Which desktop PC should I buy for working from home?

Diana wants a tower PC to handle multiple Excel spreadsheets, which are freezing her old laptop

I'm looking to purchase a tower PC for working from home, ideally for less than 500. It must have a processor fast enough to manage my work across multiple Excel spreadsheets, as well as running Microsoft Word and Google Chrome at the same time. At the moment, I am using an old laptop with two external monitors. When I try to process my spreadsheets, things slow down to the point of freezing, or it crashes. Diana

You are right in thinking that a tower PC will generally run faster than a similarly priced laptop. Towers provide plenty of space for chips to run hotter and therefore faster than they can in laptops, without throttling performance to avoid overheating problems.