Upgraded from a 6 year old PC, a short comparison review

[jaydee]

Hey guys, I upgraded to a new PC over the summer and thought it might be interesting to do a mini-comparison of switching over from the old to the new system to see how far we've over the past 6 years. Hope some people find this somewhat interesting; it was bit of a fun exercise for myself.

Back in October 2010, I built custom Mini-ITX PC:

Case: Lian Li Q11A case - $120 (Newegg)
Mobo: ASUS M4A88T-I Deluxe AM3 AMD 880G - $125 (Newegg)
CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition $70 (used - AT forums)
GPU: Radeon HD 4650 - $45 (Newegg)
RAM: 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333 SODIMM - $60 (used - AT forums)
SSD: OCZ Agility 2 - $120 (Newegg)
Storage HD: Samsung 2.5" 5400 RPM 640GB HD - $80 (Newegg)
Optical: Asus external BD-ROM - $110 (Newegg)
PSU: Corsair 400CX - $40 (Newegg)
HSF: Scythe Big Shuriken - $30 (used - HardOCP)
Misc: Arctic silver/Case fans/SATA Cables - $30
-some rebates and combo's in there, maybe totaling $80 savings

$750 approximate total build cost (WinXP OS was re-used, as was KB/Mouse, monitor).

The Mini-ITX (and this case specifically) form factor was chosen because I had a very specific shelf on my computer desk that I wanted to put my PC, and the dimensions of the Lian-Li Q11A fit it perfectly. The Q11A also had good build quality and features I was looking for. The case and form-factor were musts and the rest of the system would have to deal with this constraint.

The AMD platform was chosen as it offered the best price/performance ratio for what I wanted to do. I bought the Phenom II X2 for $70 (bought used from AT forums, it retailed for $100 new I believe), and unlocked to 4 cores. 3.2 GHz quad-core for $70 was the best price/performance deal I could find at the time. I did try overclocking/overvolting for a little while, but I just ended up more throttling than I was really gaining so I’ve mostly been running stock (I think I was able to slightly undervolt without affecting clockspeed but I don’t recall perfectly anymore). When built, Intel Clarkdale was available, but would have cost 1.5-2x more and actually had lower performance (particularly multi-threaded). Lynnfield i5-750 CPU would have been 3x cost for roughly the same performance and i7-860 was a better performer, about 4x the cost. Also Lynnfield didn't have built-in GPU to fall back on if the video card died at some point or I decided to do without. Sandy Bridge wasn’t available yet, but even if I did wait, I’m not sure the price/performance would have tipped the scales in Intel’s favor just yet. I know AMD gets a lot of (deserved) criticism for not being competitive with Intel over the last few years, but all things considered, I think my AMD CPU/platform choice was the right choice (for price/performance, not just arbitrary preference) back in 2010 for my case usage.

Other build notes: The PSU died while installing the OS, so I ended up replacing with an FSP 300W SFF PSU. Over time, I've replaced the SSD with Samsung 830 Pro, and upgraded to Win 8.1 Pro during MS’s initial promo period.

Computer was/is mainly used for light usage such as Office apps, 2D CAD, recording OTA TV, watching videos, 2D CAD. The more intensive activities are encoding the files to mp4 and batch resizing/compressing pictures. I played some older games in the first couple years, but none that were real graphics intensive and I haven't had a game installed in probably 4 years now. I did upgrade to a Radeon HD6570 (5570 rebadge) that I found on E-Bay a few years ago, but that was for the DisplayPort output and no other reason.

The PC was/still is fine enough for most activities. One of the cores died about year ago so it's down to 3 cores. Also two of the USB ports have died and another couple ports are acting sporadically. Now, I’m running off USB hub on one of the few working USB ports in the back.

 

[jaydee]

Here are the things I was looking to achieve with a new PC:

1 - Faster mp4 encoding and image resize/compression (particularly after losing a core, and uncertainty)
2 - More USB 3.0 ports (current system only had 2, none available via front panel)
3 - Decrease power consumption and noise
4 - Decrease computer footprint/more portable
5 - Faster I/O speeds (current system was still SATA II)
6 - Built-in SD card reader

New PC analysis

My Win8.1 Pro license is OEM, so non-transferrable, so I would have to buy a new OS license. And I really needed a Win 7 Pro license in order to run Windows Media Center for my TV tuner (Microsoft no longer offered it on Windows 8.1 as a paid add-on and it's missing altogether from Windows 10).

