Help suggest future proof CPU for non gaming use

[whm1974]

It all depends what your uses are and how much are you able and willing to spend.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Ok, I spoke to my dad and he was keen on the idea of me giving him my current i5 2500k PC. It is 6 year old, but I did a RAM upgrade to 8gb and an SSD upgrade as well.

Other specs:
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-Z77x-UD5H
Video Card: ASUS Radeon HD6850 1gb 4.0GHz
PSU: Corsair TX650 650w
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws F3 1066CL9D 2x4gb

I figure this build should be able to function well for Youtube playback and media streaming and of course general internet browsing for the next few years. I currently experience no issues with it at the moment.

Thank you everyone again for all the replies and for helping me figure out the right step to take.
Now I will start figuring out what PC I will build for myself which is exciting

Think you mean 1ghz, 4gb vram for the 6850. In any case, even for non-gaming you might want to upgrade that to get more current video codecs and better driver updates. Otherwise, I agree, it should be more than adequate for several years, especially with an SSD.

 

[Alpha One Seven]

"Future proof' and 'cpu' do not live in the same world. It will be outclassed in 2 years tops and you'll want a new one.

 

[mikeymikec]

"Future proof' and 'cpu' do not live in the same world. It will be outclassed in 2 years tops and you'll want a new one.

Try reading the OP before projecting your personal feelings.

 

[whm1974]

"Future proof' and 'cpu' do not live in the same world. It will be outclassed in 2 years tops and you'll want a new one.

That is funny because I am still using the i5-4670 I brought in 2013 and planning on replacing it in two years as it is still good enough that I can't justify building a new rig right now.

 

[frozentundra123456]

That is funny because I am still using the i5-4670 I brought in 2013 and planning on replacing it in two years as it is still good enough that I can't justify building a new rig right now.

Yea, I have an i5 2320. For the uses the OP is suggesting, it is perfectly fine. Even OK for light encoding: it is slow, but I just set it up to run when I am not using the comp for something else.

 

[Yongsta]

My dad had a Dell Vostro 230 with a slow HDD and Core2Duo Dual Core processor with 2GB DDR3 ram. Last year, I bought a Q9550 Quad core on Ebay for $20, a 120GB SSD for $80, used 8 GB DDR3 ram on Ebay for $20, and an Nvidia GTX 1050 when Amazon had some sale for $90 (before crypto craze). A $210 investment but that machine is really fast now and meets all his needs (he can even watch YouTube videos in 4K now thanks to the Nvidia GTX 1050).

This should be good enough to last him for another 5 years for his uses (watching occasional videos and web browsing).

 

[Alpha One Seven]

That is funny because I am still using the i5-4670 I brought in 2013 and planning on replacing it in two years as it is still good enough that I can't justify building a new rig right now.

*Cough* Murphy's Law *cough*

 

[Alpha One Seven]

Try reading the OP before projecting your personal feelings.

Yeah, right. Just buy a used Commodore Vic and be happy with that.




You just got off a vacation and you came back to troll in tech. This post and the above post.
You know the rules. No trolling here.
This is not OT nor P&N.


esquared
Anandtech Forum Director

 

[whm1974]

*Cough* Murphy's Law *cough*

Yeah, right. Just buy a used Commodore Vic and be happy with that.

A system build with a mid-range to high end CPU and decent motherboard will still be useful for a long time now and mine still does what I need it to do and does it well.

 

[SlowBox]

Grab him a i5 quad core processor and 256GB SSD and a crummy video card like a 1050 GTX or what not and 8GB RAM, 16GB if using Winblows 10. Thanks

 

[daveybrat]

Grab him a i5 quad core processor and 256GB SSD and a crummy video card like a 1050 GTX or what not and 8GB RAM, 16GB if using Winblows 10. Thanks

Why would he need more ram for Windows 10? It's more efficient with ram than Windows 7 was with it's Aero interface.

