PSA: If you currently have anything slower than a G4560 or Ryzen 3 1200, UPGRADE!

VirtualLarry

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Just a short PSA. Really, these CPUs are quite speedy, and at roughly $100 ea., they are (mostly) affordable.

Or, just buy an off-lease Dell with a Sandy or Ivy Bridge quad-core off of ebay, you can get more-or-less complete systems with a quad-core and onboard iGPU for $150 or slightly less.

This, after building out an ASRock DeskMini H110W mini-STX barebones PC that I picked up at Newegg a few days ago for $130. Drop in a G4560 (bought for $62 or less, before the price hike / shortage), 2x4GB DDR4-2400 (was pricey, like $75 at today's RAM prices, ouch!), a Plextor TLC 128GB M.2 PCI-E SSD ($75 again, frikken fast), kit comes with an M.2 Intel 3160 802.11ac 1x1 Wifi / BlueTooth card, and add Windows (bring your own copy, or old Windows 7 key to activate 10), and build and install, and voila!

A really kick-axe desktop PC, small in size, but QUITE powerful for browsing, and with the PCI-E SSD, silky-smooth operation.

I'm running mine at 4K60 through DisplayPort, using an active HDMI2.0 adapter, and it's great.

Every Millenial should invest in one of these things, just to be able to say that "I own a desktop PC". You can do it, it's not evil to own a desktop PC. But more importantly, "It's NOT your parent's tower PC".

Edit: No, the DeskMini is NOT a "gaming PC". The refurb / used Dell towers with quad-cores could easily be, though - just drop in a GTX1050 or GTX1050ti.

Edit: To add a Coffee Lake i3-8100 to the list of possible "minimum upgrade" CPUs. Think of one with an ITX mobo.
 
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mohit9206

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Jul 2, 2013
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PC hardware is becoming more and more expensive. Ram prices have doubled and are further expected to increase by another 40%.
Graphics card prices have shot up as well.
Prices on all computer components have shot up and taxes have increased.
All while one can just buy a brand new PS4 for $250...
 

kwalkingcraze

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Jan 2, 2017
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PC hardware is becoming more and more expensive...
Except for this Biostar Hi-Fi A70U3P FM2+ board...

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138415

I know about all the price increases on all PC parts, so I've decided to buy-up and stock-up all the final-edition LGA1150, FM2+, and AM3+ boards as best as possible, and then I officially exit the PC building game for the rest of my life. These obsolete sockets should last me for the next 40 years, and I will have a $5 i7-4790 by 2057 year. Some boards will die of course, but capacitors have 50 year shelf-life at room temperature. I should be fine, maybe Windows 10 will be here for next 20 years.
 
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coercitiv

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Jan 24, 2014
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Prices on all computer components have shot up and taxes have increased.
That's exaggerated.

Motherboards, CPUs and SSDs are largely unaffected. SSDs did not continue their GB/$ increase trend and are currently stagnating, but that's hardly a problem for people who were buying 128/256 GB models anyway.

The only problems now are RAM and select dGPUs. Many Nvidia cards can be found close to MSRP.
 

kwalkingcraze

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Jan 2, 2017
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Let's not panic on price increases. I actually find the Z170 boards giving good deals with prices much lower than Z97 before, due to Z270 out, and now Z370 next, so that makes the Z170 hard to compete. This lead to more clearance and discounts. I just picked up a new-in-box Asus Z170-K for $32.99 after rebate from authorized Asus reseller, but I haven't bought the DDR4 RAM yet due to high price. :-(
 
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NTMBK

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Except for this Biostar Hi-Fi A70U3P FM2+ board...

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138415

I know about all the price increases on all PC parts, so I've decided to buy-up and stock-up all the final-edition LGA1150, FM2+, and AM3+ boards as best as possible, and then I officially exit the PC building game for the rest of my life. These obsolete sockets should last me for the next 40 years, and I will have a $5 i7-4790 by 2057 year. Some boards will die of course, but capacitors have 50 year shelf-life at room temperature. I should be fine, maybe Windows 10 will be here for next 20 years.

However all the CPU options for that board are dog slow. False economy.
 

VirtualLarry

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That's a MUCH better option... OK, maybe slightly better, since it opens up the options on AM4.

But no overclocking, which makes Larry a sad panda.

I was able to pick up an Asus B350M-E Prime a couple of weeks ago, for $60. I would easily spend the extra $10 for a B350 board, to enable overclocking. My A8-9600 auto-OC using OC Genie to 3.90Ghz. (I had it manually set to 4.0, but it wasn't fully stable.)

Even overclocked to 3.90Ghz, though, the A8-9600 wasn't as fast as the G4560 in the CPU dept., both ST and MT, I think. FailDozer derivatives, are still mostly fail. Although the A8-9600 is one of the "least fail" of the family.
 
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ao_ika_red

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Aug 11, 2016
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That's a MUCH better option... OK, maybe slightly better, since it opens up the options on AM4.

