Windows 11 buying advice needed

[Hondaman]

My mother may soon need to upgrade from Win7 (to continue safe browsing, e-mail, and office tasks, without a printer). Right now, she uses an Intel Core2Quad 9550 CPU (not sure of motherboard). Video is either the Radeon 6670 or 6770, completely air-cooled, with fins like a motorcycle engine (I think I pointed a 120mm fan at it). PSU is probably Seasonic, still running after 14 years (I choose quality). I am not sure of the RAM, or the PCI-e wifi chip. Probably 8 GB or 16 GB. Perfect for WIndows 7.

She does not want to switch to Linux. And she does not want to use a laptop because of the small keyboard. I am assuming I need a new motherboard because Win11 requires the TPM chip.

What motherboard and processor would be good for basic office tasks, browsing, and e-mail? What CPU cooler? How much RAM is needed for a basic, but decent computer? Do AMD and Intel still make boards with integrated video? Can her existing video card be re-used?

I don't want to end up with the equivalent of an overpriced, wimpy 386SX (I remember those from the WIndows 3.0/3.1 switchover). Or that low-quality "JATON" video card I had once (I blew it up with fireworks when it died, and I seldom destroy broken stuff with violence like that). And I don't know how much RAM I will need. And I don't want to overpay for a wimpy 1080 video card. Even if that's all I need, I don't want to pay too much. Are there any other video chips out there worth considering these days?

(If I need to, I can easily set her up with a PCI-e wifi card with the Atheros 9380 chip -- both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios. I assume that Win 11, connected with ethernet, will auto-download wifi drivers.)

If she can't really navigate the interface in Ubuntu or Mint, she probably won't understand the Microsoft "app store", so I will probably need to set it up for her. Will OpenOffice run on Win11?

I am not impressed with Dell. Several Dimension 2400-era towers gave me weird yellow/green LED combinations on the back when they fail to boot at end-of-life. And different combinations each time I try to boot them. I guess the soldering wasn't designed to LAST. I have also had bad experiences with Gigabyte boards.

What hardware would you recommend?

[Hondaman]

Correction: after the words "with fins like a motorcycle engine", I tried to replace "I choose quality" with "I may have pointed a 120mm fan at it" but the edit might not have worked, for reasons we'll probably never know.

EDIT: Would Windows 10 work okay? If I am buying NEW hardware, I just figured I would give her Win 11. Is it expensive?

[dmill89]

For windows 11 (official support) you'll need an 8th gen. intel I3/5/7 or AMD Ryzen 2xxx series CPU or 3xxxxG series APU (integrated GPU note the G suffix). For basic web-browsing/office tasks an integrated GPU would be fine, though many GPUs don't come with a built in GPU, so if you go with one of those, you'll need a GPU as well, for the "basic" tasks mentioned something like a used GeForce GTX 1060 or Radeon RX570/580 would be fine (readily available on eBay for around $50-75), if you want something new a GeForce GTX 1660 Super, RTX 3050, or Radeon RX5500, Rx5600, or RX 6500 should be fine. For RAM 8GB is an absolute minimum and 16 GB would be highly recommended, an SSD is also an absolute must (preferably NVMe) as windows 10/11 run like absolute garbage on a spinning HDD (you can have a secondary HDD for bulk storage of photos/music/video/etc. if you like but don't run the OS from it).


If I were building a system for that use case It would probably look something like this:

CPU: Ryzen 5 4500 (~$65)
Motherboard: AsRock B450M-HDV (~$70)
GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 (~$60 Used) (Of course this specific Ebay listing may sell out, but it is just an example and there will be many other similar ones)
RAM: TeamGroup Elite 16GB DDR4 3200 (~$25)
SSD: PNY CS2230 1TB M.2 NVMe (~$58) (1TB may be too much or too little based on the individual storage needs, but I chose it as a "happy middle ground")
Case: Thermaltake Versa H17 (~$50) (Choose whatever you like that fits your budget, I just chose this as a good "band for the buck" example or you can re-use your old one)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Assassin X 90 SE V2 (~$17) (again choose whatever you like and fits your budget and case)
PSU: Thermaltake SMART 600W ($41) (really overkill, but hard to beat for the price for a somewhat reputable unit, or re-use your old one if it still works and is 400W+)

Total: ~$386 (minus Windows license, but OEM keys can be had for around $20)


Or alternatively you can pick up a use office PC like this: Lenovo ThinkStation P330 Intel i7-8700 16GB 512 GB SSD Win 11 Pro (~$250) (though pretty much all modern pre-builts will have proprietary components such as Motherboards, PSUs and cases making repair/upgrade difficult).


