Another desktop Princess? - Oh yes!

[PrincessB]

Following on from a previous thread, I picked up my new machine today.

I am now the proud owner of a 'new old stock' Dell 3470 Mini desktop (£260) which is now in bits on the dining room table awaiting upgrading.

I'm impressed by the size, it is half the width and height of the desktop it will be replacing. It has a couple of USB3 sockets at the front, built in Wi-fi and an SD card reader. Apart from some obvious shortcomings, it's perfect for my use which is mostly browsing and office.

The shortcomings;

It came with 4GB of memory, just enough to run windows 10. I've got a 16GB on order which should arrive sometime tomorrow. I was a bit worried about the height of the new memory modules as space is tight and it amused me to see that the photo of the new modules on the website turned out to be life-sized on my display. I ended up holding the existing 4GB module up to the screen to establish height and I'm pretty certain they will fit.

Whether or not the processor is an upgrade or downgrade is debatable, it comes with an i3 8100 (8th generation from 2017) a quad core at 3.6GHz which should run Word fairly well A bit annoyed that Dell have used the stock Intel cooler with some kind of shroud on top to suck air in through the side of the case. it seems reasonably quiet and there's space to upgrade the cooler if required.

Hard drive is glacially slow and suprisingly a fully sized 3.5" unit - This is annoying as I'll need an adaptor to drop an SSD in. In rummaging, I turned up a full sized 2TB Seagate Firecuda SSHD drive. Nowhere near as fast as an SSD, considerably faster than a hard drive.

Unfortunately, the design of the internals means you have to remove various layers of components to get to the memory, hence the bits all over the table. Once the new memory is in, I can reinstall the DVD drive and the replacement hard drive sited at the top of the stack of components.

I do have a questions for those who do more software stuff. I'm getting rather rusty these days.

Machine came with Windows 10 home pre-installed, I've got the serial number and would hope that I can download an image of Windows 10 home, burn to DVD and do a fresh install without licencing issues? If I have to, I could clone the hard drive but I'd much rather have a fully clean install.

Regards,

B.

[Breelander]

I do have a questions for those who do more software stuff. I'm getting rather rusty these days.

Machine came with Windows 10 home pre-installed, I've got the serial number and would hope that I can download an image of Windows 10 home, burn to DVD and do a fresh install without licencing issues? If I have to, I could clone the hard drive but I'd much rather have a fully clean install.

Well, I'd recommend making a USB rather than a DVD. It will be faster to install from a USB rather than a DVD. You can make either with the Media Creation Tool from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/softwar ... /windows10

Any machine supplied with W10 pre-installed by the OEM should have a key embedded in its firmware. Setup should detect this and use it to install the appropriate edition (Home in your case) and to activate it with a digital licence. You can check that you have this key and read it with ShowKeyPlus.

However, to make completely sure your machine has a digital licence for Home before you clean install, run up the pre-installed W10 Home and sign in. Look in Settings > Update & Security > Activation. If it says 'Windows is activated with a digital licence...' then the Microsoft activation servers have recorded the hardware ID of your PC and linked it to a digital licence for W10 Home. If so, you can clean-install W10 Home any time you want without providing a key. It will activate from the existing digital licence.

Note that the hardware ID does NOT include the hard drive, so you are free to change that without altering your activation. Likewise, a RAM upgrade won't count as a significant hardware change either. However, a new CPU may, and a new motherboard certainly would.

[bungeejumper]

LOL, have fun with it, B, and if it all goes wrong you can blame it on me for putting the idea in your head.

Yes, they do pack those SFF cases quite full, don't they? I've been having a look at my newly-bought Acer (similar format), and it looks as though I'd have to take the whole drive cage out before I could get at the M.2 slot that lurks underneath it. Having said that, though, the pain might well be worth it, because the M.2 cards are reckoned to be four times as fast as a conventional SATA SSD, and maybe even more. Golly.

However, my wife's new machine (same processor as yours) is absolutely thrashing through stuff that her ten year old i3 was visibly struggling with, so I'll probably leave well alone for a while before I start tinkering with it. Survival is my middle name.....

BJ

[Infrasonic]

Note that the hardware ID does NOT include the hard drive, so you are free to change that without altering your activation. Likewise, a RAM upgrade won't count as a significant hardware change either. However, a new CPU may, and a new motherboard certainly would.

I was wondering vis a vis the Macrium Reflect paid for version (50% discount currently folks...) and 'Redeploy' (backups restored to dissimilar/new hardware) if that could be used as a way of generating a backup image of W10 that could then be used to populate any machine? (Single license conditions notwithstanding.)

