Suggestions for MicroATX AMD Build

[dreamfordaylight]

Greetings all,
I'm looking to build a microATX gaming PC. I've been happy with AMD products for the past 10 years or so, but I'm not opposed to Intel. I'm really looking to get out the door with a good gaming PC under $1000. Here is what I've come up with:
[PCPartPicker part list](http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kCzwD3) / [Price breakdown by merchant](http://pcpartpicker.com/p/kCzwD3/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [AMD A10-7850K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-ad785kxbjabox) | $179.99 @ Newegg
**CPU Cooler** | [Cooler Master Hyper TX3 54.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rr910htx3g1) | $16.98 @ Newegg
**Motherboard** | [Asus A78M-E Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-a78me) | $52.00 @ NCIX US
**Memory** | [G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f314900cl9d8gbsr) | $84.99 @ Newegg
**Storage** | [Western Digital Se 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd1002f9yz) | $79.99 @ NCIX US
**Video Card** | [PowerColor Radeon R9 270X 2GB PCS+ Video Card](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/powercolor-video-card-axr9270x2gbd5ppdhe) | $169.99 @ Newegg
**Case** | [Thermaltake Urban S1 MicroATX Mini Tower Case](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/thermaltake-case-ca1a800m1nn00) | $39.26 @ NCIX US
**Power Supply** | [Rosewill Capstone 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/rosewill-power-supply-capstone550m) | $79.99 @ Amazon
**Operating System** | [Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit)](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/microsoft-os-wn700615) | $89.98 @ OutletPC
| | **Total**
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | $775.17
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-21 21:02 EDT-0400 |

I'd appreciate your suggestions. Also, I currently have this powersupply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371015

Do you all think I could continue using this PSU? Not sure about the cord management, which is why I was thinking modular. Thanks in advance.

 

[tiny voices]

This is a poor idea. YOu are using an APU (low end CPU with good built in graphics designed for no-GPU builds)

By using a GPU with an APU, you are defeating the purpose of the chip and just forcing yourself to use a mediocre CPU.

I recommend an i5 build for the money.

 

[dreamfordaylight]

Thanks for that info. What if I made these changes?
[PCPartPicker part list](http://pcpartpicker.com/p/fR4QwP) / [Price breakdown by merchant](http://pcpartpicker.com/p/fR4QwP/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-fd8350frhkbox) | $169.99 @ Amazon
**CPU Cooler** | [Cooler Master Hyper TX3 54.8 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/cooler-master-cpu-cooler-rr910htx3g1) | $16.98 @ Newegg
**Motherboard** | [Asus M5A78L-M LX PLUS Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-m5a78lmlxplus) | $44.98 @ OutletPC
**Memory** | [G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f314900cl9d8gbsr) | $84.99 @ Newegg
**Storage** | [Western Digital Se 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/western-digital-internal-hard-drive-wd1002f9yz) | $79.99 @ NCIX US
**Video Card** | [PowerColor Radeon R9 270X 2GB PCS+ Video Card](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/powercolor-video-card-axr9270x2gbd5ppdhe) | $169.99 @ Newegg
**Case** | [Thermaltake Urban S1 MicroATX Mini Tower Case](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/thermaltake-case-ca1a800m1nn00) | $50.98 @ Newegg
**Power Supply** | [Rosewill Capstone 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/rosewill-power-supply-capstone550m) | $79.99 @ Amazon
**Operating System** | [Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit)](http://pcpartpicker.com/part/microsoft-os-wn700615) | $89.98 @ OutletPC
| | **Total**
| Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available | $774.87
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-21 21:48 EDT-0400 |

 

[tiny voices]

That motherboard is low end and not very good for the build. Look for a 970 chipset board.

Otherwise it is a good board.

 

[dreamfordaylight]

I can't seem to find any micro ATX 970 chipset boards on Newegg.

 

[tiny voices]

There are not any. AMD makes no good mATX boards. They really are not meant for mATX.

 

[dreamfordaylight]

Is the one I posted above as good as it is going to get for mATX?

 

[tiny voices]

Yes it is. it will work fine for no overclocking the CPU.

 

[Outlander_04]

There are no worthwhile m-ATX boars for AMD FX processors .

