Sister's Internet PC - i5 vs i3

Hey all,

I am building a desktop for my sister and have a question regarding the CPU. 

I'm debating between the i5 and the i3. Will there be a measurable difference in speed between the i5 and the i3?

I am also thinking of getting an i3 then using the savings to get her a small SSD to up the speed.

What do you guys think?

Thanks for your help,

Eddie.

 

As a side question, is the integraded graphics for the i5/i3 good enough to smoothly play 1080p movies?

I guess I should clarify that by 'Internet PC' I mean that she will mainly be using the computer for browsing the internet, watching youtube videos, movies and maybe some word processing.

Even an appropriate dual core pentium would be sufficient for her needs. I would get the i3, i5 is more of a gaming grade CPU

No games? An i3 will do just fine. it's more than enough for those easy tasks.

Make sure you get a 4th gen i3 though. "haswell" (4th gen) has much better power usage and the integrated graphics on haswell are really good too.

+1 

Yeah i3 will be powerfull enought no problem a dual core pentium would be really good value for money.

@NJM1112 There is no desktop version of the i3 the 4th generation that is. I agree with berserker a Pentium is good for daily tasks like browsing watching youtube and playing 1080P movies. 

4th gen i3 is gonna emerge in the next month, I believe. OP may already have a motherboard with an incompatible socket, though.

I see.. I didn't expect the Pentium to pop up in this conversation. Haha..

Cool guys, thanks for your help. I'll check into the Pentium.

Cheers

WTH you're right. i could've sworn there was an i3 variant of haswell.

oh well.

you can count my vote in for the pentium too.

Another thing you could get too is an amd apu- you'll get better on board graphics and potentially more cpu power depending on the model. somehting else to look at.

I do hope so for him when he's building the pc for his sister, I only searched on the intel website and it said they only had the "laptop' CPUs. But don't think the power consumption will be much lower you'll maybe end up paying a couple of bucks less every year, but this means that the temps can be lower which is always better!!

if its for interent the i-3 will be fine. one of the other pc's in my house is an old pentium D with 3gb of ddr2 and it can do interent stuff and hd movies fine

Spend less money and just get an AMD A4 with 1333 MHz RAM. It'll be absolutely horrid for gaming, but internet browsing and watching movies it'll work just as well as anything else you can buy nowadays.

i3 3225 is great if she is working with basic video editing in the future potentially anyone might want to create a montage or for a school project etc.

The 3225 gives you ivy bridge 2 cores 4 threads and intel HD 4000 graphics. I can tell you for a fact that it does a great job for me for anything other than gaming.