Spec me: Cheap but good office PC... Is it worth building?

pumaz said:
I just put the Tablet out there as a quirky alternative which I personally feel is pretty good for Office work and browsing when you consider you can get these things from £60 it's worth thinking about. But for upgrading and running dual screens they'll never compete with a PC.

On your last point "If something in the tablet fails"
A single component in a PC costs about as much as one of these Tablets. Something to think about ;)
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Yeah it's not a bad idea... Just don't think it is suitable for this build

Thanks though :)

Good idea to keep in mind for future if anyone asks me about a simpe 'PC'
 
Tablets are good if your primary use is casual browsing. They will do the job for *occasional* office work

I wouldn't want to use one for *general* office use though. I adore my iPad, but IMO a tablet is still a secondary device, they still can't beat a PC, keyboard and mouse.

The Windows tablets are slightly better, and if you have one which can connect to keyboard+mouse+HDMI out, I might consider one if the use is somewhere between casual browsing and general office use. Even so, I wouldn't want to be outputting 1080p on a cheap one.
 
The trick with these windows 8 Tablets is they are all based on the Bay trail Soc with only storage and memory differing, for example my encore has 2GB memory and 32GB storage and cost £109, my son has a Linx 7 with 1GB memory and 32GB storage and cost £59.99. The internals bar the extra memory in mine are exactly the same as they are in all current tablets and wether cheap or expensive will output to 1080p just fine. Essentially they are mini PC's with screens and shouldn't be ruled out because they're tablets, you could rig one up and never use it as a tablet.
 
Thanks for the help everyone

In the end I went for the spec above, with the avexir ram recommended and switched the SSD for a 120gb 840 EVO instead as a slightly better drive
 
 
Question for anyone (or Stulid as he spec'd it)... How do you know which RAM is compatible??

I mean, other than it being DDR3... How do you tell all the rest of the spec (PC3-12800, PC3-10666 etc)? That's the one part of specc'ing a PC that I don't understand haha

Thanks to anyone who can answer that
 
pumaz said:
The trick with these windows 8 Tablets is they are all based on the Bay trail Soc with only storage and memory differing, for example my encore has 2GB memory and 32GB storage and cost £109, my son has a Linx 7 with 1GB memory and 32GB storage and cost £59.99. The internals bar the extra memory in mine are exactly the same as they are in all current tablets and wether cheap or expensive will output to 1080p just fine. Essentially they are mini PC's with screens and shouldn't be ruled out because they're tablets, you could rig one up and never use it as a tablet.
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One fairly big difference between the Windows 8 tablets is the quality of the cooling - the encore, dells, etc. will usually go on forever under moderately heavy load without any issues but the cheaper ones like the LinX will start to thermal throttle after awhile if your doing something that makes the CPU sweat and CPU speed will drop to 300-500MHz until they cool down (you get what you pay for) not to mention how well the battery holds up to heavier loads.

I wouldn't be against using one for general desktop use with a monitor, keyboard and mouse hooked up you've basically got an enhanced version of a 2007 mainstream PC (with the advantages of some type of solid state storage and DX11 support) - you can store anything important on the SD card (and/or backup elsewhere) so if something fails you don't lose data HOWEVER many of the sub 10" and even the 10" ones have problems using USB peripherals and charging at the same time which can be a problem for prolonged use and there is also an annoying Windows 8 bug with charging + USB and/or Wifi which at random will hard lock the whole tablet requiring a long press windows key + power button reset.
 
azibux1 said:
Question for anyone (or Stulid as he spec'd it)... How do you know which RAM is compatible??

I mean, other than it being DDR3... How do you tell all the rest of the spec (PC3-12800, PC3-10666 etc)? That's the one part of specc'ing a PC that I don't understand haha

Thanks to anyone who can answer that
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Look at the boards homepage and see what it can take, then look at what the max memory speed of the CPU is.

i.e = its 1600MHz.
 
stulid said:
Look at the boards homepage and see what it can take, then look at what the max memory speed of the CPU is.

i.e = its 1600MHz.
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Thanks!

And you said go for Avexir (9-9-9-24) over Team group (11-11-11-28) as it has better timings... So is it as simple as, the lower the timing numbers the better?
 
Simple as that, thanks!

Just realised the avexir RAM isn't on the supported list... Is that likely to cause any issues?

http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_ga-am1m-s2h.pdf

EDIT: I see it says:

Memory modules listed below are for reference only. Due to massive memory models on the market, we can only verify some of them.
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So just checking :)
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On a separate topic. Fans... Will a Gelid Tranquillo CPU fan fit on the mobos 'system fan' header to act as an exhaust fan? Just trying to see if the system fan header is physically identical to the cpu fan header (as the tranquillo was actually a CPU fan) or whether 4 pin case fans are actually a slightly different header... My thinking is that it should fit on the 'system fan' (presumably case fan) header?

Can you confirm please?

If it fits, I'll have that on there, the APU fan on the CPU fan header and a molex powered fan as the intake

Thanks :)
 
Ignore the memory list, they cant possibly test every kit on the market.

The fan will fit on the header if its just a 3pin.
 
stulid said:
Ignore the memory list, they cant possibly test every kit on the market.

The fan will fit on the header its just a 3pin after all.
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OK :)

Ah right, I thought the gelid tranquillo was 4 pin... I can't remember since it's been boxed up for a while. Either way it should fit then :)

Will keep you posted with the build progress :)
 
Def wouldn't bother with an APU build.

There are some great inexpensive Intel NUC and Zotac Zbox PC's around now, just add an SSD / Memory and away you go. Cheap, ideal for office work and low power , very compact PC.
 
stulid said:
After looking at the board, the SYS fan header is 4pin anyway.

http://www.gigabyte.com/fileupload/product/2/4937/9746_big.jpg
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Good to go then, thanks :)

Boomstick777 said:
Def wouldn't bother with an APU build.

There are some great inexpensive Intel NUC and Zotac Zbox PC's around now, just add an SSD / Memory and away you go. Cheap, ideal for office work and low power , very compact PC.
Click to expand...

Cheapest brand new NUC I can see from OcUK is £224.99 though? I only paid 96p more and got everything I needed?
 
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