We Assemble An Inexpensive Computer For The Office And At Home
Assemblies for 18,000 and 30,000 rubles
If you’re looking for an inexpensive computer to work with office applications, surf and watch videos, this is your option. We tell you what it can be assembled from.
Not so long ago, we already brought to your attention a couple of inexpensive gaming assemblies . But what if you don’t need a gaming PC? You may not like games, or you may already have a game console at home. In this case, it makes no sense for you to spend money on assembling a full-fledged gaming computer and you should limit yourself to a simple PC for office programs, web surfing and watching movies. Let’s try to assemble a computer for home and office.
Criteria of choice
When choosing components for a working PC, it is necessary to proceed from two main parameters: budget and sufficient performance. We decided to prepare two PC assemblies, one of which will meet the budget of 20,000 rubles, and the other – 30,000 rubles (excluding the cost of the monitor and peripherals – keyboard, mouse, printer).
When working with textual information and surfing the Internet, a large amount of RAM is not required, especially since when using an SSD, almost all information is dumped into a fast cache on the media, and not into RAM.
The motherboard also should not have unnecessary functions, but it is necessary that it be reliable and durable, which is usually the responsibility of the material of electrolytic capacitors. In budget models, they are most often the cause of the early failure of the board. Among the requirements for the board, you can also name the presence of an HDMI output, so that you can, if necessary, connect your computer to a large TV to watch a movie at home. Check here for the best ARM Desktop Mini PC
The power supply must be strong enough to keep the entire system running smoothly, but it must also provide reliable performance, low noise, and durability. In addition, the power supply must have enough connectors to connect hard drives.
As a system disk, it is better to have a solid state drive with a capacity of 240 GB or higher. For data storage, in fact, any HDD with a capacity of 1 TB or more is suitable. Hard drives are more reliable and allow you to recover data in the event of an unexpected system crash.
As for the case, there are no special requirements for it – it should be quite convenient not only in terms of everyday use, for example, for connecting flash drives on the front panel, but also for servicing internal PC components, i.e., have easy access to components.
CPU
As we said, we have prepared several builds of an inexpensive home computer. The first of them involves the use of a budget processor AMD Athlon 200GE. Of course, it is clearly not necessary to expect special feats from a processor worth about 5,000 rubles. Nevertheless, this is a well-balanced 2-core APU with integrated Vega 3 graphics, which is enough performance for word processing, watching movies, surfing the web, and even simple games.
If your budget isn’t that tight, we recommend taking a look at the much more interesting AMD Ryzen 3 3200G for $14,000. This 4-core processor uses the much faster Vega 8 graphics, which is also suitable for HD gaming with a fairly comfortable FPS. Well, with office programs and web surfing, he copes with a bang.
When buying an AMD Ryzen 3 3200G, using 4 GB of RAM no longer seems like such a good idea. And we decided to be a little “generous” by including an 8 GB Crucial DDR4-2666 bar in the assembly. But remember that due to the use of integrated graphics, this solution can only be called a temporary compromise. And in order to realize the full potential of this APU, in the future you will need to add another RAM module capable of running Crucial DDR4-2666 in 2-channel mode.
Motherboard
Here we did not select any one assembly. For each model of APUs we have chosen , the ASRok A320M-HDV R4.0 motherboard is perfect. This motherboard, although it does not have any unique features, is highly reliable due to the use of solid capacitors and ASRock Full Spike Protection technology, which protects its components from sudden power surges.
With all this, the motherboard has a very affordable price tag of 3820 rubles, so looking for something even more inexpensive does not make much sense. And it provides all the necessary functions of an office / home PC in full, including the HDMI output so needed by many for connecting a TV.
Drives
If your budget is really running out, then you can easily do without the use of an SSD, limiting yourself to one hard drive. This approach is quite applicable when using the assembly on the AMD Athlon 200GE processor. But we would strongly advise against saving on such a component of the system – when using an SSD, the speed of the computer increases many times, which can be clearly seen even by the boot time of the operating system.
We recommend using the ADATA Ultimate SU650 as a system SSD. Of course, the speed of SATA SSD cannot be compared with M.2 drives with PCIe 3.0 interface and even more so PCIe 4.0. But it is quite suitable for a home computer, helping to save some more money. Well, the reliability of this drive does not cause any complaints at all.
If you plan on using your computer to store movies, photos, and other content, then you definitely need a hard drive . The Western Digital WD10EZEX 1TB is the best choice here. It’s a time-tested classic, known for its reliability, and you don’t need more from an HDD.
Power Supply
None of the assemblies we have prepared are notable for any high power consumption. Therefore, the main criteria when choosing a power supply for a PC were its reliability and low price. There are a lot of such PSUs, but in the end we chose a very inexpensive Chieftec ELP-400S with a power of 400 watts. The power supply is quiet, highly reliable, and highly efficient for its price.
Frame
Despite its compact size, the ExeGate BAA-108 offers two 2.5″ drive bays and three 3.5″ drive bays. It has the ability to install two additional 120×120 mm fans, and on the front panel of the case there is all the necessary set of ports, including two USB connectors and headphone and microphone outputs.
As for the case design , there are no special frills here – a simple, strict appearance, equally well suited for both home and office.
Results
As a result, we got two PC builds. One of them, costing 17,500 rubles, can easily cope with office programs, surfing the web and watching movies, while the other will cost 30,700 rubles and, among other things, will allow you to unwind in not the most demanding games.
Build #1
AMD Athlon 200GE: 5063 rub.
AMD 4GB DDR4 2133MHz DIMM: 1560 rub.
ASRok A320M-HDV R4.0: 3820 rub.
Western Digital WD Blue 1 TB WD10EZEX: 2970 rub.
Chieftec ELP-400S: 2732 rub.
ExeGate BAA-108 Black: 1450 rub.
Total: 17595 rubles.
Build #2
AMD Ryzen 3 3200G: 13890 rub.
Crucial 8GB DDR4 2666: 3130 rub.
ASRok A320M-HDV R4.0: 3820 rub.
ADATA Ultimate SU650 240GB: 2700 rub.
Western Digital WD Blue 1 TB WD10EZEX: 2970 rub.
Chieftec ELP-400S: 2732 rub.
ExeGate BAA-108 Black: 1450 rub.
