Budget workstation

Hi guys,

My father-in-law has been buying cheap PCs off eBay to act as workstations for the industrial printers he installs/sells. He's been paying around £250 for these, but we think it might be possible (I'm fairly sure it is!) for me to buy the components (I normally use Scan) and build them cheaper, and we can split the savings!

It has to be "powerful" enough to cope with sending print data, via USB, to a printer and the printing software requires Windows 7 (finally ... they were still using XP earlier this year!). We think around 8GB of RAM, but beyond that I'm not sure much else is needed.

What sort of budget could we build stuff for that would be reliable (important), cheap and just fast/powerful enough to do this? VAT would be reclaimable, so could we be talking £150+VAT, or maybe even cheaper?

Help much appreciated, as I've been out of the component market for a very long time!

The first thing I think of with the mention of "Industrial" is dust, oil and moisture.

What everyone can recommend also depends on interface requirements, i.e. parallel, RS232, PS/2, bluetooth etc.

Very light industrial. Think commercial instead.

No other requirements. Certainly don't need any of the interfaces you mention. Just USB. Might not even need USB 3, but might as well go for 3.0!

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Originally Posted by DaKid

Hi guys,

My father-in-law has been buying cheap PCs off eBay to act as workstations for the industrial printers he installs/sells. He's been paying around £250 for these, but we think it might be possible (I'm fairly sure it is!) for me to buy the components (I normally use Scan) and build them cheaper, and we can split the savings!

It has to be "powerful" enough to cope with sending print data, via USB, to a printer and the printing software requires Windows 7 (finally ... they were still using XP earlier this year!). We think around 8GB of RAM, but beyond that I'm not sure much else is needed.

What sort of budget could we build stuff for that would be reliable (important), cheap and just fast/powerful enough to do this? VAT would be reclaimable, so could we be talking £150+VAT, or maybe even cheaper?

Help much appreciated, as I've been out of the component market for a very long time!

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Although you might be able to buy new hardware with your budget of about £150, a big problem would be the proportional cost of the Windows 7 licence. If you're buying systems from Ebay, I imagine each comes with a Windows 7 licence included? If you build the systems yourself, you'll have to add about £70 for each Win 7 licence.

Can you get an MS account to buy bulk OEM Windows licences?

Also, do Scan do small business accounts, do you know, and who else could I consider for this?

Looking at half a dozen PCs initially with a view to that maybe doubling or more over the medium term.