basic office PC

[pontifex]

Can anyone recommend a reliable, no frills work PC for a small rural township office? Just 1 user using email, Quickbooks, printing, web browsing, general office type work.


Needs to have:
DVD drive/burner
memory card reader
Windows OS

Less than $500

I haven't been in the PC world much in the last few years and I realize pretty much any cheap PC is going to work, but I am looking for something that will be reliable. I'm pretty much the PC support for them and the less I have to deal with it, the better.

 

[lxskllr]

I like Dell. The computers are reasonably good, and the support I've gotten has been good. It just requires patience while you're going through their checklist.

 

[pontifex]

I forgot to add it will need to come with Windows.
Also just need the tower itself, monitor, mouse, and keyboard are all still good.

 

[lxskllr]

Last computer I got for the office was a ssf Dell Optiplex refurb(C2Q). Forget what I paid, but the price was good. The psu went up in less than a month. They couldn't send another one, so they refunded $35, and I bought a new on on Amazon for $25. That was over a year ago, and it's been running fine since.

 

[Valantar]

Lenovo has an online sale going on their M710 Small Form Factor ThinkStation desktops. Should be very durable machines, and the prices are excellent - for the starting price of $319 you get a Pentium G4560 with 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD, but you can add both more RAM and an SSD for better general performance within your $500 budget. Oh, and they're quite compact too, not your mid-2000s oversized office midtower filled with nothing but air.

With 8GB RAM and a 128GB PCIe SSD for Windows and applications added, it's still just $440. If you wanted to, you could use the remaining $60 to step up to a 256GB SSD or add something else. If your monitor doesn't have DisplayPort input, remember to add the necessary adapter. Oh, and if you don't need a keyboard and mouse, you can uncheck those for another $20 of savings. With that accounted for you could even step up to an i3-7100, although the performance difference between that and the Pentium will be negligible - they're both 2c4t CPUs with similar clocks. The i3 has more chache and possibly a slightly better integrated graphics solution, but nothing you'll notice. If I were you, I would go for Pentium + 8GB + 128GB SSD, as you'll likely not need more. Remember that with the SSD, you still have a 500GB HDD for mass storage.

Edit: I didn't see that you needed an optical drive. It's only $35 to add one, though, so it should fit nicely into your budget.

 

[pontifex]

I'm leaning to the Lenovo M710 that Valantar posted about.

Also looking at this Acer on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...7-b4d4-466b-8c26-2639359664eb&pf_rd_i=desktop

 

[Valantar]

I'm leaning to the Lenovo M710 that Valantar posted about.

Also looking at this Acer on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...7-b4d4-466b-8c26-2639359664eb&pf_rd_i=desktop

The Acer looks like a reasonable deal, and has some things going for it:
-i5 CPU is noticeably faster than the G4650
-2TB HDD (although I doubt you'll exceed 500GB of data with your stated workload)

I would still choose the ThinkStation, though. Why?
-It's a business PC, in other words it's built to last at least the standard 5-year replacement cycle for enterprice machines. Consumer machines are built for immediate value for money, not longevity.
-It's bigger than the Lenovo
-It doesn't have an SSD. Especially for light use, an SSD is a far more significant performance increase than a faster CPU. Every application you open, every file you load or save, everything you do will be faster with an SSD. A faster CPU is only really noticeable for CPU-intensive tasks that take significant time.

That's just my two cents, though. But as anyone on these forums will tell you, a PC without an SSD is barely worth having for casual, intermittent use in 2017.

 

[pontifex]

The person using it only works 2 days a week typically, so it's not going to be used much.
The one they have now is freezing randomly and restarts. I've spent 11 hours with it already, upgrading software, drivers, virus and malware scans, backing up data, and even restored to factory defaults which should eliminate any software issue but it's still freezing. So I assume there's a hardware fault but it's passed the hardware tests I've done on it. Didn't run any intensive tests though. It's 5 years old now, and to throw parts and labor at it, including my labor fee that I already accrued, seems like a waste of money.
So they may want one quickly and it seems like it will take 9 to 16 business days to get here (don't see any option for upgraded shipping times).

 

[DaveSimmons]

I'm down on NVME SSDs right now since the motherboard on my new Acer at work stopped seeing mine after 6 weeks. It's a sample of 1 but I'd much rather have a 2.5" SSD. That said, the Acer is well designed with a good CPU cooler so aside from the not working part I'd recommend it

I'm not alone: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/m-2-missing.2504545/

I have an Acer i3 mini-ITX system at home from 2011 that I use as a music jukebox, it's also been quiet and very reliable.

My last 2 work PCs were Dell Vostro (small business) and both were good, reliable systems.

 

[pontifex]

We end up going with the Lenovo one