In the market for Pre-Built work PC (3 screens, tons of excel files, no gaming)

[Uppie1414]

Just looking to see your thoughts!

Currently running:
Win 10
Dell 64-bit system with i5-3330 CPU
16gb RAM (updated on my end)
WD Blue WD10EZEX-75ZF5A0 DCM: EARNHT2CG 1TB 7200RPM 3.5" SATA Hard Drive

Would like something that is faster, as it seems to get bogged down. SSD would help. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

**would also like the newest Microsoft Office Suite (or even 2010)

 

[Malogeek]

Dell Optiplex i7 with SSD or NVMe drive and you'll be golden. For Office just get an O365 subscription including desktop applications.

Honestly even with your current system, moving to an SSD will make a big difference.

 

[EliteRetard]

Some of those Excel files can get ridiculous, and after 2007 MS went multi core...so depending how crazy the file is, it might be worth looking into more than 4 cores. That would mean Ryzen, Skylake-X, or Threadripper.

Probably want a small GPU like a GT1030 or RX550 for the triple screens.

An SSD will certainly help too, as will lots of good fast RAM.

 

[Uppie1414]

Thanks everyone--any good prebuilt deals out there for what I need?

 

[EliteRetard]

Thanks everyone--any good prebuilt deals out there for what I need?

Well it's unclear exactly what you need at this point, and what your budget is.

Are you dealing with simple 1 page excel files with a couple hundred cells, or huge files with tens of thousands of rows?

As malogeek mentioned, you might even be able to upgrade your current PC to do the job. So it depends, if this is a simple home side job kinda thing, or a critical cost no object company kinda thing. Could spend a couple hundred bucks, or many thousands.

 

[Uppie1414]

critical cost no object company kinda thing...to a point. My computer and my co-worker's.

May dink around and try to upgrade. I currently have 14 Excel files open while working....haha.

 

[EliteRetard]

critical cost no object company kinda thing...to a point. My computer and my co-worker's.

May dink around and try to upgrade. I currently have 14 Excel files open while working....haha.

It could potentially be worth considering a workstation with Xeons then. Again, Intel is currently releasing it's new high end/workstation CPUs and it might be worth waiting a month to pick one of those (non-workstation versions are preorder now).

I'm just going to throw out a rough high end build with the new consumer HEDT CPU. Being that parts are just coming out and selection is very limited currently, this is not a recommended build but more of a rough template. Give you an idea of what a low end workstation build would look like/cost.

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/QkqCWX
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/QkqCWX/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel - Core i9-7900X 3.3GHz 10-Core ($999.00 @ Amazon) There should be a Xeon around this price
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-U12S ($57.99 @ Amazon) Perhaps best single tower 120mm (size/weight concerns)
Motherboard: MSI - X299 GAMING M7 ACK ATX LGA2066 ($399.00 @ B&H) 1 of only 2 examples right now
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V 4x8GB DDR4-3200 CAS 15-15-15-35 ($324.10 @ Newegg) Mid-high speed, low latency
Storage: Samsung - 960 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($327.99 @ B&H) Pro for MLC (EVO is TLC)
Video Card: AMD - Radeon Pro WX 4100 4GB Video Card ($283.99 @ SuperBiiz) "cheap" modern workstation card
Case: Fractal Design - Define C ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.99 @ NCIX US) Good looks, quality, open airflow, etc.
Power Supply: SeaSonic - PRIME 750W 80+ Platinum Fully-Modular ($127.89 @ Newegg) Best quality, 12yr warranty
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit ($132.89 @ OutletPC) $200 for a real legitimate copy
Software: Microsoft - Office Professional 2016 Software ($386.94 @ My Choice Software) $400 from a reputable site

Total: $3109.78 - A similar (but warrantied) OEM build may be 25-30% higher.

Again, I'm not suggesting you build this yourself, or even recommending all these parts. I simply tried to put together a list of sensible choices you'd want in a lower end but higher core count workstation to give you a rough idea what it would look like/cost. Selection is very limited at this time so you'll have much better options in another month or so. I'm not certain of the full release time frame, but since you can currently place preorders I'd expect everything to start showing up by then

If you need something right now, there are still certainly some good upgrades from what you have.

 

[you2]

Why the freak would he need a 3K system for spreadsheets? I would like $500-$1000 would be plenty (if not overkill at the high end).

You indicated the system gets bogged down; have you checked what it is doing during that period (task manager?). How much ram are you using with the largest spreadsheet ?

