What would be a typical recommended specification for a home office PC these days? This would not be for games, so it only needs to be powerful enough to run office type software, but also able to play back videos/BBC iPlayer etc without stutters. My dad's PC must be nine or ten years old now, and it is getting slower and slower (and probably about to expire), so he needs a cost effective replacement.

 

Does it even need a separate graphics card, or would a HD graphics chip on the motherboard be good enough? 8GB RAM? What about the CPU? I guess virtually any processor would run office software without problems these days?

 

Any suggestions?

What are the specs of your existing PC? Before you spend any money on a new system, consider reformatting the boot drive in your exisiting system and re-installing the OS. You'll be surprised at the boost in performance it gives without all of the unused programs you've accumulated over the years that clutter up the system.

He now thinks that it is something to do with the internet connection. It uses an old wireless network card, and it's just possible that this is suffering from issues....