Friend building first PC. Worried CPU will be bottleneck. Thoughts?

[JimmyH]

Best part of my old scratch and dent Dell was that it gave me time to "hot deal" my current rig in sig. CPU & mobo was trip to microcenter in houston. Heatsink dark knight was a $8 special, ps $22 w/ rebate etc etc.. A decent scratch and dent i5 or i7 w/ a video card slickdeal of your choice is nice option. Those dell power supplies stronger than rated. The 6870 recommended 500w ps but the xps w/ 430w ps took the 6870 no problem. It runs to this day w/ overclock on the 6870.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Wow thanks guys.

Should he even consider the Intel G3258?

I had narrowed down boards to

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813130731

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157483


So it was nice to see both of those linked.

No, the Pentium makes no sense. An i3-4130 is much better for gaming at only $30 more. Some games won't even launch on a Pentium. For instance, Far Cry 4 hangs on a black screen if you try to launch it on a Pentium system. If you can get your friend to find just a little extra money the i5 will really be worth it. Also, when you get your board call up the seller and ask if he knows what BIOS is on the board. If it's a new enough one you could get a better Haswell Refresh CPU like an i3-4150, i3-4160, or i5-4460 for not a lot more money. But if your board ships with a really old BIOS you won't be able to use Haswell Refresh, and will need to install an i3-4130 or an i5-4440.

 

[Yuriman]

1155 is the older socket that Sandy Bridge (2nd gen) and Ivy Bridge (3rd gen) Core processors used. Haswell (4th gen) moved to 1150, and if buying new, that's almost certainly what you want.

Haswell i3's can be distinguished from Ivy Bridge in that they will be "i3 4xxx" vs "i3 3xxx". 43xx will have faster integrated graphics, which is probably irrelevant to your friend's uses, while 41xx will be cheaper at the same CPU clock.

Personally, I'd go with the 4160:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117447

It's only $5 more than the 4130 and $2 more than the 4150, and is clocked a bit higher.

Note that as far as non-overclocking chipsets go, you get more features as you go higher up, though performance should be the same. H81 < B85 < H87 < H97. Most (all?) H81 boards will only have two RAM slots, while B85 may have 2 or 4, and may also have a second PCIe 16x slot, if that's important to you at all.

I recently put this board in my wife's computer:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16813157526R

For <$80, you get AC compatible WiFi + bluetooth built in, which costs a minimum of $20 to add later, as well as better onboard audio, more USB3 and SATA 3 ports, etc., so going with something slightly more expensive might be worthwhile.

 

[alyarb]

I would get a used sandy bridge over any AMD part.

 

[soccerballtux]

A G3258 at stock is better in many/most gaming scenarios for less. Overclock it and there's no contest. Regardless, I'd never pair a CPU like that with an R9 290 (unless it was such a good deal the bottleneck wouldn't matter). The R9 280 (or GTX 960) would be a better match.

we've had this discussion many times; it only makes sense NOW. when games get more threaded, we're going to have exactly the same scenario we had back when people were saying to get the Athlon4000+ because "none of the games need more than one core".

At the pricepoint, it makes most sense for the features you get to use a $100 AMD 8-core like the FX-8300 and overclock it. You'll have sufficient single thread performance for 60fps, and you'll have room to scale to multithreaded games or twitch streaming etc.

It doesn't make sense to go Intel until you get into Intel Quad-core (not thread) territory.

 

[Yuriman]

soccerballtux, I politely disagree, and feel that Haswell i3's make perfect sense, and not all FX's will provide 60fps where a Haswell chip will, but agree that an FX-8 isn't a bad choice in that price range. I wouldn't buy a dual core either, but hyperthreading on modern i3's can show gains of up to 50%, and most *gaming* loads won't be evenly distributed over the cores.

 

[Leyawiin]

we've had this discussion many times...

I wasn't necessarily advocating that he get the Pentium. It was more of a question as to why someone would recommend the Athlon 860K than anything. I still wouldn't get an FX regardless. The i3-4160 would be my choice if I couldn't swing another $50-60 for the cheapest i5. At least you'd have a platform for a meaningful upgrade down the road.

