best cheap/free scores 1.1

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^
That will run Mint fabulously! Glad you're going better!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Loads of scores:

- HP 250 G3
- ASUS X54C
- Acer 9303
- Compaq CQ57
- Compaq CQ71
- Fujitsu Amilo Pi 3625
- Samsung A8 2018
- LG G4 H815

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Welp, time for some updates!

- HP 250 G3 - pretty much useless - it uses a slim display, and has a very small barrel plug that wpuld cost me more than it's worth, and I'm not even sure if it works at all. Has some APU from what I remember, but unfortunately it's too broken for me to make it worth repairing.

-ASUS X54C - has had a pretty wrecked keyboard (lots of missing keys) and a broken LCD. Replaced those, repasted the CPU as it was bone dry, charged the battery (19% wear, I think? It surprisingly manages 2 hours worth of screen time out of 2600mAh!) and so far it works fine. Ubuntu certified apparently, and they even put a sticker to boast that. Has a Pentium B960.

- Acer 9303 - had a literally speared through LCD that I threw away. Still has quite the dent on the case (and since it's metallized plastic it's almost painfully hard to get it straight. Or at least I don't have much experience in straightening plastic out.). Originally had 2x512MB DDR2, some Pioneer DVD drive that quit eons ago, a 120GB HDD, and a Turion TL-52. Oh, and it ran Ubuntu. Current specs are almost the same, except it now has a LG DVDRW, 2GB worth of DDR2 667, and runs Windows XP SP3.

- Compaq CQ57 - not much about this. Replaced screen, and while at it I changed the puny AMD E300 mobo with a HM55 based Core i3 380M. Has 4GB worth of DDR3, runs Win10 LTSC at the moment.

- CQ71 - again, nothing special. Replaced screen, replaced CPU from Celery 900 to C2D T5800 (it will not POST wtih 1066s, despite the GM45 chipset supporting them technically) and dropped 10 LTSC as well. Runs great, and also has a extended 9200mAh battery.

- Amilo Pi 3625 - same treatment as the CQ71 except original battery, not replacement. This one does boot with the 1066FSB CPU I wanted to originally install in the CQ71 (a C2Duo P7450.)

- Samsung A8 2018 - useless, no signs of life

- LG G4 - replaced screen and charging port and it now runs beautifully.

- Acer 8920G - updated the HDD to a 500GB Samsung/Seagate ST500LM012, installed 2x2GB Samsung PC2-6400 DDR2, and installed a Core 2 Duo T8300 @ 2.4GHz. Runs absolutely stunning with 10 LTSC.

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

A regular dropped off a bunch of 486's today. Didn't have a chance to check any of them.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I guess this isn't too much of a score since it's a trade... but I traded my X54C I fixed for a X55VD. Got a soldered i3 and a GT610M for cheap, even if it needs repairs and a HDD cover.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

i wouldnt touch a system with a soldered-in i-series cpu,
a friend has atleast 12 laptop pcb's like that on the parts-pile with shorted cpu's

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Meh, the previous X75VD I had was similar to this X55VD in design, and suprisingly ran MUCH cooler than the socketed counterpart.

And considering I got the X54C for almost peanuts and with a Pentium B960, I suppose it's still a win. The mobo issue is with the BIOS (and am probably gonna make a clean ME bios request on this forum, in hopes somebody knows a good working dump for my mobo so I don't go screwing around too much with BIOS files) as it seems that fan runs 100% all the time, and the discrete GF610M isn't detected. I'm fairly sure this is a BIOS problem as the mobo model is also shared with some iGPU models of the X55.

Plus, soldered RAM isn't anywhere near pretty, but for a free 4GB worth of RAM, I'm not even complaining. With a 4GB stick added in, I get 8GB for half the price, lol

[dmill89]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I picked up a new (open box) HP 14-fq0090tg for only $65 as a cheap "travel" laptop (something small/light and cheap enough I don't care if it gets damaged, lost, or stolen). While I didn't used to be a big HP fan, they are one of the few that have kept slotted ram and SSDs even on their "budget" systems (with soldered RAM and SSDs now pretty common in <$500 laptops from many manufactures), build quality is about what you'd expect for a laptop with a ~$250 MSRP (lots of "Tupperware" feeling plastic), but accceptible for the purpose and definitely for what I paid for it.

