Semi-powerful work PC

[blueness]

Below are the details that I'm looking into. I haven't decided on whether to build or just wait for some nice dell or other deal.

Many thanks for any help/suggestions.



1. WHAT USE:
Looking to build a PC that will be used for work. That includes email, spreadsheets, photoshop image manipulation, scanning and OCR. Also will be used for home, photo manipulation and printing and will use to serve music to a home office area. Also... extensively multitask (many open browser windows, work on images, upload, pull data from spreadsheets, etc.)

2. BUDGET:
Around $500... I do not HAVE to build, could just go buy budget PC based upon deals that come out.

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.
US.

4. BRAND PREFERENCE.
Lean towards intel. But am open.

5. REUSE.
- I have a Corsair 400W PSU, modular
- Have a new el' cheapo small case (gigabyte $20) which I may or may not use, probably not... picked that up in case I ever got around to building an HTPC.

6. IF YOU have searched and/or read similar threads.
Have taken a gander a this forum, more of the builds seem to lean towards gaming and or just surfing. This is a working computer.

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.
NO overclocking.

8. What resolution YOU plan on gaming with.
NO gaming. Though plan to look for a 23" 1920 x 1080 monitor (NOT included in system price)

9. WHEN do you plan to build it?
Now.

10. Do you have a MicroCenter nearby?
Yes, a MicroCenter is nearby.

 

[blueness]

One additional piece... just curious on whether any hard drives stand out as being more stable/durable than others? Or is it time to consider solid state?

 

[alyarb]

i would do the $55 samsung 500GB F3 as far as hard drives go, unless you need more space there is also a 1TB F3.

You basically just need an inexpensive quad core with 4GB of RAM to cover your multitasking. You aren't doing anything particularly compute intensive but you will have quite a few light apps running simultaneously. A pretty lean Athlon II X4 machine with 4GB DDR3 and the 500GB samsung will easily come out to under $350 and would be more than adequate for your purposes.

the corresponding intel system would be an i5 750, and if you wanted that (let's face it, they are a bit faster), it will cost a bit more. an i5 can be squeezed into $500, though.

your CPU is going to be $199, there is a $99 gigabyte P55 board, $99 crucial DDR3, the $55 samsung, a ~$22 DVD burner comes to about $480, but there is no integrated video solution for the i5 750, so you'll also need a radeon 4350 for about $30.

So basically the intel machine will cost about $150 extra (the cost of a game-changing SSD) and i'm not sure if it would be noticeably faster for the jobs you're doing. If it were my money I would go for the AMD system and get a Kingston SNV425-S2 or Corsair SSD in addition to the samsung 500GB (you'll probably want the swap file on your F3). you'd get a far snappier machine for your dollar.

 

[blueness]

Thanks for the info