Possible HTPC "the 'tosh"

C4C

C4C

Well-Known Member
If you understand the title, you'll get where I'm trying to go with this.

It's for my dad. He's used an iMac since 2009, and it's been a disaster lately. Takes about 2 minutes to get to the desktop and open Safari/Chrome. He's replaced the GPU in it too (cost us $400 a couple years ago).

Anyways, I'm looking to build a Skylake machine that'll be capable to browse the web, and do some HD movie watching, and light photo editing with that pre-installed program from that operating system that can't be named.

Point is, I just need help with choosing the hardware. It has to stay Skylake, and the price around $600-650 if possible.

Currently I have an i5-6400 listed, but do you guys think that a i3-6100 with HT would be fine for this purpose? It's not going to be a gaming rig and no video editing will be done on it..

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/sQVCLD

note: he's going to be getting a rather large WD external harddrive for mass storage. We have about 400GB of movies, and over 40,000 family photos.

Updated: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/C4C/saved/#view=WsD6Mp
 
Last edited:
Personally will keep i5.

Personally would pick a bigger case like fractal design node 202, just in case you need to add gpu in future

Ssd could consider M.2 instead of sata
 
The i5 is nice to have if he can afford it, but if you want to save money I think an i3 will be absolutely fine. They're actually quite underrated - every time I've built a machine with one I have been impressed!
 
  • Like
Reactions: C4C
Cisco001 said:
??
M.2 SSD 240GB is starting from $80.
http://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#i=85,83&sort=a10&page=1&t=0&S=240000,10000000
Only extra $20-30 I am talking about...

OP spend $180 on case and psu...
Click to expand...

Sure for SATA based M.2 - why would you buy one of those? unless you are really, really, really, tight for space and cant fit 2.5" drives and a few flat cables.

Why wouldn't you just get 2 cheap $40/each adata SSD (2.5") deal with 4 thin cables and run a RAID0 volume with 2x the performance

Cost aside the pcie and nvme offerings are coming down in price and as always, I'm jealous with American prices..
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: C4C
Okay, okay... I guess I didn't do too poorly in my choices haha.

We may go with an i3 since it'll handle everything needed, as well as being cheaper and being able to put money towards a larger SSD if necessary.

Definitely looking for quality products as my dad just reminded me that we've had the HDD go out twice in the iMac as well, so a reliable SSD is good!

I thank you all for your input!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top