£200 budget for CPU & mobo

morguk · 10 Jan 2015 at 17:28

Mobo and my Phenom II 955 are dead. Need to replace them! £200 is the budget, cheaper is better. I think AMD are better value but not sure if the socket is a dead duck? I don't really want to overclock, unless it's a very simple/no worries overclock on stock air.

Mainly for browsing net and playing games but I do want to stream to Twitch.tv soon.

Other spec: Samsung 830 SSD, 8GB DDR3, ATI 5830.

Thanks guys.

stulid · 10 Jan 2015 at 17:30

What size case do you have?

morguk · 10 Jan 2015 at 18:39

stulid said:
What size case do you have?

Fractal Design Define R3.

stulid · 10 Jan 2015 at 18:43

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320E Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £109.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £83.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-DS3P AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £52.99
Total : £256.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).

That board with a choice of cpus.

Theres not much life left in the socket.

Deus Ex · 10 Jan 2015 at 19:15

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4440 3.10GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £142.99
1 x Gigabyte Z97P-D3 Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £61.99
Total : £214.58 (includes shipping : £8.00).

morguk · 10 Jan 2015 at 19:27

Thanks for the replies guys.

From looking at benchmarks, even though it sounds cool having 8 cores, the i5 is quite a bit better at games and general use. Plus I can get a 4460 at a good price. If I couldn't get it this cheap I'd go with AMD.

From what I gather I'll need to use a different heatsink and fan with AMD too as the stock is terrible.