Upgrading HP Omni 220 AIO Desktop

[npt2404]

I'd like to upgrade RAM and CPU in a family HP Omni 220-1125 all-in-one desktop used for fairly light office work, Web browsing, movie streaming but also a good amount of photography/graphic design work in Lightroom, Illustrator and other Adobe Creative Suite programs.

Based on manufacturer, the motherboard will take up to 8GB RAM total. (Has 6GB now.) Should be easy. What I'm not so comfortable with is the CPU. It appears that Intel Pentium G630 supplied can be replaced with several CPU's that will fit the socket (per HP):
i7-2600s (Sandy Bridge) quad core
i5-2400s (Sandy Bridge) quad core
i3-2120 (Sandy Bridge) dual core

Power should be ok from what I understand. What about cooling/temp? Will existing heat sink be ok? BIOS update? Will used processors still have plenty life left or is age not a concern yet? Will any of those three provide substantial performance boost? Anything else to consider?

Thanks in advance.

Specs:
Machine: HP Omni 220-1125
Motherboard: Pegatron IPISB-NK (LavacaB)
CPU socket type: LGA 1155
Current CPU: Intel Pentium G630
Current RAM: 1x2GB, 1x4GB Hynix PC3-12800 DDR3 SODIMM Non-ECC

 

[CRITICALThinker]

If you are going to an upgrade the i3 isn't quite enough to make a huge difference for the effort, the i5 and i7 are low power versions, so they will do fine thermally, as far as bios theoretically it should be supported but id check. as for lifespan these are not overclockable processors, and silicon sees little degradation over even 10 years, the motherboard is more likely to fail

 

[npt2404]

If you are going to an upgrade the i3 isn't quite enough to make a huge difference for the effort, the i5 and i7 are low power versions, so they will do fine thermally, as far as bios theoretically it should be supported but id check. as for lifespan these are not overclockable processors, and silicon sees little degradation over even 10 years, the motherboard is more likely to fail

OK, so i5-2400S and i7-2600S will work with my existing heatsink and fan. That's good news. I read somewhere (Newegg?) that i7-2600S tends to get hot but perhaps it was being overworked by the user or the reference was to a higher powered i7. It seems that HP used a similar if not identical heat sink in some of the more powerful AIO machines. So if I can get i7 cost effectively I'll go for it.

 

[Calvin7]

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom system requirements include •1 GB of Video RAM (VRAM).

Your system includes a • PCI Express MXM slot that supports a PCI Express x16 graphics card (Generation 2 speed)

MXM Video Card
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/mxm-video-card

 

[npt2404]

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom system requirements include •1 GB of Video RAM (VRAM).

Your system includes a • PCI Express MXM slot that supports a PCI Express x16 graphics card (Generation 2 speed)

MXM Video Card
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/mxm-video-card

Thanks for pointing this out. I haven't really spent any time looking into that. The information below is what I get from HP's website in connection with Omni 220-1125. I imagine there is nothing in the socket at the moment... but I can put the new card in without any additional power, cooling, etc upgrades? Is a dedicated heatsink needed? Different power supply?

Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD (DX10.1)
*Integrated video is not available if a graphics card is installed.
Integrated Intel HD 2000 graphics (supported by the processor)
One Mobile PCI Express Module (MXM) socket
- MXM 3.0 version: Type A
- <35W
- Shared memory up to 256 MB

P.S. I looked up Lightroom 4 system requirements for Windows on Adobe's Web site. So perhaps for the older version in use on that machine right now we are ok...

Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD Athlon® 64 processor
Microsoft® Windows Vista® or Windows® 7 with Service Pack 1 or Windows 8
2 GB of RAM
1 GB of available hard-disk space
1024 x 768 display

 

[npt2404]

Added RAM so now sitting at the max of 8 GB. A little bit better/faster so that's good. Checked to make sure there is no dedicated graphics card -- of course there wasn't. There is the slot there though and space for dedicated heatsink. (I looked at some pictures online of similar HP AIO units and they had one heatsink dedicated to the CPU and the other to GPU.)

I have i5-2400S on order. Would replacing the G630 with the i5 and adding a 1GB graphics card (+heatsink) be possible given factory 150W/7.9A power supply or is that going to be an issue?

 

[CRITICALThinker]

not knowing the display power, but assuming 50W, 10W for mobo, 65 for cpu, that leave ~ the 25 that the gpu in what I assume the top config is (50 is high estimate) so a 35 might be able to work, though not sure if drivers will work (EDIT DERP it says 35 on the wubsite)
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1691/radeon-hd-6450a

 

[npt2404]

not knowing the display power, but assuming 50W, 10W for mobo, 65 for cpu, that leave ~ the 25 that the gpu in what I assume the top config is (50 is high estimate) so a 35 might be able to work, though not sure if drivers will work (EDIT DERP it says 35 on the wubsite)
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1691/radeon-hd-6450a

I can't figure out what the display wattage is either. Don't know mobo but CPU is up to 65W and graphics card should be 25-35W. Seems awful tight at 150W capacity. Maybe GPU *and* CPU upgrade is too much to ask given what we have in this AIO.

 

[npt2404]

To provide an update, the new-to-me CPU is installed. Was plug and play. I did not update BIOS. No issues so far but also no visible improvement either although I'll be relying on primary user to give feedback. The Windows Experience Index jumped up a little bit after I re-ran the assessment. The CPU score is way up but graphics scores are still dragging it. I may be in as situation where HDD, GPU or something else may be the next bottleneck.

Is there a way to measure total current wattage to determine if a GPU addition is feasible?

P.S. I cleaned up the fan and the heatsink. Man, that thing was nasty. I think temps improved with the new processor!

 

[CRITICALThinker]

Glad to hear, if you grab a wall plug watt meter you can measure the whole system, assuming the power supply is ~70% efficient you should be able to determine what your approx headroom is. If the brick isn't too warm under load there should be headroom left in my experience. My 30W gpu and 15w cpu run my 65W power adapter pretty warm, prolly about 40-45C if charging and gaming, and a 45w is slightly better for 15W cpu.

As long as the brick is the same as the top config model it will be fine, not sure though.

 

[npt2404]

Glad to hear, if you grab a wall plug watt meter you can measure the whole system, assuming the power supply is ~70% efficient you should be able to determine what your approx headroom is. If the brick isn't too warm under load there should be headroom left in my experience. My 30W gpu and 15w cpu run my 65W power adapter pretty warm, prolly about 40-45C if charging and gaming, and a 45w is slightly better for 15W cpu.

As long as the brick is the same as the top config model it will be fine, not sure though.

I'll need to look into that. The existing power supply is 150W. Not the top rated. I believe the more powerful Omni desktops had a 180W adapter. So far performance has been pretty good so I'll probably leave it alone for now.

 

[npt2404]

I'm considering upgrading the OS on this machine to Win10 assuming the free upgrade is still doable and, if that works, replacing the HDD with SSD. (I imagine the only SSD this MB will support is via SATA cables so won't be able to have HDD and SSD together without major modifications.) The following is a basic question... would SSD's require an adapter for this PC? I believe native drive is the standard desktop 1TB 3.5" HDD. But all SDD are 2.5"m correct? Just want to make sure. Thanks in advance.

P.S. I have no clue where the existing OS license key is so I don't know how realistic a Win10 upgrade is but I'll probably try anyway. I'm perfectly happy with Windows 7, just concerned about EOL.