But no overclocking, which makes Larry a sad panda.
My main point is only because it has longer life, system wise, than a8 you've shown earlier. And even it has piss-poor cpu compared to G4560, it fully supports AVX and FMA3. So actually it has pretty interesting feature to limited customers.
 

VirtualLarry

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I'm still using an amd phenom ii x4 920 :D
That's not horrible, but is getting a little bit dated. I still have my Core2Quad Q9300 rigs, but I don't currently use them. At least it's a quad-core.

I've got a friend with an Athlon II X4, and another friend with a A10-5800K. Been trying to get them to upgrade for a while now, but they just keep chugging along. :)

I guess people that are more practical than I, don't spend every last remaining dollar on desktop PC hardware, like I do. I guess it's a sickness, of sorts. :p
 

gorb

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Feb 25, 2011
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That's not horrible, but is getting a little bit dated. I still have my Core2Quad Q9300 rigs, but I don't currently use them. At least it's a quad-core.

I've got a friend with an Athlon II X4, and another friend with a A10-5800K. Been trying to get them to upgrade for a while now, but they just keep chugging along. :)

I guess people that are more practical than I, don't spend every last remaining dollar on desktop PC hardware, like I do. I guess it's a sickness, of sorts. :p

I've been meaning to upgrade for years but just haven't gotten around to it. I don't play any games so I don't need anything fancy. Just regular browsing/shopping/music listening. I'd probably save money on our electricity bill if I upgraded to something more modern.
 

SPBHM

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Sep 12, 2012
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memory prices are pretty bad, so unless the performance gain is significant I think it makes sense keeping the old DDR3 stuff for as long as you can...
 
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WhoBeDaPlaya

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I'm still using an amd phenom ii x4 920 :D
Nothing wrong with PII. Still have a few OCed X6 1045t rigs in service.
Very usable by today's standards, though they're only equivalent to a highly OCed 2500K even in MT workloads.
 
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kwalkingcraze

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Jan 2, 2017
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memory prices are pretty bad, so unless the performance gain is significant I think it makes sense keeping the old DDR3 stuff for as long as you can...
I found putting just one 2GB DDR3 1600 stick valued at $5, overclock and change CAS latency from 11 to 8, along with SSD drive, performs just as well as 4GB with 5400RPM mechanical hard drive. Single-thread faster too. I don't know if the world is ready to go back to 2GB with faster CAS latency and SSD standard, because I sure think there's hope. 16GB DDR4 is a rip-off. Windows 10 barely needs that much, and it consumes LESS RAM than Windows 7 and 8.1 before. Remember to set shared graphics memory no higher than 64MB.
 
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escrow4

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Feb 4, 2013
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With local currency conversion the local difference between a 1200 and 7500 non K is $101 with maybe $20 in it for mobos. Personally I'd probably still stick with Intel. Its mature, it works, there is no fiddling and its plug n play. Besides:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11658/the-amd-ryzen-3-1300x-ryzen-3-1200-cpu-review/17

"If we ignore the Ryzen 5 1500X in the top right corner, there are a few stories here.

First is that the Ryzen 3 1200 does not look like an attractive option. It performs +2-3% of the Pentium but is $30 more expensive, and the Core i3-7100 beats it by 8% for only a sub-$10 cost.

Then there is the Ryzen 3 1300X. Compared to the Core i3-7300/7320 and the Core i5-7400, it clearly wins on performance per dollar all around. Compared to the Core i3-7100 though, it offers almost 5% more performance for around $10-15 more, which is just under 10% of the cost. Depending on budgets, each one could be an attractive option."
 

mohit9206

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Jul 2, 2013
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Neither the ryzen 1200 nor 1300X is actually good value. Does not have igpu and ST performance not better than G4560. Not sure why its priced at $110 and $130 and they both should be under $80-90.
 

VirtualLarry

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Aug 25, 2001
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I agree that the Ryzen 3 1200 should be under $100. I've seen it for $99.99 thus far, here's hoping that it drops to $89.99, with street prices even a few dollars lower.

Edit: I disagree about them not being a good value, if you include overclocking (just use a B350 or X370 mobo rather than an A320, it's a no-brainer). When overclocked to 3.8Ghz, the R3 1200 is nearly as fast as a G4560 in ST, and rather faster in MT.

You've got a good point, though. No iGPU on Ryzen CPUs. Have to wait for Raven Ridge for that.
 
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mohit9206

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I agree that the Ryzen 3 1200 should be under $100. I've seen it for $99.99 thus far, here's hoping that it drops to $89.99, with street prices even a few dollars lower.

Edit: I disagree about them not being a good value, if you include overclocking (just use a B350 or X370 mobo rather than an A320, it's a no-brainer).
Yes but $100 in usa.
Here we pay taxes on top on the mrp. Ryzen 1300X $156 while G4560 $85.
overclocking is good to have but again B350 cost atleast $100 here while H110 can be had for $60.
 
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