is this good for an office

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Yeah this will get the job done. I just recommend putting a SSD in there as your primary Storage because its way faster, there is literally no wait time with an SSD. Or you could just get a HDD if you dont mind waiting a little bit.

JoshuaPinto

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Feb 10, 2014
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Yeah this will get the job done. I just recommend putting a SSD in there as your primary Storage because its way faster, there is literally no wait time with an SSD. Or you could just get a HDD if you dont mind waiting a little bit.
 
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g-unit1111

Titan
Moderator
You don't need an i5 for that, an AMD A10 will handle those purposes just fine. Maybe try something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD A8-6600K 3.9GHz Quad-Core Processor ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock FM2A78M-ITX+ Mini ITX FM2+ Motherboard ($90.38 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($76.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.92 @ Amazon)
Case: BitFenix Prodigy (White) Mini ITX Tower Case ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($58.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($23.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $473.24
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Shaved $60 off the price and it's a small form factor at that.
 
It will work.....you won't be crimped in any way. It's hard to make a case for SSDs in an office setting from a productivity perspective. These are on a identical machine 2700k, 16 GB, SLI

SSD Boot Time = 15.6 seconds
SSHD Boot Time = 16.5 seconds
HD Boot time = 21.2 seconds.

So..... if you paying someone $20 an hour, after 3 years they savings "could be":

$20.00 / hr x 5.2 seconds x 220 work days per year x 3 years system life / 60 seconds per minute x 50 minutes per hour) = $19.06 **potential** productivity savings. Can't buy an SSD for that.

But the fact of the matter is, look around the office and this is what I see.

-Peeps come in, start their PC, check their phone messages, head to coffee machine .... their PC's been sitting idle for 5 minutes before they get back to their desk.

-When ya hand a marked up draft letter to a secretary, she might open the word processor and it will take 0.5 seconds to open on the HD .... but she won't be ready to type for about a minute till she reads thru your markups and makes sure she can read your handwriting.

So it's not that the SSDs aren't faster than HDs, it's that the user is a lot slower than both.

Since we use CAD I used to buy SSDs for staff machines but now we buy SSHDs .... any productivity savings is more than offset by someone managing storage as to what's left on what.
 

g-unit1111

Titan
Moderator


While I completely agree with most of your points there's a couple I would make as well

- First off is the downtime required should one of the PCs contract a virus. Reformatting Windows on a traditional HD would take almost an entire day of both your time and your employes' time. Reformatting Windows on an SSD would take less than an hour.

- Assuming everything is stored on a central server (which it absolutely should be along with a backup server / firewall) then having small storage devices would prohibit employees from stealing valuable company data or storing personal data on their PCs.

These are all good points - I personally would go with the SSD solution but if you don't have the resources to get a central server and backup server going then the mass storage drive is your only option.
 


I don't get it ... what's the difference:

Scenario # 1

128 GB SSD with OS
1 TB HD with Games and Programs

Scenario # 2

2 GB HD

128 GB C Partition
512 GB D Partition w/ games
256 GB E Partition w/ programs
Remainder on F Partition for backups including image of C:\ on SSD

SSD dies, you replace and restore image from F .... shouldn't take more than 20 minutes.

Assuming you did not make an image, i still don't see the difference between a 128 GB SSD with OS and a 128 GB partition on a HD with OS. I have been doing this since last millenium ... (yeah, I'm old) :)

I didn't get the impression this was going on a domain but I agree, all files should be stored on a local server or NAS. Small storage devices don't really help as if they have access to it, they can copy it and e-mail it anywhere.... of course there are protections from that but havinng 1 GB or 128 GB doesn't really affect that.

 

anti-painkilla

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If it is for himself, the SSD might be worth the investment. If not, HDD should be fine. Most people would not notice the difference unless they were told.

Also, if this is a stand alone computer. PLEASE buy a USB HDD for back-ups. Keep it somewhere safe and only use it for back-ups.
 

JoshuaPinto

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Yeah i agree. The SSD may or may not be worth it. It really just depends if he is like me and doesn't want to wait the extra 10secs. They are nice for the speed that is for sure but its really up to him. Any way disregard g-unit1111 post about the AMD machine because its not worth it
 

g-unit1111

Titan
Moderator


What do you mean it's not worth it? An i5 and 16GB of RAM isn't worth it for an office machine. For basic functions you don't need a beefy processor and a ton of RAM. Plus you're buying outdated hardware anyways, if you're paying for any kind of build you should always get the newest hardware you can.
 

JoshuaPinto

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Who freaking cares if he is getting an slightly older CPU. Like you said "you don't need a beefy processor and a ton of RAM". And no you don't always need the newest hardware. You need to get the best hardware for your needs. not the newest. An AMD machine just isn't a good choice. everyone I have had to use and work on has been JUNK!