Quickie Office Computer Build Part II

I ordered the parts for the office computer.  I had to do it quick to get the parts here before Christmas.  I decided to make it a Christmas present for my wife who has been having problems with here PC that have been unable to be resolved.  The parts only took a few days to arrive here in Alaska and I finagled $0 for shipping!  Here’s the parts list:

• Case - Corsair Carbide Series Black 300R Mid-Tower
• MoBo - ASUS M5A97 R2.0 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX
• CPU - AMD FD6300WMHKBOX FX-6300 6-Core Processor Black Edition
• Video Card - XFX AMD Radeon HD 5450 1GB GDDR3
• SSD - Crucial M500 240GB SATA 6Gbps 2.5" Internal SSD
• PSU - Corsair Builder Series CX 430 Watt ATX/EPS  80 PLUS
• Optical Drive - Lite-On Super AllWrite 24X SATA DVD+/-RW Dual Layer Drive
• OS - Windows 8.1 System Builder OEM DVD 64-Bit Windows 8.1 System Builder OEM DVD 64-Bit
• RAM – Crucial 8GB Kit (4GBx2) DDR3 PC3-10600, CL=9, Unbuffered, NON-ECC, DDR3-1333, 1.5V, 512Meg x 64

Initial parts layout

The only tool I needed to put it all together was a screwdriver.  After getting the parts and doing a quick read of the important parts of the manuals it took 90 minutes to build it.  I was impressed by the Corsair case, which was a solid build with great ventilation and just the right areas for placement of the parts.  Since I was just putting together an office case I would have settled on on-board graphics for video.  However, this MoBo seemed to fit the bill for what I needed and only spent $29.00 for the video card.  I originally planned on a four-core processor but it was sold out by the time I made my decision – I ended up finding an AMD six core for $20 less than I was going to spend for the four core…  I wanted the SSD drive for speed.  I felt sorry for my wife who waited for a long time for boot up and opening programs.  I also decided on eight GB of RAM since some of the new programs and OS have four GB as a minimum.  I bought the RAM and SSD from Crucial which I have had good luck with in the past.

Everything done but the video card and final wiring.

The build was uneventful.  It fired right up after hitting the on switch and into the BIOS, which is awesome.  If this build were for gaming, overclocking would be cake.  The most surprising thing was the boot up time and opening programs and files.  It almost scares you how fast things pop up on the screen – instant.  After tweaking the BIOS to bypass some of the checks, the boot until windows was finished loading was 19 seconds.  A thing of joy, for someone who has dealt with a slow computer for the past three years.

This is the build.  Very easy to do and a good trial run for my next build – which I am still debating on which way to take that.

Quickie Office Computer Build

My wife has been having some issues with her Dell computer she bought a few years ago.  It came with a bunch of pre-installed apps that have cluttered her system and are not causing problems making it run very slow.  Calls to Dell have led to hours on the phone and the problem is not solved.
This got me thinking - why don't I build her a new one that wont come with all the useless apps?  This will be the second computer I have built her - the first one in 2002 that lasted about six years until most of the parts became outdated and non-upgradable due to changing designs for the newer components.  This would also be a chance to dip my toe in the water and see how much has changed in building PCs over the last 12 to 13 years.
I began researching parts for a basic office computer on the internet and at local computer shops.  It became apparent that this would not cost a lot using components that were the "state of the art" about a year ago.