Mobo/CPU Combo Deals

[Galant]

Hi Hexus,

I'm on the look out for a good deal on a CPU//Mobo combo. If anyone knows of any good places for deals, or any deals themselves and could point me in the right direction I'd appreciate it.

I'm looking for the most bang for the buck under £300, preferably between £200-£250 if possible. I don't mind whether it's AMD or Intel.


Thanks!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What do you need to use it for and do you need an IGP?

[Galant]

Normal household use - maybe some light gaming for the kids. I have an old Radeon HD 5770 lying around so I could make use of that if compatible.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I suspect an HD5770 might be faster than a modern IGP,but I would suspect drivers will be a bit techy nowadays due to its pre-GCN uarch.

AWD-IT do some bundles. This one is for a Ryzen 3 3100 and a basic B450 motherboard:
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/amd-ryzen-3...pu-bundle.html

I wouldn't really overclock on it,but it should work OK at stock. It will come pre-assembled. You could spend more on a better B450 motherboard or a B550 motherboard if you want more features,and better support for higher core count CPUs.

You could then try the HD5770 and see if it works OK,or find a RX570 for around £100~£125(providing you have an OK PSU):
https://www.cclonline.com/product/29...-Card/VGA5684/

If you need something low power,an RX550 is around £70ish:
https://www.cclonline.com/product/25...uputs/VGA4165/

Sometimes refurb GPUs do pop up on Ebay,which are better deals IMHO.

You will need to add some DDR4 - you can get some reasonable DDR4 RAM for around £60ish:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-Fury...948080&sr=8-11
https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/gsk...ermany-3513317

[Galant]

Thanks.

Good point about the RAM. It had some with it but I've just checked and it had 8GB HyperX DDR3.
Power isn't an issue, it's got a new 900W PSU! It belonged to a friend who had power issues. Turned out to be a mobo issue but now it has a new PSU sitting in it.

[Galant]

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/amd-ryzen-7...pu-bundle.html

That looks pretty darn good for about £250 with 8GB RAM - https://www.awd-it.co.uk/amd-ryzen-7...pu-bundle.html

Or even https://www.awd-it.co.uk/amd-ryzen-5...pu-bundle.html

Or this is pushing it but Scan have got - https://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...essor-w-wraith

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I saw some of those,but tend to not like motherboards lacking VRM heatsinks. WRT to the Ryzen 5 3600 bundle,you could probably get a B550 motherboard with the same CPU for similar money.

[Galant]

Just did a little digging on that Ryzen 3 3100 because I'm not that familiar with the AMD lines and it looks to be surprisingly good. Based on price I thought it might be a bit on the low end, but apparently not!

And AWD will add 8GB DDR4 for £34.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Just did a little digging on that Ryzen 3 3100 because I'm not that familiar with the AMD lines and it looks to be surprisingly good. Based on price I thought it might be a bit on the low end, but apparently not!

And AWD will add 8GB DDR4 for £34.

Ryzen does best with dual channel RAM,and it ideally needs to be at least 3000MHZ.

[DanceswithUnix]

Like Cat, I do like a heatsink on my VRMs. Not convinced at the bundle "deals", just buying what you want seems to be about the same price.

£74.60 Mobo: https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASRock-B450...dp/B07FVYKFXF/
£161 CPU: https://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-Ryzen-3...dp/B07STGGQ18/

The 3600 seems to be the current sweet spot. I've now got two of them, possibly becoming an addiction But frankly, for light gaming and general computing you can't really go wrong. I've played the likes of Elite Dangerous in an Oculus Rift on an old 2200G and it maxed out but it was playable. A 3100, whilst not ideal for gaming, should be faster than that was. The 3300X looks awesome, which is why they are so often out of stock.

So, best bang for buck I would go 3600 on a B450 motherboard with the 16GB DDR 3200 ram that Cat linked above. I was looking at ram yesterday, interesting to see Cat came up with the same link I did so I'm fairly confident that is about as good as you are going to get. Slower ram actually seemed more expensive, and only getting 8GB isn't half the price.

If you want to go cheaper, get the 3100 on a B450 and the 16GB. The gaming benchmarks aren't as good, but they are still results we would have paid hundreds for not many years ago.

[scaryjim]

It's hard to get 'good' comparative benchmarks for hardware that far apart in generations, but my gut feeling - which appears borne out by what benchmarks I could google up - is that the IGP in a Ryzen 3400G will be faster than the 5770 - it roughly matches an RX 550. In which case that £199 Ryzen 5 3400G bundle from AWD-IT looks pretty solid to me. Make sure you get nice fast RAM to go with it to get the best from the IGP.

As CAT said earlier, the biggest issue with the 5770 is that it lacks driver support: the last fully supported driver for it is five years old tomorrow, and the absolute latest driver is a beta from 2016. If you're building a new computer, why would you choose a GPU that's been out of mainstream support for five years?

EDIT: just for context, techpowerup put the Vega 8 IGP (from the Ryzen 3 APUs) level with a 5770 and the Vega 11 in the 3400G almost 25% faster, based on gaming perfomance at 1080p.

[DanceswithUnix]

, why would you choose a GPU that's been out of mainstream support for five years?

Looking just at the GPU specs I would totally agree, and almost said that above. But what held me back was the step down from Zen2 to Zen+. If we were discussing a 4300G then it would be a slam dunk for the APU, except so far I haven't seen evidence of 4300G being able to run on a cheap B450 board, being reasonable cost or available soon so I couldn't suggest waiting for that. So the 3400G is a really nice chip overall, almost as fast as a 3100 so you are paying about £35 and a slight performance drop for the built in GPU. But if that £35 were put towards a new GPU or the upgrade from 8GB of slow ram to 16GB of the nice stuff?

But as I said, if it really is for light computing work then you can't really go wrong. Even the Athlon 3000G surprised me with how usable it was on web pages etc for a £50 chip including graphics. They will all do the job, just which path is optimal isn't clear.

[Galant]

Appreciate all the insight guys.

In terms of the mobos - they're basic but between the ASROCK and Gigabyte boards listed, is there anything to distinguish them, be it brand reliability or features?

ASROCK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASRock-B450...7FVYKFXF/?th=1

Gigabyte - https://www.awd-it.co.uk/gigabyte-b4...ocket-am4.html

Thanks.

[maxime69000]

It's a good deal Asrock

[DanceswithUnix]

I don't think there is a huge amount between them. The Asrock board has the extra heatsink on the VRM phases that you would be working harder if you use an APU like the 3400G, how important that is depends on how good the case airflow is and whether you intend running an APU. The Asrock VRM seems to have more phases, but that doesn't guarantee it being actually better.

The Asrock has two M.2 SSD slots, where I have yet to use more than one in a PC but possibly nice for the future.

The Asrock has a pair of USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports that can do 10Gb/s, vs the Gigabyte has 5Gp/s gen 1 ports.

I don't like the Gigabyte PCIe layout. A wide 2.5 slot heatsink graphics card would knock out all three PCIe slots, whereas the Asrock puts a x1 connector above the graphics card.

So the Asrock is the better board, it is just whether those features are of interest to you.

Edit: But at this price point, £10 is quite a percentage, and both will work.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Another alternative is the MSI B450M PRO-VDH MAX which has BIOS flashback too,but it lacks a heatsink on the SOC VRM.