The Lemon Fool

I am looking for a Windows 11 mini PC for a friend. This looks like an awesome deal:

https://droix.co.uk/product/gmk-nucbox/

Depends on what use your friend has/wants.

Gerry557 wrote:Depends on what use your friend has/wants.

She uses the PC occasionally for typing in documents. Against all advice, she bought a £300 Lenovo all-in-one 7 years ago. She says it has become unusably slow. I may be able to fix that. I do not know the hardware spec, or whether it can be upgraded. She is used to using Windows, but perhaps she could cope with ChromeOS Flex, if her machine will take it. Otherwise, another £300 would buy a good mini-PC and a good monitor.

A further thought is that mini-PC has a quad-core Celeron with about the same Passmark score as the quad core i5 4460 in my 7 year old PC, which will guzzle power at a much higher rate. The technology has advanced a lot in the last 7 years. Keeping old kit going is fun, but I have to question whether it is worth it with modern hardware becoming so cheap.

GeoffF100 wrote:Against all advice, she bought a £300 Lenovo all-in-one 7 years ago. She says it has become unusably slow. I may be able to fix that.

A fresh install of Windows (effectively a factory reset) should get it running as new.

Scott.

GeoffF100 wrote:I am looking for a Windows 11 mini PC for a friend. This looks like an awesome deal:
https://droix.co.uk/product/gmk-nucbox/

Computeractive magazine (https://getcomputeractive.co.uk/) issue 637 (3 Aug 2022) has an 8-page article on Mini PCs, which may be of assistance.
(My subscriber paper copy arrived last week; I have no connection with Computeractive other than as a subsriber)
The article's 'tests' mention Chillblast and Beelink.

swill453 wrote:

GeoffF100 wrote:Against all advice, she bought a £300 Lenovo all-in-one 7 years ago. She says it has become unusably slow. I may be able to fix that.

A fresh install of Windows (effectively a factory reset) should get it running as new.

I believe that Bree has offered advice on speeding up old Windows PCs. Here is an article that may be useful:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... ws-10.html

I expect that the PC has a hard drive, and perhaps only 2GB of memory. It might be only 32 bit. I expect that pepping up her old machine is the best option, given her low usage.

GeoffF100 wrote:...I expect that the PC has a hard drive, and perhaps only 2GB of memory. It might be only 32 bit. I expect that pepping up her old machine is the best option, given her low usage.

Without knowing the exact model it's difficult to say if it has enough RAM to run 64-bit, or even if the RAM can be upgraded. But any PC with an HDD can be significantly speeded up by replacing it with an SSD.

I got a Dell OptiPlex 7090 Ultra BTX last year and it is excellent. It clamps to the back of the display and is very fast
Enabled me to clear the box under my desk.

In principle, there is a Gigabyte Mini-ITX board that has a passively cooled Celeron N5105:

https://www.hwcooling.net/en/at-last-it ... s-fanless/

Unfortunately, it does not appear to be actually on sale. That processor is about a third faster than the quad core Celeron used in the Explaining Computers mini-ITX build not so long ago. The technology rolls on. Hopefully, availability will improve.

GeoffF100 wrote:In principle, there is a Gigabyte Mini-ITX board that has a passively cooled Celeron N5105:

https://www.hwcooling.net/en/at-last-it ... s-fanless/

Unfortunately, it does not appear to be actually on sale. That processor is about a third faster than the quad core Celeron used in the Explaining Computers mini-ITX build not so long ago. The technology rolls on. Hopefully, availability will improve.

Check to see if her AIO has video in and can be repurposed as a monitor, some lenovos do.

If you want a fanless n5105 then they are available on Amazon for £250.

If you want to put together an m-itx machine I'd throw a little more cash at it and gain a lot of increased longevity through seriously improved performance. £400ish would see you looking at a Ryzen 5 5600G.

BobbyD wrote:

GeoffF100 wrote:In principle, there is a Gigabyte Mini-ITX board that has a passively cooled Celeron N5105:

https://www.hwcooling.net/en/at-last-it ... s-fanless/

Unfortunately, it does not appear to be actually on sale. That processor is about a third faster than the quad core Celeron used in the Explaining Computers mini-ITX build not so long ago. The technology rolls on. Hopefully, availability will improve.

