Need two new office PCs, identical configuration

Buying Advice Desktop & PC Buying Advice
1

Dad’s office needs two new computers. 30k budget is only for the tower, and it is 30k per tower. Peripherals, Monitor, UPS, etc will have a seperate budget.

Requirements:

  1. Officially windows 11 compatible(TPM, Secure boot, etc) and the processor should not become unsupported by the next version of windows (no clue which generation of Intel will be unsupported by the next version of windows so will have to make an educated guess)
  2. Wifi and bluetooth on motherboard from factory, no third party adapters.
  3. Intel processor with integrated graphics, as dad has old school notions of AMD being terrible and will not budge and thats okay.
  4. An SSD, HDD, and PSU that can handle 12 hrs of being used daily, 6 days a week, for 5 years minimum with close to zero chance of failure on those specific parts. (Workload is light, checking emails, printing attachments, typing documents, and using Tally to monitor inventory and print bills)
  5. Dual channel RAM, DDR4 is fine.
  6. Storage configuration can be 240-256GB SSD+ 1TB HDD, even 500GB HDD is fine.

My personal suggestions-

  1. i3 12100(with integrated graphics)
  2. MSI PRO H610M-S WIFI DDR4
  3. some cheap DDR4 8GB stick x 2 quantity (not EVM or ANT Esports, i think Crucial is the cheapest 8GB DDR4 stick amongst long term reliable brands)
  4. Ant esports elite 1100 cabinet
  5. no clue about the SSD,HDD and PSU, but I’m guessing cant be the cheapest ones if they are supposed to survive a decade of daily 12hrs usage.

Will appreciate any thoughts, suggestions and second opinions on a better selection of parts as per the budget.

2

Not possible. There never was & never will be a hdd/ssd that is 100% failure proof. Any hdd/ssd can fail at any time & that is why always keep backup of critical data in at least 2 different drives+cloud storage.

See above. You can get Crucial P3 or WD SN5000/770/580 whichever is available at best price & keep backup of critical data in another drive/cloud storage (MS office 365 paid subscription or google drive paid). For psu you can go with ASUS TUF Gaming 550W Bronze PSU which you can get from amazon with 10% card discount offer at around 4.5k. I know this is a bit pricier than coolermaster & corsair options but it is worth it considering it comes with 6 years warranty.

3

I recommend Thinkcenter for enterprise environments. They are not exorbitantly expensive and are backed by 5 year warranty. I have 2 of these at home: ThinkCentre M75q Gen 5 Tiny | High-performing 1L PC fueled by AMD Ryzen PRO | Lenovo IN

4

I would suggest you to get ThinkCenter or EliteDesk from NewJaisa and save 50%-60% money to get other stuff/better monitors for the office.

5

Going by the way Microsoft has made W11 requirements, good chances that they will make an NPU required for W12. So get something that has it.

AMD is still way better than Intel overall, but take something newer, 12th gen is 3 years old now.

Try to take something which has an Intel WiFi chip, no need to much around for 3rd party drivers.

Buy some cloud storage for backup - no machine can be 100% fail-proof

6

Unfortunately Intel has locked down their WiFi 6 and later chips for AMD.

7

There are 2 Intel chip series - those ending in 0 (which are PCIe) and those ending in 1 (which are CNVio - an Intel proprietary platform and will work with Intel only)

You want the ones ending in 2x0 like 200 or 210 - these will work everywhere

I am not referring to the hot mess that is the BE 2xx series.

1 Like
8

I vote for a tiny pc too. Either new, or refurb depending on your dad’s risk appetite. Mount it behind the monitor and minimal clutter.