Intel-Based Office PC
Five Intel-Based Office PCs squared off in this quarter’s BestConfigs.
The reader poll ended in a near tie between mastrom101 and burritobob’s builds, but mastrom101’s Ivy Bridge-based Core i5 and 1866MT/s RAM trump burritobob’s newer Core i3/1600MT/s combo.
Congratulations to forum member mastrom101 for having his recommended build picked by the Tom's Hardware community this quarter!
The Intel-Based Office PC is once again geared more towards a quiet, energy-efficient office than its AMD counterpart. After all, the HD Graphics 4000 engine inside Intel's Core i5-3470 is plenty fast enough for Excel, right?
ASRock's B75M-DGS R2.0 keeps it all together with room for upgrades via a PCIe 3.0 slot.
The Core i5 is paired up with 8GB of overclocked DDR3-1866 from Corsair.
The low-cost PNY XLR8 SSD provides a 120GB speedy system drive, while a 500GB 7200RPM Hitachi hard drive packs plenty of storage space. We're just two systems in and Corsair’s CX430 makes its second appearance in this quarter’s BestConfigs. This 80 PLUS Bronze-certified model is a favorite entry-level power supply.
The $500 data entry beast is sheathed in Cooler Master’s N200. Mastrom’s choice is squatter, and likely considered more office-appropriate than some of the gaming-oriented enclosures that were suggested. Asus' DRW-24B1ST fills in as the obligatory optical drive. That's a similar model as nix327 chose last quarter.
The total build price when originally configured by mastrom101 was $499.91. The current prices of his machine can be found in the BestConfigs shopping tables.
