- Dec 6, 2010
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(Hi, this is such a unique and detailed case here already that it'd just be more confusing to use the stickied form, but I'll be sure to include all the information. This is a long post, sorry about that!)
This past weekend my grandparents called me up and told me their ancient gateway desktop pc (We're talking budget Northwood tech here, 2.40GHz Celeron CPU, GeForce 4 MX 440, 1GB DDR RAM and Windows XP) is no longer cutting it for their needs and they need to know what I could get them for $50. For the record, the PC will be used for email and light web browsing, photo "editing" (basically importing photos and rotating/cropping them so that they are oriented properly, no photoshop required. Basic MS paint and photo viewer stuff), MS office 2010 (Word, Excel, sometimes but hardly ever Powerpoint. They have the license), and printing documents.
Well, in short you can't get anything useful and 100% fully functional for $50 that's a significant step up from their current hardware, so I've decided to double their budget as an early christmas gift and see what can be done to get them a new(er) computer. I currently have an unused Windows 7 32bit key so I don't need to worry about the OS no matter what I do. Also, I do not need a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, or any peripherals aside from the basic PC. I have several options, all of which revolve around this first bit:
First is I was able to talk one of my friends into giving me their old HTPC that they just upgraded from for free: an Aopen MP945-X chassis (no HDD/CD/WiFi). I've pulled an old HDD from another laptop to get it running and found it has the following specs:
Intel Core duo 1.66GHz T2300E
1GB RAM (DDR2 PC2-5300, 200-pin)
Intel 945GM graphics
(The hard drive can't stay, so I'll need another)
Not impressive at all, but I suppose it worked for streaming/recording SD content over ethernet for a few years. Anyway I've been running Windows 7 on the PC under a separate partition to see what the performance was like, and it's just horrible. Obviously the RAM is a huge bottleneck, but I'm concerned about the processor and graphics as well. There's nothing I can do about the graphics, but now that I have this chassis and $100 to spend, I could make a few upgrades and possibly get it into a workable condition. Aside from the RAM I would update the hard drive, and for a system this old I'd only be comfortable putting a SSD in there to maximize speed, but I was also considering the processor. While it's certainly better than their existing hardware, a Core Duo is just not all that fast, even for a Socket M CPU. I found out that the motherboard will support a C2D, so I went looking for the fastest Socket M C2D out there, which is a T7600 (Forget the G, it's almost impossible to find and I'm not overclocking the system in the interest of long-term reliability). Unfortunately, that particular processor can be found, but only at the budget-killing price of $75 (excluding the shady ebay listings from China and Hong Kong). Even the ones that look like they haven't been handled properly are listed for more than $50 and I don't want to take a chance on those, so since I also need a hard drive and RAM, that's out.
I went looking for the next step down, a T7400, but that for some reason was even more expensive. I went another step down and found I could get a T7200 for about $30 from a reputable seller with a 30-day guarantee against defects. It'd be difficult, but I think I can swing it if I cut the RAM upgrade to 2GB and the SSD down to 64GB (It can always be supplemented by an external data drive if necessary). So I would be looking at this for the final specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz T7200 - ~$30
2GB Crucial DDR2 PC2-5300 RAM - ~$30
64GB Transcend SSD - ~$45
Intel 945GM graphics (unchanged)
Total: $105
I'm still concerned about the graphics though. Granted no games or HD videos are in its future, and the screen resolution on their existing monitor is a smaller 1366x768, but even with Aero disabled the thing has no dedicated VRAM and is just plain outclassed by everything else out there. I'm not even sure it's better than their existing PC's MX 440! So are these upgrades going to make the system useable, or is it just a waste of money?
This brings me to my secondary options. I have this mini-ITX chassis, what if I just bought a newer embedded CPU/motherboard with a modern CPU and tried to fit it in? Obviously I'd need to ensure it fits and that it has a DC in jack (thin mini-ITX motherboards), but if it does, that saves me $40-$50 on a case, which makes a motherboard possible on such a small budget. I was looking and spotted this ECS NM70-TI (V1.0A) Intel Celeron 847/807 Intel NM70 Thin Mini-ITX Motherboard/CPU/VGA Combo.
