Budget gut w/ SSD

[DominionSeraph]

My uncle's P4/512MB desktop is showing its age and he's thinking of upgrading to a laptop, all-in-one, or possibly a pre-built. With the price of desktop components being so low and the fact he has $150 worth of reusable components, I'd like to show him a third option to choose from which, at least in terms of price and performance, will far surpass those: That of a simple motherboard swap plus SSD.

Use: General/no special needs.
Reusing: Case, PSU, mechanical HDD, DVD, (possibly) OS

Ultra budget:

[URL="http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.566266"]AMD Athlon II X3 450 Rana 3.2GHz + BIOSTAR A880G+ AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard [/URL]

[URL="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231190"]G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-4GBNQ [/URL]

[URL="http://detonator.dynamitedata.com/cgi-bin/redirect.pl?user=u00000687&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newegg.com%2FProduct%2FProduct.aspx%3FItem%3DN82E16820211485"]A-DATA S599 AS599S-64GM-C 2.5" 64GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) [/URL]

$283.98 shipped. (not inc. Molex to SATA power for SSD)

Dirt cheap. Sandforce SSD at only $1.80 per GB. However at this price it would be reusing his WinXP 32-bit so it would be running into the 32-bit memory limit and the SSD wouldn't have the benefit of 4k aligned sectors. To upgrade to Windows 7 would bring it to $384.

Or:

AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition Callisto 3.2GHz

[URL="http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.552638"]BIOSTAR A880G+ AM3 AMD 880G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard + Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit [/URL]

Same RAM and SSD as above.

$389.95 shipped.

Nice combo with Windows 7 and a better unlocking baseline.

Or, if I'm gonna drop the X3 combo for the Win7 combo, should I even bother suggesting the Phenom II X2 and instead just suggest the Athlon II X4 640 for $10 more? It's not a better choice, but at least it would be simpler to explain the rationale for a straight quad-core rather than juggling the axes of L3 and possibly unlocking cores and single-threaded performance while navigating the variable of the "downgrade" from a tri- to dual-core.

My Newegg combo-fu is currently hampered by 56k browsing, so any help on that front would also be appreciated.

(And assembly isn't an issue. I'm in the area for the next month to take care of that as well as any teething issues.)

 

[fffblackmage]

I would try to go for the Win 7 x64 route. Personally, I just don't want to deal with no TRIM or alignment issue. I also happen to like using Windows 7 quite a bit as well.

I would recommend throwing in a more modern PSU in there. This Antec Neo Eco 400C is $45 ($30 AR).

If a quad core is desired, then just pay $10 more for the Athlon II X4. Since this computer is mostly for basic use, I would settle for the dual core and try to unlock it as a bonus. In the end, I don't expect extra L3 cache or more cores to matter much for a general-use computer.

 

[DominionSeraph]

I would recommend throwing in a more modern PSU in there. This Antec Neo Eco 400C is $45 ($30 AR).

Wow, nice find. The last time I was running builds (which was last week) there was nothing under the price of the Corsair 650W that didn't justify just getting the Corsair 650W.

But considering his PSU has been running just fine for ~8 years and this is just an IGP build, I'm thinking that the percentages don't lean towards braving the initial failure rates of even a reputable PSU over Old Reliable. I can't see a new build pulling much more than a couple amps more from the 12V rail unless we get something in there that fully unlocks to a 125W Phenom X4.
I'll see about checking his PSU the next time I'm over, though. If it's just a 200W ATX12V 1.0 PSU... D:

If a quad core is desired, then just pay $10 more for the Athlon II X4. Since this computer is mostly for basic use, I would settle for the dual core and try to unlock it as a bonus. In the end, I don't expect extra L3 cache or more cores to matter much for a general-use computer.

Yes; although with a SSD feeding it, single-threaded performance is more likely to be a bottleneck, which is why I skipped over the Athlon II X2. Anand's Bench shows the Phenom X2's L3 cache comes into play often enough and to a sufficient degree for it to be worth the ~4.5% price premium, leaving its added chance of unlocking to an X3 or X4 as pure bonus.

 

[Davidh373]

I would actually go with combo 1 and throw windows 7 in there.

 

[mfenn]

I agree with David. Get the Rana and Windows 7. Personally, I don't think that unlocking and stability-testing is worth the support hassle for someone else's machine.