Do you need more than a dual core for office work, web browsing and YouTube?

[Ginger Penguin]

Hi all,

 

My parents recently asked me to build them a computer for some basic office work (spreadsheets, typing etc.), web browsing and YouTube. You know, the basics. I'm trying to pick a CPU and I'm just not that familiar with the low-end. I was going to go for a 2200G and forego a dedicated GPU (though I've had to bump that up to a 3200G because the 2200G seems to be out of stock and completely discontinued everywhere now) but I was wondering whether they even really need a quad core for that kind of a workload and if I should get something like an Athlon 3000G or even lower like a 240GE at that point. They've both got 4 threads so it won't be as good as a true quad core but better than something without hyperthreading.

[AndreiArgeanu]

The 3000G is more than enough for all of those requirements.

[mahyar]

well now dual core is enough but in near future no so i suggest going with 3200g 

[svmlegacy]

The 3000G is a lovely little CPU that impressed me when I ran it for a bit. Perfect for light computing needs. Mine also OC's really well for a 14nm Zen part, over 4 GHz is possible.

 

Typically they're had for cheaper than the other Raven Ridge Athlon's, so I'd ignore the 240GE unless you truely find it cheap and available.

[AndreiArgeanu]

20 minutes ago, mahyar said:

well now dual core is enough but in near future no so i suggest going with 3200g 

What do you mean in the near future? The office and chrome system requirements won't change. A dual core is enough for the given purpose for a pretty long time.

[Ginger Penguin]

8 minutes ago, svmlegacy said:

The 3000G is a lovely little CPU that impressed me when I ran it for a bit. Perfect for light computing needs. Mine also OC's really well for a 14nm Zen part, over 4 GHz is possible.

 

Typically they're had for cheaper than the other Raven Ridge Athlon's, so I'd ignore the 240GE unless you truely find it cheap and available.

That's good to know. I can get the 3000G for $90 and the 220GE (the page on PC Part Picker said 240GE but was actually a 220GE) for $71 so it's definitely less and free shipping to boot. Though I will probably be getting some other stuff for their system and my upcoming build from the place that has the 3000G so that would absorb some of the cost.

22 minutes ago, mahyar said:

well now dual core is enough but in near future no so i suggest going with 3200g 

That's what I was thinking. But I got them an Asrock B450 VDH R4.0 so nothing special but with a decent upgrade path to something like a 3100+some dedicated GPU if they wanted to do some more things with it down the line. But if they only need a dual core right now and Vega 3 would be fine for watching YouTube etc. it probably doesn't warrant the jumping up $80 to the 3200G.

[Mister Woof]

My work laptop is an old i7-4600m, which is an old Haswell dual core with hyperthreading.

 

It works well enough, and manages videos and normal office loads fine.

[Ginger Penguin]

3 hours ago, Mister Woof said:

My work laptop is an old i7-4600m, which is an old Haswell dual core with hyperthreading.

 

It works well enough, and manages videos and normal office loads fine.

Thanks for that! I'm definitely going Athlon now, it's just 220GE vs 3000G. The 3000G is actually $99 as the $90 one is in fact out of stock which kinda puts the 220GE in even more of a position. I just had an additional thought of video chatting, though. They have a laptop which they would probably use for Zoom calls and the like but I can see the use in a system at least being capable of it.

 

Zoom's recommended specs only call for a dual core above 2GHz so should be fine but they mention screen sharing is capped at 5fps for dual core systems. Probably not an issue for them but do you think that would apply to a system with 4 threads or are they probably talking about a 2c/2t system?

[bondoao1]

my every day PC has a 4690K, GTX960, & 16gb of ram in it. 
It works great for youtube and other daily tasks, and I can even play a few of the older games on it if I'm too lazy to switch over to my gaming PC. 

 

[otennicegg3]

It's going to be quad cores as a minimum for me in 2020 and onwards as even some basic apps from my experience are starting to take advantage of more than 2 or 4 cores even. Any decent quad-core will do for most office jobs.

[Guest]

I built an office PC with a 220ge and utilize the iGPU vega3 graphics. By all means, not powerful. It does everything fine. Even some light gaming, let me son run his BrickRigs game on it too.

What's really nice is I've upgraded the heat sink so I can run passive cooling, so it's a pretty silent desktop for the most part. Quiet enough I can hear the storage drives spin up when its quiet in the evening. 

[Dr0y]

my gf still use her sony vaio core2duo laptop and it works really good for basic word, excel, web browsing and youtube.

[Ginger Penguin]

That's good to know. Thanks everyone! I guess I'll go with the 220GE for now and then they've got a solid upgrade path for down the line if they need it. In a few years, some of the older Ryzen APUs might be pretty cheap to pick up used anyway once everyone's moved over to AM5.

[Mister Woof]

18 hours ago, W.D. Stevens said:

Thanks for that! I'm definitely going Athlon now, it's just 220GE vs 3000G. The 3000G is actually $99 as the $90 one is in fact out of stock which kinda puts the 220GE in even more of a position. I just had an additional thought of video chatting, though. They have a laptop which they would probably use for Zoom calls and the like but I can see the use in a system at least being capable of it.

 

Zoom's recommended specs only call for a dual core above 2GHz so should be fine but they mention screen sharing is capped at 5fps for dual core systems. Probably not an issue for them but do you think that would apply to a system with 4 threads or are they probably talking about a 2c/2t system?

No idea I don't use zoom just Skype text