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CPU For New System

kiltman67

kiltman67

kiltman67

Associate
Joined
2 Aug 2006
Posts
63
I'm planning on building a new system soon and was hoping I could get some suggestions for the CPU. I'm looking to spend at most £130. Leaning towards AMD, and most likely AM2 since I should get longer out of it since it would seem to have a longer future than 939. Though I'm open to persuasion if you think there's a better path to take.

As far as use, I'm not looking to overclock and don't really use my PC for games, I am wanting to be able to do a little multi-tasking, something my XP 2600+ doesn't seem to like too much.

Thanks
 
kiltman67 said:
I'm planning on building a new system soon and was hoping I could get some suggestions for the CPU. I'm looking to spend at most £130. Leaning towards AMD, and most likely AM2 since I should get longer out of it since it would seem to have a longer future than 939. Though I'm open to persuasion if you think there's a better path to take.

As far as use, I'm not looking to overclock and don't really use my PC for games, I am wanting to be able to do a little multi-tasking, something my XP 2600+ doesn't seem to like too much.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Whats your budget for RAM, PSU and Motherboard? if you can afford to spend a bit on these then go for an intel Core2Duo E6300 even at stock its faster than a lot of the AM2 range
 
sgoaty said:
Whats your budget for RAM, PSU and Motherboard? if you can afford to spend a bit on these then go for an intel Core2Duo E6300 even at stock its faster than a lot of the AM2 range
Click to expand...

For RAM I was budgetting with ideas in mind so I decided on around £70 with the intention of getting 1GB (More than likely from Crucial)

I don't think I'm going to need more than 370/380W so I was thinking around about £40, that would cover both Akasa's and Enermax's 370ish PSUs.

For the Motherboard the value is a little vague, I had in mind £80-90 but any of the £130 I had budgetted for the CPU which I didn't spend could be used for that too.

I did consider one of the Conroes, but I'm not sure whether I'll need the speed since I don't intend to overclock or play cames on the machine. I'd rather save some money and get something slower rather then getting a CPU I was wasting by never pushing it as far as it could go.
 
For multi-tasking something like:
Asrock Conroe945G-DVI (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
£44.95
Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM
£114.95
Corsair 2GB DDR2 Value Select PC4200 Dual Channel Kit (2x1GB)
£108.95
Akasa Ultra Quiet 400W Paxpower Active PFC ATX2.0 PSU - Black Nickel
£33.95
Subtotal £302.80
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.25
VAT £54.44
Total £365.49

Doesn't seem much point spending loads of money on a feature rich or overclocking motherboard when you aren't going to use half of it (like SLI/Xfire for example) so might as well go for 2GB of Ram and a decent dual core CPU, which you will feel the difference with.
 
Or if you really want AM2 then you could do

CP-166-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-166-AM) 1
£89.95 £89.95

MY-030-GL GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX21GB5300DC) (MY-030-GL) 1
£49.95 £49.95

MB-071-MS MSI K9N Neo-F nForce 550 (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-071-MS) 1
£46.95 £46.95

CA-012-AK Akasa Ultra Quiet 400W Paxpower Active PFC ATX2.0 PSU - Black Nickel (CA-012-AK) 1
£33.95 £33.95

Subtotal £220.80

Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.95

VAT £40.21

Total £269.96

Also he could get better ram for the same money tetras
 
If you haven't noticed, keep in mind that Conroe board is Micro-ATX and if you don't use the onboard graphics it'll only really leave 1 (possibly 2) useful PCI slots. If you want a larger board the ConroeXFire-eSATA2 isn't that much more and would be a little more flexible in that respect.
 
Tetras said:
If you haven't noticed, keep in mind that Conroe board is Micro-ATX and if you don't use the onboard graphics it'll only really leave 1 (possibly 2) useful PCI slots. If you want a larger board the ConroeXFire-eSATA2 isn't that much more and would be a little more flexible in that respect.
Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing that out. Should only be a tenner or so extra which is good. Right now I only need an extra slot for my sound card, but I'll need to think a little if there's a possibility I'll need more.
 
kiltman67 said:
Cool, after some consideration of my shopping list I've come in under budget so I think I'll probably go for the Conroe and ASRock motherboard along with the RAM and PSU you suggested.
Click to expand...

Good stuff you know it makes sense :D
 
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