Need advice for parent's computer purely for Video/Web

[Jakyap]

My dads old ass e-Machine can't even play a 720p video without chopping up and skipping all over the place. hes been bugging me to price him out a super cheap machine that he can watch 1080p things on his new 27" monitor. Now I was thinking to save on having to get a CPU+GPU, just getting the 3570k since it has the HD 4000 graphics. I have read that it is actually performing well on it stand alone on video of 1080p quality but couldn't find anyone testing it out on that basis alone or having anything to say about it really. Was wondering if I could get some help on this issue, I could plan out the rest just trying to save him some cash if I can just get a CPU alone to do all the video on his comp instead of shelling out for a nice gpu as well. Thanks!!

[Deleted]

I believe the AMD APU's (like the A6-3650) would be a better choise for this as they are much cheaper and will easily run 1080p video. Where I live I think I could build a movie machine around one of them for about 250e (brand new excluding windows)

[lokii]

The graphics more than fine. As a company we use quite a bit of onboard graphics machines like this. I actually just built one of these for the folks for Christmas myself. As far as price goes you can probably expect around $500. If you don't want to build it yourself, go to dell and choose an Optiplex 3010 and tweek it to what you want. One thing though, always buy a machine from them with the least amount of memory possible and get it somewhere else. They charge way too much of a premium.

[Jakyap]

Yeah I plan on building it myself, have built my past few gaming computers and some for a few friends. I just don't want to use my parent's funds and rely on the i5 or as Trathus suggested, the A6 and then get spotty or artifact playback when hes trying to watch some Game of Thrones in 1080p or something =p Want it to knock it out of the park for him. He won't be using it past anything outside watching videos and browsing the web so no need to overkill it with the potential to game or anything else. Just need a solid stand alone CPU that can handle 1080p with no sweat for a resolution that size.

[Tehterokkar]

Well, if he is going to use it just for Video/Web, I think he can go with i5-2500 along with a cheap GPU, like a GTX 550 etc.

Just something I quickly put together(you didn't mention budget, but I went for quite a cheap build anyway):

MoBo: ASUS P8B75-V LGA 1155 Intel B75 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX $89.99
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge $209.99
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB $114.99
RAM: Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 $24.49
HDD: Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM $109.99
PSU: CORSAIR Builder Series CX500 500W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified $57.99

Total: $607.44

Unless nothing breaks, it should run every video out there for many years. It can be iterated, but I would definitely take a proper GPU instead of relying on the CPU(You can also take an AMD GPU if you wish).
You can switch the i5 to i3 if you wish to drop the price by about $90-100, but Dual-core CPUs are a bit "old" tech in my opinion.

[firewist]

For just movie watching you could just as well get an AMD apu with some 1866 Mhz ram.
The AMD A8-5600K would do that just fine.
with something like this you can go as low as $300 for a PC.

[yurano]

How old is your dad's eMachines? His lag might be due to the age of the computer, not necessarily that it was prebuilt. Hell, 4 year old $500 laptops can run 1080p fine.

By the way, AMD integrated graphics performance > Intel integrated graphics performance. And you really don't need a graphics card to watch TV.

Any modern $300 prebuilt HTPC should be able to play 1080p.

Here's a Mini-ITX build I threw together which would be more than enough to play videos for the next 5 years. Note, the i3-3225 has a HD 4000 so it can 'technically' play WoW at lowest settings.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i3-3225 3.3GHz Dual-Core Processor ($129.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock H77M-ITX Mini ITX LGA1155 Motherboard ($94.99 @ Microcenter)
Memory: Samsung 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($35.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: Antec ISK 300-150 Mini ITX Desktop Case w/150W Power Supply ($71.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Optical Drive: Lite-On iHAS124-04 DVD/CD Writer ($17.98 @ Outlet PC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $510.92
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-11-16 09:48 EST-0500)

[Deleted]

You could also buy a tablet, its way more cheaper and I think that a tablet is made for a web/video use.

[Deleted]

Sorry to repeat myself but trust me, even AMD A6 is borderline overkill for just 1080p video and web browsing

[yurano]

You could also buy a tablet, its way more cheaper and I think that a tablet is made for a web/video use.

Plus, Windows 8 Metro Apps. aka smartphone games on your laptop/tablet.

It could also be that your dad's computer is lagging because its bloated with programs and such. A friend's computer had problems with integrated wireless and lagged in Youtube. A reformat fixed wireless and Youtube performance.

[llDemonll]

For just movie watching you could just as well get an AMD apu with some 1866 Mhz ram.
The AMD A8-5600K would do that just fine.
with something like this you can go as low as $300 for a PC.

i agree with this man

$100 for processor, $80 for motherboard, $50 for HDD, $40 for ram, $150 tops for case/PSU (more than likely this will be $80 or so)

$400-475 for a computer that will beat the snot out of 1080p video