The disk you have is quite slow and so if it is doing a fair amount of disk i/o then an ssd would potentially help quite a bit. Naively I would think 16GB is plenty but I suppose if your spreadsheet is large enough then more ram might help but you can determine this easy enough with task manager.

For cpu upgrade the most I would consider is a 4 core i7 but again you can check the cpu utilization. hd520 will handle 3 displays (I presume newer version in 7th generation will be similar but you can double check); if the system has the appropriate ports. A cheap gpu can also be used to add a few displays (you do not need an expensive 3d card for such).
-
My guess is a small disktop (or even nuc size unit) with an i7; 16GB ram (unless you are utilizing more than 16GB then you might want 32GB) and 512GB or 1TB ssd (you could go with two drives in raid but i suspect that is overkill unless your spread sheets are 100's of MB in size (you can check the file size on disk).
-
I suspect that the spreadsheet are not that large and 16GB is ample but I could imagine a large company with data from 100+ thousand to millions of entries (does this match your usage?).
-
Anyway before you buy anything I would check where the bottleneck is via task manager and go from there. 14 spread sheets that have 10 rows shouldn't use much resources (though ms optimization is pretty pathetic so who knows); but a couple of spread sheets with 100 million rows might be a bit of a resource hog depending on number of columns and ms optimization.

 

[Burpo]

You can upgrade CPU to an i7 3770, add an SSD & a GT-1030 video card for around $300.
It would speed things up considerably over what you have now & likely be all you'd need.

 

[Kaido]

Just looking to see your thoughts!

Currently running:
Win 10
Dell 64-bit system with i5-3330 CPU
16gb RAM (updated on my end)
WD Blue WD10EZEX-75ZF5A0 DCM: EARNHT2CG 1TB 7200RPM 3.5" SATA Hard Drive

Would like something that is faster, as it seems to get bogged down. SSD would help. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

**would also like the newest Microsoft Office Suite (or even 2010)

$1490, here you go:

http://www.provantage.com/hp-z2d61ut-aba~7CMPK5HH.htm

Has a Xeon CPU, NVMe SSD, and meets your triple-monitor requirement. It ships with 16GB RAM, but you can upgrade it to 32GB RAM in about 30 seconds (regular or ECC, although I'd recommend ECC for the amount of Excel work you're doing). Upgrading is very easy...there's a slide button on the back of the case that pops the lid off, then there is a single screw to lift up the cooling fan & snap the laptop-style memory chips in. Very very easy. You can also upgrade to a Samsung 960 Pro NVMe drive if you need even more speed off the NVMe interface, although the stock drive is quite fast. There's also room for a 2.5" drive if you want to add internal backup (I've tested 15mm 5TB 2.5" drives successfully).

It comes from the factory with Windows 7 & also includes a Windows 10 license, so you have your choice of operating systems (be sure to clone Windows 7 if you want to keep it because they don't give you restore media for that OS...I use Macrium Reflect; there's a free version available you can make an image clone with & it's pretty easy to make a bootable USB restore stick yourself in case you need to nuke the PC back to factory stock for whatever reason).

One thing you may want to consider is installing a 64-bit version of Microsoft Excel. Even Office 2016 installs the 32-bit version by default (for compatibility), but if you're not using any special plugins, you might want to give that a shot:

https://support.office.com/en-us/ar...f-Office-2dee7807-8f95-4d0c-b5fe-6c6f49b8d261

Limitations in the 32-bit version explained here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-in-the-32-bit-edition-of-excel-2013-and-2016

The 32-bit edition of Office is limited to 2 GB of virtual address space, and this space is shared by Excel, the workbook, and add-ins that run in the same process. (Worksheets smaller than 2 GB on disk might still contain enough data to occupy 2 GB or more of addressable memory.)

...

The 2-GB limitation is per windows process instance of Excel. You can run multiple files in one instance. However, if the files are really large and have to be open, consider opening multiple instances for the other files.

The Z2 Mini is the zippiest off-the-shelf computer I've ever used (in the linked Xeon configuration). Super quiet, roughly the size of a shoebox (well, half the height), and has a mounting cage available (ex. if you want to screw it in under your desk). The power cable brick is ginormous, but it's easy to hide with heavy-duty double-sided velcro or whatever. I get most users a powered USB 3.0 hub & a USB slim optical drive for convenience.

