Thread: Building business machines - looking for advice

I need to build 6 machines for the family business.

They need to be able to run office, accounting and sales software, and browse the web. Basically nothing very intensive.

Although budget is undefined I'm looking for bang for buck. $400 for parts seems to be the range needed so far in my travels.

I need help selecting a processor class and deciding whether SSD's are a smart buy for business machines at this time. Plan currently is 4gb 1600mhz RAM. Roughly 300-400W power supplies. Mobo's to match the processors roughly around $100each.

I'm looking at :

Intel G3240 $70
Intel G3258 $85
Intel i3-4150 $120
or
i5's overkill?
AMD - any major recommends here? The lack of on board graphics and fans of any of the chips that would out compete the intel i3's is not exciting me here.

For hard drives
WD Blue 500gb 7200rpm $60
or
128gb Kingston SSD $65

Have you guys got any other key things to consider?

How long do you plan on using these machines? We plan ours on a 4 year cycle. 4GB of ram is underpowered by todays standards. OS and office will each that up fast. I spec Dell's for the standards for ASU and we spec the entry level as a optiplex 7020 with second from highest i5, 8GB of ram and a 120ish GB SSD. We bitlock and image in the field from MDT imagers so the SSD is a huge time saver. We redirect all local storage to network shares so we only need an SSD large enough for OS image and profiles. We no longer spec dedicated graphics if using the i5 or i7 the on-board graphics can easily push to 2 monitors simultaneously. The 7020 we spec has dual Display Ports out onboard which is perfect for us. If you go with a non i5, i7 you will need graphics. Reference Build from dell I linked the dell spec sheet for the 7020 so you can use it as a reference. Grab similar parts and build your own cheaper. We buy prebuilds for the 4 year warranty and we are dell certified repair techs so we get next day parts if something breaks.

Also, don't cheap out on displays. They will be looking at that PC for hours every day and a decent monitor is important to prevent eye strain and headaches. Dell has nice monitors in the 22" and 24" category. Avoid the 23" models, for some reason they think the should cost more then the 24" models. If you build the 7020 make with DP out on board get a monitor with DP in so you can avoid the adapter headaches. DP to DVI adapters are awkwardly long and tend to kink at weird angles and stop working.