Check to see if her AIO has video in and can be repurposed as a monitor, some lenovos do.

If you want a fanless n5105 then they are available on Amazon for £250.

If you want to put together an m-itx machine I'd throw a little more cash at it and gain a lot of increased longevity through seriously improved performance. £400ish would see you looking at a Ryzen 5 5600G.

Looking at it from a personal point of view a fanless N5105 has its attractions. The Passmark score is about 4,000. That matches my fourth generation i5. Graphics should be better. If supply was good, I should be able to build a box for about £150, and load it up with Linux. I do not have exact numbers, but I expect that the power saving would pay for the unit in about three years. A Ryzen 5 5600G would be a pointless power guzzler for me.

GeoffF100 wrote:

Gerry557 wrote:Depends on what use your friend has/wants.

She uses the PC occasionally for typing in documents. Against all advice, she bought a £300 Lenovo all-in-one 7 years ago. She says it has become unusably slow. I may be able to fix that. I do not know the hardware spec, or whether it can be upgraded. She is used to using Windows, but perhaps she could cope with ChromeOS Flex, if her machine will take it. Otherwise, another £300 would buy a good mini-PC and a good monitor.

I sounds like quite simple expectations so almost any cheap newish pc would do. Lots of mini pc tend to be used more for media duties but typing documents shouldn't be a problem.

Is there a specific program that needs to be run? They might be used to using office for instance and want to retain familiarity. New versions might be somewhat different to 7 years ago.

I don't know that particular model maybe give your impressions later.

Gerry557 wrote:

GeoffF100 wrote:

Gerry557 wrote:Depends on what use your friend has/wants.

She uses the PC occasionally for typing in documents. Against all advice, she bought a £300 Lenovo all-in-one 7 years ago. She says it has become unusably slow. I may be able to fix that. I do not know the hardware spec, or whether it can be upgraded. She is used to using Windows, but perhaps she could cope with ChromeOS Flex, if her machine will take it. Otherwise, another £300 would buy a good mini-PC and a good monitor.

I sounds like quite simple expectations so almost any cheap newish pc would do. Lots of mini pc tend to be used more for media duties but typing documents shouldn't be a problem.

Is there a specific program that needs to be run? They might be used to using office for instance and want to retain familiarity. New versions might be somewhat different to 7 years ago.

I don't know that particular model maybe give your impressions later.

I do not expect that office software is a problem. She can use the Microsoft online word processor if needs be.

The main issue seems to be that of buying a PC built by a small Chinese manufacturer from a small retailer. Intel is not able too make enough chips. Hopefully, that will change in the next year or so.

These are available from a number of suppliers:

https://www.cclonline.com/gb-bmce-5105- ... ebone-kit/

All more expensive than the little box linked in the opening post, which makes me suspicious.

The old PC might be fine for a while if the hard drive was swapped to an SSD. This can be quite difficult though in some all in ones. You need a big mug of tea and a full pack of biscuits to get you through dismantling the case.

I have had a go at fixing the Lenovo AIO, which was so slow as to be unusable. The main problem was a huge number of unwanted extensions duplicated in both Chrome and Edge. I removed them from both browsers. The machine speeded up dramatically. I also made some of the changes recommended here:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... ws-10.html

The machine is a Lenovo C20-00, which has a maintenance manual:

https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/gb/en/prod ... _userguide

The processor is a Pentium N3700 with a Passmark score of 1255. I has 4 GB RAM and a hard drive. The printer is a Canon MG2900, which has drivers for Windows, Mac and Linux:

https://canon-print.com/canon-pixma-mg2 ... ows-linux/

It should be possible to install an SSD. Maximum memory appears to be 8 GB:

https://uk.crucial.com/compatible-upgra ... all-in-one

Windows 10 loses support on 15th October 2025. Upgrading the hardware is not particularly attractive because of the rather slow processor, which cannot be upgraded. Here is a bargain priced AIO of the same age with a much better hardware spec:

https://www.stonerefurb.co.uk/hp-eliteo ... -240gb-ssd

Hopefully the changes that I have made will be sufficient. If not, I can reinstall Windows.

I thought that Chrome OS Flex might be a good solution, but it does not support her Canon printer.

Explaining Computers has just posted a video on a single board computer that uses the N5105 quad-core Celeron:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm4o2xChJgU