Spec Check Me Please?

mark145 · 28 Jun 2016 at 22:42

Hey folks,

Back again looking for advice from the wonderful genii of overclockers. This time something different.

Looking to build a pc for office use, with a budget of around £600, (sadly) there will be no requirement for gaming use. To throw a spanner in the works, after discussing the benefits, I've been asked to include 2 monitors in the £600 budget. Luckily I have access to a W10 license so that frees up some cash. Also a KB+M will not be needed and there are a couple of external 1TB 2.5" drives that I intend to hide away inside the case to provide storage. Also note the required WiFi card...

So right now the 'offender' that will be requiring the pc uses a 2 year old Asus laptop ; with an i3-2365M @ 1.4Ghz, 4GB RAM which runs 64bit Windows 10. Now for the truth to come out, typically the laptop runs (no exaggerations, the following list was compiled from a quick check right now) - 100 open tabs in chrome, 17 excel spreadsheets, 14 word documents, several quickbooks companies open, a few odd companies open in Andica softwares and basic PAYE open continuously while running BitDefender in the background.

My main issue here is that the 'offender' is constantly complaining that the laptop is too slow and therefor hindering efficiency. Enter the Office PC.

Now I've had a quick glance and the 'highest' system requirements I can seem to find appear to be a 2.4Ghz processor and 8GB of ram but I would rather blow that out of the water considering the, lets say, varied abuse the system will have to endure. Also who knows, if it really does increase efficiency I might get a chance to chuck a graphics card in there one day :cool:

Enter the proposal... I've included below a list of what I think would be fit for the job to my best knowledge but theres a reason I'm posting in here...

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Kingston 240GB SSDNow UV400 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SUV400S37/2= £49.99
1 x Gigabyte H110M-S2H Intel H110 (Socket 1151) DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard= £46.99
1 x Fractal Design Core 1000 Case & Super Flower 450W FX 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply Bundle= £48.95
1 x Intel Core i5-6500 3.20GHz (Skylake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £179.99
1 x Overclockers UK & SilverStone - 120mm FQ121WC Watercooling Radiator Fan= £8.99
2 x Acer KA220HQ 21.5" 1920x1080 TN 5ms Widescreen LED Monitor - Black (UM.WX0EE.001)= £74.99
1 x Asus PCE-N15 300Mbps 802.11B/G/N Wireless PCI-E Network Adapter= £18.95
1 x Team Group Elite 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C16 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (TPKD432G2400HC16D= £99.95

Total: £623.41
(includes shipping: £19.62)

Looking for advice for and against any of the items above, I'm not against complete overhauls of my proposal.

I would also appreciate any advice/inclusions so that I may build the PC from one delivery, on day of arrival, without any hassles or any trips to the dreaded men in purple shirts.

Many thanks as always,

Mark

Laputacake · 28 Jun 2016 at 23:01

Personally I'd spend a bit extra on the SSD as I haven't heard much good from Kingston SSDs like the https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sams...5-sata-6gbps-solid-state-drive-hd-224-sa.html and apart from that can see nothing to complain about.

mark145 · 28 Jun 2016 at 23:50

Thanks for that Laputacake. I'll have a look into SSDs as all I really know is that they make things go fast.

Is there anything else I might need to make the build go to plan?

Laputacake · 28 Jun 2016 at 23:53

mark145 said:
Thanks for that Laputacake. I'll have a look into SSDs as all I really know is that they make things go fast.

Is there anything else I might need to make the build go to plan?

I'd say it's ready to go. Maybe get a CPU cooler and quiet fans if they want a silent PC but apart from that, like I said before. Good to go.

Danny75 · 29 Jun 2016 at 00:35

Not a biggie but I'd go for:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Kingston Fury Black 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-17000C14 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (HX421C14FBK2/3= £99.95

The mobo can only run RAM at 2133MHz, so turning XMP on this kit will automatically give you better timings than the TeamGroup 2400MHz is likely to have at 2133Mhz, as it can't have XMP enabled. Sure you can manually tinker but it saves work and possible crashes while you get the timings tight.

Go for a quieter case fan, you're not going to go anywhere near 1800 RPM if you want quiet. And you may find that lowering that radiator-type fan means a lot less CFM.

