Family Media/Networking PC for under $400

[Violeta]

After 8 years of using and not maintaining whatsoever my old gaming pc, my father has decided he wants to get a new computer. 

The main usage it will get is light networking (work correspondence mainly, some web browsing), Spotify, Netflix and the occasional Blu-rays. So in all, very light, non-demanding stuff, but due to his total cluelessness towards technology, it should withstand some long term usage.

 

He got a couple of suggestions from the local PC store (in Bulgaria) for ready builds, but as I'm not entirely familiar with some of the parts ( I live in Finland and we don't have even half of them here), I thought I'd take your opinions:

 

Note: These are exact copy-paste from their email

 

 

Price: $500

Motherboard: Asrock b85m/1150

CPU: i5-4460/3-2g/6mb/box/lga1150

RAM 4g ddr31600 adata

HDD: 500g sg sata6g/7200/3y warr

Video card: Asus gt720-sl-2gd3-brk

Case: Omega atx-8815bk/no psu

LAN PSU Fortron he-500+/500w

LG ch12ns30 blue-ray combo blk

 

Price: $300

Motherboard: Asrock b85m/1150

CPU: g3440 3-3ghz/3m/box/1150

RAM: 4g ddr3 1600 adata

HDD: 500g sg sata 6g/7200/3y warr

Case: Omega atx-8815bk/450w 12cm/bk

LG ch12ns30 blue-ray combo blk

 

The preferred points for the build are:

any good performing on the budget Quad-core

4Gb RAM

250-500GB HDD

Blu-ray drive

 

Let me know what you guys think!

[Tedster]

I think you should get him an SSD.

Cheapest 1150 motherboard and an i3 4130/G3258 would cut it?

[linuxfan66]

I would say go the 300 one for what he wants i cannot see any point spending anymore than that.

[fir_nev]

I think you should get him an SSD.

 

I think the choice for 500GB HDD is good because the family will be using it for work too. Maybe the SSD can come in later when the family is feeling adventurous.

[Violeta]

I think you should get him an SSD.

I would've liked an SSD as well, but due to the delay in how technology happens in Bulgaria, these are still unreasonably expensive and with limited availability, especially for the intended PC usage in this case.

[Violeta]

Well, he ended up going with a combo between the original suggestion and the input from you guys:

This is the rough final combo:

 

CPU: intel i3 4130

Motherboard: Intel Desktop board DQ87PG

RAM: Kingston 4GB DDR3 1600MHz

SSD: 240Gb Kingston SSDnow V300 SATA3 

Case: Omega atx-8815bk/450w 12cm/bk

LG ch12ns30 blue-ray combo blk

 

He might have to get a different case and power unit, depending on what the store offers tho. And because the i3 is a bit cheaper than the Asrock motherboard + Netflix announced they're looking to enter the market in Bulgaria, an SSD option became a reasonable addition to the budget. The final price might be more around $400, haven't got the spreadsheet yet, but all in all it's a very reasonable system combo for the intended use. 

Thanks a lot for the input guys!

[fir_nev]

Hope it will serve U guys well. Good luck.

[Violeta]

Hope it will serve U guys well. Good luck.

Thanks! Biggest problem is backwards salespeople. My father already reported that they've stated how "SSD and blu-ray drive are useless" and how he should get some half-legit Asrock parts instead of intel ones. Oh the joy!

Also how it would cost him an extra 100 euros for legit Windows 8, but they won't give him the physical copy because "he won't need it" (translated as: We just want to cash in on that one copy as much as we can, so we'll keep selling it to stupid people.)