70k Basic Office Use PC- Only Preference is Reliability and Durability

[NiGHtfUrY]

Greetings Everyone,

My father wants a super basic desktop for his business. Usage will be limited to chrome, accounting software like tally/busy, Microsoft excel etc. The only thing is he wants is the Desktop to work without any hassles. His previous desktop develops issues at random and it requires him to call some computer guy every other week.

This Desktop will also operate as a "server" to other systems in his offices. From what I know it's a basic server made with tungle or hamachi (he's not sure) setup by said computer guy for 3-4 desktops in different locations around Delhi. His being the main server desktop, any problem in his system affects his entire business. I understand that a desktop could be assembled for much less than the budget he has allocated, but the same is set high just for the purpose of reliability. If say a component is twice as expensive with no improvement in performance but is just 10% more reliable, he would prefer that over the much cheaper one.

Keeping the above in mind, what would you guys suggest - should I go for a pre-built desktop by a established company, like say, Dell? With extended warranty and all support options purchased, is buying a Dell Opti-plex Desktop more hassle-free and reliable option? How is Dell's Service and product reliability? Any other company I should take into consideration?


And if you suggest going the assembling way, what components should I buy? Please suggest as I am way out of my league and too out of touch with the computer market. Deeply Thankful!!




1. What is the purpose of the computer? What all applications and games are you going to run? (Be exact. Which games? Which applications? Avoid the word 'et cetera.' Vague answers like 'gaming' or 'office work' will not work.)
Ans: Excel, Busy, Tally (Accounting Softwares), Basic Chrome.

2. What is your overall budget? If you can extend a bit for a more balanced configuration, then please mention.
Ans: 70,000 INR.

3. Planning to overclock?
Ans: Nope

4. Which Operating System are you planning to use?
Ans: Windows. 10 or 11? which is more bug-free and reliable as of now?

5. How much hard drive / solid-state drive space is needed?
Ans: 512 Gb SSD should suffice

6. Do you want to buy a monitor? If yes, please mention the screen size and resolution you prefer. If you already have a monitor and want to reuse it, then do mention the screen size and resolution of the monitor you have.
Ans: Need to buy a new Monitor. 20-24 inches. No videos/gaming. Just text quality should be clear.

7. Which components you DON'T want to buy? i.e. which components you already have and plan on reusing?
Ans:

8. When are you planning to buy the system?
Ans: ASAP

9. Have you ever built a desktop before? Or, will this be done by an assembler?
Ans: Have built.

10. Where do you live? Are you buying locally? Are you open to buying stuff from online shops if you don't get locally?
Ans: Delhi

11. Anything else which you would like to say?
Ans: Reliability and durability over speed and performance. Also, need UPS suggestions too if possible.

 

[Nerevarine]

You dont need 70k budget for tasks mentioned above.
Do not buy a GPU, even a low end one. an i5 12400/12500 will be more than sufficient for above tasks.
A 1080p monitor (24 inch) is good enough for above task too, there is zero need to go for 1440p.

UPS, I recently found out APC's bvx series, which might be better to go for. Wait for others to reply. There is no need to go for pre built desktop, unless you want completely standardised warranty (which might suck anyway).

His previous desktop develops issues at random and it requires him to call some computer guy every other week.

Can you give more info on what his previous desktop was and what the problems were. It might give us more insight on giving you suggestions.

I'll tag a few people @SaiyanGoku @ico @omega44-xt

 

[omega44-xt]

With pre-builts from say Dell, for any issue, you can just call Dell, even though base warranty is just 1 year. But with custom built ones, you have to troubleshoot but most parts have 3 year warranty, main two being CPU & mobo.

CPU - Intel i5 12400 - 19k (don't F which lacks iGPU)

Mobo - Asus TUF B660M Plus WiFi - 17k

RAM - 2x8GB DDR4 3600MHz C18 - 6.5k

GPU - iGPU

M.2 SSD - WD SN550/Kingston A2000 500GB - 5k

HDD - WD/Seagate 1TB - 3.2k

PSU - Corsair CX550M 80+ bronze - 4.2k

Cabinet - Ant esports ICE 311MT - 4k

Monitor - Dell E2421HN 24" 1080p IPS - 12k

Total - 66.7k

If you feel more RAM might be required, go for 2x16GB 3600MHz CL18 for under 12k.

UPS - APC BX600 - 3.3k

 

[NiGHtfUrY]

You dont need 70k budget for tasks mentioned above.
Do not buy a GPU, even a low end one. an i5 12400/12500 will be more than sufficient for above tasks.
A 1080p monitor (24 inch) is good enough for above task too, there is zero need to go for 1440p.

UPS, I recently found out APC's bvx series, which might be better to go for. Wait for others to reply. There is no need to go for pre built desktop, unless you want completely standardised warranty (which might suck anyway).