It's currently on sale for quite a good price, which allows me to afford 2x2GB RAM for $40. This will bring me just under budget, but again I'm concerned about the processor. It has a Celeron 847 in it, which I'm not sure would be any better than the Aopen PC's upgraded T7200. Add to that the fact that I'd have to settle for pulling an old laptop HDD from somewhere else, and possibly buy/make adapters to get everything to fit in the case, and I'm not sure it would be a better option at all. Synthetic benchmarks put the Celeron lower on the charts than the C2D, but I know those don't always tell the whole tale, and the Celeron would have newer instruction sets and a faster bus speed. I've been unable to find any direct comparison between the CPUs in any sort of real-world testing.
The only other thing I could find that MIGHT be within budget is the Biostar J1800TH, which would run the bay trail J1800 processor. That's a much better processor and I would imagine the graphics will be vastly improved too, but I haven't been able to find any info on pricing or a release date (It appears to have just been announced in the past day or so). I have a feeling it would be over $100 though after adding in RAM.
This next option is out of my current budget and would take about 3-6 months. We could save up $175 and go for a more expensive thin mini-ITX motherboard without an integrated processor like this ECS H81H3-TI2 LGA 1150 Intel H81 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Thin Mini-ITX Intel Motherboard.
With that I could probably afford the Pentium G3258 or the Celeron G1850, which are much more capable processors and have desktop-level Intel HD graphics. Right now it seems the Celeron is $50 and the Pentium is $70, so with the $70 motherboard I'd have to go with the Celeron, assuming prices don't drop by then. That would leave me with $30 to get a smaller RAM stick and I'd again be stuck with an old notebook HDD, but at least I would have the ability to upgrade just about everything down the line (Could go as high as i7, 16GB RAM, and SSD). There are a few problems though, I would need to figure out how to get the hard drive to fit properly (the existing hard drive sits in a riser slot that appears to be proprietary to the existing mobo), and I would need to find a low-profile heatsink/cooler combo for the CPU as the stock cooler will be too large. Then I'd also have to convince my grandparents that they need to spend more money, since I can't cover the extra amount myself!
And finally (and this is perhaps only a half-joke), I could buy them a Raspberry Pi and stay within their $50 budget, but I can't imagine using that as a daily PC, or teaching my grandparents Linux for that matter!
So uh...yeah if you made it this far, I thank you for your interest and congratulate you on your attention span! What should I do, and is there anything I might have missed in my own research?
This past weekend my grandparents called me up and told me their ancient gateway desktop pc (We're talking budget Northwood tech here, 2.40GHz Celeron CPU, GeForce 4 MX 440, 1GB DDR RAM and Windows XP) is no longer cutting it for their needs and they need to know what I could get them for $50. For the record, the PC will be used for email and light web browsing, photo "editing" (basically importing photos and rotating/cropping them so that they are oriented properly, no photoshop required. Basic MS paint and photo viewer stuff), MS office 2010 (Word, Excel, sometimes but hardly ever Powerpoint. They have the license), and printing documents.
Well, in short you can't get anything useful and 100% fully functional for $50 that's a significant step up from their current hardware, so I've decided to double their budget as an early christmas gift and see what can be done to get them a new(er) computer. I currently have an unused Windows 7 32bit key so I don't need to worry about the OS no matter what I do. Also, I do not need a monitor, keyboard, or mouse, or any peripherals aside from the basic PC. I have several options, all of which revolve around this first bit:
First is I was able to talk one of my friends into giving me their old HTPC that they just upgraded from for free: an Aopen MP945-X chassis (no HDD/CD/WiFi). I've pulled an old HDD from another laptop to get it running and found it has the following specs:
Intel Core duo 1.66GHz T2300E
1GB RAM (DDR2 PC2-5300, 200-pin)
Intel 945GM graphics
(The hard drive can't stay, so I'll need another)
Not impressive at all, but I suppose it worked for streaming/recording SD content over ethernet for a few years. Anyway I've been running Windows 7 on the PC under a separate partition to see what the performance was like, and it's just horrible. Obviously the RAM is a huge bottleneck, but I'm concerned about the processor and graphics as well. There's nothing I can do about the graphics, but now that I have this chassis and $100 to spend, I could make a few upgrades and possibly get it into a workable condition. Aside from the RAM I would update the hard drive, and for a system this old I'd only be comfortable putting a SSD in there to maximize speed, but I was also considering the processor. While it's certainly better than their existing hardware, a Core Duo is just not all that fast, even for a Socket M CPU. I found out that the motherboard will support a C2D, so I went looking for the fastest Socket M C2D out there, which is a T7600 (Forget the G, it's almost impossible to find and I'm not overclocking the system in the interest of long-term reliability). Unfortunately, that particular processor can be found, but only at the budget-killing price of $75 (excluding the shady ebay listings from China and Hong Kong). Even the ones that look like they haven't been handled properly are listed for more than $50 and I don't want to take a chance on those, so since I also need a hard drive and RAM, that's out.
