PC for Office

[nac]

This is for my cousin. Thought of delaying it for few months and see if the price settles or not and buy a desktop. But the laptop he currently uses is pretty slow, so can't delay anymore. Gonna get as soon as possible, let's say a week.

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: Generic office work like MS Office suite, running multiple excel files with macros, a dozen browers tabs atleast, Tally, may be an android emulator.

2. What is your overall budget? If you can extend a bit for a more balanced configuration, then please mention.
Ans: 35k

3. Planning to overclock?
Ans: A BIG NO

4. Which Operating System are you planning to use?
Ans: Win 10

5. How much hard drive / solid-state drive space is needed?
Ans: Minimum would be fine, I guess. ~ 250GB

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: No

7. Which components you DON'T want to buy? i.e. which components you already have and plan on reusing?
Ans: Monitor, KB/Mouse, UPS, ODD drive

8. When are you planning to buy the system?
Ans: In a week

9. Have you ever built a desktop before? Or, will this be done by an assembler?
Ans: I will help him in this regard. I will be doing the assembling part.

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: Online. Guessing local pricing would be atleast 10-15% higher than online. Anyway I will check the pricing locally before deciding that.

11. Anything else which you would like to say?
Ans: I have recommended him the following, I would like you guys point out if I am missing anything.

• i3 10100 (Though I feel Pentium is suffice for his needs, I don't feel it's value for the money. For 20% price premium, i3 performs twice that of Pentium)
• MSI B460M Pro VDH / Asrock B460M Pro4 (Since looking for multi monitor setup, H410's max display support of 2 nos is not good enough. Would like to keep the options open for future, so sticking with B460 chipset board as it supports 3 monitors. Leaning towards Asrock as it's slight cheaper).
• Hyper X 8GB DDR4 3200mhz (I guess any popular brand would do).
• Kingston A2000 NVME drive 250GB (I guess since there is not much storage required for the use case, gonna stick with just NVME, and skipping HDD).
• Deepcool Matterex 40 / Corsair Spec 01 (Since this is for an office use, the Deepcool case looks subtle and neat comparitively than the Corsair. But shorter warranty, SSD install location, single headphone/mic jack are the few I don't like).
• CM MWE 450w 80+ Bronze v2 / Corsair CV 450W 80+ Bronze (Both costs the same, I chose CM for my rig about a year back. Corsair costed about 3.5k vs 3k for CM back then - one of the reason why I picked CM. Since both now costs the same, which one I should pick?. Recently came across a discussion about these two PSUs and CV was the suggested one. Correct me if I am wrong.

Online pricing brings the total to 33k.

Please point out if I am wrong anywhere with the choices. If I have to change the parts, let me know.

 

[nac]

Got a quotation from a local shop, I am surprised with the pricing.
B460 is not available, got to order and get it for me.

34k
i3 10100
MSI B460M Pro VDH (Stock not available)
Corsair Vengeance 8GB 3200mhz
MWE 450w 80+ Bronze v2
Corsair Spec 01
WD Blue nvme 250GB

Cousin says to get it locally. Have to confirm about the board and place the order.

 

[nac]

They are pushing 500 series, as they don't have any B400 series board. I feel they are either expensive or they don't support triple monitor. Even suggested H500, again as they don't supported triple monitor I said no. If they couldn't source it by tomorrow, probably we will get the rest of the parts locally and buy the board online.

 

[nac]

They couldn't source the B460s I asked. Went to buy the rest of items, but to my surprise many of them are out of stock in just a day. Unlucky us
End up getting just the CPU. Getting everything else from online. Bottom no. comes to 32.5k.
Final configuration:

• i3 10100
• Asrock B460M Pro4
• Hyper X 8GB DDR4 3200mhz
• Kingston A2000 NVME drive 250GB
• Deepcool Matterex 40
• Corsair CV 450W 80+ Bronze

 

[skeletor]

They couldn't source the B460s I asked. Went to buy the rest of items, but to my surprise many of them are out of stock in just a day. Unlucky us
End up getting just the CPU. Getting everything else from online. Bottom no. comes to 32.5k.
Final configuration:

• i3 10100
• Asrock B460M Pro4
• Hyper X 8GB DDR4 3200mhz
• Kingston A2000 NVME drive 250GB
• Deepcool Matterex 40
• Corsair CV 450W 80+ Bronze

Looks good.

If you really want triple monitor without discrete GPU, then Dell Optiplex might have it. Might cost a bit extra. Edit: Nope, they are very expensive.

 

[omega44-xt]

Got a quotation from a local shop, I am surprised with the pricing.
B460 is not available, got to order and get it for me.

34k
i3 10100
MSI B460M Pro VDH (Stock not available)
Corsair Vengeance 8GB 3200mhz
MWE 450w 80+ Bronze v2
Corsair Spec 01
WD Blue nvme 250GB

Cousin says to get it locally. Have to confirm about the board and place the order.

Seems good actually. Get B560 if you want to run RAM at 3200MHz, else it will be capped at 2666 (won't matter for light office tasks). See if you can save money with 2666MHz RAM if you opt for B460.

 

[nac]

Seems good actually. Get B560 if you want to run RAM at 3200MHz, else it will be capped at 2666 (won't matter for light office tasks). See if you can save money with 2666MHz RAM if you opt for B460.

I thought of that, since already we are overshooting our initial budget I dropped the idea of B560. Out of curiosity when I checked, the cheapest triple monitor supported B560 board cost over 10k, Asus Prime M A. Don't like DS3H.
I asked around even the cheapest 2666mhz Crucial basics cost about 3150/- in local. And don't want to get it without that heat sink. Getting 3200mhz for 2900/-. Couldn't find cheaper anywhere else.
Ordered and paid, they are on the way. Hopefully will get it assembled by next week this time, if not by next weekend.

 

[nac]

Except case everything else have arrived couple of days back and we assembled it today and checked. Assembling after that BIOS settings and OS installation all went in a breeze. While trying to get the wires off of the hook from CPU fan, I touched the thermal paste accidentally. I was little concerned about that and was doubtful whether I would need to get some thermal paste and do it all over again. But the temps are fine and good. Should push it again by running some benchmarks and see if the temp shoots up too much and confirm if it's alright. I am hopefull that it will be, will see.
Hopefully by monday we will get the cabinet and the assembling will be over.

 

[avichandana20000]

kindly post pic after final assemble is done

 

[nac]

kindly post pic after final assemble is done

It's done around Nov end. It's in his office, I will try and take few snaps when I visit next time.

No power led in the cabinet, that's bit of a bummer.
More space than Spec 01 for cable management.
Would prefer motherboard speaker than the diagnostic (is that what they call?) led's in the board.
Led lights behind the board is a nice touch. I thought those are just in the product images.
Since the ram stick we bought didn't have 2666mhz in any xmp profile, we picked from the list and the timings aren't good in auto. We manually set the timings 15-17-17-38 @ 1.2v
Temps in BIOS are about 7-10 degree higher than the HWinfo. In BIOS I saw mostly around mid 40s, in HWinfo it's almost always in mid to high 30s.