Hi OZB
Looking to purchase a PC for home office use, majority office products and pdfs. Nothing like photoshop. What do you recommend? I was thinking SFF but also techfast pc however having a gaming graphics card in it might be overkill as it won’t be used for any games.
Budget is 1-2k including dual monitors (basic ones)
Thank you
Safe to assume you'd rather spend $1K than $2K? It's a pretty wide range…
Pretty much anything even the $300 refurbs will do
Almost anything these days will do office stuff. You certainly don't need a graphics card.
Do you want new, or would a refurbished PC be good enough? Do you want a mini PC or do you want full sized?
Do you want something that'll last a long time in terms of upgradeability, ie, its the latest generation, rather than a good enough recent generation machine?
Do you want it built and working out of the box, or can you or do you want to put it together yourself?
Yep. Could use a potato for those intended applications.
If you want to be able to upgrade to Windows 11, then you will need an 8th gen Intel or newer (Windows 10 end of life is October 2025, if you are worried about security vulnerabilities).
Perfect thanks for all the replies!
Yes definitely something that will be able to run windows 11 as windows 10 will be obsolete.
New PC will be better for warranty purposes. Dell website for SFF is around 900 or so. Any other contenders?
I'd go HP over Dell
New PC will be better for warranty purposes.
FYI, I had no issues claiming Dell warranty on a used Optiplex. I think I could have extended the warranty if I wanted to.
Awesome! I will check out some refurbs too. I just want something a bit more modern like 8th Gen i5/i7. Would you consider amd over intel?
AMD of that age are not worth considering. AMD CPUs could only be considered a match for Intel around the 2nd gen Ryzen generation (2000 series). Before that their single core performance was sub-par, you can't compensate for that with more cores
There's a growing trend towards small form factor PCs like: https://www.amazon.com.au/MINISFORUM-Neptune-6900HX-Radeon-G…
They go anywhere from $200 to $2,000 depending on specs and features. You should be able to get a decent one for $600-800.
Wow they look like an amazing little rig. I’ll definitely check it out
If you don't need gaming speed graphics those mini PCs sold on Amazon have an excellent set of features that serve you well into the future. I'd very seriously consider one myself. I just don't know how you'd go if you had a problem and needed technical or warranty support, which does seem to be something that's important to you.
I have a couple of HP T640 Thin Clients retasked as PCs running unactivated (ie free) Windows 10 Pro and 11 Pro. Dual core Ryzen with integrated graphics. No fan, so its silent. DDR4 RAM. M.2 NVMe drive. Gigabit ethernet plus lots of DP 4K and USB-A and USB-C ports including a couple of 10 Mb/s ones, and a slot and antennas for an M.2 wifi card. Runs off a 45W PSU. What more does someone running office apps and internet access need. Cost me $150 plus $21 for a 256GB gen4 M.2 NVMe SSD.
For a SOHO, get one of the gen 8 i5 refurb desktops for $250 deals that come on this site every week or 2. And get an external HDD for data backup.
I would spend your $2000 on a synology NAS and a pair of HDDs, and a used 8th gen i5 refurb upgraded to 32gb RAM.
Sounds like a plan! I am definitely leaning towards a Optiplex 9020 i5 8500 with dual basic monitors. That would be well under $1k I guess more money for other things :)
a sexy optiplex like 7020 or 9020, i forget which one