LarBearLairI love building PCs, but who can afford to anymore? Before you could strategically spend the most on the important components, then scrounge in the bargain bin for the rest. Now the main components are not in the budget, and the bargain bin is gone. The age of the purpose-built PC is over, leaving builders like me in a state of purposelessness.
But as they always say, if there are too many bunnies hopping around the yard, eliminate bunnies as a species. And so, faced with purposelessness, I chose to follow the way of purposeful purposelessness, or purposeless purposefulness (it’s a big tent). It was then, free of conventional purpose, useful skills, and the burden of life’s important questions, that I asked myself: Why haven’t I built a PC that can run Windows 11 Pro using the cheapest, most ill-fitting parts that meet Microsoft’s minimum system requirements for Windows 11?
Qualification & Guidelines
Does the Bear Minimum meet the Microsoft minimum system requirements?
| Component | Requirement | Bear Minimum | Requirement Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | 1GHz 2 cores, 64 bit or SoC | 2.9Ghz with 2 cores | 1Ghz? Because a Celeron is overkill for most computer users |
| RAM | 4GB | 4GB | Just don't touch anything |
| Storage | 64GB | 74GB | Windows 11 Pro installation uses 50GB |
| System firmware | UEFI, Secure Boot | Meets | Secure Boot stops software Windows can't protect you from like memtest86 |
| TPM | Version 2.0 | Meets | The upgrade to 11 was free with the purchase of a new PC |
| Graphics card | DirectX 12 compatible with WDDM 2.0 | Intel HD 610 | Important difference found between "compatible" and "capable" |
| Display | HD 720p, 9", 8 bits color | 1024p, 17" | Only if you're picky about seeing the whole window. They won't stop you |
And to be sporting, I’m adding that it must be able to run Windows 11 Pro without crashing. Also, in the spirit of the rules, I’ll not use ancient tech like IDE drives or parts that fail basic operation tests, although Microsoft doesn’t say I can’t.
Below is the parts list, minus about 30 cables and adapters. Some parts weren’t strictly speaking necessary but nonetheless could not be done without, like the self-defeating RAID drives and the enterprise-grade RAID controller.
| Part | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ASUS PRIME H310M-Dash R2.0 (Motherboard) | $49.99 | Also called the not-ASRock, following the ASRock with broken pins & the ASRock with blown-out audio. |
| [2] Intel Celeron G4900T (CPU) | $12.95 | Miracles of efficiently doing nothing well |
| [2] Intel HD Graphics 610 (GPU) | $0.00 | No evidence found of graphics worse than the HD 610 that are allowed to run Windows 11. |
| Intel E97379-003 (CPU Cooler) | $10.99 | Core i7 level cooling package. Tried to throw itself into the trash. |
| A-Tech 4GB DDR4 PC4-19200/2400MHz ECC Unbuffered (RAM) | $43.93 | Yes, my Celerons can run ECC memory. Just a $300 motherboard upgrade away error protected web browsing. |
| Seagate ST98823AS Momentus 5400.2 (OS Drive) | $9.63 | Write errors are so rare that there's no sense in overpaying for storage. |
| Jonsbo TK-1 (White) (Case) | $149.99 | Beautiful case. I should have put a computer in it. |
| Jonsbo DS916 Display Panel (White) | $22.05 | Critical telemetry meets harsh reality at embarrassing cost |
| USB 3.0 Switch 2-in-2-out | $19.79 | Took I/O board out of the plastic case so I could mount it on standoffs over air vents. |
| Dell PERC H310 (HV52W) (Hardware RAID Controller) | $25.99 | What the OS can't touch, the OS can't kill. |
| GODIYMODULES 150W DC-AC Converter Booster Module | $13.88 | By rule, PC can only have one external power plug so internal AC inversion power chain needed to power Jetson. |
| NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano Super Developer Kit 8GB | $249.99 | Fully integrated, because every modern PC must be AI enabled. |
| HP 797601-001 PCIe x1 Parallel Port Card | $10.99 | Internal/external parallel port redundancy required for PC retro-proofing. |
| Creative Sound Blaster SB1040 X-Fi Xtreme 7.1 PCIe x1 | $27.50 | These cards are rad, and the board audio died in motherboard #2. |
| HGST HTS721010A9E630 1TB 7200RPM (RAID member) | $50.00 | 1TB enterprise grade HDD anchors 120GB RAID 0 that’s 3X speed of Boot drive! (Albeit ¼X speed of front panel USB C.) |
| Seagate Momentus 5400.2 ST96812AS 60GB (RAID member) | $ 9.63 | Consumer mass-produced drive in RAID 0 keeps average per drive cost down. |
Component Selection
It occurred to me as I started selection, that the case was a total wildcard. The importance of airflow changes when temperature throttling is a nice-to-have. So, I went shopping for over-the-top 70s cases and HP Pavilions, I looked up old appliances and was considering cardboard boxes in the garage and then it hit me―I’m treating this like another sleeper. Hiding great parts in unlikely cases. But I’m getting lousy parts, so I should put them in a showoff case and call it a reverse sleeper, as well as a Windows minimum requirements build. Two bunnies, one shot. Perfect.
