Help choose AMD AM3+ Motherboard bundle. ideally up to £200

isotonic_uk · 23 March 2015 at 2:30PM

Hi Folks

My PC of nearly 8 years is finally going down the pan, its an old Pentium Dual Core D830 which I custom built. I am having a few issues with Hard drives continuously dropping out of the OS even though I have tested the disks which are all ok, blue screen of deaths etc. I have even reinstalled from scratch the OS.

I now am looking to purchase a motherboard CPU and memory bundle so I can rip the old kit out and freshen it up a bit. I don't want to spend too much as I only use the PC for internet and work which may comprise of me logging onto the corporate VPN but also I may want to run some test virtual machines using VMware workstation for R&D purposes and have very limited requirements for gaming, the only game I will probably play is via Steam and that is Counter Strike Source.

So I have been looking at a few options and because I dont want to spend loads, I think the AMD option would be the route to go for my budget.

This is what I have specced so far:

AMD FX-6300 6 core Socket AM3+ processor
8GB 1866Mhz DDR3 CL10 HyperX Fury White Memory
Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 990x Socket AM3+ ATX Motherboard

This is coming around £235 mark which is really a bit more than I want to spend, want to keep it to about £200 if I can.

I have the case, 3 Hard drives which includes 1 SSD, 500W PSU and a PCI-E graphics card which I plan to reuse with the new bundle.

As I dont reall keep in the know with PCs, I just wanted to get others opinions on this, ideally if there is anything out there for around £200 that could be better or same of what I specced that would be ideal. I have concentrated my efforts looking at Novatech, Amazon, Ebay, Scan, Aria and ebuyer for the parts. I can built the bundle myself also and dont need it prebuilt, if that will save some cash..which I think it will.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. I been looking at second hand good via ebay, would these come recommended?

Thanks

Cisco001 · 23 March 2015 at 3:22PM

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£74.89 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£51.00 @ Aria PC)
Memory: Kingston Fury White Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£52.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £178.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 14:22 GMT+0000

To save money, get AMD 970 chipset.

Or get more expensive 990FX for its function. I don't see the point having 990X as it is not cheaper than 990FX

Fightsback · 23 March 2015 at 6:08PM

You can buy a

Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 4GB Xeon E3-1225 v3 3.2GHz Tower Server

This has a 450w psu

For £219 after cashback

http://www.ebuyer.com/623350-lenovo-thinkserver-ts140-4gb-xeon-e3-1225-v3-3-2ghz-tower-server-70a5000kuk

The offer ends 31st Mar 2015

It's a really good deal, don't hang around. Sell off your other bits on gumtree and put the money towards this.

A Xeon 1225V3 CPU alone will set you back £185.76 Inc VAT from Scan.

prost · 23 March 2015 at 10:39PM

If you need more memory here's 8Gb ddr3 RAM (for AMD-processor motherboards) from Hong Kong at £36 including post:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-8GB-DDR3-PC3-12800-DDR3-1600Mhz-240pin-DIMM-Desktop-For-AMD-Chipset-Memory-/281417376743?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item4185c863e7

I've ordered several memory modules from Kong Kong vendors before and they've arrived within 2-3 weeks. They work well.

There's a 3-core that uses 95W for £20 (with a cpu score of 2500):
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-Athlon-II-X3-ADX435WFK32GI-2-9GHz-Socket-AM2-AM3-CPU/221703156462?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D29952%26meid%3Def376cbf6536468fa259509f46c14d16%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D6%26mehot%3Dlo%26sd%3D381199840067&rt=nc

This £26 95W 3-core scores 3000:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-Phenom-II-X3-B75-3-GHz-triple-core-HDXB75WFK3DGM-CPU-Processor-Socket-AM3/251577540243?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D29952%26meid%3Dfcdcc447514e4968a77b10ff307c75d7%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D251666868087&rt=nc

This £35 95W 4-core scores 3000:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-ATHLON-II-620-2600-MHz-QUAD-CORE-SOCKET-AM2-AM3-CPU-ADX620WFK42GI-/201310998963?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2edf1211b3

This £13 65W 2-core has a cpu score of 1660:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-Athlon-II-X2-B22-2-8GHz-Processor-2800MHz-AM2-AM3-/191514978984?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item2c972eaaa8

This £20 45W 3-core scores 2100:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-Athlon-II-X3-405E-2-3GHz-AD405EHDK32GM-Triple-Core-CPU-Socket-AM3-667MHz/251666868087?_trksid=p2054897.c100204.m3164&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20140407115239%26meid%3D0fe723be49334e1087e541309aa38ff1%26pid%3D100204%26rk%3D6%26rkt%3D21%26sd%3D151491124660

The 45W will save you a lot of money each year in electricity costs as normally they use 65 or 95W.

I currently need a cpu with a 500 score in my modern Linux system. You won't need anything faster than a 2100-score cpu for a long time so why not save electricity costs for the next 30 years? I worked out that the difference between a 45 & 65W cpu is £10/year for my PC that's on 12 hours a day.

You can always safely overclock it a little too.

http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/CPUs/AMD/index.html
has information on the AMD cpu's.

www.Acrtic.ac make quiet cpu fans. Sold at amazon, ebay.

When applying the heatsink compound let it cover the whole surface thinly.

Also, there's a £40 65W 4-core scoring 3100:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/AMD-Phenom-II-X4-905E-2-5GHz-Socket-AM3-6MB-Quad-Core-65W-Ship-from-UK-/400750403626?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item5d4e95e02a

(The FX-6300 is 95W & scores 6300.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php
shows performances of laptop & desktop processors.)

