New PC advice please

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stevovo

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Good day all

I'm trying to sell my pc and get a new one. My old pc is an intel and so far I'm inclined to get amd.

At the moment I'm thinking of these items:

AMD Phenom II X6 1075T
Gigabyte GA-M68MT-D3
Corsair CMV4GX3M1A1333C9 VALUESELECT 4GB DDR3-1333 X 2

I know the motherboard is kinda cheap, but does that make a difference if I'm not gonna be using sli or crossfire or have 20 usb peripherals or 10 hard drives? I only have 1 nvidia gtx460 and 3 hard drives at most, so is there anything I'm missing out on by not buying an expensive mobo? (assuming that this one supports the cpu and ram.)

I'd rather spend the cash on a faster cpu than a more expensive (better?) mobo.

TIA
 
Let's look @ it this way:

When you build a house, you have to ensure that the foundation you build on is super strong and stable (do a soil test first). Otherwise you end up endless nightmares as you progress through the year...

The same can be said of a motherboard...I would recommend that you google reviews first on the motherboard you are intending on purchasing to see what the most common issues / gripes are before you buy (aka soil test).

Then aim for the middle of the market segment kind of board where most people end up purchasing - ofcourse all this is dependent on the application of the PC.......
 
Agreed, mobo can be quite important. But if you don't intend on OCing, or adding anything in the future that the mobo can't support, then it'll be fine. I ran a Intel G31 mobo for quite some time in my gaming rig, could even OC slightly and there were no problems.

I would question your choice of CPU though. Are you going to be utilising all 6 cores? Doing graphics/design/CAD/other heavy usage/multi-threaded work? You might be able to get away with a quad for less.
 
stevovo said:
....I know the motherboard is kinda cheap, but does that make a difference if I'm not gonna be using sli or crossfire or have 20 usb peripherals or 10 hard drives? I only have 1 nvidia gtx460 and 3 hard drives at most, so is there anything I'm missing out on by not buying an expensive mobo?...
Click to expand...

Hi stevovo

I asked the same question on another forum a couple of months ago and was almost crucified by the 'boffins' for wanting to do that, but guess what... I did it anyway LOL (I had no choice.. read on...).

I was still on an old M/B (with AGP etc.) when it packed up and I needed a replacement in a heck of a hurry to finish a project by the next day. Of course, all I could get at such short notice was a 'new technology' (pci-e etc.) - Intel in my case, - M/B, and thus also a new CPU - socket LGA 775 - and RAM as well. Did I mention that it was at the wrong time of the month so finances was a major issue? I simply couldn't just buy what I wanted.. I had to go as cheap as possible.

I ended up with a little ECS micro ATX M/B with a Celeron 1.8GHz CPU, 2Gig RAM and onboard graphics (it does have a PCI-E slot though but I couldn't afford a GPU at the time) but I could finish the job. Here's the thing though....

Since then I have upgraded to a better CPU (the biggest it can take is the Qxxxx series and I settled for the Q8400 Core2 Quad 2.66GHz - which I've overclocked to 3.0GHz) and I also plonked in a GTX460. Man, this little setup breezes through anything I throw at it and I've come to dearly love it!! I will stick to this for a while still.

What I'm trying to say is this.. depending on what you are mainly going to be doing with your PC, it doesn't matter at all..

The big bad motherboards (IMHO) caters mostly for the overclocking and serious gaming crowd of which I'm neither, so I was happy just with the upgradability aspect which served me just fine in the end.

:)


ps: i agree with the above poster.. are you really going to need the six cores? It's only faster on certain applications like he mentioned
 
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PostmanPot said:
I would question your choice of CPU though. Are you going to be utilising all 6 cores? Doing graphics/design/CAD/other heavy usage/multi-threaded work? You might be able to get away with a quad for less.
Click to expand...

Really? I'm going to be using the pc for gaming and I assumed that the better the cpu the faster the gaming. How much difference is there between quad core and 6 core in that regard?

I'm not complaining :D it would be a bit cheaper. I just wanna make sure I won't regret it - although I'm not a SERIOUS gamer to be honest, I still enjoy playing games at 1024x768 and sometimes 1280x1024 if the effects are crap.
 
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You would see very little difference, since most games don't use even all 4 cores on a quad core CPU.

If you have heavily threaded and multi-tasking use for the CPU then by all means go for the more cores = less work route, else a quad core is perfect and a beefy graphics card should cut it.
 
