Windows 2000 Posted October 1, 2019 Share Posted October 1, 2019 Hello everyone! As said in the title, I'm gonna be making a tight budget PC build for my grandpa and the parts which I have choosen as of now are: Athlon 200GE CPU with Radeon Vega 3 Graphics Gigabyte A320M-H Motherboard Kingston 2x4GB DDR4 2666MHz RAM Transcend 120GB M2 SSD Cougar 400W 80 Plus Bronze PSU The machine in question is going to be used mostly for YouTube, regular email checking, some office work, playing music and occasional 1080p/4K video playback and I was wondering whether the Athlon 200GE can handle all of those tasks smoothly paired with the M2 SSD, 8GBs of RAM and Windows 10 Home. Please note that this is my second PC build so I might have made some mistakes. The goal is to make a power efficient, quiet, fast, cheap and a long lasting PC. Any tips and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Have a great day and thanks for reading! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alacran Posted October 1, 2019 Share Posted October 1, 2019 (edited) 3 hours ago, Windows 2000 said: occasional 1080p/4K video playback I think it will work fine at 1080p, but not fine at 4K Full HD = 1920 horizontal lines by 1080 vertical lines 4K = 3840 horizontal lines by 2160 vertical lines It means 4K has double horizontal lines by double vertical lines, 2 x 2 = 4 times the Full HD resolution or 4 times the load to the GPU. See this review: https://www.windowscentral.com/amd-athlon-200ge-worth-it Edited October 1, 2019 by alacran 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WalksInSilence Posted October 1, 2019 Share Posted October 1, 2019 (edited) Agree ^ should be good enough for 1080p video playback but it is easy to find reviews that show you'd be lucky to get any game made in the last three years playing at acceptable fps even at minimum quality settings. That is a good indicator of Radeon Vega 3 graphics capabilities or better described as lack of capability. However that article/review above reminded me that one of the reasons I went for the i3 with Intel HD4600 graphics 4th generation CPU I use in my daily use PC was that it could get Tomb Raider 2013 playing at 25+fps. Those review figures suggest the Vega 3 graphics are considerably better so, for general use online, you can be confident it will be absolutely fine. 8GB RAM is more than you need for the purposes described but I would not skimp on that. Only change I'd make is with the SSD - more is better. I too use a 120GB for the OS and programs and if there is one thing I'd do with a new build now and the same budget is double that or more. 120GB soon gets filled and in absence of any other built in storage it could be limiting. My Crucial 120GB cost me a little more than £50/$65 which was good value 4 years ago but for that price you can buy a decent 500GB SSD now. You can get 240GB ones for under £30/$40. Far cheaper and faster than any external storage solution. Edited October 1, 2019 by WalksInSilence 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alacran Posted October 1, 2019 Share Posted October 1, 2019 (edited) @Windows 2000 I think you should buy the best AMD CPU with included graphics, and compatible Motherboard you can pay, and it will have better graphic capavilities and will be good for long time, about the storage I differ a little with WalkInSilence, since for starting the SSD you selected is good enought for OS (32 GB is the requirement for any x64 OS) and still have some space (about 85 GB) available, then latter when/if required you can add a secondary (mechanical) HDD or a secondary bigger SSD if you prefer, to increase the storage. So better put more the money on CPU and motherboard than in a bigger SSD. Or you will lament it later. About the Motherboard: Asus is my prefered option even the entry level models. Gigabyte is also a reputable brand and would be my second option. Don't buy a cheaper brand as they usually faill sooner than the 2 mentioned brands, just to let you know I still have an i3 3225 running on an Asus MB (first and only MB used), and another i3 3225 (My brother PC) still working (both builded with a difference of 3 months) is on its third MB (one Asrock and now on second Biostar), soket 1155 MBs were not available anymore but I had 2 used Biostar from upgraded PCs. Edited October 2, 2019 by alacran 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Windows 2000 Posted October 2, 2019 Author Share Posted October 2, 2019 Thanks for the replies. About the SSD, it is just 128GB as there aren't gonna be any programs on this system really. If space is so scarce, as @alacran said, I could always add a secondary 2tb hdd, but I don't think that it would be initially necessary for my grandpa. Afterall, YouTube and Ebay don't take 80GBs so easily. I am more worried about Windows Update to be very honest. I might just stick a 240GB M2 SSD as it is just 20€ more. About the the CPU situation, I will try opting for a Ryzen 3 2200G, but only if the budget allows it of course, because this is as previously mentioned, a pretty tight budget system. 