Add a 90mm rear fan to help extract heat. The PSU is not going to be stressed so fan may spin really slow, plus case air extraction through PSU isn't very efficient.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Noiseblocker BlackSilent Fan XE1 - 92mm (1500rpm)= £4.99
1 x Noiseblocker BlackSilent Fan XL1 Fan - 120mm (1000rpm)= £5.99

Ask OcUK to chuck in a 3-pin-to-Molex fan adapter.

Mobo only has two fan headers in total.

groovesection · 1 Jul 2016 at 15:03

If it's only for office use 16GB surely would be plenty, (You are quadrupling what you currently have)

Maybe this:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team...l-kit-black-tpkd416gm2400hc16d-my-066-tg.html

That will save you £50,
Take the saving on the ram and get the samsung 850 evo 250GB SSD which is £30 more than the Kingston in your OP, this should get you closer to a total of £600 for the build

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sams...olid-state-drive-mz-75e250b-eu-hd-191-sa.html

Just my 2 pence worth

mistersprinkles · 1 Jul 2016 at 15:52

No, 16GB will not be enough. Did you read what the goof (no offence) who will be using this machine has open all at once? Totally needs 32GB.

Machine looks good. I don't like SSDNOW! but it's up to you. Know that they are not great.

Does the user not need more than a quarter TB of storage?

Borealis · 1 Jul 2016 at 16:57

The Kingston UV400 series SSDNOW! drives are much better than the 300 series generation where the onboard controller was naff. The UV400s are a decent value option now.

I would agree that this sytem may need more than 250GB storage but if the existing system is a laptop, maybe not.

16GB RAM should be enough for 99% of office PCs, but if the OP is figuring on putting in 32GB, then fair enough. His colleague/end user at least can't complain it doesn't have enough memory. The issue here is the number of
concurrent tasks going on:

100 open tabs in chrome, 17 excel spreadsheets, 14 word documents, several quickbooks companies open, a few odd companies open in Andica softwares and basic PAYE open continuously while running BitDefender in the background.

Heck, I'm not sure my work PC would cope with that bunch all at once (6-core Xeon, 32GB RAM)!

I can understand keeping Quickbooks, PAYE and Andica open, as it'll save you logging in and out constantly.

Why on earth do they need to constantly have ~100 Chrome tabs open :eek:

? Aside from any memory leaks in Chrome, that's an insane number of tabs. I can understand keeping a couple of spreadsheets open, but 17 at once?

What's the internet connection like? Part of the slowness could be in part due to trying to constantly access so many webpages etc over a poor connection!

groovesection · 2 Jul 2016 at 07:28

mistersprinkles said:
No, 16GB will not be enough. Did you read what the goof (no offence) who will be using this machine has open all at once? Totally needs 32GB.

Machine looks good. I don't like SSDNOW! but it's up to you. Know that they are not great.

Does the user not need more than a quarter TB of storage?

Yes I did read the OP, of course,
A friend of mine runs win7 x64, has about 70 tabs open 24/7 in FF, games, browses, uses as a media centre (music always on) and he only has 8GB and never gets anywhere near 5GB used.

If the laptop (mentioned in the OP) can currently open all those things mentioned with a mere 4GB, then 16GB should be more than plenty.
Like I said, just my 2 pence worth

Poneros · 3 Jul 2016 at 23:44

You got a good spec imo, order it!

mark145 · 4 Jul 2016 at 15:42

Thanks for the input folks. I'm thinking that perhaps the Samsung EVO SSD would be a better option, I shall try and steer the user towards that.

Regarding the RAM and stupidity of open programs etc etc. It is more a case of "getting their moneys worth" I genuinely believe you could give this user the use of a NASA supercomputer and the system would still be loaded by the end of the day.

I simply have no reasoning behind the user's mentality. I believe it's partly due to such a busy business but also a wandering mind contributing to the way the system is abused.

Luckily there is a very usable 40 meg connection with BT Infinity so the connection is not the problem.

I have continuously tried to explain that closing programs will increase efficiency to an extent that it will not matter about the time it takes to open the programs in the first place but such an idea is just not fathomable for some reason which is why I have chosen to go for 32GB and also why I will unlikely be backing down from such an option.

What also must be remembered here is that the user struggles with updates from and is certainly not what you might call an enthusiast, where we as enthusiasts might be able to use our systems efficiently with several programs/games open, the end user of this build simply can does not have the knowledge or abilities, just the ability to use a system until it crashes or freezes.

Storage wise, the external drives I mentioned are not slow drives nor are they lacking in storage space, these will be installed into the case and the SSD will be used to host programs, all other files will be kept off of the SSD.