When investigating getting a new PC, my first thought went to building another. I thought of saving the case/PSU/video card to save money (although I obviously wouldn't be decreasing footprint, one my desires), but even so, I didn't find the cost of a new build being worth it. Looking at pre-built's, specifically on E-Bay, I found HP, Lenovo and Dell all have small form factor business line mini-desktop workstations that offered a lot more bang for the buck, particularly considering the OS was included.

After a little research and watching a few auctions over the course of a week, I pulled the trigger on an HP Elitedesk 800 G2 mini:

i5-6500T (quad-core, 2.8 - 3.2GHz / 4GB DDR4 / 500 GB HD
4x USB 3.0 in the back, 2x USB 3.0 in the front, 1x USB-C in the front / 2x DisplayPort
Windows 10 Pro license, downgrade rights to Win 7 Pro

In short, it checked almost all the boxes I was looking for. For something brand new, USB 3.1 would have been nice, also an SD card reader was desired, but neither were deal-breakers. Everything else that was lacking was upgradeable. To supplement, I bought (also on E-Bay), a Samsung 256 GB PM951 SSD (which appears to be the 850 EVO with PCIe interface) and found a matching make/model 4GB stick of DDR4.

Total cost was $350 + $80 + $10 = $440


CPU Performance

Handbrake encoding (World Series game, 720p / 23 RF):
Old system = 139 min, 42 seconds
New system = 59 min, 14 seconds

Does the same job in 42% of the time. Expressed in another way, it's 2.37x faster


Faststone image resize/compression of a few months worth of pics:
Old system = 21 min, 13 seconds
New system = 9 min, 37 seconds

Does the same job in 45% of the time. Expressed in another way, it's 2.21x faster


SSD Performance

Old PC (Samsung 830 Pro 2.5” via SATA II)
Read (Seq Q32T1 / 4k Q32T1 / Seq / 4K)
237.7 / 22.93 / 198.2 / 16.84

Write (Seq Q32T1 / 4k Q32T1 / Seq / 4K)
194.9 / 60.39 / 173.9 / 46.57

New PC (Samsung PM951 M.2 via PCIe)
Read (Seq Q32T1 / 4k Q32T1 / Seq / 4K)
1551.0 / 768.70 / 1192.0 / 42.57

Write (Seq Q32T1 / 4k Q32T1 / Seq / 4K)
311.7 / 312.00 / 310.9 / 48.70


Power usage (using Kill-A-Watt P3)

Sleep
Old system = 7 W
New system = < 1W

Idle
Old system = 28 W
New system = 10 W

"Light" usage
Old system = 47 W
New system = 18 W

FastStone (100% CPU single-threaded):
Old system = 103 W
New system = 28 W

Handbrake (100% CPU all threads)
Old system = 138 W
New system = 46 W

Savings calculations:
I made up a formula based on what I would approximate my average monthly PC usage (work to be done), and came up with the following numbers. These calculations DO take into account the fact that better performance of the new PC reduces the amount of time spent at the high usage tasks (for example 30 hours of mp4 encoding on the old PC will only take about 12.6 hours on the new PC). Time spent on light usage activities would be about the same, because the old CPU was not a bottleneck.

Old PC: 14.6 KWh per month / 175.2 KWh per year
New PC: 3.0 KWh per month / 36.1 KWh per year

Total cost to run the PCs (based on state average 16 cents per KWh):
Old PC: $2.37 per month / $28.47 per year
New PC: $0.49 per month / $5.93 KWh per year


Temp & Noise & Form Factor

Temps
Don't really have a scientific way of doing this. I've had the side of the case off to help with temps on the old system. The new system feels warm, but not uncomfortably so to the touch under full load. If anyone would like me to take some temp readings with an IR temp sensor let me know.

Noise
Old system: I wouldn't call it bothersome, but definitely audible anywhere in the room
New system: You have to get pretty close to the unit to tell if the fans are accelerating

Form factor
Old system: 8"W x 10"D x 13"H / total volume: 1,040 cubic inches
New System: 7"W x 7"D x 1.3" H / total volume: 63.7 cubic inches


Final thoughts

For $445, I bought about 2.3x more CPU performance, for about 20% of the power/running cost (averaged out over total usage), 33% of peak power, 60% of the footprint, 6% of the total volume, much less noise and I get to rid myself of the USB hub.

