Buying another new computer in 2015

Past Systems

I bought two computers already in 2015: But our family room computer was intolerably slow, so I picked up an HP Pavillion 500-123 with an i5-4570 from Amazon.

I didn't put up a web page about it, but I did write an amazon review, to wit:

Dual boot with Linux only works in legacy boot mode

Computer has holes drilled to mount an SSD. Nice touch.

Here's what I had to do dual boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu:

Windows evidently gets the license key automatically from BIOS, so no typing in of tediously long keys was required.

Funny detail: in Linux, rear panel speaker outlet doesn't work unless you plug in headphones into the front panel!

Upgrading the CPU

Battlefield 1 on some maps gets as low as 40 fps with this system and a GTX 1050 ti. The game appears to be CPU-bound, and only slightly fond of hyperthreading.

The fastest CPU HP claims to support in this motherboard is the i7-4790, but evidently any LGA1150 CPU should work.

The i7-4790K's 4.0GHz (with its larger cache) could give a 25% speed increase from single-core performance. That might bump up a 40fps scene to, say, 50fps. However, it sells for $170, and that dough might be better spent on a new system.

The i7-4790 or e3-1271v3's 3.6GHz could bump fps from 40 to 45, maybe 47 with hyperthreading. For $50, that might just barely be worth it, hard to say. Hard to justify at $75, which is the cheapest I've found them at.