I am trying to get an old extreme budget build off the ground for my nephew who wants to get into pc gaming, but currently only focuses on games like Minecraft. I figured building up an old low profile HP tower would fit best for this occasion, but I want the rig to have a quad core cpu rather than the triple core Phenom it has now. Since this system has an AM2+ motherboard, what is the best quad core phenom or phenom II I can slap into it?
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
My knowledge doesn't extend far enough to give you advice on that platform, but do remember that Minecraft is HEAVILY CPU-bound. Even something like a cheap, recent dual-core pentium would likely outperform anything on the AM2+ simply because of the higher per-core performance.
I know my i7 930 would have a tough time when I was building red stone devices in minecraft.
http://pcpartpicker.com/p/wspc8d
CPU: Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz Dual-Core Processor ($49.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81M-H Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($32.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Blue 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($20.49 @ SuperBiiz)
Storage: Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($41.99 @ Best Buy)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 650 2GB Video Card ($66.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $212.44
AM2+? That wasn't a good platform for home use from what I remember and was a lot better for offices and schools. If you could bump up to am3 I could recommend a phenom 2 955 BE. My chip is right on the edge of way too slow and I stream. You might want to go up a level here.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1744056/am2-cpu.html
^ that has a lot of good answers though.
Also for a GPU just grab a Nvidia GT330. It's low power and can drive whatever game you nephew can come up with.
a lot of am2+ boards could run deneb phenom IIs even some am2 boards could. Deneb quads and Regor dual cores etc could use ddr2 or ddr3. I used a phenom II x4 945 95 watt on an old asus m2n32 sli deluxe board for a while just depends on the motherboard bios.