New office built

[Galatian]

Hey,

I'm planning on building a new office PC for my BFs birthday in February. I want to go with a completely passive case, like the Streacom FC8 Evo Fanless Chassis, so I'll need a mini-ITX main board. I'm pretty lost on the CPU. He is running some old AMD CPU right now, but seems to be fine with it (except the fact that the entice computer is loud and takes like 5 minutes to boot). I see that Intel is having a few 35W TDP Core i3 CPUs but they are for one all Dual Cores and I'm not sure if this wise for future proofing this rig and they all don't have the TSX-NI, which might become important in the future. I'm completely lost on AMDs processors as well, but it appears that Watt for Watt Intel is just much more efficient. Should I go all in and get the 35W Core i7-4765T or can I stick with something way cheaper (Core i5/i3/A10)?

The main board should come with wireless LAN and maybe Bluetooth, but other than that there are no more requirements.

The rest of the system is pretty straight forward. I'm sticking with 8 GB of low voltage RAM, a 256 GB SDD (probably going with Anandtechs recommendation for a Sandisk Extreme II Pro or a Samsung 840 Pro since RAPID seems to be a nice thing to have) and a slot-in slimline BD-Drive (might have to go with the one offered by Streacom, because those are hard to find). I'm not sure what kind of HDD I can put inside this case, since it has no ventilation. Will I have a heat problem when I stick a 7200 RPM drive in their?

Price wise this is a present, as well as a project for myself building a highly efficient system, so I want this to be as cheap as possible and as expensive as it has to be. I will be buying all the components in January here in Germany.

 

[ggadrian]

Is a passive case a must? Because it tends to be expensive and quite limiting in hardware choices.

You can use a well ventilated case with silent fans running at very low speed, a computer like that would be almost inaudible and way cheaper. And you can throw in it any CPU you want.

 

[mfenn]

I agree with Adrian. Fully fanless is a tall order. Even 35W may be too much for the case unless you have some external airflow. More tightly integrated factory-built fanless PCs go with 17W mobile parts to keep the heat down.

 

[Galatian]

Hmmm...of course it's not a must, I just thought it be nice. According to Streacom their cases can fit a CPU with an TDP of up to 95W.

What "normal" case would you recommend?

 

[Charlie98]

There are many good cases that are very quiet as part of their design... going with a traditional case would also allow greater flexibility in component selection.

I have 2 Fractal Define Mini mATX cases in use (desktop and HTPC,) both running 3 fans, and while they are not inaudible, in general use you don't really know they are there. There are smaller cases (mITX) that can do this as well, certainly.

 

[Galatian]

Sounds good. I have a Fractal Design Core 3000 for my gaming rig as well. It's not inaudible, but I guess that's not what was planned for the case anyway.

What kind of processor will suffice for an office built? He doesn't game or anything, but I want to make sure it will last him the next 5 years.

 

[Essence_of_War]

What kind of processor will suffice for an office built? He doesn't game or anything, but I want to make sure it will last him the next 5 years.

How demanding is his workload?

Is he photoshopping and handbraking or is this more of an MS Office, Evernote etc sort of thing?

If it's mostly office type stuff, I'd probably go with a basic haswell pentium like the G3220, or a haswell i3 like the i3-4130.

 

[yinan]

This is what you want:

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Compa...s=intel+nuc+i7

 

[Cerb]

Hmmm...of course it's not a must, I just thought it be nice. According to Streacom their cases can fit a CPU with an TDP of up to 95W.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1333-page5.html
95W, if it throttles correctly, and doesn't actually come close to using 95W for any meaningful length of time...

 

[Fayd]

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1333-page5.html
95W, if it throttles correctly, and doesn't actually come close to using 95W for any meaningful length of time...

maybe so, but it does fit a 65w tdp processor quite well. a 35w tdp processor would run pretty cool.

any decent mitx mobo with a 35w part would be fine. if he's not gaming or doing anything super processor intensive, than you should be fine with an i3.

 

[Fayd]

This is what you want:

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Compa...s=intel+nuc+i7

if there's no real performance requirement, i don't see the need for an i7 nuc. an i5 or i3 would do just as well in office apps, run cooler, and be significantly cheaper.

 

[Galatian]

He is just doing some Office stuff and Facebook and the like. No gaming, no photoshop...I guess an i3 will be fine? Will I/he regret not having the TSX-NI or will that not be relevant for the near future?

 

[Essence_of_War]

Just office and FB would probably be fine with a pentium. i3 would certainly be fine. I seriously doubt he'd miss TSX-NI.

 

[mfenn]

Hmmm...of course it's not a must, I just thought it be nice. According to Streacom their cases can fit a CPU with an TDP of up to 95W. If you have adequate airflow

Added the caveat that Streacom listed on their page. In this case (pun intended), what they mean is "if you have active cooling blowing over the case's fins".