 

[whm1974]

Why would he need more ram for Windows 10? It's more efficient with ram than Windows 7 was with it's Aero interface.

And why would a 1050Ti be a crummy video card?

 

[mindless1]

Hi,

I would like to purchase a PC for my dad who currently running an Intel Core Duo E6600 PC, which is becoming awfully slow and non responsive.

Figure out why? Odds are all he needs is a clean windows install on an SSD.

 

[mindless1]

There's no point in throwing a SSD in it when you're limited by 4gb memory. in fact it will just swap like mad to the SSD and wear it out. (It's a huge speed up over swapping to traditional hard drive, but hardly a good long term solution.) The real solution would be 4gb more ram (even 2gb helps greatly). After you have 6gb or more of ram you can start thinking about SSDs.

Believe it or not, a lot of people don't use more than 4GB and would benefit from an SSD with 4GB. Instead of assuming, do a clean windows install so there isn't years of background junk running, fire up the most demanding app he'll use, and look at Task Manager for memory allocation.

Besides, "most" pagefile use is only virtual. An app wants X amount of memory and it's allocated virtually but most of it is never used.

 

[whm1974]

Believe it or not, a lot of people don't use more than 4GB and would benefit from an SSD with 4GB. Instead of assuming, do a clean windows install so there isn't years of background junk running, fire up the most demanding app he'll use, and look at Task Manager for memory allocation.

Besides, "most" pagefile use is only virtual. An app wants X amount of memory and it's allocated virtually but most of it is never used.

I can't believe I miss that one. But the poster you just quoted is dead wrong about needing more then 4GB of memory to get any benefit from an SSD.

 

[ericlp]

I built a system for my dad about 5 years ago based on AMD A10. Now his system is crashing, and has a hard time booting. Likely P/S or RAM or MB. He says that the speed that he runs is still fine. But all he does is pretty much just run chrome and edits some video/photos... So I'm in the same boat kinda as you, and he wants a new system. So... This is what I am going to build him since he has 8 Gig of DDR3, and a half a terabyte HD.

With a $300 budget, I could still build a ryzen 2200G APU ($100) cpu, $55 motherboard, and use the other $145 for memory, ssd since you don't even need a video card and it can do everything you want it to.

A 2200G removes the video card, to me that's just another component to fail with another fan that can fail. For all he does, the 2200 should be good, and pretty much runs circles around an A10, but if he was running high end software like photoshop then I'd consider the 2400G for 50 bucks more. Tho, getting some quality ram, and an m2 ssd would be the best way to go, I already have a spare P/S kicking around 620 seasonic. Just reuse the old coolermaster case. He should be good to go!

I have been considering chrome OS as well. You might look into that. 2200G would be overkill for chrome but, like others say, it updates itself (security) and if your dad is just using his pc as web browser 99% of the time, it's an option looking into. There are plenty of "aps" built into chrome... Use the money saved on the OS for a nice mechanical keyboard/mouse...

Good Luck!

 

[whm1974]

I built a system for my dad about 5 years ago based on AMD A10. Now his system is crashing, and has a hard time booting. Likely P/S or RAM or MB. He says that the speed that he runs is still fine. But all he does is pretty much just run chrome and edits some video/photos... So I'm in the same boat kinda as you, and he wants a new system. So... This is what I am going to build him since he has 8 Gig of DDR3, and a half a terabyte HD.



A 2200G removes the video card, to me that's just another component to fail with another fan that can fail. For all he does, the 2200 should be good, and pretty much runs circles around an A10, but if he was running high end software like photoshop then I'd consider the 2400G for 50 bucks more. Tho, getting some quality ram, and an m2 ssd would be the best way to go, I already have a spare P/S kicking around 620 seasonic. Just reuse the old coolermaster case. He should be good to go!

