Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
Help me pick a computer? Year-end madness has a hold of me. I have all Linux computers now and I thought these refurbished computers would give me a great chance to nab Windows 7 and upgrade it to Windows 10. (If I can. One guy did it on the $59 dollar machine.) Any opinions on which would be best (of the three)? Thanks. Gregg
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...9SIAAYZ8AA3963 |
My current desktop is a refurb ex-corporate HP SFF box, which came with a an Intel i5-2400 CPU at 3.1-3.4 GHZ, 8GB RAM, and a 500GB SATA HD with Win7 Pro installed.
It was an emergency replacement for a Dell SFF unit that suffered a power supply failure, and the design was such that I needed to get a new machine.
I had gotten a 240GB Crucial SSD and a low profile ATI-AMD video card to replace the built-in Intel graphics in the Dell. I reused both in the HP.
I had upgraded the Dell from Win7 Pro to Win10 Pro with MS's free upgrade offer. MS's free upgrade offer was long over when I got the HP, but I had downloaded the Win10 Pro upgrade media to a thumb drive. As expected, when I plugged in the thumb drive and ran setup from it, it upgraded the Win7 Pro install to Win10 Pro just fine. (I did have to tell it
not to look for updates before installing. I did that at first, and it came back and told me it couldn't find a valid Win10 license. I killed the upgrade process and restarted and told it
not to check for updates, and it matter of factly installed Win10 Pro and then checked for updates as the last thing it did.
)
Once I was up and running on Win10, I wiped the SSD and reset it to factory stock state, then cloned the Win10 install on the SATA drive to the SSD and set it as the boot drive.
As it happened, the onboard Intel HD2000 graphics on the HP motherboard performed better than the AMD-ATI card, so it got pulled and is sitting in a parts drawer.
I
do recommend more than 4GB RAM. My HP came with 8GB, but I can go up to 32GB if needed. Thus far, no need, but the headroom is there is I need it.
I also recommend getting an SSD. You get a nice performance boost, with booting and program loads happening much faster. I just got a 120GB SSD from budget vendor at my local Micro Center outlet for $30. It's a mid life kicker for an old netbook. The fact that it's a budget model isn't a concern. SSDs have gotten for more reliable, an online torture test reports have reported
petabytes of writes required before any failed.
And you may want to check that the CPU in the machine you buy is on Win10's supported list. I discovered after the fact that the quad-core Xeon CPU in the Dell was not on the supported list, and the system only saw two of the four cores. The i5-2400 is supported and sees and uses all four cores.
Without a closer look at the three you listed, it's hard to make detailed recommendations beyong checking the CPU is supported by Win10.
One area I'd think hard about is serviceability. The Dell was a PITA to work in when I needed to pop the hood. The HP was designed for easy service, and it was easy to pop the hood and get to what was installed. It was also expandable. I was able to install teh SSD as boot drive, the supplied SATA HD as data drive,
and installed the SATA HD from the old Dell as a secondary data drive. (I repurposed the SATA port the onboard DVD player used for that, as I have no need to access DVDs.) More recently, I added a PCI-e USB 3.0 card, as the HP didn't come with it, and a 4 port USB3 hub plugging into it. There was a spare mini-PCI-e slot the card could fit into. Works fine.
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Dennis