There are good options for quadcore A seies processors now the new architecture is available as an unlocked Athlon 860K

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/xkRXMp
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/xkRXMp/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor ($84.00 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Antec KUHLER H2O 650 Liquid CPU Cooler ($64.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Asus A78M-E Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard ($52.00 @ NCIX US)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($56.98 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon R9 270X 2GB PCS+ Video Card ($169.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Thermaltake Urban S1 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($50.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Rosewill Capstone 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.98 @ OutletPC)
Total: $720.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-22 00:19 EDT-0400

is a tweak of the original build , costs less , performs the same .

If you changed case , and ditched the water cooler you can even get a more powerful graphics card

 

[mdocod]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($106.02 @ Amazon)
Overclock this to ~4.4ghz or better. Gaming performance will be comparable to an i5-4440S, power dissipation will be triple. An overclocked FX-6300 is a viable and cost effective, albeit less practical alternative to a locked i5 bridge or haswell for gaming. The novelty of overclocking the FX makes up for some of the impracticality.

CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS9900MAX-R CPU Cooler ($49.04 @ Amazon)
There are many others to choose from but this has the advantage of generally not interfering with RAM installation and comes with a really nice unique look. Performance of this cooler is impressive as well.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($62.60 @ Amazon)
Most AM3+ micro boards are junk. This is one of the few exceptions. In fact, the BIOS, albeit "old school," has all the power-user overclocking features necessary and the heatsunk VRMs on this board can indeed provide enough power to get most FX-6300s to ~4.4-4.7+ghz (Depending on your luck of the draw on CPU binning).

Memory: Mushkin Redline 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($82.99 @ Newegg)
In my experience and testing, FX-6300s hit peak memory access performance with a good dual channel dual rank kit with speeds in the 1866-2133 range and tightest possible timings. Aiming for higher speeds is not particularly useful. Having 2 ranks per channel is especially important for rank interleave, a function you will not take advantage of unless the kit is configured 2x64 bit ranks per dimm, not all 4GB dimms are configured dual rank. Many popular g.skill dimms are NOT dual rank, and will perform up to 10% worse than a ballistix/redline/blackline of similar speeds/timings. This mushkin kit (micron parts) is an ideal match to help eek out the best possible performance from an FX chip.

Storage: Crucial MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($111.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($56.99 @ Micro Center)

Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX Video Card ($339.99 @ Amazon)
Unless you anticipate playing all Mantle games, an nvidia GPU is actually a better match to an AMD CPU, as the nvidia DX11 drivers are better optimized for parallelism and have less compute overhead in general. In fact, if you were to compare an overclocked FX-6300 with a kepler or maxwell based GPU in a compute intensive DX11 game, to an i5-4690 with an "equal" GCN architecture GPU in compute intensive DX11 games, the "gap" of performance normally produced by the more powerful i5 will actually dissolve as the FX chip has less work to do running the Nvidia GPU than the i5 will have to do to run the AMD GPU. The best way to help bridge the performance gap of the FX chip, is to pair it with an Nvidia GPU, (ironic eh?).

The GTX970 sort of fits the budget, assuming your budget doesn't need other peripherals, but I should make it clear that this is a bit of an overkill GPU unless you have a 1440P monitor. At 1080P this GPU won't really be able to stretch it's legs, as it will pretty consistently run up against the limits of the CPU or the limits of the monitor refresh rate (assuming 60hz). If you are gaming at 1080P, a more cost effective GTX760 is a good fallback at ~$200-250.

Case: Fractal Design Arc Mini R2 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($99.99 @ Amazon)
A Fantastic microATX case. I really like Fractal Design cases. Though to be honest, there are great alternatives from Corsair, Coolermaster, and Silverstone to consider. This is obviously very much a personal taste thing. Check out the Sugo SG10 for an interesting alternative.

Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Amazon)
You could technically squeeze by on a 450W for this system, but for only $20 more you can have this modular seasonic that has nice black cables and plenty of headroom for system changes and more aggressive overclocking. These are really nicely made PSUs for the money.

Total: $989.60
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-09-22 00:34 EDT-0400

 

[dreamfordaylight]

Thanks for the great suggestions. I'm getting the impression that I would be best served using an intel i5 as oppsed to the AMD. Should I kick in some extra money for the i5?

 

[Outlander_04]

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant




Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($62.60 @ Amazon)
Most AM3+ micro boards are junk. This is one of the few exceptions. In fact, the BIOS, albeit "old school," has all the power-user overclocking features necessary and the heatsunk VRMs on this board can indeed provide enough power to get most FX-6300s to ~4.4-4.7+ghz (Depending on your luck of the draw on CPU binning).

