CPU for £100 or Less

[Bugrit]

Can anyone recommend a decent CPU for gaming for under £100. I'm thinking the AMD Phenom II X2 560 Black Edition. How do the similary priced offerings from intel compare?

Cheers

 

[stulid]

The best CPU at this price range is the i3 2100/2120.

i3 2100 vs a PhenomII X2 560 - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=187

Again - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-2120-2100.html

They use less power/run cooler, the boards are more future proof (especially a Z68) so youi can drop a Ivybridge chip into them.

 

[Witcher1979]

Why not second hand? Could get a Q6600/mobo and 4gb ram for just over £100. Shame you don't have axxs to the members market, sure you would find one.

 

[Alkalinepro5]

Surely you can get an X4 Phenom II for £100 now?

 

[horrorwood]

Pretty hard question. We'd need to know which board and gpu you have or the budget.

Assuming you have nothing and zero budget for a GPU then an A8 3870k would be the best choice due to its GPU.

Paired with a GPU then the i3 2120.

Second hand, maybe an older i3 or even an i5 or i7 920 if you are lucky?

 

[welshrat]

A 960t can still be had for under £100, so if you dont mind going with amd you may get 6 cores for under a ton

 

[cmndr_andi]

Hi there,

May I ask what you will mainly be using the PC for and will you be adding a separate graphics card?

 

[horrorwood]

A 960t can still be had for under £100, so if you dont mind going with amd you may get 6 cores for under a ton

The 960t is not guaranteed to unlock. Also when 6 cores are unlocked it is not faster than the i7 920 in games.

If both are clocked at 4ghz the i7 920 will win in most things too.

 

[Bugrit]

Thanks for replies.

I should probably have elaborated in my original post. I built my last pc 3 years ago and the MB has given out on me out the worst poss time (cash wise). I'm hoping that i can upgrade the CPU, MB and RAM on a tight budget (£200 to £220) and reuse the following:

ASUS HD 4870 512MB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDCP HDTV out PCI-E Graphics Card
Asus Xonar D2X Soundcard - 7.1 PCI-Express
Western Digital WD3200AAKS 320GB SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache
Antec 300 Three Hundred Case
Corsair 750W TX PSU

Use will be primarily for gaming and overclocking is not a priority as i have less time these days. It would be good to have some upgrade potential.

Thanks again

 

[stulid]

Thanks for replies.

I should probably have elaborated in my original post. I built my last pc 3 years ago and the MB has given out on me out the worst poss time (cash wise). I'm hoping that i can upgrade the CPU, MB and RAM on a tight budget (£200 to £220) and reuse the following:

YOUR BASKET
1 x intel core i3-2100 3.10ghz (sandybridge) socket lga1155 processor - retail £89.99
1 x gigabyte z68ap-d3 intel z68 (socket 1155) ddr3 motherboard £84.98
1 x corsair xms3 8gb (2x4gb) ddr3 pc3-12800c9 1600mhz dual channel kit (cmx8gx3m2a1600c9) £35.99
total : £222.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).




if you have any ide drives then they wont fit, but the motherboard is a z68 so will overclock future cpu upgrades ("k" cpu's with unlocked multipliers) and will accept ivybridge chips when they are released.

reviews,
http://www.kitguru.net/components/m...-z68ap-d3-z68-review-bargain-buy-of-the-year/
http://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/gigabyte_ga_z68ap_d3_review,1.html
http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc...herboards/gigabyte-ga-z68ap-d3-1026263/review
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2011/10/11/gigabyte-ga-z68ap-d3-review/1

 

[cmndr_andi]

For buying new, an i3 2100, LGA 1155 board and 4GB of DDR3 (2x4GB) RAM is probably the best way to go. A cheap H61 board should be good enough, but a Z68 board would allow you to drop in a better CPU in the future and allow you to overclock it.

However, for best bang-per-buck then you could get a second hand i7 920 (or 930/950 so long as the price is OK), X58 board and 6GB of DDR3 RAM (3x2GB) for the same price. This option will give you better performance in most applications (since the i3 2100 is a dual core, while the i7 920/930/950 is a quad core - albeit a slightly older one) and the ability to overclock - each of these chips should be able to go as high as 3.8-4.2 GHz, so long as you use a good CPU cooler.

 

[stulid]

Dont agree with getting a dead end discontinued socket such as LGA1366 with a i7 920 chip.

A i3 2100 seems to do well for a dual core (with Hyperthreading) vs a i7 920 - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=47

Especially in the gaming benchmarks while consuming less power/generating less heat and offering a better upgrade path.

 

[Witcher1979]

1 x Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £84.98

As mentioned above is a decent mobo with easy overclocking options if you decide in the future. It is the same board stulid did for me when he did my spec

 

[cmndr_andi]

Dont agree with getting a dead end discontinued socket such as LGA1366 with a i7 920 chip.

A i3 2100 seems to do well for a dual core (with Hyperthreading) vs a i7 920 - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/289?vs=47

Especially in the gaming benchmarks while consuming less power/generating less heat and offering a better upgrade path.

Yea, in terms of power usage the i7 920 is a bit of a hog, but if you are willing to overclock and don't mind the extra power usage then it can offer better performance.

But I take your point that overall it is better to go for the newer i3, as it uses less power and actually has decent upgrade options.

 

[stulid]

Also, a native intel SATAIII controller on the Z68 board

 

[cmndr_andi]

Also, a native intel SATAIII controller on the Z68 board

Yea, absolutely. With older board like the X58 the implementation of SATA3 (using a marvell controller linked to the PCI-E bus) results in pretty bad performance (often better off just connecting it up to the native sata2 ports) - the native SATA3 on the newer boards (like Z68) is MUCH better. So if you plan to use a SATA3 SSD then the newer system is much preferred.

 

[Bugrit]

Thanks again especially Stulid for doing so much homework for me. I think the only thing I might change is to go for the I3 2120 as it's only a tenner more.

Am I OK to assume that my existing PSU will be OK with the new MB and is my existing GPU still "acceptable" in terms of performance?

Cheers

 

[cmndr_andi]

Your PSU is a very nice one and will work fine with then new motherboard. The HD 4870 graphics card is still pretty decent (equivalent to the £80 HD 6770).

 

[Roachy692]

I bet you could pick up a Q6600 on an Asus Striker Extreme mobo with a Geforce 8800GTS and 4Gig Ram for about £100 second hand.

edit: abiding by the rules.

 

[stulid]

There is to be no selling outside the members market.