Kamunkin

Sorry this post a bit old now, but I wanted to thank you for the idea! I actually bought that and made a great little PC for him. Even tried gaming on it and it works like a charm. Great price, great little machine. Thanks a lot! 🙂

In today's day and age, I would forgo anything HTC branded.  They are not sitting pretty right now and updates are far and few in between.  When new exploits come out good luck getting them patched in a timely manner.  If you are wanting to stick with HTC design then follow @aisle9's advice and get a Pixel 2.  I have a Pixel 2 XL and have zero complaints about it.  At least with Pixels you will get monthly security updates and guaranteed updates for 2 years.  
 
If you are not dead set on HTC design/hardware, then wait a few months till the new Pixels come out (should be announced in October IIRC).  

I went from a One M8 to a Sony Xperia X Compact before ending up on a Pixel 2. It's funny, I went for the Pixel 2 specifically because its dimensions are so close to the M8 (as you'd expect...the Pixel 2 is an HTC phone). I'd really give the P2 a second look, because I think it's the spiritual successor to the M8/M9/10 line.
 
If the Pixel 2 really isn't your thing, you could look at the HTC 10 or the U11. Both are larger than the M8 (the U11 significantly so), but they're direct follow-ons to the M8.

Too lazy to look it up and don't quote me on this, but I think the price difference might have something to do with the wiring that's being used. Cable is copper and the other one is glass, which transmit data through light.

For fiber they usually have to make a run to your home still whereas with cable it's almost certainly there already so there is less work on their part.
If they both offer the same upload and download and you play really competitive e-sports titles then go with fiber for a bit less latency. Otherwise if they give you the same and 3 to 5 extra ms won't make a difference, go with whatever is cheaper.

How does the upload speed compare between the two?

At most the fiber may have lower pings among its hops depending how they manage the traffic.
I have 100Mbits cable and its pings are around 60ms or 80ms depending on the number of hops (note: this in a 1987 townhouse, so the copper probably not the best).  Never had fiber, so I have no clue civi side how its ping rate is.  I know military side when I work with it, its ping rates are nice and low.  Also, keep in mind, depending on how the fiber is done, it is either fiber up to the box for the neighborhood area or in some areas fiber up to the house wall.  Unless you got a motherboard, router, and modem with fiber connections, the connection goes back to copper lines.
 
Best thing is look into the upload speeds, fiber tends to win out there since a TX and RX line is ran as a pair unlike cable where TX and RX are sharing the same cable.

Somewhere under the title, it says " and Fulfilled by Amazon. " .
 

 
 
 
He has one monitor that's 144 Hz / fps and that means he needs to use the DVI connector for it, because HDMI is limited to 60fps. Maybe that monitor has no DisplayPort connector, so he HAS to use DVI if he wants more than 60 fps. 
So basically buy either HDMI to VGA or DisplayPort to VGA active converters , depending on what's available on the video card.
 

You'll have to buy a HDMI to VGA or DisplayPort to VGA (if your card has DisplayPort connector) converters.  If you don't like eBay, Amazon also has lots of models from all kind of sellers.
Since I guess you're in Canada, here's some links for around 10-15 Canadoodles and free shipping
 
1. https://www.amazon.ca/Rankie-Gold-Plated-Active-Adapter-Converter/dp/B00ZMV7RL2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1516737450&sr=8-3&keywords=hdmi+to+vga+adapter+converter
2. https://www.amazon.ca/VicTsing-Gold-plated-Converter-Ultrabook-Devices-Black/dp/B016LVT51G/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1516737450&sr=8-4&keywords=hdmi+to+vga+adapter+converter
2a . https://www.amazon.ca/VicTsing-Version-Gold-Plated-Adapter-Converter/dp/B0758BDGJH/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1516737450&sr=8-7&keywords=hdmi+to+vga+adapter+converter
3. https://www.amazon.ca/VicTsing-Adapter-Female-Converter-Digital/dp/B01NASJ72Q/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1516737450&sr=8-5&keywords=hdmi+to+vga+adapter+converter
 
There may be cheaper ones but you have to pay attention to  be fullfilled by Amazon .. that means the products are physically in their warehouses so you'll get them fast.
Lots of other sellers list such products on Amazon but after you order, they ship them to you from China which may take weeks to arrive.

M.2 are more recent like 1 or 2 years ago. A laptop older than that, will not have a M.2 slot. the other way is the screw mount. M.2 will have a single screw, mSATA has 2 screws.
Your dad's laptop has a few years in it, so I doubt it will have a M.2 slot. You can upgrade his HDD to a 2.5 inch SSD.

Can't remember what I've used to clone my HDD to my SSD, but I know for a fact that I never paid for any software... And I will asume there is freeware that can clone your HDD to your SSD. (just can't remember which software I used)

Yes, any small form factor SSD would work. Although if you intend to swap the drives, you have to make sure to clone the complete drive on a second computer, because it might be hard to get all of the drivers for the laptop.
Maybe do a clean windows install first, and then try to clone the HDD to the SSD. Many laptops have all of their drivers on a hidden partition for when people reinstall windows. If you remove that drive you might not be able to reinstall the drivers to windows.
Then clean that as well

 

If it can fit a regular SATA HDD/SSD, you just need to buy it. Make sure it's not too thick (can be an issue), and just install it. Sounds like it is going to be easy.
 
For best performance, do an fresh install on the SSD, after making it the primary boot device. Otherwise, just clone/migrate from your HDD to your new SSD. (lots of tutorials out there)

Any laptop with an HDD can have the HDD replaced with a 2.5" SATA SSD. Period. 
 
