CPU Selection

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

Alright, now that I have spent an evening trying to limp a 7 year old PC through cleaning it up, and getting running right.

Now they (my N-laws) want to know what it would take to bulid a new machine that would keep up with the Jones's for a while.

So I figured the first place to start is going to be the CPU... and build from their.

All they do is surf the net, run Office 2003, and allow a kid to load up stuff hes not suppose to. That being said, I know it dont have to be the latest and greateset quad core I7 CPU.. but I figure I better build it fast enough to handle some random spyware, Google tool bar updater, Bing Tool bar updater/optimizer, MSN updater/Chat Room Searcher, Office tools updater, Adobe auto search Indexer, Yahoo Search Indexing service... And on and On and On and On... you get the picture.

[LA_MERC_MadMAX]

For general use, I wouldn't put much emphasis on CPU - almost any modern CPU is plenty fast enough...really...

If they aren't going to be doing any gaming, I'd either look into one of the new Intel i5 dual-cores (with hyperthreading) like the i5 600-series or heck - even the i3 500-series would be enough. These chips actually have the graphics core built onto the CPU, and is very good graphics for HD content, etc, just not "gaming" graphics by any means...

Another option would be an AMD AM3 system - probably an Athlon Triple core or Athlon Quad (I think a Phenom II would be overkill for them - the Athlon x4 is ~$100 and probably more than they will ever need)...pair this up w/ a motherboard w/ the AMD 785G chipset and you'll have the best onboard graphics money can buy, and more than enough system for your in-laws.

Having a speedy hard drive and enough RAM is going to be more of an impact than ANY cpu. For HDD's look at the Western Digital Caviar Blacks and/or the Seagate 7200.12 500GB drive - it's a single platter 500GB - that's major data density there, and has unbelievable performance from a 7200RPM spindle speed. The WD's have 320GB platters, but have dual controllers, and are very fast in almost any workload - it's a coin-toss between the two really....

Oh, and if they are going to be running Windows 7, just go ahead and get them 8GB of RAM and be done w/ it -that way they won't ever be swapping, and that system will last them for a loooong time w/o any upgrades.

Just my $0.02, your mileage may vary :-)

[LA_MERC_YellowDog]

Thanks Jayson, I was looking into the i5 processors for certain, and maybe the P55 chipset to go along with it.. Throw in a lower end PCI-e graphics card.

I havent looked into the AMD option yet.

[LA_MERC_MadMAX]

Here is a good article on the i3 if you are interested: http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3724

Performs AMAZINGLY well for a Dual-Core CPU...