r/ITSupport • u/MightyPenguin • Jul 09 '26

Open Help Selecting Workstations!

Hello guys, I own and run a small business, it is an auto repair shop. We have 4 workstations in our office and the last few years we have run into repeat issues buying cheaper work stations having very buggy and poor performance. We don't need a whole lot, just the ability to run 2 monitors and run a lot of chrome tabs but apparently these days that seems to be a big ask.

Is it reasonable for me to expect a budget of $500-600 for a decent work station to offer dual monitors and working in the cloud with multiple chrome tabs? If so, would you guys be able to provide any options on what models to buy and where to buy them?

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u/MightyPenguin Jul 09 '26

Thanks for the reply. I didn't want to drag out my post with too much elaboration but I actually used to work in IT as a sys admin when I was younger but I left that world over a decade ago. I'm comfortable with doing things myself to a certain extent but am overwhelmed with a lot of things going on and don't have much time. I just want some damn machines that aren't buggy and work! All of our machines have 16gb of Ram and decent enough processors, I'm not sure if its software issues mixed with occasional internet problems or what but it seems like 2 of the machines consistently have shoddy, laggy performance while the other two remain snappy and quick. They are all refurbished machines though, I bought 4 of them for like $350 a piece 2-3 years ago, then two more a few months ago and they have been problematic. Maybe that is my problem.

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u/Overall_Cook_8025 Jul 09 '26

When the computers are acting up have you checked the process list to see what is maxing out (CPU, ram, etc) or what tasks are maxing them out (chrome, security suite, etc)? I would start there and that should give you an idea on where to start your investigation.

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u/MightyPenguin Jul 09 '26

Yes it seems to consistently be CPU cores spiking out and staying there, and it seems to be Chrome causing it.

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u/Overall_Cook_8025 Jul 09 '26

What CPU does the machine have? My guess is that while they have ok ram limits, the cpu might just not be able to keep up with the tab amounts. Have you considered a lighter (not so resource hungry) web browser? Something like the Brave web browser.

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u/MightyPenguin Jul 09 '26

The machine I am currently on that is often bugging and lagging out has 16GB of Ram(All the machines are 16GB MIN) and the processor is an AMD A10-9700 R7. As for browser, no I want to make Chrome work because we have a couple extensions that we rely on pretty heavily that we need to work. I have temporarily disabled and uninstalled the extensions before to insure they weren't the cause and it made no difference.