AMD upgrade for around £200 - suggestions?

LittleGreyCat

LittleGreyCat

LittleGreyCat

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7 Dec 2011
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I have an old tower system running an AMD Athlon 64 3000+.

For mainly sentimental reasons I fancy upgrading with newer AMD kit.

I won't be gaming on it, and I have case, HDD, monitor and PSU so all I need is mother board, memory and CPU.

PSU is a Corsair CMPSU-400CX which has been little used. Not a patch on the 750W OCZ in my other system but hopefully sufficient for anything apart from mega graphics cards.

My main requirement is versatility so I need plenty of USB 3, plenty of SATA3 and plenty of PCIe slots.

I see two bundles currently available which seem to fit the bill:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/gigabyte-990x-gaming-sli-amd-piledriver-fx-6-6300-6-core-8gb-ddr3-memory-bundle-20-pounds-saving-bu-027-gi.html

and

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/recon-rx6-amd-fx-6-6300-black-3.5ghz-4.1ghz-turbo-six-core-value-gaming-bundle-bu-231-ok.html

but I have also noticed recent posts with other AMD components which also seem to total around the £200 mark.

Is AMD the way to go for reasonable performance and device support at the £200 price point or is there an Intel based solution which can match or beat this?

Of the two I have linked, the first one with the Gigabyte 990X board seems to be a better board, with USB 3.1 and an M.2 connector in addition. However the bundle seems slightly cheaper. What is the down side?
Edit: just noted the cheaper one is Piledriver which is supposed to be newer and better than Bulldozer.

My other system is in my signature and still going strong.

Edit 2: Oops! Think this should be in the "bundles" forum.
 
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I reckon you'd be much better off with something along the lines of an i3 6100 as it also provides onboard graphics that AMD Piledriver/Bulldozer chips don't. Sure one of the chaps can spec you up no problem :)
 
Quickly put this together:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £206.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)
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However it would leave you with only four sata ports and two USB 3.0 on the rear and one 3.0 header for another two case ports.
 
Possibly look at the FM2 boards. I've got an ASRock extreme (something) with 8 SATA, 6 USB 3 and about 5 or 6 PCIE slots. You could probably pick that board up with a decent APU and 16GB of RAM for well under £200.

Edit.
 
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TheSkateyBird said:
Quickly put this together:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £206.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)
​


​

However it would leave you with only four sata ports and two USB 3.0 on the rear and one 3.0 header for another two case ports.
Click to expand...

Thanks - yes, it does fall well short on real estate.

I am still horribly tempted by the original AMD mother board because of the USB 3.1 and M.2 connections which seem to be leading edge at the moment.

I am expecting a full ATX mother board to accommodate all the slots and connectors.

To narrow things down a bit, can we please only look at full size ATX mother boards with USB 3.1 and M.2?

I am still playing catch up from several years back.

Edit: I assume that you can get drivers for the latest mother board components for W7 Pro 64 bit? That is my intended main OS for this PC.
 
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jigger said:
Possibly look at the FM2 boards. I've got an ASRock extreme (something) with 8 SATA, 6 USB 3 and about 5 or 6 PCIE slots. You could probably pick that board up with a decent APU and 16GB of RAM for well under £200.

Edit.
Click to expand...

Thanks - looking now.

Any recommendations for an APU?
Still coming to terms with processors not including GPU capability after exposure to Intel i series.
 
I'd probably go with a A8-7650K and overclock it as it's meant to come with a really good stock heat sink for £70-80, but it depends on the level of graphics performance you are looking.

I think the higher end chips come with around R7 250-260X graphics performance but are closer to £100.
 
Thanks for all the advice so far.

It looks as though the original AMD setup I am tempted by is a very old processor recommended as a cheaper alternative to an i5 2500 because it can be over clocked to match the performance but at a lower cost. [I note that i5 2500s don't seem to be for sale here.] However an i5 2500k with an over clock can beat it.

More recent offerings in the same price area seem to be Intel dual core with 4 threads. I have no real idea how these compare to AMD 6 core(?) processors as each pair of AMD cores seem to share some stuff, which kind of blurs the lines. Even so, 6 threads vs 4 threads.

