Look, if a decade-old dual-core chip is enough for you, believe me when I say it’s definitely not enough for me. Even for basic stuff like browsing the web, watching YouTube, or running VLC—things that shouldn't be taxing—my old FX 6300 just couldn't keep up; it felt sluggish even though I was running an SSD. Just because something works for your needs doesn't mean it meets everyone else's standards. For instance, my dad is perfectly happy with an ancient Celeron from ten years ago paired with a slow 5400 rpm hard drive... but there's a catch. 🙂 That Celeron is in a laptop with only 4 GB of RAM, and let me tell you, it can't even handle streaming a football game online. It stutters constantly and the quality is honestly unwatchable. Sure, maybe you can scrape by with 360p or 480p on YouTube, but anything higher than that is a lost cause. Meanwhile, I have a seven-year-old i7 that cost me way more than that FX processor and 130 bucks, and it handles everything flawlessly, from 4K YouTube videos to whatever else I throw at it.
Saying you don't need an SSD is basically like saying you don't need fiber optic internet at home 😁 Sure, you can crawl along on a 4 Mbit/s connection if you really want to, but this just saves your sanity—running everything on an old HDD or slow DSL is just asking for trouble 😁
Generally speaking, everyday tasks feel significantly snappier on an SSD compared to an old-school HDD—we're talking things like launching File Explorer, firing up Chrome, moving photos around, or just grinding through some work in Office. I actually keep my entire Adobe CC suite on an SSD, and it pops open in just a few seconds; back when I was running it off an HDD, I’d be sitting there staring at a loading screen for nearly 30 seconds. Plus, Windows boots up incredibly fast. I hit the power button, grab my phone, and by the time I look back, the system is already up and running. If you're looking at a budget around $5,500-$2000, just make sure to throw a 120GB SSD into the build and install Windows, Chrome, and whatever programs you use daily onto it, and you'll be more than happy with the results.
Look, it’s rocking 1GB of RAM and it’s six years old; of course it isn't going to perform the way you're imagining it should. It's like asking why my 1994 Chevy Silverado is burning through 20 miles per 62 miles 😁
That tablet was decent back in its day, but honestly, it just doesn't cut it anymore. It’s like trying to pull up on an iPhone 4 today when everyone else is using an iPhone X, for example
Honestly, they’d be better off just grabbing the 32-bit version of W10. I mean, the system requirements are basically identical anyway.
w10
Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2 GB for 64-bit Hard disk space: 16 GB for 32-bit OS 20 GB for 64-bit OS Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver Display: 800x600
w7
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor*
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
If you push a light overclock—hitting something like 4.2 GHz like I did—you’re looking at a performance bump anywhere from 10% to 35%, depending on whether you're grinding through heavy workloads, gaming, or just doing basic daily tasks. For instance, my experience with PUBG went from hovering around 70fps to consistently staying north of 90fps, and NBA 2K18 jumped from about 70fps to well over 80fps. As for Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe Photoshop, they run smooth as silk without any stuttering, though honestly, I couldn't tell you exactly how much of that is thanks to the overclock versus just the software itself.
Honestly, you're getting way more bang for your buck here than if you went out and grabbed an i5 8400 along with a brand-new motherboard and some overpriced RAM. It’s a no-brainer. I’m running an I7-3930k myself, and I have to say, I couldn't be happier with it. Once you overclock it, this chip still holds its own and performs incredibly well.
By the way, I actually picked up the I7-3930k paired with that Asus board you linked, and everything is running perfectly smooth.
Back when my OS was running on an HDD, I actually had enough time to whip up a sandwich and take a quick bathroom break while the PC booted up. Nowadays, with an SSD, I barely have enough time to pull on a single sock before everything is ready to go.
Ah, my bad. I was staring at the AMD product page and saw the number of CPU cores, then noticed the 8 GPU cores right next to it, and my brain just short-circuited into thinking that was the HT count. Total brain fart on my part. You should probably just take 🙂 from crimsonstag84.
2 x G.Skill DIMM 4GB DDR4-2400 $241 1 x AMD Ryzen 3 2200G $254 1 x MSI B350M GAMING PRO $206 1 x Seagate BarraCuda 1TB SATAIII $112 1 x Kingston Technology A400 SSD 120GB 120GB 2.5" SATA III $93 1 x Cooler Master T2 Mini-Tower ATX case, no PSU, black $61 1 x Cooler Master MasterWatt Power Supply, 550W, 80 PLUS Bronze, modular $196
Total: 3 $164
Maybe this one? It actually includes an SSD in the bundle.
I can't seem to get rid of that 857 partition for the life of me. Every time I try to right-click on it, the only option that pops up is Help. There isn't even a "delete volume" choice in the menu.
Alright, here’s the deal... I used to run my whole system off a 500GB HDD as the main boot drive. A few months back, I finally upgraded to an SSD and moved Windows over to it. I went ahead and formatted the old HDD, but either I botched the settings somewhere or I'm just being blind, because now it looks like I can only access about 350GB of space on that drive.