Reliability build

[JS_ELEC500]

I'm putting together a build for a friend of mine who's not very technically inclined. So I'm trying to make this machine as reliable as possible.

I'm looking for some advice on things to watch out for when selecting parts. If anyone's got some recommendations or warnings about specific brands let me know.

Thanks guys!

 

P.S.

A little more info:

It's mainly going to me an office machine (mostly just browsing, email, spreadsheets and word processing.)

I'm definitely going with an SSD and a nice power supply.

 

 

[RobFRaschke]

Don't overclock. Don't watercool.

 

What do you mean by office machine? Internet browsing and Word processing, 3d modeling, video production?

[JS_ELEC500]

3 minutes ago, RobFRaschke said:

Don't overclock. Don't watercool.

 

What do you mean by office machine? Internet browsing and Word processing, 3d modeling, video production?

Yeah, water cooling and overclocking would definitely be a bad idea. 

Mostly just browsing, email, spreadsheets and word processing. I'll add that to the post. 

[LienusLateTips]

Just now, JS_ELEC500 said:

Yeah, water cooling and overclocking would definitely be a bad idea. 

Mostly just browsing, email, spreadsheets and word processing. I'll add that to the post. 

What country? What budget?

 

I can spec a nice little machine out for you.

[RobFRaschke]

Honnestly, for that workload, an Intel NUC is a great option for reliability and longevity, and they take up no space. Basically all of them would support a 2.5" SATA SSD, and a few support NVMe SSDs too. He's really not in the category of being benefited by a custom build, unless he really needs something shnazy.

[Sorenson]

13 minutes ago, JS_ELEC500 said:

P.S.

A little more info:

It's mainly going to me an office machine (mostly just browsing, email, spreadsheets and word processing.)

I'm definitely going with an SSD and a nice power supply.

 

 

I would recommend sticking to an intel processor (probably like an i5), Asus or msi motherboard, Corsair ram, Samsung ssd,  and a Corsair or EVGA power supply.

 

I’ve personally used all of these brands for the specific product, and they have never given me an issue.

[JS_ELEC500]

1 minute ago, LienusLateTips said:

What country? What budget?

 

I can spec a nice little machine out for you.

I'm in the US. I've pretty much been given a budget of whatever's necessary, within reason.

I was thinking about a RYZEN 5 2400g and 16gigs of RAM. I should mention that it's supposed to be as "future proof" as possible, hence the slight overkill. 

[RobFRaschke]

1 minute ago, Sorenson said:

I would recommend sticking to an intel processor (probably like an i5), Asus or msi motherboard, Corsair ram, Samsung ssd,  and a Corsair or EVGA power supply.

 

I’ve personally used all of these brands for the specific product, and they have never given me an issue.

ANY modern processor would be more than powerfully enough for the listed use case. Literally an Athlon 200GE would be fine, with a Ryzen 2200G being a better price/performance and the extra cores sure wouldn't hurt. The 9th Gen Core i3s are inbound, but at a marginal improvement over the 8th gen, and an i3 would be more than sufficient as well. A $400 HP or Dell would get the job done just as well as anything you can put together, and with a similar warranty.

[LienusLateTips]

3 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

I would recommend sticking to an intel processor (probably like an i5), Asus or msi motherboard, Corsair ram, Samsung ssd,  and a Corsair or EVGA power supply.

 

I’ve personally used all of these brands for the specific product, and they have never given me an issue.

AMD is just as reliable.... Corsair RAM is quite expensive and has no advantage over others, same manufacturer as literally everyone else. Samsung SSDs are way overpriced for what they are, and both Corsair and EVGA make shitty power supplies, with the latter making some computer hand grenades.

[RobFRaschke]

Just now, JS_ELEC500 said:

I'm in the US. I've pretty much been given a budget of whatever's necessary, within reason.

I was thinking about a RYZEN 5 2400g and 16gigs of RAM. I should mention that it's supposed to be as "future proof" as possible, hence the slight overkill. 

That would definitely work. I'd throw it in a B450 board, as that's quite likely to get at least 3rd Gen Ryzen support, and have slightly better quality components than cheaper boards.

