Which spare PC should I keep for work?

[Shawn]

I have a cubicle space at work I can use but they didn't give me a computer so I was going to set up one of my spares. I'm not sure though which one to keep because they all have similar Passmark scores, even for single threaded performance. I want to keep the best one because I'll probably sell the rest.

PC 1:
AMD A8-5500 APU (with Radeon HD 7560D Graphics)
Gigabyte GA-F2A75M-D3H rev 1.0 Motherboard
8GB DDR3 (64GB max)
USB 3.0
Passmark 3983

PC 2:
AMD Phenom X4 965
ASUS M4A78 Pro Motherboard
Onboard Radeon HD 3000
6GB DDR2 (16GB Max)
Passmark 4222

PC 3:
Dell Optiplex 380 Slim (hacked to take Xeon processors)
Xeon E5450
8GB DDR3 (maxed out)
Crappy Intel Graphics and
Half-height expansion cards only
Passmark 4250

I am leaning towards the first PC since it has a newer board and supports USB 3.0, but it doesn't support FM2+ CPUs, so I can't put anything much faster in it. The Dell is also newer than the Phenom and uses DDR3 memory as well but it's basically maxed out. The Asus Motherboard is AM3 so I think it may support a faster CPU, but its got slower DDR2 memory. I think I can get 16GB DDR2 high density for cheap on ebay though.

Thoughts?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Why is your work giving you a cubicle but not a computer? I'm confused. Do you, like, work for some little church or something with no IT budget?

Edit: I'd probably keep the A8 rig, too.

 

[Unico]

Do you, like, work for some little church or something with no IT budget?

Always though churches had plenty of money.

As a BYOD I’d go with whichever box I’d care least about. Certainly your first choice would be fine. Or make it the Dell box. And then submit a request to the IT department for an upgrade – they’re bound to think its one of their machines which slipped through their inventory control process.

 

[Malogeek]

Tell them you don't have any spare computers, what would they do?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Always though churches had plenty of money.

As a BYOD I’d go with whichever box I’d care least about. Certainly your first choice would be fine. Or make it the Dell box. And then submit a request to the IT department for an upgrade – they’re bound to think its one of their machines which slipped through their inventory control process.

Big churches maybe. The little hole-in-the-wall places count every penny.

 

[Shawn]

I'm a lab manager at a research university. We have Xeon workstations in the lab with 64GB Ram we bought with our startup funds. My boss got the department to give me one of the grad student cubicles. They don't give out computers to them. Actually though, this department is pretty stingy. The last department I worked for would give computers to anyone who asked. They were pretty terrible though.

 

[JackMDS]

Do you realt thing that there will any different in whatever your are doing between the 3 Computers?

I.e., choose the one that fits physically well to the cubical space.

Or and, the least expensive in case it disappears.

 

[sm625]

The A8-5500 is pretty slow but it has the better GPU.