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New comp for Mom

D

Dman877

Platinum Member
We live in New England and my Mom is one of those people who is always cold, no matter how high the heat is, from about October to April. This year, she wants to put a space heater under her desk but my Dad thinks it will short the circuit since there's already 2 comps a tv and some other stuff plugged into that outlet.

I suggested getting my Mom a comp that puts out a lot of heat and running something cpu intensive in the background to load it up (she is an email/internet/word processing PC user). This leads me to a number of questions.

First, the cpu would obviously be intel. If I run f@h or p95 or something similar in the background, will I need a dual core proc to prevent the comp from chugging? or will HT suffice? I know next to nothing about newer intel stuff, are dual core mobo's still expensive? Does nVidia's intel board support pentium d's?

Second, will it matter if it's a sff or not? I know sff's tend to get hotter then my midtowers but either option should adequately heat up the area under a desk right?

Third, what hsf and cases would you suggest? Since my Mom wants to feel hot air, I'm looking to point the exhaust air from the pc towards her feet instead of towards the wall.

Finally, what background apps would you suggest for loading the cpu with minimal memory usage and that won't completely chug the system?

TIA, any suggestions will be appreciated. I'm thinking about giving her my 9800 Pro, it's not super hot but hot enough imo then I can upgrade.


EDIT: Her current comp is an athlon tbred A 1800+ w/512 mb ram in a very old shuttle sff and it meets her needs just fine but it doesn't put out much heat at all.
 
Originally posted by: Dman877
We live in New England and my Mom is one of those people who is always cold, no matter how high the heat is, from about October to April. This year, she wants to put a space heater under her desk but my Dad thinks it will short the circuit since there's already 2 comps a tv and some other stuff plugged into that outlet.

I suggested getting my Mom a comp that puts out a lot of heat and running something cpu intensive in the background to load it up (she is an email/internet/word processing PC user). This leads me to a number of questions.

First, the cpu would obviously be intel. If I run f@h or p95 or something similar in the background, will I need a dual core proc to prevent the comp from chugging? or will HT suffice? I know next to nothing about newer intel stuff, are dual core mobo's still expensive? Does nVidia's intel board support pentium d's?

Second, will it matter if it's a sff or not? I know sff's tend to get hotter then my midtowers but either option should adequately heat up the area under a desk right?

Third, what hsf and cases would you suggest? Since my Mom wants to feel hot air, I'm looking to point the exhaust air from the pc towards her feet instead of towards the wall.

Finally, what background apps would you suggest for loading the cpu with minimal memory usage and that won't completely chug the system?

TIA, any suggestions will be appreciated. I'm thinking about giving her my 9800 Pro, it's not super hot but hot enough imo then I can upgrade.


EDIT: Her current comp is an athlon tbred A 1800+ w/512 mb ram in a very old shuttle sff and it meets her needs just fine but it doesn't put out much heat at all.
Click to expand...


Dumbest idea ever. A heater would warm up the room better and more efficiently.
And besides, if the PC is working and generating so much heat, it would draw a big load from the outlet too but less efficiently.
 
Why would you spend one or two thousand dollars on a computer to do the same job as a fifty dollar space heater? A better approach would be to figure out the real currant draw at the wall outlet now, and buy a heater that won't overload it. Also, you can turn the heater off come summer.
 
Yes it's a bad idea, get the space heater instead.

> since there's already 2 comps a tv and some other stuff plugged into that outlet.

If it is a tube TV and tube monitors you could switch to LCDs and get back some watts.
 
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