Work from home, various online jobs are becoming more common these days. This article will discuss the configuration for productivity needs which will cost you around $1000 including everything and you can easily work with 15 browser tabs opened, edit videos, smoothly use Adobe Photoshop etc. A workstation is a too much expensive option for most and maybe, if you can afford the price tag, Dell has robust workstations (and also laptops) which reliably work year after year.
There is some basic advice for anyone who wants to purchase a laptop or build a PC in 2023. Most of us never need Intel i7, i9 etc processors. To buy and use an i7 and i9 processor effectively, your budget is required to be over $1500 else you’ll receive an old or crap configuration with more overheating, and the least performance. You need an SSD. It is better to avoid slow mechanical hard disks. NVMe SSDs make everything significantly faster. They’re not super costly today. Get as much RAM as possible. Laptops with 16GB RAM will still be usable in five years, but planning for 32GB is a good idea. Watch out if you want a DVD/Blu-Ray drive.
Suggested Configuration
AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor is a decent processor at that price point. This is competitive with Intel 11th Generation Core i5 processors. You can research “Ryzen 5 vs Core i5” topic. Indeed, Intel Core i5-13600K performs better, but the price tag is near double. For online work, it is better to have 3 desktops worth $1000 each than a single $3000 desktop. You’ll need to back up the servers, saving a lot of video and PSD files.
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Thermalright builds decent-quality of CPU coolers. You can check their website. Thermalright Assassin X 120 Refined SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler is a budget-friendly yet modern solution.
As for the motherboard, MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Supports AMD Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors. Radeon RX 6650 XT 8 GB Video Card from MSI is compatible with this setup. You can choose a PCIe 4.0 NVME Solid State Drive of any brand within your budget. You can buy two 8GB DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory as RAM modules. The rest of the things depend on your budget and choice.
There are beautiful cabinets and coolers from Thermaltake, CoolerMaster etc brands. CoolerMaster MASTERBOX NR200 is a mid-range, highly configurable cabinet suitable for productivity. Streacom DA2 V2 cabinet is an example of an elegant, premium quality cabinet.