Good Second Build?

I'm on a phone so I'm not posting links for the prices, and the full price is estimated anyway.

 

AMD A10-68xx Series (not sure on exact model number yet)

Gigabyte G1.Sniper A88X

500w PSU EVGA 80+ Bronze Certified

NZXT Phantom Red Mid Tower ( I think the 400?)

Kingston HyperX Beast 2400mhz 16GB

1TB Seagate HD

120 Samsung SSD

 

I could be forgetting something. This is the first time I wrote down these specs. It's about 700 - 800 dollars total before TAX. I might end up getting the newest AMD A10 if I think the performance is worth the extra price. Am I forgetting anything? And would that PSU be able to handle a GPU when I add on later on you think?

 

I'm I am putting Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on as an OS.

That 500 watt power supple will be enough for most graphics cards. Although I think some AMD cards like a 280 or above would be pushing it. Or on Nvidia's end, a 770 or above would be too much. But a nice mid ranged card would be fine.

With the AMD APU's, we can only use certain cards right? And does that really add that much of a performance boost?

Hi Morbidtech,

What are you using this machine for? Other than the OS (Ubuntu 14.04), you haven't given us a lot of info for what you are going to be doing with it. The help we can give becomes a lot better if we have more info on what you will be doing with it:

 

Being used for gaming, you would be limited by OS and lack of a dedicated graphics card.

 -You could get the most gaming out of the APU using faster ram (1866 or higher)

If your using the machine as a web server, file server, media box then your build is awesome. 

-try to grab a mobo with 2 gigabit NIC's

If your doing rendering/video editing.

-Linux leaves you with very few options (3D textures you have Blender and ?? for example) 

-You will probably need more storage, or a second SSD for caching 

And if your using it as a web browsing/ word processor/ netflix/youtube/facebook machine

-16GB or ram is overkill 

-1tb of storage is overkill 

I think the powersupply MIGHT not be what you want for a later GPU upgrade.. it really depends on what you are thinking to upgrade too. If you wanted somethign like a GTX 770, or r9 280, then you would want something in the 650 watt range.

16gb is probably overkill, unless you wanted to make a ram drive for all your temp files and disable file paging in windows.. it makes things snappier, but it isnt necessary.. its more of something to do if you have some extra cash, but not the extra cash for more graphical or processing power.

1tb hdd is not overkill if you are a movie hound.. some of my friends have all their movies on their HDD and dont like to remove them... that will fill a TB drive up fast if its full of HD movies. If you are just looking at games though, there is a $90 250gb ssd you can get that is still faster than any HDD. Just pop in your old HDD as a long term backup drive for important files.

GTX 770 and R9 280 will run just fine on a 550w power supply, granted it's a good quality power supply.  If you're talking about GTX 780, R9 290, and higher, then 600-650 would probably be preferred.

I'm sorry, my friend, I didn't have much time during my breaks today and totally forgot about that info. It is very important to know what I need to do so I can build the best system!

Alright, in the short term (one to three months), I plan on doing school work, playing Wii games (like Zelda and GCN games like Crazi Taxi) using emulators like Dolphin. I plan on buying Watch Dogs and play that game using PlayOnLinux (software that makes WINE a little easier to manage). If I can't get That game work, I'll buy Windows later on and wait.

I will install Steam, which has a lot of games for Linux (and more coming thanks to Steam OS). I plan on, in the long term, to get into video production making video blogs and short films. I plan on using GIMP and Blender.

 

Of course, as a media hog, I will be watching HD movies (I found a 27 inch HD monitor for 179 that was included in my original pricing). I all ready have a huge digital library in the cloud. And it's going to get larger. And this is on top of usual stuff like internet browsing and YouTube and Netflix.

 

Does that help?

EDIT: I'm sorry, no the original quote didn't include monitor like I thought.

 

 

 

I could be wrong, but currently AMD A10'S are only compatible with R7 GPU's. And I'm an AMD fan all the way, so no NVIDA for me. I'd love to get a MSI R9 270 Gaming edition if it works with A10's.