[RobFRaschke]

Just now, LienusLateTips said:

AMD is just as reliable.... Corsair RAM is quite expensive and has no advantage over others, same manufacturer as literally everyone else. Samsung SSDs are way overpriced for what they are, and both Corsair and EVGA make shitty power supplies, with the latter making some computer hand grenades.

Basically every company makes some shite power supplies, but both brands do make some decent to good power supplies as well. Just never get the cheapest power supply you can afford. I've had VERY good success with the Corsair RMx series actually.

[LienusLateTips]

4 minutes ago, JS_ELEC500 said:

I'm in the US. I've pretty much been given a budget of whatever's necessary, within reason.

I was thinking about a RYZEN 5 2400g and 16gigs of RAM. I should mention that it's supposed to be as "future proof" as possible, hence the slight overkill. 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($119.89 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: ASRock - B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($75.61 @ OutletPC) 
Memory: OLOy - 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($69.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Silicon Power - 128 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($20.99 @ Newegg) 
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GT 710 1 GB Video Card  ($37.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Case: Cooler Master - MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($39.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair - CX (2017) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($32.98 @ Newegg) 
Total: $397.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-05-03 23:36 EDT-0400

 

I went for a Ryzen 5 1600/GT 710 instead of a 2400G. It's not that much more money and will do much better in pretty much everything, especially long term. It's not that much more expensive over the 2400G, either.

 

16GB of DDR4-3000. Higher resale value in the future, if wanted. If this ever turns into a gaming system, it'll help out the Ryzen processor a lot too.

 

128GB SSD. These things have DRAM unlike a lot of their competitors. 

 

CX450 is a quality power supply for not much. The Q300L has pretty great airflow, and is available pretty cheaply. If you wanted to save, you could go for the cheapest case on PCPP and call it a day. The motherboard, while a bit more expensive, will support upgrades in the future to high end CPUs due to the pretty good VRM, and if this gets handed down to a gamer could even be overclocked.

[brob]

3 minutes ago, JS_ELEC500 said:

I'm in the US. I've pretty much been given a budget of whatever's necessary, within reason.

I was thinking about a RYZEN 5 2400g and 16gigs of RAM. I should mention that it's supposed to be as "future proof" as possible, hence the slight overkill. 

 

Seems reasonable.

 

Get a good non-windowed case with two fans and closed top and sides, i.e. no fan/radiator mounts in top or side. Fractal Design Define or Meshify series are decent. Corsair has a couple, if memory serves.

 

For psu I suggest the Corsair CX450. It's non-modular which doesn't matter given the case and does mean no loose cables to store somewhere. If you want a bit more capacity, you could look at the Corsair RM550M and Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 550.

 

I'd suggest wireless mouse and keyboard and a monitor with speakers and USB ports 

[JS_ELEC500]

10 minutes ago, LienusLateTips said:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($119.89 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: ASRock - B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($75.61 @ OutletPC) 
Memory: OLOy - 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($69.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Silicon Power - 128 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($20.99 @ Newegg) 
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GT 710 1 GB Video Card  ($37.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Case: Cooler Master - MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($39.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair - CX (2017) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($32.98 @ Newegg) 
Total: $397.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-05-03 23:36 EDT-0400

 

I went for a Ryzen 5 1600/GT 710 instead of a 2400G. It's not that much more money and will do much better in pretty much everything, especially long term. It's not that much more expensive over the 2400G, either.

 

16GB of DDR4-3000. Higher resale value in the future, if wanted. If this ever turns into a gaming system, it'll help out the Ryzen processor a lot too.

 

128GB SSD. These things have DRAM unlike a lot of their competitors. 

 

CX450 is a quality power supply for not much. The Q300L has pretty great airflow, and is available pretty cheaply. If you wanted to save, you could go for the cheapest case on PCPP and call it a day. The motherboard, while a bit more expensive, will support upgrades in the future to high end CPUs due to the pretty good VRM, and if this gets handed down to a gamer could even be overclocked.

Seems like a good starting place.

Going to need a little more storage.

Thanks!

[JS_ELEC500]

6 minutes ago, brob said:

 

Seems reasonable.

