Haswell PC since it launched ... then it burned out probably because of a faulty PSU and I replaced it with the same processor model, slightly better mainboard.Today I ordered a relatively old AMD Athlon X4 845
Carrizo processor and a very cheap MSI A68HM-E33 V2
mainboard. The CPU cost me 215RON (52USD) including 19% VAT and the mainboard cost 160RON (39USD) including 19% VAT.
Hopefully these will be the contents of the package, which will allow me to practically double my PC's processing power, from 2775 Passmark points of the Celeron to 5435 Passmark points of the Athlon X4 845. The old Haswell Celeron will actually go into my girlfriend's computer, which is still running a Celeron E3200 from the Core 2 Duo generation, measuring 1378 Passmark points. As it turns out, this will be a speed doubling for her too 😎 The rest of her PC is up to date, in the sense that it has a 120GB SSD
+ 160GB 2.5" laptop hard drive, 2 x 2GB DDR3 and a business class NEC 19" LCD monitor... it runs Windows 10 PRO x64 well, even with the current processor.My system has a 60GB SSD + 320GB laptop hard drive, 2 x 4GB DDR3 memory and an old ATI Radeon 5550 512MB
video card, which will all go into the new AMD system... powered by a cheap 72% efficiency 450W power supply, with a 12cm relatively silent fan.
The MSI A68HM-E33 V2
mainboard has very few USB ports on the back, but luckily another 4 can be connected to the internal headers. I won't be using the video ports, nor the PCI-Express x16 3.0 slot to its full potential, as the AMD Athlon X4 845
processor only supports 8 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes for the main graphics card slot. For my current graphics card it's no problem, and if I decide to upgrade in the future, I can go up to like an nVidia GTX 1060
or AMD Radeon RX 470
.I probably won't be using the AMD stock cooler, as I have an old Cooler Master Hyper TX2
, which can handle up to 125W without any problems, so on the 65W processor it will be very silent. The only part it's missing is the FM2+ mounting bracket, but if I remember correctly, I'll be able to use the one on the stock cooler. I just have to unscrew the fan and it'll come right out.
BUT I'll have to be very careful, as the stock cooler's retention mechanism only connects to two of the six tabs on the plastic bracket of the AM2+ socket, which it was originally intended for, so the system won't be very safe to transport. In fact the FM2+ socket has only two plastic tabs ... so... yeah ...
As the components were ~30% off, I may have to wait up to 10 days for delivery, but I hope they'll bring my package sooner, as I live in a big city (where they have to deliver many packages daily) and they usually optimize logistics to save fuel, so location matters more than time of ordering.