CPU For New System

[kiltman67]

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]

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

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.

 

[kiltman67]

Thanks for the advice both of you. Would the RAM suggested for the AM2 be suitable for the Conroe CPU and Motherboard?

 

[kiltman67]

yup it should be

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.

 

[kiltman67]

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.

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.