New Budget PC, Which Processor?

[Smiler]

Hello folks,

I'm looking to replace the old (probably vintage, it's past it's 8th birthday) home PC and have about £500 to spend. When I looked into this a few years ago AMD was the way to go as Intel seemed to be trying to continously develop old technology and spend lots of cash on flashy telly adverts.
With this in mind I was narrowing my search down to AMD machines. However, I have just read a thread on another forum that suggests that the roles have now reversed (I guess all that advertising has paid off) and Intel are now the better choice. Is this true for the lower end of the scale?

I also have a question about multi core processors and there speeds. Does the speed of the processor quoted count for each individual core or is it the total of all cores? Which are the ones to look out for and which should be avoided as old models being pedalled off cheap?

One of the machines that has caught my eye is the Hewlett Packard MS215uk. For those not familiar with it it does away with the tower and is built into the back of the monitor. It comes with an 64 bit AMD Athlon x2 3250e 1.5GHz processor which doesn't sound so impressive when similar traditional machines are avaliable with quad core AMD chips with 2.8GHz. I'm not sure if the CPU can be upgraded either due to possible cooling issues. I've seen the machine at my local PC Land and it is silent suggesting no cooling fans.

Sorry for such a long post, any help is much appreciated.

Cheers,

Smiler.

 

[Big.Wayne]

I'm looking to replace the old (probably vintage, it's past it's 8th birthday) home PC and have about £500 to spend

Hello Smiler,

for £500 you can put togther a really nice AMD Athlon II/Phenom II machine, will you be needing everything including in that budget? (inc case, monitor etc?)

and Intel are now the better choice. Is this true for the lower end of the scale?

No, if buying new AMD have the value sector pretty much sewn up, Intel don't give you much tech for little money although if you consider buying used LGA775 kit it is possible to get something nice for not a lot of £££

Intel have got the high end sewn up but of course at a premium (£150-£200 CPU, £100-£200 Mobo etc)

Does the speed of the processor quoted count for each individual core or is it the total of all cores?

each individual core!

 

[Strawberry]

For what it's worth: My current system (minus liquid cooling, case, peripherals and power supply) cost a little over 500 gbp, and that's running a quad core 2.83 GHz (OC'd to 3.4 on stock intel cooler and 4 GHz on water cooling).

6 GB of memory, a Sapphire HD 4870 and a rather decent P45 Neo-F mobo, it definitely packs a punch.

If you already have peripherals such as keyboard, mouse, monitor, I'd definitely go with a pricier CPU/graphics card than a pre-built PC as you can get waaaaay better results for your money.

(For reference, my CPU - a Q9550 - cost around 180 GBP)

 

[easyrider]

Intel have the faster chips in the i5 and i7 series.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - OEM Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - OEM £137.99
(£119.99) £137.99
(£119.99)
XFX Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (HD-485X-YDFC) XFX Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (HD-485X-YDFC) £83.98
(£73.03) £83.98
(£73.03)
Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £78.99
(£68.69) £78.99
(£68.69)
OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel (OCZ3P13334GK) OCZ Platinum 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C7 1333MHz Dual Channel (OCZ3P13334GK) £70.99
(£61.73) £70.99
(£61.73)
Corsair VX 450W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-450VXUK) Corsair VX 450W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-450VXUK) £56.99
(£49.56) £56.99
(£49.56)
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black £39.99
(£34.77) £39.99
(£34.77)
Samsung SpinPoint F1 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD251HJ) Samsung SpinPoint F1 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD251HJ) £27.99
(£24.34) £27.99
(£24.34)


Sub Total : £432.11

VAT is being charged at 15.00% VAT : £66.58

Total : £498.69 with free shipping

 

[TheTard]

With 500 to spend, i would suggest getting a 955 but you would bush it and get an i5

 

[pieman109]

I've just picked up a Phenom II X3 720 BE and Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H AMD 785G plus 2 x 1 gb geil ram (didn't fancy forking out for some DDR3, would have meant extra cost) as system for me son. Got the PII clocked to 3.5ghz using just the multi (easy as pie) and I'm gonna start doing some comparison benchies with the E8400 in the main pc shortly.
I tried to unlock the forth core yestarday but its a no-go, the forth core is not unlockable, pc won't post/boot, but I'm still happy with the performance so far.
If some one can give me some benchies to run (not videot, aint got a graphics card for it yet), I'd appreciate it.

 

[Smiler]

Thanks very much for the replies everyone, your time is much appreciated.

I have a keyboard and a new mouse, the screen works but is old (and beige!)

I have since been shown an alternative route to go down, a second hand HP Workstation.

The ones I've found have been Hewlett Packard XW6000 models with twin dual core Intel Zeon 2.8GHz processors, reasonable (apparently) graphics cards, 2GB ram and a fairly small hard drive. They seem to average at about £175 delivered. That seems to be a lot of machine for not a lot of money.

 

[droyden]

Sounds like a workstation, which means it will probably be ECC RAM etc.
What do you plan to use it for?

edit: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11485_na/11485_na.HTML

# PC2100 ECC Registered DDR SDRAM, expandable to 8 GB
# Integrated Ultra320 SCSI hard drives (10,000 or 15,000 rpm), Ultra ATA/100 hard drives (7,200 rpm) or Serial ATA Drives (7,200 rpm or 10,000 rpm)
# Integrated dual-channel Ultra320 SCSI, Ultra ATA/100 controllers or 4-channel Serial ATA (SATA) RAID PCI Controller
# Internal storage capacity of up to 438 GB (SCSI), 500 GB (Ultra ATA) or 750 GB Serial ATA

again depends really what you plan to use it for.