I don't use CAD or video-editing software so for me the software taking up the most processing power are the web browsers. The software of the operating system hardly uses anything. Apart from certain games & video editing there's very little software that makes use of multi-core CPUs. So as long as you have at least a dual core the justification of the extra expense in having more cores isn't as great. The Chrome, Internet Explorer 8+ & Opera browsers make use of multi-core CPUs but not Firefox. So, pick the right browser & your 2100-scoring dual core should last you decades.

In a few years people will only use 64-bit operating systems so that adds to the speed too. So, your next Windows operating system should be 64 bit & not 32. Your old 32-bit software will still work, however.

Kendall80 · 24 March 2015 at 12:45AM

I run a similar AMD based system here. I'd suggest pushing for the 8 core if you can.

Main reason I posted though is that you are upgrading components but keeping the 500W power supply. I don't know the particulars of your system but you may want to check that 500 is enough for now and for future upgrades/overclocks. There are various online sites that can do this for you if you enter your system details.

bingo_bango · 24 March 2015 at 1:48PM

Cisco001 wrote: »

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor (£74.89 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£51.00 @ Aria PC)
Memory: Kingston Fury White Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£52.99 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £178.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-03-23 14:22 GMT+0000

To save money, get AMD 970 chipset.

Or get more expensive 990FX for its function. I don't see the point having 990X as it is not cheaper than 990FX

I'm running this mobo with the FX6300 Black edition (runs @4.1Ghz out of the box) and 8Gb of G-Skill Ripjaws RAM. No flakiness whatsoever from any of them after 5 months of use.

2 things to bear in mind though. The processor rail on this Mobo will only deliver a maximum 95w (which the FX6300 uses all of), so upgrades may be tough later on.

As the processor will be using 20% of the PSU supply, do you have enough for everything else in a 500w supply?

Cisco001 · 24 March 2015 at 1:59PM

bingo_bango wrote: »

2 things to bear in mind though. The processor rail on this Mobo will only deliver a maximum 95w (which the FX6300 uses all of), so upgrades may be tough later on.

Where does Gigabyte say it only support 95W CPU???

bingo_bango · 24 March 2015 at 2:20PM

Gigabyte don't tell you that. They'll tell you it will support 125w CPU families.

What they will not say is that above 100w the coil whine makes the system pretty unusable. But hey, this is the internet so why believe anything you read from people who have used the system?

OP, Cisco has caught me out in a lie. I suggest you now disregard anything further I say as obviously only the manufacturer tells the truth and you should trust them :cool:

Scott_T · 25 March 2015 at 6:22AM

No manufacturer tell the truth ....thats fact figures are distorted for sales ....truth only comes out in consumer testing

Anyway

If you want to go cheap ....you could get the intel pentium aniversary dual core with hyper threading gives seudo quad core on socket 1150 platform for about £110-125 G3258k ..cpu £54.38 the £60-70 can buy a half decent mother board with future upgradability add minimum 8gb(always buy fastest type you can afford for future reuse) and away you go

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-pentium-k-anniversary-g3258-s1150-haswell-dual-core-32ghz-oc-up-to-45ghz-5-gt-s-dmi-32x-ratio-?utm_source=google+shopping&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=CIfxv9PfwsQCFbLLtAodUnwANQ

Personaly i like multicore AMD chips better but recommending that for convienience

If you plan on reusing your ssd and more so pci-e graphics card then the AMD Fm2 platform isnt going to be much use .... If you really want to save buy second hand , personally i dont as would rather know the history of the things i buy

imatt · 25 March 2015 at 2:29PM

Is not buying an AMD AM3+ platform not buying into a dead end, a technological cul-de-sac if you will. It looks like AM3+ is no longer going to have any future.

Best going with a good AMD socket FM2+ along with an suitable CPU such as X4 860k to be honest

Or an Intel Z97 board with perhaps a Pentium G258 overclocked to 4GHz+. Then you could upgrade to a more powerful core i5 5XXX later on. Something I'm toying with myself.

P.S. The G3258 is dual core only. No hyper threading at all I'm afraid. If it did, it'd kill i3 sales stone dead.

isotonic_uk · 9 April 2015 at 3:11PM

Hi

bit of an update on this one.... I still been looking around and havent brought one yet :-(

I have decided to go with Socket 1150 Model supporting Haswell

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/ftwTRB

Intel Core i3-4160 3.6GHz Dual-Core Processor
Gigabyte GA-Z97P-D3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Corsair 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory

Also would I need to purchase a CPU cooler or doesnt the processor come with one included?

If I need to purchase one I am thinking of the

Zalman CNPS 7500 AlCu LED Ball Bearing CPU Cooler

This comes in around £212 which I am happy to go with.

On the PSU question, I brought a 550W PSU about 3 years ago and would prefer to use that. Its a Winpower ATX-550L PSU HEC WinPower Win 550UB PSU Review - PCSTATS.com. Would this be compatible with the gigabyte board I am about to buy. On my current board which is an ASUS P5ND2-SLI socket 775 board I believe it uses the 20 pin plus 4 pin.

With the new components I plan to install some existing kit, this will consist of:

1 X SATA DVD/RW Drive
1 X 120GB SSD
2 X 750GB HDD
1 X PCI-16 GT8600 Graphics

Any additional advice would be greatly appreciated especially whether I can get away with buying the CPU cooler.

Thanks

Help choose AMD AM3+ Motherboard bundle. ideally up to £200

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