Opinion on PC for Parents

Hi everyone,

My parents have asked me to buy them a PC for home use. Their budget is £600-700 but are open to more. The main use will be Microsoft office, storing and sorting their pictures (they have a lot) and playing some games (nothing bran new, mainly like zoo tycoon, sims type games). This is what I was looking at on the website and would be greatful for opinions! Thanks in advance!


Case
FRACTAL FOCUS G BLACK GAMING CASE (Window)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Celeron® Dual Core Processor G4900 (3.10GHz) 2MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® H310M-A: Micro-ATX, DDR4, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2133MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1050 - DVI, HDMI, DP
1st Hard Disk
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES™ VS-350 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
Microsoft® Office Home & Student 2016 (1 Digital License)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 12 to 14 working days
Quantity
1

Price £674.00 including VAT and delivery

Unique URL to re-configure : https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-home-office-pc-ii/97WVkZgk3u/

The celeron is a very weak CPU. Even for home use over the coming years.

You should try your parents on Open Office, which is a free and open source office suite offering a very extensive set of features. Since it's free you can always try them out on it now before they get a new PC. This will save the extortionate £122 that would be much better spent on hardware. https://www.openoffice.org/download/index.html

The build would really want an SSD too ideally.

What's the budget?

£600-700

Ok I have rejigged it and below is a new run coming in at £709. I don’t want to go down the SSD route as I wouldn’t trust my parents to accidentally be saving day to day stuff on it rather than saving it for operating system etc. Let me know what you think:


Case
FRACTAL FOCUS G BLACK GAMING CASE (Window)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5 Six Core Processor i5-8400 (2.8GHz) 9MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME B360M-A: Micro-ATX, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2133MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1050 - DVI, HDMI, DP
1st Hard Disk
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES™ VS-350 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS 802.11 AC1200 867Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 12 to 14 working days
Quantity
1

Price £709.00 including VAT and delivery

I don’t want to go down the SSD route as I wouldn’t trust my parents to accidentally be saving day to day stuff on it rather than saving it for operating system etc.

Click to expand...

It's not a problem to save random documents to an SSD. It's a bit inefficient but there's no problem and if they fill the drive up they can always move things to the HDD. The write endurance isn't really a factor unless they are going to download petabytes of stuff

Also you can change the location of folders like Pictures, Videos, Downloads to be on the HDD to mitigate the amount of stuff they store on the SSD.
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/74955-move-location-videos-folder-windows-10-a.html

I'd say that's worth the overwhelmingly huge performance gain

One of the main points of the B360 motherboards is that they support the fastest SSDs and have additional M.2 slots to allow for an additional SSD. But if you spend less on the mobo and less on the case, this lets you afford a fairly decent Sata or better SSD as well as the HDD.

What is their home network like? Do they use network storage? If not there might not be much point to the AC1200 wifi card.


Case
PCS GENESIS G1B CASE + SD CARD READER
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5 Six Core Processor i5-8400 (2.8GHz) 9MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® H310M-A: Micro-ATX, DDR4, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2133MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1050 - DVI, HDMI, DP
1[SUP]st[/SUP] Hard Disk
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 32MB CACHE
1[SUP]st[/SUP] M.2 SSD Drive
256GB ADATA SX6000 PCIe M.2 2280 (1000 MB/R, 800 MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES™ VS-350 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 12 to 14 working days
Quantity
1

Price £706.00 including VAT and delivery

Unique URL to re-configure : https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-home-office-pc-ii/bKwXGyzacC/

longtimeowen said:

Ok I have rejigged it and below is a new run coming in at £709. I don’t want to go down the SSD route as I wouldn’t trust my parents to accidentally be saving day to day stuff on it rather than saving it for operating system etc.

Click to expand...

That's a non-issue really if you take the time beforehand to properly move the Documents, Pictures, etc. folders within Windows to the HDD (we can show you how to do that). After that whenever your parents save a document or picture, or video, etc. it will automatically go to the HDD.....

Buy the silver warranty as well, it's way too cheap not to!

Cheers! Im gonna go for the specs you posted above ����

They were meant to be smiley faces!

Glad it helped. And nps, diamonds are good too