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$730 Office/Productivity Live Build

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Post

philip Oct. 21, 2015

Join us Thursday 2pm Central time for our weekly live stream, where we'll be putting together Jenny's office build.

After a few (rather expensive, cough) gaming and rendering systems, it's time to build a more modest system for general office and productivity software use. Jenny handles our retailer relationships, and with the move to the new office we wanted to put together a new system for her. She's not an avid gamer, so we decided to skip external graphics and go with the CPU on-board GPU chipset instead. However, we didn't want it to be a plain ugly box, so we spent a bit more for the nice Silverstone case. Here's the full part list:

PCPartPicker part list

Type Item Price
CPU Intel Core i3-4350 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor $151.98 @ Newegg
CPU Cooler CRYORIG C1 65.0 CFM CPU Cooler Already had on-hand
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard $112.00 @ B&H
Memory Kingston HyperX Fury White 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory $46.99 @ Amazon
Storage Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive $84.89 @ OutletPC
Case Silverstone FT03S-MINI Mini ITX Tower Case $142.08 @ Amazon
Power Supply Silverstone 300W 80+ Bronze Certified SFX Power Supply $48.99 @ SuperBiiz
Keyboard Microsoft Designer Bluetooth Desktop Bluetooth Wireless Slim Keyboard w/Laser Mouse $79.98 @ Amazon
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total $666.91
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-21 22:02 EDT-0400

Comments Sorted by:

wildskiller 10 points 41 months ago

This computer is the devil!

click here for image

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190n 2 Builds 2 points 41 months ago

lol

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Emmettdogg 1 point 40 months ago

Ha

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190n 2 Builds 3 points 41 months ago

The livestreams are weekly now?

COOL!!!

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mike9409 6 Builds 3 points 40 months ago

Chess boards will never look the same again...

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PorkyDonut 2 points 40 months ago

Not best, for a few reasons:

i3

Man, use Team Elite memory, its cheaper.

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PorkyDonut 1 point 39 months ago

This computer costs like my gaming build. My gaming build is at over here

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Psyckosama 1 point 39 months ago

Lets see...

i3? Less than ideal.

Expensive ram?

An 150 dollar case? Really?

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philip staff submitter 10 Builds 1 point 39 months ago

Really!

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Psyckosama 1 point 39 months ago

Really excessive.

With some wiser parts selection this build could have easily been reduced in cost by an easy 200 dollars... or have had that money put into improvements that would have benefited it performance wise.

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philip staff submitter 10 Builds 1 point 39 months ago

Just a heads up - this was not a build guide. This was a personal build for our office. Sure, we could have changed the case and saved money or spent it elsewhere, but we chose not to. We were comfortable spending extra to get the aesthetics we wanted.

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Psyckosama 1 point 39 months ago

Fair point. Though still, a 150 dollar case strikes me as a needless excess.

That said I tend to run along the lines of ITX cases exist to be tucked away out of site and out of mind.

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philip staff submitter 10 Builds 2 points 39 months ago

I understand you feel it is excessive.

I've built with $50 ITX cases, $100 ITX cases, and got to see this one up close. Yes, it's $150, but it's also really well built. When you spend more on a case like this one, you'll often notice substantial differences in build quality. Seriously, it's a really nice case, and it's really nice to build in. (Didn't you just recommend a not-cheap Enthoo recently due to the ease of working in it?) It's not my personal build, but I like it. It looks really clean on the desk and takes up minimal space. It's super quiet.

Regarding the choice of CPU, the i3 is plenty capable for what the build is being used for. She's not gaming on it. She's not doing heavy number crunching. Just basic productivity apps and tasks.

At the end of the day, Jack and Ryan put together this part list for Jenny's work computer. I didn't give them a budget, but let them splurge where they wanted to. I think that's ok, but I also recognize not everyone has that luxury. We just ended up optimizing for personal preference rather than trying to squeeze the most out of every dollar.

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PorkyDonut 1 point 39 months ago

If there is no gpu, buy a A10-7870K or A10-7850K instead! Same price, a little bit more electricity, but is worth the gpu.

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philip staff submitter 10 Builds 1 point 39 months ago

We didn't need the extra graphics capability.

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piemancoder 0 points 41 months ago

Office builds are cool, I think it's smarter to omit an external GPU. Can't wait to watch the replay, as I'll be in a long car ride during the live stream, but it's one day before the monotony data limit resets!

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philip staff submitter 10 Builds 1 point 41 months ago

If I remember correctly, we ordered the parts for her build before the non-K variants of Skylake were available.

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