Hi
I have a old Dell 755 Tower, and I'm wondering if it is worth the trouble of doing anything with it.
I'm thinking living room low end HTPC and (hopefully) as a Client for Game streaming (Steam). Definitely not as a main PC...
So, the machine present specs are:
CPU: C2D E6550
RAM: 4Gb DDR2
HDD: 160 Gb
PS: 380 W (I think)
As for the GPU, I already know that, if I decide to use this PC I have to get a discrete PCI-e Card, if only to have a HDMI port (The PC's MB does have a normal PCI-e 16x, and it's the mini tower variant of the Optiflex, so I wont need a SFF Card).
So, my doubts are:
1 - Will it work as a HTPC with, for example, a 2nd hand low/mid range GPU (I have a spare Radeon 5450 around, so if that would be enough) ?
2 - Will it work (acceptably) as a steam streaming client? (720p30FPS or 1080p24FPS) (the server is a i5 4690 + 8Gb + R9 280X, so, no issue there), and which type of GPU would preferable (I think there is something about hardware decoding that the E6550 can't do, so it must be transferred to the GPU)
3 - Should I keep Win7Pro 64bit (the current OS) or should I think about some form of Linux?
4 - Should I just forget about it and just get some cheap 2Gb Baytrail Z3735 with Win 8.1 little box?
All Comments/Suggestions/Ideas will be very welcome!
Thanks
JMDC
I have a old Dell 755 Tower, and I'm wondering if it is worth the trouble of doing anything with it.
I'm thinking living room low end HTPC and (hopefully) as a Client for Game streaming (Steam). Definitely not as a main PC...
So, the machine present specs are:
CPU: C2D E6550
RAM: 4Gb DDR2
HDD: 160 Gb
PS: 380 W (I think)
As for the GPU, I already know that, if I decide to use this PC I have to get a discrete PCI-e Card, if only to have a HDMI port (The PC's MB does have a normal PCI-e 16x, and it's the mini tower variant of the Optiflex, so I wont need a SFF Card).
So, my doubts are:
1 - Will it work as a HTPC with, for example, a 2nd hand low/mid range GPU (I have a spare Radeon 5450 around, so if that would be enough) ?
2 - Will it work (acceptably) as a steam streaming client? (720p30FPS or 1080p24FPS) (the server is a i5 4690 + 8Gb + R9 280X, so, no issue there), and which type of GPU would preferable (I think there is something about hardware decoding that the E6550 can't do, so it must be transferred to the GPU)
3 - Should I keep Win7Pro 64bit (the current OS) or should I think about some form of Linux?
4 - Should I just forget about it and just get some cheap 2Gb Baytrail Z3735 with Win 8.1 little box?
All Comments/Suggestions/Ideas will be very welcome!
Thanks
JMDC