Present for parents build help

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shingyboy

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Jan 29, 2013
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Right now my parents have one of my old gaming PCs which is like 7-8 years old and the age is really starting to show.

They browse the web a lot, watch youtube, read emails, watch movies and use the computer in a pretty generic way aside from gaming. Sometimes open a lot of tabs which is why they are complaining that it is starting to slow down I would assume.

So I just need some advice on what I should be getting as I have built a gaming PC before but that was going for higher end parts. I am thinking I can get away with reusing the same hard drives, graphics card and PSU. I have already bought a case which I think suits their needs and small enough to put into their TV setup.

I just need to think about what CPU, MOBO and RAM I should get. I would like to think I can turn this into a little HTPC project which could end up nice for them to use.

This is meant to be my little present for them so I don't really mind paying a little extra, but not too crazy since they do not really play games. So as of right now I am not even sure what my budget really is.

If I was to go ahead and get them a quad core something would that be sufficient for a long time to come?
 
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PSU is a XFX 650w Core Edition
Graphics card is a nVidia GTX 260
Case is a Coolermaster HAF XB

I really am not sure about the budget, as I said it is just for the parents so I can only figure not to spend that much on it, how about £200 budget and then one with a higher budget perhaps like £500 although £500 seems like it is way too much.
How much would you spend? I MAY or MAY not get another HDD for them as the one they have currently is 250gb but I am pretty sure they do not need another one there is a IDE one I have lying around that is about 500gb but unfortunately that is so old not sure if it even works in modern systems.
 
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Another option that might actually be better for them. Given what they use the PC for, they'd notice the speed increase from an ssd much more than having the i5 over the 6300. Both CPU's will last about the same length for those uses as well.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£82.79 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock 980DE3/U3S3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£46.00 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Grey 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£59.95 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Sandisk Ultra Plus 64GB 2.5" Solid State Disk (£46.37 @ Scan.co.uk)

Total: £235.11
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
 
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64gb is enough for windows 7/8 and a few large programs, or several smaller ones. If you feel they'd need more space, you could also consider an SSHD (hybrid drive). They offer most of the speed of an SSD while not being so expensive for the capacity.

An SSHD does take a little while to learn what files are the most accessed ones (hus, which ones to store in the SSD cache), so you'd see it get faster over the intial few weeks.

Seagate 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive ($99.81 @ Amazon)
 
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I do have a question, do programs now a days use more cores because that 6 core processor is actually cheaper than that i5? I am so outdated on tech but can you explain why that is?

Another thing I wanted to ask is that I have not just asked this question here but in a couple of places and they mostly tell me to go for this processor: Intel Core i3-3220 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor.

Yet again it is only a Dual-Core, are these lower core processors actually more high quality or something like that? is that why they are more expensive?
 
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