Building your own tower.

It's because some of the Mother Boards are much cheaper. Right now im trying to budget around 100 for Mobo instead of 230, and 120 for CPU. Over all 300 for Mobo, Cpu, Mem

SevSaint said:

It's because some of the Mother Boards are much cheaper. Right now im trying to budget around 100 for Mobo instead of 230, and 120 for CPU. Over all 300 for Mobo, Cpu, Mem

Have you now given up on the idea of overclocking and a Z97 board?

If I had 300 absolute max for CPU/motherboard/RAM, I'd probably reduce the RAM to 4 GB and spend the saved $40 on the processor. I'd build it. If I then decided I needed more RAM, I'd later pay another $40 to buy another identical 4 GB stick to make 8 total.

I'd get an SSD no matter what. No more than $80.

On a day to day ordinary use basis, you'll appreciate the stronger processor all the time. You'll appreciate more than 4 GB of RAM only some of the time. I have 4 and have no need at all for 8. I don't use more than 3 even 1% of the time.

For 300, I'd think something like this:

RAM 40 for 4 GB.

Motherboard 90 to 100

Processor 160 to 170

If you have signed up for email promotional deals from Newegg and Tiger Direct, you stand a decent chance of picking off some worthwhile stuff on sale. If you are near a Microcenter, you may be able to save on a CPU/motherboard combo deal.

AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8-Core 4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Desktop Processor FD8350FRHKBOX - Newegg.com

GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX + SB950 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com

this puts me at 300 alone.. hoping to swtich mem over and upgrade later. i have 2 sticks.. how do i know what mem i have now

Softwares CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

download and run cpu-z to get memory details

HWinfo at the same site is also good to identify hardware generally

AMD FX-8350 Black Edition Vishera 8-Core 4.0GHz (4.2GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ 125W Desktop Processor FD8350FRHKBOX - Newegg.com

with this sort of CPU what kinda motherboard should i get or look for so i can avoid bottle necking.

If i transfer my current HD over without reformat would i see any errors since it has win already installed. Or do i need to reformat in the transfer?

After reading up on many different things and taking my time on this investment i have concluded that the I5 4570 Haswell is the best CPU. Mostly because of the overclock. With that said, and that being my future CPU, what kinda mother boards should i look at that would be best for over clocking. I also need one for using 2 graphic cards for future use. As well as 2-3 HD's. First HD being a small one for installation and 2nd to 3rd one for movies and games.