So I am currently in the process of hunting down parts for a new PC build. I mainly play CSGO and will dabble in battlefront. Currently this is my parts list but I am kinda lost in the world of motherboards and CPU's. I am looking at getting an AMD as intels are too pricey. I want to keep the motherboard and CPU cost around 150-200 ish
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($36.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Western Digital RE3 750GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.00 @ Amazon) Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 380 2GB Video Card ($179.99 @ SuperBiiz) Case: BitFenix Aegis Core (Black) MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($72.99 @ NCIX US) Power Supply: Corsair CX 600W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($44.99 @ Newegg) Keyboard: AZIO MGK1 Wired Gaming Keyboard ($59.99 @ Amazon) Total: $443.95 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-27 20:40 EST-0500
I am looking at the FX 6300 and the ASROC 970M Pro3
Is this a decent choice for a motherboard and CPU or are there cheaper/ more cost effective options. I also will be putting an SSD in this setup and using it as my boot drive and storage for games.
Is it fairly easy to take one out of my old setup and just install windows on it? Im pretty sure I can just format it and it will recognized as a clean drive.
What's your overall budget? Some of those components might be niggleable, allowing us to use it more effectively. Would you like to be able to overclock? How often do you tend to upgrade?
Im looking at keeping it under 650 (before all the stupid rebate things.)
And I kinda like the case as it is shiny :D
I not really concerned about OC at this moment. If I do I can get an after market cooler later on down the road.
I'd like to have upgrade potential as I want to be able to play the latest games at decent settings. Everything on that list is not particularly set in stone.
CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($164.99 @ SuperBiiz) Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($72.99 @ Directron) Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($34.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.98 @ OutletPC) Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 380 4GB PCS+ Video Card ($199.99 @ Newegg) Case: BitFenix Aegis Core (Black) MicroATX Mid Tower Case ($72.99 @ NCIX US) Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($78.99 @ NCIX US) Total: $674.92 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-27 21:24 EST-0500
That PSU is the cheapest semi-modular/modular, 80+Bronze and 550W or above PSU I could find. Honestly, if you have to strip down anything to pull it under that budget, I'd say it'd be the case. $20 off the CPU, you can't do without dropping down to an i3 or an AMD platform. The motherboard is the cheapest thing that supports crossfire (which'd be handy if you feel the need for an upgrade on the GPU side and don't want to be reselling later down the line, that 380 is a 4GB card too so it should do pretty well in CFX), the RAM is the cheapest CAS9 1600MHz stuff that also looks nice, the storage, you'll need... even with your SSD. I've had my system with a 120GB SSD for boot and a 1TB WD blue for just over a year now and it's almost stuffed. The GPU is the cheapest 380 with 4GB of VRAM, and the PSU, as aforementioned, "is the cheapest semi-modular/modular, 80+Bronze and 550W or above PSU I could find"
Two minutes, I selected the PSU with rebates. ooops
How much of a difference in preformance will the intel i5 make vs the amd 6300? Like as far as speed and in-game preformance? Currently I am on laptop with a I7 4800MQ.
The single core performance on intel chips is significantly better, which after you have at least 4 cores is pretty much the deciding factor when it comes to gaming at the moment - not many games use more than 4 threads. The two extra (making 6 total) cores on the 6300 don't really come in handy enough to outweigh the loss of that single core performance because as aforementioned, most games won't utilise them and you usually won't have enough going on in the background to make a significant enough difference to pull down the 4460. It's handy if you're streaming and the like, and might be a bit better for video rendering and such, but if this is just a gaming build, the 4460 would be a better option. With the 4460 you also get better upgrade options, although with that being a B85 motherboard you'd need something else motherboardwise to overclock. An xeon 1231v3 per se, you can't overclock anyway though and is a very good value chip for a possible upgrade if you wanted extra threads to stream or video or photo edit or whatever. It's essentially a 4770 without the iGPU. For the moment though, from the start, if you had the extra money for that it'd be better off spent on the GPU anyway.
here's the fixed part list. It was $15 under before rebates so I stuck in some RAM that's all black, $5 more, for the same of aesthetics. Feel free to switch it back though. They're both the same timings and frequency.
OK great thank you very much. If I do end up going with the AMD as I may enter into streaming, what MB would you go with? PcPartPicker has 3 options i'm looking at.
Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3
ASRock 970M PRO3
MSI 760GMA-P34(FX)
The MSI doesn't have crossfire support so I suppose that could be a deterrent for future upgrades. So i guess it comes down to the ASRock and the Gigabyte
I just realised that powercolour card has a backplate! Very nice! JayZTwoCents would be proud. Text on it will be upside down when you stick it in your build though. Oh whale, at least there is one.
CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($164.99 @ SuperBiiz) Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81M-HD2 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($39.99 @ Micro Center) Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($32.99 @ Adorama) Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.98 @ OutletPC) Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 380 4GB PCS+ Video Card ($199.99 @ Newegg) Case: Rosewill FBM-02 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($29.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($37.99 @ NCIX US) Total: $555.92 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-27 21:59 EST-0500 Please ignore the compatability note you will run these parts fine.
-Changed the case, RIP aesthetics -RAM is bare PCB, RIP aesthetics mk.II -PSU might be pushing it if he goes for 380s in CFX -Motherboard only has two SATA 3 ports, limiting expandability on storage. Nobody wants to buy spinning rust as an upgrade any more in their desktops. -Motherboard doesn't support crossfire
The FX lineup does not have decent mATX boards, if memory serves. ATX boards would be more feasible if still sticking with the AMD build. If you really want that case, you'd have to be looking at the intel platform.
As a general rule, do not skimp out on the motherboard or the psu.
I don't care how ugly how my case looks as long as it does it job
I don't care for RAM aesthetic since you will be not be sticking your face inside of your pc most of the time
Sell the 380 and get a higher end single GPU don't crossfire two lesser GPU since the gains are not worth it
The speeds are negligible unless he is running SSDS as for storage which he is unlikely. He can run a SSD if he chooses to upgrade on one of the SATA 3 ports and use the others as mechanicals.
There's the first two debunked. You're building for someone else. Not yourself, and considering this guy wants to keep that case, your first point is invalidated anyway and it's pretty blatantly obvious that he cares about aesthetics if he wants to keep that case, so there goes the second.
Reselling GPUs isn't always the most cost effective and the scaling with two 380s is actually pretty damn good. See: LINK Although I might want to ask the GPU wizard @Fouquin for further detail.
And I'll reiterate, nobody upgrades their storage in desktops with HDDs any more. In a year or two, that "nobody" will be literal. He's already got one from the get go, add another SSD and he's got his HDD on a SATA 2 already. Then no more SSDs on SATA3 for you!
That ASRock board is really nice if you don't really care about overclocking.
However, how desperate are you for gratification ? If you have a working system and can slum it for a bit longer before investing money into parts for a new rig, it really might pay dividends to wait on Socket AM4 and Zen. Right now anything AMD as far as mobo/cpu go is so dated it's painful to talk about. You won't even get PCIe 3.0.
If your on a budget I would spend some times outside of PC part picker. My last build cost 410 before the rebates but took a month of shopping around and a two hr drive to flipping jersey but I like it. 8320e with asrock 970 pro 3 125 evga 600B PSU 50 bucks, coulda saved more there LEPA case 30 bucks, 20 dollar ANTEC case was sold out WD 1 gig HD 50 bucks.....ok I was tired and said F the ssd 3 yr protection plan fer MB....ill try not to abuse it:) GTX 770 refurbished, open box and a reference card to boot, kind of a gamble but for 135 bucks it was worth the trip. Overkill for a Linux HTPC and I was nervous when it came time to hit the on button. It made the build at it was not on PC partpicker. @Logan did a great video on how to maximize your money and find deals. If the mail in rebates work the MB will be 10 bucks and the PSU 30 bucks and I get a free Dirt Rally. Don't be afraid to use the AMD stock cooler for stock speeds.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/VnKhCJ My personal recommendation is not to go amd 6 core at this price range. You would be buying into a platform that is already completely out of date at your first graphics card update. With the intel I5 you can get by at least one upgrade before the cpu, mobo, and ram have to be upgraded. And really if in 3 years you decide to upgrade the gpu, you can buy a second hand I7 and that would allow you to reuse that H97 motherboard for even more time. With the amd your could grab an 8350, but the 8350 isn't much of an improvement and that motherboard wouldn't support it well. My rational basically boils down to the fact that the I5 can be made to last for an extra generation or two more then the AMD, before its completely to slow to use.
Crossfire. Here's the thing, crossfire really doesn't make any sense when your talking about 380's. The rule is that unless the card is the highest end possible, or just below that, that you shouldn't bother with adding a second card for cfx/sli. Your usually better off selling the card and buying a single higher end card, when upgrade time comes. For amd it really doesn't make sense to crossfire anything lower then a R9 390/290, and for Nvidia anything lower then a Gtx 980. The amount of inherent headaches/issues that come with a multi-gpu setup really just can't be justified unless you have some pretty high end hardware.
Firstly i want to say if you could afford a haswell or skylake i5, then by all means do it, if you dont have to make any sacrefices on the gpu side.
Non of these 3 boards are realy that decent. To be very fair, there are no real decent M-atx AM3+ boards atall, especialy not if you aim for overclocking imho. The Vreg design of these boards are not realy designed for overclocking atall.
If you are looking for a decent AM3+ board for overclocking a FX6300 for example, and it should not be too expensive?
Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 6+2 powerphase digi vrm
Msi 970A Gaming 6+2 powerphase analog vrm
Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P 8+2 powerphase digi vrm.
Note that these boards are all atx, and dont fit in a m-atx case.