- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,450
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Just a short PSA. Really, these CPUs are quite speedy, and at roughly $100 ea., they are (mostly) affordable.
Or, just buy an off-lease Dell with a Sandy or Ivy Bridge quad-core off of ebay, you can get more-or-less complete systems with a quad-core and onboard iGPU for $150 or slightly less.
This, after building out an ASRock DeskMini H110W mini-STX barebones PC that I picked up at Newegg a few days ago for $130. Drop in a G4560 (bought for $62 or less, before the price hike / shortage), 2x4GB DDR4-2400 (was pricey, like $75 at today's RAM prices, ouch!), a Plextor TLC 128GB M.2 PCI-E SSD ($75 again, frikken fast), kit comes with an M.2 Intel 3160 802.11ac 1x1 Wifi / BlueTooth card, and add Windows (bring your own copy, or old Windows 7 key to activate 10), and build and install, and voila!
A really kick-axe desktop PC, small in size, but QUITE powerful for browsing, and with the PCI-E SSD, silky-smooth operation.
I'm running mine at 4K60 through DisplayPort, using an active HDMI2.0 adapter, and it's great.
Every Millenial should invest in one of these things, just to be able to say that "I own a desktop PC". You can do it, it's not evil to own a desktop PC. But more importantly, "It's NOT your parent's tower PC".
Edit: No, the DeskMini is NOT a "gaming PC". The refurb / used Dell towers with quad-cores could easily be, though - just drop in a GTX1050 or GTX1050ti.
Edit: To add a Coffee Lake i3-8100 to the list of possible "minimum upgrade" CPUs. Think of one with an ITX mobo.
Or, just buy an off-lease Dell with a Sandy or Ivy Bridge quad-core off of ebay, you can get more-or-less complete systems with a quad-core and onboard iGPU for $150 or slightly less.
This, after building out an ASRock DeskMini H110W mini-STX barebones PC that I picked up at Newegg a few days ago for $130. Drop in a G4560 (bought for $62 or less, before the price hike / shortage), 2x4GB DDR4-2400 (was pricey, like $75 at today's RAM prices, ouch!), a Plextor TLC 128GB M.2 PCI-E SSD ($75 again, frikken fast), kit comes with an M.2 Intel 3160 802.11ac 1x1 Wifi / BlueTooth card, and add Windows (bring your own copy, or old Windows 7 key to activate 10), and build and install, and voila!
A really kick-axe desktop PC, small in size, but QUITE powerful for browsing, and with the PCI-E SSD, silky-smooth operation.
I'm running mine at 4K60 through DisplayPort, using an active HDMI2.0 adapter, and it's great.
Every Millenial should invest in one of these things, just to be able to say that "I own a desktop PC". You can do it, it's not evil to own a desktop PC. But more importantly, "It's NOT your parent's tower PC".
Edit: No, the DeskMini is NOT a "gaming PC". The refurb / used Dell towers with quad-cores could easily be, though - just drop in a GTX1050 or GTX1050ti.
Edit: To add a Coffee Lake i3-8100 to the list of possible "minimum upgrade" CPUs. Think of one with an ITX mobo.
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