Compact Motherboard & CPU advise

[Nevillet]

Hi All,

I have a very compact PC that is housed in a 1U 19" rack case. The problem is that it's sluggish. It is running a stripped back version of W7.

The PC has the following hardware:
Motherboard = ASRock N3050-ITX
CPU = Celeron N3050 @1.6 GHz
Ram = 4Gb DDR3 @ 1600 MHz
Hard Disk = 120GB KINGSTON SV300S37A120G SATA

I'm only running low level apps e.g. Chrome, Excel, Word, VLC, etc

So I'm looking at upgrading the MB, CPU & RAM. It doesn't have to be new.
But the important thing is the height as in the CPU needs to have a low profile passive heat sink.
The external height of a 1U rack is 44.45mm

Many thanks.

[bigbeark]

Re: Compact Motherboard & CPU advise

How much of your HDD space is already used? Have you defragged recently? Have you done a virus scan? Try Malware Bytes to see, it's free. You could upgrade RAM to 8GB.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Compact Motherboard & CPU advise

Don't defrag an SSD, it doesn't help.

I know first hand what an Atom at 1.6GHz runs at. If you really want to run video or heavy duty applications, you need to get another CPU. I don't have a problem with the Atom with simple web pages and general office type applications.

Though I don't have the exact Atom flavor you have but I suspect it at the speed of a 1.6GHz P3 when turboboosted (if enabled) else near 1.2GHz P3 (at 1.6GHz).

Now finding another 1U-sized fast ITX board... how much money do you have to spend... and anything faster will be using more power and requiring some sort of heatsink modification, likely involving heat pipes.

[Nevillet]

Re: Compact Motherboard & CPU advise

Many thanks both,

I was always led to believe that defraging a SSD was not good for their health.

I'll run Malware Bytes on this (and all my other machines).

Upgrading the RAM is a good and relatively cheap way forwards.

The machine lives in my garage and is off at the moment but at a guess I'd say that less than 40% of the SSD is used as all my files live on a server.

Thanks again.

[lti]

Re: Compact Motherboard & CPU advise

Check RAM usage in Task Manager.

There are faster 1U systems (servers), but you will need really loud fans. Low-power CPUs faster than a Celeron aren't easy to find. Most of them are mobile CPUs, and they're soldered to save space.

[zunasthegreat]

Re: Compact Motherboard & CPU advise

CPU = Celeron N3050 @1.6 GHz

The sluggish one is the CPU, current era browsing is a lot harder and those weak cores have a hard time. I don't know the cooler clearance for your case but I think intel boxed cooler might fit, there are low profile ones if it won't. If you plan to update don't buy something weaker than a 4C/8T cpu. For example an 10100/H410 or B460 ITX and 8GB RAM will set you back around 180-200$.

*34mm tall cooler example