Small Business IT Solutions - Components?    

More is better, except when you go over 4 Gigabytes. 32 bit versions of windows which is almost universally used in business at this current moment in time can only ever access a maximum of 4 Gigabytes of RAM, this is inclusive of the video card ram. This is the reason that even with 4 gigabytes of RAM in the machine, the operating system will often only report 3.5GB as being installed.

The sweet spot at the moment for installed RAM on a workstation is 1GB for XP pro and 2GB for Vista business.

All modern PCs come with a DVD drive as apposed to a CD Drive. The only advantage that a DVD has over a CD is the amount of data that can be stored on it (up to around 8 gigabytes) as compared to a CD which can only hold around 700 megabytes which is not even 1 Gigabyte.

Performance graphics cards are only required in high end business machines for staff that work on applications such as Adobe CS3 or CAD. Even a low-midrange graphics card for around $300 will more than suffice in these circumstances. There would be of course a few professions that may require the high end graphics cards, these cost in the vicinity of $1200 for the top consumer grade graphics cards.

CAD and other engineering drawing applications may benefit from the commercial grade 2D cards available, though they can get very expensive. The benefit is they draw 2D lines etc much more accurately than anything else available.

As a business owner, you should not be too concerned about this level of detail. A motherboard allows all the other components to interface with each other. There has been a trend by the big motherboard companies to charge obscene amounts of money for the "performance motherboards" Prices approaching $500 and beyond are not at all uncommon.

There is no need for this sort of thing in a business PC. For a competent motherboard, expect to pay from $160 up to $350 depending on features and make.

For business applications, its hard to go past Intel for their motherboards. They are built for stability rather than high end performance and over clocking (a term used to go past the bounds of the manufacturers maximum recommended performance level) which is used by enthusiasts to get every ounce of performance out of their machine.

For business uses, in most cases, stock cooling is fine. You can add expensive water cooling solutions however this is mainly for the enthusiast market.

Some custom made high performance computers for graphics artists or design engineers that we create will require a custom cooling solution, for day to day business users, this is not something to worry about.

For a name brand such as Lenovo or HP, there is no choice in the type of computer case you get. When we custom make a PC then we will generally pick an all aluminium frame due to its quality and understated looks that many businesses desire.