Going to buy more computers tomorrow...

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury)
04/20/2020 at 19:16 • Filed to: None

Just doing my part to keep the economy, as it currently exists, alive.

The first one is a 14" HP Chromebook for $40. I just want something simple with a decent size screen and good battery life. It’ll probably replace an older iPad for which I have new plans.

The second one is an Acer all-in-one touchscreen system for $50. The processor isn’t much, just a Pentium of some sort, but it’s an 1155 chip and I can throw in something a lot faster out of my collection of spare parts. The other interesting thing about it is that it appears to use a low-profile PCIe video card, and it looks like it can easily be replaced, something that I did not expect. There’s probably nothing available to make it a good folding machine, but anything I could toss in there should be better than stock. A 1030 or 1050 should fit, although with some of the thicker ones I might have to leave off the back of the computer which, in my house, is absolutely normal.

DISCUSSION (19)

ZHP Sparky, the 5th > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
04/20/2020 at 19:44

$40 for a brand new Chromebook ? Damn that’s cheaper than 2 pizzas delivered ! I’ve never tried a Chromebook, that price makes it tempting just for the hell of it.

gin-san - shitpost specialist > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
04/20/2020 at 19:44

You make me want to dig my old PC out of the closet.

I haven’t fired it up in 6-7 years, but if I recall it’s a Core2 Quad Q6600 but it’s so old that it would need a much bigger overhaul. Can’t recall if that gen of PC had USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, PCIE X16, and all that stuff...

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > ZHP Sparky, the 5th
04/20/2020 at 19:46

Not new, not at that price. But these things are so simple that there’s really little to go wrong.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > gin-san - shitpost specialist
04/20/2020 at 19:54

Kinja'd!!!

Here’s my old Q6600. I don’t know the speed of the SATA ports, but it does have PCIe x16, although probably just 2.0; even my i7 2600 doesn’t have PCIe 3.0, and this was a challenge when I was trying to upgrade the GPU. No USB 3, but that could easily be added with a card; there are probably ones out there that have USB 3 and SATA 3 together. When I put an SSD on it I was surprised at how well it ran for an old machine.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
04/20/2020 at 20:08

Damn, good deals! Some of those Intel-based Chromebooks can be tweaked to run a full Linux distro as well, which is pretty cool!

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
04/20/2020 at 20:08

Damn, good deals! Some of those Intel-based Chromebooks can be tweaked to run a full Linux distro as well, which is pretty cool!

SiennaMan > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
04/20/2020 at 20:09

Makes me want to buy a couple of chromebooks to reclaim the family laptops from the kids currently distance learning on them..

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > gin-san - shitpost specialist
04/20/2020 at 20:10

Hell, a Core 2 Quad would still be perfectly fine for a Media Center PC....I have a Core 2 Quad running my Media Center PC downstairs as we speak with an old Radeon HD4850 video card....does 1080p just fine!

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
04/20/2020 at 20:13

I’ve always wanted one of those all-in-ones ever since HP started the trend but I know they’re not nearly powerful or upgradeable enough for my needs.

I actually have a 1030 (the good one with the gddr5) that I would have sold to you but as of yesterday it’s been reserved for the SFF case I’m resurrecting .

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/20/2020 at 20:23

I prefer a tower case with plenty of room for upgrades and tweaking, but sometimes I want something simple and contained that I don't have to think about abs can easily move around. After upgrading it I might just send it to my mother to replace her aging desktop.

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
04/20/2020 at 20:30

My understanding is that the all-in-ones are basically just laptops where the guts are behind the screen. Too many custom designed parts designed around tight clearances to be worth trying to fiddle with.

facw > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
04/20/2020 at 20:31

I recently replaced my 4670 with a 5500XT. Got annoyed that W indows kept trying to replace the working video driver with a new WHQL one that maxes out at 1024x768 (the old driver isn’t officially supported under Windows 10). Also felt bad about not being able to output 4k to my 4k TV. Plus has some weird compression arti facts with Steam s treaming that I don’t have with other machines (mainly blacks come out greenish ).

gin-san - shitpost specialist > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
04/20/2020 at 20:36

I think the only must-have component is an SSD as the boot drive. I still remember being floored at how quickly my current PC booted into Windows compared to the old one. Good to know it’s still running that stuff without any issue!

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
04/20/2020 at 20:40

That is generally the case and why I haven’t bothered with them until I saw this particular one. If you look at the picture you’ll see that the CPU is easily accessible and as it turns out is a desktop, not a laptop, part. And in the upper right is the low-profile video card in a standard PCIe slot plugged in using DVI - nothing proprietary there (and it leaves the HDMI connection available ; I watched a video of a guy in Malaysia disassembling one of these and was sold when I saw these two things. My only real complaint is the RAM. Only two slots and apparently limited to just 8GB, but that should be enough for basic usage. One other interesting thing is that it has HDMI in and out ports.

facw > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing.
04/20/2020 at 20:41

My Q6600 is I think still around at my parents somewhere. It probably should go to electronics recycling though. It’s just a bit too old.

Kinja'd!!!

Last gasp for Abit. 6x 3Gbs SATA, plus 2 more eSATA. 10x USB 2.0. 2x Firewire. Dual gigabit ethernet. Random 4-pin molex connector on the board because I guess even the 8-pin power connector wasn’t enough. 2 16x PCI-E slots (one 4x electronically). I actually ran this machine with dual 3870s and then later dual 5870s . All passively cooled. I originally bought it with a Radeon 2900 Pro, which is the worst high-en d graphics card I’ve ever had, but luckily the 3870 was great and cheap, so replacing it didn’t hurt.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > gin-san - shitpost specialist
04/20/2020 at 21:50

Agreed! My current Win10 system, (Core i7, Rad eon HD7870, 8GB RAM) has a Windows install that has been through 3 computers on like 3 different hard drives, lol...it was originally a Win7 install on my old Core 2 Duo system (which is actually Core 2 Quad system I mentioned as it originally had a Duo before I upgraded it to a Quad) on an old 160GB HDD, cloned to a larger HDD, then moved to my current rig and re-activated, then cloned to my current SSD. It’s boot time even on my current system was like 5-7 minutes from a cold off to usable...once it was up, it was perfectly fine, but the boot time was always really long.

Now it’s literally like 20-30 seconds on a Samsung EVO SSD...it’s hilarious the difference...

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > facw
04/20/2020 at 21:51

I wouldn’t recycle it...if you could put a fresh install of Win10 on it, I bet you could sell it for $100...at least you could around here, and that $100 would be in CAD in my world, of course...but hey, income is income for something you were just going to through away and it keeps something else out of the recycling bin that is still usable!

facw > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
04/20/2020 at 22:01

Well a legal copy of Windows 10 would cost that much to begin with. And even if I played fast and loose with the licensing, I’m not sure that would be a good use of my time.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > facw
04/20/2020 at 22:24

If you have a copy of Win7 for it, you can do a basic install of that and then upgrade it to Win10 for free using Microsoft’s own upgrade tool.

I get where you’re coming from...but at the same time, send it to me if you don’t want it! :P That’s the type of thing I do to make some side cash - computer repair/tutoring/help and fixing up and selling older systems to make them useful again. I am sure the shipping charges would only be slightly astronomical! :P