£470 to play with, i3 or AM3 X2?

griffo_001

griffo_001

griffo_001

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As the title basically, I've been asked to help a friend build a new PC, with a budget of £470 absolute maximum. I've heard good things about the i3 rig below, I'm wondering what you experts think?

It won't be used for gaming, and will run on integrated gfx for now, possibly adding a 5770 later if he changes his mind on the gaming front. I will probably push it as far as possible on stock voltages then take it down a notch or two, so a good cooler will be needed, I'll be aiming for 3.8GHz +

I just need the tower, no keyboard, mouse, monitor or OS etc

Thoughts on this spec?

4617316966_2e252dc720_b.jpg


As far as I can see its only missing a CPU cooler (OEM i3's don't come with a stock cooler do they? I was under the impression that was the difference between the retail and OEM)

So I'm looking for a CPU cooler for this rig, £35 to play with for it, which counts out an H50 :(

I must admit to knowing very little on the AMD side :( Poor form I know, but I've heard good things about the 8x0 motherboards, but they seem more expensive the H55 above, could someone suggest a similar priced AMD system and give me the pro's and con's of each

I know you guys will do me proud once more ;)

Cheers in advance,

Matt
 
Hi, tried my best to make a build thats top end amd but within budget, so i put in a decent case, ok psu etc but you can downgrade each to buy the aftermarket cpu cooler you want, mobo has integrated Ati4200gpu

build.png
 
Cheers for that response, just what I was looking for :)

Any advantage to the quad over a regular dual core 555 or 545? That'd make it fit the budget nicely :) I don't think he'll need a quad personally, as he doesn't do much Photoshopping or video editing.

How does 4200 stack up against Intel's set-up? Do they both support flash hardware acceleration through the latest beta?

That RAM is a good spot though, I missed that, its the same price as that Geli and 267MHz faster :eek:

Sorry about the spanish inquisition :p

Matt
 
i think the quad core will be good to buy, considering you dont want a gpu now you may aswell invest in the best you can get now with the addition of a better gpu later, it depends on what games you play, more and more games are using more than 2 cores now and different games depend more on cpu rather than the gpu.

As for the intergrated graphics, i dont know about being compared to the i3's as ive never bought intel but i think the 4200 will be enough to play some games on low to medium settings, it should be ok for a temporary solution.

i will put together another build now and try work in a 5770 for you.
 
You work fast :eek:

danewesley said:
i think the quad core will be good to buy, considering you dont want a gpu now you may aswell invest in the best you can get now with the addition of a better gpu later, it depends on what games you play, more and more games are using more than 2 cores now and different games depend more on cpu rather than the gpu.

As for the intergrated graphics, i dont know about being compared to the i3's as ive never bought intel but i think the 4200 will be enough to play some games on low to medium settings, it should be ok for a temporary solution.

i will put together another build now and try work in a 5770 for you.
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The 5770 was an option for further down the road :) Thanks anyway, I totally agree with the "invest in the best CPU/Mobo/PSU combo now and add a GFX later", I've done that with my rig in the past.

He's coming from some Acer core 2 duo lappy, so even integrated will seem impressive :p

I think I need to do some reading on the different solutions and see which come out on top across the benchmarks :cool:

Cheers for all you help mate

Matt
 
The Asus motherboard in post 4 has 128MB of DDR3 on the motherboard for the IGP. AFAIK the IGP is around the same speed as an HD3450 graphics card or at least a little slower.

The Corsair CX400W should be fine with a Phenom II X4 and an HD5770 1GB if you are running the Phenom II at stock speed.

It is made by Seasonic and seems to be a decent unit:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/750

http://www.silentpcreview.com/Corsair_CX400W
 
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Unfortunately not sold on ocuk but an AMD athlon or phenom triple core would be a good compromise. They offer a big improvement over dual core but would keep costs a bit lower than going for full quad.
 
danewesley said:
Hi, tried my best to make a build thats top end amd but within budget, so i put in a decent case, ok psu etc but you can downgrade each to buy the aftermarket cpu cooler you want, mobo has integrated Ati4200gpu

build.png
Click to expand...

