07-13-2022 at 06:29 AM#62
Modifications possible with this build
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* The motherboard size is likely mini ITX. Meaning if you are adventurous, you can relocate the motherboard to another case, and get more bays in the process.
* System has 2 SODIMM slots. One is empty, another is occupied with 4Gig. It is possible to install 2x8Gig for a total of 16 Gigs. Regardless what Intel and Acer says, 16 Gigs (2x8) appears to work fine. This is the 8 Gig I used in mine. 8 Gig Team Memory [amazon.com]
*The system has a single SATA full length power connector. If you wish to connect a second drive that needs a full SATA power port, you will need a splicer, something like this.
SATA Power Splitter [ebay.com]
* Depends on how drives you install and what type of drives you install, the temperature in the case could be higher than desired. I modded the case to take a 140mm and spliced the 3 pin CPU fan connector. It would be useful to disable fan control in BIOS so it runs at high speed at all times. *spliced fan header [ebay.com]140mm fan [amazon.com]
* The system as shipped accommodates 1x3.5 above and beyond the DVD drive installed. If you want to change the DVD bay to accept 2.5 inch HDD< you will need something like this *a DVD caddy 3.5 9.7mm bay [amazon.com].
With all above modification, my system draws about 25Ws at peak.
Copied suggestions below for various uses.
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Desktop replacement, Rating: Medicore
This is a mediocre use case as a desktop replacement because the limited CPU capability and memory. The system comes with 4Gig standard which will mean a lot of swapping on Windows 10 in default configuration. If you can up the memory to 8Gig, I think the use case becomes fair. It is a reasonable system for lite web page browsing, spreadsheets, email, YouTube and Netflix at 1080P. ie, this is a good system for your grandparents if usage case isn't aggressive.
Gaming setup, Rating: Poor
Expansion slot is half height, power supply is 65W, there is only a CPU fan. ie, if you want to game other than minesweeper, you should look for a beefier system, such as the one with I3 and 250W power?. Again, if you go that route, maybe Acer small form factor shouldn't be what you should consider. For reference, my current game setup has a 850w ps and about 7 fans.
NAS, Rating: Good
This thing draws less power and is quieter than my Synology 2 bay. CPU will be more powerful than my Synology with more possibility of expanding via standard PC peripherals. A two bay Synology is about $200 right now which means you can use this thing at about half the cost. With this said, there are only 2 SATA ports and no additional cooling fans and will only accommodate 1 3.5" and 1 2.5" drive without additional engineering. If you are okay dropping in a 10TB 3.5 WD Red Plus and call it good, you have an excellent use case here. If you are desperate, I suppose you can always use external USB 3.0 enclosures for additional drives. Hardware transcoding via Plex for a single 4K stream shouldn't be a huge issue since this Celeron has a UHD600 onboard.
pFsense, Gateway replacement, VPN server, PiHole etc, Rating: Excellent
What this system really excels is as an always on, minimal power, minimal noise internet relay device. I listed a couple use cases above. I am thinking moving my VPN server (both up and down streams), PiHole, and Firewall server into this thing. As given the system has more than enough resource to run Debian or BSD, never sipes more than 15Ws, generates no heat, and is virtually silent, I can see this thing sitting next to my cable modem and be the consolidating gateway machine that is currently being taken up by a Synology, a number of Rasperberri Pis. For $100, this is just a bargain you can't find equivalent elsewhere. Now the only decision is to buy another one as a backup in case this breaks. :-)
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Installed this Crucial 32GB set [a.co] and did not notice any slowness. The only thing that happened was a delayed FIRST POST after installing the sticks, beyond that, so far so good. Screenshots below:
WIN10_SYSTEM [imgur.com]
USERBENCHMARK [imgur.com]
HWINFO1 [imgur.com] | HWINFO2 [imgur.com]
CPUZ_MB [imgur.com] | CPUZ_MEM [imgur.com] | CPUZ_SPD1 [imgur.com] | CPUZ_SPD2 [imgur.com]
10-min stress test with CPU Smart Fan feature turned off [imgur.com]
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Top Comments
This 88 dollar PC is not a powerful PC. That is correct. I'm not being duped into thinking this is a POWERFUL PC!
This is a laptop PC who's motherboard has been placed in a tiny tower case and can run windows 10/11, and you can add more ram, and comes with NVMe, with external power supply that laptop's use! So very, very low power 24/7 machine 6 watts idle.
It has bluetooth/wifi,ethernet port, 4 usb 2 ports, 2 usb 3 ports. 2 year warranty, intel 600 internal graphics, hdmi and vga port,
You know that Walmart currently is selling this at 299 dollars with good user review average.
I object to the word "duped" in your post. There are 2-3 threads on this device on slickdeals , with things people are doing with it.
Like the Raspberry Pi, it is hobby device, and cheaper than Pi,( if you were to buy Pi plus all the extra's you need to buy to complete Pi package).
Hopefully, people read YOUR post, and read posts from others that discuss the positive aspect of this device, so they know what they are buying and not buying. Alert heard, sir. . Your mission is accomplished. Torpedoes away. Next target!