It’s hard to summarize the hard drive performance increase in a meaningful way (considering in external cases, what you’re reading from and to is usually the bottleneck and in internal cases, ), but synthetically it’s anywhere between 4-30x faster read speeds, 1.5-5x faster write speeds.

 

[Burpo]

Thanks for the well written comparison & summation Jaydee!

 

[Torn Mind]

Would like to hear your thoughts on the "feel" when using the two different boxes, such as for basic interfacing, web browsing, etc. Certainly, I expect more "snap" from the Skylake.

 

[Iron Woode]

OP sums up my own upgrade story. I went from a Phenom II x4 965BE system (built in 2010) to a 4690K I5 H97 system that's at least 2x faster.

 

[whm1974]

OP sums up my own upgrade story. I went from a Phenom II x4 965BE system (built in 2010) to a 4690K I5 H97 system that's at least 2x faster.

I also had a similar experience when I built my current rig three years ago, replacing the system I had for seven years.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'll have to admit, I really had no reason to upgrade from my G3258 (now that Gigabyte released BIOS F6 for the H81M-DS2V v1.0 board, that allowed better overclocking) @ 4.0, but I felt like trying Skylake. Honestly, though, Haswell runs Windows 7 a bit better, or at least, it's an easier installation. Sure, I guess the G4400 @ 4.45Ghz is faster, but not hugely. Plus, have to use a dGPU, because you lose the decent Skylake iGPU when you BCLK OC it.

Compared to my aging Core2Quad rig, though, it's really pretty snappy.

 

[jaydee]

Would like to hear your thoughts on the "feel" when using the two different boxes, such as for basic interfacing, web browsing, etc. Certainly, I expect more "snap" from the Skylake.

It certainly feels a lot faster. For example, installing the OS/applications was way faster than I even imagined. Applications are fully installing in the amount of time they used to take to launch! This is nice, but of course how much time do you spend installing applications after you first load the OS? Not much. Launching applications is also really really quick. It's also "nice", but not really much of a timesaver since were talking about saving a second or two here and there. All these things "felt" things though, I'm assuming has more to do with the much faster SSD (including interface) than the CPU.

Starting up is so fast, I'd have no problem turning the PC off altogether more often now, but I can't really do that with the TV tuner. It needs to be at least "asleep" in order to "wake-up" and record programs. Since sleep mode doesn't even register a single Watt on the "Kill-A-Watt", it's not like I'm really saving power doing a full shutdown anyway. I have no idea what the absolute accuracy of the KAW is, it may not actually be less than a Watt, but I'm confidant it's drawing a pretty tiny amount.

 

[bob4432]

Nice write up and thanks for sharing the info. Need to get rid of at least 2 old rigs (C2Q, Early AMD Quad) from just a Power/Heat issue if nothing else. Going new will pay for themselves since they are 24/7 machines when factoring the heat as in the summer in PHX, AZ I have to bring the cost of some of the A/C into my equation.

 

[bbhaag]

OP sums up my own upgrade story. I went from a Phenom II x4 965BE system (built in 2010) to a 4690K I5 H97 system that's at least 2x faster.

I'm in the same boat right now. Going from a 965be to a 6700k. The 965 has been a great cpu but its time ya know what I mean....?

Anyway, thanks for the insightful posts about your old vs. new systems jaydee. It was very informative and makes me even more excited to get my new system together.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Oh, yeah, btw, I have a friend that has an Athlon II X4 640 3.0Ghz quad-core CPU in his rig. We upgraded it with 4x4GB of "Chinese DDR2", so he's got 16GB RAM in that box, which is fairly nice. And a 120GB SSD for Windows 7 64-bit, and a 500GB WD Caviar Black for storage. He's also got an NV GT610 GPU, just for watching videos, because the 780G chipset IGP's video-decode features seemed to be borked. (Got persistant macroblocks, whenever watching videos in Flash Player with HW accel turned on.)

He complains, or has complained, nearly every week, certainly, every month, that his PC is "slow" or "laggy".

