(Help) I want a new CPU and motherboard

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Steel-ATX-Mid-Tower-Chassis-Computer-Case-/140632344827#ht_1653wt_1185

I like this one, and it's affordable too.

 

Seems fine and the reviews aren't really that bad
http://www.amazon.com/Astraeus-Towe...iewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

I don't understand the lowest review. He didn't notice the "mid-atx" in the title?

One thing I dislike is the lack of fans. My PC can get hot when rendering HD video and the fans really help.

This one only has 2 of the small ones (loud as hell) and one on the side.

 

Yeah in this day of age any case that doesn't at least hold a 120mm fan in the rear is crap. Serious crap. You can find something better for a few bucks more.

As for the CPU and mobo yeah it should be fine. Any mobo these days will have at least 1 full-sized (x16) PCI-e slot for your video card so no worries there. It doesn't even matter if the slot is technically not x16 lanes (electronically it could be 8x or 4x etc) or PCI-e 2.0 (or 2.1) it will always work. If it fits it will work pretty much when it comes to PCI-e.

So a Core i7 Quad and Core i7 Hexacore both cost $1000 in NZ? That makes no sense. Yes the Core i7 Hexacore here in NA is about $1000 (or at least when they came out) but the quad cores are only like $300. Why would the Intel Core i7 Quad and Hex both be the same price?

Look as much as I like AMD (I run a PII x4) I don't see the point in recommending Bulldozer to your average home user. You can talk about bang for the buck all you want but we all know that for the average home user doing what the average home user does, the Bulldozer gets beat %90 of the time by chips (from both Intel and AMD) that cost much less. AMD isn't always the best bang for the buck and in terms of Bulldozer we all know a Core i5 2500K quad core will mop the floor with it and it costs LESS! That once again is doing the things the average home user is doing. Not unzipping a million zip files at once or rendering 1,000 HTML5 pages in a second. The FX line shouldn't even have been advertised towards home users it should have been for the server market alone.

Now as far as the AMD holding the overclocking world record. That's great but why should the average home user in the market for a new CPU care about that? No offense but those numbers don't mean jack. They disable most of the chip to get those numbers. So are you going to be running a 8GHZ chip at home? No. Is the OP going to be running a 8GHz chip at home? No. No one here is going to be running a 8GHz chip at home. So telling someone to buy an AMD chip to use at home, because AMD holds the overclocking record is pointless. True or not. It doesn't matter and it's not a selling point at all.

The OP is on a budget so the AMD PII x4 and motherboard he is looking at makes perfect sense for him. Bulldozer makes absolutely no sense. If you aren't on a budget or you simply want the best raw performance than you go Intel.

 

Intel 2500k or any AMD thats x4 and over, if i was building a system at this current moment to last a few years id use the 2500k with any gigabyte board. heavy considering it my self as my motherboard is on its way out cant fault the x6 phenon i had for the last 2 years though

 

I was on a tight budget as well. I got this for 190 euro:

AMD FX Series FX-4100
ASRock 970 Extreme3 AMD 970
8 gig 1333 ram

I had a spare ati hd 4850 (some pimped model, dont know with more right now).

I play battlefield 3 on ultra settings on a 55 inch full hd screen. Its all good, fps never drop under 35 fps. Thats all I need and it kicks ass.

My brother in law on the other hand got a bought a pc for 1k with a i7, ssd, and a 300 euro graphics card. He also play battlefield 3. It looks great, too. But there in no real difference in my opinion.

My conclusion:
If you want to play this generation games, a pc with my specs is fine. If you want a pc that MIGHT last for some generations, then get top of the line stuff

I would of never thought of buying a AMD, especailly after looking a benchmarks. Fuck benchmarks. Simple as that. As stated above, battlefield runs fine. I can recommend an AMD FX 4100.

 

Generally for most people Benchmarks are pointless. Just get whatever you want and you can afford. Nothing wrong with AMD for budget gaming CPU. I mean who really cares if someone gets Y amount of points in some benchmark while I only get X amount. Unless you're trying to pump enough data to run two GTX580's in SLi (or better) you don't really need more CPU power for games. But if you're running like two GTX590's on an AMD quad core you aren't going to push all those GPU's to the limit. So you're wasting those expensive video cards. Than you buy the best CPU out there! But then again if you can afford two $700+ video cards you can afford an Intel Core i7 2700k or w.e. But those kind of ultra setups are beyond necessary IMHO. No one "needs" that!

