Cheap test machine - questions (pertaining to CPU)

[ZacB]

Hi, now this is for a completely temporary build so don't start screaming straight away at the parts but i'm planning on building an extremely cheap (£170) machine to

a) See if i screw up as i don't want to buy an i5 or exepencive GPU only to have messed something up somewhere else
b) To then upgrade if i can get it functioning...

The parts i've got so far is a mATX board on socket 1155 (so i can upgrade to an i3 / i5 when the time comes) ASRock H61M-VG3

- mATX compatable case, Fractal Design Core 1000

- cheap PSU (I know CIT aren't very reputable and i'd upgrade this along with a GPU and / or CPU in the same instance. CiT 480W 12cm Silent Fan Dual Rail Power Supply

and Corsair 2 x 2GB Ram (To be upgraded also...)

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So my real question with that in mind is if i get the Celeron G530 as a test CPU how quickly would this bottleneck a GPU if i were to decide to upgrade that first and not buy a good CPU at the same time? (to note i don't plan for this to be an ultimately cheap machine and will eventually be investing heavily into the CPU and GPU + anything else that needs upgrading!)

Thanks for any help and ill be happy to clarify on anything that might be a bit murky in detail!

 

[JOOK-D]

Honestly, I'd wait until you can afford a proper rig rather than taking these little steps. These steps will deduct from the overall budget you could have to build a killer rig in the future. There's no point getting a bad quality PSU in any case, if that goes it takes out everything else along with it.

If you are dead set on this, then yes an old CPU would bottleneck a modern GPU.

 

[USAFRet]

So basically you're building two systems.

For your upgrade:
New CPU
New GPU
New PSU
More RAM
You'll want a new motherboard to match the new CPU. Yes, that one is socket compatible, but it is lacking in features.

So...except for the case and drives...that's all the parts of a completely new system.
I would think of building this cheap one, and then look to building a whole new, more powerful, system. Keep this one for an HTPC or something.

 

[Gaidax]

Well for one, since the said motherboard has only 2 DIMM slots, you should take 1x4GB ram - one stick of 4GB ram... this way when you would want to add more (you WILL) - you could simply buy another stick and not replace everything.

Also I would suggest to look for socket 1150 motherboard to begin with, it gives you a better upgrade path in the future both with current Haswells being better (especially considering you won't be overclocking with budget board) and also because there is a chance that Broadwell will still be supported with the current socket 1150 motherboards.

It also comes with better goodies built-in like more USB3 and SATA3 ports, more future proofing.