Operation stop-my-dad-buying-a-mac

[nibbler]

My dad is (understandably) wanting to replace his 8-10 year old single core laptop which is his "desktop" computer at the moment. He almost bid £700 in an imac today but I told him to hold off - it was a 3 year old machine and I said I could build something faster and brand new for less. The issue is that I am slightly out of touch. His needs are the standard desktop tasks as well as some photo editing so processivity is not much of an issue but having a nice monitor is. He would also preferably like a desktop under-the-monitor case and as quiet a computer as possible.

My thoughts were an i5 or i3 low power cpu (i5 4330s or similar), around 8gb of ram, a seagate SSHD, a cheap dedicated GPU and as much of the budget as possible on the monitor. The budget is probably around £650 to stop him buying a mac but the cheaper the better.

What is recommended in terms of

a) CPU - maybe an AMD APU is better? Could I run anything passively?
b) Case - the silverstone cases look decent but will they be noisy?


Thanks in advance,

Nick

[nibbler]

double post

[HalloweenJack]

amd A10 6800k with 8gb of the fastest DDR3 you can afford on an A88X FM2+ motherboard with an SSD, with an HDD for file storage . a quality psu in a case with quality cooling (low powered but can shift air).

its pretty much what im building my parents (except im using a 5800k and 1600mhz ram). comes in at about £400 or so without screen or windows

[wasabi]

Something like a G3220 Pentium and a mini-itx mobo, plus a SSD drive. Lower temps and lower TDP than AMD APUs. Tallish itx case (shuttle?) so you can fit a big heatsink with very slow/quiet fan.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would go with an AMD A8 5600K and an A88X or A85X mATX or mini-ITX motherboard. Going from my experience of both Llano and Trinity based mATX and mini-ITX systems,idle and low load power consumption will be between 35W to 45W at the wall. It might be worth seeing how Kaveri(which should launch in two weeks) fares,but the A8 5600K is only £65 ATM.

[herulach]

If he's after the all in oney ness, then I'd be tempted to look at the NUC sized barebones (AMD or Intel) integrated gpu with 4gb should be fine. You could build an i3 based NUC with 4gB and a 128gb ssd for about £330, with £300 on an ultrawide display I think anyone find it more impressive than an imac. Admittedly you're missing an optical drive, but I'd be surprised if that was a problem.

[DanceswithUnix]

amd A10 6800k with 8gb of the fastest DDR3 you can afford on an A88X FM2+ motherboard with an SSD, with an HDD for file storage . a quality psu in a case with quality cooling (low powered but can shift air).

its pretty much what im building my parents (except im using a 5800k and 1600mhz ram). comes in at about £400 or so without screen or windows

I wonder if you could skip the HDD and just stick with SSD, otherwise this is what I would do. In fact, for my mum I expect it is what I will be doing soon.

[Biscuit]

As CTF suggested, I would wait a few weeks for kaveri. APU is definitely the way forward though, they are really solid chips for the kind of use 'the oldies' will put them through. My dad is over the moon with the 6600 system I built him. I think you will struggle trying to make one passive though, they do kick out some heat!
Personally I think active cooling is the safer bet, if done well the noise levels will be negligible anyway.

[nibbler]

Is the difference between A8 and A10 the GPU? Also is 6 series vs 5 series just a facelift/clockboost?

[b0redom]

Anyone know the difference in performance between A10 and Intel HD5000 graphics? Looking at similar for my own build. (Sorry to hijack your thread Nibbler).

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

People have run the AMD APUs in passively cooled cases,although they are not cheap. I can have a look around later for specific parts.

[herulach]

I suppose you need to decide really if the thing he likes about the mac is the compact ness, or the monitor. If its the latter then you can easily do it, if its size, nuc, zbox etc are your only real options. I recently got one of these for my parents:
http://www.ebuyer.com/500387-acer-re...c-dt-smeek-008

Happily sits on the wall behind the tv in their living room and with a wireless keyboard & mouse does everything you need.

[nibbler]

Just about convinced him I think

Any reason to get a CPU cooler for a 5600k or similar?

Any reason not to get this motherboard: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-a...dvi-hdmi-matx?

You mentioned other chipsets cat - what's the difference?

[Kiyam]

I was thinking about getting something similar for something to just sit behind a TV in the living room, and my spec list at the time was:
[pulled all the prices from scan etc... you can find cheaper but I hadn't researched it enough yet]

Silverstone Sugo SG06B: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...lus-bronze-psu
MSI A78M-E35 Micro-ATX Motherboard: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-a...dvi-hdmi-matx?
AMD A10 6800K Black Edition CPU: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-a...hz-100w-retail
Samsung 840 EVO 120GB SSD: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb...-410mb-s-256mb
Toshiba 2TB 7200rpm HDD: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb-t...-cache-8ms-ncq
2x4GB 1600MHz Corsair Vengeance DDR3 RAM: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-(...9-9-24-xmp-15v

and I guess you could throw in a monitor, say a Dell Ultrasharp?: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/24-de...-height-tilt-s

and all of that added together comes to £656.54, admittedly the system itself is pricier than what some people are suggesting, and you could probably cut back here and there, and be able to add in a better monitor, keyboard + mouse etc... and an aftermarket CPU cooler which would make things quieter, such as a Zalman slim cooler: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/zalma...lim-cpu-cooler for £28.78 (again from scan)

[nibbler]

Ordered it all - gone for a coolermaster silencio 352, a 128gb SSD (he has an external HDD for any serious storage needs), an A8 6500 (lower TDP) and the same MSI board linked to above. Came in at £507 for the whole system including a £160 dell IPS monitor, not too shabby...

[Kiyam]

That's great!