CriticalConsumer said:
You would see very little difference, since most games don't use even all 4 cores on a quad core CPU.

If you have heavily threaded and multi-tasking use for the CPU then by all means go for the more cores = less work route, else a quad core is perfect and a beefy graphics card should cut it.
Click to expand...

Ok then. I will look at the quad core. BTW how much difference is there between 4gb and 8gb for gaming? And will the lack of l3 cache in the athlon compared to the phenom of the same speed make a huge difference or not?
 
Buy the cheapest motherboard you need bud. Seriously people waste so much money on motherboards.

As long as it suits your needs buy it but don't go splash big cash on a mobo when you don't need to. Rather buy a better cpu or gpu or just save the money.

Do games even 4gb? 8gb would be useless for gaming, that mobo would be perfect for your needs. Not sure why people think you need middle to top end mobo's to run a pc.

Overclocking, dual cards then yes but explain why that cheap mobo would be a problem?
 
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killadoob said:
Buy the cheapest motherboard you need bud. Seriously people waste so much money on motherboards.

As long as it suits your needs buy it but don't go splash big cash on a mobo when you don't need to. Rather buy a better cpu or gpu or just save the money.

Do games even 4gb? 8gb would be useless for gaming
Click to expand...

Yeah, so far I think I'm gonna go for a gigabyte mobo for ~R530 and a quad core. Just can't decide if I must take the phenom or the athlon (both are 3.1Ghz but there is ~R600 price difference)
 
stevovo said:
Ok then. I will look at the quad core. BTW how much difference is there between 4gb and 8gb for gaming? And will the lack of l3 cache in the athlon compared to the phenom of the same speed make a huge difference or not?
Click to expand...

Very little, you will probably only have faster loading times, and this is mainly when starting up the game. I would go for 2 x 2GB in your situation.

Again, you probably wouldn't notice the difference with L3 cache in games. In more heavy usage & multi-threaded apps, sure you would. Cache is king, L2 being the most important.

If you can afford it, go with the Phenom 955. Good CPU,will last a long time.
 
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AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8MB, AM2+, 3.4GHZ L2 Cache Quad Core R 1 299 excl. R 1,480 incl.

Looks a winner to me, believe and some people may say i am talking rubbish but my pc runs faster with a quadcore and many console games are ported onto pc and they make use of four cores.
 
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killadoob said:
AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8MB, AM2+, 3.4GHZ L2 Cache Quad Core R 1 299 excl. R 1,480 incl.

Looks a winner to me, believe and some people may say i am talking rubbish but my pc runs faster with a quadcore and many console game games are ported onto pc and they make use of four cores.
Click to expand...

Very good price, PC Int no doubt. :p
 
Ya it can be got cheaper i have heard though. Cannot recall the companies name but i am sure it would be cheaper.

I bet though pcint won't have stock.
 
Ok, so far this is what I've got:

AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8MB, AM2+, 3.4GHZ L2 Cache Quad Core R 1,480 incl.
M4A785TD-M Evo ASUS R 853 incl.
2 X 2GB DDRIII-1333 Kingston R 210 incl

Is there any way to work out what power supply will be sufficient?
 
You said you are going to use this PC for gaming, what GPU are you using cos ultimately that would determine your PSU wattage.

In my case I am using an older GTX285 with a Thermaltake Toughpower 750W PSU and six HDD's and this meets all my needs.

Best thing to use to calculate the wattage required is the following tool: http://www.antec.outervision.com/
 
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"AMD Phenom II X6 1075T
Gigabyte GA-M68MT-D3
Corsair CMV4GX3M1A1333C9 VALUESELECT 4GB DDR3-1333 X 2"

CPUbenchmark.net is a nice site to compare CPU's.
Like one commentor said above, if you are not using your pc for very CPU intensive tasks like using Blender ect. consider going with the four core.
The Athlon II x4 gives very respectable performance and is great value for money.
But..the Phenom II x4 840 is brand new (landed not long ago in SA) and there is only R200 price difference between the Athlon II x640 and the Phenom II x4 840.
That is if you could get hold of it.


"AMD Phenom II X4 965, 8MB, AM2+, 3.4GHZ L2 Cache Quad Core R 1 299 excl. R 1,480 incl."
I wonder why they quoted AM2+ ...all new AMD processors is AM3


Regarding the powersupply. Many would disagree, but the manufacturers of the 460 cards more or less always quote 450 watt is minimum powersupply with a 460GTX
 
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