Originally posted by BigMackCam I just picked up a very cheap, new / old stock, factory sealed "
Lenovo ThinkCentre M72e Tiny (4004)" mini desktop business PC, circa 2012 / 2013, complete with detachable optical drive / VESA mount enclosure, full size wired USB keyboard and wired USB mouse. As the model name implies, it really is small - just 7.1" wide by 7.2" deep by 1.4" in height (179 x 182 x 34.5mm) for the PC itself, without the optical drive enclosure.
...
I paid GBP £70 inc. shipping for the PC, which - considering it's brand new, metal cased, and came with the dual WiFi antennae, optical drive / VESA mount, quality keyboard and mouse, and Win 7 Pro (upgraded to activated Win 10 Pro at zero cost) - is cheap IMHO, even given the lowly specification. The Kioxia Exceria 240GB SSD cost another GBP £26 with free Amazon Prime delivery, and I've ordered an additional 4GB RAM Kingston RAM, brand new for £12 shipped, arriving next week. 8GB total RAM will be more than ample for anything I'll ever throw at this little puppy, especially under linux...
...
So, I'm into this project for GBP £108 (~ USD $150 at current forex rates). That seems like a pretty good deal to me, all things considered.
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I'm wavering over one final potential upgrade: a used-but-tested dual-core,
four-thread i5-3470T CPU to replace the humble G645T, for GBP £20 shipped. This would boost performance significantly, with single thread improvement of around 50%, plus the benefit of hyper-threading. I'm not sure I really
need it... but it's a very inexpensive upgrade. I'm
sorely tempted
Further to my recent post, I upgraded my new / old stock Lenovo M72e Tiny PC with an extra 4GB RAM, giving me 8GB total. Temptation got the better of me (as it often does
) and I ordered a used dual-core, four-thread i5-3470T CPU and some thermal paste - total cost under GBP £22 shipped - in order to replace the dual-core, two-thread G645T. The CPU and paste arrived today, so I installed it this afternoon...
I'd never installed a CPU before, and on my first attempt I think I was a bit too economical with the thermal paste between the processor and heatsink (I'd read that you should use a "
pea-sized" blob, but mine was more "
petit pois"
). In testing, the temperatures were frequenty reaching throttling level before the BIOS-controlled fan had a chance to spin up and cool it back down. Thankfully, the second attempt was more successful. Now, under heavy load, it creeps up more slowly
towards the throttling level, but the fan speed increases in line with that and keeps it below the threshold at peak
The higher core speed and boost, hyper-threading and faster integrated graphics translate into
much better performance overall. It was decent enough before, but fairly zips along now!
With the RAM, SSD and CPU upgrades, and the switch from Windows to Ubuntu MATE 20.04, I think I've exhausted the possibilities for optimising this little machine. It has some limitations that can't be overcome, such as the SATA II interface and USB 2.0-only ports; and whilst I
could upgrade the WiFi card to dual band, I have solid bandwidth to the router from anywhere in my home, so it's not really necessary. Plus, I'm already invested to the tune of GBP £130, and I think that's where I'd like to stop. It's been fun, and I'm happy with the result