Help Welcome: Simple Home PC

[joedoesntlikeyou]

Hello Tom's Hardware! I am trying to set up a build for my mom. It's going to be my first build so I wanted to make it something simple. I frequent reddit/r/buildapc and I have been using pcpartpicker to try to piece together my first build. It is going to be used solely for internet use and I wanted something that would not have to be replace for at least two to three years. Tell me what you think with these set ups....

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3sQa

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3w2y

I flipped on the CPU and the Mobo on the two and also I changed the case because the Antec wasn't really what I wanted. My biggest problem is I know almost nothing about CPUs and Mobos. I'm lost when looking at the ample amount of them to compare, it just gets too deep too fast. Any advice on the selection?

 

[kajabla]

How much money do you want to spend?

With the CPU, stick to the latest generation. That's currently Sandy Bridge. I recommend the $125 i3-2100.
You could easily go Micro-ATX and save some room. You don't need such a big case. Trawl Newegg and just pick whatever looks good and doesn't come with a power supply. Almost anything will work here.
Motherboard: something cheap and H67. This one's $70: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131716

Do you want this thing to be able to handle any kind of games? You could add a cheap graphics card if so. If you don't, absolutely no gaming is going to happen.

 

[kinggraves]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.797371

Set the browser to use hardware acceleration.

Moms is gonna be watching her cat videos in 1080p

 

[joedoesntlikeyou]

How much money do you want to spend?

With the CPU, stick to the latest generation. That's currently Sandy Bridge. I recommend the $125 i3-2100.
You could easily go Micro-ATX and save some room. You don't need such a big case. Trawl Newegg and just pick whatever looks good and doesn't come with a power supply. Almost anything will work here.
Motherboard: something cheap and H67. This one's $70: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131716

Do you want this thing to be able to handle any kind of games? You could add a cheap graphics card if so. If you don't, absolutely no gaming is going to happen.

I'm sorry I should have specified what I was wanting to spend. Somewhere around 300 if possible. I want on board graphics to save some cash. I should switch to micro ATX, you're right. I will look into it.

Why H67? I'm sorry to ask but the explanation would hopefully help me grasp Mobos a bit better. What is the moat current gen of Mobo and CPU?

 

[joedoesntlikeyou]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.797371

Set the browser to use hardware acceleration.

Moms is gonna be watching her cat videos in 1080p

The cat video comment made me seriously laugh out loud. That combo deal looks like a decent deal to be honest.

 

[jsc]

For $300 ($400 once you add monitor, mouse, keyboard, and OS), you will not be able to do better than your local big box store.

 

[joedoesntlikeyou]

For $300 ($400 once you add monitor, mouse, keyboard, and OS), you will not be able to do better than your local big box store.

I have the mouse, keyboard, monitor and was going to set up ubuntu as the OS. Also I would really like to make PC builds a hobby if I could get more info on it and I wanted my first build to be something small and simple so my mom's PC came out as a great option. I have found some decent $300 to $400 refurbs on Dell Outpost but I really wanted to do it myself.

 

[kajabla]

Oh, right. I'd completely forgotten about the APUs. That's the right choice.

On Intel motherboards, though you should be going AMD:
Sandy Bridge is the latest mature Intel generation of processors. Sandy Bridge-E ("Enthusiast") has arrived and uses Socket 2011, but it's only got two very high-end processors. SB uses Socket 1155, and has three chipsets: H67, P67 and Z68.
H67 allows you to use your SB processor's integrated video processor, but does not allow you to overclock past your processor's maximum Turbo Boost frequency (generally 0.4ghz higher than the base clock).
P67 allows you to overclock, but does not allow you to use your integrated video chipset. This is generally not an issue, as it's used by gamers who would never consider going without a discrete graphics card.
Z68 allows you to overclock and also to use your integrated video chipset, and it has two extra features.
Quick Sync allows you to make use of your chip's dedicated video processor, which would normally sit idle with a discrete graphics card installed, for video transcoding (converting videos from one format to another). This is very useful for people who do a lot of video editing.
Intel SSD Caching is supposed to use an SSD to speed up your hard drive by moving commonly-used data to the SSD, but it doesn't work as well as managing the data manually.

 

[joedoesntlikeyou]

Thank you kajabla for all of your help!

 

[kajabla]

So do you have something solid based on an APU?

 

[joedoesntlikeyou]

I tried to find a list of APUs and couldn't. I found an older write up about APUs but it didn't list any. After that I started looking at entry level Pentiums with Sandy Bridge. From what I understand Sandy Bridge can do on board graphics from the CPU? So as you said the H67 allows you to use it correct? Maybe I'm lost here. As I mentioned earlier having on board graphics is pretty important to the budget of the build.

 

[kajabla]

The AMD APUs are definitely the right choice for this build. Cheap, and they've got significantly better graphics than the SB chips.
List: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007671%20600166681&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=100

 

[joedoesntlikeyou]

Very nice! Thank you again! I'm going to put together another build real quick and repost.

 

[joedoesntlikeyou]

Well I messed around a bit with it. Tell me what you think and if there is room for improvement. Still in right around $300.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3zO2