At the beginning of 2019, our old PC reached the end of its life. It survived three monitors, two hard drives, three power supplies, and even had 2 GB of DDR2 memory added to its original 6 GB. We also upgraded its graphics card to a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB. However, its aging AMD motherboard with a Pentium Dual Core CPU E5400 2.70 GHz had done its duty. We were quite attached to that PC since it had served us well for over 7 years.
After its demise, we couldn’t afford one of the top-of-the-line machines, so we settled for two lower-performance laptops. Instead of buying the most expensive high-performance computer, we opted for a budget-friendly machine that could handle at least 80% of our computing tasks. We aren’t including the latest games in that percentage. And we can tell you that we’re satisfied with what we managed to purchase.
- Motherboard: AM4 A320, 2x DIMM DDR4 / SATA3 / GLAN / Audio 7.1 / USB 3.0
- Processor: AMD Athlon X4 950, AM4 / 28nm / 4 physical, 4 logical cores / 2MB L2 cache / 65W power consumption
- Processor Clock Speed: 3.5GHz (Turbo frequency 3.8GHz)
- Cooler: AMD stock cooler
- Memory: 8GB DDR4
- SSD: 240GB SATA3 / 2.5
- Hard Disk Capacity: 1TB SATA3 / 3.5 / 7200 RPM
- Graphics Card: nVidia GeForce GT 1030 2GB / GDDR3 / HDMI / DVI-D / VGA / 64-bit
- Sound Card: 7.1 System (integrated on the motherboard)
- Case: Midi Tower Rhino RX459 / 500W power supply
Later, you can add an additional 8 GB of RAM to this machine and replace the graphics card with one that is twice as powerful, featuring 4 GB of memory.
When you buy a new machine, those are the happiest moments for any programmer. You usually think, “Now I’ll clear a spot for it and immediately turn it on, install Windows 10 Pro, and then enjoy installing other programs. I can’t wait to work with a 27-inch monitor.” However, that’s when the challenges begin, and you have to solve them on the fly. First, you might have trouble connecting the monitor to the computer. You’ll likely need an HDMI cable. At the time, we had an extension with an HDMI input, but the new computer required a different HDMI input.
So, you might find yourself returning to the computer store after purchasing the new computer to buy additional items you need. When we first turned on our new computer, we were pleasantly surprised. Instead of the old blue BIOS screen, we encountered a new UEFI interface, usually in a simpler brown color. We believe this depends on the motherboard you have. And then comes that initial moment when MS-DOS opens up, and we need to start installing the best Windows operating system of all time.
How to install Windows 10 Professional on a new computer?
