Anyone familiar with Pentium N3700 1.6Ghz (2.4Ghz Turbo ) Quadcore

[DaveLembke]

My wife saw a computer at BJ's for sale tonight for $229.99 its a HP 251-a121 as seen here:  http://www.bjs.com/hp-251-a121-desktop-16ghz-pentium-n3700-processor.product.286066

Looking online I see some youtube videos of people playing games on the N3700 CPU and it seems like they are playing ok with the Intel HD Graphics.

My concern with it is that it is a very low 6 Watt TDP CPU and only 1.6Ghz with 2.4Ghz Turbo and so I'm wondering if it would run World of Warcraft ok or not as the most complex game my wife would run on it?

My wife currently has a Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4Ghz dual-core with Windows 7 32-bit with 3GB RAM and she is looking for a new system purely just because she says her system is old and she wants a new one. This core 2 duo otherwise runs completely fine and I said its a waste of money to buy a newer computer when what you have works without any problems. I also warned her that she might not like Windows 10 and I wouldnt be downgrading a new computer to 7 because I dont have any Windows 7 licenses left to use.

Looking at benchmarks the Core 2 Duo E6600 and the Pentium N3700 seem like a close match in performance with N3700 slightly better than her Core 2 Duo so she wouldnt gain much probably although the low clock and very low 6 Watt TDP ( 10x less power than Core 2 Duo ) stands out as maybe too weak however CPU is likely far more energy efficient as well and being quadcore vs dualcore it likely makes up for this as well.

Here is E6600 benchmark: http://cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core2+Duo+E6600+%40+2.40GHz

Here is N3700 benchmark: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+N3700+%40+1.60GHz

Here is a comparison against the E6700 as closest comparison I could find to my wifes E6600: http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_pentium_n3700-510-vs-intel_core2_duo_e6700-461

Anyone here have the N3700 to comment about whether its too weak or not as well?

[camerongray]

Performance between the two is probably reasonably close, with the Core 2 Duo possibly being slightly better in single threaded performance and the Pentium slightly better with multi core workloads since it's a quad core chip.  It is still very much a chip designed for small/low cost laptops.

I'd be very wary of that desktop though - Looking around online it appears to be one of those hilarious machines that are essentially a laptop in a desktop case - They use a MiniITX motherboard with soldered CPU that has no PCI(-E) slots at all and even uses an external power brick.  You essentially end up with a tiny motherboard and hard drive inside a regular size case that's mostly empty space - See the photo of the rear here: http://store.hp.com/us/en/mdp/desktops/hp-desktop-tower#!.  If you are going for a system like that you would be better off getting something like a NUC as you don't really lose much in terms of expansion (although you can't fit a HDD and need an SSD) and you end up with a machine that isn't mostly empty space!

[DaveLembke]

Thanks for the info... I didnt catch this important detail..

Looking around online it appears to be one of those hilarious machines that are essentially a laptop in a desktop case - They use a MiniITX motherboard with soldered CPU that has no PCI(-E) slots at all and even uses an external power brick.

Now that you pointed that out I looked and found this which is quite funny... Why did they make a minitower case with external power supply when with all the empty space they could have made it internal... 

http://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c04870230

We wont be buying this one... ha ha 

Some other online references to people adding PCIE video cards with the N3700 must have been a custom low TDP gaming build like using one of these boards linked here with PCIE 8x slot or something. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182987&cm_re=N3700-_-13-182-987-_-Product

Thanks for your help