Budget gaming upgrade

[Emirzan]

I am considering upgrading a very out of date PC (Intel Core2 E7200, 2*2GB RAM and Nvidia GTX 460 768MB). My intention is to use it for gaming. Are the below parts sensible choices for a budget of ~£350?

CPU - Intel i3 4330 - £93.76
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...tio-54w-retail
Motherboard - Gigabyte H87M-HD3 - £65.84
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...vi-d-hdmi-matx
RAM - 2*4 GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600 MHz - £64.56
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-(...-9-9-9-24-165v
Graphics - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 - £136.39
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-g...098mhz-cores-9

Total £360.55 @ current scan prices.

I already have a monitor (24" 1920*1080), hard drives (1TB HDD for storage + 120GB SSD for OS), keyboard & mouse, OS, fans and case all of which I intend to re-use.

[Jellyfish]

Hey Emirzan!

You could also consider if you wished an AMD build aswell for around the same price for a 6 core chip and maybe GPU aswell such as:

AMD 6300 £80.99
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

ASUS M5A97 EVO £69
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

KINGSTON 2x4Gb RAM £65
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

GIGABYTE R9 270 £134
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...A3P5ROKL5A1OLE

£346

For a 8320 instead of the 6300 it would be £372, so a little over. Not sure on your PSU as it's not listed. You could get a cooler at another point and overclock this chip quite nicely with this Motherboard (one of the best 970 boards) The GPU is out of stock on Amazon, but i'm sure some appear around this price aswell, or if you wanted to keep with the 660 etc... Anyway i hope this helps!

[mikeo01]

^ OR This board HERE. Strong phases, 8+2 also.

I'd probably pair it with a FX-6300 or FX-8320 too.


Although do bare in mind AM3+ isn't going to get future upgrades, so puts that setup in a pickle

This is lowest I'd go with Intel, I5-4440. I3's are good, but they are dual core with hyperthreading. I mean it's OK but some games may suffer on it a tad.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What PSU does the OP have BTW??

I would probably go for what is suggested in post 2 with this RAM:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-BLT2...ds=8GB+CRUCIAL

[Agent]

This is lowest I'd go with Intel, I5-4440. I3's are good, but they are dual core with hyperthreading. I mean it's OK but some games may suffer on it a tad.

Don't underestimate the i3 chips: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...0_5.html#sect0

It seems a bit strange to recommend a FX6300 and then suggest that an i5 is the lowest you'd go. They're pretty close in actual game benchmarks It's only games that really need the extra cores that take an advantage, otherwise maybe go with a better GPU and save on the CPU a bit?

I suppose it depends on what you're going to play!

[Jellyfish]

^ OR This board HERE. Strong phases, 8+2 also.

I'd probably pair it with a FX-6300 or FX-8320 too.



Although do bare in mind AM3+ isn't going to get future upgrades, so puts that setup in a pickle

This is lowest I'd go with Intel, I5-4440. I3's are good, but they are dual core with hyperthreading. I mean it's OK but some games may suffer on it a tad.

Yea, I've been looking at that board recently (was a real pain finding info on it when it first came out) & trying to find out more info on the oc'ing etc... it's around £65 on Amazon currently too.

Yeah, AM3+ doesn't look like it has anymore cpu's with the roadmap, but for the price is quite nice to consider. Intel has the refresh of Haswell (is that on the same socket? - can't remember) but after that the socket might change (could be wrong?) Although the intel boards are much newer.

The i5 isn't too much more from that i3 really, only about £30 or so. Maybe something to consider aswell, although no overclocking potential in the future. If you were wanting to play Bf4 for example the AMD would be quite nice.

Hope it's of some help!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Don't underestimate the i3 chips: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...0_5.html#sect0

It seems a bit strange to recommend a FX6300 and then suggest that an i5 is the lowest you'd go. They're pretty close in actual game benchmarks It's only games that really need the extra cores that take an advantage, otherwise maybe go with a better GPU and save on the CPU a bit?

I suppose it depends on what you're going to play!

The FX6300 and FX8320 do better in newer engines which use more threads,and these are all the new generation multi-platform ones. With the consoles having 8 X86 threads,you can see where many games will go. Having had a SB Core i3,they are OKish but I saw limitations in games,which my Xeon E3 did not have.

I have a few mates who use overclocked FX6300 CPUs.

One has a FX6300 at 4.4GHZ with an HD7870LE(Bagnaj97 on these forums). It will pretty much run his extensive library of games fine including many MMOs.

[Agent]

The FX6300 and FX8320 do better in newer engines which use more threads,and these are all the new generation multi-platform ones. With the consoles having 8 X86 threads,you can see where many games will go. Having had a SB Core i3,they are OKish but I saw limitations in games,which my Xeon E3 did not have.

Oh I'm aware - games engines are literately my living I just want to make sure that people don't underestimate the i3 and how relevant it is still is for today's games. Only a few truly take advantage of the extra threads, which in some cases can even be made up with just raw computing power.

Wait till the release of UE4 games start hitting - then you'll see threading in action

[mikeo01]

I'd probably say the best bang for buck is the FX-6300 right now to be honest it's just too cheap a chip to miss for it's performance

[Agent]

Probably more luck with overclocking too , even if you don't push it

[Emirzan]

Thank you all for your suggestions. I missed a PSU out of my original post (my error!). I have a Corsair HX520 at present. I have no problems with this but it was bought in 2008 so should probably replace it, perhaps with this or something similar: Be Quiet! BN223 PURE POWER L8 500W - £48.60

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500w-...ized-120mm-fan

I picked the Intel i3 in the original list after comparing it with the i5 4440, a number of articles suggested it would be acceptable. Also as a secondary concern I would like the computer to be reasonably quiet and efficient, thought this might be easier with the Intel chips.

Certainly not a decision made yet though, I think in my hasty research I've clearly neglected the AMD parts so I'll have a look at the AMD build suggested. The only intensive task this will be used for is games (thinking about BF4, Metro 2033, Dota 2, Assassins Creed 4) so it makes sense to optimise it for that.

[Agent]

I missed a PSU out of my original post (my error!). I have a Corsair HX520 at present. I have no problems with this but it was bought in 2008 so should probably replace it

Why?

If it works, leave it. It's more than powerful enough for what you have listed.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

BF4 and the Metro series tend to do better on CPUs with better multi-threaded performance. DOTA II will run fine even an older CPU and AC4 should be comparable between the FX6300 and the Core i3 4130 IMHO.

BF4 is getting updates for Mantle too,which also means an AMD card would be a better choice. OTH,AC4 and the Metro series are Nvidia sponsered games. However,I would expect as BF4 is usually played as a MP game,it would be better to optimise for that IMHO.