My wife has decided that she wants a PC for her desk instead of the laptop. Usage is mainly excel, word and some browsing. Watching netflix or youtube type thing. Really light stuff.
I have a old ryzen 1600 cpu but no mobo for it. (the original mobo has a 3800x in it atm). This was being used in my streaming PC (NVENC encoding so cpu didn’t matter), and only upgraded it because I upgraded the 3800x to the 5800x in my main machine.
Do you think the 1600 would be enough today for the basic requirements she needs without being sluggish. My gut is yes, but would rather ask before getting another mobo.
I have tons of other spare parts like PSU’s etc and even cases, so trying to keep costs down as much as possible.
I know you said you have spare parts around but these new mini-pc’s are really cheap and is much newer hardware. This particular one is a barebones system so you can save on cost and just throw in some Ram and a SSD.
I’m sure the Ryzen 1600 would be perfectly fine, for what she’s doing. It’s only what? 6 years old or so. Just pair it with an SSD and some ram and she’ll be perfectly happy, I doubt that she’ll have any issues.
I was looking at a Mini PC to prevent the “the box is too big and not beautiful” complaints, but honestly the last time (many 100’s of years ago) i touched one of these the performance under windows was just bad. There is one here with that does look interesting with a Ryzen 5 5500U Chip in it. MINI PC (มินิพีซี) ASUS PN51-E1-B-B5210MD
Will need to investigate the performance of these.
Yeah that’s my thought. Extra cost would be a mobo and case. Maybe some ddr4 ram. We are talking really basic computing here. I do have a micro-ATX case, so was even thinking that form factor as a possibility. The 1600 was always an extremely solid chip.
Wendell has several videos posted of newer generations of these mini pc’s and I think you will find them much more capable than the ones you are thinking of. The performance gains in the low power processor market have been huge.
I did some research on that 5500u model I posted earlier. You are correct. With the ability to boost it up to 30W usage, you can actually game on it! pretty amazing to see… but then I shouldn’t really be surprised with the way the steamdeck performs.
Seems like the mini pc might be the better idea. Small, clean and no complaints of “it’s not bootiful!!!”… Biggest issue about it is that the cats won’t be able to sleep on the top. lol
A320 motherboard + some RAM for the 1600 seems like a good solution, wouldn’t cost much, and would fit in the micro-ATX case you mentioned. I guess the main concern is a GPU for the machine, as the 1600 doesn’t have a GPU on-chip, do you have something basic that would suffice?
I do have an old 1070, but would be an overkill, also not sure if it will fit in the box. As my previous message, probably leaning towards on of those mini PC’s now. Probably a little more than kit bashing, but less work overall.
R5 1600 would be certainly serviceable, for general purpose stuff
Could build around the likes, of Fractal Designs Node 202 [or insert other dainty iTX box]
it will depend on which o.s. you intend running as to whether that cpu is worthy…
win 11 your shit outa luck im affraid. its not supported.
win 10 will be fine as will win 7… but both are eol now.
Windows 10 would be the poison of choice. Got a pihole to stop all the telemetry stuff, but there are some versions around without all the extra crap running, so will probably go with one of those. I did put her a on linux a while back, she loved the Thai support, but in the end… office.
Windows 11 ain’t going anywhere near me… although i did hear of the “Ghost Spectre” distro that completely removes all the crap including edge.
Any decent i5 or equivalent AMD CPU will do the trick if you don’t want gaming.
I got mine an i5 Intel NUC from work that they were decommissioning. Linux Mint Cinnamon, 16GB RAM (I added 8GB), 256GB SSD. Plays her YouTube channels @ 1080 and no issues with FB or her usual social channels. With everything open, it runs at 85% CPU and with little to no noise.
(More seriously) Wendell just did a video (on YouTube) on how well a Ryzen 1700 stands up to modern equivalents. It acquitted itself well, on an MSI X370 motherboard. You should check it out. She’ll probably be fine, although a nice newer machine would be better, and Zen3 prices are coming down quite significantly now.
your gut is correct! but for how long and like others have said about W10 eol, if linux isn’t an option then an older platform might be more trouble than its worth?
i run a coffeelake nuc & though i have outgrown this little thing by a lot and i am ready for all the cores in the world with all of the tasty Ghz, this little nuc has been great and I’ve really thrown a lot at it!
like others have said, the newer nucs out now as shown by Wendell and others, they really do kick butt and come somewhat future-proof but obviously for a price
so form-factor wonderful, simplicity also wonderful and yeah upgrade options limited to memory and storage but for your Wife’s use-case, a nuc is plenty and some of the new nuc or small form factor ones out now can even play AAA at decent resolutions and decent settings too thanks to integrated graphics making nice use of DDR5.
But there’s nothing wrong with going the way of building something with stuff you have, like saving a bunch of $ with the ryzen 1600 and building around it. Hope this helps
Is the laptop too slow, or does she want a larger monitor / better keyboard / better speakers, etc?
If the issue is form factor and not performance, then a Thunderbolt dock and her existing laptop (or a used one from the last few years) should do the trick:
A single connection to the laptop will connect keyboard, mouse, monitor, network, and charger. This has the added benefit that all the work is on a computer that can be carried around.
She has a monitor, keyboard (which i will reuse) etc. all connected, but its an old i7 6500u which windows has obliterated to be rather sluggish even though on ssd. Its old and in need of a replacement tbh. I might repurpose it for a linux machine.
