Home Office PC <$700 (USA)

[Kobathor]

Hey everybody I am looking to help my friend build a home office PC for his mom. She would like it to cost less than $700, and she already has all of the required peripherals. She wants it to be reliable without crashing and such. It shouldn't look flashy. With all that in mind, I made a list; if you have some critiques or a better list, I'd love to see them. Thank you!

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3400G 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor	$149.99 @ Best Buy
Motherboard	ASRock B450M/AC Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$93.98 @ Newegg
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory	$85.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$179.99 @ B&H
Case	Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mini Tower Case	$57.98 @ Newegg
Power Supply	EVGA GD (2019) 500 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply	$69.94 @ ModMyMods
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$637.87
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-07 12:43 EDT-0400

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

that ssd is probably overkill, something like a 660p or a p1 will be fine here.

[boggy77]

made some tweaks

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3400G 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor	$149.99 @ Best Buy
Motherboard	ASRock B450M/AC Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$93.98 @ Newegg
Memory	G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory	$64.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$109.99 @ B&H
Case	Fractal Design Core 1000 USB 3.0 MicroATX Mid Tower Case	$40.98 @ Newegg
Power Supply	Corsair CX (2017) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	$58.98 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$518.91
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-07 12:50 EDT-0400

 

[aisle9]

9 minutes ago, Kobathor said:

Hey everybody I am looking to help my friend build a home office PC for his mom. She would like it to cost less than $700, and she already has all of the required peripherals. She wants it to be reliable without crashing and such. It shouldn't look flashy. With all that in mind, I made a list; if you have some critiques or a better list, I'd love to see them. Thank you!

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3400G 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor	$149.99 @ Best Buy
Motherboard	ASRock B450M/AC Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	$93.98 @ Newegg
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory	$85.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$179.99 @ B&H
Case	Cooler Master N200 MicroATX Mini Tower Case	$57.98 @ Newegg
Power Supply	EVGA GD (2019) 500 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply	$69.94 @ ModMyMods
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$637.87
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-07 12:43 EDT-0400

 

As mentioned by @Electronics Wizardy, the SSD you've got there is probably overkill, but the price actually isn't terrible. Otherwise, unless you're wanting to trim costs back, this looks fine to me.

[VxZ]

First I'd suggest to check her usage, For example, if she does a lot of office work and such, you obviously would focus on the CPU and a little bit of SSD to speed it up (altho not this much, maybe put some of that into the CPU or an HDD for capacity)

Maybe throw a cheap graphics card just in-case (something like $150) if it really doesn't matter you can skip it  feels like a terrible advice to be honest

 

The only thing I'm noticing is that the motherboard is kinda on the cheap side, If it covers all the features you need and you are sure it will be a quality, then don't change it

 

Other than that, it should be good in my opinion 

[aisle9]

2 minutes ago, VxZ said:

First I'd suggest to check her usage, For example, if she does a lot of office work and such, you obviously would focus on the CPU and the a little bit of SSD to speed it up (altho not this much, maybe put some of that into the CPU instead)

Maybe throw a cheap graphics card just in-case (something like $150) if it really doesn't matter you can skip it

 

The only thing I'm noticing is that the motherboard is kinda on the cheap side, If it covers all the features you need and you are sure it will be a quality, then don't change it

 

Other than that, it should be good in my opinion 

$150 for a GPU "just in case"? What?

[VxZ]

1 minute ago, aisle9 said:

$150 for a GPU "just in case"? What?

Lots of programs use GPU acceleration, such as chrome, to smooth the work out (you can try disabling it in settings to see the difference), Discord... etc

 

in my experience, it really did make a bit of difference working around many programs, especially visually, but yeah, probably not worth the $150, sorry

[Kobathor]

28 minutes ago, boggy77 said:

made some tweaks

This is why I always post here first! Thank you, I always have trouble finding cheaper stuff. PSU is hard for me because I haven't bought one in like... five years haha.

29 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

that ssd is probably overkill, something like a 660p or a p1 will be fine here.

I agree; I picked the 970 Evo because I've used it before, so I didn't know what else is good. If the P1 is reliable then I would rather save the money.

24 minutes ago, VxZ said:

First I'd suggest to check her usage, For example, if she does a lot of office work and such, you obviously would focus on the CPU and a little bit of SSD to speed it up (altho not this much, maybe put some of that into the CPU or an HDD for capacity)

The only thing I'm noticing is that the motherboard is kinda on the cheap side, If it covers all the features you need and you are sure it will be a quality, then don't change it

The specific work program is something called Gerber. I couldn't find much info on it, but I found that the minimum reqs in 2016ish were an i5-2500 and 4Gb of RAM, so I assumed it isn't too CPU hungry. Though I did pick the 3400G over the 3200G for the multi-threading. 16GB RAM because it fits well in the budget.

 

I picked that mobo specifically for the WiFi spec; if I can save on some other parts then I may pick a nicer one that also has WiFi. Also the smaller form factor is desirable.

[boggy77]

1 hour ago, Kobathor said:

I picked that mobo specifically for the WiFi spec; if I can save on some other parts then I may pick a nicer one that also has WiFi. Also the smaller form factor is desirable.

that mobo is good enough for the cpu. it can even run a 3700x if it has to, so don't worry.

[aisle9]

1 hour ago, Kobathor said:

This is why I always post here first! Thank you, I always have trouble finding cheaper stuff. PSU is hard for me because I haven't bought one in like... five years haha.

I agree; I picked the 970 Evo because I've used it before, so I didn't know what else is good. If the P1 is reliable then I would rather save the money.

The specific work program is something called Gerber. I couldn't find much info on it, but I found that the minimum reqs in 2016ish were an i5-2500 and 4Gb of RAM, so I assumed it isn't too CPU hungry. Though I did pick the 3400G over the 3200G for the multi-threading. 16GB RAM because it fits well in the budget.

 

I picked that mobo specifically for the WiFi spec; if I can save on some other parts then I may pick a nicer one that also has WiFi. Also the smaller form factor is desirable.

I have yet to come across a mobo that has problems with Ryzen APUs. Typically, you start getting into trouble with VRMs when you get up to the eight-core Ryzen 7 family or beyond.