I would quite happily build another i5 2500k system if I could withing the price range of around £200 but the processor (very old now) still seems to be over £200 new which means that a roughly equivalent processor and motherboard at around £200 looks like a better deal.

However the big issue is graphics.

Is there a comparison site which will give me a graphics card with equivalent performance to the on-board graphics of an i5-2500k? This seems to be the best way for me to understand the capabilities compared to a known system.

Any recent quad core Intel processor seems to be well above my current price target.

Edit: working my way through the Over Clockers list of Graphics Cards (price low to high) and am yet again struggling to rationalise price with performance.

I am using http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ as a rough guide to performance.

From that, the HD 3000 built in graphics for my i5-2500k scores 312; this hopefully is a good starting point as the rest of the bits are positioned as comparable to an i5-2500. I also have a system which I can look at to get a feel for graphics performance.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-geforce-gt-710-silent-low-profile-2048mb-gddr3-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-316-ms.html

This scores 645 and costs £29.99. So in theory my tempting bundle at £182.96 plus this card should give a roughly i5-2500 alike system for £212.95.

Scrolling further up the price range there seem to be better "bangs per buck" but the top price performers seem to be around £100+ and as I am not planning to be gaming I am not sure what these big bang cards would give me.

I might consider one for the Intel system if I ever get into video editing (which was the long term plan) but I don't have 4k TV or a very high resolution monitor so I can't see what the extra money buys.

Anyway, can anyone beat this configuration for price/performance/peripherals?

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £223.45
(includes shipping: £10.50)
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The i5 2500 is 5 years old. The equivalent is the i5 6600.

You should get a i3 6100. This can often outperform 8 core AMD FX. Alternatively you could wait for AND Zen to come out around the beginning of next year.

The FX 6300 is honestly not worth it as it isn't very competitive with newer intel CPUs anymore.

Here is an i3 Build but slightly over budget. For some reason OCUK don't stock many H170 motherboards.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £245.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)
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Alternatively you could go with a Pentium instead.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £189.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)
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Thanks Gze - as noted above I need a full ATX motherboard but I'll investigate the processor options.

The main attraction of this system with the older processor is the real estate on the mother board, as I see myself needing a lot of connectivity but no more processing grunt than my 5 year old i5-2500k system.

As soon as I go for a fully populated mother board and an Intel processor the price seems to shoot up.
 
jigger said:
I'd probably go with a A8-7650K and overclock it as it's meant to come with a really good stock heat sink for £70-80, but it depends on the level of graphics performance you are looking.

I think the higher end chips come with around R7 250-260X graphics performance but are closer to £100.
Click to expand...

How about:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £194.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)
​


​

Not quite the full specification mother board I was looking for, but it does have plenty of SATA3 and USB3.
 
Honestly, the best for you is probably the AMD FX 6300 bundle with the 990X motherboard. Most motherboards with M.2 and USB3.1 are over £100. The other option is to go for a Pentium G4400, which is around the same performance.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £202.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)
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faceman123 said:
Sorry but, if you have a 2500k, why don't you just buy a new motherboard?
Click to expand...

I have more than one PC.
Ummm....4 PCs, 3 laptops, 3 Pis and a tablet....

I am planning to upgrade one of the oldest, and using my newest (the i5 2500k) as a benchmark to measure any new configuration against.

Processors don't seem to have become that much more powerful since I built the 2500k system but peripherals have evolved quite a bit.

So I ended up with a very rough requirement of CPU performance at the i5-2500k (sort of) level but the latest connectivity.
 
If you really want AMD then as others have said wait for Bristol Ridge. AM4 motherboards will bring in the latest connectivity stuff and the AM4 APUs should be very similar in price to current APUs.
 
Gze said:
Honestly, the best for you is probably the AMD FX 6300 bundle with the 990X motherboard. Most motherboards with M.2 and USB3.1 are over £100. The other option is to go for a Pentium G4400, which is around the same performance.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £202.47
(includes shipping: £10.50)
​


​
Click to expand...

Thanks again - good option.
Many thanks for all your help; it has cleared up a lot of stuff for me.

Now trying to decide if dual core or 6 core best suits my work loads. :-)
 
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