[HELP] on Building new PC which is better for money? Which CPU?

[secret1337]

Hello Tom's Hardware!

As on the title says I am planning to build a new PC, with a tight budget, (can't say the £.XXX for now)

for processors I am thinking what I should buy for

*Price
*Performance
*Low Energy consumption
*Temperature ( Because I dont wanna fry eggs on my MB )
*Good in processing games,video editing etc etc...


Processors

AMD FX-4170 4-cores @ 4.2GHz

or

AMD FX-6200 6-cores @ 3.8GHz

or

Intel i3-2120 2-cores @ 3.30GHz (I am confused with intel i3 because my brother has an i3-540 and it has 4cores running at 3.01Ghz, 4 cores!) [ is intel i3 Quadcore?]

or

Intel i5-2500K 4-cores @ 3.30GHz

[ TELL ME GUYS WHAT IS YOUR SUGGESTION FOR ME ? ]



Motherboard:
ASUS AM3+ SABERTOOTH 990FX for AMD

and

Asus Maximus IV GENE-Z Motherboard for Intel



RAM:
G.Skill RipjawsZ 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800 C9 1600Mhz Quad Channel Kit


PSU:
A 600watts 80+ PSU

Hard Drive:
Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SATA 6Gb/s SSD

Graphics Card:
Nvidia 560ti 1gb




Give me your best shot guys.


AMD or Intel? for performance, money, and long lasting computing.

*Please no flamewars for AMD and Intel

 

[mocchan]

Stick with Intel, they're better price/performance wise over the new AMD-FX chips. I use AMD myself, and personally a big fan of their P2 chips, but FX...just no.

Wattage seems fine for the PSU, what brands/models are you looking at so far?

Also, to answer your question about the i3, your brother's i3 is also a Dual Core chip. The i3's have Hyperthreading technology that allows 1 core to run 2 threads (So 2 cores, 4 threads, that's why it looks like your brother has 4 cores). Just for future reference - i3 = 2 cores, 4 threads (Hyperthreading). i5 = 4 cores, 4 threads (no hyperthreading), i7 = 4 cores, 8 threads (hyperthreading).

 

[secret1337]

Stick with Intel, they're better price/performance wise over the new AMD-FX chips. I use AMD myself, and personally a big fan of their P2 chips, but FX...just no.

Wattage seems fine for the PSU, what brands/models are you looking at so far?

as long as it will be cheap but great for gaming that will be able to run games at ultra.

because I have seen some reviews with amd FX-6200 and the FX-4170, they have played well at BF3, but I heard that they consume alot of electricity, as well the temperature is high too,

I will be using Corsair H100 watercooling kit, but I still wanna buy a good processor that will last for 4years.


and for PSU I will get either OCZ or Corsair , and for motherboards I want some cheap ones that is good for overclocking. I wont be using any SLI, just a single video card.

 

[secret1337]

addition, about I3-540, i have looked in my brother's pc, at device manager it has 4-cores, task mananger 4-cores, I am really confused with it.

 

[mocchan]

as long as it will be cheap but great for gaming that will be able to run games at ultra.

because I have seen some reviews with amd FX-6200 and the FX-4170, they have played well at BF3, but I heard that they consume alot of electricity, as well the temperature is high too,

I will be using Corsair H100 watercooling kit, but I still wanna buy a good processor that will last for 4years.


and for PSU I will get either OCZ or Corsair , and for motherboards I want some cheap ones that is good for overclocking. I wont be using any SLI, just a single video card.

Good choices for PSU, though steer more towards the Corsair side :lol:

For low power consumption, definitely the 2500k, I hear Bulldozer chips are massive eaters of electricity...

As for motherboards, I'm not too knowledgeable for Intel boards, so you might want to wait until some other people start rolling onto this thread Don't want to link you something bad

Ah right, as for you saying "last 4 years", Ivy bridge is just around the corner, you might want to wait for that for 'futureproofing' but the i5 2500k is a great chip nontheless. I personally built my friend a system a month ago that had a Z68 board, i5 2500k, and Gtx 560 Ti (almost identical to yours )

 

[mocchan]

i3 540 : http://ark.intel.com/products/46473/Intel-Core-i3-540-Processor-%284M-Cache-3_06-GHz%29

i3 2120 : http://ark.intel.com/products/53426/Intel-Core-i3-2120-Processor-%283M-Cache-3_30-GHz%29

 

[secret1337]

I just can't decide wether to pick asus gen-z or the asrock cuz asrock is kinda cheaper, but I dont know about its overclocking potential, as well i am trying to balance the budget for motherboard+cpu at £200 below.. since I really dont wanna spend something huge and will just be wasted over nothing.

 

[mocchan]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157271
The friend I mentioned in an earlier post, preferred to get this motherboard. She currently has her i5 @ 4.4ghz 24/7 with no problems

 

[secret1337]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157271
The friend I mentioned in an earlier post, preferred to get this motherboard. She currently has her i5 @ 4.4ghz 24/7 with no problems

so asrock is good for money?
whats the difference of the asrock z68 xtreme3 and asus gen-z?

 

[mocchan]

Yeah, in my opinion Asrock is good for the money. Though the main differences will probably be the features that both provide. Look at them on newegg (or the site of your preference) and get the one with better features, OR the one with features you would like to have.

 

[secret1337]

alright Thank you, but i still can't decide which processor I should buy and a cheap motherboard,

 

[mocchan]

No problem I'll look around the webs for you and get back to ya. See what options you have for your budget...since the Intel CPU alone will break your budget of 200.

 

[secret1337]

I will go for an ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 Intel Z68 will cost £100 and yea intel i5- will break the budget.

 

[mocchan]

Yeah, unfortunately you might go over-budget for this build, and that's how it was like for my friends build as well. I think we were around 100-150 dollars over budget in the end...but on the bright side, it'll last you a heck of a long time that's what I would like to think.

Of course, if you really prefer to stick with your £200 budget for Mobo+CPU, I found these : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131767
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727

It won't be the fastest, but it'll be plenty for you to play something like BF3 (955 is almost identical to the 965, look at my siggy ) As long as you get an aftermarket cooler (Hyper212 won't run you that much, and it's plenty much to overclock, btw. Save some money from the H100).

But of course, in the end you make the choice. I'm just here to make suggestions Good luck!

 

[secret1337]

Yeah, unfortunately you might go over-budget for this build, and that's how it was like for my friends build as well. I think we were around 100-150 dollars over budget in the end...but on the bright side, it'll last you a heck of a long time that's what I would like to think.

Of course, if you really prefer to stick with your £200 budget for Mobo+CPU, I found these : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131767
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727

It won't be the fastest, but it'll be plenty for you to play something like BF3 (955 is almost identical to the 965, look at my siggy ) As long as you get an aftermarket cooler (Hyper212 won't run you that much, and it's plenty much to overclock, btw. Save some money from the H100).

But of course, in the end you make the choice. I'm just here to make suggestions Good luck!

Thank you so much Mocchan!

 

[mocchan]

Thank you so much Mocchan!

You're very welcome Glad to be of help.