This unit is pretty much my go-to turnkey computer for professional installations at the present time. It's great for power office users and basic CAD & DCC users. Price is great too...you get a lot for under $1.5k USD.

 

[Kaido]

Why the freak would he need a 3K system for spreadsheets? I would like $500-$1000 would be plenty (if not overkill at the high end).

...

Anyway before you buy anything I would check where the bottleneck is via task manager and go from there. 14 spread sheets that have 10 rows shouldn't use much resources (though ms optimization is pretty pathetic so who knows); but a couple of spread sheets with 100 million rows might be a bit of a resource hog depending on number of columns and ms optimization.

Professional use of Excel can be a real hog on a machine. I have several customers who work in finance who use pretty high-end machines because they live in Excel all day. It's like anything else...depends on the usage. I'm a ram hog myself because I usually have half a dozen Chrome windows open with a good 20 tabs each (ADHD FTW!). You wouldn't think that a Chromebook would need 16 gigs of RAM or a good processor, but uh, life finds a way

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Bogged down? Ivy Bridge i5? 16GB?

Bah. 90% of the improvement you see in a new rig will be the SSD. Just get one of those.

What kind of monitors and keyboard/mouse setup do you have? That's probably more important here. (Eyestrain, etc. for the monitors, and a good keyboard/mouse can reduce wrist soreness.)

 

[Uppie1414]

Running through all of this now--I might just try the SSD and go from ther.e Updates tonight.

Thanks SOOO much!

 

[Kaido]

Running through all of this now--I might just try the SSD and go from ther.e Updates tonight.

Thanks SOOO much!

An SSD will make an enormous & noticeable difference if you're running off a mechanical spinner. I'm a big fan of the Samsung EVO 850 series. They start at 120gb & go up to 4TB for the SSD's. You can clone the drive using this:

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

If you have a tower PC, just plug the SSD into the CD-ROM ports (power & SATA) temporarily to clone. Alternatively, if you want a fresh install, you can just download the Windows 10 USB installer creator software directly from Microsoft...if your computer is already activated now, it will check online & register you without needing a key.

 

[Uppie1414]

I may try this this weekend--again, thanks everyone!! Wish me luck!

 

[Torn Mind]

Why the freak would he need a 3K system for spreadsheets? I would like $500-$1000 would be plenty (if not overkill at the high end).

You indicated the system gets bogged down; have you checked what it is doing during that period (task manager?). How much ram are you using with the largest spreadsheet ?

The disk you have is quite slow and so if it is doing a fair amount of disk i/o then an ssd would potentially help quite a bit. Naively I would think 16GB is plenty but I suppose if your spreadsheet is large enough then more ram might help but you can determine this easy enough with task manager.

For cpu upgrade the most I would consider is a 4 core i7 but again you can check the cpu utilization. hd520 will handle 3 displays (I presume newer version in 7th generation will be similar but you can double check); if the system has the appropriate ports. A cheap gpu can also be used to add a few displays (you do not need an expensive 3d card for such).
-
My guess is a small disktop (or even nuc size unit) with an i7; 16GB ram (unless you are utilizing more than 16GB then you might want 32GB) and 512GB or 1TB ssd (you could go with two drives in raid but i suspect that is overkill unless your spread sheets are 100's of MB in size (you can check the file size on disk).
-
I suspect that the spreadsheet are not that large and 16GB is ample but I could imagine a large company with data from 100+ thousand to millions of entries (does this match your usage?).
-
Anyway before you buy anything I would check where the bottleneck is via task manager and go from there. 14 spread sheets that have 10 rows shouldn't use much resources (though ms optimization is pretty pathetic so who knows); but a couple of spread sheets with 100 million rows might be a bit of a resource hog depending on number of columns and ms optimization.

Time is money and the losses to the paycheck and free time are worth the expense to get as much zip as possible.

32 gigs or more and at least an i7 quad core is the way to go. With an SSD, yes.

 

[you2]

I don't disagree that Time is money; however I do disagree with throwing money away. I still think he should identify the bottleneck and address the issue. It might very well be disk i/o or it might be lack of ram or it might be ...
-
If we were talking about $600 vs $400 then it might be easier to just get the more expensive system. But in this case he could end up saving $2500 and it is well worth spending an hour to see if the bottleneck can be easily identified.

Time is money and the losses to the paycheck and free time are worth the expense to get as much zip as possible.

32 gigs or more and at least an i7 quad core is the way to go. With an SSD, yes.