 

Get a good non-windowed case with two fans and closed top and sides, i.e. no fan/radiator mounts in top or side. Fractal Design Define or Meshify series are decent. Corsair has a couple, if memory serves.

 

For psu I suggest the Corsair CX450. It's non-modular which doesn't matter given the case and does mean no loose cables to store somewhere. If you want a bit more capacity, you could look at the Corsair RM550M and Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 550.

 

I'd suggest wireless mouse and keyboard and a monitor with speakers and USB ports 

Do you happen to have any suggestions for a good wireless keyboard? Better yet would be a mouse + keyboard combo. 

[RobFRaschke]

5 minutes ago, LienusLateTips said:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($119.89 @ OutletPC) 
Motherboard: ASRock - B450M PRO4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($75.61 @ OutletPC) 
Memory: OLOy - 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($69.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Silicon Power - 128 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($20.99 @ Newegg) 
Video Card: Zotac - GeForce GT 710 1 GB Video Card  ($37.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Case: Cooler Master - MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case  ($39.99 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair - CX (2017) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($32.98 @ Newegg) 
Total: $397.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-05-03 23:36 EDT-0400

 

I went for a Ryzen 5 1600/GT 710 instead of a 2400G. It's not that much more money and will do much better in pretty much everything, especially long term. It's not that much more expensive over the 2400G, either.

 

16GB of DDR4-3000. Higher resale value in the future, if wanted. If this ever turns into a gaming system, it'll help out the Ryzen processor a lot too.

 

128GB SSD. These things have DRAM unlike a lot of their competitors. 

 

CX450 is a quality power supply for not much. The Q300L has pretty great airflow, and is available pretty cheaply. If you wanted to save, you could go for the cheapest case on PCPP and call it a day. The motherboard, while a bit more expensive, will support upgrades in the future to high end CPUs due to the pretty good VRM, and if this gets handed down to a gamer could even be overclocked.

With the low prices of SSDs a 250 or 500GB dramless SATA SSD shouldn't be too much a strain on the budget.

 

The GT710 is DRASTICALLY slower than the Vega 11 of the 2400G. The GT710 is more on par with the Vega 3 in the Athlon 200GE. The GT1030 is about on par with Vega 11, so you're up to a GT1050 to actually outpace it by a meaningful margin. The GT710 is absolutely worthless in any situation that doesn't just need extra outputs. I'm actually fairly confident that Intels integraged HD630 graphics are slightly faster than the GT710.

 

A Dram cache on an SSD is of negligible importance in this use case, so a DRAM-less 500GB would be a better investment since the guy may or may not want to keep more files.

 

The CX450 is decent quality, I'd jump up to an RM550 something else GOLD rated that's well built, not junk "gold" rated as it's going to run more efficient, which means cooler, which means longer lasting, very generally speaking.

 

I do like the Q300L though, good case, especially with one extra intake fan.

[Sorenson]

15 minutes ago, RobFRaschke said:

 The 9th Gen Core i3s are inbound, but at a marginal improvement over the 8th gen, and an i3 would be more than sufficient as well. A $400 HP or Dell would get the job done just as well as anything you can put together, and with a similar warranty.

I agree, but I’m thinking from a 5 year life perspective. I think the i3 Is definitely viable, but the i5 will undoubtedly last longer. Also, a majority of apps are more optimized for intel then AMD. This will probably change in the next couple years as Ryzen matures, but intel isn’t bad or unreliable by any means.

 

19 minutes ago, LienusLateTips said:

AMD is just as reliable.... Corsair RAM is quite expensive and has no advantage over others, same manufacturer as literally everyone else. Samsung SSDs are way overpriced for what they are, and both Corsair and EVGA make shitty power supplies, with the latter making some computer hand grenades.

On pcpart picker, Corsair ram is only $10 more than the cheapest 2x8gb 3000mhz ram. It may perform exactly the same, but in the event of an issue do you want to RMA with Corsair or Geil? Samsung ssd’s are more expensive because they include dram Caches and aren’t QLC or TLC nand, which makes them more reliable. Finally, you’re nuts if you think any 80+ gold EVGA or Corsair power supplies are “shitty”. If you buy the cheapest EVGA or Corsair power supply you get what you pay for.

