New Build: Intel vs AMD

[Ulti]

Although your friend only uses the pc for general purposes, I'd really advise against going for a "Green" drive as they're 5400RPM drives and are simply not nice to work with. Either go for a Western Digital Blue or Black drive or a Samsung F3. I'd really question whether 2TB is needed though. I'm sure 1TB will be enough from the uses you've listed. Here's the Samsung F3 1TB for £61 (Today only is £58)

That Dominator RAM is really overpriced IMO. I'd suggest you go for these G.Skills 1600Mhz CL8 (£97) which are basically the same. You can go for lower latency ones (e.g. CL8 or CL7) but there is next to no real world benefit from them. Also from personal experience, AMD systems don't really like 1600Mhz memory so if you can go for CL7 1333mhz memory for the same price or lower then go for it but like I said there will almost be no noticeable difference.

I really wouldn't go for a PSU that expensive, it's like you're trying to make the build as expensive as possible haha. (No offence intended) The Corsair HX450W at £58 will be enough for that pc easily. It doesn't seem like there'll be many planned updates either.

In terms of CPU choice I'd say the Phenom II 545 can be a good choice too unless you want a simple overclock. If there's no overclocking then I really think a Phenom II 545 will be enough and to be honest the dual core is fast enough and doesn't really need to be overclocked IMO.

I really don't think you need such a hi-end motherboard, if you were then there's almost no point of going for AMD if you were to spend that much. If you really want USB 3.0 support and SATA 6GB/s then the GA-890GPA-UD3H will be enough easily but at £105 I still don't think it's that important.

These are just my thoughts though.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would look at something along the lines of the following:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition C3 ~ £125

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190673

Gigabyte GA-770TA-UD3 ~ £80

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191059

This motherboard has USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0!

4GB Crucial 1333MHZ DDR3 RAM ~ £100

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/179278

This has low latencies which is important for the Phenom II memory controller.

Antec TruePower New 650W ~ £83

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159920

Fractal Design R2 ~ £80

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?q=fractal+r2&x=0&y=0

3X120MM Fractal 120MM fans ~ £22

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/185157

Samsung F3 1TB ~ £64

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804

Sony SATA DVD rewriter ~ £16

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/164449

HIS HD 5770 1GB GDDR5 ~ £128

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/191864

Tuniq Tower 120-Extreme ~ £46

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/169197

The total comes to around £744. You could probably get an HX450W instead to save some money.

[ProbablyJoe]

The PSU is excellent value if you're set on a P183, though I'm not sure of the merits of spending that much on the case if it's (a) not being overclocked, (b) going to be used by someone who isn't likely to go anywhere near the insides of it. You did mention low noise though, so the P183 is a good choice in that respect, but there might be better options out there. The PSU is cheaper because it only works in 3 cases, but it's a good PSU, though unless you're planning on doing SLI in the future, you could cut down the price a lot here.

I don't know a lot about the current generation of AMD chipsets, but I'd agree that it's somewhat pointless going for a higher end motherboard with a lower end CPU. The X4s are really cheap at the moment on Scan, so I think it'd be far better value to go for one of those and a somewhat cheaper motherboard. It's worth seeing what prices the X6s come in at too, though they may be overkill for this setup.

As for USB/SATA 3 support, I wouldn't worry about going for them. Besides there being very little hardware to support it, very few HDDs can even break the barrier of SATA 2 speed anyway. Similarly for USB3, I don't see many devices gaining from extra speed. Nice extras if you can get them for cheap, but not worth a £50 premium, I'd say.

If you're not overclocking then I wouldn't worry about a big heatsink, stock will do the job. If you do want to overclock then that does look like a good value one.

In terms of the more general question of AMD vs Intel - Phenom X4s and Intel i5s are relatively evenly matched. The i5 edges it out but you'll be paying £50 or so more for it.

I'd say that for a good value/performance PC, bump the CPU up to an X4 955 or thereabouts, drop down to a lower spec motherboard, and unless you're desperate for low noise/upgradeablity, save £100 by going for a cheaper case/PSU combo like an Antec 300 with a 4/550w PSU.

[robmaio]

Re: New Build: Intel vs AMD

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I would look at something along the lines of the following:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition C3 ~ £125
Gigabyte GA-770TA-UD3 ~ £80
4GB Crucial 1333MHZ DDR3 RAM ~ £100

Recently purchased the same processor, motherboard and Ram from ebuyer. Very happy with the combination

[psu1]

Recently got an Intel i3 and have to say it is an amazing CPU.

[peterb]

I've merged this with another thread started in the last couple of months - no point in having two recent threads with the same subject matter!

[TooNice]

How reliable is Ebuyer's next day delivery? I've only ever used the free delivery with them which is sometime rather lengthy, but time is of the essence this time round. The Gigabyte GA-770TA-UD3 looks good, as does the suggested RAM (Scan is really limited when it comes to RAM), but I will need to make sure that if I order them tonight, that it will arrive by Friday. By the way, what's the difference between the GA-890GPA-UD3H and the GA-770TA-UD3? The former is more expensive, but oddly enough seem to be lacking eSATA ports (doubt he'll care, but I feel that it never hurts).

I am quite keen on sticking with the the P183. It's not that much more expensive than the Fractal which seem like a good case, but not superior (if I am not mistaken, please correct), and I expect that it would not be too hard to work with given that I have built a PC based on the P182.

