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Prebuilt or custom built

strep3241

strep3241

Senior member
A buddy of mine is looking to get a new computer. One of the main things he does with it is play a game called Wartune. It is a flash player online MP game but the computer he has now is really slow. And no it is not the internet, we are using the same internet and mine is much faster than his.

He has a HP AIO Omni 120. For the most part, it is decent but the cpu is the part that is killing his system. It only has a AMD E2-1800.

Would he be better off buying a prebuilt? Or could I build him one with much better specs without spending a fortune? He may go up to $5-600 if it is worth it but the cheaper the better. Could I build him one for that price? He will not need Windows, a monitor, keyboard or mouse.

For his budget, could I get a core i-5 machine?
 
Does that game require a discrete GPU? If so, you are going to be hard-pressed to fit an i5 in there, especially if you get a pre-built. Maybe if you can find a Lenovo or Dell outlet i5 machine for $450, and then spend $150 on a GTX 750ti video card. (Can be as low as $120-130 after rebates, check Newegg often.)
 
Given that the game is implemented in Flash, I doubt it has intensive GPU requirements. It most likely needs high single-threaded CPU performance. The E2-1800 is a 1.7 GHz Zacate with no turbo, which is a really slow CPU.

As Larry mentioned, the Dell and Lenovo outlets are a good place to look. You probably don't need an i5, even a 3.X Ghz i3 will be a huge upgrade. It looks like the Dell Outlet has an Inspiron 660 with a Core i5 3340 and 8GB of RAM for $480. That's a reasonable deal.
 
Would it be feasible to build one for $400? Any newer dual core or higher cpu will be a huge upgrade, 4gb's of ram would be enough, a video card isn't really needed.

I also want something that can be upgraded in the future like adding memory, a video card and an additional hard drive. I would also like to get on the has a mid tower case or bigger.
 
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Pffffft. The E-350 and its successors are a low power, low performance chip that could provide hardware acceleration for 1080p. I can assure you that even a Celeron G1820 would power through many a Flash game, although he can get the Pentium G3258 or an i3 if he's concerned about insufficient single core performance.

Look at the outlet section of Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc for i5 rigs. Set up wish list reminders and look up deal sites like Slickdeals, Techbargains, and Dealzon. (And craigslist for a "Bridge" or Haswell gen chips)
 
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memory said:
Would it be feasible to build one for $400? Any newer dual core or higher cpu will be a huge upgrade, 4gb's of ram would be enough, a video card isn't really needed.

I also want something that can be upgraded in the future like adding memory, a video card and an additional hard drive. I would also like to get on the has a mid tower case or bigger.
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Could you build one? Yes. Do you want to support it? I can't answer that.

Also, the generic mid tower Dells and Lenovos are pretty much your standard PC other than the mobo and case. You can add/change RAM, GPU, and HDDs.
 
Does he *need* to reuse or sell the HP? While I'm too lazy to check, I'm guessing the case isn't practical to reuse and those seem to use DDR3 memory so at a bare minimum you're looking at needing:

$10 Case (used, after rebate, gift, whatever)
$200 i5 (willingness to look and wait for sale prices is entirely up to you)
$100 Motherboard (not the worst, nowhere near the best, there's a lot of wiggle room here)
------

$310

Reuse HDD, add $20 if he needs a DVDRW and/or $20AR for a Corsair Builder PSU and you're still at only $350 for the upgrade.

As for the video card, wait and see. Try a board with integrated video then you can always add a card later. You may need new memory but this is something else to try and see later if it matters.

Option #2 is buy a refurb'd OEM, then wipe and sell the HP. Either way it's Time VS Money. Spend more of one to reduce the other.
 
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memory said:
Would he be better off buying a prebuilt? Or could I build him one with much better specs without spending a fortune?
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IMO, go prebuilt. There just aren't the wants or needs for building, here.

He may go up to $5-600 if it is worth it but the cheaper the better. Could I build him one for that price? He will not need Windows, a monitor, keyboard or mouse.
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Yet it is replacing an AIO?

