Mini Tower Work Computer Build

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Don't buy home built machines. Purchases a name brand lenovo or HP.

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I would build myself if it came to that.

I just don't think saving $40-50 is worth it in this case.

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It's hard to beat the off-the-shelf prices for basic home PCs at budgets below $500, as long as you shop properly. I could probably beat or match something like that by using some questionable OEM parts, but at that point it's not worth the hassle.

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Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I can't really see the point. It will be a 3-5 year machine for basic office use. Get online to order stuff. Look up parts. Point of sale stuff.

I don't think it would be worth it to build one for this use. I'm not used to shopping on a budget when building computers Plus I would imagine when you start cutting corners that much to hit a price point that low you start getting some real hit-or-miss hardware.

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Plus I would imagine when you start cutting corners that much to hit a price point that low you start getting some real hit-or-miss hardware.

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Yeah, that can be a problem. It takes a lot more experience to wade through the low-budget components. I still can't recommend dirt cheap motherboards and cases with 100% confidence because I rarely did those types of builds for clients. A big chunk of the savings comes when you pirate Windows.

However, I did just do some rough pricing on a similarly spec'd build to that Dell. Basically, it can be built for $300, but that doesn't include the cost of Windows if you're going legit. And I suppose it doesn't include the cost of $4 mouse and keyboard combo it comes with.

Here's what I'd call a "solid" build with parts that I can actually confidently recommend, including Windows, for a bit over $400: LINK

Use that as a baseline when shopping for off-the-shelf, to determine whether it might be worth it to build -- I'll leave that "worth it" threshold up to you. Personally, I'll build even if it costs more because I fricking love it, but for more practical people, a $50 price difference isn't enough to make it worth the time. Although, SSD... always awesome....

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If we have any problems they send us a new unit overnight no questions asked. If I build then I'll have to screw with sending stuff back if things go bad.

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For an office build, that can be invaluable. That's why I rarely did low-end builds for customers. They are a fricking nuisance to support sometimes. Let Dell/HP/Lenovo/ASUS handle that shite.

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although hybrid?

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Obviously will never match an SSD in performance but it's a step above normal hard drives. It's basically a hard drive that has a larger cache and learns your file access habits to make things launch/load a little faster over time.

EDIT: And I know I am probably providing zero help in terms of helping you decide to build or buy.

This thread is about DIY vs. buy off the shelf, not buying from a local shop. OP knows how to build and troubleshoot. He doesn't need Timmy Toms PC repair, and is only trying to decide whether buying the parts and assembling it himself worth his time (both short term and potentially long term) for this particular machine's use.

What's the build for? Office use?

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controlling a RAID

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What type and how many drives? or is this going to be connected to an external RAID box... The build I posted for the OP was small form factor, probably wouldn't fit too many 3.5" drives safely and comfortably. I also don't think an i5 is totally necessary for your use. It depends, I guess, on what sort of clients you'll be using for Plex and how many streams you'd have going at once that would actually need the PC to do the transcoding. Even still, it just so happens that I've been working on "Plex"-ifying my media recently (Getting this Chromecast and Nexus 6 has put me in the tinkering mood), and I came across an old post on the Plex blog showing a 2-year-old Mac Mini handling transcoding to 12 clients at once with a mobile i5 on older architecture -- 720p and 1080p of course. Any of the haswell refresh i3s would easily beat the performance of a Sandy or Ivy Bridge mobile i5.

Nevertheless, here's a $436 micro-ATX build with an i5, 120GB SSD, and 1TB HDD: LINK

You could scale down the CPU a little, go Mid-tower/ATX and have some room for more hard drives to make it a true media server/torrent box for essentially everything digital you own.

If you're building a home server like this from scratch you might as well put your storage drives in it. Not sure how well Plex would perform in NAS-to-client streaming/transcoding (of course it depends on the NAS internals). It could very well do just fine in an Atom-based NAS for all I know. Personally, I'm all maxed out on ethernet ports but have plenty of room in my PC for more hard drives, so if I were expanding my home server storage, it would go straight into my desktop as opposed to setting up another access point or a wireless storage solution. Just more convenient and cost-effective for my situation.

Consider this:

PCPartPicker part list: LINK
Price breakdown by merchant: LINK /

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor ($97.27 @ NCIX US)
Motherboard: Biostar Hi-Fi H81S2 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($48.88 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($59.94 @ OutletPC)
Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($31.98 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: EVGA 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($24.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $318.05
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-09 16:45 EST-0500

ATX home server for $300 -- just add the HDD storage of your choice. Maybe some NAS-oriented low power drives with a longer warranty, or take your chances with an array of WD caviar blues or seagate barracudas with the 1-year warranties. You could torrent/seed all day long while streaming Plex to every capable screen in your house while you fire up some Quake 3.

Gigabyte Brix.

Doesn't get much smaller.