Attempt at "cheapest viable Facebook / browser build".

[cbn]

Yeah, I tried that video, seemed fine.

When I was testing with the single-channel DDR3-1866 @ 1600 CAS11-11-11-38-2T, I was trying some 1080P @ 60 VP9 video, something with GoPro Hero and RC car in the title I think.

Try this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m2O7VsYVX4
video/mp4; codecs="avc1.4d401f"

I'm running VSR @ 2560x1440 (1440P) on my G4400 Skylake (OC to.445Ghz) desktop, and that video is showing huge numbers of skipped frames, when full-screened. Like 10000 out of 12000 skipped.

Edit: That's probably because I was running my CPU at 100% doing DC. After starting the video a few times later on, no dropped frames, probably because the DC had paused because I was using over 50% CPU time on non-DC tasks.

I'm curious about the codec, is that the same as AV1, or is that AVC, as in H264? I'm curious why it would be served up that way on this box, and I thought, VP9 on my AMD FM1 box.

Gave that above video and the following video below a shot with my Ubuntu 16.04/Firefox Athlon x 4 860K (dual channel DDR3 1600) using HD5450 (VLIW 5 DX11 card with 80sp) and both ran smoothly at 1080p VP9 (software decode) 60 FPS with no dropped frames:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSn3Tvc7jQU

 

[VirtualLarry]

I buckled down and built two of these rigs earlier tonight. Went together smooth. I used a pair of my NAXN 450W PSUs, which have a 6+2 and and 6-pin PCI-E power cable, both on separate wires from the PSU, so it can support a beefy video card. Amazingly, that was the cheapest PSU I had "in stock", that I consider to be "quality", so I used them. Plus, they're NOT "Haswell Ready", AFAIK, so I didn't want to use them for my Haswell Celeron or G3258 OC builds.

Used the 16GB SSD, 2x2GB DDR3-1600 RAM, 24X SATA DVD-RW (to fill the 5.25" bay hole that these OEM cases came with, no other reason. I guess the end-user can use them to watch DVDs and burn CDs, hehe, if they even know what that is).

Put Linux Mint 18 Mate on them, left around 4-5GB free on the SSD, after swap and the OS install. Should be enough for storing a few pictures or a movie. (Hmm, I don't think that they would be able to copy DVD movies, not enough disk space.)

Edit: Did NOT overclock them. Was thinking about it initially (those FM1 dual-cores could really use some OC loving), but thought it not worth the risk for machines that I'm giving to other people.

I think, with the DVD-RW included, I calculated a cost of $152 for each of them. Not too bad, for a usable machine.

I still have to consider keyboard + mouse, WiFi adapter (I have some cheap Chinese N150 RealTek-chipset ones that work with Linux), and speakers and / or an HDMI cable. Also, possible monitor options for those that don't have one, don't have a flat-screen, and need / can't afford a screen. (I've got a few spare screens I picked up along the way cheap.)

 

[cbn]

24X SATA DVD-RW (to fill the 5.25" bay hole that these OEM cases came with, no other reason. I guess the end-user can use them to watch DVDs and burn CDs, hehe, if they even know what that is).

Sweet. I'm glad you were able to do that.

Then whoever gets the box has the option to check out DVDs from the library. (My library even has the newest release DVD movies for loan as well)

P.S. What PC enclosures are these?

 

[jaydee]

$15 AMD A4-3420 2.8Ghz 65W dual-core FM1 APU (CPU only)
$28 ECS A55F-M4 v2.0 A55 FM1 micro-ATX mobo
$8 AMD FM1-compatible generic heatsink/fan
$18 Kingston 2x2GB DDR3-1600 unbuffered RAM
$9 *used* 16GB 2.5" SSD (pulls, supposedly from new rigs, replaced with other drives, but sold as "used")
$16 ATX mid-tower case
$42 EVGA 500W "80Plus White" ATX PSU

$136 total

$15 WD 160GB SATA 3.5" HDD (refurb, zero POH) - optional, for storage
$3 Generic N150 USB2.0 wireless B/G/N 2.4Ghz dongle (Linux compatible) - optional

Question, Windows 10 Home 64-bit (for $20 e-mailed key), or Linux Mint 18 Mate 64-bit ($0)?

