Short PC question.

My brother-in-law is looking for a new PC and he's shooting quite high with specs IMO.

Basically he only uses MS Word and the internet. (mails, streaming...)

I told him that he doesn't need a super expensive video card for that and that onboard graphics should be enough for what he's doing.

I am thinking that the onboard graphics capabilities of a modern motherboard are enough to play Blu-Rays and stream/playback 1080p video content. Am I correct in this? Comments would be appreciated.

Thanks!

I built a PC in 2001. It was mid-high end at the time.

In 2008, it was time to replace it as it was seriously old. (I had only replaced my PSU and a  GPU in that time) I then built the one described in my profile.

In 2010, my 2001 was having serious issues, it had been running a copy of win7home but was chugging along and started to have issues. At this time I was no longer able to find drivers for the nvidia video codec on the mobo, so I figured its been long enough; time to replace it. Keep in mind this is my downstairs PC that for guests, kids, and such. No real gaming beyond kids internet stuff like Club Penguin, etc.

I spent about $180 on a mobo with a AMD Sempron 140 processor running at 2.7G, 2GB of Ram, and a 250GB HDD. It also has on-board Nvidia Gforce 7025 video. I used my existing case, DVD drive, PSU, and everything else.

It runs Win7 pro 64bit, office, and any other basic item. Even plays DVDs without a hitch. (I'm sure if I wanted to put a bluray player on it, it would do just fine as Ihave watched plenty of 720p/1080p video on it)

Whenever a family member or friend asks me what to buy, I suggest taking their current box and simply spending about $200 or less to build a lower-end PC like this. It will easily last 4-5 years without fail and run smooth as butter based on their needs.

There's no reason to do more unless you are a business, developer, or serious gamer (beyond onlive or basic net games).

I agree. If he doesn't play modern 3D games on his PC, a recent onboard graphics card with a builtin H.264 decoder should be sufficient. A standalone card would only make the PC
- more expensive
- more power-consuming
- louder

I use RS780-based onboard graphics on all of my 3 PCs and I'm completely happy with them.

Thanks for the comments so far.
It's just as I thought. :)

Nice Avatar btw, ArnoldRimmer. :D

I was given a Dell Inspiron laptop with a dual-core 1.7GHz and an ATi X1400 integrated graphics card. Upgraded the RAM to 4GB DDR2 because I could. Now my little sister uses it and she watches Sailor Moon on YouTube and plays Mario Kart DS online with the adaptor (after I installed the software and set it up for her).

I also through OpenOffice on there so she could type up school papers (she's a 17 year old high school student).

For both of these purposes, it does what she needs it for.

Does it do what I want it to? (Run SC2 on the barest minimum of settings) No, it doesn't but it still works for everyday "normal" people computer stuff.

Integrated graphics for new computers will ALWAYS work for basic stuff. And besides, these integrated cards are getting better and better. A Radeon HD 4200 series card will work just fine, even for some basic gaming

He won't need an advanced GPU, especially with the new Fusion A-8/A-6 CPUs from AMD and the Intel Sandy Bridge (new i3-i7 CPUs on socket 1155 I think). These new chips combine CPU and GPU on a single chip and are quite efficient for most basic functions.

Unless he plans on playing modern games (which you've said he's not) or doing video encoding then an advanced standalone GPU is not needed. If he does want to go for a seperate GPU then an entry level chip would also work.

The onboard graphics should be enough for most everything (besides playing graphic intensive games). My laptop (a Macbook Air) has a 1.7ghz i5 SB cpu and the onboard Intel HD 3000 graphics card and I've had no problems playing 1080p content on it. (I'm not quite sure about blu ray playback as it doesn't have an optical drive and I don't think blu ray playback is supported in Mac OS X anyway.)

My desktop also has the same onboard Intel HD 3000 gpu(with the 3.4ghz i7 2600k SB cpu) , but my mobo doesn't support onboard video so I can't test it.

Onboard graphics should be enough though and later he can always add in a budget discrete gpu if his needs change.

I would be careful, I have a decent mobo and when I first got that 2 years ago it choked on HD content, same goes for my sisters decent laptop which she bought recently. By HD content I mean just 720p.

You are probably going to want a $100+ mobo, preferably a 1156 or 1155 socket.

I would recommend a dedicated GPU instead of on-board. An entry level GPU should be sufficient though.

He can still play 2D games like terraria on it ^^ (it's for 3D that you need to beware...)