Hey Oz family,
My mum currently has a old Celeron G1840, 4GB RAM, 120GB SSD with Windows 7. It's finally starting to die so I want to upgrade it so it can handle Windows 10 for daily web browsing.
What path shall I take?
A) Build a cheap PC (i3 10100, 8GB RAM, 240GB SSD) - Around $500
B) Buy a refurb Lenovo or Dell (roughly 4th/6th gen Intel) - Around $300
C) Buy a barebones (Intel NUC) - Around $400
She doesn't want a laptop as she already has a large monitor and peripherals.
Why not a tablet if they're just web browsing?
Laptops can be connected to monitors and peripherals too.
Fair call. She has an iPad Pro for surfing/drawing at the kitchen table or sofa. She doesn't have the best eyesight so she prefers a large monitor with a large keyboard and mouse.
I offered a laptop to be plugged in permanently but if she's never going to use it portably, then it's a waste. Ie more annoying to turn on due to having to open the screen. $500 will probably get a better new desktop than a laptop.
Look at the minimum specifications windows 10 requires, and get as close to that for the price performance as possible.
Another option is to get a compatible LGA1150 CPU (check your motherboard compat list), probably an i5-4570 or i5-4590, e.g. https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/194468844615. A bit cheaper than your second option.
If you do this, you might also want to upgrade your RAM a bit - 8 GB (64-bit OS) is a more comfortable level for modern browsing.
Note that Windows 10 is only supported for 5 more years, and this era of hardware is not supported by 11. That said, $50-$75 is pretty good for a 5 year upgrade.
The current machine is LGA1150 so I thought about upgrading to a 4th Gen i5, adding 4GB ram (total 8) and upgrading the SSD. Probably the best option hey?
That being said, aspending $50 on a used CPU, $30 on another 4GB stick RAM, $40 on a new SSD, I may as well get the FuseTech machine for $160ish and recycle the very old machine to a router/media server.
The refurbished Dell deal from few days ago would suffice for couple hundred bux
An i5-3470 with 8GB of RAM and the cheapest SSD will still fly through web browsing. You should be able to do this for well under $300.
win 7 is so out of date, and 4 gb ram doesn't really help. you have a SSD which is great. but the low ram is dragging it down.
or
-and this would be my ozbargain preference - add more RAM, dedicated graphics card, and install windows 10
upgrade win 7 to 10 for free how to guide
the G1840 will not run windows 11 but then again pretty much any PC that is more than 5 years old will not. and win 10 will be relevant for another 5 years
Yeah even all the Windows Aero stuff is a blast from the past.
Probs won't upgrade to Windows 11. I think the best bang for buck is to buy a refurb machine from the other day, let her use that until Windows 10 is no longer supported, and then build a new machine for Win 11 in 2025 when prices drop lol.
If it's just basic web browsing, no heavy tasks than most PCs nowadays will do just fine, regardless of the price range. Option B should be more than enough. Currently using an old i7-2600 and everything runs A-OK.
All three are fine, I figure Option B will win the vote given how popular these old refurbs are around here. My view on it is that $300 is too much to pay for one of these old ones. If you're just web browsing, you could probably get one for around the $200 mark, but you'd probably have to go with Sandy Bridge (as opposed to Haswell / Skylake), YMMV with this.
Personally, I'd just go with Option A, you can never go wrong with DIY using new parts. i3 10100 is plenty fast.