Hi all, my buddy at work build his gaming desktop based off advice from the members here, so I'm looking for the same direction.
It is a work computer but my biggest reason is for redundancy, I want a central computer with a few HDD for backup, as well as the space on our server.

Thanks in advance!

Budget:
More specific use (what games, what programs):
Planned time until purchase:
Do you need an Operating System?:
Do you have any specific preferred components?:
Do you need a sound or wireless card?:
Do you want stock cooling or do you plan on overclocking?:
Do you need a monitor? mouse? keyboard?:
Zip code/location? (Shipping costs):

Budget: 800-1000
Use: MS office, Web browsing, remote access from home, back up all my files, movies, music, etc. Some minor image editing
Planned time of purchase: ASAP
Operating system required: Yes, Probably Windows 7
Preferred components: 2 HDD, 1SSD for bootup, decent ivy bridge processor
Sound/wireless: Yes/Yes
Stock cooling ok, not going to overclock
No need for monitor, mouse, or keyboard
Zip code 16802

This build has Windows 8.1, and here's why:
Win 8.1 is faster and performs better than Win 7. Also, with 8.1 (apparently) you get a free upgrade to Windows 10 (not sure if this part is true, but if it is, no reason to NOT get it). Also, if you really want to, you can download Classic Shell (for free) to make it look like traditional "Windows" looks.
Its also under budget.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/qMN9RB

You can upgrade it a bit to a quad core (if you would like) for a little more:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/TcKxVn

I assumed by you saying Ivy Bridge that you just wanted an Intel processors. Ivy Bridge is the previous Generation while Haswell is the newer one. You can increase the HDD size to 2TB each for about $20 more per drive (if necessary) and you could also remove the disc drive and save $15 if you don't need it. You can also add a third drive and do RAID 5/10 if you wanted to, but its probably unnecessary. I haven't done RAID in forever, but I know its going to cost you at least an additional $200 or so.

No reason to get a dedicated GPU with Intel on non-gaming build.

Yeah, I was just thinking that while I was in the shower.

@OP,
You could lower the GPU to a GTX 720 or 730, or even drop it all together and just use integrated graphics then you would have plenty of money to spare to run a RAID setup if you wanted to. You could also drop down to 4GB of RAM and save yourself another $30 as well. All together, if you run integrated and drop to 4GB of RAM, you would cut about $170 that you could spend else where. Since I haven't done RAID in awhile, I'll let someone else post a build for that rather than potentially get it wrong.

Dual Core:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Ds3jqs

Quad:
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/jVvv23


There are likely better HDDs to use in the RAID setup, so again, I'll defer it to someone with a little more knowledge. At least get a second opinion.

This post was edited by DeXaFiLaH on Oct 16 2014 09:36am

I was okay with the Ivy Bridge generation processor, and I knew it was intel, because I expected them to be cheaper since they were 3rd gen.

Either way, that is an awesome build and I appreciate the quick response. I can likely get away with integrated graphics to save some money.

I'll probably keep the 8gb of ram because I keep a lot of tabs open and will be analyzing a lot of videos. (video tracking of particles under a microscope) Which will be the ram and processor respectively.

Lastly, why did you up to 2tb x3 HDDs? particular reason?

This post was edited by ejewell on Oct 16 2014 09:50am

Prices don't really drop like that with most computer stuff, it's almost always best to buy current generation parts.





3x WD Reds for RAID 5 configuration.

can I do 1TBs?

Of course.

Is RAID 5 something you're interested in?

I'm not even fully certain what it is, I know it is a partitioning method?? Wikipedia isn't helping much. haha

RAID 5 requires a minimum of three disks but only two of the disks needs to be functional. The data blocks are striped with distributed parity. What this means is you have much faster read times versus a standard, standalone HDD and you have redundant systems so if one drive fails, little to no data will be lost. Although RAID 5 has good read times, the write times tend to be a bit slower.

RAID 10 is usually better because it requires 4 drives and each pair of drives contains half the data. RAID 10 is striped and mirrored (where as RAID 5 is striped and distributed) so disk 1 and 2 each contain the same data and 3 and 4 contain the same. Essentially disk 2 is a mirror of 1 and the same for 4 and 3. RAID 10 performs much better than RAID 5.