Budget PC build under $450 (including monitor)

What should I build?

The main use would be
Watching movies (1080p if possible)
Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Dreamweaver, and stuff like that

Games... just Solitaire or Minesweeper on max settings😁
A friend of mine is getting a laptop with this budget, but I’m wondering if she can get something a bit more decent. Honestly, I’m a little worried for her—if she gets a cheap machine that dies right after the one-year warranty expires, she'll be stuck without a computer. She needs it for her profession, too... she finished her degree, and even though she's currently looking for work, she still needs to practice and keep those professional skills sharp...🙂

As follows:

1 x Dell Monitor 21.5'' LED, VA, 6ms, D-Sub, DVI, black
1 x Fortron Hexa+ 400W, 80+
1 x MS Helios 3 Case, black
1 x Kingston UV400 240GB SSD, 2.5” 7mm, SATA 6 Gbit/s
1 x AMD Kaveri A8-Series X4 7600 (3.8GHz,4MB,65W,FM2+) box, NVIDIA GeForce Series
1 x Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-DS2 (SFM2+,DDR3,DVI/VGA,USB3.0,SATA III) mATX
1 x Corsair 4GB DDR3L 1600 Value S
Total: $1022

It’s probably fine for what she needs, and I guess the SSD will make it feel snappy enough.

A laptop isn't a terrible choice if she actually needs portability, but if it's just going to sit on a desk 99% of the time, there's maybe not much point.

So, which store did you end up getting all that from?

Andrew Peterson2 said:Which store did you pick that up from?

Best Buy, I'd say.

aha

I just realized you left the HDD out of the build list. Honestly, you probably should’ve included one—you can't beat that extra capacity, and they tend to last longer. By "last longer," I mean if she’s planning on keeping this thing for at least five years... an SSD has a finite number of write cycles, and if she’s doing, I don't know, heavy video editing or something similar, those drives can burn through their lifespan way faster than people realize...

If she's doing video editing, she's definitely going to need the capacity. I wouldn't lose sleep over longevity, though—SSD prices just keep dropping, and if one dies after a few years, it simply served its purpose.

But honestly, it’d probably be smarter to grab something like a 120GB SSD paired with a 1TB HDD. It would cost about $83 more than that complex build above, but you actually get a functional setup.

wiredotter14 said:If she's doing video editing, she needs the speed. I wouldn't sweat the longevity too much; SSD prices just keep dropping, and if one dies in a few years, it's done its job.

I think grabbing a 120GB SSD paired with a 1TB HDD makes more sense. It’d cost about $83 more than that messy build above, but you get a setup that actually works together.

I'd go with an HDD plus another 4GB of RAM. Honestly, 4GB is cutting it too close, especially since a chunk of that memory gets eaten up by the video card.

Robert Rodriguez2 said:I’d go with an HDD plus another 4GB of RAM... honestly, 4GB feels thin to me, especially since a chunk of that goes straight to the video card.

👍👍

What if I just threw in an Intel Core i3 and

plus 8 gigs of DDR4 RAM
and a 1TB HDD

Bryan Taylor6 said:What if I just threw an Intel Core i3 in there?
Check out this motherboard link from a retailer over at Best Buy. It’s an H110M PRO-D.
8 gigs of DDR4 RAM. That's it.
I don't know what you're talking about.

Honestly, you're better off just going with AMD here. You get four physical cores and a much beefier GPU.

Do these programs (Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Adobe Dreamweaver) actually need 4 cores?

For multi-threaded workloads, there's only a 6% bump with the Intel Core i3, but for single-core performance, they say the Intel Core i3 is 47% faster than the Core_G4400...

My assumption is that you'd get way more utility out of that 47% single-core boost than just a measly 6% in multi-threading.

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/168...Core_G4400.htm

If I'm reading this right, gaming isn't really an issue here, so any upgrade to a better GPU would just be minor...

Don't sweat the write/erase cycles on an SSD; it'll hold up just fine. You didn't mention if you're doing any video editing, but if that's in the mix, I guess a 1TB drive would be better, or maybe that combo of a 120GB SSD plus a 1TB drive I mentioned earlier.

From what I know, Photoshop and Illustrator can really push a CPU to its limit, and they use GPU acceleration too. Plus, if you're planning on editing video, having those two extra cores might actually help.