For his budget, could I get a core i-5 machine?
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Maybe. The Lenovo Outlet has several $500 or less Haswell i5 and i3 non-Edge Thinkcentres, ATM.

http://outlet.lenovo.com/outlet_us/itemdetails/10ALX001US/445

Take that, FI, give it another 4GB RAM, if needed, and he would have a nice little upgradeable PC (if they run out, there are others like it, W7 Pro or W8 Pro, Haswell Core i5 or Core i3, for at or under $500).

Being an online flash game, I wouldn't even get a video card, unless there was compelling evidence for needing one.
 
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Cerb said:
IMO, go prebuilt. There just aren't the wants or needs for building, here.

Yet it is replacing an AIO?
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A lot of the downsides of an AIO would be eliminated, if they came with both a video-in and a video-out connector (HDMI?).

That way, if the screen dies, you could still use the PC with an external display (much like a laptop), and if the PC died, you could still use the screen as a monitor.
 
VirtualLarry said:
A lot of the downsides of an AIO would be eliminated, if they came with both a video-in and a video-out connector (HDMI?).

That way, if the screen dies, you could still use the PC with an external display (much like a laptop), and if the PC died, you could still use the screen as a monitor.
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Greater cost, though. AIOs with added display outputs aren't hard to get, but you don't get those cheaply, and probably not at all at retail.
 
We may have made a mistake. We went to a local computer shop to see what they had to offer. They had some refurbished dell dual core pentiums and he also had a brand new still in box Acer Aspire with a quad core.

Well he decided to go with the Acer after using it, it may not be good enough. I myself made a mistake by not taking it out of the box and checking it out before he bought it. It has a Intel celeron quad core 2.0ghz, 4gb ddr3 ram, integrated hd graphics and is running Windows 8.1. What is the word on the celeron quad core? Is it a really low performing quad core compared to the core series?

You see, we tried out the dual core machine on the game he would be playing and it was quite a bit better than the AIO he had. So we both figured the quad core would be even better.

The thing is it has a small form case, motherboard has no slots for video cards or ram. Well, it does have a ram slot but not your normal type of ram, probably expensive to upgrade.

He hasn't made a decision yet if he wants to get a different one. I just want some ideas on what kind of specs he could get on a custom build for $400. He may decide to spend more, he is not sure yet. He will not need Windows or a monitor, just the guts of the pc.

And before anybody says it is the network, it is not. That may have something to do with it but we are on the same network and my computer is much faster than his Acer. Now granted I have a pretty nice machine and spent a little more on mine but this is a flash player game we are talking about. It shouldn't take a beast of a computer to run it.
 
Ah, a Celeron J1900. Or, in other words, and Intel Atom based Celeron, as indicated by the J in its name(Intel's confusing nomencalture strikes again). I haven't checked a direct comparison, but even though Bay Trail Atoms improved on their predecessors, their predecessors were slow to begin with, so they are only slightly better than the E2-1800 at most when only one or two cores are used.

A little primer on CPUs.

Each "core" is a complete CPU*. That one core has a certain clockspeed, and the difficult to ascertain "instructions per clock" variable. While clockspeed is simply given on the specsheet, IPC has to be indirectly determine through benchmarks for us laymen.

After you determine the speed of a single core, then you use core count to add up the performance of each core. The thing with "moar cores" is that not all programs utilize extra cores.

For example, take two CPUs made by the same company. Both have a 2.0 GHz clockspeed and only one core.
CPU 1 performs better than CPU 2 by a significant margin in a benchmark. That means that CPU 1 has a higher IPC than CPU 2.

For many Flash games, they are likely to use only one core, maybe two.

Haswell CPUs(including Haswell Celerons; they have not "J" in their names) have higher IPC than Bay Trail Atom, and they are usually set at higher clock speeds.



*Technically, a complete CPU has both a dedicated integer calculating core and floating point calculating core. CPUs can also perform logic tests. An AMD Bulldozer chip has a module with a dedicated integer unit per "core", but shared floating point units between two cores. Intel's Hyperthreading is another example of a virtual core.
 
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memory said:
Now granted I have a pretty nice machine and spent a little more on mine but this is a flash player game we are talking about. It shouldn't take a beast of a computer to run it.
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I don't see the point in paying hundreds to keep upgrading to yet another years old performance level system. You're (he's) paying $400 for $50 worth of performance increase essentially.