His previous desktop develops issues at random and it requires him to call some computer guy every other week.

Can you give more info on what his previous desktop was and what the problems were. It might give us more insight on giving you suggestions.

I'll tag a few people @SaiyanGoku @ico @omega44-xt

Thank you so much for replying and tagging other pro's too

You are right to say that a 70k desktop is above and beyond what is needed for such tasks. Keeping the same in mind, I mention the reasons of durability and reliability again to justify such cost. Just as an example to show how important it is to him that the computer works as reliably as possible -

Say if a newer processor or any other component, which performs 10x faster is available at 10x lower price than the older version of the component but it has a 1% higher chance to encounter bugs due to new technology/updates/drivers or whatever, he would still prefer the slower older version of the said component.

Also, I completely understand and agree that pre-built desktops are not only more expensive for the same components, but also perform slower due to various factors.
I say all this, fully aware of the benefits of assembling ones own PC (would never purchase a pre-built for myself ever!) that the following is what is weighing with me when I consider pre-builts for my dad-

+ Ease of service - just a call away/service centre availability
+Orignal Windows and Microsoft office
+easier to set the liability of a huge mnc than local computer guy
+i would be unable to assist my father with technical stuff post purchase and assembly,being ina different state so DELL technical help would be a huge plus!

IF i could get all this in a PC i assemble for him I would be more than happy to avoid a pre-built!

 

[omega44-xt]

Go for a pre-built, pay extra for an extended warranty. You will get lower performance parts for sure as well.

Dell has shit mobo & coolers & so on, watch Gamers Nexus' video on Dell gaming desktops. I have seen Dell Vostro workstation in my previous company, not a good one, part quality wise, but Dell has one stop support for everything. Other pre-builts from HP & Lenovo have issue with poor mobo & cooling as well, but I feel Dell has better support network for desktops because for some reason most corporates buy from them for their support. My current company has custom built PC for high-performance tasks like video editing.

Dell Vostro 3681 Small Desktop Computer | Dell India

Buy this, buy ProSupport for 3/4 years for on-site support, buy another 8GB RAM & buy a monitor. This will likely have just 2 RAM slots, so say you want more RAM in future, remove the present RAM sticks & buy 2x16GB. No XMP here, shouldn't matter much.

You have to make a call & choose your poison - Dell's one stop solution but expensive & inferior parts, some even in quality or custom built's superior performance & part quality but no convenient support.

 

[NiGHtfUrY]

Go for a pre-built, pay extra for an extended warranty. You will get lower performance parts for sure as well.

Dell has shit mobo & coolers & so on, watch Gamers Nexus' video on Dell gaming desktops. I have seen Dell Vostro workstation in my previous company, not a good one, part quality wise, but Dell has one stop support for everything. Other pre-builts from HP & Lenovo have issue with poor mobo & cooling as well, but I feel Dell has better support network for desktops because for some reason most corporates buy from them for their support. My current company has custom built PC for high-performance tasks like video editing.

Dell Vostro 3681 Small Desktop Computer | Dell India

Buy this, buy ProSupport for 3/4 years for on-site support, buy another 8GB RAM & buy a monitor. This will likely have just 2 RAM slots, so say you want more RAM in future, remove the present RAM sticks & buy 2x16GB. No XMP here, shouldn't matter much.

You have to make a call & choose your poison - Dell's one stop solution but expensive & inferior parts, some even in quality or custom built's superior performance & part quality but no convenient support.

Dell is taking more than a month to deliver the desktop and the physical outlets are flat out refusing to offer the configuration available online, so I have decided to go assemble the desktop myself.

For reliability, in case of hard drive failure, I am thinking of getting 2 500gb SSD's and setting them up in a RAID 1 setup. I am completely unaware with how RAID works, except the basic concept of what it does. Can you help me out here, does RAID work with two similar SSD's? Also any PC case which looks a bit professional but has good cooling? The one you suggested has RGB fans and says ESPORTS on the cover, which is something my father would not particularly appreciate

 

[Nerevarine]

*mdcomputers.in/cooler-master-masterbox-mb600l2-knnn-s00.html?sort=p.price&order=ASC

*mdcomputers.in/deepcool-d-shield-v2-dp-atx-dshield-v2.html?sort=p.price&order=ASC

Both of these would suffice.

Cheaper mobo and should suffice for your usecase.

*www.primeabgb.com/online-price-rev...e-d4-intel-h610-lga-1700-mic-atx-motherboard/

UPS to go for.

*www.amazon.in/APC-700VA-Line-Inter...&qid=1644487305&sprefix=apc+up,aps,264&sr=8-8

SN570

*www.amazon.in/Western-Digital-SN55...d=1644487370&sprefix=sn55,aps,262&sr=8-2&th=1

Go for cloud backups first and then think about RAID.

