Under $300 (USD) Dual Monitor Work PC for the Wife

themagicbum

Honorable
Sep 3, 2012
9
0
10,510
Howdy. So here's the deal: My wife is starting a new job soon doing CART captioning of college lectures for deaf students. She needs to have two windows full screen simultaneously, one for her transcription software and one on the Internet. I've built gaming PCs before but not in the last ~3 years and I'm unsure of exactly how much power is needed here. Is a video card even needed for this type of setup, or can I get by with on-board graphics?

Basically I just need a benchmark of the PC guts (MoBo, RAM, PSU, HDD, video card). I have an old ATX case that can be reused and the keyboard, mouse, OS. Monitors will be purchased later (probably Black Friday) but if you can recommend some as well, that would be great. We're looking for a build hopefully under $300 (not including monitors, of course). Thanks!
 
Solution
An i3 should have no problem with what your wife needs to do and it and the motherboard will support dual graphics. You might want to increase the RAM to 16 GB's if it's in your budget or substitute an HDD for the SSD if you need to shave costs.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($110.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI H110M Pro-VD Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($55.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($34.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: OCZ TRION 150 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($109.88 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: Antec 450W ATX Power Supply...
An i3 should have no problem with what your wife needs to do and it and the motherboard will support dual graphics. You might want to increase the RAM to 16 GB's if it's in your budget or substitute an HDD for the SSD if you need to shave costs.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($110.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI H110M Pro-VD Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($55.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: G.Skill NT Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($34.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: OCZ TRION 150 480GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($109.88 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: Antec 450W ATX Power Supply ($33.69 @ Directron)
Monitor: Asus VS228H-P 21.5" Monitor ($99.99 @ Best Buy)
Monitor: Asus VS228H-P 21.5" Monitor ($99.99 @ Best Buy)
Total: $545.51
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-07-31 11:58 EDT-0400
 
Solution