Workstation vs Consumer Pc
With a bewildering array of PCs available with various different price points, its hard to know which is the right choice for your business.
As technology improves and specifications widen, purchasing a computer can begin to feel like you’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. In order to make sure our customers don’t over spend, here’s our handy guide to Workstations vs Consumer PCs.
A Consumer PC, is designed for the general use of web surfing, E-mails, using Microsoft Office, storing files and casual gaming. As none of these are demanding tasks, a basic PC with a relatively low cost will comfortably manage this.
What is a Workstation?
A Workstation is a dedicated desktop machine that is intended for daily use It will be used for demanding tasks such as image manipulation, video editing, motion graphics, 3D visualisation, programming, game development, CAD and so on. With this is mind it needs to be a powerful, durable and reliable machine. Whether it’s at home or an office, you need to be able to rely on it for your livelihood. So endless progress bars and insufficient RAM and hard drive space needs to be avoided.
You don’t need to over spend.
As with any expense for your business there is an issue of budget; you may not want to spend a lot of money on a PC that is going to be used for the whole family with the worry of chocolatey fingers and drinks being spilled.
A consumer level PC can start at at low end prices and will do most of the tasks outlined but with limited power and speed, such as the amount of RAM and HD space. It will alsomost likely feature an integrated GPU (Graphics Card) – one that’s built into the main board of the PC, which might prove to be a bottle neck when it comes to anything graphics related.
However you only need to jump to a higher price range to find systems with quad-core processors, a terabyte of storage and a more powerful GPU. It may only come with 8GB of RAM or so, but this is easily expandable and RAM is cheap these days. Now this isn’t a workstation although you will be able to work on it. A PC of this standard will handle apps like Photoshop and Illustrator. However you may find it struggles with larger files and could grind to a halt with a complex multi-layered tasks. This is where a proper work station would be needed, but at a higher price.
Benefits of a Workstation
Of course, with a bigger budget you can configure your workstation exactly how you want it. Cheaper machines tend to pre-configured with stock components, However with a workstation you can specify them to suit your needs. A good example of this would be to move some of your budget to a better GPU, knowing you can upgrade your RAM further down the line or opt for a more powerful processor while sacrificing storage. Workstations do tend to come in tower form which allows room to expand; the motherboard will be capable of supporting multiple hard drives and lots of RAM should you need it.
Which should you buy?
Choosing between a consumer PC and Workstation can be tricky, especially with a mid-range specs and budgets, where the distinction isn’t so clear. The main thing to consider is power and reliability. Do you need a powerful machine that’s going to be working all day everyday, or do you just need something to run Microsoft Office?
Either way you should always choose the affordable computer that fulfils your needs. There’s little point in spending more on multi-core processors that will be running simple tasks. That being said you should always think ahead and make sure any technology purchases can expand and grow with your your business needs.
What we can do at CoRE Educational
Here at CoRE, we are always on hand to advise you on which machine is best for you. So if you are looking into purchasing a new machine please don’t hesitate to contact us on 0330 22 35 229 so ensure you get the desired machine at a competitive price with a full business warranty. You can contact me also on my email abbygail@coreeducational.org.uk
