I want to build a new desktop PC for my father-in-law and it needs to do more than just surf the web (news, stock market and genealogy sites) and e-mail. What he wants is the ability to watch news and stock market videos/streaming videos and his 10 year old Pentium 4 PC just won't do the trick.
I have done two PC builds in the last year, so I feel comfortable and excited to do another. However, I don't believe his PC requirements are as extensive as mine were for the first two builds. In my opinion, I should be able to build a nice budget system for his use. I prefer to stay with an Intel CPU vs. AMD if possible and want the PC to run nice and quiet.
Mainly, I'm looking for recommendations on the motherboard, CPU and RAM. This is what I've determined so far for each category:
Motherboard - Looking at a mobo with integrated video and sound. A socket 1150 mobo seems fine, but I don't think I need to go with a Z87 or H87 chipset, I think a B85 chipset would be fine and price wise, a little less expensive. Not sure if the savings, if any, with a B85 chipset is really worth it though.
CPU - All I know here is that the CPU needs to be powerful enough and fast enough for streaming video. For the two PC builds I did recently, I installed Intel i5-4670 processors. I don't believe he will need that. Right now I'm considering an Intel Pentium G3220 Haswell 3.0GHz processor for about $59.99. It's still a Pentium and honestly I don't know if that will do the trick, so very open to suggestions.
RAM - The builds I've already done were installed with 8GB of RAM each. For this build, I'm not sure if I need 8GB or if I can get away with 4GB. Seems that for streaming video, the more RAM the better, but again I'm not absolutely sure.
As for the OS, it will likely be Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. He is still using Windows XP on the old PC at this time.
Your thoughts and recommendations are appreciated.
Edited by Webslinger64, 13 June 2014 - 08:24 AM.