I have been considering chrome OS as well. You might look into that. 2200G would be overkill for chrome but, like others say, it updates itself (security) and if your dad is just using his pc as web browser 99% of the time, it's an option looking into. There are plenty of "aps" built into chrome... Use the money saved on the OS for a nice mechanical keyboard/mouse...

Good Luck!

How about this one?
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wQBmxG

 

[PeterScott]

Personally I wouldn't touch refurbished unless it was given to me.

Reason being those old desktops have been run in a corporate/ educational environment with zero effort given to their care. Most likely cpus are overvolted and run hot.

With a $300 budget, I could still build a ryzen 2200G APU ($100) cpu, $55 motherboard, and use the other $145 for memory, ssd since you don't even need a video card and it can do everything you want it to.

That's what I would do personally. You can also go the intel route if you want intel but either way that's better than risking refurbished.

You have to think like you aren't an enthusiast.

My buddy, bought a refurb C2D about 8 years ago for a couple of hundred bucks, and ran it as his OTA Recording/encoding box basically on 24/7 for the last 8 years straight. Eventually the HDD failed (after about 6 years), but I have had new HDD fail in less than 2 years.

It was still working when he decided to get something faster, another few hundred dollar Gen 4 i5 SFF, Refurb. Both times he got my advice on what to get, and he was very happy both times.

Nothing can really touch the value of these Refurbs, especially when it includes a $100 Win 10 license.

Personally I am running my 10 year old C2Q build, and it is really only modern AAA games that can't be run to satisfaction, so IMO computers built recently will probably have a HW failure before they become obsolete for most people.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I figure this build should be able to function well for Youtube playback and media streaming and of course general internet browsing for the next few years. I currently experience no issues with it at the moment.

Video Card: ASUS Radeon HD6850 1gb 4.0GHz

If I may suggest, consider "upgrading" your dad to a (passively-cooled) GT1030 GDDR5 2GB version, for around $90, if you can swing it.

Reason being, that 6850 is probably really long in the tooth, possibly noisy or slow fan(s) by now, and it's not all that great at decoding modern media formats, like VP9 used for High-Def YouTube. It may do HEVC / H.265, so if YouTube sends you HEVC-encoded video streams, you're probably OK (for now! YouTube is trying to move everyone to a royalty-free codec platform, currently VP9, soon AV1).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Nothing can really touch the value of these Refurbs, especially when it includes a $100 Win 10 license.

True! That "free" Windows license that comes with a (genuine) refurbished name-brand PC is a nice chunk of cost that you would otherwise have to pay for separately, if you built your own. Then again, there's always Free Software OSes (Linux).

 

[SlowBox]

And why would a 1050Ti be a crummy video card?

Sorry your right its not a crummy card. Im thinking of the 6 and 7 series. But 1050 is not a hard core gamers card tho.

 

[SlowBox]

Why would he need more ram for Windows 10? It's more efficient with ram than Windows 7 was with it's Aero interface.

Well if you go to task manager, it's a fact Windows 10 does load more stuff and is more complex and uses more RAM. It might handle the RAM well but it uses more RAM, and that is a fact just compare taskman from WInblows 7 then look at Winblows 10 and you will see why I say get the extra 16GB, but then again this is coming from a guy who has 64GB RAM,,, sighs But then again I do DAW, but ya I haven't used a 8GB Windows 10 machine so I guess I can't talk .. but the SSD will save him in this regards. thx

 

[ericlp]

How about this one?
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wQBmxG

Looks good, but I'd step up the ram to 3000 speed and use name brand for more reliability. And a SSD M.2 Samsung drive.

Try that link, pushing 500 bucks though...

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3NkzZR

 

[whm1974]

Looks good, but I'd step up the ram to 3000 speed and use name brand for more reliability. And a SSD M.2 Samsung drive.

Try that link, pushing 500 bucks though...

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3NkzZR

I will have to change some things with my under $500 build since some of the items were on sale at the time I put together the list, or were unavailable.