That sounds like a great APU. Hmm, I haven't done a build in many years, so don't know actually. I know my friend who just did a fairly advanced build used an american part picker to check for compatibility and then went hunting for the parts anywhere it was the cheapest, which was primarily from German shops. His budget was in the neighborhood of $5000 incl. monitor and peripherals, so the occational $30 here and there wasn't a big deal, whereas it would make very much of a differnece in my potential build.
noticable benifit from faster ram? no, big waste of money
Its a business pc not a gaming pc, the igpu on the cpu is very limited to what games it can handle. I have the t430 (non-s version, same cpu.) If you wanna game on it setup a steam box with a decent gpu and stream it to the laptop.
Thanks! I do understand it is going to be a marginal improvement, the plan is hereby dumped. I have not had a proper gaming computer in 10 years and have not gamed much in the meantime, so I'm not up to par with what possibilities are out there. A steam box you say, as in a computer with SteamOS or a dedicated gaming PC running Windows?
Either OS - works just fine under windows. I stream steam games from my gaming pc (i7, gtx980 etc) to my laptop in the lounge room all the time, works a treat (ac wifi or lan cabled connection recommended).
In saying that there are some really fun indie games that play well enough with the intel igpu.
Thank you, I did not now know this was a solid alternative. I will definitely use this, as I lack a proper monitor and a new one will greatly decrease my budget for the computer. Peripherals like that can always be added later on with the streaming setup. Great!
Yes, smaller games run okay on my system too. I play Plants vs. Zombies 2 through bluestacks and it runs well. I do know there is some kind of developer mode in Chrome which allows for natively running android apps and it should have a much lower footprint than bluestacks, but I just never had the time to tinker with it. That being said, a big part of me wanting to game is for the social value of playing with friends and family, which of course has a big impact on which games I want to be able to play.