HP Pavilion DC5700 SFF

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crosscourt
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HP Pavilion DC5700 SFF

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The 5700 is a 2007-2008 SFF primarily a business system. It has a Pentium D 945 3.4ghz cpu, 4gb of ram, Intel IGP and I added a 128gb ssd. I tried Q4OS with it and it ran well but had major sound issues I couldnt solve. Online performance was poor as the sound issues continued. Tried Zorin and Neon as well as MX-21 but too many issues. I tried Mageia 8 and the difference was amazing. Better performance online and off and no sound issues at all. Im not sure what the difference is between Mageia and the Ubuntu/Debian based distros but its a stark difference. It also runs Win10 which surprised me. Ive got a Intel core 2 duo E6600 2.4ghz thats supported and Ill install it over the weekend. This should give the system a large performance improvement. The biggest drawback is the system only supports 4gb of ram, four slots/1gb per slot. I tried a 2gb stick and it wont boot at all. Iy also doesnt have a pcie slot for a video card. One slot is add2 support only and the other 2 slots are PCI. Wanted to see if I could get this system running and upgrade for general use. HP no longer offers bios or driver support for the system so you either have to go with Win10 or with Linux to have all your drivers.
Pentoium D gets extremely hot and they dont have a great fan in the system. The design of the case is horrid. To change ram you have to pull out the dvd drive and power supply and pull up on a side support to get to it. Other side of the mobo is fine as you have good access to the cpu and slots.
Its been fun seeing what you can do with older systems and as usual Linux impresses me with how well it supports really old systems.
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crosscourt
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Re: HP Pavilion DC5700 SFF

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Sadly this system doesnt have a PCIe slot for a video card. Its either the integrated graphics or I do have an older Radeon X1300 PCI video card.
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Re: HP Pavilion DC5700 SFF

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Made some changes thru terminal but the popping/clicking sound issues continue with Debian/Ubuntu based distros. Decided to try a USB sound card and it works perfectly no issues at all. Its a cheap and easy way to get better sound as well on older systems as this card is 7.1 sound. Running Zorin OS 16.1 and was amazed to see the ram usage went from 989mb to 683mb. Thjats partially due to the age of the system using less processes but good news for those with older systems looking for a Windows alternative. Hoping to turn it into an open source gaming system.
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Re: HP Pavilion DC5700 SFF

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With the sound issue solved I installed Zorin OS and have been loading up on open source games. Various Doom versions, Quake versions, Heretic, Hexen, Strife, some space shooters, a few turn based games,some arcade games, Dosbox-x and some emulators.
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Re: HP Pavilion DC5700 SFF

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Radeon X1300 pci card wouldnt install, as there seems to be an issue with the bios.
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