£500 budget Haswell M-ATX

[Elkie]

Hi guys,

I'm just speccing a new machine, getting a bit confused by this Haswell compatibility business! I just wondered if you guys would be so kind as to have a look over this build and let me know if there's anything I have overlooked, or anything where there would be a better option. Looking to spend about £500, this comes to £504.05 (I already have a mATX case and optical drive).

CPU: Intel Core i5 4570 3.20GHz Socket 1150 6MB Cache -£162.12

MoBo: MSI B85M-G43 Socket 1150 -£63.26

RAM: Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600MHz Vengeance Pro Kit -£59.99

HD:WD 1TB 3.5" SATA-III Caviar Green Internal Hard Drive - 64MB Cache -£49.91

SSD: Kingston 60GB SSDNow V300 SSD SATA Rev. 3.0 / 2.5 -£56.62

PSU: Be Quiet Pure Power L8 430W Modular -£50.15


What do you reckon guys? Anything I should change?

Is it just my MoBo, RAM and PSU that need to be specifically Haswell-ready?


Thanks in advance for your help!

[teppic]

You just need to make sure the board and CPU are both socket 1150 (they are). Any modern PSU will work with Haswell, but not all of them will give you the very low power states Haswell supports.

Can you put the prices up?

[Elkie]

Thanks teppic, I have edited to add prices.

I thought it was more complicated than simply matching the socket. I read on Scan that that PSU supports the power states needed for haswell, so should be good to go!

Do I not need to worry about RAM then? To be honest, I chose that RAM as eBuyer recommended it as Haswell compatible - I would much rather get something with a bit lower profile, to ensure I don't have any issue fitting an aftermarket CPU cooler, should the need ever arise.

Thanks for your help!

[teppic]

DDR3 RAM at 1600MHz or better is ok. You can save a bit, e.g.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-BLT2...dp/B005Y8C8JO/

From the CPU/board choice I take it you don't want to overclock at all?

[Elkie]

Ah ok wicked, thanks!

To be honest overclocking isn't really of much interest, I don't game a lot, I will be using the computer predominantly for web design and music production. I have been thinking maybe an i5 is overkill and I would be better off building something with an FM2 AMD chip (A6 or A8) for around £400, then using the rest of my budget towards a nice monitor. I just don't know, there's too many choices haha!

[teppic]

Yup, you may well be better off with an AMD APU in that case.

An A10-5800K is about £95, a decent micro-atx A85x board about £60. For general desktop stuff you wouldn't notice the difference. It'd be good enough for occasional gaming.

I'd also not go with a green drive as it'll be quite slow, they're best as backup/storage drives. You can get a WD Blue for about the same price.

[Elkie]

Hmmm ok, I may well go for an A10 then... Thanks.

Motherboard wise, what would you recommend? I've been looking at the Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-D3H for £63ish, mainly because it offer 4 RAM slots and 8 SATA connectors, but I've heard bad things about Gigabyte motherboards, would this be a poor choice?

Thanks, I'll get a Blue drive instead then, I wasn't aware there was much difference in speed.

Other than that, is there anything else you'd change? Does the SSD look ok?

Thanks a lot for your help, I really appreciate it!

[teppic]

Not a problem.

An A8 would be ok, but you should get the best you can within your budget. Some sellers have Sim City free with the A10-5800K too, which you could sell off.

Gigabyte makes brilliant boards Any Asus or Gigabyte A85x will be fine.

60gb is pretty small, you can find 120gb drives for about £70. It depends on how much space you think you'll need. Any SSD will be quick though.

With this you could get away with a cheaper PSU too. It'd run fine on 350W even. The Be Quiet ones are good but are premium models.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

What packages do you intend to use??

[Elkie]

Ok, after looking at the AMD option, here's my revised spec, including prices and product links:

CPU: AMD A-Series A10 5800K Black Edition FM2 CPU with Heat Sink Fan £96.70
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-a...hz-100w-retail

MoBo: Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-D3H £63.42
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigab...vi-d-hdmi-matx

RAM: Crucial 8GB (2x4GB) DDR 1600Mhz Ballistix Tactical Tracer Orange/Blue Memory Kit CL8 1.5V £55
http://www.ebuyer.com/342451-crucial...1608dt2txobceu

HD: 1TB WD Blue WD10EZEX SATA 6GB/s 7200rpm 64MB Cache £50.87
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-w...-cache-8ms-hdd

SSD: Sandisk 128GB Pulse SSD Slim £74.99
http://www.ebuyer.com/387080-sandisk...dssdp-128g-g25

PSU: Be Quiet Pure Power L8 430W Modular £50.15
http://www.ebuyer.com/283834-be-quie...oductid=283834

This weighs in at £391 total (the total price of the Intel build was off by about £50, for some reason I had 2 PSUs in my basket).