I went looking for the next step down, a T7400, but that for some reason was even more expensive. I went another step down and found I could get a T7200 for about $30 from a reputable seller with a 30-day guarantee against defects. It'd be difficult, but I think I can swing it if I cut the RAM upgrade to 2GB and the SSD down to 64GB (It can always be supplemented by an external data drive if necessary). So I would be looking at this for the final specs:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz T7200 - ~$30
2GB Crucial DDR2 PC2-5300 RAM - ~$30
64GB Transcend SSD - ~$45
Intel 945GM graphics (unchanged)
Total: $105
I'm still concerned about the graphics though. Granted no games or HD videos are in its future, and the screen resolution on their existing monitor is a smaller 1366x768, but even with Aero disabled the thing has no dedicated VRAM and is just plain outclassed by everything else out there. I'm not even sure it's better than their existing PC's MX 440! So are these upgrades going to make the system useable, or is it just a waste of money?
This brings me to my secondary options. I have this mini-ITX chassis, what if I just bought a newer embedded CPU/motherboard with a modern CPU and tried to fit it in? Obviously I'd need to ensure it fits and that it has a DC in jack (thin mini-ITX motherboards), but if it does, that saves me $40-$50 on a case, which makes a motherboard possible on such a small budget. I was looking and spotted this ECS NM70-TI (V1.0A) Intel Celeron 847/807 Intel NM70 Thin Mini-ITX Motherboard/CPU/VGA Combo.
It's currently on sale for quite a good price, which allows me to afford 2x2GB RAM for $40. This will bring me just under budget, but again I'm concerned about the processor. It has a Celeron 847 in it, which I'm not sure would be any better than the Aopen PC's upgraded T7200. Add to that the fact that I'd have to settle for pulling an old laptop HDD from somewhere else, and possibly buy/make adapters to get everything to fit in the case, and I'm not sure it would be a better option at all. Synthetic benchmarks put the Celeron lower on the charts than the C2D, but I know those don't always tell the whole tale, and the Celeron would have newer instruction sets and a faster bus speed. I've been unable to find any direct comparison between the CPUs in any sort of real-world testing.
The only other thing I could find that MIGHT be within budget is the Biostar J1800TH, which would run the bay trail J1800 processor. That's a much better processor and I would imagine the graphics will be vastly improved too, but I haven't been able to find any info on pricing or a release date (It appears to have just been announced in the past day or so). I have a feeling it would be over $100 though after adding in RAM.
This next option is out of my current budget and would take about 3-6 months. We could save up $175 and go for a more expensive thin mini-ITX motherboard without an integrated processor like this ECS H81H3-TI2 LGA 1150 Intel H81 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Thin Mini-ITX Intel Motherboard.
With that I could probably afford the Pentium G3258 or the Celeron G1850, which are much more capable processors and have desktop-level Intel HD graphics. Right now it seems the Celeron is $50 and the Pentium is $70, so with the $70 motherboard I'd have to go with the Celeron, assuming prices don't drop by then. That would leave me with $30 to get a smaller RAM stick and I'd again be stuck with an old notebook HDD, but at least I would have the ability to upgrade just about everything down the line (Could go as high as i7, 16GB RAM, and SSD). There are a few problems though, I would need to figure out how to get the hard drive to fit properly (the existing hard drive sits in a riser slot that appears to be proprietary to the existing mobo), and I would need to find a low-profile heatsink/cooler combo for the CPU as the stock cooler will be too large. Then I'd also have to convince my grandparents that they need to spend more money, since I can't cover the extra amount myself!
And finally (and this is perhaps only a half-joke), I could buy them a Raspberry Pi and stay within their $50 budget, but I can't imagine using that as a daily PC, or teaching my grandparents Linux for that matter!
So uh...yeah if you made it this far, I thank you for your interest and congratulate you on your attention span! What should I do, and is there anything I might have missed in my own research?
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