Would this £118 refurbished HP cpu work into my son’s good quality Dell gaming screen - just for browsing the web, doing homework, using powerpoint, etc)?
(He uses an X-Box Series X and a Switch as gaming consoles.)
HP ProDesk 400 G4 SFF
Intel Core i5-6500 (3.20GHz) 6Mb Cache
8GB (1x8GB) 2133MHz
256GB Solid State Drive
DVDRW
GigaNIC Network
Intel® UHD Graphics 530
Windows 10 Pro (64-bit) Loaded and Licenced
Report Description: Grade B Condition - May have a minor cosmetic mark.
Connectivity
1 x Headset Connector
2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1
1 x Audio-in
1 x Audio-out
1 x DisplayPort 1.2
1 x RJ-45 (10/100/1000)
1 x VGA
4 x USB 2.0
1 x PS/2 port
1 x Serial
I’m very sorry to be working class Ian. I’ve only time to write a quick comment on this forum and not dig into pc energy consumption and advise something. It’s just something one needs to be aware of.
I don’t have the time to do the math for you, but when the energy crisis started, I measured all my PCs and the PCs from the children. Unfortunately my Mac Pro was on top of the list and using 100 watt continuously. That’s hundreds of euros per year given the usage it had.
In general, the laptops were most energy efficient followed by my lenovo thinkcentre which looks similar to your HP.
While Energy Consumption is important, a PC is not a high power user. A Mac Pro is hardly a good comparison, either. Bit like saying a Ferrari uses a lot of fuel… IMO. But YMMV…
You can always use the Energy Saving Switch. Marked OFF.
Yes, I should think so. It won’t run Windows 11, but you won’t need it. Most schools ask students to log in and run packages on which to write homework. Word, PowerPoint etc. Great value for money IMO.
It is newer and can run the latest software. But both Win 10 and 11 call back to Microsoft to continuously update themselves. Your son won’t want to run games as he has gaming consoles. Sometimes the updates are very inconvenient. Win 10 is more than fine for the intended purpose.
From effective functionality, Win10/11 won’t matter much, given the use cases you describe.
Note though, that Win10 will be end of support October 2025; then you should stop using it for security reasons. (Or replace it with something else, where Linux will likely be the only option.)
So yes: the hardware is fine for the purpose for now (and likely RAM can be increased too 16GB for low cost, or add another SSD for storage which are really cheap currently), but it only has ~2 years of support left.
(I read, used PCs currently have a significant price drop/raise, depending on whether they will support Win11.)
There are semi-sanctioned (ie not actively blocked by MS) ways to upgrade a Win10 machine to Win11 if the only reason it fails the “ready for 11” test is a missing security module. This is of interest to Apple Intel owners as well as potential purchasers of slightly older Intel PCs. It’s not difficult to do, after downloading and creating USB installation media and either manually installing with a few Registry tweaks or automatically installing via readily available scripts.
Something to consider when pure horsepower is not an issue, hence can purchase a bargain machine, but you’d like to have a maintained and secure Windows OS running… or you just want to use the Win11 (improved) interface.
That said, it might be worthwhile to seek a box that comes with 16GB already installed, as that’s a much smoother overall experience. Apart from that, what you’re looking at is probably fine for school / email / surfing / MS Office type stuff.
Edit:
ps - be sure to check that your son’s existing monitor has a Display Port input connection… the video spec on the box you listed is pretty old … VGA very much ch passé; no HDMI. (But you can leverage the old school serial port for firmware upgrades to your original generation Uniti boxes!?!)
Edit 2:
DisplayPort 1.2 to HDMI 2.0 adapters seem to be readily available