Specs (original):

CPU: AMD Athlon Gold 3150U (actually has performance similar to a 7th gen I5)
GPU: Integrated Radeon
SDD: 128 GB M2 SATA (the slot supports NVMe, but an M2 SATA drive was used, not unexpected given the pricepoint)
RAM: 4GB DDR4 3200 (single channel and ~2GB gets eaten by the GPU)
Display: 14" 1366x768
OS: Windows 10 Home

I happened to have an extra stick of ram and "proper" NVMe SSD which provided a decent performance bump

Specs (upgraded):

CPU:AMD Athlon Gold 3150U
GPU: Integrated Radeon
SDD: 512 GB M2 NVMe
RAM: 8GB DDR4 3200 (dual channel, ~2GB gets eaten by the GPU)
Display: 14" 1366x768
OS: Windows 10 Home

















Benchmarks in stock configuration:





Benchmarks after upgrade:



(The SDD is being CPU/Chipset limited, this SSD could do ~3000MB/s read and ~2400 MB/s write in the last system it was in, but still a big improvement over the stock drive).

It also gets around 6hrs. battery life out of the 41 Wh battery (basic web browsing, etc. all this laptop will ever be used for) with all the power saving settings turned off (HP claims ~9hr. with the power saving settings turned on, though my NVMe SSD may reduce that a bit).

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

I probably wasted more time on this than it was worth.....but every time a piece of audio gear that was high end gets shredded, a little piece of my soul dies..... It seems the younger generation would rather listen to a squeaker in a phone than appreciate what music should sound like....

This was a drop off; Aiwa AV-D50U. Display out. Stuck in protection. Volume control not working.

2 lytics in the VFD power supply fixed the display. Volume control was just crudded contacts in the rotary switch (not a pot). Stuck in protection was some shorted diodes & burned resistors. Outputs were fine. Several resistors were burned beyond recognition....thankfully the schematic was available online for identification.

Came back to life, I spent a couple hours on it......and on a good day might be worth ~$100.....Drives a set of test Bose speakers nicely....actually sounds very good!

It will live to sing again!

[lti]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

RAM: 4GB DDR4 3200 (single channel and ~2GB gets eaten by the GPU)

There might be a setting to change that. If I remember right, it's in the BIOS on AMD systems, so HP might have removed it. 2GB of video RAM is ridiculous for a computer like that, especially when it only comes with 4GB of RAM. That thing must have been hammering the SSD for virtual memory while just sitting at the desktop.

[dmill89]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

There might be a setting to change that. If I remember right, it's in the BIOS on AMD systems, so HP might have removed it. 2GB of video RAM is ridiculous for a computer like that, especially when it only comes with 4GB of RAM. That thing must have been hammering the SSD for virtual memory while just sitting at the desktop.

There's no option in HP's custom BIOS to change it (there aren't many options at all aside from changing boot order and enabling/disabling some built-in devices and power management settings).








It seems to be fine with 8GB of RAM, but I'm sure it would struggle with the factory 4GB (at least this is upgradable), though I only left it in that config long enough to complete initial Windows setup and run the initial benchmarks, with SSDs (even relatively "slow" SATA ones) the use of virtual memory doesn't have nearly as much performance impact as it did back in the mechanical HDD days, but it definitely isn't good for SSD life. My previous work laptop (a Lenovo T450 I was issued in late 2015 and was replaced in 2020) only had 4GB RAM from the factory (I believe the GPU used 512MB of that) and it constantly used virtual memory until they finally upgraded it to 8GB after a year or so (and also upgraded the 128GB SSD to 256GB), and that was under Windows 7 (Though there are a ton of background security applications running on our work computers that use more RAM/CPU at idle than most personal systems would, though some OE systems that ship with a bunch of junkware that the user didn't clean up may match/exceed this).

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Not sure if it's really a score (since it's kicking my butt) but I scored an old Star TSP100 thermal printer (80mm) for $6. Had most of a roll of paper in it too. 10/100 LAN plus the usual RJ11 cash drawer hookup. Was able to use telnet (and a Star utility) to set the IP address and surprisingly there are linux and windows 10 drivers available. However, it's print server throws an error every time I try to print to it (even a test page that supposedly will work causes issues). May be incompatible with the new driver... or without POS software I can't format a document it's capable of printing. Oh well, at least I had a fun evening playing with it .

