Advice needed for new work PC

[juane414]

I'm hoping to get some advice on a build I'm hoping to put together for work. For the last 3+ years I've been working with a Lenovo laptop with a core i5-4200U,250gb SSD, and 8gb of ram. It's getting to be just a little too slow for my taste, so I think it's about time for an upgrade. I have an expense account that I'm able to use so I think I can afford to spend up to $800. I would like to build an AMD Ryzen based system, but I'm not sure which motherboard or CPU to get, how much ram I need, etc.

Most of what I do is word processing, email, excel, internet browsing, etc. However, I also do a bit of basic photo and video editing and I have a few applications that hog the resources. My laptop seems to get bogged down when multitasking, but it seems that my core i5 is the bottleneck more than my 8gb of ram. This leads me to believe that I might be able to get by with 8gb of ram, especially at the current ram prices, but I'm not sure how much ram is ideal for Ryzen. I've been looking at the Ryzen 5 1400 and Ryzen 5 1600. I'm not sure which motherboard to pair with one of those. The Gigabyte B350 Gaming 3 is appealing, but I'm wondering if it's a little "overkill" for a work PC. I've never owned an ASrock board, but the ASrock AB350M might meet my needs just fine. I would like the ability to do a mild overclock, if possible. As far as I can tell any of the B350 motherboards should allow for a mild overclock with adequate cooling.

I don't need a powerful graphics card as I won't be gaming at work, and aesthetics aren't too important either so I don't need an extravagant case. I also already have a monitor and external HDD for additional storage.

Here's what I'm considering so far on the high end:
Ryzen 5 1600
Gigabyte B350 Gaming 3
GSkill DDR4 2x8gb
Samsung 850 EVO 250gb
RX 560 2gb
Windows 10 Home
EVGA 500B PSU
Rosewill Challenger case
With combos, rebates, etc. the above comes out to around $800.

And this is what I'm thinking on the low end:
Ryzen 5 1400
ASrock AB350M
GSkill DDR4 2x4gb
Samsung 850 EVO 250gb
Cheap graphics card (might even reuse an old Radeon 6850 or GT 9600 for now)
Windows 10 Home
EVGA 500B PSU
Rosewill Challenger case.
I think I can get all of the above for around $550.

I'm inclined to go as cheap as possible because I do need to use my expense account for other things and it has to last me until April. I can always upgrade the system after April when my expense account resets. I just don't want to go so cheap that I run into issues or regret my purchase. I particularly would like some guidance on the motherboard and the amount of ram that I should get since I have no experience with Ryzen or DDR4 memory. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Sentential]

You might as well look at Dell's outlet for a biz PC and call it a day. No sense in making something that isn't portable just in case you need it to be

 

[juane414]

You might as well look at Dell's outlet for a biz PC and call it a day. No sense in making something that isn't portable just in case you need it to be

There isn't really anything that I absolutely need a laptop for anymore. If I need to do some work on the go I use my iPad pro, and if I must use a PC I access my home computer or work computer remotely from my iPad. Plus, I won't be getting rid of my Lenovo. It still works, I just want something more powerful to be my daily driver.

 

[TimoneX]

April seems like a long way off. That being the case, I suggest you go with your cheaper option there, but replace the micro ATX motherboard with a standard ATX board for an extra $20 or so. This way you at least have some room for upgrades...starting with more memory when prices return to Earth. 2x4 may or may not seem fine for now depending on how you use the system, but 4x4 sounds a whole lot better longer term particularly in the context of video editing. Along those lines I'd probably try to cut every corner possible to spring for a Ryzen 5 1600 for $50 more if you can swing it. If you're doing any video editing it'll be a bunch more fun with 50% moar cores and threads.

 

[trents]

I vote for a Ryzen 5 1600. I recently put one in my wife's computer using this board: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157762 and was very impressed. Overclocked it to 3.8 ghz on pretty modest voltage. It's a hoss! It has four RAM slots so some room for expansion if you only start with 8 gb. I can feel the difference in smoothness of power over my i5 7600k (overclocked to 4.8 ghz) across a range of applications and uses. The Ryzen just handles everything with power to spare because of those extra cores and threads.

 

[Daleon]

Here ya go:

Ryzen 5 1600
Gigabyte B350 Gaming 3
GSkill DDR4 1x8gb
Samsung 850 EVO 250gb
Windows 10 Home
EVGA 500B PSU
Rosewill Challenger case

Drop down to a single stick of 8gb ram and get a 2nd stick in April. Reuse old GPU and get a 1050 ti later. That should knock $150+ off. If you are counting something like $100+ for a Windows license buy an OEM key on ebay or somewhere for cheap. I bought one for $18 or something a month ago.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232419
$60, looks like it works fine with Ryzen at 2400 and may clock higher eventually with bios updates.

 

[trents]

You can pickup an OEM copy of Windows 10 Pro from Kingquin or $30 or so: https://www.kinguin.net/category/19429/windows-10-professional-oem-key/

And I would not bother with high speed RAM such as 3200 mhz. It's still pretty hit and miss whether it will actually run at those higher frequencies. Stay with 2400 mhz and save yourself a lot of headaches and some expense.

