New PC Build

[tomwright366]

Hey, I'm 14 years old and I'm building my first ever PC and was wondering if these components would be suitable for my gaming needs. Please let me know if there's anything you think I should change as I have plenty of time to make changes!

The CPU will be an AMD FX 8350, and I think this will be good for overclocking and will have good enough performance for the money I'm paying for this.

The motherboard will be a ASRock 970 Extreme3 R2.0 and I think this will be ok because it has AM3+ sockets and has a maximum capability of 64GB of RAM.

The ram I've chosen is Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB of ram and this has a cas latency of 9 which was mainly the reason I chose it, I'm told this doesn't really matter.

The GPU I have chosen is a MSI Radeon R9 285 2GB Video card and I have watched a lot of vids about this and it can play nearly all games max settings at 1080p which I'm happy about and the price isn't really much of a problem.

The other parts don't really matter right now, but thanks in advance

 

[Bryan Choi]

what games do you play?

 

[Onus]

According to https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgN1D79Joo7tdE9xMUFlMEVWeFhuckJEVF9aMmtpUFE&gid=2 your motherboard is suitable, but will throttle with the 8-core FX.
Any budget that supports a FX-8350 and a good-enough motherboard for it, will support an Intel build that is likely to be stronger, particularly in games. Which CPU/motherboard to get will depend in part on your interest in overclocking.
The other parts you will choose definitely do matter, particularly the PSU. Decent quality is absolutely required for the long term health and stability of any system. Something like a 550W XFX or Rosewill Capstone or Seasonic "G" would be all be good.

 

[tomwright366]

My budget is £500, I live in the UK and I play BF4, all the cod's and lots of sport games like FIFA and NBA. Pretty much any FPS or sports games.

 

[tomwright366]

According to https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgN1D79Joo7tdE9xMUFlMEVWeFhuckJEVF9aMmtpUFE&gid=2 your motherboard is suitable, but will throttle with the 8-core FX.
Any budget that supports a FX-8350 and a good-enough motherboard for it, will support an Intel build that is likely to be stronger, particularly in games. Which CPU/motherboard to get will depend in part on your interest in overclocking.
The other parts you will choose definitely do matter, particularly the PSU. Decent quality is absolutely required for the long term health and stability of any system. Something like a 550W XFX or Rosewill Capstone or Seasonic "G" would be all be good.

I know, I have a 600W corsair bronze certified PSU I said it didn't matter because I couldn't be bothered typing it down because no matter what pc i get, this will probably be the PSU I'll be getting.

 

[Bryan Choi]

i would have to agree with onus, intel just does things better when it comes to cpus. the gpu you have will have no problem killing it in bf4 bit I would expect some lower that 60 fps on some maps.

 

[tomwright366]

i would have to agree with onus, intel just does things better when it comes to cpus. the gpu you have will have no problem killing it in bf4 bit I would expect some lower that 60 fps on some maps.

I would have to downgrade other components too be able to stay within my budget of £500 wouldn't I?

 

[Onus]

Hmmm, it looks like he already has the PSU. Any chance of bumping the mobo up to a H97 or even B85? The H81 boards are pretty sparse.

 

[tomwright366]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£143.94 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81M-HD3 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£46.39 @ Aria PC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£54.98 @ Novatech)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£38.34 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 280X 3GB TWIN FROZR Video Card (£169.99 @ Novatech)
Case: Zalman Z3 Plus ATX Mid Tower Case (£26.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: XFX 550W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£49.13 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £529.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-02 18:13 BST+0100

I've literally just made that PC xD, thanks anyway bro.

 

[tomwright366]

Hmmm, it looks like he already has the PSU. Any chance of bumping the mobo up to a H97 or even B85? The H81 boards are pretty sparse.

Wouldn't a Z97 mobo be better?

 

[Onus]

For overclocking, yes; you'd also need an unlocked ("K") CPU. Otherwise, the H97 has a wealth of features, including USB3.0, plenty of SATA 6Gb/s ports, and RAID support.

 

[tomwright366]

For overclocking, yes; you'd also need an unlocked ("K") CPU. Otherwise, the H97 has a wealth of features, including USB3.0, plenty of SATA 6Gb/s ports, and RAID support.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I want to overclock. But the cheapest i5 that is eligible of overclocking is the 4690k.. and with the budget I have I can't get that. Also I can't get a i3 because most games struggle on dual core CPU's.

 

[Bryan Choi]

its hard to find a computer that needs more than two cores..... i would consider an i3 or if you can save up a bit

 

[tomwright366]

its hard to find a computer that needs more than two cores..... i would consider an i3 or if you can save up a bit

What about the i5 4460 and a nvidia gpu?
But if I did get a AMD CPU and a radeon GPU I could have mantle which increases the fps and has the same architecture.

 

[Bryan Choi]

mantle isnt gonna mean crap in a bit (imo it was overhyped). direct x12 is mantle except nvidia will support it. the 4460 will do great but i thought you wanted to overclock?

 

[Bryan Choi]

the one problem i have with amd's gpus is no with the gpus but with the drivers that are updated once every turn of the century and dont work half the time.

 

[tomwright366]

I fixed it

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£143.94 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: ASRock H97 PRO4 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£70.76 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£54.98 @ Novatech)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£38.34 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 280X 3GB TWIN FROZR Video Card (£169.99 @ Novatech)
Case: Zalman Z3 Plus ATX Mid Tower Case (£26.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £505.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-02 18:28 BST+0100

That actually would be good. However, shouldn't I get a Nvidia GPU?

 

[tomwright366]

the one problem i have with amd's gpus is no with the gpus but with the drivers that are updated once every turn of the century and dont work half the time.

haha, true xD

 

[Onus]

The i3 is dual core, but it is hyperthreaded, so it can run 4 threads, just like a quad-core. If you start with that, you can then begin saving money for an upgrade later (if you even need it).

 

[tomwright366]

mantle isnt gonna mean crap in a bit (imo it was overhyped). direct x12 is mantle except nvidia will support it. the 4460 will do great but i thought you wanted to overclock?

I did but I guess it's not necessary.

 

[tomwright366]

I would get Nvidia if you are worried about your power bill, otherwise AMD is better as it has better performance😛rice

ahh, ok haha.

 

[tomwright366]

The i3 is dual core, but it is hyperthreaded, so it can run 4 threads, just like a quad-core. If you start with that, you can then begin saving money for an upgrade later (if you even need it).

To be honest after I build this I probably won't be upgrading for a long time, maybe GPU but not the CPU so It's best if i get this for now imo.

 

[Bryan Choi]

looking at onus' builds i agree with the way theyre set up. I wouldnt be so set on the i5 because with dx12 you wont need as good of a cpu because instead of the cpu sending small messages to the gpu the cpu will be sending large packets of data which would require less overall cpu power.

 

[tomwright366]

looking at onus' builds i agree with the way theyre set up. I wouldnt be so set on the i5 because with dx12 you wont need as good of a cpu because instead of the cpu sending small messages to the gpu the cpu will be sending large packets of data which would require less overall cpu power.

True. Anyways thanks for your help, it means a lot as this is my first ever mid range PC build.

 

[Onus]

Both companies have had driver issues. The most recent seem to have been AMD's, but I believe most problems have been fixed. With consoles moving to AMD GPUs, it is possible that near-term new game releases may be better optimized for AMD hardware. Consider that speculation, however, until benchmarks come out.
I'm not a fanboy of either one; until recently I was running all AMD cards, and I am currently running all nVidia; driver issues did not play a role in the switch.