My Grandfather needs a new PC as his dell is slow as crap. Just for facebook web browsing and light games like card games and slots . No monitor needed and no speakers needed also no need for a dedicated GPU. I only know gaming builds and high end stuff. Trying to keep budget as low as possible maybe 300-350 USD can use microcenter and newegg for parts Thanks for any suggestions
Asrock Q1900-ITX around $80 http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Q1900-ITX/index.us.asp Antec ISK 310-150 150W Mini ITX $80 Add a small hard disk drive for $50 and you are good to go. Very small power draw,enough for the purpose you mentioned. Did the same build a few weeks ago,was amazed to see a such small board with enough oomph for more than office tasks,as a HTPC was briliant.
Here is a quick build I threw together. Case: Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Motherboard & CPU: ASRock Q1900-ITX RAM: Mushkin 4GB DDR3-1333 (1x4GB) SSD: Samsung 850-EVO 120GB PSU: Corsair CX430 DVD Drive: ASUS CD/DVD Total comes to $303.94, all from Newegg. Anticupidon's suggestion of the Q1900 is spot on, I've heard they're great little boards. As far as the RAM goes, I can't see your Grandfather needing more than 4GB. The SSD is probably overkill, but the 120GBs are so cheap nowadays and there just isn't really a point in using regular harddrives for the OS drive. Unless your Grandfather needs to store a bunch of stuff, that 120GB will work perfectly. If he has no need for the DVD drive, that'll save $22.
how good is that cpu compared to his four year old gateway? his takes awhile to load web pages and crap like that ... will this be snappy?
Any idea what CPU he has? Also are you sure the webpage loading is bound to his CPU and not his internet speed? Also other factors like how much RAM he has and what OS. If he only has 2GB of ram on Windows 7 with a 4 or 5 year old Pentium, then that'll affect the speed greatly.
i would not think it is his internet connection speeds as we all have the same provider where we live and i am wireless and he is wired so to me that doesnt wave a red flag. honestly i am unsure of what model his computer is so i can not check the specs. he should be ready to build this in a few months ... Im confident it will be better than what he has.
I'd imagine the Celeron in this combo board will be plenty for him. Assuming he has a Pentium from about 4-5 years ago, it'll be a dual core G6950 or G6960. The listed Celeron is somewhat faster and is a quad core.
CPU: Intel Core i3-4330 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor $127.89 Motherboard: MSI H81M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard $44.99 Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory $35.98 Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive $49.99 Case: NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case $31.99 Power Supply: EVGA 400W ATX Power Supply $24.99 Total: $315.83