Input on low budget CPU

[SPBHM]

it's a single module, single thread performance should be comparable to the other trinity parts, but dual thread performance... the (cheaper) celeron should be more interesting for that,

also, OpenCL? it's hardly relevant...

here they have some numbers for the g530 on the same software
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-pc-do-it-yourself-geforce-gtx-560,3216-11.html

"current $500" = G530

celeron = $50, 5400k = $75
so basically the same performance, you are paying the extra for the IGP, if you need something better...

the cheapest B75 board already have enough features I think,

 

[AtenRa]

I recommended the A4-5300($64,99) paired with ASRock FM2A75M-DGS ($54,99) vs the Intel Celeron G530 + cheapest mobo.

The A75 motherboard has more features than any Intel in the $50-60 price range.

As for the OpenCL, more and more applications will use it and A4-5300 will gain performance in the future when Celeron G530 will not.

 

[Puppies04]

I recommended the A4-5300($64,99) paired with ASRock FM2A75M-DGS ($54,99) vs the Intel Celeron G530 + cheapest mobo.

The A75 motherboard has more features than any Intel in the $50-60 price range.

As for the OpenCL, more and more applications will use it and A4-5300 will gain performance in the future when Celeron G530 will not.

My parents don't play games, edit video, or overclock. It's basically there for playing Freecell and watching Youtube clips....

Sound familiar?

The mobo you suggest has features that the OP doesn't require and openCL performance is irrelevant. The pentium reccomended by the majority in this thread will do what the OP wants while using less power.

No brainer if you ask me.

 

[NTMBK]

My parents don't play games, edit video, or overclock. It's basically there for playing Freecell and watching Youtube clips....

Sound familiar?

The mobo you suggest has features that the OP doesn't require and openCL performance is irrelevant. The pentium reccomended by the majority in this thread will do what the OP wants while using less power.

No brainer if you ask me.

Watching Youtube = decoding video. Youtube quality is steadily improving over time- anything above the lowest quality is utterly unwatchable on my parents' old (old, old, old, old, old...) rig. A slightly beefier GPU for video decode is not a bad idea for future parental usage.

Frankly though, I'd just keep an eye out for a really good buy on a prebuilt rig, whether it's AMD or Intel. I imagine something will come up in January sales. I just bought my parents a sweet little Packard Bell- 3GHz Sandy Bridge i5, build in wifi, DVDRW, lovely little slim case so it takes up a lot less room than their old machine, dual monitor output if my Dad decides to use it (he's quite taken with hooking up a monitor to his laptop so he can have Word on one screen and Excel on another). All for about £300, including Windows 7. That's the sort of value you really can't beat, especially when you include OS costs. What your parents want is the epitome of mass-market appeal, meaning the big companies will churn out millions of the things. You can't fight economies of scale.

EDIT: Also, I agree that a borked CPU or motherboard could be caused by a bad power supply. I'd be certain to isolate precisely where this fault is coming from before spending any more money on parts for this machine.

 

[Puppies04]

Back to the other topic, OP your problems could be caused by the HDD developing a fault. If you wanted to cross that off the list of potential problems you could pick up a SSD (120gb would be fine if they aren't using the machine to store tons of files).

If the problem persisted you can easily transfer the SSD into whatever new machine you build for a more "snappy" user experience.

 

[AtenRa]

My parents don't play games, edit video, or overclock. It's basically there for playing Freecell and watching Youtube clips....

Then why didnt you suggest an Intel ATOM or AMD Brazos ??? both will play 720p YouTube and consume way less power than Intel Celerons and Pentiums. Also Brazos has way better Video Playback than Intel HD graphics.

The mobo you suggest has features that the OP doesn't require and openCL performance is irrelevant.

So, having more and better performance at the same price is bad and not recommended?? I dont see why they have to get an inferior motherboard at the same price simple because they dont currently need USB3 for example.

The pentium reccomended by the majority in this thread will do what the OP wants while using less power.

Most probably they both will use almost the same power at Idle/Playing YouTube.

 

[SPBHM]

I recommended the A4-5300($64,99) paired with ASRock FM2A75M-DGS ($54,99) vs the Intel Celeron G530 + cheapest mobo.

The A75 motherboard has more features than any Intel in the $50-60 price range.

As for the OpenCL, more and more applications will use it and A4-5300 will gain performance in the future when Celeron G530 will not.

I'm sorry, but all the graphs you posted show programs rearely used by an average desktop user, OpenCL has failed to make an impact so far... the handbrake opencl support looked promising, but I'm yet to see it released?

the A4 seems like an OK choice I guess, as for the MB features the A75 doesn't have any big advantage over the B75 imo, also the b75 MB can be used with a wider range of CPUs,

the cost is basically the same (some $10 less for the G530?), but if the g530 can clearly beat the 5400K in some stuff, the 5300 is not going to look better... and the g630 (+300MHz +1MB l3) is probably an easy choice (if you don't care about the IGP performance), since it costs the same as the 5300.