Paying the overhead you face at a computer shop then limiting the budget so much that the system is only half as fast if not slower to get a budget CPU does not make sense to me. Then again I'd never get a proprietary slimline system to save a few inches of space either.

... just one opinion, you or he doesn't have to agree with it. 🙂
 
memory said:
We may have made a mistake. We went to a local computer shop to see what they had to offer. They had some refurbished dell dual core pentiums and he also had a brand new still in box Acer Aspire with a quad core.

Well he decided to go with the Acer after using it, it may not be good enough. I myself made a mistake by not taking it out of the box and checking it out before he bought it. It has a Intel celeron quad core 2.0ghz, 4gb ddr3 ram, integrated hd graphics and is running Windows 8.1. What is the word on the celeron quad core? Is it a really low performing quad core compared to the core series?
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Yes. It's a quad core Atom. For the budget, you can get a refurbed Dell or Lenovo mini or micro tower that can outrun your old Core i7, with a Haswell Core i3 or i5 or better.

You see, we tried out the dual core machine on the game he would be playing and it was quite a bit better than the AIO he had. So we both figured the quad core would be even better.
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The other 3 cores are just going to idle. :\

And before anybody says it is the network, it is not. That may have something to do with it but we are on the same network and my computer is much faster than his Acer. Now granted I have a pretty nice machine and spent a little more on mine but this is a flash player game we are talking about. It shouldn't take a beast of a computer to run it.
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Both computers so far have been in a totally different performance class. Like, Chromebook and building directory kiosk performance class. I don't want to hate on them for what they are, because they really aren't bad CPUs in their element, but you have a use case that simply does not fit them. Nobody's said it's the network, nor will they. Flash games are basically never multithreaded, and run in an optimized proprietary Javascript runtime environment. They can hog a single thread on a single core, more-so than a regular non-flash game would.
 
FYI out of curiosity I tested the Wartune flash game and it did make fairly equal use of both cores on the dual core box it ran on.

I also have played a few other flash games myself that used more than one core so I have to disagree about "basically never multithreaded", except perhaps the really simple ones with performance needs so low it wouldn't matter.
 
mindless1 said:
FYI out of curiosity I tested the Wartune flash game and it did make fairly equal use of both cores on the dual core box it ran on.

I also have played a few other flash games myself that used more than one core so I have to disagree about "basically never multithreaded", except perhaps the really simple ones with performance needs so low it wouldn't matter.
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I tried it on my 3770S and saw two cores doing most of the work. Yes, all 8 cores were doing slightly more than idling, but the game could not kick the clockspeeds to the fullest on my i7 most of the time. It hovered around 2.6 GHz most of the time. If the guy can get an i5, great, but an i3 or an overclocked G3258(latter does need a compatible board) should power through most flash games.
 
I just tried it up to the tutorial boss, and it didn't bring any thread past 40%, but it did go to 20% total a couple times (E3-1230V3), so it must be utilizing more than one thread, though there's just one that seems to be getting a lot of CPU time (or it's causing flash to use a rendering thread, at the least). A Haswell i3 would probably be every bit as good at it.
 
Just a little update, haven't had much time to do anything with this.

With his new acer, the processor goes up to 100% usage when fighting the world boss and stays around 60-80% everywhere else. On my computer, which I know is in a totally different league than what he has but doing the same thing, my cpu usage stays around 20%.

He has decided he wants to get a different one. I been looking at places like hhgregg and they seem to have a really nice one.

http://www.hhgregg.com/dell-desktop-pc-with-intel-core-i5-4440-processor/item/I38474616BK

That would seem to be more than capable. I know it has integrated graphics. How good are these integrated graphics on these processors? I have a few older video cards myself that I could stick in there. But how would a 8800GTS 512mb video card compare to the integrated graphics?

Without opening it up and looking, can I tell if it has pci slots?
 
memory said:
He has decided he wants to get a different one. I been looking at places like hhgregg and they seem to have a really nice one.

http://www.hhgregg.com/dell-desktop-pc-with-intel-core-i5-4440-processor/item/I38474616BK

Without opening it up and looking, can I tell if it has pci slots?
Click to expand...

That one has decent specs, for the money. No picture loaded for me, but if it's a standard ATX tower form-factor (and not slim or SFF / USFF), then it should have a PCI-E x16 slot in it.
 
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