STREAMING PC SUCCESS?
SO, HAVE WE ACHIEVED a system capable of streaming content across wireless networks at HD and UHD? Yes. Amazon Prime, Netflix, and YouTube all work seamlessly at 2560x1440, delivering top-notch content in your own home. The Pentium G3258 is fairly beefy when it comes to streaming content at this resolution, and in everyday desktop operation, there’s very little difference between this and the likes of an Intel Core i7. However, we live in the age of 4K TV—1080p is the new CRT, and a maximum resolution of 60fps 1440p just doesn’t cut it.
Your best bet for a 4K streaming rig is to opt for more modern hardware in the form of Skylake and the Z170 chipset. We had a soft spot for the Pentium G3258, due to its overclocking capabilities. Even so, you can add all the MHz in the world, but if the chipset and integrated GPU don’t stack up, what’s the point? We should have opted for one of Intel’s newer G4400 Pentium dual-core CPUs. You could put together a similar system using more modern components for around the same price, at a spec that would make mincemeat of 4K streaming. Hardware struggles to hold its value second-hand, yet as a year or two passes, it becomes far more expensive to buy brand new—just take a look at the Gigabyte Z97N Gaming 5. You could forge a system out of spares and old components (which is what we’re trying to suggest), but you’ll be far better off opting for newer in-stock componentry, as opposed to buying out-of-date hardware.
The build process was excruciatingly frustrating—impressive, when you consider how little there is in the system. The RM650X, although fantastically quiet, doesn’t do so well in a small form factor case. And the lack of cable management space really did a number on us. This case would’ve worked much better if the power supply orientation was reversed, and the power pass-through located on the side of the PCIe slot, so we would have the choice of installing a GPU if we wanted.
On top of that, during installation of the OS we encountered numerous problems, mostly due to an uncleared motherboard leading to a multiplier of 46 being applied to the G3258 core. Amazingly, even at 4.6GHz, it was stable, but the temperatures kept ramping up when we tried to extract zipped files, to the point that the system would hard reset to protect the core. On top of that, fast-boot was enabled, and getting into the BIOS without a dedicated GPU was nigh-on impossible. In the end, we had to use Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility, and install a spare GPU in the form of the R9 Nano to get back in.
In hindsight, we would have loved to have gone for a more impressively specced Skylake rig, but for a system that we pieced together out of spare parts and older components, it shows just what you can do with old tech.
As a final disclaimer, we should point out that this isn’t going to break any records when it comes to benchmarks—it’s not meant to. It’s a perfect office PC, a system for your grandma, or a home theater. Not a bank-busting, framerending, zero-point-shredding machine.