Onboard Video

[CPN706]

I am building a computer for my mom and she plays zero games whatsoever. She does however watch blue rays and download x264 and ect. She uses it as a multimedia kind of rig. I see some motherboards out now with 4200 hd, are they worth it? what route should I take?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

The 4200 will handle all of that. Any modern processor will handle that anyway. So onboard will be perfectly fine.

I guess my suggestion would be to try to go low power. This would mean going with an Intel Core i3 or Pentium G####. Also get an 80 Plus power supply. Bronze or Silver rated would be good, but you'll pay more for them. The onboard video should be fine, but in the off chance it isn't then you can always add a dedicated video card, and power consumption, heat, and noise should still be low.

 

[RavenSEAL]

The onboard on my pc(nV 9400) runs B-R just fine.

 

[Gloomy]

What's your budget? If it's for multimedia, IE lounging around the house, I'd go for a nice DTR laptop. Might be more expensive, but nothing beats watching a movie on the couch.

 

[CPN706]

We all have a laptop in this house, we just wanted to build a cheap pc for the living room to hook up the flat screen to. Im thinking around 300-400 max to spend on a mobo, hd, cpu, memory.

 

[VirtualLarry]

So it's HTPC time! Start a thread in General Hardware about building a HTPC.

I would recommend an AMD solution, they work well for this (well, eventually). I had issues with my HTPC with a 780G mobo and a BE-2400 CPU (2.3Ghz Athlon64 X2 dual-core) under XP, but once I installed Windows 7 everything cleared up and now it works basically perfectly.

Plus, Windows 7 has much better font/icon scaling features, which you might want to take advantage of if you are trying to read text on a big-screen from the other side of the room.

 

[Vette73]

Yea I built my HTPC a couple months ago and went AMD. Using the onboard video through HDMI now.

Get a 880g/890gx board (with HDMI) and a cheap AMD dual core. Should be able to stay in your budget real easy.

Motherboard: 890gx board with the 4290 onboard video, USB3.0, mATX, etc... for only $93
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157192

CPU: Athlon X2 250 for $59 (retail with heatsink)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103903

Memory: 4gig for $51 shipped
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820144478

Then add in a hard drive, dvd drive, and case with power supply and that would not only work well now but hold up for a while.