About the rest of the components, every one has a story to go along with it. I’m awfully fond of the Celeron G4900Ts. They put most of the development money into making it super energy efficient. The language equivalent of how they did would be taking “Do more with less” and removing “more with”.
The ASUS motherboard seems to have been built for a corporate customer, but it ended up in the hands of a reseller on Newegg with its bizarre feature set (HDMI, Display Port, and D-SUB? Internal Parallel port?). It came sealed in a plain cardboard box, with the complete contents minus the manual. And I really could have used a manual, with all the IT specific headers on the board, including LPC Debug and serial port.
Build Process
For conventional builds, the process requires very few decisions except about things like fan configuration and cable routing. But making these decisions is enjoyable, so it’s best to search for and invent new problems, because problem solving requires decision making.
I’ve done Noctua fan swaps for SFX PSUs because their little server fans never stop screaming. So, when I looked at the specs of this build’s Delta PSU and found the form factor was ATX PS/3, I rounded down to SFX. And because SFX PSUs are too loud, conventional wisdom dictated that I swap the Delta’s 80mm Quietek SB0812H with a Noctua NF-A8 FLX fan.
Some may point out that the Noctua is not a static air fan and therefore not a good cooling solution for a cramped PSU. But this system draws so little power it hardly needs a PSU, and its future-proofing-by-cheapness design allows replacement of any part at any time except the case. Incidentally, there were a few PSU related problems:
- After adding the Jetson Orin Nano Super to its load, the PSU would reliably cut power and turn off after 20 minutes. I solved this problem by turning off the Windows Sleep function, and the PSU was exonerated.
- After a week of heavy testing and the final system build, the computer suddenly would not turn on at all. Although the PSU had been exonerated, 8 hours of troubleshooting later I tried swapping PSUs, and the system worked again. The PSU was unexonerated and is enjoying a nice retirement on a farm in the country with my childhood pets, or so I’m told.
Testing Process
It’s more like working long shifts in a psych ward than being a system tester. Messages from the system that would be reassuring if you were testing a normal PC begin to mean different things. The first 5 minutes that Firestrike is "Just collecting system information” seem like thoroughness. Within 10 minutes you’re making the “this is getting creepy” joke. But at 15 minutes, you realize that the long game has begun.
Is it the build being slow or has the build broken the testing software? If it’s the build being slow, then it’s no surprise and you must continue to wait till the bitter end to collect the facts. That is your purpose. But if the build has broken the testing software, when can you be sure? There’s no one answer. But I can tell you for a fact that, if Firestrike is still collecting information on your build after 4 hours, you have broken Firestrike.
The thing about running a 35W laptop CPU in desktop case with a cooler and no GPU is that you don’t have to be concerned about system temps. Otherwise, I might have added the second 4GB of RAM that the system evidently needs to supply telemetry when it has to do anything hard--like opening Notepad, which incidentally takes 15 seconds.
Tip: The DS916 display panel gives up and goes black when it’s denied telemetry while HW Monitor just freezes the numbers, making the DS916 the superior diagnostic tool.
Test Results
The system runs Windows 11 Pro like a dream. I know because I’ve often had them during the 8.5-minute interval between pressing the On button and when the OS becomes responsive.
I think it would be really helpful to go through the results in an organized and informative summary. Here are some random details:
- Cinebench’s timer ceiling is 20:00. It will allow you to finish the test anyway, which I thought was nice. It is also possible to be the bottom entry in the system comparison list.
- If your system is slow enough in responding to GeekBench.com’s data request, the site forgets that it asked and, when the Bear Minimum finally answers, thinks it’s being attacked.
- UserBenchMark makes you win a video game before you can use their benchmarks, effectively randomizing test conditions. Hypothetically, let’s say you were tragically bad at video games and it took you over 20 minutes to destroy four red robots instead of the average of 50 seconds and you were testing a system for which opening Windows Settings is a stress test already. You would have to wait another 15 minutes for your system to settle, during which time you get timed out
and have to do another CAPTCHA, praying it’s not the video game again. It did give me a proud parent moment: Gaming 1% (Tree trunk), Desktop 52% (Yacht), Workstation 0% (Tree trunk). Then I considered the source.
It’s difficult to do justice to this system’s performance with mere numbers, but PassMark PerformanceTest 11.1 tried--Overall score: 254 vs 6137 world average (26886 high). Percentile among all computers: 0th. If you’re morbidly curious about any other system numbers, just ask. I'll either have it or I'll generate it for you.
Microsoft Minimum System Requirements Verdict
They’re a little low.
What? Are you expecting an intelligent appraisal? Have you read the rest of this piece? Okay, if you insist: It depends.
- If all you do is websurf, splurge on the extra 4GB of RAM and replace the Seagate Momentus 5400 SATA I laptop HDD with literally anything else. But that would imply that you’re basing configuration decisions on what I’ve done here and that would be insane.
- In general don’t, having achieved a state of perfect purposeful purposelessness, spend endless hours thinking of ways to make your system work as badly as possible while meeting the Microsoft Minimum System Requirements for Windows 11.