Our skepticism regarding the case's claimed maximum TDP proved to be correct: Running Prime95, which is the true torture test, the system was stable for all of five minutes before the CPU began to throttle at 82°C. While Prime95 is a synthetic test that generates greater power and heat than any real world application, the fact the FC8 Evo failed it with a 65W chip suggests that a 95W processor is completely out of the question, with any type of heavy load. The case's cooling system has less external surface area as well as fewer heatpipes compared to the FC5 OD. It handled the TMPGEnc test using the Core i5-3470S, but this is in a relatively cool 20°C ambient room; in summer, especially in warmer climates, pairing the case with such a chip would not be wise.

 

[mfenn]

He is just doing some Office stuff and Facebook and the like. No gaming, no photoshop...I guess an i3 will be fine? Will I/he regret not having the TSX-NI or will that not be relevant for the near future?

Unless he is a developer who is working on highly-threaded code, he will not miss TSX-NI support. New instruction sets take many years to be even used in commercial products, and they take decades to be mandatory.

 

[Charlie98]

Sounds good. I have a Fractal Design Core 3000 for my gaming rig as well. It's not inaudible, but I guess that's not what was planned for the case anyway.

What kind of processor will suffice for an office built? He doesn't game or anything, but I want to make sure it will last him the next 5 years.

The Core series are decent cases, but they don't have any sound damping; The Define series does. I just built a general purpose rig in a Core 1000... it certainly isn't a Define Mini.

Speaking of which...

DESK2: Pentium G3220, ASRock H81M-HDS, Intel 530 120GB, 500GB Hitachi, 2x 4GB Crucial RAM, Corsair CX430v2, Fractal Core 1000, W7

...that's the rig I just built for my inlaws for general PC use with a $400(US) budget. The Pentium G3220 is a decent chip, if you wanted a little more performance you could add $60 and swap in the i3-4130 or similar; I don't see any reason to dump a bunch of money on an i5, etc.

I also think an SSD is essential... it makes even the G3220 look like a hero!

 

[Torn Mind]

Haswell Pentium should indeed be enough for basic office work. Fast single-threaded performance will blow through Word, etc just fine. Since it has the same number of cores and same clockspeed as an E8400 at stock, the Haswell will be faster due to the 4(?) generations of IPC advances. Assuming a 10% increase per generation, it would come out to being 1.46* times faster.

And it does this with a 54W cooling system. Actual power draw will be less than 30W at idle, probably even ~20W.

* (1+.1)^4=1.46

 

[Charlie98]

And it does this with a 54W cooling system. Actual power draw will be less than 30W at idle, probably even ~20W.

Just FYI, DESK2 rig in sig draws 32w at idle, and I can't get it over 50w in LinX testing, measured at the wall with a Kill-o-Watt.

 

[escrow4]

I'd put an i5 4670 in it at least. I've run too many times into it when I needed to do something on a box and it was built for basic tasks that changed in a few months into complex tasks. That i5 would last and last period. An i3, eh. Overpriced. And I doubt a Pentium has the puff even for basic work with multitasking thrown in. Then again I'm running an i7 4770 in this workstation, I upgraded from a G1610, massive difference overall.

 

[Torn Mind]

Just FYI, DESK2 rig in sig draws 32w at idle, and I can't get it over 50w in LinX testing, measured at the wall with a Kill-o-Watt.

Obviously, since these are at the wall numbers, you're probably experiencing efficiency losses of at least 20%, or about 8 watts, at idle.

 

[yinan]

I really do not get the hate for the NUC type devices in these types of threads. The NUC is an awesome little box, produces basically no heat, has no moving parts, smaller than an Xbox controller, but no one ever likes them.

I am using one for a XBMC media center PC and it kicks ass.

I am probably going to be buying 3-4 more to upgrade my ESXi lab at the house, since it can run 5.5.

 

[Essence_of_War]

I don't think anyone is hating on the NUC here, it's certainly an option, we're catering a little to the fact that OP said that they were also interested in this as a sort of build-project for themselves also.

 

[Charlie98]

I am using one for a XBMC media center PC and it kicks ass.

Because using one for an HTPC is much different than using one in general PC use. There is very little demand on the CPU when streaming movies and such. I put a Pentium in my HTPC and I'll admit it (after the fact...) that it's serious overkill.

The OP is trying to 'future proof' a bit and anticipate the machine perhaps filling a bigger role in the future. To me that says a minimum of a Pentium... just my .02.

 

[Charlie98]

Obviously, since these are at the wall numbers, you're probably experiencing efficiency losses of at least 20%, or about 8 watts, at idle.

Right on...!

 

[yinan]

Because using one for an HTPC is much different than using one in general PC use. There is very little demand on the CPU when streaming movies and such. I put a Pentium in my HTPC and I'll admit it (after the fact...) that it's serious overkill.

The OP is trying to 'future proof' a bit and anticipate the machine perhaps filling a bigger role in the future. To me that says a minimum of a Pentium... just my .02.

It has an i7, an SSD, and 16GB of RAM. And the movies I am playing are not streaming, they are high bitrate MKV files played over the network.

Please tell me how any of these other suggestions are better.