Value Oriented Budget Gaming PC Build

[Iron Sights]

looked everywhere for my old x2 athlon cant find it, lucky for me I found a good deal on dabs nabbed
Athlon X4 860K 4.0GHz Black Edition £52.32
https://www.dabs.com/products/amd-at...QLS.html?src=7

[Bonebreaker777]

looked everywhere for my old x2 athlon cant find it, lucky for me I found a good deal on dabs nabbed
Athlon X4 860K 4.0GHz Black Edition £52.32
https://www.dabs.com/products/amd-at...QLS.html?src=7

Unless I am mistaken (in that case I do apologise) the CPU mentioned above is a FM2+ Kaveri based CPU without IGP. And the boards discussed earlier were more of AM3+ nature, thus your desired CPU being incompatible.

Correct ones would be, if I may, FX-4300(quad core) for £57 or FX-6300(hexa core) for £73.

EDIT: if you are a patient one, eBay sold FX-6300 for £55-60 recently. Some are currently on "buy it now" and/or "or best offer" for £68 right now.

[Iron Sights]

Unless I am mistaken (in that case I do apologise) the CPU mentioned above is a FM2+ Kaveri based CPU without IGP. And the boards discussed earlier were more of AM3+ nature, thus your desired CPU being incompatible.

Correct ones would be, if I may, FX-4300(quad core) for £57 or FX-6300(hexa core) for £73.

EDIT: if you are a patient one, eBay sold FX-6300 for £55-60 recently. Some are currently on "buy it now" and/or "or best offer" for £68 right now.

oh poop I need to check this quick

EDIT: epic fail on my part, lol, damm

[Iron Sights]

Cancelled the Athlon 860k in time, thanks Bonebreaker for spotting that mistake
hmm the FX-6300 looks nice, wonder how it compares to the athlon 860k

[Bonebreaker777]

Cancelled the Athlon 860k in time, thanks Bonebreaker for spotting that mistake
hmm the FX-6300 looks nice, wonder how it compares to the athlon 860k

I would say the extra two cores and much larger cache (14MB vs 4MB) should tip the scales ever so slightly towards the FX-6300.

Especially if you decide and manage to buy a second hand, the value will be outstanding!

Plus you can always overclock and the FX-6300 is very popular, so there will be plenty of manuals, if you need.

[Bonebreaker777]

Cancelled the Athlon 860k in time, thanks Bonebreaker for spotting that mistake
hmm the FX-6300 looks nice, wonder how it compares to the athlon 860k

Don't mention it. Everybody would have done it, I was just simply faster (or not sound asleep yet)

[scaryjim]

The FX-6300 will be slower in lightly threaded tasks - older architecture (Piledriver v. erm ... Steamroller in Kaveri?) and lower base clock speed. The extra cache will make up for a bit of that, and obviously having the extra cores will mean it flies in multi-threaded workloads, which more games are moving towards ....

BUT

.... DX11 is still ultimately reliant on single-threaded performance, as it does most of the rendering work in a single thread. So for a lot of current games, that lower single-thread performance on the 6300 will actually have an impact. Both Mantle and DX12 will remove that reliance on single thread performance, but I don't think either of them will be available on a 5770, which I believe is the GPU you were talking about using? Or is this now an upgrade for your build with your spare parts going to her? Think you need to make that decision first.

TBH, the way the CPU scene's looking at the minute I'd be more inclined to get a processor to upgrade your rig and give your sister your Phenom II, mobo and RAM. The FX 6300, 6350, and 8320 are all great buys; if you're overclocking then the 6350 is probably an unnecessary extra expense (I'd be surprised if there's a 6300 out there that won't do another 400MHz), but it might be worth considering the step up to the 8320 (although it's a biggish one) as you simply can't add extra cores to a CPU once you've bought it...

[Bonebreaker777]

The FX-6300 will be slower in lightly threaded tasks - older architecture (Piledriver v. erm ... Steamroller in Kaveri?) and lower base clock speed. The extra cache will make up for a bit of that, and obviously having the extra cores will mean it flies in multi-threaded workloads, which more games are moving towards ....

BUT

.... DX11 is still ultimately reliant on single-threaded performance, as it does most of the rendering work in a single thread. So for a lot of current games, that lower single-thread performance on the 6300 will actually have an impact. Both Mantle and DX12 will remove that reliance on single thread performance, but I don't think either of them will be available on a 5770, which I believe is the GPU you were talking about using? Or is this now an upgrade for your build with your spare parts going to her? Think you need to make that decision first.

TBH, the way the CPU scene's looking at the minute I'd be more inclined to get a processor to upgrade your rig and give your sister your Phenom II, mobo and RAM. The FX 6300, 6350, and 8320 are all great buys; if you're overclocking then the 6350 is probably an unnecessary extra expense (I'd be surprised if there's a 6300 out there that won't do another 400MHz), but it might be worth considering the step up to the 8320 (although it's a biggish one) as you simply can't add extra cores to a CPU once you've bought it...

Suggest to wait for the FX-8310? (whenever that may be available for the masses).

Followed up Jim's advice about [Piledriver vs Steamroller]. Same clock, Richland vs Kaveri. Not sure how much is understandable from the article, but at the same frequency the architectural differences can be either minimal or quite enormous. One thing is sure, the Kaveri/Steamroller is always ahead.

EDIT: Secrets of Steamroller, Kaveri Versus Richland: A Performance Per Clock Comparison

[Iron Sights]

well it turns out my brother had the athlon x2, so she will be getting that. When this phenom starts to show its age in my games I will probabily look into upgrading to the fx series, thanks once again for the help guys

[Iron Sights]

I'm worried that the current no brand case will not give enough cooling especially as she will eventually inherit my HD7850 and phenom II 965 when I upgrade.
Any ideas on a decent case, £35 ish, nothing above £40!

Cooler Master Elite 430- seems to get good reviews
NZXT Source 210 Elite White Case- another good contender

[Pob255]

Corsair Carbide SPEC http://www.scan.co.uk/products/corsa...g-case-w-o-psu
Zalman Z5 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/zalma...t-fans-w-o-psu
Zalman z3 plus http://www.scan.co.uk/products/zalma...-panel-w-o-psu
coolermaster n300 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/coole...e-case-w-o-psu

sliverston rl04 looks decent http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...ior-and-usb-30

[Iron Sights]

while it may not be the prettiest case the zalman z3 plus really does seem to have a lot of features and fans too for the price, I dont know much about the build quality, will have to read further into this

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Bitfenix Neo and Comrade are worth a look:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/produc...age=2#prodlist

Its a shame the Merc Alpha is not available anymore from Amazon.