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$500 office/work - critique my build

If you can get away with not having an optical drive, or would be fine with a small external USB drive, an Intel NUC might suit you very well.

Here's one with a Broadwell i3, which includes case/mobo/PSU/CPU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102093R

56-102-093-Z01


There are smaller versions available that will only accept a M.2 SSD, and cheaper versions with Pentiums and Celerons instead, if you don't feel you need that much performance. Personally, I see the days of the full-sized desktop as basically at an end.
 
Yuriman said:
If you can get away with not having an optical drive, or would be fine with a small external USB drive, an Intel NUC might suit you very well.

Here's one with a Broadwell i3, which includes case/mobo/PSU/CPU:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102093R

56-102-093-Z01


There are smaller versions available that will only accept a M.2 SSD, and cheaper versions with Pentiums and Celerons instead, if you don't feel you need that much performance. Personally, I see the days of the full-sized desktop as basically at an end.
Click to expand...

Gaming/extended storage and a number of other items would make the NUC type systems not suitable for everyone. A lot of people can use them, but I doubt the desktop PC will ever completely go away.
 
mvbighead said:
Gaming/extended storage and a number of other items would make the NUC type systems not suitable for everyone. A lot of people can use them, but I doubt the desktop PC will ever completely go away.
Click to expand...

"Full-sized desktop"

ITX can take care of 95% of the rest of the market.
 
Sidenote: I would buy another Dell if they offered SSDs, but they don't unless you spend over $1K. Are there are any brands that put SSDs in budget systems?
 
What you have looks solid to me, assuming you don't have any servers or plan to join to domain later on...

I have that same Fractal Core 1000 case with Asrock H97M-Pro and CoreI5 for my ESXi whitebox, and its wonderful for the price.
 
Just be sure to get the larger-sized NUC which gives you a laptop hard drive option instead of limiting you to an M2 SSD.

Unless, of course, you really don't need much storage and a 120-256GB SSD is sufficient. (For additional storage, I'm a big fan of the Seagate hybrid SSHD drives. So-so-speed 5400RPM laptop drive for storing tons of data, but 8GB of SSD caching for booting and the stuff you use all the time like Office and web browser.) My 2¢
 
I built a very similar G3220-powered system for my inlaws a few years ago in a Core 1000, about the only difference (besides your newer components) would be a 500GB HDD for backup images... because I always expect an SSD to fail at any time... but that could be handled by a portable external HDD.

The NUC looks like a good option, but it's inability to expand (USB ports, for example...) would make it a niche item. But if it works, it works.
 
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