I would generally avoid any new "consumer oriented" "budget" (<$500) prebuilts as they are pretty much all universally garbage these days.

Correction: after the words "with fins like a motorcycle engine", I tried to replace "I choose quality" with "I may have pointed a 120mm fan at it" but the edit might not have worked, for reasons we'll probably never know.

EDIT: Would Windows 10 work okay? If I am buying NEW hardware, I just figured I would give her Win 11. Is it expensive?

Windows 10 is fine (really better than 11 in just about every way except support period) but of course it officially goes out of support in October this year if that matters to you, license wise the prices is pretty much the same (and you can get a free upgrade to Windows 11 with a Windows 10 license on "supported" hardware). Windows 10 will run reasonably well on anything Core2Duo/Core2Quad and newer as long as you give it enough ram (8GB min 16GB recommended) and an SSD.

[stj]

this must be a troll post.
the browser is your interface to the world, not the o.s.
besides, newer stuff is more compromised out of the box.

[sam_sam_sam]

Be careful of some of the newer graphics cards because there seems to be an issue with the update that have been released and are coming out screen completely dead no video output or just revert to the default graphics settings and dose not want to update at this is what I have read lately

Fortunately the new gaming computer that I have dose not have one of those video cards in it and if I had one and works correctly I would not update the firmware until these issues are resolved for good and might even wait until the next update before I did anything else Unless I was forced to because of an application that I really need to use will not work because of not doing the update hun really I am not sure if I want to or not

[Hondaman]

this must be a troll post. The browser is your interface to the world....

It is not. Most browsers will not support Win7 much longer.

Also there is much "fakery" in the USA. I have seen "upgrade" PCI sound cards designed for "people who only have an FM synthesizer chip on their motherboards". But the "upgrade" was just another FM synth chip, not a wavetable chip! And I bought the ATI All-In-Wonder 9200SE. "Special Edition" means fewer features, it was released late in this chip's lifespan.

(I can use it to convert VHS to digital MPEG-2, so I guess that is nice.)

I have not bought any computer equipment since my mother's computer (2011/2012). I'm not trolling, I really have been out of the market for a long time (my AMD 5350 was really only intended for testing, file server and the pfSense hardware firewall).

So yes, all of your advice is valuable!

...avoid any new "consumer oriented" "budget" (<$500) prebuilts....

To me, cheap means proprietary garbage, and I avoid it, PERIOD.

Be careful of some of the newer graphics cards....

THANK YOU. That's good to know. I remember when Diamond Multimedia came out with new video cards, and they did not work with Windows 95 FOR A WHOLE YEAR. They were worthless hunks of silicon until the drivers were perfected. I will avoid this and probably choose integrated video (my mother just uses the computer for web surfing and e-mail)..

newer stuff is more compromised out of the box.

TPM (Trusted Platform Module) means that MICROSOFT can trust your hardware, not that YOU can. They can stop you from playing copies of media you have LEGITIMATE RIGHTS to play, and maybe MUCH MORE in the future. I still run Win7, and Microsoft snuck in an update to Media Player so it will not play DVDs of movies. I tried to DENY ALL updates, but somehow I think they got this update in anyway. So to play DVDs, I have to use VLC Media Player and double-click on the directory where the files are located. I may need to use DVD Decrypter first.) My mother is 82 years old, and uses it for web surfing and e-mail. She is smart and rejects e-mail scams. I don't think her browsing history can be monetized. What are they going to try to sell her? Adult diapers? Diabetes medication? Funerals? She works for a funeral home.

...OEM keys can be had for around $20.

How does that work? Back in the days of WinXP, I thought there was a special string of characters in the BIOS of Dell, etc., that would bypass activation, which an Asrock mobo would obviously not have. Can anyone be their own OEM now by providing their own support? I think that's the way Win7 worked for my AMD 8150 and my mother's Core2 Quad 9550. Is it still that way with Windows 11?

[stj]

if you have to buy a video card they buy AMD, nvidia has been really taking the piss since the 4000 series was released.
infact i recommend this guy's YT channel - he knows his shit and it's very educational!
https://www.youtube.com/@Jayztwocents/videos

[momaka]

I hate to say it, but I just cannot recommend either Windows 10 or 11 for old people. It's a tricky OS (yes I grouped both into singular thing, because they are) and there way too many things "going on" or try to regularly steal your focus from whatever you are doing. You can quiet it down a bit if you take the time to go through every single setting to disable everything that your mother may not have a use for (read: this may take you upwards of a few hours... which is exactly why I HATE setting up Win10/11). Alternatively, you could use something like Tiny 10 or Tiny 11 - a stripped-down version of these OSes with telemetry and updates disabled out of the box.

