It's possible to squeeze an SSD in his budget, and is much better than an HDD. The i5 is SO much better than an i3 for gaming. And the motherboard has 4 RAM slots, you know. You can still upgrade to 16 gigs easily. No need for that anyway. Do you know what you're talking about? If he needs an HDD he can just carry forth an old one, just to store crap he won't read a lot.