 

[SaiyanGoku]

For reliability, in case of hard drive failure, I am thinking of getting 2 500gb SSD's and setting them up in a RAID 1 setup

For a office use PC, that's waste of money.

 

[omega44-xt]

Dell is taking more than a month to deliver the desktop and the physical outlets are flat out refusing to offer the configuration available online, so I have decided to go assemble the desktop myself.

For reliability, in case of hard drive failure, I am thinking of getting 2 500gb SSD's and setting them up in a RAID 1 setup. I am completely unaware with how RAID works, except the basic concept of what it does. Can you help me out here, does RAID work with two similar SSD's? Also any PC case which looks a bit professional but has good cooling? The one you suggested has RGB fans and says ESPORTS on the cover, which is something my father would not particularly appreciate

You can just turn off the RGB lights on fan. Silverstone FARA R1 looks professional but has just 1 fan pre-installed. Maybe get Deepcool Mattrexx 40:
Amazon.in
Turn off its fan lights.

There is a type of RAID for backup, like the 2nd disk will keep backup of 1st one all the time. That might be useful if data is very important, the performance oriented RAID is not required.

 

[NiGHtfUrY]

For a office use PC, that's waste of money.

Can you please elaborate?

I have a few things that I don't understand and would be grateful if you could help me out--

Q1. I understand RAID 1 reduces my usable drive space to half. But, please correct me if I am wrong, say if one of the SSD fails, my data would be secure on the other SSD and I would be able to continue working without even a break right? The windows would be installed on both the SSD's along with all my data?

Q2. I have read that modern SSD's tend not to fail as much in general everyday use. So another option I was thinking of was if instead of going for 2x500gb SSD, I could go for a 1TB SSD which is extremely durable and reliable. Can you suggest some?

Q3. If I convince him of going the cloud storage route, what SIMPLE cloud storage option would you suggest that a 60-year-old and his non-tech savvy employees could understand? The amount of data transfer would be limited to 10GB per month MAX.

 

[NiGHtfUrY]

You can just turn off the RGB lights on fan. Silverstone FARA R1 looks professional but has just 1 fan pre-installed. Maybe get Deepcool Mattrexx 40:
Amazon.in
Turn off its fan lights.

There is a type of RAID for backup, like the 2nd disk will keep backup of 1st one all the time. That might be useful if data is very important, the performance oriented RAID is not required.

*mdcomputers.in/cooler-master-masterbox-mb600l2-knnn-s00.html?sort=p.price&order=ASC

*mdcomputers.in/deepcool-d-shield-v2-dp-atx-dshield-v2.html?sort=p.price&order=ASC

Both of these would suffice.

Cheaper mobo and should suffice for your usecase.

*www.primeabgb.com/online-price-rev...e-d4-intel-h610-lga-1700-mic-atx-motherboard/

UPS to go for.

*www.amazon.in/APC-700VA-Line-Inter...&qid=1644487305&sprefix=apc+up,aps,264&sr=8-8

SN570

*www.amazon.in/Western-Digital-SN55...d=1644487370&sprefix=sn55,aps,262&sr=8-2&th=1

Go for cloud backups first and then think about RAID.

Kindly share your opinions on the following-

Rs.3550- DEEPCOOL MATREXX 40 3FS - The coloured fans seem fine, and my father also likes the look of the case. I would have to go for a micro-atx motherboard with this right?​

Rs. 18,990-Intel i5-12400​

Rs. 3077- Corsair CX450M - Kindly look at this PSU. Is it reliable? 450 Watts seems to be more than enough for my use case as per online calculators. Please share your views.​

Rs. 14,400 - ASUS TUF B660M-E D4 MOTHERBOARD - Since the PC will be connected via ethernet no need for wifi, so would this motherboard be okay? Its 3k cheaper than the ASUS TUF B660M Plus wifi suggested earlier, any major difference other than the wifi?​

Rs. 12,000 - Dell E2421HN 24 Inch Monitor

Rs. 5999- APC UPS BX1100C-100VA / 660W

Rs. 1300- Dell Wireless Kb & m
-------------------------------------------

??? RAM -- I have no idea what RAM to buy, 16 GB (8x2) should be more than enough. Would CL and MHZ really matter if all he is doing is checking mail and excel and some basic accounting applications? What basic but reliable ram would you suggest?


Same with the HDD/SSD. Kindly see my previous comment and help me decide this please. Is Samsung 980 better than WD 570 in terms of durability/failure rates?
Samsung 980 1TB - Rs. 10,800
WD BLUE SN570 1 TB- Rs. 8825

Samsung 980 500GB- Rs. 5800
WD BLUE SN570 500GB - Rs 5222

The difference in 500 GB models is negligible but if I decide to go for a 1tb SSD is the Samsung more reliable?

