Recommend 300€ linux hardware :)

[crazycheese]

It seems my relatives are finally pissed off by windows xp and want to exchange outdated athon xp 2k as well.
The parts in question would be CPU+MB+RAM and HDD. The target system is mainly for document work, surfing, flash gaming. some video acceleration would be nice.

Hence I need your advice, if you have the hardware or know its current state pretty good...
I was thinking about either i3-2100 or higher clocked A4 cpu + some solid cap board. What do you think?

[Kano]

i5 would be over your limit already i think (but if you need aes hw support then i3 is not enough). you can get cheap h61 boards, but those have got 2 sata3 ports less than the h67 ones. z68 is only needed for oc and k cpus, i5-2500k will become a bit cheaper when ivi bridge is out, but still more expensive than i3. if everything goes wrong and your fav. distro has got problems with some games or tearing with movies you might need to add a nv card >= 210 but basically for the speed/core current intel cpus are a very good choice. most apps do only use 1 (at max 2 theads) and therefore you dont need 4 cores - if compiling is not your hobby with the exception of gigabyte all boards should have got uefi + bios layer on top (csm). gigabyte boards have got bios + uefi addon which is a bit weird. it is a bit sad that hds are so overpriced currently...

[RealNC]

I good but cheap board with solid caps is the MSI P67A-C43 B3. It's socket 1155 with P67 chipset.

[curaga]

One of the E-450 mini pcs, like Zbox AD04? Should be < 200€.

[crazycheese]

Much thanks for opinions so far.

The problem is that if I purchase Intel, Im pretty sure things will work out-of-the-box as far as opensource driver goes.
If I purchase AMD APU, Im pretty sure I will not be able to use hardware acceleration and chip will not be efficiently utilized without fglrx. And I don´t want fglrx as it is synonyme for trouble.

The hardware I target now is IGP or APU, so that they can extend the performance using discrete card, if they desire so. Then, it will probably be nvidia unless amd fixes open drivers or fglrx (in terms of support period, wine compatibility and kernel/xorg coverage; bugs seems to be fixed so far). Reason why recently a friend of mine bought 2gb 560ti instead of 5970.

PSU, opticals, monitor etc are not needed, since we are upgrading. I will also exclude gigabyte as I have met rather linux-unfriendly behaviour.

[Kano]

Then be sure you do NOT buy P67 as you need to use a gfx card with that chipset.

[Panix]

It seems my relatives are finally pissed off by windows xp and want to exchange outdated athon xp 2k as well.
The parts in question would be CPU+MB+RAM and HDD. The target system is mainly for document work, surfing, flash gaming. some video acceleration would be nice.

Hence I need your advice, if you have the hardware or know its current state pretty good...
I was thinking about either i3-2100 or higher clocked A4 cpu + some solid cap board. What do you think?

Easy, I would only look for Intel hardware. Look for used. Not sure exactly where you are but is there any FS/Buy & Sell websites in your area? Either from a forum or online local ads site. This is a pretty typical marketplace (selling and upgrading) in North America so it depends on how prevalent it is there. But, if so, that would be my route.

Otherwise, you're comparing prices and deciding on what's available. Even if you find a decently priced Intel board and cpu, you don't need the Intel onboard graphics. Used nvidia boards are probably cheap.

[crazycheese]

Well, unfortunately used hardware is out of the question, since they don´t want risk and want warranty.
It will probably be i3-21xx Cpu this saturday. Thanks again!

[Panix]

Well, unfortunately used hardware is out of the question, since they don´t want risk and want warranty.
It will probably be i3-21xx Cpu this saturday. Thanks again!

That should be sufficient for what your folks need. To save money, you could get a used video card though.... it's cheap and worth the risk, imho. It's the mobo which is the component you have to worry about the most, imho. It depends if you need integrated graphics (and how much such a mobo is there).

[crazycheese]

Thanks Panix, Kano, guys! And Intel!

Bought i3-2105 (1st cheapest with hd3000, ~130€+60€mb). I do not regret that.