I read the Be Quiet PSUs don't actually fire up the fan at all until they get hot enough to need it, this was one of the reasons I chose it because it's going to stay pretty quiet. Thinking about it, I might look for a quiet CPU cooler than the stock one as well. I don't mind spending a bit on a PSU - I've heard too many horror stories about cheap ones! Is there a 350w you'd recommend? Modular is preferable too as it's going to be a tight squeeze in the case and it will help with airflow too!

[Elkie]

I imagine the most intensive stuff I'll be doing on a regular basis is Photoshop work, a bit of Illustrator and a bit with Ableton Live/Maschine. The rest of the time it'll be pretty low-CPU usage stuff really - building WordPress sites, that sort of thing. The odd game or two here and there, but I'm no serious gamer at all!

[teppic]

I've run an A10-6800K overclocked to 4.7GHz with two drives on a 350W PSU without the slightest problem. A fully loaded system like this isn't likely to be drawing anywhere near 350W. You'd only be talking maybe £20 saving by getting a cheaper one, so get what you're happy with.

AMD's stock cooler isn't very good. There are plenty of good options that are more or less silent when the CPU isn't flat out. My 6800K with a Coolermaster GeminII M4 (£20) was so quiet I genuinely had no idea if it was on or not without looking at the power light.

The APUs are perfect for general desktop work, I couldn't tell the difference between my APU and my Haswell i7 system for things like browsing. You may find that filters in Photoshop etc would run slightly quicker with the Intel build, but if you're talking 10 seconds vs 8 seconds, it doesn't really matter. Plus if you want to play a game now and then, you'd need to buy a graphics card with the Intel build on top.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

IIRC,a number of music orientated packages seem to favour Intel CPUs. With Photoshop,the AMD IGP should be decent for general acceleration,and for light gaming would be faster than the Intel IGP. I would also consider an SSD,to cut down loading times of files.

Edit!!

You could look at the following:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-a...hz-100w-retail
http://www.amazon.co.uk/AsRock-FM2A7...rds=a75+asrock
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMZ8...ds=8gb+1600mhz
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/450w-...n-atx-v231-psu
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-t...rpm-32mb-cache
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/128gb...71000-iops-max

The CPU comes with a copy of SimCity which you can sell on Ebay for around £15 to £25.

AFAIK,the AM3 125W TDP CPU stock cooler should also fit the FM2 motherboard:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CPU-COOLER...item4166eeedda
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-Heatsi...item3cd2dbce04

The total should come to around £350.

There should be enough of the budget left for this monitor:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-Ultrash...ywords=u2312hm

Alternatively go with a low end Core i5. Hence you need to consider how intensive your usage patterns are!

[Elkie]

AH ok, I may look into getting a slightly cheaper one then, thankyou.

The Coolermaster GeminII M4 Looks good, but Scan doesn't list it as compatible with the FM2 socket, only FM1 - is it safe to assume that any CPU cooler for the FM1 socket will also fit FM2? Unfortunately, eBuyer don't seem to stock it and Scan have it on "pre-order". I was tyring to stick to these 2 sites to minimise postage costs, but I may have to branch out!

I wasn't aware that I'd need to buy a graphics card on top of the I5 build - is the IGP of the AMD chip much better than the Intel chip then? This integrated graphics business confuses me!

I have never had any troubles with any music software on AMD computers before, although this could be something worth taking into consideration maybe... Thanks for the info! There's an SSD in both of the lists I posted up, or were you suggesting an SSD in place of the HD for data as well? I'm not sure I can afford a big enough SSD for all the files I'd want to store!

Thanks both!

[teppic]

Also, there's the 6800K - it's about £15 more, a little bit faster and a little more efficient. If you're looking to keep costs down I wouldn't bother, otherwise it's a bit extra performance for not much.

The AMD graphics are leagues ahead of Intel's, there's no contest. Intel's IGP is fine for desktop stuff, it's pretty useless for games.

The GeminII fit perfectly on my FM2 board, so I'd think so, yes

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have edited my previous answer. IMHO,either go with an A8 5600K and a new monitor or probably a Haswell Core i5 if you think you are doing very CPU intensive tasks. The Haswell Core i5 IGPs are not too bad for certain acceleration work,although as a whole the AMD IGPs tend to be more consistent in performance and better for any games.