 

[malcolm]

Thanks very much for the replies everyone, your time is much appreciated.

I have a keyboard and a new mouse, the screen works but is old (and beige!)

I have since been shown an alternative route to go down, a second hand HP Workstation.

The ones I've found have been Hewlett Packard XW6000 models with twin dual core Intel Zeon 2.8GHz processors, reasonable (apparently) graphics cards, 2GB ram and a fairly small hard drive. They seem to average at about £175 delivered. That seems to be a lot of machine for not a lot of money.

That HP workstation is probably about 4 or 5 years old. The CPU(s) re equivalent to the Pentium 4, and the rest of the hardware willl be pretty old. Fine if that's what you want, but not exactly current tech!

 

[Smiler]

I imagine it is a bit old now but it's high spec old so my thinking is would its performance be up to that of a £500 single dual core processor machine?

What is ECC Ram?

 

[bJN]

the i5 spec easyrider posted is a great build that will last for a very long time, well worth the money

 

[easyrider]

I imagine it is a bit old now but it's high spec old so my thinking is would its performance be up to that of a £500 single dual core processor machine?

What is ECC Ram?

NO

The cpu has 512kb cache and a 533FSB

That i5 I specced has 16 x this amount

Its running slow ram.Its ECC which is used in servers.

Its old dead tech.

Waste of money on every level.

 

[jms198]

WRT to the spec above; may need a cooler and I thought the F3(500gb)>>F1.

 

[fobose]

I've just build a PC for my brother with the Intel e6300 dual core CPU (the newer 2.8GHz wolfdale chip, opposed to the 1.8GHz conroe) and I highly recommend this CPU for a budget system. I haven't included the CPU in the spec as OCUK do not stock it but I bought it for £52 with free delivery from elsewhere.

Here is the rest of the spec with the inclusion of a 20" monitor and windows 7 license:

The motherboard has onboard graphics which will be fine unless your a gamer, but you could add a card at a later date if required.

 

['Wes]

I would get an i5, and overclock it.

But i don't overclock, so that's why i bought a 955, i like having 3ghz.

 

[jms198]

i3 reviews out today! Have a nosey, they look promising.

What exactly are you using your PC for?

 

[Smiler]

Those old workstations will be a none starter then.

The PC is used presently mainly for internet work including working on my own website and photo editing for the above. I also intend in the future to move into video editing but this may be a little while off yet.

I basically want something as quick as I can get for the money with a reasonably capable graphics card and preferably wireless though having said that I do have a wireless router so maybe that's not actualy so important.

I don't use it to play games or to watch films etc... I have a perfactly good telly/DVD set up in the same room for that and I'm not bothered about sound either. Al my musice is played through my Hi-Fi (seperates so proper Hi-Fi).

Ta very much for the help, much food for thought. Thanks for taking the time to knock up that spec list too Easyrider.

Just as an alternative, would I be better off getting a secondhand laptop?

 

[PermaBanned]

What do you need? Monitor? OS (say yes here and i'll just tell you to use Linux )? Peripherals etc.?

People may try to say that just because you do editing you need an i7, or something like that. But it's just not true. Sure, encoding takes longer but it's still do-able, as long as you don't concentrate on what you're missing.

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Asus GeForce GTS 250 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card Asus GeForce GTS 250 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Graphics Card £81.99
(£69.78) £81.99
(£69.78)
AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core 620 2.60GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core 620 2.60GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £81.99
(£69.78) £81.99
(£69.78)
Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P AMD 770 (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £74.99
(£63.82) £74.99
(£63.82)
Corsair 4GB (2X2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMV4GX3M2A1333C9) Corsair 4GB (2X2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit (CMV4GX3M2A1333C9) £74.58
(£63.47) £74.58
(£63.47)
Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-400CXUK) Corsair CX 400W ATX Power Supply (CMPSU-400CXUK) £40.85
(£34.77) £40.85
(£34.77)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (ST3500418AS) £37.99
(£32.33) £37.99
(£32.33)
NZXT BETA Classic Series Case - Black NZXT BETA Classic Series Case - Black £35.76
(£30.43) £35.76
(£30.43)
Akasa AK-CC017 Freedom Tower CPU Cooler (Socket AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1156 / 1366) Akasa AK-CC017 Freedom Tower CPU Cooler (Socket AM2 / AM3 / 775 / 1156 / 1366) £28.99
(£24.67) £28.99
(£24.67)
LG GH22LS50 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter Lightscribe Drive - Retail LG GH22LS50 22x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter Lightscribe Drive - Retail £22.99
(£19.57) £22.99
(£19.57)
Edimax EW-7128G 54Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter Edimax EW-7128G 54Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter £14.29
(£12.16) £14.29
(£12.16)
Sub Total : £420.78
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £75.69
Total : £508.22

 

[easyrider]

I would wait for the new i3 chips.

They look like great bang for buck

 

[PermaBanned]

What, just like the Athlon quads?