Hey, So I've been asked by a friend to put together a new build for his son for around £400-500 so he can play BF3 and Far Cry 3 mostly. Budget: £400-500 Main uses of intended build: Gaming Parts required: Everything bar monitor, hoping to try fit in an i3 and a 7850 so that BF3 plays decently. Previous build information (list details of parts): none Monitor resolution: I assume it's 1080p, no idea really on this. Storage requirements: Whatever is in budget maybe like 500GB will you be overclocking: No Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): None, small budget so whatever fits nicely Pretty lost in terms of what to fit in with a low budget build.
Don't write off the new Richland APUs, they're decent and can pair well with an AMD video card. Especially when you're a little more interested in graphics performance than compute performance. You will be very hard pressed to achieve high fps numbers at 1080p with your budget if you're trying to go for ultra graphics. If you turn down the settings in intensive games like BF3 a little, you should be fine though. I think a micro-ATX board/case would be perfect for this . Nice maybe 8GB of memory and a 550-650W PSU... I'm at work right now so I can't research specific parts. If nobody's gotten back to you yet by the time I get home I'll spec something up for you.
Sorry! I forgot about this thread last night >.<''' I know this is no excuse, but please accept my appology . This doesn't really redeem me, but I ran across this article this morning. The guys over at rock, paper, shotgun went and speced up a machine for a little over £500. I don't agree with all the choices (especially note DO NOT skimp like that on the PSU). But it will give you an idea of what kind of hardware you're aiming for. I personally feel like they're streching to try and accomidate an Intel i5 build on that budget. They really should've gone AMD or i3 and spent a little more on the PSU and motherboard. Also, I wouldn't suggest getting an SSD on this budget. Get it as an upgrade for your friend's son one Christmas or something.
You do have a disc drive you can use right? Otherwise you'll need one of those too. Unless... you don't use discs anymore ._. Do we really still need disc drives on computers .-.? That build by noob is pretty much what I was thinking for the most part.
Well the A10 be decent enough for BF3 or would it be worth considering an AMD FX cpu? Need to skimp in something to fit win7 in aswell, which will probably be the HDD to 500GB.
A10 should be decent enough. I wouldn't jump up to FX since that means not only a price increase on the CPU, but also a price increase on the motherboard. Since you just mentioned cutting the budget to allow for OS software, I don't think you can fit an FX anyway.
Been pricing that build above up on scan (for free delivery). I've changed a few of the bits but want a second opinion, before give the list to my friend. This is what I've come up with on scan http://i.imgur.com/2r7EEjk.png I could fit in an FX CPU with a mATX board for a similar price but I'm not sure if it's worth it, I don't know much about AMD CPUs. Is is worth going with this CPU and MB instead? http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-...-s-am3plus-42ghz-12mb-total-cache-125w-retail http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-...gb-s-raid-pcie-20-(x16)-d-sub-dvi-d-micro-atx Or any recommendations on changes?
That's a pretty good spec. Get an A75X or A85X board, not A55. Scan's a bit limited in range there, but there are plenty at Amazon and Ebuyer. Since you're not going to use the APU graphics, you could instead get an Athlon II X4. It's £67 at Scan. It's clocked a little lower than the 6800K but a lot cheaper. As you can see from this, with many games, as long as you have a modern quad core CPU, there's no big difference when paired with a good graphics card:
You're right, they wouldn't really need it so I revised the build again and came up with this. http://i.imgur.com/gRakq1x.png Since they don't need the onboard GPU from the A10 it felt like a waste and the FX is cheaper annyway.
The FX with that board would be fine, and definitely perform better. Aria often does deals on AMD stuff, today they've got the FX-6300 up for £70.
Yup that would be my choice too the FX 6300 is quickly becoming the budget king IMO. When supported it is right up the chuff of the 3570 and can be overclocked to merry hell
It's just a shame the AM3+ boards don't come in mini/micro atx (at least any that are decent), but for ATX yeah, it's a brilliant budget choice, especially when you're not going to use onboard graphics anyway.
If only they were purchasing it today. Hopefully something is on offer on either aria or scan on the day. Thanks for the feedback aswell.
