Improvements on £~550 build.

[iLiftFood]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£74.34 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£82.00 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Kingston Fury Black Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£55.96 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£255.59 @ Aria PC)
Case: BitFenix Comrade ATX Mid Tower Case (£28.79 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£36.98 @ Novatech)
Total: £569.60
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-11 13:40 GMT+0000

Max is £570.

 

[madmatt30]

Dropped to a cheaper board (just as good)
Aftermarket cooler ( you need to get that 6300 up to 4ghz to push the 970)
Dual channel ram (better performance)
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£74.34 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS5X Performa CPU Cooler (£13.24 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£63.54 @ Aria PC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£62.39 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£255.59 @ Aria PC)
Case: BitFenix Comrade ATX Mid Tower Case (£28.79 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£36.98 @ Novatech)
Total: £570.81
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-11 13:57 GMT+0000

If you must have a white case & can squeeze another £10
The z3 plus is a far better case than the bitfenix & has 4 fans+fan controller included.
http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/zalman-case-z3pluswhite

 

[zivlaks]

If i were you, I'd get a bit more money and buy an fx-8350. Games are just now starting to ask it for "recommended requirements". Or at least get a board that will allow you to upgrade it down the line.

imo...

 

[iLiftFood]

I could get a cheaper board and buy an FX-8320 instead.

 

[LucoTF]

For the price of an fx-8xxx and a board that can handle it and an afermarket cooler, you could just buy an i5-4440 and cheap h81 board which would give similar (if not better) performance and run on less power

 

[iLiftFood]

I don't like going for cheap boards due to their limitations when upgrading/trying to max performance (eg max 16GB RAM, no overclocking)

 

[madmatt30]

^ not with a gtx 970 for a £570 budget.

However you're right an 8320 will require a decent cooler to oc & push a gtx970.

Iliftfood - don't go for any other board than the ud3p I suggested - for £63 it is THE am3+ board to buy.
As good as any other 970/990 board on the market apart from it won't do sli.
To push a 970 you need to run an fx chip at 4ghz+
The 6300 will do better at 4ghz with the zalman cooler than the 8320 will do at stock & very close (within 5%) to the 8350 stock in gaming.
Ignore benchmark results.
To run an 8 core you will need a £30 cooler.
To keep in budget that would mean dropping to a 280x or similar.
The 290 is out of the question as you would need to spend another £30 on a better PSU.

The ud3p is not a 'cheap' board.
Its the recommended board for mid range budget am3+ builds.
There are no limitations apart from no sli ( a non entity to you with a gtx970)
& it is not recommended for the fx9*** series CPU's (another nonentity as you can push any of the 6/8 core chips to their absolute limits clockwise with this board).I've personally had an 8320 at 4.8ghz stable on this very board & vrm temps were firmly still in the low 40's.

 

[Fostez]

First, it's better to get 2x4GB of ram cuz dual channel is faster.

With this build you can upgrade your CPU to something better if you decide to.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor (£85.19 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 Anniversary ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£62.06 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Kingston Fury White Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory (£59.72 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£255.59 @ Aria PC)
Case: BitFenix Comrade ATX Mid Tower Case (£28.79 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£46.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £574.28
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-11 14:59 GMT+0000


If you could afford ~610£, i5 would be great choice. This thing will do good too so no worries.

 

[iLiftFood]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor (£103.00 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 LE R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£57.04 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Kingston Fury Black Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£55.96 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£255.59 @ Aria PC)
Case: BitFenix Comrade ATX Mid Tower Case (£28.79 @ Aria PC)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£36.98 @ Novatech)
Total: £573.30
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-01-11 15:26 GMT+0000

Would this build be better? I plan on buying another RAM stick soon hence the reason I'm not going for dual-channel just yet.

 

[zivlaks]

I would get the bronze certified powersupply that Fostez recommended. Also, you can get a 1600mhz RAM if you wanna save money. There is almost no diffference between 1600 and 1866 mhz RAM in games...

 

[iLiftFood]

The 1866MHz RAM is cheaper than any 1600MHz RAM I could find minus the Patriot Signature RAM. I considered either an XFX or Seasonic PSU before, so may go for one.

 

[iLiftFood]

^ not with a gtx 970 for a £570 budget.

However you're right an 8320 will require a decent cooler to oc & push a gtx970.