Then why didnt you suggest an Intel ATOM or AMD Brazos ??? both will play 720p YouTube and consume way less power than Intel Celerons and Pentiums. Also Brazos has way better Video Playback than Intel HD graphics.

there is a huge difference in performance from "Brazos" to the A4 or Celeron,
Brazos can be beaten by a single core celeron... and I think you will notice a difference in simple things, like a website full of flash ads

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I'm sorry, but all the graphs you posted show programs rearely used by an average desktop user, OpenCL has failed to make an impact so far... the handbrake opencl support looked promising, but I'm yet to see it released?

the A4 seems like an OK choice I guess, as for the MB features the A75 doesn't have any big advantage over the B75 imo, also the b75 MB can be used with a wider range of CPUs,

the cost is basically the same (some $10 less for the G530?), but if the g530 can clearly beat the 5400K in some stuff, the 5300 is not going to look better... and the g630 (+300MHz +1MB l3) is probably an easy choice (if you don't care about the IGP performance), since it costs the same as the 5300.

For a real budget PC, pair a Celeron G465 with a Gigabyte H61M-S1 board. It'll not be particularly fast or fancy, but will be sufficient for basic use... 🙂

There is a huge difference in performance from "Brazos" to the A4 or Celeron,
Brazos can be beaten by a single core celeron... and I think you will notice a difference in simple things, like a website full of flash ads

My Celeron G465 says hi, and is one **** of a lot snappier then any Brazos system... 😀

look here...

 

[pauldun170]

Hi folks,

my parent's computer stopped working, and I suspect it's the motherboard/CPU. ....so would like some advice on replacing those 2 parts.

Here are the current specs:

Cooler Master mid tower case
500 GB Seagate HDD
Kingston 1333 2x2 GB RAM
Onboard video
busted ole Biostar AM3 motherboard
450 Watt Corsair PSU
busted ole AMD Regor 250

As you can see, it's really low budget. My parents don't play games, edit video, or overclock. It's basically there for playing Freecell and watching Youtube clips.

Has Intel become the best low-end bang for your buck?

Thank you

Cheapest route: Replace the motherboard. Reusues CPU(CPU's rarely go bad). Probably between $45-$65 (just pay attention to the on board video on bargain bin specials. Some of em really suck)

New "build" G530 + mobo = $95

Reuse existing components and be sure to blow out the cobwebs whatever you are reusing.

Anything more than $100 is wasted money.


My freecell\facebooking\youtubing parents run a similar AMD 260 based setup. I did slap an 128gb Sammy 830 SSD in there when the WD blue drive that was in there took a dump.

 

[podspi]

Frankly speaking, NO.

The only thing e-series is good for is a nas box imo.

Cheaper alternative

ASRock FM2A75M-DGS FM2

Micro ATX with A75 Chipset, USB3, 6x SATA-6 etc at $54,99

AMD A4-5300 Trinity

Dual core with HD 7480D for 1080p playback at $64,99

E-class series is definitely fast enough for web browsing, but a Trinity setup would be even better and the dual-cores are pretty cheap.

Frankly I'd consider Brazos to be the absolute minimum, and pretty much anything else would be fine. That said, I always try to make these replacements "upgrades", so I would probably make sure to get a cheap SSD along with whatever else you get. It makes a huge difference and non-techies tend to tell the difference the most, as they have a bad habit of letting everything launch at start-up 😀

 

[frozentundra123456]

Watching Youtube = decoding video. Youtube quality is steadily improving over time- anything above the lowest quality is utterly unwatchable on my parents' old (old, old, old, old, old...) rig. A slightly beefier GPU for video decode is not a bad idea for future parental usage.

Frankly though, I'd just keep an eye out for a really good buy on a prebuilt rig, whether it's AMD or Intel. I imagine something will come up in January sales. I just bought my parents a sweet little Packard Bell- 3GHz Sandy Bridge i5, build in wifi, DVDRW, lovely little slim case so it takes up a lot less room than their old machine, dual monitor output if my Dad decides to use it (he's quite taken with hooking up a monitor to his laptop so he can have Word on one screen and Excel on another). All for about £300, including Windows 7. That's the sort of value you really can't beat, especially when you include OS costs. What your parents want is the epitome of mass-market appeal, meaning the big companies will churn out millions of the things. You can't fight economies of scale.

EDIT: Also, I agree that a borked CPU or motherboard could be caused by a bad power supply. I'd be certain to isolate precisely where this fault is coming from before spending any more money on parts for this machine.