Also, ABSOLUTELY DO NOT give her Windows 10/11 if she uses the computer infrequently, even more so if it's going to be connected via Wi-Fi. The updates between long periods of downtime can sometimes make the connection slow down to a crawl. It gets even worse if the wireless is "spotty", like I have it here (old all-concrete condo from the soviet era, which is very unfriendly to Wi-Fi signals.) And to make it even "better", Windows 11 will probably want you to create a Microsoft Account... which means the PC will have to phone home to M$ pretty much every time she turns it on and/or logs in, making the boot up / log in even slower as account data/info is retrieved from M$. Of course, you can (still?) opt out of an MS Account at setup - just do NOT connect the PC to internet (Wi-Fi or wired) while setting it up... and any steps that ask for this to be done specifically, always try to "skip this step" if available.

I also don't suggest to go with those $20 scummy licenses from Ebay and elsewhere online. Yes, they work, but they are technically operating in a gray area of the M$ license agreement. So that means M$ could revoke the license in the future or you may not be able to use it later again if you do decide to upgrade the same machine again (and/or if the upgrade somehow breaks the activation due to too many hardware changes).

Personally, I'm staying away from Windows 10/11 for as long as I can and keeping all my relatives (who rely on me for their PC maintenance / upkeep) off of it too. So far, no complaints, and there are still ways to keep Win7 up-to-snuff / compatible with the modern web.

As for browsers, rest assured that there are a good number out there that support Windows 7 and will likely continue to do so for quite some time. Firefox ESR still supports it for now and is my default choice. Pale Moon is another one, though the 32-bit version is not exactly great or that compatible with some very script-heavy websites (i.e. Youtube and Gmail.) There are Chromium forks too, if a Chrome-like browser is more of her thing. On that note, I actually recently tried Supermium browser, as was suggested by another user here in the OS 2025 thread. It's a Chromium-based browser that was specifically made to be compatible with older OS-es like 7 (and even XP) while still being maintained/updated for the current web. So far, I have to say I'm quite impressed with it too, in terms of website support. The fact that I can still get on the web in 2025 with an old Pentium 4 PC from 2005 and get most basic (non-media-heavy) browsing done is quite a feat, IMO.

Now, if you really have already set your mind onto going the Win10/11 route, then here is the 1st and most important thing about the system: DO NOT use a regular HDD as the OS drive. SSD is a must if you want your boot / log-in times to take less than several minutes and for things to open smoothly. Better yet, don't go with the really cheap cache-less SSDs, because even those will seem a bit slow under Win10/11. What you need is something that has good read/write speeds and can withstand a good number of read/write cycles, because... boy... Win10/11 will surely use those two things up.

In regards to GPU: unless your mother is into modern gaming, stay away from dedicated video cards. They are pricey, they will eat up unnecessary electricity without any added benefit, and they tend to die with or without load (especially used GTX 1060's and RX400/500 series of cards - have a look at the forums here)... so overall, you/she just won't need it. A 9th or 10th or 11th gen Intel i3 or i5 CPU with IGP will do just fine for the modern web without any slowdowns or compromises. If going beyond Intel 11th gen, do your research - I haven't been keeping up with the latest Intel releases, but they did have a problem with chips frying themselves at some point. Don't know if that got fixed or not. Perhaps someone else can shine more light on that here.

For RAM: if your mother keeps just a tab or three open at most, 8GB will more than likely suffice with some room to spare. On the other hand, if she tends to keep her browser open all the time with all kinds of tabs open, probably better to go with 12GB or more. FWIW, 16 GB is still fine for many things these days, including e-sports / light gaming and that likely won't change for a while.

Contrary to some of the other suggestions here, I'm not all against OEM pre-builts - particularly those smaller SFF/USFF desktops. Yes, they come with proprietary PSUs and motherboard layouts and may not be very upgrade able (if at all). But overall they are intended as quiet and reliable business/office machines and usually do hold up to that task quite well. Better yet, since you are in the US, spare parts for OEMs like HP and Dell tend to be abundant... especially if you get a model that's 5 years or older, as that's when large corps will do their upgrade cycles and dispose of these in masses... making Ebay and other places online filled with cheap spare parts for the next 5 years.

[dmill89]

How does that work? Back in the days of WinXP, I thought there was a special string of characters in the BIOS of Dell, etc., that would bypass activation, which an Asrock mobo would obviously not have. Can anyone be their own OEM now by providing their own support? I think that's the way Win7 worked for my AMD 8150 and my mother's Core2 Quad 9550. Is it still that way with Windows 11?

