Hi Guys,
I'm currently putting together the part list for my first custom build an i3 Office build. What I can take from the old PC is the HDD, an Optical Drive (and maybe something like a TV card). Currently I got this: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/6yZFZ8 So I still need a case and a power supply. And I would also like a suggestion for a ~250 GB SSD and an opinion on the ~500 GB one.
If this is an office machine, it's not going to need a whole lot of power. A 450W power supply would be more than plenty. EVGA, Antec, Seasonic, anything that is from a reputable brand and that is at least 80+ bronze or silver certified would be preferable.
The motherboard and CPU are excellent for this application. I got the mATX version of that board for my brother's machine and it's a really good board for the money.
The case is subjective. Since this is an office machine, I'd venture to guess it doesn't need a whole lot of bells and whistles. Find one that fits your needs and your budget. Enermax does some very good budget cases with lots of perks. Deepcool's Tesseract case is a nice option too - I used one for an upgrade at the public library for one of their machines.
For the SSD, so long as it's not a Silicon Power, Transcend, Lite-On or a Kingston V300 it should be perfectly fine. I generally favor Crucial(Micron), Adata and some of the Phison-based SSDs like the Patriot Blast. Mushkin's Eco3 and Reactor series drives are really good as well. Whatever you find that's going for a good price really.
Samsung's SSDs are good too, and the 750 should be completely fine, but I've never bought one since the others tend to be more inexpensive.
If it takes your fancy, Intel either has or will soon release their lineup of budget-oriented M.2 NVMe SSDs, the 600P series drives. I moved back to Sandy Bridge so I can't really take advantage of them, but the board you've picked has an M.2 slot, so something like that would be great for an out-of-the-way storage drive.
For a mATX office build , for cases, I can't recommend the silencio 352 more. Especially if you're not going to have more than a 3.5" and 2.5" storage solution (you can completely remove the drive cage in the thing, then). There's not much room for cable management but for the money, if this thing isn't going to be under much load most of the time, if you want it to be quiet, it's a goodun. Decent dust filtration, too.
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I'd rather pick an i3 over an Athlon X4. Just use the iGPU - it's plenty fast and will require less power than having a cpu + dGPU. Also an i3 should generally feel snappier overall, due to the better single core performance.
Same, and then if this office PC needs to be upgraded to keep up later down the line for any reason there's an upgrade path.
I tend to not destroy everything that I get so usually something thats a 4 GHZ chip like that I see and I know that I'll have it for at least 5 years with all new parts. I've kept pentium 4's running after they were in use 8+ years :P
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Not my fault I'm resourceful. Tis how I was taught to live. 'Side's, I have seen a lot of good builds with these new Ath's.
That i3 setup is perfect for your needs @Simon04090
And the i3-6100 will murder that previously mentioned Athlon X4 in Office workloads.
What I would change in that list would be the SSD.
I would go for either the 500GB 850 EVO or a 512GB Intel 600p.
Both more expensive than the 750 EVO you have there but so much better.
The 600p would also cut down on the cable clutter, if that's important for you, as it's an m.2 NVMe SSD.
And now that I think of it, why not go for a smaller mATX footprint while you're at it.
For a case for office use, I'd say look at the Silverstone Precision PS09.
It's a basic case but features are pretty good for the price, USB3 in the front and so on. Especially the front intake which is two vents on the sides > better acoustics than the PS08 variant. And the intakes are filtered which you can easily remove for cleaning.
As for the PSU, you could power that with a PicoPSU. But if I'd have to recommend something, I'd go for the Seasonic G-360, it's a 360W 80+ Gold ATX PSU. I have one in my fiance's computer and I don't have anything bad to say about it.
Here's couple of reviews of it.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/Seasonic_G360
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=313
Here's a Mindfactory shopping cart. With added Seasonic 360W 80+ Gold PSU and Intel 600p 512GB. Also I swapped the ATX board for an mATX board with 4xDDR4 and Intel GbE LAN among other things.
https://www.mindfactory.de/shopping_cart.php/basket_action/load_basket_extern/id/ff75552213e88c13f9a3578373ced941802ac20d143e3971d41
And the case which unfortunately Mindfactory doesn't sell so you'd have to source it from somewhere else.
http://geizhals.eu/silverstone-precision-ps09-black-sst-ps09b-a1053347.html
Edit: Added Arctic F9 Pro PWM PST* fan to the shopping cart for use in the PS09 case as an exhaust, link updated.
The stock 120mm front intake fan on the PS09 will do just fine, afaik it's the FN121-P.
*selected the PST variant in case you'd wish to replace the front 3pin fan for a 4pin PWM fan in the future. The PST variant of the F9 has a Y-splitter on the cable which enables you to share the PWM signal from the fan header to a second fan.
Why the PST variant? Because the Gigabyte motherboard in the shopping cart has 1x CPU fan and 3x system fan headers, of those only the CPU fan is a proper PWM header, the rest are voltage control headers. This is pretty typical even with more expensive motherboards..
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i know you're in the uk but ebay still is an option lol. if not though hard to go wrong on an office build as long as you have a decent cpu and enough ram. however.. an 8300 is also a suggestion since you don't particularly need single threaded performance and just throwing in a random ebay gpu in or like a 710