If you want to have both the HDD and an SSD, then you just need to check if it has an Msata or M.2 slot (or an optical drive that you can replace with an SSD).

Personally, I'd still recommend going through the hassle of changing passwords everywhere. It's annoying and all, yes, but if you don't want to risk your ex messing with your account in drunken stupor or something, it'd be the safest thing to do.

Not a complete solution, but in Google you can de-authenticate logins. Go into your account settings, and it'll be in there somewhere. Devices you no longer want to have a valid session on, you can delete. Drawback is this only works if you logged into Chrome using an account.
 
I think you can do similar with facebook if you use that.

Found a similar topic on these forums,  It ended the same, someone OC there ram.
 
All I can say is remove the CMOS battery agian but for 4-5 mins, Put it back in and boot it agian.
 
EDIT: Also there is a "Clear CMOS" Jumper on the board try shorting that as well

Honestly the i5 won't be enough for both of you.
What i would do is get a nice cooler like the CM 212 evo or CM 412S and OC the phenom.
At least if you aren't afraid of overclocking. And for now it's a good patch-up until you have money for a better rig
Also, make sure you have an AM4 compatible cooler, if you eventually end up going with ryzen you can take the cooler with you.

Anyway, it sums up everything. We would have tried. Thanks a lot guys. I'll buy a 212 EVO, and then I'll see. Its a great cooler and it could be used in a future build.

As many have commented already on the hardware that can or can't pull that out, I will focus on the different rooms part: it will depend on the effective distance. You could simply wire everything upstairs, perhaps with some drilling, but some cables may reach their limits on the way, requiring repeaters to maintain the connection all the way to your seat.
If his motherboard has a Thunderbolt port, it could in potentially be used to take video and peripherals upstairs too, but it may be more expensive and it may not work with virtual machines (you would have to check that). Linus has a video on using this at home to hide his noisy PC somewhere else. Not sure whether this solution introduces input lag in games.
Going back to hardware, right now you could pretend to have 2 pentiums. Upgrading to an i7 would allow you to pretend you have 2 i3s. But you may need to leave some CPU to the underlying OS running the VMs, so it maybe worse than that.
All in all, it could be more cost-effective to upgrade your rig than to upgrade his + buy the necessary hardware to take video, sound, and controls upstairs.
 
It could be a matter of re-seating the cooler or upgrading it, then. If even when cool enough (i.e., not throttling) it can't keep up, then you may consider a Haswell upgrade to re-use your RAM (I don't think you can improve much without changing the motherboard).

http://store.steampowered.com/streaming/
But I am not sure how the performance would be on an i5 trying to do that.
There's also this type of thing but again, I would thing an i7 would be minimum to run two game clients on one PC.
 
 
 
Ultimately I think the best option would be a Ryzen 7 CPU or maybe an intel HEDT (like X99) or dual xeon workstation with unraid like the 7 gamers 1 computer and having two 1070s if the end goal is to hide the computer in a closet somewhere.  Just be aware that you may need USB and/or HDMI repeaters for long runs.  I'm not sure if they would add latency (lag).

Steam streaming should work well and be low maintenance and easy (but limited to only steam games).  Setting up unraid would be more of a project of love that would be technically challenging and probably have it's fair amount of issues.
Also it wouldn't cost 30,000.  Linus just does off the wall crazy more than is actually needed stuff for the fun of it (and youtube views).
The other option would be to just build another reasonable computer for a decent price.  Ryzen 5 would make a pretty good cheaper option, pair it with 8 or 16 gb of ddr4 ram and the GTX 970 you already have.  Heck, you can probably even reuse the case, PSU and storage devices from your current machine to keep the total price under 500. and have a good decent rig for 1080p.
Oh nevermind you have a 960.  Honestly I'd probably continue to run it.  It'd be strong enough for lower settings in 1080p.  Although if you felt like an 800 or so budget you may be able to add in a 1070.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/zx9km8
Obviously you're in canada so it would be a bit different in pricing so brands might change around.  The prices could also be a little bit cheaper, but I picked similar color parts for looks at a 20-30 dollar higher cost.  The cooler requires a separate bracket to be purchased from Cooler Master.   I couldn't remember if the 1500x came with the cooler or not.  I think it does and if that's the case it's my understanding it's a good cooler if you're not going to overclock so you could drop about 20-30 bucks that way.
800 total in US with a gtx 1070, without it 420 ish.

It could be done to put both of your games off his system but it would not be good as each of you would be gaming on dual cores (even if he upgraded to an i7, each would get an i3 virtual cpu) at that point so you'd pretty much both experience what you are on your computer now with your CPU bottleneck.  I suggest checking out that pcpartpicker I linked and after April 11th when the Ryzen 5 launches - see what it would cost you up there.  IMO it would be one of the best cost to performance options available to you.  You could also go with a system similar to his with an i5 but at current it would be more $.  Just remove the GPU from the list and use your 960 and you're at only 400 ish US so probably right in line with that 500-550 CAD you're looking for.
 
You could also get a used i5 2500k, mobo and ddr3 combo. That would cost you less than 300 CAD I'd hope.  http://www.ebay.ca/sch/Motherboard-CPU-Combos/131511/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=2500k&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat=131511&LH_Sold=1&_udlo=&_udhi=&_samilow=&_samihi=&_sadis=15&_stpos=33990&_sargn=-1%26saslc%3D1&_salic=2&_sop=15&_dmd=1&_ipg=50&LH_Complete=1
Though the Ryzen 5 quad core would probably be the better option.