I've got boards and CPUs, to upgrade him to a G3258 @ ~4.0, or a G3900 or G4400 @ ~4.3+, but thus far, he's resisted upgrading, as it might require a re-format.

I long for the day that he'll agree to an upgrade, and then discover, WOW, this is what I've been "missing". (Performance-wise.)

If he had money, I'd love to get him into an i7-7700K, but that's a bit too rich for both of us, I'm afraid. He's tangentially wanting to get into PC gaming. (He's got a PS3 currently.)

 

[Iron Woode]

Oh, yeah, btw, I have a friend that has an Athlon II X4 640 3.0Ghz quad-core CPU in his rig. We upgraded it with 4x4GB of "Chinese DDR2", so he's got 16GB RAM in that box, which is fairly nice. And a 120GB SSD for Windows 7 64-bit, and a 500GB WD Caviar Black for storage. He's also got an NV GT610 GPU, just for watching videos, because the 780G chipset IGP's video-decode features seemed to be borked. (Got persistant macroblocks, whenever watching videos in Flash Player with HW accel turned on.)

He complains, or has complained, nearly every week, certainly, every month, that his PC is "slow" or "laggy".

I've got boards and CPUs, to upgrade him to a G3258 @ ~4.0, or a G3900 or G4400 @ ~4.3+, but thus far, he's resisted upgrading, as it might require a re-format.

I long for the day that he'll agree to an upgrade, and then discover, WOW, this is what I've been "missing". (Performance-wise.)

If he had money, I'd love to get him into an i7-7700K, but that's a bit too rich for both of us, I'm afraid. He's tangentially wanting to get into PC gaming. (He's got a PS3 currently.)

why not get him into an I3? faster than a G4400 but not as expensive as an I5 or I7.

Hell, my I3 4160 runs my HTPC like a boss.

 

[VirtualLarry]

why not get him into an I3? faster than a G4400 but not as expensive as an I5 or I7.

Hell, my I3 4160 runs my HTPC like a boss.

That's a definite option too. I already own an i3-6100 that I'm not using currently.

Edit: I think that's my most powerful, and most expensive (recent) CPU that I own. Discounting the $210 I paid for my Q6600 CPUs back in the day. I don't like to pay more than a little bit over $100 for a CPU.

Zen might change that though.

 

[whm1974]

That's a definite option too. I already own an i3-6100 that I'm not using currently.

Edit: I think that's my most powerful, and most expensive (recent) CPU that I own. Discounting the $210 I paid for my Q6600 CPUs back in the day. I don't like to pay more than a little bit over $100 for a CPU.

Zen might change that though.

After using an i5 for the last three and a half years, I doubt I would build anything with less then four cores.

 

[VirtualLarry]

After using an i5 for the last three and a half years, I doubt I would build anything with less then four cores.

Honestly, that's probably a wise strategy. But if I upgrade my friend's rig for a Christmas present or something, I'm not going out of my way to buy him an i5. I already have the i3, and as I said, I'm not currently using it.

I could put it in a B150 K4/Hyper board, and BCLK OC it, to 4.3-4.5. At that speed, I daresay that nearly everything you ran on it, would probably perform better than a locked i5 CPU, save for maybe AVX tasks.

 

[mnewsham]

Honestly, that's probably a wise strategy. But if I upgrade my friend's rig for a Christmas present or something, I'm not going out of my way to buy him an i5. I already have the i3, and as I said, I'm not currently using it.

I could put it in a B150 K4/Hyper board, and BCLK OC it, to 4.3-4.5. At that speed, I daresay that nearly everything you ran on it, would probably perform better than a locked i5 CPU, save for maybe AVX tasks.

The rumors of a kabylake unlocked i3 might interest you. Though it will basically cost i5 money, at least you'll be able to OC a bit more heavily without resorting to BCLK OCing.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes, and no. What I finally realized is, although the B150 K4/Hyper ASRock mobos allow BCLK OCing of locked SKL CPUs, they DO NOT allow overclocking of "K" SKU KBL CPUs. You need a Z170 or Z270 board for that. What a PITA.

(I just bought two more H81 boards that OC with G3258, probably give him one of those.)

 

[lehtv]

@VirtualLarry The B150 K4/Hyper costs over $100, more than many entry level Z170 boards. Z270 boards will likely cost the same as Z170 boards do now. I don't see why this is cause for any PITA