 

[DaveB]

And this is what I'm thinking on the low end:
Ryzen 5 1400
ASrock AB350M
GSkill DDR4 2x4gb
Samsung 850 EVO 250gb
Cheap graphics card (might even reuse an old Radeon 6850 or GT 9600 for now)
Windows 10 Home
EVGA 500B PSU
Rosewill Challenger case.
I think I can get all of the above for around $550.

You should do the bottom one and just replace the 1400 with the 1600. Reusing one of your old GPUs, similar HW with the Ryzen 5 1600 and the NVMe Samsung 960 SSD, the price comes in just under your $550 at Microcenter including Virginia sales tax. Add an OEM Win 10 license for $30 and you're done. Here's the breakdown:

Ryzen 5 1600
ASrock AB350M
Geil DDR4-2400 2x8gb
Samsung 960 NVMe 250gb
Reused Radeon 6850 or GT 9600
EVGA 500B PSU
Antec VSK-3000 mATX case

 

[trents]

I like Dav B's list. But I would still recommend going with a board that has four RAM slots. 8 gb is not much these days. You want some expandability and we are enough under your budge that you can easily do that by spending a little more on the board. But do you have a Microcenter nearby?

 

[Daleon]

I checked that last night, don't see any MC's in Wi.

 

[juane414]

Huge thanks to all of you for the very helpful feedback. I have a few questions...

First, is Kinguin a legit place to buy an OEM license for cheap? Is that more or less "risky" than buying a license from Ebay? I've only ever paid full price for an OEM license but I wouldn't mind getting Windows 10 for $30 if it's legit.

Second, are there any drawbacks to running one stick of ram? How does Ryzen do with single channel vs dual channel? What would be better: running one stick of 8gb now and another 8gb later, or two 4gb sticks now and add another two later (for a 4x4 configuration)? In the past I shied away from running just one stick, and I also shied away from using all four slots because that seemed to hurt OC potential. However, I haven't read up much on this lately as it relates to Ryzen.

Third, is the NVMe SSD worth the price bump over a sATA SSD? The 250gb 960 EVO is about $30 more than the 250gb 850 EVO. The benchmarks look favorable, but is it worth the extra $30?

Lastly, how do the ASrock AB350M Pro4 and Gigabyte B350 Gaming 3 compare in terms of quality and OC ability? I hadn't considered the ASrock before because it was out of stock at Newegg until today and way overpriced at other retailers. The ASrock appears to have better reviews but has fewer features. I'd be willing to give up some of the full ATX features of the Gigabyte to go with the ASrock if the ASrock is better quality and has more OC ability.

Thanks again, everyone!

I like Dav B's list. But I would still recommend going with a board that has four RAM slots. 8 gb is not much these days. You want some expandability and we are enough under your budge that you can easily do that by spending a little more on the board. But do you have a Microcenter nearby?

No, unfortunately. There aren't any good retail locations in my area. I'll be ordering everything online.

 

[Sentential]

https://slickdeals.net/f/10489928-h...conditioned?src=SiteSearchV2_SearchBarV2Algo1

 

[trents]

Huge thanks to all of you for the very helpful feedback. I have a few questions...

First, is Kinguin a legit place to buy an OEM license for cheap? Is that more or less "risky" than buying a license from Ebay? I've only ever paid full price for an OEM license but I wouldn't mind getting Windows 10 for $30 if it's legit.

Yes. I have purchased Windows 10 OEM licenses from Kinguin personally and have had no problems. They are as legit as any other OEM license from what I can tell but you just don't get media. You would need to use Microsoft Media Creation tool for that.

Second, are there any drawbacks to running one stick of ram? How does Ryzen do with single channel vs dual channel? What would be better: running one stick of 8gb now and another 8gb later, or two 4gb sticks now and add another two later (for a 4x4 configuration)? In the past I shied away from running just one stick, and I also shied away from using all four slots because that seemed to hurt OC potential. However, I haven't read up much on this lately as it relates to Ryzen.

I have not seen any reports on the performance effect of running one stick of RAM vs 2 with Ryzen. Historically, dual channel mode has been over rated and in real life computing there has been very little performance improvement with dual channel. Not sure if that bears out with Ryzen and it may not be as true because of Ryzen's memory controller architecture and many cores.

Third, is the NVMe SSD worth the price bump over a sATA SSD? The 250gb 960 EVO is about $30 more than the 250gb 850 EVO. The benchmarks look favorable, but is it worth the extra $30?

No. You will only see a real difference from going with NVMe in boot times. And their have been issues with some of them running very hot.

Lastly, how do the ASrock AB350M Pro4 and Gigabyte B350 Gaming 3 compare in terms of quality and OC ability? I hadn't considered the ASrock before because it was out of stock at Newegg until today and way overpriced at other retailers. The ASrock appears to have better reviews but has fewer features. I'd be willing to give up some of the full ATX features of the Gigabyte to go with the ASrock if the ASrock is better quality and has more OC ability.

