i3-6100 Gigabyte GA-H110M EVO 120GB SSD 8GB G.SKILL 2133 random case, that fits where their current PC does EVGA 500W
OK first thing first, Yes I know 500W is SUPER overkill, but it is about the same price for a smaller PSU anyways, and Yes 8GB is overkill as well. Price of the total PC is already so low, I figured "why the fuck not" 8 vs 4 was less than $20.
Note on case, if you recommend another case. It must be these dimensions or smaller, and needs front not top IO.
EDIT: They are rocking a pre i-series dual core with 3gb of DDR2 RAM.
Do your grandparents do more than email and youtube? If not, why not something simple and small like this. (I'm not saying this unit specifically. It's just an example.)
all they would really need is like an amd Athlon quad core, 4gb ddr3 ram, 500gb harddrive, mitx motherboard and a reliable psu. should cost no more than $100 - $150
then charge grandma $300 for it. she'll throw in an extra $50 for her lovely grandson, making this project ~$200 in pure profit
Maybe. But I should have stated in the OP that I want them on DDR4/newest platform. They don't replace computers often so I wanted something a tad overkill so it will last them 7 years(hopefully) like their current PC did.
I had thought about doing a cheaper build and charging them more than what it cost me. But I said the computer would be 500, and if I know my gma she will give me the difference so Ill still pocket about 100.
I might suggest adding a spinning disk drive for cheap storage if they plan on using any digital cameras or storing other people's digital photos but otherwise for a long term simple usage build it looks good.
Personally, I'd go with the A10-7850k over the i3-6100 because the price/performance is much better, 4 instead of 2 cores, same clock speed out of the gate (w/ the possibility of overclocking if you want to be a bit overkill ;) ). Nevertheless, this rig looks to be very solid.
Which OS will it run? 120 GB will be fine for Linux, but if the machine is to last 7 years, I'd think hard about relying on a 120 GB drive for a Windows 10 machine, even if it's intended for fairly minimal use.
If the OS isn't set in stone and your grandparents are anything like mine, you might take a look at Neverware's OS, a Chromium OS distro. Costs nothing to use, ultra light, easy as pie, and Chromium handles all the updates itself, so there's essentially zero maintenance. It doesn't get much simpler.
For a basic fast machine, I like it. But, it's your grandparents, 'cmon. Throw the extra hundred bucks on it and get them a cheap 500GB ssd. They will be able to put all the pics and vids of their grandkids on it for a long time. If you're really awesome, you could go over every few months and back it all up for them too. 10,000 thumbs-up for being a bad-ass grandkid.
