building a second machine, advice please.

[DazQ87]

Hi guys,

I am planning on building a second PC to go in my living room which my missus can use for some light gaming (mid settings ish at 1080p) and for watching movies/netflix etc.

Firstly it has to be a mATX form factor not a full ATX, I was thinking I like the look of the Xigmatek Aquila.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-084-XG&groupid=2362&catid=2278

Now for the internals, I have two lines of thought on:

1. Upgrade the 2500k in my main machine to a 3770k, freeing up the 2500k to go with a new cheap socket 1155 motherboard (the board in my main machine is full ATX so couldn't be transplanted to the case I want).

2. buy an AMD fx6300 or fx4300 and motherboard for the new machine, keeping the 2500k in my main machine.

Regarding the rest of the parts I have acquired a geforce 560 and I have an old crucial C300 SSD and mechanical 500GB HDD to use for storage so I only need to get some RAM and a PSU.

Anyway obviously option 2 is going to be cheaper but I dont mind spending the extra if its worth it.

My question is, would it be worth upgrading the 2500k in my main machine to a 3770k, and is the 2500k significantly better than either of AMDs offerings to warrant spending the extra cash?

I did think about AMDs APU lines but having already got the 560 from a work college on the cheap I have discounted this as surely the geforce 560 is going to have more grunt than an APU.

 

[los]

What do you use it for? Is your CPU bottlenecking your GPU?
I'd go for the Intel route personally as its lower power and better.

 

[DazQ87]

My main desktop is for gaming only, although I have to say the 2500k in it now is no bottleneck for my R9 290, which manages to stay at 100% in the most intensive games.
Whilst it wouldn't really be much of a benefit now I was thinking that a 3770k would be more future proof in case I decided to add a second 290 later.

The machine I am planning on building would be more general usage, browsing, video playback and the more console (is that a word) type games which could be played with a 360 controller on the TV i.e. not hardcore FPS games and the like.