[Sorenson]

3 minutes ago, RobFRaschke said:

A Dram cache on an SSD is of negligible importance in this use case, so a DRAM-less 500GB would be a better investment since the guy may or may not want to keep more files.

 

Dramless SSDS have shorter longevity than SSDS with it. Why skimp on this to save like $30. 

[RobFRaschke]

5 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

Samsung ssd’s are more expensive because they include dram Caches and aren’t QLC or TLC nand, which makes them more reliable. 

The rest is opinion, so I'm going to ignore it as everyone is entitled to that, however this is just plain false. Samsung's VNAND is TLC, and the QVO series is QLC. Most of Samsung drives do include an SLC cache for speed, but it's not the bulk of the storage.

 

I actually had to go back and check, and the 950 PRO, 850 EVO and 961 series are the last Samsung drives to use MLC instead of TLC or QLC.

[BigRom]

2 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

I agree, but I’m thinking from a 5 year life perspective. I think the i3 Is definitely viable, but the i5 will undoubtedly last longer. Also, a majority of apps are more optimized for intel then AMD. This will probably change in the next couple years as Ryzen matures, but intel isn’t bad or unreliable by any means.

Intel is expensive, unless you have a use case like Adobe or certain software that is visibly improved by having Intel. It makes no sense to go for an i5 as majority of those are overpriced af.

[RobFRaschke]

2 minutes ago, Sorenson said:

Dramless SSDS have shorter longevity than SSDS with it. Why skimp on this to save like $30. 

Please tell me how you've come to this conclusion?

 

The DRAM is a write through cache to speed up small file reads and writes to increase low queue depth IOPS, it doesn't effect longevity in any meaningful way. At all.

[LienusLateTips]

21 minutes ago, RobFRaschke said:

With the low prices of SSDs a 250 or 500GB dramless SATA SSD shouldn't be too much a strain on the budget.

Fair enough. The 512GB Silicon Power is only $1 more than a DRAMless one right now afaik, it's a nice $1 addon.

21 minutes ago, RobFRaschke said:

The GT710 is DRASTICALLY slower than the Vega 11 of the 2400G. The GT710 is more on par with the Vega 3 in the Athlon 200GE. The GT1030 is about on par with Vega 11, so you're up to a GT1050 to actually outpace it by a meaningful margin. The GT710 is absolutely worthless in any situation that doesn't just need extra outputs. I'm actually fairly confident that Intels integraged HD630 graphics are slightly faster than the GT710.

It's a office PC. Doesn't need Vega 11 performance...

 

[Sorenson]

12 minutes ago, RobFRaschke said:

Please tell me how you've come to this conclusion?

 

The DRAM is a write through cache to speed up small file reads and writes to increase low queue depth IOPS, it doesn't effect longevity in any meaningful way. At all.

The 860 evo (one of their cheapest SSDs) is MLC not "TLC" or "QLC" 

This guy is asking for a reliable build, and people are telling him to go with the cheapest shit available. 

[RobFRaschke]

1 minute ago, LienusLateTips said:

Fair enough. The 512GB Silicon Power is only $1 more than a DRAMless one right now afaik, it's a nice $1 addon.

It's a office PC. Doesn't need Vega 11 performance...

 

Yeah, that's fair. Silicon Power for a buck more is absolutely worth it.

 

Probably doesn't, but I was responding to

"I went for a Ryzen 5 1600/GT 710 instead of a 2400G. It's not that much more money and will do much better in pretty much everything, especially long term. It's not that much more expensive over the 2400G, either."

 

Are you meaning the extra CPU cores, not the GPU?

[LienusLateTips]

1 minute ago, RobFRaschke said:

Yeah, that's fair. Silicon Power for a buck more is absolutely worth it.

 

Probably doesn't, but I was responding to

"I went for a Ryzen 5 1600/GT 710 instead of a 2400G. It's not that much more money and will do much better in pretty much everything, especially long term. It's not that much more expensive over the 2400G, either."

 

Are you meaning the extra CPU cores, not the GPU?

Yeah. Should have made that a bit more clear...