New components choice

[spiral out]

I've been asked by my brother what would be the best CPU, motherboard and RAM to get as he is using an old AMD 3000+ chip on an asrock board at the moment.

He will mainly be using it to work in cubase along with the usual web browsing and listening to music.

The budget is £200 all in to spend on these components along with a hard drive.

Is Intel or AMD the best to get, in the budget range these days?

These are the proccessors i've seen, is it worth going for the newer AM3 CPU?

AMD Athlon X2 7850 2.8GHz Black Edition £48.65

AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz £65.65

I'm looking to get 4GB of DDR 2 RAM, i believe he will be sticking to XP for the time being

Thanks

[staffsMike]

I think in your position stick to AMD and perhaps the still slightly cheaper AM2+ variant. Possibly hampers upgrades later on but for intents and purposes they will run the same now.

If you were to go something like this.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150278 ~£60

or this if he doesnt need the decent IGP (still has a dvi out though)
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...Board-VGA-HDCP

4GB of RAM is about £35 leaving £105 for your processor and HDD.

I would probably get this
AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz £65.65

as it's a very nice cpu in the budget sector, it's a shame you cant spend the full £105 though as that would have meant an X3 720 black edition which is a nice step up.

[spiral out]

Cheers, yea he has my old ATI 800GTO graphics so he doesn't need on board.

He will be using his old nexus 300w power supply which i assume will be fine.

If he did go this route AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz £65.65 what motherboard would you recommend, also are you still able to use DDR2 with these?

[greenpanda]

if hes looking for decent latency for audio production i would make sure to get a decent sound card.

you can pick up a phenom 2 x2 550 black edition for £75 Phenom II x2 550 @ Scan
am3 motherboard £71 - AM3 Motherboard @ Scan
would stick to 32bit for the moment until audio software gets there, i know ableton have a 64bit version, not sure about cubase, with that in mind go for 3gb ram

my suggestions anyway.

--- edit ---
just looked at this review - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu...lon-ii-x2.html
for your needs id probably stick to the athlon x2 as the performance difference is negligable

[staffsMike]

As above the 760G is more than capable enough of handling everything and at £45 it's a bit of a snip really.

It's always best to change PSU's when you can really but 300W is more than enough. great unit for £30 if he does want to
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166784

[greenpanda]

a 300w powersupply should power your system okay, if you upgrade the graphics card anytime then think about going up to 400w

[greenpanda]

Cheers, yea he has my old ATI 800GTO graphics so he doesn't need on board.

He will be using his old nexus 300w power supply which i assume will be fine.

If he did go this route AMD Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz £65.65 what motherboard would you recommend, also are you still able to use DDR2 with these?

am3 boards at the moment only support ddr3 ram, to my understanding.
you could get an am2+ board as the new am3 chips are backwards compatible, which would then allow you to get ddr2 ram.

in regards to 4gb ram, heres a quote on the net -

Windows XP Professional 32-bit is limited to 4GB of address space. If you have 4GB of RAM installed, it will not show 4GB within Windows. What you'll probably get is the size of your pagefile subtracted from the 4GB.

Some of this address space is reserved for hardware and the OS... so you'll never have access to the full 4GB anyway. If you want to access 4GB+ of RAM... your best solution is to pick up XP Pro 64-bit

someone correct me if im wrong.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is what I would go for:

Phenom II X2 550 ~ £73

http://www.scan.co.uk/

The CPU is on offer on the Scan front page.

Asus M3A76-CM 760g motherboard ~ £45

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...Board-VGA-HDCP

4gb PC2-8500 DDR2 RAM ~ £36

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-(...S-5-6-6-18-EPP

Samsung F1 320gb hard drive ~ £32

http://www.scan.co.uk/TodayOnly/Index.aspx

400w Silverpower SP-400P2C ~£28

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/400w-...ed-cooling-fan

Silverpower is part of the same company as Tagan and they make decent budget power supplies. It is probably worth giving the old PSU a try but TBH if it is a few years old I would look at replacing it as things like capacitor ageing will affect the output of the PSU.

Using the free Scan postage the total comes to around £216.

[spiral out]

Cheers for your replies guys.

He already has some super duper sound card i believe. Not sure what it is though.

So the cheaper of the 2 motherboards would that allow overclocking? I'm just curious as he's not in the slightest bothered by it but i seem to have to overclock everything i get my hands on. If not what other boards allow it?

I'll let him know about swapping power supply, the one linked to looks great for the price.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The X2 550 has an unlocked multiplier so it should be easier to overclock though than the X2 250. However you may need to factor in the cost of a new cooler if you are going to do any big overclocks.

[spiral out]

ok thanks will check everything out properly and see what he decides.

[greenpanda]

as per cat-the-fifth, would not overclock with out aftermarket cooler.
what else would he want to be doing with it that would need an overclock?

[spiral out]

Nah it's me who likes to overclock, i've overclcocked my last three computers current is a Q6600.

Any cheap quiet aftermarket coolers you can recommend never like the ones that come with the CPUs.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

These may do the trick:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/AKASA...-side-blow-fan

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Xigma...AM2-Cpu-cooler

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Coole...939-940-socket