Solved Buying a budget PC soon, need advice

[4eyed]

I'm going to buy a PC on monday, this is the build i've come up with:

AMD Phenom II x4 960T
Asrock 970 Extreme4
MSI Twin Frozr II GTX 560 Ti
4GB DDR3 1333MHz Patriot ( this is just temporary, to save a couple of bucks, will upgrade to 8gb soon )
Seasonic SS-520GB
Cooler Master Elite 430

I'll reuse an old Hitachi 160GB and a 24x Philips DVD Drive.
I'll use this PC for gaming, so what do you think, how will it run Skyrim, BF3 and WoW cata on a 1680x1050 monitor? And is there anything i should change? Btw. The following PSU brands are not avaiable where i live: Corsair, Antec, OCZ, XFX.

 

[Lemur]

I had a bad experience with that specific motherboard - ASRock. You may have a different experience. However, I would recommend Asus or MSI over ASSROCK. Some others in this forum may agree with me. Not sure what you're gonna use the old spin drive for with SSD. I'd upgrade the spin to 6gb/s sata to take advantage of mobo. You can get 4gbx2 memory for $45 from crucial. Get 1.35 volts instead of 1.5 volts. Recommend ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS for $185. If price is a consideration, you should be happy with ASUS M5A97 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS for $95

 

[4eyed]

I had a bad experience with that specific motherboard - ASRock. You may have a different experience. However, I would recommend Asus or MSI over ASSROCK. Some others in this forum may agree with me. Not sure what you're gonna use the old spin drive for with SSD. I'd upgrade the spin to 6gb/s sata to take advantage of mobo. You can get 4gbx2 memory for $45 from crucial. Get 1.35 volts instead of 1.5 volts. Recommend ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS for $185. If price is a consideration, you should be happy with ASUS M5A97 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS for $95

I'll reuse the HDD. If i didn't i'd probably have to downgrade the GPU, and i don't plan on doing that. As i said, i'll go with 1x4 to save some money, just for a couple of months. And, about the mobo, everyone on tom's hardware and on a serbian forum, "svet kompjutera" ( computer world ) said that this asrock is a great choice... But ok, i'll change to asus if it's more reliable.

 

[Lemur]

Srećno

 

[DeaconFrost]

I'm not a fan of Asrock boards, either. I stick with Gigabyte, Asus, or Intel. Speaking of Intel, consider, just for the heck of it, what an i3-2100 build would cost, or something similar to it. I greatly prefer the Intel chipsets as opposed to what's available to the AMD side.

 

[4eyed]

Srećno

Hvala

A similar intel build would look like this:

Intel Core i3 2100
Asus P8Z68-V LX
Everything else the same

Would it be better for gaming than that AMD build? I am pretty sure it wouldn't be any faster or slower, but would have 1/2 of the cores...

 

[DeaconFrost]

You could check some benchmarks, but the i3-2100 was the favored processor of most computer enthusiast mags for a budget build. Just because it has half the cores, doesn't mean the performance will suffer....unless it is an app that specifically is designed to use four cores, and those are very few and far between.

 

[4eyed]

Ok... But will it suffice for gaming in 2012\13 on medium-to-high?

 

[DeaconFrost]

Assuming you pair it with an adequate video card, yes. But, don't take my word for it...check out some comparisons and benchmarks. One of the reasons people go this route is so they can drop in a much faster i7 later on, without replacing any other components.

 

[4eyed]

GTX 560 Ti should be adequate. Thanks!

 

[4eyed]

Hm... I made another build, here it is:

i5 2400
MSI PH61A-P35 (B3)
4GB Patriot DDR3 1333MHz
MSI Twin Frozr II GTX 560 Ti OC
Chieftec CFT-600-14CS
Cooler Master Elite 430

I chose this PSU because it's cheaper than seasonic, and while i know its quality is nowhere near the ss-520gb, people in serbia say it's a good PSU, pretty silent and pretty reliable. What so you think about this build? I think it would perform awesomely and will have an ok PSU.

 

[bobkn]

Looks OK.

Upgrading is a slippery slope, but in the US, an I5-2500k has a retail price $40 higher than the I5-2400. Because of its unlocked multiplier (k suffix), it's easy to overclock on a motherboard that permits overclocking (P67 or Z68).

You'd probably want an aftermarket CPU cooler to overclock, like a Cooler Master Hyper 212+ ($30).

You could get an inexpensive Z68 motherboard for about the same price as the MSI board that you list. Example: Asrock Z68M. (It's microATX. The main thing you'd lose with microATX is all the PCI slots on the H61 board.)

I doubt that you want to be talked into spending more on your upgrade, but an I5-2500k would be about as fast for gaming as anything available at any price. It's easy to overclock to 4.5 GHz or more, as well.

 

[4eyed]

Z68M is ~30$ more expensive than the PH61-P35
2500K is ~ 40$ more expensive than the 2400

That makes 70$... I don't know. It's a bit too much for me as it is ( salary in Serbia is like 300$ per month )... I'll see, but i really doubt it. And yeah, some things i thought i should change in the build in my previous post are: Case to Xigmagtek Asgard II and PSU back to Seasonic SS-520GB.

EDIT: What about this mobo: Gigabyte GA-P67-DS3-B3. It will allow overclocking and is less than 10$ more than the MSI H61.

 

[4eyed]

Final build:

[FONT=&quot]Intel Core i5 2400[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]MSI H67MA-E35 (B3)
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]MSI Twin Frozr II GTX 560 Ti
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]4GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Seasonic SS-520GB
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Xigmatek Asgard

Do you think it'll be ablo to max out most of modern games at 1680x1050?[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]

 

[Lemur]

While you can max out at 2560 x 1600, you should be very comfortable at 1920 x

 

[4eyed]

Thanks! Gonna order tommorow and post pictures when it's assembled. Solv'd.

 

[Lemur]

Good luck!