The reason I picked the 2TB 5400RPM drive, BTW, is that I was thinking of slipping in a 40GB SSD if budget permit afterward. But come to think of it, I think I got it the wrong way round. After 18 months, my flatmate hasn't even filled an 120GB external HD, and he can also salvage a 500GB from his current shuttle. By all user account, SSD FTWow, so despite the poor £/GB, I go for a 40GB Intel SSD (I'll speak to him about it). Would I need a 2.5" -> 3.5" cage of sort to mount it on a P183 case?

Oh I take it that this heatsink: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Therm...6775AM2-3-Cpus *will* work on the AM3 motherboard out of the box? I would've liked the much cheaper AMD only version that's on pre-order, but again, time is very much of the essence.

Thanks for all the previous replies.

[TooNice]

Right, this is it: http://img530.imageshack.us/i/scan.png/ and http://img707.imageshack.us/i/ebuyer.png/

I didn't forget the GFX card, it'll be sourced elsewhere.

So it's not exactly that much cheaper than my initial build, and yes, I realise there is definite 'excess' in terms of PSU, but AFAIK, it is a good, quiet and efficient PSU, so cost aside, it won't do much harm, and will allow silly dual-GPU GFX card if he ever decides to go down that route.

The only thing I am still not sure is the difference between the £100 mobo Ulti mentioned and the one CAT did. And perhaps a bigger concern is the choice of CPU. Can you not fairly reliably unlock the cores of an X2, and does it require a specific motherboard to do so?

Thanks.

[Ulti]

How reliable is Ebuyer's next day delivery? I've only ever used the free delivery with them which is sometime rather lengthy, but time is of the essence this time round. The Gigabyte GA-770TA-UD3 looks good, as does the suggested RAM (Scan is really limited when it comes to RAM), but I will need to make sure that if I order them tonight, that it will arrive by Friday. By the way, what's the difference between the GA-890GPA-UD3H and the GA-770TA-UD3? The former is more expensive, but oddly enough seem to be lacking eSATA ports (doubt he'll care, but I feel that it never hurts).

The reason I picked the 2TB 5400RPM drive, BTW, is that I was thinking of slipping in a 40GB SSD if budget permit afterward. But come to think of it, I think I got it the wrong way round. After 18 months, my flatmate hasn't even filled an 120GB external HD, and he can also salvage a 500GB from his current shuttle. By all user account, SSD FTWow, so despite the poor £/GB, I go for a 40GB Intel SSD (I'll speak to him about it). Would I need a 2.5" -> 3.5" cage of sort to mount it on a P183 case?

Oh I take it that this heatsink: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Therm...6775AM2-3-Cpus *will* work on the AM3 motherboard out of the box? I would've liked the much cheaper AMD only version that's on pre-order, but again, time is very much of the essence.

Thanks for all the previous replies.

The former motherboard has the 890GX integrated graphics which I believe is currently the fastest consumer integrated graphics right now. It is also coupled with the 850 SB chip but I'm not too sure on what difference it offers.

With the SSD (same model as mine except I bought mine from CCL), mine came with a metal 3.5" to 2.5" metal bracket adapter and my NZXT case also came with a plastic one too.

The heatsink will work fine as AM3 motherboards have the same heatsink mounting mechanism as AM2 motherboards.

If you don't need any integrated graphics at all then I'd go with the motherboard CAT listed, didn't expect 770 chipsets to have USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s support though but CAT proved me wrong I can't really say what the chances are as I've only unlocked 2 but they were both stable and even managed to overclock. You do need a SB750 southbridge though to unlock as it was said that the new SB850 southbridges will remove the ability to unlock cores but it still exists according to many sources that I quickly googled upon. I can't see anything on the motherboard's website about being able to unlock cores though so you might wanna try looking into that if you were to go with it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Gigabyte motherboard does support ACC though:

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...ProductID=3272

The SB710 southbridge can be used to unlock processors too.

However, unlocking is not guaranteed so make sure that you are happy with the stock performance of the X2 555BE.

The SB850 southbridge basically has native SATA 3.0 support and some other improvement in I/O speeds over the SB750. The SB710 is very similar to the SB750 but has less RAID options.

[12GaugeShotty]

Whatever you do, avoid nVIDIA chipsets. They are quite renown for poor stability.

[psu1]

Whatever you do, avoid nVIDIA chipsets. They are quite renown for poor stability.

A bit over the top i would say.

[TooNice]

Thank to everyone's who've replied. Probably the last one question, what would be a modest/safe overclock on the X4 555? I expect 3.2Ghz to be more than enough, and chances are, I won't bother overclocking due to the lack of time to conduct proper stress test, but just in case.

[Ulti]

I'd say 3.6ghz would be a safe overclock (likely to be able to do it on stock voltages) with almost no excess heat and a small voltage bump should allow 3.8ghz. I've heard 4.0ghz is quite doable but I'm guessing it'll need quite some tweaking and testing.

From my experience I had a X2 550 and it unlocked to a quad core and was stable up to 3.6ghz but pushing it higher was rather hard so I left it at 3.6ghz. I also had a Phenom 955 just for comparisons and it could get to about 3.8ghz with a little voltage bump but anything over 3.9ghz was a bit too much effort for me to bother with. Unfortunately I can't remember how the X2 550 went as a dual core