Hi, A friend has asked me to configure a PC for him. I was thinking of using an AMD FX 6300. He will be using the PC as a general desktop with mainly internet, office, photo editing, etc. I thought a six core CPU combined with an SSD boot drive should provide a responsive system. He claims that he isn't bothered about gaming performance, so I thought a motherboard with integrated graphics might be suitable, but I'm struggling to find an AMD motherboard with HDMI/DVI and SATA3 storage. This is what I'm considering so far: AMD FX 6300 Black Edition, Vishera, Six Core, AM3+, Clock 3.5GHz, Turbo 4.1GHz, 8MB L3 Cache, 95W, CPU, Retail £98.28 8GB Corsair DDR3 Desktop PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 11-11-11-30, 1.5V £46.49 Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P, AMD 970 / SB950, S AM3+, DDR3, SATA3 6Gbps, 2-Way CrossFire, Realtek LAN, USB 3.0, ATX £59.99 *** edit - wrong motherboard included by accident. Should be GA-78LMT-USB3 *** Silverstone SST-KL05B-W Kublai Black ATX Mid Tower with Window £49.99 250GB Samsung 750 EVO, 2.5" SSD, SATA III - 6Gb/s, Samsung MGX, 256MB Cache, Read 540MB/s, Write 520MB/s, 97K/88K IOPS £76.68 Corsair Hydro Series H45, 120mm All-In-One Hydro Cooler CPU Cooler, 1x120mm SP120L PWM Fan, Copper Base, for Intel/AMD £39.98 550W Corsair VS550, Refurbished, 80PLUS Fully Wired, SLI/CrossFire, Single Rail, 42A +12V, 1x120mm Fan, ATX PSU £31.99 Does anybody have experience with the stock AMD HSF? Do I need the watercooler? Thanks, Grimer
AM3+ chips (unlike FM-family chips) have no integrated graphics processors (they're pure CPUs, not APUs), so you need a motherboard with on-board graphics of its own - which is typically rare, since AMD pushes people who want integrated graphics to the GPU-equipped APU range on the FM socket family. The Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P you've picked there doesn't have on-board graphics, but they do exist: the GA-78LMT-USB3 has Radeon HD 3000 on-board, but no SATA 3. Personally, I'd ditch the idea of going FX: six cores is massively overkill for general desktop use. Either get a dual-core Intel with IGP or an AMD APU. I'm using an AMD A10-5800K here, and it works a treat: everything's lovely and responsive, and I can even do a bit of gaming. I've even got SATA 3, too.
Thanks for clearing that up. I guess a cheap passively cooled graphics card might be needed. To be honest, I think I'll stick with the AMD CPU. I'd rather future proof things a bit for my friend. He gave me a budget of £800, so even with keyboard, mouse and monitor it should still come in well under budget.
If it were me, I'd be looking at an AMD APU, half-decent motherboard, 16GB of fast RAM, 512GB SSD and 2TB spinner, quiet air cooler, in a case that doesn't suck. That's basically what my desktop is, but I've got a smaller SSD, and I regularly sit there with a few dozen Chrome tabs open while flinging 20 megapixel images around in The Gimp. I paid about £500 for my build way back when, so it comes in well under budget - which means you can splash out on a better monitor, keyboard, and mouse. EDIT: Quickly put together using Amazon for prices: AMD A10-7850K Black Edition CPU, £96.23 Gigabyte GA-F2A78M-HD2 Motherboard, £44.93 HyperX FURY 16GB (2x8GB) 1866MHz RAM, £101.99 Crucial MX300 525GB SSD, £116.54 Corsair VS450 PSU, £38.52 Corsair Carbide 100W case, £49.99 That's £448.20, leaving you £350 for a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. With that sort of money you could get something really shiny like a Dell Ultrasharp or an LG Ultrawide - and he'll see the benefit of a good monitor a damn sight more than the benefit of two extra CPU cores.
What Gareth said. That build will fly! Even my 3 year old A8 5600K APU has plenty of grunt using an HDD for storage. With an SSD it will be perfect. I even do some light gaming on it. 4 cores for desktop use is overkill, 6 cores would be a waste.
I would be inclined to go for a i3 7100 or similar for the extra £20. Very old platform you are investing a reasonable sum of money into and the onboard graphics are not great in the GA-78LMT (HD3000 doesnt offer video decoding for things like youtube and other more modern codecs). In that regard the Kaby Lake i3 7100 is bang upto date being able to encode/decode 4k codecs etc