Lots of places online (Vip-Scdkey, GVGMall, and even somewhat legit places like the TechSpot store, and periodic sales on "Woot" Amazon's "closeout" subsidiary) sell grey market OEM keys. Using these keys as an individual user is technically a Terms of Service violation in most cases, but (at least so far) Microsoft doesn't try to enforce this (aside from OEM keys not getting direct support from MS, which has always been the case since OEMs like Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc. provide their own support), and of course OEM keys are "tied" to the hardware (motherboard) once activated so if you buy a new motherboard you'll need to buy another OS key.

[dmill89]

I
In regards to GPU: unless your mother is into modern gaming, stay away from dedicated video cards.

I would generally agree, though with Intel and AMD omitting integrated GPUs from many of their recent "entry-level" and "midrange" desktop CPUs in addition to the "high-end" CPUs (which would almost always be paired with a dedicated GPU) can complicate this a bit. In many cases the price difference between the non-IGPU and IGPU versions of a CPU exceeds that of buying a decent used mid-range or even entry-level new GPU (something like a GT1030 which is still sold new though it barely outperforms most current IGPUs), making the economics favor a D-GPU in some cases.

I
Now, if you really have already set your mind onto going the Win10/11 route, then here is the 1st and most important thing about the system: DO NOT use a regular HDD as the OS drive. SSD is a must if you want your boot / log-in times to take less than several minutes and for things to open smoothly.

^This x1000, do not under any circumstances use an HDD as a boot drive for Win10/11. I have a "junk" Optiplex 390 (I7-2600, 8GB DDR3, GTX1050), that I threw a 10K RPM veloci-raptor in just to test with and even it is agonizingly slow (takes minutes to fully boot, and windows updates often take several hours), and a "common" 7200 or 5400 rpm drive is going to be eve worse.

I
Contrary to some of the other suggestions here, I'm not all against OEM pre-builts - particularly those smaller SFF/USFF desktops. Yes, they come with proprietary PSUs and motherboard layouts and may not be very upgrade able (if at all). But overall they are intended as quiet and reliable business/office machines and usually do hold up to that task quite well. Better yet, since you are in the US, spare parts for OEMs like HP and Dell tend to be abundant... especially if you get a model that's 5 years or older, as that's when large corps will do their upgrade cycles and dispose of these in masses... making Ebay and other places online filled with cheap spare parts for the next 5 years.

I'm also not completely against pre-builts if you stick to the business (or even higher-end consumer) units and understand their limitations, but some of the "entry-level" consumer pre-built you'll find in places like Walmart, BestBuy, etc. are basically manufactured e-waste with specs that barely cut it for even basic tasks today and will quickly be obsolete with little to no upgradability (many are basically a laptop motherboard in a case with soldered CPU and Ram and no PCIe slots), you're pretty much always better off buying a used business pre-built, than a new "entry-level" consumer one (the same goes for laptops).

I
Personally, I'm staying away from Windows 10/11 for as long as I can and keeping all my relatives (who rely on me for their PC maintenance / upkeep) off of it too. So far, no complaints, and there are still ways to keep Win7 up-to-snuff / compatible with the modern web.

I also tend to agree with that sentiment, in my opinion Microsoft hasn't made a decent new product that is actually better than what it replaces (not just OSs, Office, Teams, Outlook, etc. as well) in over a decade now, and still see Windows 7 as far superior to 10/11 in just about every way. But with 3rd. party software support (I generally couldn't care less about Microsoft's "security" updates, but once 3rd. party software starts dropping support for an OS it becomes an "issue") rapidly being dropped from Windows 7 it is admittedly harder and harder to keep using it as a "daily driver" OS, especially if you have "stubborn" relatives that refuse to switch browsers, e-mail clients and other applications.

I
I also don't suggest to go with those $20 scummy licenses from Ebay and elsewhere online. Yes, they work, but they are technically operating in a gray area of the M$ license agreement. So that means M$ could revoke the license in the future or you may not be able to use it later again if you do decide to upgrade the same machine again (and/or if the upgrade somehow breaks the activation due to too many hardware changes).

Agreed these keys are "sketchy" and just because MS hasn't gone out of their way to block them currently doesn't mean they won't at some point in the future. Though I also hate giving Microsludge any more money than I absolutely have to (though admittedly for the reasons you mentioned I bought a "full" legit Windows 10 license for my main desktop and keep the "grey market" keys to less critical things like test systems and the like).