 

[kantonburg]

I wasn't necessarily advocating that he get the Pentium. It was more of a question as to why someone would recommend the Athlon 860K than anything. I still wouldn't get an FX regardless. The i3-4160 would be my choice if I couldn't swing another $50-60 for the cheapest i5. At least you'd have a platform for a meaningful upgrade down the road.

After talking with him some I think he's leaning toward the i3-4160. It seems to be the best bang for buck for him and most important a platform where he can grab an i5 or even i7 when it's cheap.

He's still undecided on the GPU though. If he chose the 4160 what would be the point he's be wasting money because the CPU just wouldn't keep up?

 

[Yuriman]

After talking with him some I think he's leaning toward the i3-4160. It seems to be the best bang for buck for him and most important a platform where he can grab an i5 or even i7 when it's cheap.

He's still undecided on the GPU though. If he chose the 4160 what would be the point he's be wasting money because the CPU just wouldn't keep up?

I'd go up to maybe a 290 or 970, at the extreme end, but you'll probably hear several differing opinions. I wouldn't run high-end SLI or Crossfire on an i3, because at that point the extra cost of an i5 is negligible and would probably have greater performance returns.

 

[Ratman6161]

Yes overclocking with AMD is pretty standard. Can anymore recommend an Intel chip and board? Say $200-$230 for both.

edit: See post below

No idea where you live but if you happen to be lucky enough to live near a Microcenter check out here:

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-processor-bundles.aspx

They have a i5-4690K and z97 motherboard combo for as low as $289. That would give you another $300 to go for the rest of the system so you might still come out above the $600 goal but not by a lot. If you have an existing machine you could salvage at least some parts from (like case, power supply, RAM, drives, etc) you could make it.

Or if the $600 is a hard/not to be exceeded limit, they have an i3-4370 = z97 combo for $220.

If even that is too much they have an i3-4160 for $99 and throw in something like an H81 motherboard they have for $55.

As to AMD, I'm not a gamer but about the only place I use AMD these days is for my home and lab servers where I'm running VMWAre ESXi and multiple virtual machines. For most other things you are likely to do, the AMD FX line looks pretty poor even compared to an i3.

 

[kantonburg]

I'd go up to maybe a 290 or 970, at the extreme end, but you'll probably hear several differing opinions. I wouldn't run high-end SLI or Crossfire on an i3, because at that point the extra cost of an i5 is negligible and would probably have greater performance returns.

Yeah SLI or Crossfire is out of the question. I wasn't sure if a 290 or GTX 970 is overkill. Didn't know if dialing back to a 280 or 960 was recommended.

 

[Yuriman]

It's not the CPU:GPU ratio I'd pick, but for someone that primarily games on their PC I think it would be fine to go with a 290 or 970.

 

[kantonburg]

It's not the CPU:GPU ratio I'd pick, but for someone that primarily games on their PC I think it would be fine to go with a 290 or 970.

Just for curiosity what would you pick?

 

[Yuriman]

I decided to go with an i5 because I use my PC for running game / file / voice chat servers, encode, and do work on it with programs like ArcGIS and CAD. I believe my CPU was about $210 at the time (?) and my video card was about $175, so it was close to 1:1 spending. If I were buying again today with the same budget and needs I'd probably end up with something like a Haswell i5 and R280x.

Haswell i3's are practically in a different league than older i3's though, and would probably serve my needs pretty well. Due to improvements in IPC and hyperthreading, a Haswell i3 is close to as fast as a Sandy Bridge i5, which most still consider to be great chips for gaming.

 

[EliteRetard]

If u really want to get your friend the MOST BANG for his buck then it's near impossible beat a Dell XPS 8700 with a coupon or scratch and dent.

*snip*

The refurb Dell idea may actually be pretty good, you can get an i5 system w/ 8GB RAM and the HDD/OS under $400, like this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA4GH2J28852

Add a quality ~500watt PSU for ~$30-35 and you have around $200 left for a GPU. I still vote for an R9 290 around $230 AR...it's just far better than a GTX960 at $200.

 

[kantonburg]

He thought about that but really wants to build from scratch. I understand that too. Sometimes just knowing you did it all is more satisfying.