Advice on basic office computer

[JO53PHS]

So I've decided that my dad's 9 year old Dell Dimension 3000 is really too slow to actually be worth bothering with any more, so I guess it's time for a new PC. I'm looking at a budget of around £500, and the usage of the computer is not going to extend far beyond web browsing and MS Office, but I do want a certain degree of future proofing. Is there anything that'd be worth changing from the spec below?

Case
COOLERMASTER ELITE 311 BLUE CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-3470 (3.2GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® P8H61-MX USB3/SI: uATX, USB 3.0, SATA 3.0Gb/s
Memory (RAM)
4GB SAMSUNG DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (1 X 4GB)
Graphics Card
INTEGRATED GRAPHICS ACCELERATOR (GPU)
Memory - 1st Hard Disk
120GB INTEL® 520 SERIES SSD, SATA 6 Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
2nd Hard Disk
500GB 3.5" SATA-III 6GB/s HDD 7200RPM 16MB CACHE
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Memory Card Reader
INTERNAL 52 IN 1 CARD READER (XD, MS, CF, SD, etc) + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Power Supply
350W Dual Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan
Processor Cooling
INTEL SOCKET LGA1155 STANDARD CPU COOLER
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Facilities
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
4 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL (MIN 2 FRONT PORTS) AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit w/SP1 - inc DVD & Licence (£79)
Office Software
FREE 60 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 2010 Professional Edition
Anti-Virus
BULLGUARD INTERNET SECURITY - FREE 90 DAY TRIAL
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 8 to 10 working days
Quantity
1

Price: £532.00 including VAT and delivery.

 

[vanthus]

Looks good for what you want to do,not sure it's worth bothering about an SSD though.

 

[JamesMLB]

personally i would drop the ssd and put 8gb ram in there

 

[Karnor00]

If you did want an SSD then you would really need to upgrade the motherboard to get the best out of it. I'd suggest maybe a compromise, dropping the SSD, but upgrading the HDD to a Caviar Black (either 500GB or 1TB depending on how much space you need).

I'd also suggest getting Windows 8 rather than Windows 7.

 

[JO53PHS]

Thanks for the advice. I know it probably varies but do you have any idea what sort of drives PCS are using for the 'bog standard' options these days? I ordered a PC about a year and a half ago with just the standard 1 TB hard drive, and it turned up with a Samsung Spinpoint F3 in it. I read a few reviews and was quite pleased to find that performance is almost on par with the Caviar Black.

I'd go for Windows 8 but having used XP and nothing else since it was released, I'm not sure my dad could quite get his head around using it. I'm running the trial of Windows 8 Enterprise on VirtualBox to see if he can get used to it

 

[Grimezy]

Does he definitely require a desktop? It would seem quite sensible to go for a laptop if it's purely for browsing and word processing. I know you can get more value out of a desktop but an i3 and 4-8gb ram laptop should be perfectly sufficient and would offer him portability around the house if he needed it and also the comfort of being able to sit in a comfy chair. Desktops only really seem to be useful now for high end machines or work machines.

P.s. I know you mentioned you wanted future proofing but I abused a bog standard Acer laptop for a good 5 years playing games, etc that I really shouldn't have been doing so if he's only using it for limited use I'm sure a laptop would last him that long without needing an upgrade. It sounds like he's the kind of person that will use a machine till it's on it's dying legs and too ancient to upgrade manually anyway.

P.p.s Chromebooks are cool for browsing and word docs.