Been a while since I've been here. Last I remember I was modding a PC in 2005 and posting some pictures of it. Well, that old, rusty vessel is about to be decommissioned, so I'm building a new PC. What's the word on AMD CPUs these days? I remember around the time when the Core 2 Duo's came out the dominance of AMD amongst gamers was broken and Intel had the upper hand for a while. I am asking because I want to build a new machine for less than $500 and I am struggling with the CPU/mobo combo because I've been out of the loop for a while. This is mostly a family PC, but every once in a while my dad likes to play Battlefield 2 and my sister plays Sims 3. I can salvage a SATA disk and a DVD drive, so I am looking for a CPU/mobo/GFX combo. PSU and RAM shouldn't be too difficult to pick out. I was thinking about getting a 9600 or HD4770/Hd4850 for the graphics card, but even that might be overkill for the kinds of games they play. The budget is somewhere between 400-500 for a the whole PC, but without a monitor/DVD drive and potentially SATA disk. Thanks guys.
Any of... AMD Phenom II X2 550 3.1Ghz Black Edition (Dual Core) ~ £78 or AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8Ghz Black Edition (Triple Core) ~ £106 Or the Intel Alternative Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6ghz 2MB (Dual Core) ~ £54 or Intel Core 2 Duo E7400 2.8ghz 3MB (Dual Core) ~ £90 Any of those will be more than ample and all are massively overclockable (Intel: with the right board) Do you want an ATX or mATX board? And Yes Ram Just 4gb of DDR2 800 HD4770 sounds like a good choice too, but steer away from the 9600 rather go for a GTS 250.
Below is a budget PC that I have put together according to the best of my knowledge. I am based in Germany so these are euro prices. Intel E5200 (CPU only) 64,95 € Zalman CPU cooler 32,95 € Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L 64,95 € 4gB RAM MUSHKIN CL5 44,95 € 500GB Samsung 53,95 € Asus Case 35,95 € 512MB HD4650 Sapphire 52,95 € Windows Vista Home Prem 32bit 107,95 € +PSU ~40 Total = €500 At a local big box store I can get a "Siemens/Fujitsu Amilo PI 3630" PC which includes Intel quad Q8300 4gB RAM 640gB SATA Nvidia 9600GT +all the peripherals (integrated sound, DVD burner, vista home premium, mouse, keyboard etc.) Total= €444 Now talk some sense into me. For €66 less I can get a better, high end processor, a marginally better GFX card a bigger HD and the peace of mind that everything is compatible. I have always been a PC enthusiast, and believe in the merits of building a PC yourself, but I'm not sure I can beat this (especially if it's just supposed to be a family PC). Obviously, they didn't specify the brands of the components, and probably for a good reason, but I'll go find out tomorrow.
I personally would go for the Radeon 4770 if you can find any lying around , that should be able to cope with older games like BF2 maxed out at resolutions up to 1680*1050 . As for CPU/board combination then there's advantages to both AMD and Intel ; with the right board you can potential turn your dual core Phenom II x2 into a quad if the board has the right ACC firmware.The E5200 has been hitting some very high clock speeds , 4ghz and is very overclockable - I'd personally go for the AMD build as I'm a bit unsure about some of the cheaper Intel boards.
