Budget cpu/mobo

A

andrus

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 13, 2007
Messages
362
So my mobo bit the dust and instead of buying an old 775 board I figured I would get a new cpu as well. Budget is very limited (want to spend as little as possible) so I'm looking at the following options at the moment

$100 FX4100
$80 ASRock 970 Extreme3

$120 i3-2120
$87 ASRock Z68 PRO3 Gen3
or
$80 ($60ar) MSI H67A-G43

(prices from amazon so I don't have to pay tax/shipping)

People seem to recommend the i3 especially for gaming but it seems to me that after OCing, fx4100 would be comparable for gaming + have the 2 additional cores so I'm unsure what would be the better option. Going with intel would also probably give me a better cpu upgrade path for the future but would a mobo like the 2 I've listed be able to overclock say an ivy bridge i5 very well? If not I guess I'd be better off just getting a cheaper mATX board... On that note, if I decided to go AMD, would it be worth paying the extra $30 for the mobo I've listed instead of a $50 matx board (ie http://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-GeFo...ie=UTF8&qid=1340225090&sr=1-1&keywords=am3+)?
 
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andrus said:
Ah I looked through the microcenter ads earlier but I missed the free mobo deal. I actually don't live by a MC but I guess I could get a friend to buy and mail it to me :D. Would this mobo be able to OC the fx4100 a decent amount? (it's this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128504)
Click to expand...

Not sure, I saw a reviews on newegg saying it would but I would take those with a grain of salt. Maybe a fellow [H]er has one and knows.
 
I have seen a few Phenom II 940-955-965 as of late that were just about that same price, and clock for clock are faster then the fx4100 and generally will also clock up the same if not better(and use less power/less heat) its worth taking a look, the 955BE is a great cpu for its cost(yeh I know for a bit more you can get intel and its WAY faster yada yada yada, im not arguing anything, just pointing out) the Phenom II 960t is also a great cpu and still available, on average with a decent board the fx4100 940-955-965 and 960t will all clock up the same 4.0-4.3, for the clocks, the Phenom II are just faster then the FX, real world wise, they are all decently fast, the Phenom II are just slightly faster for "most" things even at a slightly lower clock.

Also, to each thier own, I have had 3 freinds this year alone 2 of them had asrock boards crap shoots 4 times in row, then they got the boaard I am using, and 1 went from a crap msi board 3 times, to the lower end model of what I use, no issues with any of them, sometimes its worth saving the $, sometimes its well, not worth it :)
 
Please answer the following questions:
What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
What PSU will you be using?
What RAM will you be buying/uing?
What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? eSATA? Onboard video? UEFI? etc.

andrus said:
People seem to recommend the i3 especially for gaming but it seems to me that after OCing, fx4100 would be comparable for gaming + have the 2 additional cores so I'm unsure what would be the better option. Going with intel would also probably give me a better cpu upgrade path for the future but would a mobo like the 2 I've listed be able to overclock say an ivy bridge i5 very well? If not I guess I'd be better off just getting a cheaper mATX board... On that note, if I decided to go AMD, would it be worth paying the extra $30 for the mobo I've listed instead of a $50 matx board (ie http://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-GeFo...ie=UTF8&qid=1340225090&sr=1-1&keywords=am3+)?
Click to expand...

Here's the problem with your logic: You would need a more expensive mobo and maybe a 3rd party HSF in order to OC the FX4100 well. If you live in a warm/hot place, have crappy case cooling, don't have a 3rd party HSF, or are unlucky in that your CPU requires more voltage, that also affects just how high of an OC you can obtain. So there's a bunch of other factors involved. So all the extra costs (3rd party HSF, more expensive mobo) that just mentioned could have gone towards an actual Core i5 2400 for $180 shipped from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-i5-2400...8&qid=1340235964&sr=8-2&keywords=Core+i5+2300

So even if you don't OC that Core i5 2400, it's still gonna be faster than most AMD CPUs even if heavily OC'd. In order for an AMD setup to be cost-competive, it must offer the same performance as the Core i3 without costing more than a Core i3 setup.

As for the AsRock mobo you selected for the Intel build, I would not get it based on this HardOCP review:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/12/07/asrock_z68_pro3_lga_1155_motherboard_review/

In order to overclock on an Intel platform with a Core i5 or Core i7 CPU, you need a mobo based on the Z68 and Z77 chipset. I wouldn't recommend P67 since they tend to be really old mobos. The MSI mobo you chose isn't really that great.

However if you want AMD, stick to mobos with AMD chipsets as AMD mobos with NVidia chipsets tend to be slower and less reliable than their AMD counterparts. so that Gigabyte AMD mobo you chose is not a good choice.
 
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For AMD I would recomend an ASUS 970/990x/990FX based board, they are a bit more pricey then some offered by gigabyte or MSI but they are also excellent boards, and in my opinion as well as many reviewers, well worth the slight cost increase vs thier competition(in the same performance bracket)
M5A97, M5A970 EVO, M5A99X, M5A99X EVO(the one I use), 990FX sabertooth

Danny has really good points there, the i3 is a faster chip, so you would have to clock the 4100 up to equal, probably will not do that well on the stock hsf, so add another $35 or so for a decent cooler, you are now getting into the pricier intel cpu territory. It is always a hard call, always

btw fx4100 is not a "quad" core, suffice it to say that it is "more then" a dual core, but not quite a true quad core either. Hence my recomend of Phenom II 940/955/965 or 960t which are true quad cores, or what danny was saying, may cost a bit more, but an i5 2400 is also a quad core(the i5 2xxx range are all quite good, and ar eknown to be very decent overclockers, you pay more and get more with intel, for the most part, AMD you have to be picky lol)

Nvidia may do good gpu, but thier motherboards passed thier prime years ago, better to get a AMD 900 series based chipset OR for Intel the mentioned Z68 Z77, even some of the P67 are quite good, but as mentioned older as well.
 
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