Yeah, I know that the PSU is overkill for the rest of the parts, but I don't want to risk the liability of going with a lesser-quality PSU. It seems that every PSU significantly below $40 or so, is basically crap.

Also interested in comments on the viability of a 16GB SSD, with 4GB RAM (considered putting in only a 2GB stick), and Windows 10 64-bit size and updates / upgrades, and Linux Mint 18 size / updates.

I think Mint would have slightly less issues, with that size SSD, but in either case, it's gonna get cozy, with swap and all.

Edit: Now that I think about it, I think I'll put the full 2x2GB RAM in. I had a single 4GB stick of GSKill DDR3-1600 in my overclocked Sempron 3850 AM1 quad-core rigs with Win10 64-bit, and when I changed that out for a single 2GB stick, browsing was a pain, with that little RAM in 64-bit Windows. 4GB == OK, 2GB == painful, for 64-bit Windows.

Edit: These computers may end up donated to the local food pantry, for "under-privileged families". Or maybe the local Senior Center. (Although, I might have to do some installation / teaching / hand-holding if I do that, and I don't think I want to be stuck in that position. Most of the seniors in this town can afford their own PCs, if they wanted them.)

Comments of the viability of CloudReady OS are welcome too. I'll have to test that once I get one of these built.

I'm not sure if what "underpriviledged families" need most in their lives is Facebook, with that kind of money, but it really is, for gosh sakes, get a cheap pre-build like https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KY0Y26I/ref=psdc_13896591011_t1_B00SCBWF52

What do you suppose your build is going draw at the wall? With the inefficient CPU and a PSU that's probably only ~75% efficient for the entire usage range, you're looking at pulling 45+W from wall all the time. That Cherry Trail with a brick style AC-DC adapter is going to give you the same performance at less than half the power usage.

Another way to look at it is to find someone else's unwanted old PCs on craigslist. I can find Latitude E6410's with Core i5 for under $150 all day, any day and they already come with Windows. I picked up an E6440 with Haswell for $225 a couple months ago.

Is the main point is build cheap PCs, and then figuring out what to do with them is more of a secondary concern?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Is the main point is build cheap PCs, and then figuring out what to do with them is more of a secondary concern?

You do understand.

 

[Torn Mind]

To be fair, Cherry Trail is garbage compared to Llano in the matters of rendering a single web page.

The NAXN is actually a fair unit, but efficiency won't be at 80 Plus Bronze levels unless the CPU is pushed hard.

But pre-emptively buying cheap motherboards on the suggestion of another chronic cheapskate on this forum because of "good enough" logic precisely leads to sub-optimal results like this, where you wind up with a gimped computer due to a lack of storage space and a OS that channels Harbor Freight. LOL

 

[whm1974]

To be fair, Cherry Trail is garbage compared to Llano in the matters of rendering a single web page.

The NAXN is actually a fair unit, but efficiency won't be at 80 Plus Bronze levels unless the CPU is pushed hard.

But pre-emptively buying cheap motherboards on the suggestion of another chronic cheapskate on this forum because of "good enough" logic precisely leads to sub-optimal results like this, where you wind up with a gimped computer due to a lack of storage space and a OS that channels Harbor Freight. LOL

I agree. Even with a lightweight Linux Distro I wouldn't even bother at all with a storage device lower then 128 GB.

 

[VirtualLarry]

To be fair, Cherry Trail is garbage compared to Llano in the matters of rendering a single web page.