+1 to this however you could drop the phenom quad and use an athlon quad. this would still be very quick and the athlons still clock well , but would allow you to get a fairly high end air cooler such as the titan fenrir
 
frozennova said:
+1 to this however you could drop the phenom quad and use an athlon quad. this would still be very quick and the athlons still clock well , but would allow you to get a fairly high end air cooler such as the titan fenrir
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+1 again. Athlon would be a good idea. Given that he doesn't do much Photoshopping or video editing I think that losing a bit of potential clockability for a large decrease in cost is worth it.
 
Cheers guys, it looks like an Athlon or Phenom dual core would probably be the way forward, anyone got any opinions on these. I've read good reviews of the performance, but with some dodgy compatibility with some components.

It seems like an extra £60 well spent on more features and future proofing, however it can't hold a candle to the i3's onboard gfx :(

Tbh I'm actually still leaning towards the i3/Gigabyte bundle, just because it's more of an known quantity to me - I've got an i7 on a Gigabyte UD5, so can work my way round the BIOS better.

What PSU would people recommend for the i3? Assuming he'll add a 5770 (Although he probably won't), will 500-550W be enough?

Cheers for the insight guys, you're helping me a lot here :)

Matt
 
500-550W (depending on brand) is enough for most people. You'd need to be running two graphics cards in SLI and an array of hard disks to need anything more, really :p

OcUK don't stock them, but the Seasonic S12-II 80-plus Bronze 500W psus can be found for £50-£60, and you really can't go wrong with them.

Seasonic make PSUs for Corsair, Antec and others.
 
griffo_001 said:
I don't think he'll need a quad personally, as he doesn't do much Photoshopping or video editing
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For someone who doesn't need a quad then picking up a Phenom II 550/555 and playing the unlock game does make some sense although as the others have said an Athlon II X3 (£60) or an Athlon II X4 (£80) fits the budget & brief quite nicely! :)

i3630fritz.jpg


griffo_001 said:
anyone got any opinions on these
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I did a build for a friend/client using the Asus M4A89GTD PRO (£107.99 inc) board and found it quite nice . . . although I personally don't think it offers a great deal extra over the 700 series boards apart from SATA/USB 3.0? . . . I think £85 & £100 would be a good price for either of the 890GX boards, as it stands I believe they are both priced a bit too high . . . newness factor maybe?

sbuild9e.jpg


griffo_001 said:
It seems like an extra £60 well spent on more features and future proofing, however it can't hold a candle to the i3's onboard gfx :(
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Really? . . . i thought they were quite comparable? . . . what does the i3's graphics do that the Radeon IGP doesn't?
 
Big.Wayne said:
Really? . . . i thought they were quite comparable? . . . what does the i3's graphics do that the Radeon IGP doesn't?
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Nothing really, but when the i3 goes up against one of the 890's it comes out on top in all the benchmarks I skim read, but its only by 10% or so, so it's not going to be the end of the world I guess :)

How was that build? Easy? I saw that board had an core unlock switch, or am I confusing it with another one?

He'll be looking to order today or tomorrow and the Fenrir's are out of stock :( Any alternatives for the same £30 price point?
 
griffo_001 said:
How was that build? Easy? I saw that board had an core unlock switch, or am I confusing it with another one?
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Yeah the build was fairly straight forward but I would say thats more to do with using quality hardware from 2010 and not really anything to do with AMD per se! :D

There is a [Overclock] switch and a [Core-Unlocker] switch grafted onto the board, both of these functions are also available via BIOS so not quite sure why the switches? :confused:

Another strange thing on these boards is if your using a graphics card the manual appears to indicate to use the bottom PCI-E x16 slot? . . it also states that is using just a single graphics card you need to plug-in a (supplied) adapter into the top PCI-E slot . . .odd?

I'll be using one of these if I need to do any more AMD builds that need an IGP and will be overclocked . . .

Asus M4A785TD-V Evo

£74.99 inc

ASUS Product page here
 
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