PC build around $300 (no monitor)

Hey there!

I'm looking to pick up a new PC for my better half—mostly for surfing the web, office work, movies, torrenting, and stuff like that. She might also want to play some older games, maybe an old NFS title or something similar. She already has a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, and we definitely don't need a CD/DVD drive.

The budget she's working with is around 2,000 - $833, though it would be ideal if we could stay closer to $667. I'm planning to buy everything in a shop in a major US city like Chicago using cash, and ideally, I'd love to find a place where they can just build the whole thing right there on the spot. 😁

One important detail: this computer will basically be running all day long. She turns it on when she wakes up and doesn't shut it down until bedtime—with Chrome pretty much always active and running at least 4 or 5 tabs at once (Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest...).

The requirement is that it needs to have an Intel processor, and based on what she needs to do, I'm thinking integrated graphics should be more than enough.

Do you think I can put together a decent SSD within this budget? Or would it be better to go with an SSD for the OS paired with a traditional hard drive for storage?

Thanks in advance for all the suggestions! 🙂

The AMD A8 x4 7600 processor.
The Asus A68HM-K motherboard.
The Asus A68HM-K MS PHOENIX 2 case.
Kingston DDR3 HyperX Fury, 1866MHz, 8GB (2x4GB) Red HX318C10FRK2/8
So, I'm looking at this AKYGA AK-P3-500 Pro 500W power supply—the one with the 120mm fan and standard 3.3/5/±12V rails. Just a basic retail unit, I guess.
Patriot SSD Blast R560/W530, 240GB, 7mm, 2.5" PBT240GS25SSDR
The LC Power LC-CC-95 CPU cooler—it's a 90mm unit designed for both Intel and AMD setups.

The grand total: $781 ZAL-A1 total : 2,257.89 HRK AMD center

I guess it’s either this or that.

So, I'm looking at this AKYGA AK-P3-500 Pro 500W power supply. It handles 3.3/5/±12V and comes with a 120mm fan in retail packaging. I guess it's just your standard 500W unit.
The Patriot SSD Blast R560/W530, 240GB, 7mm, 2.5" PBT240GS25SSDR.
Maybe it's an Intel Pentium G4400.
The ASRock H110M-DGS motherboard.
I guess there might be an issue here. Maybe? Maybe some Kingston DDR4 2133MHz, CL15, 4GB.
The Zalman mini tower case in black, specifically the ZAL-A1.

The total amount comes to $2,257.89 at the AMD center. $753 ZAL-A1 total : 2,257.89 HRK AMD center

AMD's got a much stronger integrated GPU and a quad-core processor, whereas Intel offers a more modern platform that’s probably faster, though it only has two cores and a better case.

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly! 🙂

I’ll probably need to do a bit of digging regarding processors—specifically how Linux handles their integrated graphics, since I’m most likely running Ubuntu on this thing. To be honest, the Pentium side of things has me slightly worried... I'm just not entirely sure how stable the Skylake drivers are yet. I remember it took a little while for everything to really "click" when we were dealing with Haswell.

What kind of older games is he actually planning to play? An APU might be the smarter move, I guess. Though, I'm not sure how well they'll even run on Ubuntu 😬

Also, if I were him, I’d grab a decent power supply instead of that cheap junk. It’s gonna be running 24/7, after all.

I'm looking at some older titles—think Need for Speed Most Wanted or Underground from back in '05/'06, maybe PES 2008, just that whole era of classic games. 🙂 The plan is to run a dual boot with Windows and Ubuntu, though I mentioned Ubuntu because, let's be honest, Linux hardware support isn't quite as seamless as Windows yet. That said, Steam actually has a pretty decent library of games available for Linux these days. 🙂

Regarding the power supply, I was leaning towards picking up a Corsair unit—it’s been running quietly in my own rig all day long without any issues, which is a huge plus for me, and so far, it hasn't let me down. 🙂

I'm also thinking an AMD build might be the smarter move here. Since the Pentium is a relatively newer chip, I know from experience that Linux drivers for my old Haswell Pentium were just barely catching up. It feels like Intel puts way more of their focus into the i3, i5, and i7 lines anyway...

One quick question: I haven't really messed around with an SSD before, so I'm wondering if it'll cause any headaches if I split it into different partitions? My idea is to set up one for Windows, one for Linux, and then a third one just for general storage.

I'm also wondering how anyone actually plans on gaming on Ubuntu 😁 Here’s another suggestion if you're already committed to Linux—an Intel setup is probably more reliable when it comes to drivers. Plus, if you find you actually need some gaming power later, it's way easier to just slap in a dedicated GPU than to struggle with a mediocre one right now.

G3260 / G1820 + R7 250X FLEX
GIGABYE H81M S2V
KINGSTON 8GB 1600 MHZ
KINGSTON FURY 120GB SSD / SANDISK Z400S
FORTRON HEXA+ 400W 80+
MS VOYAGER MIDI ATX

= 2040 - $858 including shipping and assembly.

edit: was literally building this while you were posting (added a second option).

Whatever you do, don't go with Corsair for the power supply—that CX series is pretty low quality, and honestly, you can almost count on having to RMA it during the warranty period. For your budget, the Hexa+ I mentioned is definitely your best bet.

It shouldn't be an issue, but for storage, try using an external HDD or maybe grab an old internal SATA drive from an old PC if you have one lying around—just watch out for how much you cram onto the SSD, because once it gets too full, performance starts tanking and everything slows down.

I’ve got a nagging feeling she might keep an eye on disk usage—maybe it's just safer to stick with a standard drive so I don't have to worry about it. Or, if that old HDD from my previous laptop is still kicking, I could probably just repurpose it for storage... I'll have to double-check that later today.

You can totally play on Linux too—I run Football Manager on mine without any issues at all. 😁

How much of a jump are we really looking at between this Celeron and the Pentium? Honestly, I'm leaning more towards the Pentium side of things...

Honestly, the Pentium isn't even that much stronger when you look at the price gap—it’s practically unnoticeable, especially if you're just doing basic stuff with an SSD and 8GB of RAM.

I was out running errands on my phone this morning—totally missed the fact that you actually added a dedicated GPU to the build! I did a little digging online, and since it has solid Windows drivers, it looks like you could probably tackle some way more demanding games than the ones we talked about. If the Pentium doesn't really offer much of an upgrade, you’d likely end up running a Celeron paired with that graphics card instead...

I've got two quick questions for you:

1) Since these processors come with integrated graphics built-in, do I need to manually toggle the dedicated one through the BIOS, or is it automatic..?

2) Also, do you happen to know if that specific card tends to be pretty noisy?