I don't think you will find very much difference in overclocking ability with any of the AM4 boards presently out on the market. Ryzens tend to have a low overclock ceiling and there isn't much variability between Ryzen CPUs in that regard anyway. They all top out between 3.8 and 4.0 ghz it seems. The boards don't seem to make much difference because Ryzen's TDP is low and the Ryzen CPUs are limited not by power draw but by core voltage. You already have my testimony about the ASRock AB350M board. I would check the two boards on their manufacturer's website to see which one is putting more effort into bios updates to fix compatibility issues with high speed RAM. Not that the high speed RAM matters so much but it was an indicator to me of which manufacturer was doing the best job of follow up development of their product line. When I checked a couple months ago ASRock was the clear winner over Gigabyte in that regard.

Thanks again, everyone!



No, unfortunately. There aren't any good retail locations in my area. I'll be ordering everything online.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/66puim

 

[DaveB]

Huge thanks to all of you for the very helpful feedback. I have a few questions...

First, is Kinguin a legit place to buy an OEM license for cheap? Is that more or less "risky" than buying a license from Ebay? I've only ever paid full price for an OEM license but I wouldn't mind getting Windows 10 for $30 if it's legit.

I've bought several valid OEM licenses on ebay for under $10. All were from UK sources, were emailed in minutes, and are still valid after 6 months.

Second, are there any drawbacks to running one stick of ram? How does Ryzen do with single channel vs dual channel? What would be better: running one stick of 8gb now and another 8gb later, or two 4gb sticks now and add another two later (for a 4x4 configuration)? In the past I shied away from running just one stick, and I also shied away from using all four slots because that seemed to hurt OC potential. However, I haven't read up much on this lately as it relates to Ryzen.

Since Ryzen is dual channel, you want 2 sticks.

Third, is the NVMe SSD worth the price bump over a sATA SSD? The 250gb 960 EVO is about $30 more than the 250gb 850 EVO. The benchmarks look favorable, but is it worth the extra $30?

Your call on that, but I like having an NVMe boot disk.

Lastly, how do the ASrock AB350M Pro4 and Gigabyte B350 Gaming 3 compare in terms of quality and OC ability? I hadn't considered the ASrock before because it was out of stock at Newegg until today and way overpriced at other retailers. The ASrock appears to have better reviews but has fewer features. I'd be willing to give up some of the full ATX features of the Gigabyte to go with the ASrock if the ASrock is better quality and has more OC ability.

I was able to overclock my Ryzen 5 1600 to 3.9 GHz on air and 4 GHz on water cooling using the ASrock AB350M Pro4.

Thanks again, everyone!



No, unfortunately. There aren't any good retail locations in my area. I'll be ordering everything online.

 

[trents]

I'm guessing going from 2 sticks or RAM to 4 won't make much impact on overclocking Ryzen as long as you aren't also using the higher speed RAM products.

 

[Janus67]

Out of curiosity, how large is the business that you work for? Who does the IT support?

To be honest, I'd be pretty pissed if some faculty/staff went and bought/built their own computer and expected us to support it. What you use at home I wouldn't care (nor would I support it, of course), but if I had to support it and put our licensing on it, etc then I would want it to be one of the same machines that are used throughout our enterprise so that support isn't a one-off situation depending on the user.

Just my $0.02.

 

[Daleon]

For what your doing you won't notice much performance drop with lack of dual channel for a while. You really only need the NVMe speed if you have other drives that could keep up with its speeds. So far you can only get external enclosures like StarTech.com Portable M.2 SSD Enclosure for USB C but I am sure we will see some Thunderbolt 3 enclosures soon then things could get interesting.

 

[Sentential]

Out of curiosity, how large is the business that you work for? Who does the IT support?

To be honest, I'd be pretty pissed if some faculty/staff went and bought/built their own computer and expected us to support it. What you use at home I wouldn't care (nor would I support it, of course), but if I had to support it and put our licensing on it, etc then I would want it to be one of the same machines that are used throughout our enterprise so that support isn't a one-off situation depending on the user.

Just my $0.02.

I concur which is why I still think he ought to look at a business capable laptop

 

[trents]

I concur which is why I still think he ought to look at a business capable laptop

It would still amount to the OP bringing in his own computer.

 

[juane414]

Out of curiosity, how large is the business that you work for? Who does the IT support?

To be honest, I'd be pretty pissed if some faculty/staff went and bought/built their own computer and expected us to support it. What you use at home I wouldn't care (nor would I support it, of course), but if I had to support it and put our licensing on it, etc then I would want it to be one of the same machines that are used throughout our enterprise so that support isn't a one-off situation depending on the user.

Just my $0.02.

Thanks for sharing your concern. I work for a small church and I handle all IT stuff. If I were to encounter a problem I couldn't fix on my own I'd consult the local computer shop (which is very good, from what I've seen/heard) but so far in 3+ years at this job I haven't encountered a problem I haven't been able to fix myself.