Fabulous improvement that it has heatsinks at all, BUT the boards 125 watt thermal limit will be challenged by an FX 6300 running faster than the 125 watt TDP FX 6350 . 3.9 Ghz , maybe 4.0 Ghz is probably a practical limit for a board like that if you want it to last

Getting RAM to 1333 MHz is an overclock too . The board officially supports 1066 Mhz . The BIOS may be incapable of getting RAM to the 1866 MHz speed you have in your build

And of course only the 9XX chipsets support the full range of power saving profiles for FX processors .

 

[Brunostako]

Thanks for the great suggestions. I'm getting the impression that I would be best served using an intel i5 as oppsed to the AMD. Should I kick in some extra money for the i5?

When talking about pure gaming, the hardware really depends on what resolution and graphics quality you want to achieve.

If you're happy playing minecraft at 720p, why spend on a i7 extreme and a R9 295x2?

What do want? 1080p mid-high settings.

 

[mdocod]

If you are drawn to a particular solution (intel or amd) for whatever reasons of novelty or subjective desire, then you should probably fullfill that desire otherwise you probably won't be happy with the outcome no matter how good it is. If you can strip things down to nothing but rational considerations, the i5 is the most practical way to achieve high end performance in real-time workloads. An i5-4690K on a Z97 board with some overclocking pretty well defines the high end of gaming CPU performance, (i7's rarely offer much if any useful performance scaling in gaming beyond the overclocked i5).

-------------

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant




Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($62.60 @ Amazon)
Most AM3+ micro boards are junk. This is one of the few exceptions. In fact, the BIOS, albeit "old school," has all the power-user overclocking features necessary and the heatsunk VRMs on this board can indeed provide enough power to get most FX-6300s to ~4.4-4.7+ghz (Depending on your luck of the draw on CPU binning).

Fabulous improvement that it has heatsinks at all, BUT the boards 125 watt thermal limit will be challenged by an FX 6300 running faster than the 125 watt TDP FX 6350 . 3.9 Ghz , maybe 4.0 Ghz is probably a practical limit for a board like that if you want it to last

Getting RAM to 1333 MHz is an overclock too . The board officially supports 1066 Mhz . The BIOS may be incapable of getting RAM to the 1866 MHz speed you have in your build

And of course only the 9XX chipsets support the full range of power saving profiles for FX processors .

You seem to have a misunderstanding about the way these TDP ratings are used. The "125W" rating of a chip, or a board, has more to do with socket specifications for current limits and thermal density issues than the actual "wattage" of anything.

The FX-8350 draws more power than an FX-6350, even though they are both "125W" envelope chips. The Gigabyte motherboard I am suggesting has been successfully used by overclockers to achieve 150-175+W power levels on CPUs without problems. 4.4ghz on a decent bin FX-6300 can actually be comparable in power dissipation to some FX-8350 at stock clocks.

As someone who has ACTUALLY BUILT on the motherboard I am suggesting, I can tell you that the board supports memory multipliers all the way up to 2400MT/s.

As someone who has both built on this board, and who runs every build I make on a kill-a-watt for the sake of testing/troubleshooting/comparing, I can tell you that the GA-78LMT-USB3 is very reasonably power friendly compared to other AM3+ socket boards and appears to support all of the same cool/quiet, C1E/C6 power states I am familiar with from 990 and 970 chipset boards. Don't be fooled by the old 760 chipset on this board.

 

[Brunostako]

This is the build i usually suggest (1080p mid-high), is more about the parts than the price (these are from newegg, you may find the parts in other webs):

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K - $92
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113379&ignorebbr=1
MoBo: MSI A88XM-E45 FM2+ - $77
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130745&ignorebbr=1
RAM: Team Vulcan 8GB Kit (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz CL9 - $69
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313344&ignorebbr=1
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM - $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148840&ignorebbr=1
SSD: ADATA Premier Pro SP920 128GB - $76 (optional)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211863&ignorebbr=1
GPU: Gigabyte Windforce 2 R7 265 2GB GDDR5 256-bit - $156
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125514
PSU: EVGA 600B 80+ Bronze 600W - $60
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438014&ignorebbr=1
Case (meh!): DIYPC M88-BK Black - $31
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811353043&ignorebbr=1

TOTAL (including shippings and SSD, not including OS nor optical drive): $621