here is what they have:
amd 5350 sempron on an am1 board . they use it to surf the web, watch movies and do minor word processing; no gaming, no video/audio trans-coding nothing to really push the processor.
the reason for the upgrade is the onboard graphics are no longer supported by amd, and they get a blue screen with "thread stuck in device driver caused by address atikmdag.sys+e7f0b ATI Radeon Kernel. crash address ntoskrnl.exe+70e00 " . could be the mobo, processor or the driver.
this has happened approximately 1-3x a week for the past 6 months or so. the amd software keeps updating, but the driver version only supports R5 and up (the 5350 has R3 graphics).
i had thought about just sticking a video card in there, but due to the mini-itx form factor (and lack of expansion slots in the low profile case) this would prove to be hard to do.
this appears to be a very common error in older AMD apuâs .
anyways onward to the build:
thinking about a G4400 pentium with 8GB ram on a gigabyte board. they want to preserve all data so i will reuse the hard drive (after imaging it for a backup). they are in their 70âs and dont want to move away from windows 7.
and yes i know there are hacks to get around windows 7 and kaby/coffee lake & ryzen, however i dont want to have them re-applying patches for this after every update. so skylake it is. (thanks $micro$oft)
the budget is fairly limited, and i want to use new (as in unused) parts for maximum reliability.
i already have a case here and a new dvd drive (for movies) . i realize the need for a video card, but that doesnt seem to be in the budget for a new build. the intel 510 graphics (as bad as they are) are worlds better than the R3 on the 5350.
any opinions on something better for around the same price?
perhaps something different altogether (as i may be way off base here).
go linux. Youâll likely be able to do more than than you currently can - and it works just fine.
else,
its Ryzen.
am4 doesnât have any issues, and drivers are available for amd site. Only thing that may require is usb 3.0/3.1 driver - but all you need to do is run installer with â-installâ argument
Setup.exe -install
, and theyâll install correctly.
Your error points to bad vram - if its apu and uses system memory run a memtest.
I donât think there is really. Your config is really on point and I wouldnât gamble going with Linux or try some weird combo. Maybe you could get a used Skylake i5 (6400 maybe?) for cheap to give that PC a bit more humpf while keeping the same parts you chose.
to re-iterate, they are in their 70âs and want windows 7. so linux is out. and as i stated, i dont want to have to either have them re-apply the patch for ryzen/kaby lake/coffee lake support. so no ryzen or 7th + gen intel.
With that usage in mind, might I suggest a dc-dc powered board? Or NUC?
If youâre on budget, check out Braswell powered J3160DC from Asrock.
All you need is some ddr3 so-dimms, and ssd.
Well, and case, but this thing does not produce much heat so itx case for 40$ is fine
WR250, doncha wish folks would run with what you are asking instead of âya ottaâ.
I have no words of wisdom for the specific upgrade you are talking about. I assume that you are attempting to slide in a new motherboard / processor under windows without triggering Windowsâ licensing issues?
And of course allow windows to reboot / update drivers to get it all working with minimal head scratching?
That is always tricky. I would guess however that staying with an AMD MB with a 2200g might make the upgrade easier, given that is AMD to AMD instead of AMD - Intel. Iâm wondering why you would choose to move to Intel.
I will say that popping in a new low end graphics card might be the easiest method though. Look on newegg for a very low end AMD graphics card .
i can slide the new hardware without licensing issues. it is not pirated, and can be done using microsofts built in tools.
amd will not support ryzen under windows 7, nor will microsoft. therefore to avoid that headache of supporting it myself (via patching/re-patching indefinably to allow win7 to update), i choose the skylake platform.
as someone said before âit appears to be a vrm issueâ and i tend to agree the motherboard has problems. i replaced a PSU last year right before this started, as it was faulty (intermittantly losing the 5V rail among other things) so its its likely the mobo is bad.
i give what they ask for if possible. they want win7 . they dont want vista, xp,8,8.1,10, *linux, *bsd. and thats what they want. i did talk about upgrading to 10 to which i got âno way, i dont want to learn a new operating systemâ . so theres that.
You know thereâs no need to shove Linux down through someoneâs throat like if itâs a fucking interrogation camp. If they canât and have no desire to use it, let it beâŚ
Judging by the use case, I wouldnât sweat finding a graphics card in their budget. If you did have a little extra headroom in the budget, perhaps spring for the i3 6100 (HD 530 and 2 more threads)? I second finding a small SSD (or swapping the HDD with a same size SSD, BAM! everything is faster!) I would do the SSD route before going to the i3.
Just an aside, Linux is not a âbetter operating systemâ than windows 7. It is very different. You like it. The op specifically stated windows 7 is a MUST.
