i was tasked with the job of building my Mum a new Computer. since i am a gamer i know my way around “top off the line” Products but not the lower tiers one.
and since i watch a lot of the L1T youtube channel i thought what a great opportunity for trying out this forum.
its a PC for a mum so it doesnt need much. just opening emails and browsing the web. but it should do that for a long time. there is no real budget. just my conviction arts about which parts she realy need and how much is to spend.
i would go for a good powersupply since that doenst need much upgrading for the future. same for the case. but for the other parts i am pretty clue less.
so i would appreciate some recommendations for a CPU.
key points:
-no old parts
-webbrowsing PC
-no real budget.
if i missied key informations i am sorry. and please Excuse my bad englisch. i am not a native speaker
Probably best going with an Ryzen 3 2200G, 8GB RAM, and a cheaper A320/B350/B450 motherboard.
If you went with a 300 series chipset motherboard, make sure it supports some sort of USB BIOS Flashing utility, so you can update to a BIOS with 2nd Gen Ryzen support.
AMD have promised support for AM4 until 2020, so as long as the motherboard manufacturer keeps providing BIOS updates, there will be more upgrade options in the future, if it’s needed.
The i3-8100 would also be a good option, but it’s a little bit more expensive.
I would buy her a cheap laptop. Otherwise you’re going to be supporting the thing for the rest of your life. Laptops also have obvious advantages in being portable and having a built-in UPS.
ChromeOS makes a lot of sense for this purpose too. It’s bulletproof. She will NEVER have her computer destroyed by a virus she got from downloading a cute kitty screensaver.
Actually unless she needs to do a lot of word processing or whatever, I wouldn’t buy her a laptop at all. I’d get her an iPad. The cheaper one.
everybody was right, this is a great forum. thanks a lot for the very quick answers.
i dont like the laptop solution since its not going to move. she has a desk with enough room for having a full pc. and spending money on features like protabele that i dont need. doesnt sound right. and uprading a laptop is very hard.
i was looking at the Amd APUs aswell but wasnt sure if she needs a GPU at all.
Probably not. I only got my mother a new GPU when the old one died after serving for 10ish years.
Current one is an R5 230 4GB because that helps a little when she edits videos once in a full moon.
Laptops work fine in one place, and she has the option of moving it if she wants to do so. Can be nice to take it outside on the deck with a cup of coffee or whatever.
I’m of the firm opinion that the vast majority of people should not have desktop computers. Your mom example is the archetypical reason why this is so.
I’m extremely happy with my Ryzen 2400G build. I went Mini-ITX and have a tiny little cube as my workstation, complete with Bluetooth and Wifi. I speced with with 32Gb of RAM, which is overkill for a casual use PC, but my entire build still came in at around $700, which is a great price/performance ratio for a fresh build.
In terms of video output, your mom’s computer doesn’t need much. Onboard video will be sufficient for video playback and browsing, and even some light gaming.
The only consideration you need to account for in terms of video is output ports. The Ryzen 2400G has an HDMI port, and can handle 4k@30hz without issue. If she has multiple monitors or a monitor only with DisplayPort inputs, you’ll need a dedicated card.
If she’s got a single 1080p monitor with HDMI, onboard will be perfectly sufficient.
I’ve also got an Intel NUC (by way of a System76 Meerkat) and it’s a good system. The only drawbacks is that it’s not very upgradable, but that’s really not a problem given how cheap they are.
Mini-ITX on Ryzen is where I personally aim now for that kind of build. It’s still veyr small, but doesn’t miss out on the opportunity to toss in a couple bulky drives for storage, and toss in a PCI card for expansion if the need arises.
at the moment she is using a iMac so we are need a new monitor anyway.
but thanks for the tip going to look out for the ports.
1080p should be fine for her
I agree with others that the baked in eGPU in the CPU while be way enough for your mom. But maybe I would recommend to take a case like the InWin Chopin. Cute little case that would take no space and would be great aesthetically (I know it’s not the #1 priority but I like beautiful thing. I’m a sucker for that). If you don’t want a NUC but still would prefer smallness with up-gradablelity. And I would go all in for a m.2 SSD. It gonna be small, reliable, fast, and less cable and I don’t suspect your mom need a lot of storage so a 128 GB would all fine.