Agreed. I have a CHT "TV box", with 2GB / 32GB and Win10 32-bit on it. It sucks. Not to toot my own horn, but these LLano Linux boxes should be a lot more usable that that thing. Plus, it was unreliable. A lot of Chinese CHT boxes are, for some reason.

I agree. Even with a lightweight Linux Distro I wouldn't even bother at all with a storage device lower then 128 GB.

Well, point noted, but if 120GB SSDs had continued their downward pricing trend, and were below $30, I might have considered that. But over the last 3-4 months, SSDs and DRAM prices have raised 30-40%. Now a 120GB SSD is nearly $50. That's a third of the cost of the entire rig. Way too expensive. If they need more storage space, they can always buy a USB external HDD at Walmart for $50-60.

 

[Torn Mind]

Those TV boxes might be running bootlegged Windows and due to extreme cost-cutting, the drivers are barely there in some cases. http://www.anandtech.com/show/10100...less-intel-atom-x7z8700-cherry-trail-minipc/7

Something more reputable like Intel's Compute Stick should provide something more "conventional", for lack of a better term.

But with storage worse than those old early 2000s 20GB HDDs, these donation rigs will be filled to capacity soon enough, and the annoyance of having to constantly manage storage will manifest itself.

Remember, for many people, the internet is for porn. Those free WiFi kiosks New York kiosks have been used for such...stimulation by the homeless.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, should I use my stash of 160GB factory-refurb (zero POH) WD 7200 RPM 3.5" HDDs on these boxes?

Should I add the HDD as additional storage, or should I pull the SSD, and put in the HDD, as the primary storage?

One upside of making the HDD the primary storage, is that they would have enough room then to put Windows 7 / 10 64-bit on there if they wanted to.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Wow where are you finding parts for that cheap? Here in Canada everyone of those parts (not those specific models just the parts in general) would be at least $100 each. Ex if I look at motherboards and sort by price the cheapest will be maybe a tad under $100. Same with cpu etc..

I was going to suggest a Raspberry PI but you basically have a full blown PC for only like ~$50 more than a RPI so what you have is probably better. Though a RPI will be a smaller and self contained package and use less power, so it's still an option I suppose. It's actually crossed my mind to build a "portable computer" with a RPI just for fun. Like one of those old school computers that was in a big wooden box.

 

[whm1974]

Wow where are you finding parts for that cheap? Here in Canada everyone of those parts (not those specific models just the parts in general) would be at least $100 each. Ex if I look at motherboards and sort by price the cheapest will be maybe a tad under $100. Same with cpu etc..

I was going to suggest a Raspberry PI but you basically have a full blown PC for only like ~$50 more than a RPI so what you have is probably better. Though a RPI will be a smaller and self contained package and use less power, so it's still an option I suppose. It's actually crossed my mind to build a "portable computer" with a RPI just for fun. Like one of those old school computers that was in a big wooden box.

Actually there is a company that produces some kits to build a Raspberry Laptop and table. It's like $300 however, while the tablet is around $100.
https://www.pi-top.com/

 

[VirtualLarry]

After careful consideration of the forum's observations of the recipient's need for a large HDD for a "stash", I ordered some 500GB HDDs off of ebay. Supposedly new, they were around ~$15 shipped. Now debating whether to put ONLY a HDD in there (it's a "Green" drive), or leave the SSD for the OS drive.

Ah well, now the PC's config (4GB / 500GB) matches most OEM dual-core PCs.

 

[jaydee]

To be fair, Cherry Trail is garbage compared to Llano in the matters of rendering a single web page.

The NAXN is actually a fair unit, but efficiency won't be at 80 Plus Bronze levels unless the CPU is pushed hard.

My friend has a Kangaroo PC with the Atom x5-Z8500 (1.44GHz, turbo up to 2.24GHz). With the turbo I'm not sure how far behind these are compared to 2.8GHz Llano with 1MB L2 in single-threaded, and the Cherry Trail should win handily in multi-threaded applications. At any rate, with my friends Kangaroo PC, the web browsing experience seemed fine to me, I don't remember trying YouTube though.