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Free JV50-MV mainboard from an pretry beaten up Acer 5738. Standard HD4570 deal but DDR3 instead of DDR2.

Wasted potential as the mainboard was originally made for M96 (HD4650) and Madison (which strangely points to HD5650 - why on earth would you pair a HD5650 with a Core 2 Duo is absolutely beyond me) but upon further inspection, it turned out that the GPU is the default HD4570 that usually comes with these.

I'll probably hunt down a bottom case and LVDS cable, and then, depending on what the MB originally used (FYI, 5738 has two types of LVDS cables - one is for CCFL, the other is for LED.), will probably patch up something using a 5735 lid (apparently the Wistron CP2 (AS5735) and JV50 share the same hinges, more or less) and whatever display I need, and hopefully turn it into a cheap Fedora machine.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

It also gets around 6hrs. battery life out of the 41 Wh battery (basic web browsing, etc. all this laptop will ever be used for) with all the power saving settings turned off (HP claims ~9hr. with the power saving settings turned on, though my NVMe SSD may reduce that a bit).

the battery life is still quite decent. my 13 year old hardware, a dell latitude e6500 from 2009 has a 9 hour battery life with the 9 cell 81 Wh battery with the processor forced into the lowest p-state and running at the minimum allowed voltage of 1v and with all the power saving settings turned on like eist, c-states and SLFM (super low frequency mode) using throttlestop and running idle at the desktop. this is according to windows power options which estimates the remaining battery life. all the power saving options for the intel onboard gpu were also turned on using the intel gfxui configuration utility. this is also with a sata qlc ssd which saves more power compared to a spinning rust hard disk.

so your modern laptop is still twice as power efficient as my 13 year old laptop. i believe hp's estimate is running idle at the desktop which corresponds to the maximum battery life possible.

Aiwa AV-D50U

another excellent fix, topcat! aiwa is a japanese brand so definitely worth the fix. the japanese pairing of the aiwa together with the pioneer multi-disc cd player which is also a japanese brand looks great! an excellent pairing!

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

the magazine-based cd players are a curse,
i used to fix them a lot - never run it without a full magazine or it can jam to the point of having to be stripped to get it ejected!

that may be why they switched to the turntable in a tray style mechanism.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Does a free i3-3110M count as a great score?

I guess so, my g6-2238sl seems to be happy to run its HD4000 along a HD7670M 1GB. Better than crippling it with a GT610M.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Scores of today!

Acer 5536 - HD3200 variant that got gutted in favor of housing the 5738 board (w/ a P8700 recently housed in it, plus 2x2GB DDR3)

HP Compaq 6830s - variant w/ HD3400 series card (internet states it's a 3430, although I have reasons to believe it's a standard 3470

Gigabyte M61PME-S2 - no POST, there was a SMD cap broken under the socket. Might try soldering it back then doing a small recap of some suspicious caps (most are Nichicon, but two look a bit suspect, despite this board being 2007/8 vintage.)

[Topcat]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Today's freebie is a Lenovo laptop; 6th gen I5-6200U @ 2.3GHz, 12gb RAM and a 500gb agonizing spinner... Came from a little old lady....and it smells like a little old lady....had to clean it up to get the sweet old lady smell out of it.... I'll ditch the spinner and toss a SATA SSD in it....it has a m.2 slot for the WWAN, but I've not read any success stories of people putting drives in that slot...bummer. Ohh well, it was free!

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Knowing Lenovo, there's gonna more than likely be a whitelist on the WWAN slot. Them and HP are about the only brands I know that whitelist cards.

I was once told Dell does too but from experience, I never had any Dell complain about WLAN/WWAN cards.

[whatamidoing]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Knowing Lenovo, there's gonna more than likely be a whitelist on the WWAN slot. Them and HP are about the only brands I know that whitelist cards.

I was once told Dell does too but from experience, I never had any Dell complain about WLAN/WWAN cards.

I'm told Fujitsu also does it (or used to do it rather, I think nowadays they only do servers), but only on the WWAN side. I've replaced the WLAN cards on a S7110 and a E752 with no problems.