Iliftfood - don't go for any other board than the ud3p I suggested - for £63 it is THE am3+ board to buy.
As good as any other 970/990 board on the market apart from it won't do sli.
To push a 970 you need to run an fx chip at 4ghz+
The 6300 will do better at 4ghz with the zalman cooler than the 8320 will do at stock & very close (within 5%) to the 8350 stock in gaming.
Ignore benchmark results.
To run an 8 core you will need a £30 cooler.
To keep in budget that would mean dropping to a 280x or similar.
The 290 is out of the question as you would need to spend another £30 on a better PSU.

The ud3p is not a 'cheap' board.
Its the recommended board for mid range budget am3+ builds.
There are no limitations apart from no sli ( a non entity to you with a gtx970)
& it is not recommended for the fx9*** series CPU's (another nonentity as you can push any of the 6/8 core chips to their absolute limits clockwise with this board).I've personally had an 8320 at 4.8ghz stable on this very board & vrm temps were firmly still in the low 40's.

I was referring to the H81 someone recommended when I said "cheap board." Thanks for the advice!

 

[LucoTF]

if youre getting the m5a97 dont get the LE, get the 2.0 or better yet get the evo

or get the gigabyte ud3p already suggested

 

[madmatt30]

^ whs - the le is not a good board ,neither are the asrock pro boards.
The ud3p is an excellent board - put it in your build list & leave it alone mate seriously.
For a tenner more than the Asus LE itsxsn absolute no-brainer.
I'll stress again ,you do need an over clock on the 6300/8320 - its the difference between 60fps solid & drops into the low 50s.
I know this because I run a 6300/gtx 970 rig.
Try and allow a decent cooler into the build - its a pain fitting one down the line as big towers like the evo need motherboard removal to fit.

 

[iLiftFood]

I made that build before reading your previous comment, sorry mate 😛

 

[madmatt30]

BTW - the evga w is the exact same PSU as the bronze - I've pulled the 2 models to bits - same caps,same coils ,same PCB - same PSU ;-) apart from a 80 bronze tag
I can only think it failed 82% under extreme tests & got down rated by EVGA or more likely theyre exactly the same batch with different model numbers to offer 2 different pricepoints to the consumer - this is not a new trick its fairly common.
The evga will run that setup without blinking mate if you're on a tight budget.you won't get the xfx for the partpicker price mate,its around a tenner more.
There are a few benches of the 6300@4ghz with a 970 on my YouTube page.
http://youtube.com/user/MrMadmatty30

You can clearly see GPU usage 95-99% with no CPU bottleneck.

Whole system draw 440w at the plug so around 350w actual system usage.

 

[iLiftFood]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£74.34 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS5X Performa CPU Cooler (£13.24 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£63.54 @ Aria PC)
Memory: Kingston Fury Black Series 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£55.96 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4GB Video Card (£255.59 @ Aria PC)
Case: Zalman Z3 Plus ATX Mid Tower Case (£26.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply (£31.15 @ Aria PC)
Total: £556.75

Based on your advice. (as mentioned previously, I haven't gone for dual channel RAM as I will buy another stick soon.)

 

[iLiftFood]

Using the zalman cooler you recommended, could you exceed 4GHz if you wanted to or does the CPU become unstable.

 

[madmatt30]

I did a build at Xmas with a 6300 using it for a customer- I topped out at 4ghz as that was the max at stock voltage without messing around too much.It was only running a r9 280 so there was no point pushing more.
It hit 54c under stress testing so there's definitely room for pushing a bit more - 4.2 shouldn't be much of a stretch for it - impressed for a £13 cooler though personally.
I'm not a fan of big voltages increases for 2-300 more MHz myself ,temps & power take a big turn upwards for not much more performance.
Every amd build I do I stick an aftermarket cooler on,lose the turbocore which is a useless function & push the highest clock I can on stock voltage.
If you really want to push to the limits a 212 evo is like £26.

 

[madmatt30]

Btw - you won't get the zalman case for the amazon list price - its been out of stock for ages now - its a tenner more at aria but its well worth the money - there's £20 worth of preinstalled fans for starters.

 

[iLiftFood]

Btw - you won't get the zalman case for the amazon list price - its been out of stock for ages now - its a tenner more at aria but its well worth the money - there's £20 worth of preinstalled fans for starters.

By the looks of things a lot of my components are £10-£20 more than what they are listed for. Could be a problem but whatever. Thanks for all the advice!

 

[sora]

Btw - you won't get the zalman case for the amazon list price - its been out of stock for ages now - its a tenner more at aria but its well worth the money - there's £20 worth of preinstalled fans for starters.

You could find it on eBay or something although it would be sketchy.