PC Advice

[Browncoat67]

Ahoy all. 

 

I'm helping my boss with picking out new PCs for the front desk and office. The image below shows the minimum specs the company is looking for. They are, as you can see, pretty lightweight. I'm certainly recommending something with more horsepower. 

 

I'm thinking that a mini-pc would be a great option. 90% of what they do is cloud-based. So they really only need good internet speeds, and decent processing. They need to manage some spreadsheets and Word docs, but nothing too crazy. They need a small form factor for the front desks, and you don't get much smaller.

 

What are the possible downsides that I might not be considering? 

 

Are there any brands you'd recommend over others? 

 

Dan 

[Tetras]

Proprietary parts and limited upgrade potential are the only downsides I can think of, but those problems obviously depend on which mini PCs you buy and if the PCs are replaced frequently it probably doesn't matter anyway.

 

Would recommend more RAM and I'd actually prioritise that over even the CPU.

[ImWilly]

Well, I just stumbled on Paul's Hardware build for his sister, a really small and not noisy ITX build, maybe that could be an inspiration for your office build.

It's obviously overpowered based on the specs below for your office use case, but 

40 minutes ago, Browncoat67 said:

Are there any brands you'd recommend over others? 

Are you aiming for pre-build?

 

Specs:

CPU: Ryzen 8700G -> You can change to 5600G (older AM4 platform) or i3-12100

Mobo: Asrock A620I Phantom Gaming (this is for AM5, for AM4 you need to look for either B550 or A520)

CPU Cooler: ID-Cooling IS-47-XT

RAM: G.Skill Flare X5 32GB (KIT 2x16GB)

Storage: Kioxia BG4 NVME 1TB 2230

Case and PSU combo: InWin Chopin MAX, 200W PSU

 

Basically, what he does in this build is using ITX form factor (motherboard and case), and utilized Integrated graphics instead of dedicated GPU (CPU with "G" on Ryzen or Intel CPU without "F"), paired with low profile CPU air cooler.

 

[Browncoat67]

8 hours ago, Tetras said:

Proprietary parts and limited upgrade potential are the only downsides I can think of, but those problems obviously depend on which mini PCs you buy and if the PCs are replaced frequently it probably doesn't matter anyway.

 

Would recommend more RAM and I'd actually prioritise that over even the CPU.

Well, our current PCs are the same as when they opened the location, 10 years ago. So frequent replacement isn't an issue, LOL.