That said I still run a 4870 and have a real hard time believing you can run BF3 on Ultra settings in HD and get perfectly smooth game play. By Ultra High do you mean no AA, no AF, DX9 (not DX10 or DX11) and 1280x720 res? Because to me Ultra High means DX11 and 1920 x 1080 and my card would struggle at that big time. Running any game from the past year in DX10, let alone DX11 (can't run DX11 on 4850/4870 anyway) and 1080 is too much for my card.

 

Many people need that, If you're outputting 1080p AVCHD videos as a profession and something you make money from professionally, you can't spend time looking at a bar going up.

 

The 8 core FX series is a rip off (for most people) but the 4100 doesn't look bad. I mean a 3.6GHz Quad Core with Turbo Core and they go for as little as $110. Sure the PII x4 980 beats it in most games BUT remember this is still WAY cheaper than a 980 or the hexacores. I haven't looked into the benchmarks and TPU specs too much yet, but it doesn't look bad. I mean at $110-120 I doubt it's bad at all.

 

So I finally decided to buy this Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Computer Case. Bought this on Black Friday for $42, free shipping. I hope this is the case that I need for my new motherboard. =)

 

That should be fine, Mid-ATX and lots of nice big fans for good cooling.:thumbsup:

 

Wow yeah man that case looks MUCH better than the other one you had picked out. Basically any ATX motherboard should fit into any ATX mid tower case unless it's some special EATX motherboard that's beyond normal ATX sizes. So really you have nothing to worry about as far as your motherboard fitting into that case goes.

 

I hate to harp on, but you aren't using that same Bestec power supply are you? I aren't overstating when I say bestec power supplies were dangerous.

Numerous articles here

These ARE motherboard killers.
One I had from an eMachines PC manufactured around 2002 was rated for 250w but It couldn't put that out on a good day.

It had a crap 5v standby circuit, caps would go bad after a while (They used the caps that were manufactured with the stolen & incomplete recipe (Google capacitor plague for more info) and it would jump from 5v to 12v and blow just about everything connected to the power supply.

 

Yeah I've heard a few people say that. Something about bad 5 volt rails shorting out or just bad regulation on the 5v would kill the motherboard. I've certainly seen a lot of dead motherboards in systems with these PSUs so it sounds very plausable.

Anyway, I must have missed the fact this was the PSU that you had and you planned to re-use it. If you are I have to say... DON'T DO IT! You put your big 4850 on that Bestec you're going to kill something. I garuntee it and you'll be lucky if you only kill the PSU. There's a good chance it will damage or shorten the life of your motherboard and or video card. Repalce it with something decent.

 

I replaced it long ago, gentleman...

I'm just gonna pretend I didn't say what my new PSU is again. =P

 

Well, I have been waiting to buy great RAM at an affordable price and I need money. I'm selling PC parts to make ends meet, and I hope you find something here that you'd find of use to yourself.

I'm selling a used Samsung 512MB PC2-5300U DDR2 SDRAM 240 pin RAM stick in good condition.



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Micron Brand 128MB x 2 RAM DDR PC 2700 333MHz CL2.5. They are both in good used condition.



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I'm asking $30 for a used Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 80GB 3.5" Internal Hard Drive that I'm selling. I'm open to offers.

 

If you're going to do rendering, you should look into a 64-bit system.

I was trying to render something on my 32-bit Quad-Core and the software would just crash.

Tried it on a 64-bit system, and it worked perfectly fine.

 

I've been using Vegas on 32bit systems for about four years now and I have yet to have one crash that wasn't because of poor specs and consequently it crashing because I had stuff using up the CPU/RAM. (Used to get infrequent crashes on a Laptop with a pentium D and 512mb Ram.)

 

I finally build the PC I wanted, and so far I'm very satisfied with what I put together now! I want to thank everyone for the suggestions and help that you've all given.

If you're curious, these are my current specs.

 

Just pointing out, but this is a copycat of this topic.

 

It's the same person