Budget HTPC / Workstation

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bucpound

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Please give any suggestions that will offer a lower price for comparable performance, negligible price difference for increased performance or anything that I might be incorrectly considering. The parts don't have to be from Newegg, but I figured that is a good place to start. I mostly stream ESPN, video chat and use Google Apps. Occasionally I mix in some word processing and light gaming (not very concerned about resolution, detail or FPS).

This is what I'm considering:
Also, PC Part Picker indicated the MB and CPU might be incompatible w/o a BIOS update... Does anyone have any information to share regarding that?

Thanks in advance for any advice.
 
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atljsf

atljsf

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the a 88 is the latest, should work out of the box afik

i got a 860k and a a68 and worked well, i should had problems

if you are going to play games, get a bigger cpu, a a10 or a a8 78xx

are you limited by price or local availability?

there is intel counterpart that could be better for you at around the same price
 
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bucpound

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As for price, I guess cheaper is better and it looks like I'm coming in around $300 - $400. I'm in SE TN and there is nothing other than Walmart within a couple of hours drive.

I've considered a new Pentium or an i3, but assumed I would then need to incur the cost of a decent video card.

 
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bucpound

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Would you go with a video card or is the Intel HD Graphics 610 sufficient? I have an AMD A6-5400K now and it seems to be the only the device that buffers while streaming ESPN and I'm blaming the integrated graphics.
 
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R_1

R_1

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The a8 does have the Better iGPU but the CPU is far inferior. "Light Gaming" I took to mean a secondary concern. the internal GPU should be fine for ESPN, video chat, and google apps. if the gaming performance is too disappointing you can add a dedicated GPU. Which games in particular?
I updated the link - rookie mistake
 
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bucpound

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Light gaming does indeed mean a secondary concern, if that. Specifically I might simulate a season in NBA 2K or I recently got No Man's Sky and realized my current PC only has 4GB of RAM, so I might try that out, but I rarely do any gaming, just kinda want to have the option. By no means is top end gaming performance a priority, but a low cost PC that will comfortably handle video streaming for years to come as content providers more increasingly move to the online medium is my goal.
 
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robert600

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"or anything that I might be incorrectly considering"

I don't know about gaming so i don't have anything to say about that. But ... thinking of that Kingston SSD ... you really shouldn't load them past 75% so you're essentially going with a 90 GB which doesn't give you much space ... I know you want to keep the cost down but I would seriously consider a 240 ... the same brand is $85.
 
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R_1

R_1

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another option is to upgrade to a h170 board and use intel SRT to cache the HDD on a half the SSD, and use the other half for quick storage. price would go up a bit though.
 
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bucpound

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Is PNY a quality brand for a SSD?

PNY CS1111 2.5" 240GB $79.99
 
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bucpound

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I was thinking about going the other way with the MB, H110... Please let me know what I would be sacrificing. I don't think I'm concerned with the lack of PCI-E 3.0 lanes, but I'm not really sure what they're for.

Thanks to everyone's input, here is what I'm currently considering:
Please let me know if there's any better deals or components I should consider.
 
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