Where to mount the disks? As previously mentioned, there's space for a 3.5" disk and a 2.5" disk if you removed the optical drive. Alternatively, you could remove the entire cage and replace it with something that'd accept two 3.5" disks [amazon.com] (I haven't actually tried it because I haven't received the computer yet, but it should work). Similarly, it should not be too difficult to put four 2.5" disks in the case. Use a cage if you want to be fancy. Velcro or duct tape if you just don't gaf. Or get a bigger case, but then you'd lose the cute little form factor.
Where to get the power? Y-splitters. Just don't overload the power supply.
Where to connect the data cables? Ah, now this is the fun part. See previous post regarding the limitations of the PCIe bus. If the goal is to install as many disks as possible, one way would be to put SATA controllers in the ×16, ×4, and ×2 slots. Yes, the M-keyed M.2 slot and even the E-keyed M.2 slot could probably be used for PCIe modules, including SATA controllers and Ethernet controllers.
Each lane of PCIe 2.0 provides 500 MB/s of bandwidth, just barely sufficient for SATA III's 600 MB/s. This is obviously not a problem for HDD, but could limit SSD performance. You might want to be... creative... with port selection, if you plan to use SSDs and HDDs together. For example, if you put a 2-port SATA controller in the ×2 slot, you might want to pair an SSD with a HDD on that same controller to optimize bandwidth usage.
Also remember the limitations of the DMI link. If you're using this machine as a NAS, your disks might be sharing PCIe bandwidth with your NIC. You could potentially install many disks and a lot of other stuff, but they'd compete for bandwidth. Proceed with caution.
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655 Comments
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Your second link goes to the celeron chipset and all the emulator stuff this celeron chip can do.
Also, from reading the user reviews on Walmart about this PC, most people did like this machine, (with exception of some people that couldn't get windows activation to work, and had to call Acer about it). If someone didn't know it had celeron chip in it, and was not that tech literate, this is nice PC to do average PC stuff on. Under 100 dollars!
Your second link goes to the celeron chipset and all the emulator stuff this celeron chip can do.
I bought an xbox series s console a few weeks ago with 3 years of ultimate game pass, and I have tried cloud on my xbox, and it does work great. Times are changing, and it is possible to not have to install games anymore, and even use older equipment to play (provided a person has good internet connection.).
Thanks for joining this thread, and suppling us with cool info.
All I want is a pfSense box 🥺
Yep, good luck with your Celeron Gaming Rig and be well.
So let's see how a quad core system with 4mb l2 cache (the primary reason Celerons are slow is historically low onboard cache) at a 2.0ghz clock, with 16gb ddr4 memory in dual channel and a geforce gt 730 dedicated graphics card with 2gb of ddr5 (card is actually built on PCIE2.0 architecture) dvd, solid state, extremely low power draw.. let's see how that stacks up for a grand total of about $150 (8gb ddr4 sodimm was on hand).. I wonder how well it will perform in the games I enjoy from time to time..
Any computer professional knows that celerons are lighter weight processors, HOWEVER, when you put this cpu next to older generation i5's, it's on par, because of advances in tech.. It's literally neck and neck with the PC I'm on now, and once upgraded it will be in the ballpark regarding video capability as well.. How do those games run on my current system you ask? Not too shabby for an oldie but goodie.. Not bad at all. Downright playable.
So let's see how a quad core system with 4mb l2 cache (the primary reason Celerons are slow is historically low onboard cache) at a 2.0ghz clock, with 16gb ddr4 memory in dual channel and a geforce gt 730 dedicated graphics card with 2gb of ddr5 (card is actually built on PCIE2.0 architecture) dvd, solid state, extremely low power draw.. let's see how that stacks up for a grand total of about $150 (8gb ddr4 sodimm was on hand).. I wonder how well it will perform in the games I enjoy from time to time..
Any computer professional knows that celerons are lighter weight processors, HOWEVER, when you put this cpu next to older generation i5's, it's on par, because of advances in tech.. It's literally neck and neck with the PC I'm on now, and once upgraded it will be in the ballpark regarding video capability as well.. How do those games run on my current system you ask? Not too shabby for an oldie but goodie.. Not bad at all. Downright playable.
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Edit: This is perhaps the biggest selling point of this computer, that fully upgraded it looks like it'll draw a half an amp
Let us know how it works, and the games you play on it.
We got someone who challenges if we can GAME on this 88 dollar Wonder.
i forgot, I have 2 GT 710's in my hp 8300 elites i5's , I think that card is so old, I would think the intel 600 could beat it. I will wait until you report back , your power supply is not blown.
Let us know how it works, and the games you play on it.
We got someone who challenges if we can GAME on this 88 dollar Wonder.
i forgot, I have 2 GT 710's in my hp 8300 elites i5's , I think that card is so old, I would think the intel 600 could beat it. I will wait until you report back , your power supply is not blown.
Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
88celly
Edit: I went ahead and ordered a "matching" stick to what I have now (8gb hynix 2133). It seems that ram clock speed is a small enough improvement that even if this system supported higher speeds it would not be worth it at all to invest in a whole new set.
So my total cost on this machine is indeed right around $150. Everything is in the mail and I will post back here with some data once received.
Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
88celly
Of course this would be risky to attempt. Might as well get the i3 or i5 model if you're into higher power computing.
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