Hi. Looking to build a PC for my Dad, it will sit in the living room and stream Interned Tv & net flix & the like. It will be connected to a monitor for internet surfing but to a 42" plasma for Tv watching. will be looking to set up TV Recording on it also. Now I was advised to use the I5 2500k processor for streaming but it would seem a bit like overkill for what it would be used for. so what do you think, if you have another ideas plus the right bits of kit that will fit around it well. your help would be appreciated
. Just checked this out any opinions. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-...n-s-fm1-quad-core-30ghz-1mb-cache-100w-retail
I get the impresstion if I go amd I will need a Graphics card, but if I go intel I wont for a mid range quad core
For streaming, I'd say your weakest point is always going to be your dad's Internet connection. Netflix themselves (as a guideline) only state a "1.6-gigahertz (GHz) or higher processor" - I think the limitation is Silverlight, which is what the Netflix player uses. Any mid-range processor is going to be fine; any GPU that does hardware decoding is OK too. TL;DR version: no need to push the boat out just for video streaming. Also, you may want to consider editing your posts rather than posting multiple replies to yourself
The 2500k is definitely overkill I'm pretty sure any i3 chip could do that (if you're wanting intel) and on the AMD side you could just get an APU.
I have an old atom with nvidia integrated gpu doing the same job fine so an i5-2500 is more than powerful enough. I would look for the lowest powered AMD cpu with GPU that you can find.
I wouldn't go for that one - 100W is quite a lot of heat for a very undemanding task. The bottom of the range is more than enough for just video playback and even web browsing. Something like http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-...re-3ghz-amd-radeon-hd-7480g-720mhz-65w-retail would work. As said a raspberry pi plays 720p perfectly but isn't that great for web browsing. TBH if it was me I'd buy a Roku for the TV playing and a tablet like a Hudl for web browsing and you'd probably be about the same price as a dedicated PC. EDIT: the hudl might even have HDMI out via MHL so you wouldn't even need the Roku
i5 definitely overkill, i use a i3 on my media player/streamer but if you plan to use the cpu's onboard graphics chip you could have some stutter on 1080 video playback as i did so i got myself a cheap amd card for about £30 let me know if you want model numbers and i will dig them out for you
I would definitely go the AMD APU route here, their graphics side is stronger than Intel's and as said the processor will not be pushed in the slightest. Also, what's your budget?
The i3 is a waste of cash these days. The Pentium chip is very close behind it and half the cost. That's where my money would go. The 53 watt power usage at full blast is very desirable too. Oh, and it'll happily sit at 4GHz on the stock cooler without a problem, if that's of interest. I had mine at 4.6 on the stock cooler for a brief moment. It could cope though.
http://www.scan.co.uk/savedbasket/678404e1b18d4d66a576d1c3cf034245 Here is an idea at the £500 mark with th focus on noise, size and reliability.
Firstly, old thread is old. Secondly, very true Dude, in fact I'd now argue that for anything other than a gaming or productivity PC, even the modern dual core Celerons are more than powerful enough. Case in point, a Celeron G1850, a sub £40 dual core Haswell chip, is roughly as quick as the old Yorkfield Core 2 Quads and Phenom II X4s running with all four cores flat out, and in single/dual threaded apps it's nearly twice as fast. All the while sipping power. I know it will be slower in certain benchmarks, but those are not indicative of your typical PC user's workload. I would argue that a Yorkfield is still overkill for most regular users even now, ergo the latest Celerons and Pentiums are awesome. Basically unless you need 4 or more threads, the i3, i5 and i7 chips are not necessary.
Oh dear lord. I just saw the most recent reply and assumed it was from yesterday or something. Mega thread revival!