I'm sure the PSU is a fine one, but even the best are usually pretty inefficient (compared to brick adapters) at ~10% load.

But pre-emptively buying cheap motherboards on the suggestion of another chronic cheapskate on this forum because of "good enough" logic precisely leads to sub-optimal results like this, where you wind up with a gimped computer due to a lack of storage space and a OS that channels Harbor Freight. LOL

Yep

 

[Torn Mind]

My friend has a Kangaroo PC with the Atom x5-Z8500 (1.44GHz, turbo up to 2.24GHz). With the turbo I'm not sure how far behind these are compared to 2.8GHz Llano with 1MB L2 in single-threaded, and the Cherry Trail should win handily in multi-threaded applications. At any rate, with my friends Kangaroo PC, the web browsing experience seemed fine to me, I don't remember trying YouTube though.

I'm sure the PSU is a fine one, but even the best are usually pretty inefficient (compared to brick adapters) at ~10% load.


Yep

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+x5-Z8500+@+1.44GHz
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+A4-3420+APU&id=19
Single thread is about 503 for Atom and 931 for Llano.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1229?vs=399
The Anandtech bench is with an A8 at 2.9 GHz and a 8-core Avoton(Bay Trail) C2750 with better cooling for Turbo, but regardless, the single-thread performance of the Atom is behind.

Even in multi-threaded, Atom does not blow away a Llano dual core. Better to take the two fast cores in this situation because single-threaded performance will "show up" in practically every applicaiton while apps that take advantage of multi-core is hit-or-miss.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6013/350450w-roundup-11-cheap-psus/18

A power brick probably can hit over 80-85 these days, so you would be correct there.

 

[cbn]

Regarding idle power consumption affecting cost of ownership, 1 watt x 24 hours x 365 days = $1.22 (This based on a Kilowatt hour cost of 13.9 cents x 8.76 kilowatt hours (ie, 8,760 watt hours).

So assume the browser machine is powered on for 6 hours a day (and sleeps 18 hours a day) the cost savings for 10 watt savings would be $3.05 year.

.....And if the usage is below 6 hours a day, then the savings would be even smaller.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Regarding idle power consumption affecting cost of ownership, 1 watt x 24 hours x 365 days = $1.22 (This based on a Kilowatt hour cost of 13.9 cents x 8.76 kilowatt hours (ie, 8,760 watt hours).

So assume the browser machine is powered on for 6 hours a day (and sleeps 18 hours a day) the cost savings for 10 watt savings would be $3.05 year.

.....And if the usage is below 6 hours a day, then the savings would be even smaller.

This. Truth.

What it means is that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" - saving money on electricity is virtually never a reason, by itself, for a typical consumer (non-gamer) to replace good, working hardware.*

That said, if you have a poorly ventilated studio apartment on the second or third floor of a building where the radiators are on in July, you might want to back off that overclock and get a more power-efficient GPU. It helps. Trust me.

* Flipside is that energy use is part of TCO - if you need a new computer anyway, buying the most power-efficient hardware you can get that meets your performance requirements is usually the way to go, even if it is a few bucks more.

 

[VirtualLarry]

No comments on the primary storage?

My thoughts:

A 16GB SSD, is pretty small. You can install Win10 64-bit onto it, but it's ... not pretty. No room for anything else (less than 1GB free), and it runs pretty poorly. OTOH, with something like ChromiumOS / CloudReady, it's fine. (Most ChromeBooks only have 16GB primary storage, either eMMC or SSD, anyways.)

Linux, with 4GB RAM (.5GB used for video), on a 16GB SSD (3.5GB used for swap), is a mixed bag. It will install, and leaves around 4-5GB free, which is OK for normal usage, unless you "collect" files from the internet.

