Building a new office PC for my old man

[Skilid]

I built a PC for my Dad many years ago and it's been working a treat ever since. I think it's on AM3, so not much salvagable from it. I thought I'd build him a new PC for Christmas. He's retired and only uses it for office tasks really, as well as a bit of family tree and photo/video storage. It'll likely last him many years without upgrading again. With that in mind I thought going AM4 might be a good bet to save some cash, as by the time he's likely to upgrade, AM5 will probably have been replaced and he won't benefit from any AM5 based features anyway

I was going to get him:

Ryzen 5600G
16GB 3200 DDR4
1TB NVME
MSI B550-A Pro
Be quiet 450w PSU
Fractal Pop Silent Solid case
No GPU

He's got a 5.25" DVD drive he'll want to move over and a few other SSDs. Will probably re-use his license key as well.

Is there anything I'm not thinking of for a bog standard home PC? It would be about another £50-£100 to go AM5, so I'm not sure I see the point for his use case.

 

[Tetras]

For the very small cost difference, I'd get 32GB. He might never need it, but RAM is one of those things that always need more of it over time.

 

[Skilid]

For the very small cost difference, I'd get 32GB. He might never need it, but RAM is one of those things that always need more of it over time.

Thanks, yeah I am considering this. I personally still only have 16GB and haven't needed more yet and I'm a way heavier user than he is. I also figured that if he really needed it, the motherboard has 4 slots, so we could always chuck in another 16GB later.

 

[Werewolf]

A google suggests the case you've looked at may not have an external bay for the optical drive, so you may need to look at another case or pick up an external drive (IIRC a usb DVDRW is only about £25).

For the very small cost difference, I'd get 32GB. He might never need it, but RAM is one of those things that always need more of it over time.

That would be what i'd do especially if he's using it for things like photos.

But I've been running 32gb for nearly 9 years.

 

[Skilid]

A google suggests the case you've looked at may not have an external bay for the optical drive, so you may need to look at another case or pick up an external drive (IIRC a usb DVDRW is only about £25).



That would be what i'd do especially if he's using it for things like photos.

But I've been running 32gb for nearly 9 years.

Apparently it's supposed to have 2 5.25" bays.

 

[theforce]

Since you are going for a 5600G, l would suggest getting a 3600MHz RAM kit instead of a 3200MHz one. 16GB should be enough for some general usage. You can always add more in the future if the need arises.

 

[Quartz]

He's retired and only uses it for office tasks really, as well as a bit of family tree and photo/video storage. It'll likely last him many years without upgrading again.

Take a look at the Intel NUC form factor boxes with an external USB optical drive. The Minisforum and Beelink boxes seem to be flavours of the month.

Those are the higher-end models, of course. A barebones 5600G model is £309 from Minisforum.

 

[Skilid]

Thanks. I did consider a mini PC, but he's always wanting to connect additional drives and if something breaks is easy for us to replace being a standard form factor.

I've ordered all the parts for him today and upgraded him to 32GB RAM.

Thanks all.

 

[Werewolf]

Aye I always like the ide of a mini pc, and I've almost bought one several times for a Plex server, but i'm always put off by the fact that it's one part failing away from complete replacement much of the time.

32gb is possibly going to be overkill, but it's a nice buffer to have (I'm just in the process of putting 64gb in two new builds that i hope will last us 5+ years).