Also, any recommendations for simple and cheap cloud storage application?​

​

 

[omega44-xt]

Those parts seem good.

2x8GB DDR4 3200MHz CL16 RAM will also suffice. Don't go any lower MHz as you won't be saving much money. Corsair Vengeance is good budget one, but ones from Adata, XPG, Kingston, Crucial or G skill are good as well.

Both of those SSDs have 600TBW endurance, good IMO. Samsung one has higher speeds, not sure if it will be noticeable.

For cloud, you can consider Office 365 subscription, you get genuine Office apps like Excel + 1TB Onedrive storage. Cheapest way to get it is if someone buys a family plan which is about 5k per year, can be used by 6 users, so per user cost is ₹833 per year.

 

[NiGHtfUrY]

Thanks, will stick to the WD BLUE SN570 then. The motherboard look okay to you?

ASUS TUF B660M-E D4 MOTHERBOARD​

Do you know what the E means at the end? Is there some reason this one is cheaper than the one you suggested?

 

[Nerevarine]

Any specific reason you are going for B660M over H610M (Around 8 k cheaper )
I would also advice you to stay away from tempered glass cabinets (especially cheap ones). Them breaking means you have to go through a hell of a lot of pain to get it replaced. Just buy fully opaque cabinets.

Also do not go for a higher VA UPS, nor the specific model (BX Series) as it lacks AVR. Go with the one i linked. 600-700 VA is sufficient for your use case.

 

[NiGHtfUrY]

Any specific reason you are going for B660M over H610M (Around 8 k cheaper )

Only reason is that I feel that the components used in B660M motherboards would be better than H610M motherboards. For eg, Asus has a TUF range for B660M but only Prime for H610M. Other than that I feel that there is no feature in B660M that I would benefit from. I would very happily go for a H610M if it has a good build quality. Any suggestions would be helpful. Any brands to avoid? Any lineups to avoid?

I would also advice you to stay away from tempered glass cabinets (especially cheap ones). Them breaking means you have to go through a hell of a lot of pain to get it replaced. Just buy fully opaque cabinets.

Also do not go for a higher VA UPS, nor the specific model (BX Series) as it lacks AVR. Go with the one i linked. 600-700 VA is sufficient for your use case.

I dont know what AVR means but will go with the one you suggested. The power supply I selected is alright according to you?

 

[quicky008]

why would someone need an i5,that too a 12th gen model to run basic office apps?!Wouldn't a pentium or i3 have sufficed for this? (even a core 2 duo/quad would be more than capable of running such productivity apps with ease.)

Will this office pc double up as a gaming rig when "dad" isn't around?

 

[NiGHtfUrY]

why would someone need an i5,that too a 12th gen model to run basic office apps?!Wouldn't a pentium or i3 have sufficed for this? (even a core 2 duo/quad would be more than capable of running such productivity apps with ease.)

Will this office pc double up as a gaming rig when "dad" isn't around?

Nope, no chance of anyone gaming on it. Longevity is the only reason of going with the i5-12400. He wouldn't upgrade the PC for the next 5 years at the least.

My i5-3570k rig is still used as the home PC by my parents 8 years later. It does not even have an SSD. According to them if its working, its working fine and there's no point in spending money on it.

 

[silverrahul]

I seriously think , the CPUs that have been suggested are WAAY too much of a overkill.

From what i understand , since it is a office PC , important for your dad's work, reliability, hassle free, robustness is way more important , than higher processing muscle power.

The applications that you mentioned, do not need high performance CPU.

I think you would be MUCH better off, going for a lower end CPU and investing the savings on other measures that will improve reliability like
RAID setup that you mentioned yourself, HIGH quality power supply, better UPS in case the office has unreliable power supply.

These 3 are just from the top of my mind. I am sure, people here can mention 10 more things like this, which do not increase performance per se but improve reliability which seems to be a bigger priority for you

 

[omega44-xt]

I seriously think , the CPUs that have been suggested are WAAY too much of a overkill.

From what i understand , since it is a office PC , important for your dad's work, reliability, hassle free, robustness is way more important , than higher processing muscle power.

The applications that you mentioned, do not need high performance CPU.

I think you would be MUCH better off, going for a lower end CPU and investing the savings on other measures that will improve reliability like
RAID setup that you mentioned yourself, HIGH quality power supply, better UPS in case the office has unreliable power supply.

These 3 are just from the top of my mind. I am sure, people here can mention 10 more things like this, which do not increase performance per se but improve reliability which seems to be a bigger priority for you

OP did mention something about being used as a server, so I think extra performance does help. Otherwise surely an i3 10100 is enough.

 

[sumit05]

Go for i3 12100f