I've current got a qty of 160GB 7200RPM WD 3.5" HDDs (factory refurb, zero POH, presumed to be NOS). I've also ordered a qty of 500GB "Green" WD drives, supposedly "new". (Surplus, because WD stopped selling their "Green" AV-GP drives, and now calls them "Purple"?)

Benefits of using a 160GB 7200RPM as the primary storage: Not quite as fast as an SSD, but by the same token, those 16GB SSDs had really poor write benchmarks. Much more "space" for storing things, could easily wipe Linux and put Windows on if they wanted.

Benefits of using a 500GB "Green" as the primary storage: Probably rather slow for OS usage compared to even a small SSD, but capability of having a much bigger "stash" for files.

I'm not entirely opposed to putting the 16GB SSD in with Linux, and then sticking in a 500GB "Green" drive for storage purposes. But this configuration, would require the end-user to be knowledgeable enough to be able to copy or save downloaded files to the HDD, rather than the SSD.

 

[whm1974]

No comments on the primary storage?

I'm not entirely opposed to putting the 16GB SSD in with Linux, and then sticking in a 500GB "Green" drive for storage purposes. But this configuration, would require the end-user to be knowledgeable enough to be able to copy or save downloaded files to the HDD, rather than the SSD.

Simple solution. put / on the SSD and /home on the HDD. Which you should be doing anyway. The OS and apps should be separated from data.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Simple solution. put / on the SSD and /home on the HDD. Which you should be doing anyway. The OS and apps should be separated from data.

Yeah, I thought about doing that. I'll have to figure that out. The "advanced partitioning" screen on Linux distros is still a bit intimidating to me, for some reason. (Yeah, I know about /etc/fstab and mount points.) I guess I just trust the "automagic" installer's partitioning work over my own.

 

[cbn]

Started playing around with secondary storage in Linux Mint 18....

Installed secondary drive on my Linux Mint this morning (after formatting the secondary disk last night).

All it took to mount the secondary drive was to click on "Menu" (lower left hand side of screen), then type "disks" in search bar. Click on "disks", then click on the volume you want to mount. Then click on the icon which has picture of interlocking gears in the lower left hand of of the volume. Click "edit mount options". Turn "automatic mount options" to off position. Next, make sure "mount at start-up" is enabled. Reboot computer. Secondary drive will be mounted.

P.S. Formatting the secondary storage is done in the same set of menus. (I will edit this later to add the necessary step by step info).

EDIT (See above): In order to format a secondary disk in Linux Mint first click on Menu then in the search box type "disks". Click on "Disks" when it appears in the Menu above. Click on whatever is the secondary drive in the left hand column in "disks". Under Volumes click on the icon with the interlocking gears. Click on Format Volume.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes, but that doesn't mount the secondary storage as /home, thought, does it? I would think that would be more involved.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yes, but that doesn't mount the secondary storage as /home, thought, does it? I would think that would be more involved.

You just pick a different mount point in /etc/fstab

Ideally, you'd be booted to a CLI and logged in as root, since root's ~/ directory is /root and not under /home/ - since you don't want to be moving around files while they're in use.

Probably the "more linux" solution - change user home directory path using usermod:

http://www.computerhope.com/unix/usermod.htm

Mount the secondary storage as, say, /mnt/homes/ and then change the default home path and/or the home path for your account.

I don't know why you people keep insisting on using GUI tools for this stuff. It only complicates things.

 

[whm1974]

Yeah, I thought about doing that. I'll have to figure that out. The "advanced partitioning" screen on Linux distros is still a bit intimidating to me, for some reason. (Yeah, I know about /etc/fstab and mount points.) I guess I just trust the "automagic" installer's partitioning work over my own.

It's not really that hard. You can use the drop down menus to select mount points.

 

[cbn]

It's not really that hard. You can use the drop down menus to select mount points.

Yes, I was able to type in "mnt/home" as the mount point in "edit mount options".