 

I'm choosing the FM2+ because IT appears AM3+ is going bye bye in a year or two, and I don't want to buy a motherboard and CPU now and in two years have to buy not only a new CPU but also a new motherboard. So if AMD's future is FM2+, then that's what I want.

If you are talking about dual graphics (hybrid corssfire) then you can only go up to a R7 240 with the A10 APUs. If you are talking about a GPU in general you could use what ever one you wanted. A single core Sempron could be paired with a GTX 780 TI, of course it's not going to get very good results in the end. You could get a GTX 760 or an R9 270X, those will be fine. A R9 280X or a GTX 770 will run fine but will slightly suffer, but nothing too noticeable.

+1

If you are looking for a small upgrade, then the r7 240 is your only option, and you will get some ok results. Games will be playable. If you are looking for a a big increase in graphics then you would want something like the GTX 760/r9 270x or above on either side. And you can mix the CPU and GPU anyway you want. I ran a phenom II 940 x4 with a GTX 285 for 4 years without problems and it handled every game I could throw at it until black ops II and heavily modded skyrim.

In two years you will need to buy a new CPU and motherboard anyway.. I think there will be FM3 or something equivalent.... If you want something more upgradeable, then I would recommend an intel build with an i3-4xxx processor that you can pop an i5 or i7 (if the price comes down enough) later.

here is a sample AMD build since you said you are a fan: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3vApG

This is $803 and a lot more powerful than what you posted before. This is a lot more powerful than even the hybrid graphics. It also has the NZXT 410

**I recommend just bringing the old HDD from your old drive to this new build. If that is not an option, then maybe something like this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3vAtg

or just get a HDD and do the SSD upgrade later.

I believe the R7 250 with DDR3 RAM will also work for dual graphics.  However, dual graphics is often very finnicky and not worth the price-performance.

:'( Sadly, I had to sell my first PC build last year. So I can't do that. And that site is awesome! And a pretty wicked build too. Thanks man!

RAM is OVERKILL 8 GB, the mHz is fine and should be fine but for $500-$600 you can get so much more. This is just my recommendation

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/edric_xiong/saved/4r3h

CPU: FX 6300

Mobo: Asus M5A97 LE

Memory: Kingston Black 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600

Storage: (SSD) A-Data Premier Pro SP900 128GB

Storage: (HDD) Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM

GPU: Asus GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB

Case: Antec One

PSU: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze

Total: $598.90

Get a board that actually has some cooling so it doesn't struggle with powering the 6 core CPU.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-m5a97r20

Or even better, one that has a digital 8+2 power phase design and should be able to handle an 8 core CPU.

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gigabyte-motherboard-ga970aud3p

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/MorbidTech/saved/4r5L

 

That's my updated list. The price includes ny monitor which might change if that sale goes away by the time I get the money to buy the parts.

Just my opinion:

27" monitors at 1920x1080 have a very low pixel density.  I prefer 20-22in or smaller.  The monitor you also picked is not IPS(I believe it's TN), and I don't think the price you pay for that monitor is worth it.  I switched it out to a smaller IPS display.

RAM clock speeds have no effect on gaming when you have a dedicated GPU.  I switched it out for cheaper, lower clocked RAM.

MSI AM3+ motherboards are incredibly low quality.  I've switched it out to a better motherboard that has a digital 8+2 power phase design and a nice amount of cooling.  You should be able to put a FX-8350 in here just fine.

I personally prefer Western Digital Blue and Black drives, as Seagate, in my experience, is not too reliable and has a relatively high failure rate.

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3vUyP

I updated the build..

It has the 6 core AMD 6300 processor and a 240gb SSD which should be big enough for all your games.

the 4300 is still a good processor with a higher base clock and a bit cheaper if you need to be exactly on budget. The 6300 puts you over a little.. also a $30 cpu cooler like the coolermaster 212 evo would go a long way to increase CPU performance.

Overall this system will doing everything you want. Upgrade the long term storage later with a 1tb HDD and you will be golden.

you will want more than a 750.. you want a AMD 270 or higher.

I want a 27 inch monitor because I plan on watching movies in my bed (my computer will be right in front of my bed). However, if the price goes up I'll end up getting a 24 inch screen.