You must live in England? Didn't even know they sold Packard bell any more. My first comp in the late 1990s was a 233mhz Packard bell. It was a great computer btw. Back on topic, a pre built would make sense as well. If one watches carefully they can get a sb i3 or Pentium for around 400.00.

Something no one has mentioned yet is that they could also get a low end laptop and hook it up to an external monitor. Last gen llano laptops are at a good price now.

 

[wirm]

I'm not sure what memory test I ran, but it only went for about an hour. It showed no problems.

I don't think the cpu is overheating. I've looked at the temperature from time to time, and it always seems okay. Then again, I only do this once in a while.

What I'm hearing here is that the problem could be just about anywhere. Ugh.

 

[pauldun170]

Hi everyone, thanks for your comments. As to the current problems:

Every once in a while, the computer will either lock up, or the screen will turn blue with that Physical Memory Dump screen. I then have to restart it.

For a while, it would do this every 5 minutes. Oddly enough, every time I opened up the case and fiddled with things, the computer would work fine for a few more days.

I thought it was the power supply, so I got a new one, but the same thing happens. The computer is fine most of the time, but about once a day, it crashes.

I have tried reinstalling the operating system (Windows Vista), but that didn't help either.

If it's not the CPU/Motherboard, what could it be? I did a memory test with the RAM, but it didn't find anything.

Personally, I would love to not switch out anything. But I don't know what the problem is. I've already wasted money buying a new power supply, and that didn't do anything.

Malwarebytes - Run scan
Seagate HD - run chkdisc or bring up whatever smart\HD checker you have lying around. HD going south could cause some issues

What model Biostar is it? You should make sure you are on the appropriate driver for the board (Newer drivers may have dropped support for it, drivers pushed by windows may have messed things up)
You've already run memtest and swapped out the power supply.

It could be a driver related issue
It could be the motherboard is flakey nowadays causing voltage nonsense.

 

[Hubb1e]

You didn't' waste any money by getting a new PSU. Now you can use that PSU for a spare when things like this go bad. If you build computers and support your family, then a box of spare parts is a must have or you will spend all your time troubleshooting going nowhere. Your time is worth a $35 power supply. It's tough to troubleshoot things like this, but basically start at the easiest to hardest. It's relatively easy to swap out the PSU, drop down to one stick of RAM, and even replace the HD with a spare if you have one.

My bet is on the drivers or the motherboard too. I wouldn't go replacing the whole thing with a new Intel system. There isn't much benefit to that over their AMD dual core. Check for errors on the HD with the tools you get from the drive maker, and then you're gonna have to get a new board.

 

[wirm]

The computer has actually functioned fine over the past 2 years. It is only in the last 2 months or so that it's started freezing up. Wouldn't a driver issue have reared its head earlier?

The motherboard is a Biostar A780L3L AM3

 

[pablo87]

Not sure if this has been mentioned but have you thoroughly dusted the insides of the PC?

Other than that, the likely culprit is the motherboard. if you buy a used motherboard with the same chipset and swap it, that would be your best and cheapest bet. Hard drive and OS might even boot right where it left off. You might even be able to get a free mb from a recycled PCs.

If you want new, go with Intel G630 or Celeron derivative, get a GBT or ASUS budget mb.

 

[wirm]

I have dusted the insides several times. In fact, I also took out the CPU and replaced it. Hopefully, that didn't do anything to the thermal paste between the CPU and heatsink.

I'm glad you brought up the OS. If I replace the motherboard, I really hope I don't have a problem getting Windows Vista to continue working.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I have dusted the insides several times. In fact, I also took out the CPU and replaced it. Hopefully, that didn't do anything to the thermal paste between the CPU and heatsink.

Well, there is your problem. Always change the thermal paste when you reseat the heatsink. You might also have bent a pin inadvertently... :\

Or was the problem occurring before you took the CPU out...?

 

[Hubb1e]

Yup, you're gonna need to reseat that heatsink with new thermal grease. And when you do check for bent pins. No need to go crazy on which grease you choose. If you have some left over from some random heatsink, go ahead and use that.

Did you reseat the CPU before or after the problems started?

 

[wirm]

Problems started first. I wouldn't have taken that thing out if I didn't have to.

 

[Carson Dyle]

Even if you're completely shooting blind and have to replace the motherboard, then the memory, then the CPU (or vice versa), then even the hard drive... it will still be less expensive than building a new system with current parts.

If that system was fast enough for their needs, that's what I would do. You may get a little lucky, it ends up being the motherboard, and costs you $40-50.

 

[sm625]

There are literally hundreds of Core 2 machines on ebay at any given month and they regularly touch the $100 and even drop far below it in some cases. I bought 6 core 2 duo machines for $80 including shipping, and this was several months ago. (They are running great btw.) The simple fact is that supply of these is growing faster than demand. The ones I bought had XP. Now you can get them with 7 installed.