$230 Budget upgrade for the parents

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My parents have come to me to build them a new computer now that they just can't handle the speed of their 10 year+ old Compaq machine. They will be using it mainly for email and general browsing, with light office use on the side (just word really).

The case seems to be in great nick and has a 600w Cooler Master PSU, they brought a few years ago to replace the original. I also have a 128GB laptop HDD laying around, so I felt just a cheap upgrade would be the best option, rather than a complete build. 

My original plan was a g3220 build. After hitting a $155 price point for the h81 machine and $179 for the b85 machine, I started getting curious about APUs as I knew they weren't too expensive. 

What I found was that they're extremely good value for the $100+ APUs, but fairly similarly in price/performance (not taking into account the graphics) for the cheaper APUs. So I decided it would be pointless unless I spent a little more, so here is what I ended up with:

ASRock FM2A55M-DGS Revision 2.0 Motherboard

$53.00

AMD x4 A8-6600K Quad Core 3.9Ghz w/ Integrated Radeon HD8570D

$132.00

Kingston ValueRam 4GB DDR3 1600mhz

$41.00

Total: $226

All parts will be purchased from MSI Geelong Branch tomorrow: http://www.msy.com.au/

I know I'm losing out on USB 3.0 with the A55 board, but I don't think this will be a big deal on this machine. Plus at $55 it's not a big deal to replace one day if needed. 

The main reason I went for the APU is that; after seeing the performance it had on youtube, while this build is for my parents, I'd actually be able to game on it. It seems to run almost all current games, at least on low. 4 cores isn't bad either haha! 

From a price/performance perspective it seemed the best option. 

With all this said, i have 0 experience with AMD processors, and just want to make sure it's all compatible, and that I haven't made a massive mistake anywhere, or could have made a better decision somewhere. I also want to make sure I'm not over estimating the APU's ability to run current games. 

Thanks heaps to anyway that can help me out!  

 

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For the APU, I'd go for the previous generation APU, Trinity (A8-5600K), as they are significantly cheaper ($109 vs $132), and practically the identical to their successor to Richland. Richland is ultimately a minor refresh, bringing slightly better power efficiency, and faster native memory support (2133 vs 1866), and those features aren't too helpful on the desktop space, especially when you can OC the memory and aren't confined to laptop battery and a dinky 45w - 90w AC adapter for power. Richland has it's place in the mobile market, but it's premium on the desktop space doesn't justify the features it brings; they're practically identical.

With the savings, I'd dump it into memory, specifically, a 4GB dual-channel kit (4G Kit 1600 G.Skill Ripjaws-X for $52) over a single 4GB DIMM. Having two dimms, one per channel, effectively doubles your RAM bandwidth. Since the APU's graphics uses RAM as video memory, you would want as fast RAM as you can afford to allow the rather potent integrated graphics to work well. Plus, the Ripjaws X has some overclocking headroom if you wanted to get even more bandwidth.