Does anyone do decent pre-made shoebox PCs?

[DanceswithUnix]

Hi,

At work we are looking to get a PC and would rather it be fairly easy to move around.

It has one unmovable hardware requirement, in that in needs a recent Nvidia graphics card which should be at least a 3060 (for video encoding, so doesn't need to be a ti) but ability to shoehorn a 3070ti in there would be nice as they have two video encoders which we don't think we need, but you never know for the future.

Other than that, a fairly boring 8 core with 16GB of ram would be fine. It will run Ubuntu Linux.

I've been looking around online at the usual suspects, and only seeing options that are stupidly expensive and still not that impressive. I assumed such a beast would be not much over £1000 including VAT.

Being a work machine, and we might end up buying several, I don't really want to be assembling myself.

[Percy1983]

AWD-IT have some decent spec and reasonable prices.

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-observa...desktop-pc.htm

Most 3060 systems have 6 core processors but can be upgraded to 8 core AMD/Intel.

[Kumagoro]

How about half way house it and get low profile GPUs if they are available https://www.amazon.co.uk/GIGABYTE-Ge...f54&th=1&psc=1

Then stick them yourself in Dell small form factor or similar off the shelf ones.

I bet they would sound lovely....

Personally I would just contact overclockers and see what they suggest. We have found them to be pretty good when we want custom PCs rather than standard dell boxes from a business point of view. Support has been better than others we have found.

[DanceswithUnix]

AWD-IT have some decent spec and reasonable prices.

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-observa...desktop-pc.htm

Most 3060 systems have 6 core processors but can be upgraded to 8 core AMD/Intel.

Thanks, I hadn't looked at them. Seems you have to tread a bit carefully, the headline price includes a SATA ssd and who wants one of those, and a 5500 CPU might not cut it (ISTR those are an APU with the GPU bit switched off?). But with some careful clicking there are some nice boxes on there.

How about half way house it and get low profile GPUs if they are available https://www.amazon.co.uk/GIGABYTE-Ge...f54&th=1&psc=1

Then stick them yourself in Dell small form factor or similar off the shelf ones.

I bet they would sound lovely....

Personally I would just contact overclockers and see what they suggest. We have found them to be pretty good when we want custom PCs rather than standard dell boxes from a business point of view. Support has been better than others we have found.

Yeah, might well be worth talking to them.

I'm a bit worried by the 4060 only having a x8 PCIe connection. I can make sure we have a PCIe4 interface and at least to start with we won't be pushing it that hard, but that interface is going to have a lot of video going over it.

I might just get a 3060 and a 4060 to see if we can see any difference.

[cptwhite_uk]

Consider Ryzen for the processor, it isn't as power hungry and will be easier to cool in a small form factor system.

There's some decent ITX cases these days if you fancy putting one together yourselves:

https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/ridge/
https://nzxt.com/en-GB/product/h1
https://hyte.com/store/revolt-3?v=84
https://www.coolermaster.com/catalog...sterbox-nr200/
https://ssupd.co/products/meshlicious
https://ssupd.co/products/new-meshroom-d
https://ssupd.co/products/new-meshroom-s
https://lian-li.com/product/a4h2o/
https://www.caselabs.org/cases/freeflow <--- soon to be on pre-order, looks interesting as it will suppprt mATX / ATX

[Percy1983]

[QUOTE=DanceswithUnix;4314559]Thanks, I hadn't looked at them. Seems you have to tread a bit carefully, the headline price includes a SATA ssd and who wants one of those, and a 5500 CPU might not cut it (ISTR those are an APU with the GPU bit switched off?). But with some careful clicking there are some nice boxes on there.

I find its best to look for case and GPU and AMD/Intel, then upgrade the processor storage etc, of course all models have base specs to make the price attractive but I generally fine the 'upgraded' prices are still good.

As it is I build pc for people but over the miner/scalper pandemic the only way to get a reasonable priced gpu was a prebuilt so I sent a few people to AWD-IT and advised as above and they where all very happy, had a look at few later and everything was in order.

Thinking about it I got my 3700x and board in a bundle from them saving a good few quid and they where cheapest when I wanted my 5900x too.

[cptwhite_uk]

Ryzen 5500 isn't too bad, it's on a level with the Ryzen 3600 or slightly better than an i5 10400

[DanceswithUnix]

Ryzen 5500 isn't too bad, it's on a level with the Ryzen 3600 or slightly better than an i5 10400

Yeah, for a budget office rig a 5500 would be fine. This will be handling raw video streams in real time though, so even with just a couple of streams a bit more oomph would be nice. I'm thinking a 5700X is a nice compromise on heat, performance and price.

OFC a Ryzen 7900 would be ideal, but a bit pricey.

[Jonj1611]

My daughter has a 5700X in her gaming PC and it handles everything. She is on an esports team and plays games, has multiple streams, several windows open on 3 monitors. It hasn't faltered yet

[cptwhite_uk]

Yeah, for a budget office rig a 5500 would be fine. This will be handling raw video streams in real time though, so even with just a couple of streams a bit more oomph would be nice. I'm thinking a 5700X is a nice compromise on heat, performance and price.

OFC a Ryzen 7900 would be ideal, but a bit pricey.

I'd probably aim for for a Ryzen 5900X in that case, 12 cores, 24 threads, plenth of parallel processing power.

I've seen them go for not much more than £200 on the used market. It's £230 on CEX in case you're after a warranty.

5700X is a great 65W chip too.