Hi all So I'm looking at buying a nice little power house PC that will play the latest games as of now on the highest settings without breaking the bank. Here is what I've come up with as far as the CPU / Motherboard and video card goes, let me know if I'm better of changing anything at all - keeping in mind I'm not overly fussed with future proofing this PC. CPU - AMD FX-6300 black edition 3.50ghz Motherboard - MSI 970 gaming series Video card - ASUS GTX970 strix Your thoughts? Cheers..
Well there are a few gaps. What are you doing for a case, hard drives, power supply, etc. Are you reusing your old stuff and just upgrading the MB, CPU and Video Card? What's your budget?
I'll probably just buy a cooler master storm trooper or HAF series for around the $145-150 AUD mark, not looking to over lock so shouldn't be too much of a problem for cooling. I also saw a western digital 500gb 32meg cache for $50 off the site I'll be purchasing all the gear from which should cover the hdd. Power supply I was looking at the thermal take tough power 750w +gold awarded which should give me enough power if I ever looked to sli / crossfire also. Budget would be about $1000k AUD (Australian dollars). Sorry I didn't mention this earlier don't often do this and sorta pushed it aside since it's probably the least expensive / game dependant components.. I understand it all rolls into one with the budget though
It looks okay but the one thing that stands out is the Asus Strix 970 as here in the UK it's probably the most expensive 970 going but about £50. For a budget build I'd pick another 970 personally but still one with an aftermarket cooler and save the extra cash or put it somewhere else. Also get an SSD please you'll regret getting a mechanical drive I swear. As mentioned by Cartman, what ram are you using or intending to buy?
Yeah there's about a $20-$30 difference here which I just worked out I could put back into my hdd and get a 120gb SSd just for the operating system..? Then just get the 500gb for the games drive? As far as ram goes was a bit undecided if ddr3 1600mhz would make much of a difference between 8gb or 16gb?..
Ram I'd say 8gb minimum and since this is a budget build get that, if you can find 16gb for little or no extra cost choose that . 120 ssd will be good for OS and perhaps a game or two but will be a very nice upgrade for you. I don't use a mechanical drive any more and run two 480gb ssds since the performance is great and the prices have come down quite substantially.
I always had AMD CPU in the past, begin with the K6-3 400mhz years ago. Last year i switched all PC to Intel for Gaming, because even the little i3-4130 which is the weakest i-3 on Haswell is equal or faster as FX-8320. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CphtYLMNWi8 The Intel i3-4170 Price are equal as the FX-6300 and its even faster the example in this Video
Intel is defiantly an option, though if I go with an i3 later on with my motherboard can I upgrade to an i5 / i7 or will it only run i3's?
1150 boards are for i3/5/7 some even xeon, but only Z Boards can overclock combinied with K cpu. But a i3 havent a K version. it would just overclock to permanent turbo clocks
That's awesome very good to know, thank you.. Will help give some future proofing to the PC to whilst staying in my budget
is there anywhere I can find a review of the i3-4170 I can't find one on guru3d or even a review of a similar product with the stats of the 4170 in it?? Just want a bit more reinforcement the dual core will out do the 6300 before I make the purchase thank you
search here ... they have some excellent benchmark with cpu scaling h t t p://g a m e gpu.ru/ (remove the spaces)
Was going to throw this out there as an option. I just built a budget gamer with an i7 4160 last month. Another fine LGA1150 chip is the Pentium g3258 (as it overclocks like a madman). Either way, these cheaper CPUs can be replaced with an i5 or i7 in the future. Out of the box the i3 is on par (or faster) than any overclocked FX processor (look up tons of benches as I did). It's quite the gamer. I was very impressed with the i3 (...and we run 4 gaming rigs here, 3 have i7's and one i5). I've since bought a used i3 2120 and built a light gamer out of it that the kids use in the family room.
That is a little misleading in some ways. True, it is showing the CPU limitations, but that CPU limitation is based on 980 GTX's in SLI, not the average bloke building a 'more realistic' PC for gaming. The difference on say, a 970 GTX is likely to be much less. In the future, under DirectX 12 games, the difference will probably be quite minimal if existing at all.
Definitely go with Intel i5 and overclock it to 4+ghz (hell, even as old as Sandy Bridge will run circles around that 6300). 8GB RAM is minimum nowadays, 16GB is a good amount for games. So yeah, Intel i5, 16GB RAM and a 970 is a solid setup. Not at all a powerhouse, but good enough form 1080p/1440p gaming if you're willing to compromise a little bit here and there.
