Upgrade for parents.

[Victor Golf]

I am indecisive about this. I am looking to upgrade my parents' computer with modern components. This will be a basic system used for web browsing, Email, and extremely light gaming.

I already have some components that I will be reusing which include the case, power supply, optical drive, and storage.

So I would like some suggestions. I need a motherboard, an OS, some RAM, and a CPU.

So far this is what I have come up with:

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/9dmkgs

 

I would like to know what your thoughts are and if you have any suggestions, please share them.

 

My location is Saskatchewan, Canada.

[Enderman]

I thought you were upgrading your parents lol

[Cokeman]

I thought you were upgrading your parents lol

I thought he said Pants

[Victor Golf]

You guys just made me freak out about possible typos. lol.

[Speedbird]

They don't need expesive memory, any CL11 4GB kit is good enough. I personally would go for an Intel-based platform with an i3, Pentium or Celeron, but that's just my opinion and you can go for AM1 if you wish. However, if you wish to go for AMD, an A4 APU would probably be the best.

 

mATX seems to be cheapest form factor for boards, but for a case the 200R is good enough.

 

Go for a 1TB drive, that seems to be the minimum these days.

 

Is Linux good enough for them? What do you mean by light gaming?

[Victor Golf]

-Snip!-

Yeah the memory is overkill. Just looking for the cheapest solution. Oh, and I forgot to post the budget, silly me. I am looking to spend around $200 up to a maximum of $250. I'm am not sure if a core i3 and the board will fit in that budget. That is why I chose AM1.

As for the OS, I am going to try putting some Linux distro and if that does not work, then I will bite the bullet and get them a copy of windows.

And by light gaming I mean that my sister likes to play the Sims 2 from time to time.

[Speedbird]

Yeah the memory is overkill. Just looking for the cheapest solution. Oh, and I forgot to post the budget, silly me. I am looking to spend around $200 up to a maximum of $250. I'm am not sure if a core i3 and the board will fit in that budget. That is why I chose AM1.

As for the OS, I am going to try putting some Linux distro and if that does not work, then I will bite the bullet and get them a copy of windows.

And by light gaming I mean that my sister likes to play the Sims 2 from time to time.

Oh well, in that case go for AM1 definitely, and stick with that Athlon because that's the only AM1 chip that gets to 2GHz, which is recommended for Sims 2. I'm not quite sure how you're going to run it on Linux though. 4GB RAM is still good enough, and maybe you can fit a GT610 in that budget, makes Sims 2 a little smoother.

[Victor Golf]

Oh well, in that case go for AM1 definitely, and stick with that Athlon because that's the only AM1 chip that gets to 2GHz, which is recommended for Sims 2. I'm not quite sure how you're going to run it on Linux though. 4GB RAM is still good enough, and maybe you can fit a GT610 in that budget, makes Sims 2 a little smoother.

Well, I didn't think about running the Sims on Linux. Oh well.

So far the Sims runs pretty well on a 1.8 GHz AMD Sempron 3000+ on socket 775...

[Speedbird]

Well, I didn't think about running the Sims on Linux. Oh well.

So far the Sims runs pretty well on a 1.8 GHz AMD Sempron 3000+ on socket 775...

You could try Wine, which is a Windows comparability layer for Linux.