7 hours ago, alacran said: Asus is my prefered option even the entry level models. Gigabyte is also a reputable brand and would be my second option. Don't buy a cheaper brand as they usually faill sooner than the 2 mentioned brands, just to let you know I still have an i3 3225 running on an Asus MB (first and only MB used), and another i3 3225 (My brother PC) still working (both builded with a difference of 3 months) is on its third MB (one Asrock and now on second Biostar), soket 1155 MBs were not available anymore but I had 2 used Biostar from upgraded PCs. About the motherboard, I have had some rough past with Asus mobos so I would really prefer to just get a Gigabyte or Asrock one over it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WalksInSilence Posted October 2, 2019 Share Posted October 2, 2019 (edited) I was going to bring up the Windows Updates issue. That 32GB recommended free space for 64bit OS mentioned by alacran is a MS joke. My Win7 64bit Windows folder is now 3+ years old and it has grown about 4GB/year, every year. The monthly Windows Updates marked as 'Important' are typically 250+MB minimum. They do not just replace they usually add so with only essential updates there is a 3GB/year reduction of free space. That is without the optional updates like MS .NET Framework which is actually required for a number of popular 3rd party programs. My Windows folder is now 36+GB, so long ago that recommended 32GB free space was shown to be a ridiculous under-estimate of what is really required. Add Pagefile.sys (default = total RAM ie. in this case 8GB) and Hiberfil.sys and that's another huge chunk of free space lost too. On my current system (16GB RAM) those two take up 26GB. The 120GB SSD which I'm also using on this this PC is shown as half full just with the OS and other system files. Edited October 3, 2019 by WalksInSilence 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alacran Posted October 2, 2019 Share Posted October 2, 2019 (edited) I updated my 7x64 Iso upto Dic/2017 just before all the debacle about Meltdown and Spectre, and installed the OS, since then I decided to stop updating the OS, since every update is full of telemetry and also very frecuently bugy, I have Avast Free AV, and run maybe once every 2 months the AV and also Malwarebytes Antimalware free, just to confirm the PC is clean, and I haven't got a single virus. So only updates on my PC are for FireFox, Avast and Antimalware. Now Win7 support is very close to end, I may update my Iso with the final last update, (cleaning as much telemetry as possible) and reinstall 7x64 and will use it as log as there are AV and browser available for it. So my OS do not grow at same rate as yours, it is using right now 21.5 GB from a 50 GB partition, System restore is deactivated, since I make periodicaly full images of each OS in the PC, documents, all games and majority of programs are installed on another partition, I have backups of all important info on external disks, the idea is keep to OS partition basicaly with only the OS, Office, AV and browser to get the smaller size when making an image of the OS partition. Also have 10x64 on another partition (it was done to get the free HWID register only, almost never used), and Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon x64 on a secondary disk, wich I have been testing for about 2 or 3 weeks now and so far found it is a good solid OS (and you get about twice or thrice a week small size updates) only issues are many games and Autocad do not run on Linux, but for anything else it is very fine. Edited October 3, 2019 by alacran 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RooseveltDowling Posted October 17, 2019 Share Posted October 17, 2019 On 10/2/2019 at 2:24 AM, alacran said: Don't buy a cheaper brand as they usually faill sooner than the 2 mentioned brands, just to let you know I still have an i3 3225 running on an Asus MB (first and only MB used), and another i3 3225 (My brother PC) still working (both builded with a difference of 3 months) is on its third MB (one Asrock and now on second Biostar), soket 1155 MBs were not available anymore but I had 2 used Biostar from upgraded PCs. I absolutely agree with this! I've tried to buy cheaper processor and, you know, penny wise and pound foolish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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