Buying New Desktop

CoastingHatbox

jamesd said:

CoastingHatbox said:

jamesd said:

That Celeron J4025 is an excellent fit for the tasks. It's from the November 2019 Gemini Lake Refresh desktop CPU series and has hardware decoding support for both HEVC and YouTube's latest mainstream production codec VP9. 4k video will fly for either of those, let alone mere 720p.

The RAM is just about adequate but it's not a good machine to buy because of the spinning hard disk. You should really be looking for SSD or other solid state storage and preferably 8GB of RAM, but solid state storage is more important than the extra RAM.

There are many different versions of the Celeron, i3, i5 and other names and it can take a little bit of research and shopping around to get a good choice, particularly when exact CPU model numbers can be hard to find. But don't buy without knowing - the oldest Celerons around wouldn't be the excellent match that this one is.

With all respect, I disagree. Benchmarks are only a broad guide, however:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+J4025+@+2.00GHz&id=3668

And for comparison, I have one of these:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+J3455+@+1.50GHz&id=2875

Lower base clock speed, but twice as many cores. I use it for some headless stuff, but I really wouldn't want to run full fat Windows on it and use it for a daily driver. I would happily run a lightweight Linux desktop on it, but unlike most people I default deny most scripts on websites and I don't tend to peruse many of the more expensive (CPU-wise) websites any way. For webapps like Facebook and for video calls (without hardware acceleration), that CPU would struggle.

It might sound ridiculous, but many websites shift the burden of rendering and processing to the client in order to increase the number of requests a given web server can simultaneously serve.

You seem to have made a mistake with "without hardware acceleration" because that CPU has support for a very extensive range of modern codecs and the benchmark you used doesn't check or report that support or how well the hardware support performs.

For my day to day activities in Windows I've used a Chuwi Hi13 tablet with a Celeron N3450 CPU since 2017. Comparison with yours here: 
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Celeron-J3455-vs-Intel-Celeron-N3450/2875vs2907 Or all three https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-Celeron-J3455-vs-Intel-Celeron-N3450-vs-Intel-Celeron-J4025/2875vs2907vs3668 .

The Chuwi gets the job done without any issues, after using its ports for suitable expansion, else I'd have changed it. Not as much modern video codec support in the hardware but it can handle the brief of our questioner without issues. Except: the Chuwi does have solid state storage, else it would suffer quite badly from swap issues. I agree with you about two cores making it slower but it's not being asked to do anything hard.

The key trouble here is the budget, which requires some major compromises. 

It is not a mistake, it is quite deliberate. The conditions have to be absolutely right for hardware acceleration to be used; codec, software, firmware and hardware have to all support that acceleration. And when those stars don't align, it is down to the CPU to do the crunching in the old fashioned way. And this acceleration doesn't help with client-side rendered and java script heavy websites.

I've experimented hugely with low power computing, and I have a number of Atom/Celeron based SOC computers.

I appreciate the budget, which is why I asked if the OP had an existing desktop, if so the best option may be to look at fixing/upgrading that, which is also the more environmentally sound option.

Sandtree said:

CoastingHatbox said:

debitcardmayhem said:

And as I said the rendering is done by a browser on the client side not by the server

Still plenty of static and server-side rendered sites out there. In fact you can browse this forum with javascript disabled and it mostly works (only a few minor asthetics are broken).

For clarity, I'm talking about HTML rendering, not graphical rendering.

HTML is rendered on the client side, thats why you can "inspect" an element and adjust the CSS/attributes and the page layout changes. This is also how certain accessibility tools work by ignoring the rendering instructions in the CSS and applying their own.

PHP/ASP.Net etc generate HTML (and javascript) on the fly and send the output to the client for rendering.

There has always been the choice of doing some things client or server side and various pros/cons of each. The proliforation of certain standard javascript libraries like JQuery has meant that firstly the client doesnt need to download them each time because a local cached version can be used, they are maintained by third parties so doesnt give the site developer the overhead of ensuring the new Chrome update is still compatible and makes certain tasks a few lines of javascript rather than hundreds.

These may influence some decisions on if to do something client or serverside but given anything client side can be manipulated by the client there are certainly some things that should always be done on the server (eg calculate the value of a shopping basket for payment) 

PHP and classic ASP render it server side. ASP.NET in modern web applications is typically used to handle API requests from the client with views written in typescript HTML rendered on the client. This is also the way most of the modern javascript frameworks favoured by front end developers work. Yes the graphical components based on the HTML/DOM are rendered by the browser, but the HTML and the DOM itself not necessarily so.

Not trusting the client to render HTML is outdated thinking. It is what we used to think in the early 2000s, but it is perfectly possible to use validation/sanitisation to establish trust over what is generated on the client. A lot of frameworks will use a mix of both server and client side rendering to provide the best of both worlds.

When using a "low end box", in general my biggest pain point is unresponsive browser tabs and scripts taking a long time to run. Given that almost everything runs in the browser these days, I think it is important to have an adequate amount of CPU power on the client.

If the OP could advise about their current desktop situation. It is possible to build a low cost machine for around ~£240:
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/d72pPV

This features a dual core Pentium Gold CPU with a passmark 4274 (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+Gold+G6405+@+4.10GHz&id=4367)

Building a PC might seem intimidating, but it is actually fairly straight forward with plenty of guides on YouTube etc..
I've generally gone for the cheapest available parts from trusted sources. It is possible to do an AMD Athlon build for less, but I had an Athlon 3000G on back order for about 6 months and then gave up waiting.

You will need to add extra for the Windows License and any peripherals (there are some great bargains on used HD monitors on eBay right now; you can also obtain cheap unused Windows licenses but they should be treated as grey market, probably in effect pirated and I would rather advocate for people trying free and open source software (Linux) rather than obtaining dodgy licenses/keys).

Second hand might also be an option. All that said (sorry), I agree with this:

ann_droid said:

I think the important part is for the OP to save every month, avoid VERY, and then look at options in the open market.

This is after all MSE and not BenchmarksRUS.

getmore4less

The pc builders seem to have all the stocks.

£230 build from these guys with a 3200g

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/palicomp-pc-of-the-week-vega-3200g-pc-systems-from-ps230-or-vega-3400g-from-ps27799-at-palicomp-3744881

The main builders often have systems below part costs.

OnlyTheBestWillDo

I cannot imagine that anyone who was interested in purchasing on credit via VERY, is still perusing this thread.
Keep it simple folks.
If they were thinking of paying in instalments, find them something that they can afford straight away that will do the job; rather than suggesting something that costs the same but is even more complicated and they still cannot afford it.
Whilst this is the Tech forum, most people seeking advice are not technically minded....or they would not be asking here.

They need us to keep it simple and just give them a solution.

My idea is for them to get something inexpensive(around £100), that does the job. But they are probably long gone by now.

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15 June at 12:46PM

OnlyTheBestWillDo

Even something like this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/402934508367 would do the job.

Ibrahim5

Set up and ready to go. Just needs a PSU.
Never seen that before. Maybe not so straightforward.

OnlyTheBestWillDo

Ibrahim5 said:

Set up and ready to go. Just needs a PSU.
Never seen that before. Maybe not so straightforward.

That can add up to £30 to the cost: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Optiplex-3020-3040-3046-3050-Micro-65watt-UK-Adapter-MGJN9-450-AECO-43NY4-/322991933724

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/274471603116

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/312504435112

Though generics can be found for less than half that: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/191971443077?var=0

OnlyTheBestWillDo

Hmmm...now you'll need at least and 8th Generation Intel CPU or a Ryzen to run Windows 11.