Best place to buy a home PC?

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I'd like at least an i3 processer at least

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Why do you want an i3? What will you be doing? I ask because the Pentium G 3258 is a fantastic processor at the price and much cheaper than an i3 with likely no gain in function. And with the $50-70 in savings, you can invest in something like the Kingston 128gb SSd, which will dramatically increase your performance as opposed to the i3 with a 1tb non-SSd.

And if you have the old tower and list its specs/model no, it's usually really easy with just a couple of screws to buy a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM and drop it into the old case to have a whole new computer. All the parts snap right into place. You can even keep your old hard drive as extra storage.

ETA: but search Amazon, Newegg and Tigerdirect. Find a model you want; then search that model on the other two sites. No one site is always the cheapest. Between those 3, you should be bottom dollar more often than not.

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the interface takes getting used to.

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Windows key + F and type what you're looking for. Learn that, and you now know where almost everything is.

Don't get hung up on the processor model. Instead compare Passmark scores to get a better idea of the processing power. For the usage you describe look for something with a Passmark score of at least 2000-3000.

LINK

Don't limit yourself to Newegg. I've found bargains at some of the unlikeliest places including Office Depot. Get on the e-mail list for Newegg and Tiger Direct and don't be in a hurry. A couple of things you ought to be looking for are a 7200 rpm disk drive and at least two USB 3.0 ports. If you're connecting to the internet with wi-fi, get a decent N900 router and a matching N900 adapter for the PC; the built-in cards that come with the PC are all crap. The SSD is nice but you'll get a lot more bang for your buck with the higher rpm drive.

You should expect to pay no more than $400, less if you opt for refurbished.

Just got my Newegg daily e-mail and found this. It pretty much has all of the features you need and it's on sale for $449 with free shipping. Use promo code EMCPCHH237.

LINK

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Buy parts and build it yourself.

Nothing wrong with win8 btw, it's actually better "under the hood" than win7 but the interface takes getting used to.

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Yep. I built my first desktop PC 10 years ago, and I've never bought another desktop. Building is the way to go.

Case
Motherboard
cpu
memory
hard drive

Done.

EDIT: Also need a disk drive to install windows I guess.

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Yep. I built my first desktop PC 10 years ago, and I've never bought another desktop. Building is the way to go.

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Pretty much this, parents have a built machine from 2010, but it still works amazing. The people who did are very reputable in my area, so that helps as well.

You're in BR?

Here's what I'd do for a basic home PC, FWIW: LINK

- As hopeful doc said, the G3258 is one of the better value lower-end CPUs in terms of raw computing performance. The integrated GPU will be fine for everything but gaming.

- Went with a mATX form factor because there's no reason to put this in an ATX mid-tower. Going with Mini-ITX would cost more for an acceptable case, motherboard, and cooling arrangement. Without knowing your budget, I can't really determine the appropriate form factor/cost balance.

- Chose that Zalman low profile cooler because even if you never do anything super-CPU-intensive, the stock coolers can be loud and inefficient. This is a cheap cooler that will be a big improvement over the stock HSF and can carry over to any CPU upgrade you make in the future.

- 8GB of RAM kind of stands out in this build, and it may be overkill depending on your usage. If you're like me and keep your PC on most of the time and a lot of programs running (couple dozen browser tabs, maybe a word document or two that you're working on sporadically, videos, etc. etc.), it will be a night and day difference between 4GB and 8GB. I generally come close to 50% memory usage at all times (and 60-70% once I fire up a game), and I have 16GB. If you're not a multi-tab browser/multi-programs/leave-it-all-open-because-I'm-not-done ADD type of person like I am, going down to 4GB would shave $30 from the price.

- Went with the SSD for obvious reasons. It will be absolutely the most noticeable performance enhancement in day-to-day use. I can give you a long technical explanation why if you want to know.

- Also added a 1TB drive for storage. No need to choose one or the other in a desktop build. That's really stupid.

- Power supply is overkill for this build, but the amperage headroom will actually allow the PC to run at peak energy efficiency when it's under the highest of loads. It's also a cut above any power supply you'd get in a prebuilt, and it's fairly cheap. And modular.

If you order the parts, I will build for free. Otherwise, another option is picking any cheap off-the-shelf desktop and installing an SSD, or just pick a random desktop and don't worry about the SSD (it will be slow). There's not a whole lot of difference in vanilla off-the-shelf solutions at similar price points when it comes to basic home PCs.

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How much are we talking?

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These days? I'd say anywhere between 300-500 dollars if you know where to buy from.