Very Cheap Upgrade Build...

[Drannon86]

CPU: AMD A6-5400K ($34.99)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3HP ($47.98)
Ram: G.Skill Sniper DDR3 2400MHz with 11-13-13-31 Timing ($39.99)

Above are the items that I ordered to upgrade my computer. I'm currently running a stock HP dx2400. For those who don't know, it has a Pentium Dual-Core E2180, 1GB of DDR2 800MHz, Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 500GB, stock 300W PSU, and of course the case. Having picked it up for $10, I think it was quite a bargain considering the hard drive alone is worth more than the rest of it. As for what I'm doing, I'm just upgrading the essentials today with a budget of $130.

On one side, I can overclock EASILY with a cheaper board or have a harder time overclocking with the Intel. Again, I have somewhat better graphics than Intel but have worse single-core performance than Intel.

Basically, I will be adding another Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM hard drive and an aftermarket cooler that both were from yard sales (I tested them and they are working). Also, I will limit the overclocking of this APU to a stable but safe-ish overclock of what I hope will be 4.0GHz and raise the motherboard's ram speed to 2400MHz. After factoring in all this, will this be better than anything that Intel could of provided me at the same price point of $130? Just remember that I was limited to $130 but I was trying to get everything I needed to upgrade again in about a year to a better APU like an A10-7860K.

 

[BadActor]

Not much better you could have done on that budget other than going to used parts or spending $180.00 dollars for the Intel i3/motherboard/RAM. Your main disadvantage is that you are still stuck with a lower performing system and few upgrade options.

 

[CTurbo]

What is the purpose of this build? Those parts are barely an upgrade over what you had except for the integrated graphics.


This would have been far better



PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Celeron G3900 2.8GHz Dual-Core Processor ($42.18 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($46.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($35.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $125.14
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-09-22 18:14 EDT-0400

 

[Drannon86]

Not much better you could have done on that budget other than going to used parts or spending $180.00 dollars for the Intel i3/motherboard/RAM. Your main disadvantage is that you are still stuck with a lower performing system and few upgrade options.

That's what I was thinking myself. The motherboard is actually used but still in good condition. The processor and ram are brand new. I checked prices of used i3's but nothing was cheap enough unfortunately otherwise that would of been the way I would of went.

 

[Drannon86]

What is the purpose of this build? Those parts are barely an upgrade over what you had except for the integrated graphics.


This would have been far better



PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Celeron G3900 2.8GHz Dual-Core Processor ($42.18 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($46.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($35.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $125.14
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-09-22 18:14 EDT-0400

The reason why I didn't go with that board is because I need a VGA connector but still have the SATA3 ports. Not to mention, there's only 2 ram slots so I would basically be throwing out 2 sticks of ram if I wanted to upgrade to 16GB of ram.

 

[Drannon86]

What is the purpose of this build? Those parts are barely an upgrade over what you had except for the integrated graphics.

The purpose of this build is to have something that's stronger and more capable than what I have in my computer right now. As far as an upgrade, the A6-5400K is about 2x as strong as the E2180. Granted that the G3290 would of been a nice touch, the motherboard that I would of wanted was about another $10- $15 more. I would rather have the 4 slots so I can always add memory if I wanted instead of having to either sell or throw away 2 good sticks of ram just to upgrade to 16GB.

 

[CTurbo]

The A6 is only 25-30% faster than your old Pentium. It's no where near twice as fast. The Celeron g3900 is about 70% faster than the A6. For just $12 more than the g3900, you could get the g4400 which is about 100% faster than the A6.

The A6 + A88X will be useless before you'd need more than 8GB RAM.

 

[Drannon86]

The A6 is only 25-30% faster than your old Pentium. It's no where near twice as fast. The Celeron g3900 is about 70% faster than the A6. For just $12 more than the g3900, you could get the g4400 which is about 100% faster than the A6.

The A6 + A88X will be useless before you'd need more than 8GB RAM.

When I said that the A6-5400K is 2x stronger than the E2180, I was quoting that from this link: http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-Dual-E2180-vs-AMD-A6-5400K-APU/m814vsm4113. You're completely right, I should of gone with the G3900. I never checked the benchmarks on them mainly because I figured that a Celeron wouldn't be beat an overclocked AMD. I was seriously wrong. If the parts weren't already on their way to me already, I would of cancelled and got the G3900 for sure. I wasn't going to pair the A6 with 16GB of ram, that's for when I have a stronger processor. I suppose that the only other reason that I picked an AMD CPU is because you can overclock them and I have 0 experience with overclocking. I know this much, I would be pouting if I fried an expensive processor.

 

[CTurbo]

I would at least try to get a quad core A8/A10 as soon as you can. That will help a lot.