Which got me thinking whether that could be a solution for Parky on this thread?...viewtopic.php?f=39&t=20484

[Breelander]

I was wondering vis a vis the Macrium Reflect paid for version (50% discount currently folks...) and 'Redeploy' (backups restored to dissimilar/new hardware) if that could be used as a way of generating a backup image of W10 that could then be used to populate any machine?

Actually Windows10 is very good at sorting out new drivers when it finds itself unexpectedly running on new hardware. Redeploy is hardly necessary, restoring with the Free edition is usually good enough.

You can even yank a drive out of one machine and put it in another without issues as long as both machines are using the same type of bios, Legacy or UEFI.

(Single license conditions notwithstanding.)

Yes, activation requires the recipient machine to already have a digital licence for the edition being transplanted (Home or Pro). If not, you'd need to purchase a new licence.

[PrincessB]

However, my wife's new machine (same processor as yours) is absolutely thrashing through stuff that her ten year old i3 was visibly struggling with, so I'll probably leave well alone for a while before I start tinkering with it. Survival is my middle name.....

Tinkering must be my middle name, as I've had the unit to bits and back together again, installed Windows 10, broken it and will do a clean install again in the morning.

I don't know if I'm overly used to SSD drives these days. The SSHD I've popped in is managing to accelerate things a bit, it still feels a bit sluggish mind you. Annoyingly, I've got a 240GB SSD somewhere in the house, all I've got to do is find it and order some kind of adaptor to fit it into the full sized hard drive socket. First world problems!

The memory upgrade fitted a treat and the Dell software was kind enough to tell me my memory configuration had changed. Would also note that the memory is supposed to run at 2400 and according to a system scanner it's running 10% slower than the rated speed. I bought a pair of 3000 rated modules on cost grounds - As time passes, slower modules become rarer and command a premium price, usually you can just buy the best value faster stuff and it will throttle down.

I didn't look about too hard, but I'm happy with 16GB of low profile Corsair (2x8GB) units for £53.

The Windows 10 DVD took a few minutes to burn and installed without issue. All drivers automatically downloaded and things were fine until I tried to remove password protection from the login screen at which point things got a bit weird. Windows generated some new users and made logon yet more complex.

Firefox is also acting up, for some reason, it fires up a second tab every time I start it and wants me to register with yet another e-mail address.

Peformance wise, it is tough to call. Current main desktop uses an ancient Xeon 1230v2 with 16GB of DDR3, 1TB SSD and a 2GB 750ti graphics card - A very long way from cutting edge, but enough muscle to deliver a very fluid system. I'm blaming the hard drive for the moment, I've got a laptop that gets little use with a 500GB SSD so a bit of cloning and replacing bits and bobs and we might see this new machine fly.

Off to research half height graphics cards now.

Cheers for the replies,

B.

[PrincessB]

I'm all up and running now and not that impressed.

After a lot of faffing, I cloned the 500GB SSD from the spare laptop onto a 750GB SSHD and swapped the drives.

I now have a 500GB SSD in the new machine and the difference in performance is like night and day. I used to love SSHDs but they are so lacking these days. Not a bad idea for an emergency back up machine, no good for day to day usage.

Chippy is a quad core Intel @3.6 now armed with 16GB of memory. Amusingly I've got the old machine behind me. It's chugging along fine and despite dating back to 2013, using lots of outdated components and the various kludge that accumulates over time, I think it's faster than the new item.

The SFF case has been a revelation, I'm an old school type and like some space to slot big components in and upgrade power supplies and generally fiddle. I'm uninpressed by Intels low range processor offering and Dells case design is a nightmare to work with.

It's alright after a fashion, but I'll need to upgade as this is just not good enough. Fun experience mind you.

B.

Disclaimer - B Has an interest in AMD - Mindor a few grand, reporting as I've been bashing on about Intel for value but have mentioned AMD a time or two.
Second disclaimer - I've never liked on chip graphics, will report back once I've slotted a proper graphics card in - I think it might make more of a difference than you would expect.

[Infrasonic]

I remember upgrading my sisters SFF 'slimline' HP with an SSD, lots of skinned knuckles and swearing.
I got there in the end after discovering the DVD wasn't visible to W10/device manager but was to the BIOS, and that there was no USB boot facility in the BIOS (and PLOP boot manager wouldn't work to get around that, because of no working DVD...). Network boot (PXE) was available but I wasn't trying that out as a busk.
Ended up cloning SATA/SATA with Macrium in the end and leaving it multiboot with the HDD still in place and the SSD blu tacked to the floor of the case (which is where it remains to this day).

I quite like the icy box front loading idea, with 2.5" SSD's you can get 1-4 bay units in quite a compact size.
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