I think Roo's suggestion of AM3, might make more sense. After all, an Athlon/Phenom will be drastically faster than your current setup and there are none of the issues of trying to slap a quad into a H55 board (which a couple people here have experienced). You also get Sata6gig and USB3 out of the box.
I think you're right - either way would be fine. I think that the AMD path wins, considering two things: You wanted to be able to keep this motherboard for future upgrades. If AMD's new bulldozer CPUs drop into AM3 boards, as is rumoured, this board has the best CPU upgrade path by far. If you're not big into overclocking, then the i3 will be a bit wasted. It really only comes to life after some tweakery. Note: you could happily drop the Fenrir for the Freezer 7 pro if you want to save another £10 or so. You should still have a look at your expansion cards. What is the sound card? Do you know if it uses PCI-e x1 i.e. the smaller plug as per below? The boards do have integrated audio ... If all of your 3 expansion cards use the longer legacy PCI slots and you're attached to them, then they won't all fit in the AMD board unless you're using a single-slot graphics card. You would probably then need to wait for the single slot 5770's, or head over to the intel 1156 board, or use the built-in audio instead. Pics of the boards below. Intel board (scan pic): AMD board (techradar pic): Note: The AMD board doesn't have a lot of clearance between the CPU and the RAM. You'll probably want to stick with low-prifile RAM sticks like the corsair xms3. Avoid anything with big fancy heatsinks.
Ok, I'm nearly there now I think!!! My soundcard is a Creative Soundblaster Audigy 4 PCI. I'm not too bothered about putting the TV card in, as long as I can get the wireless pci card and the soundcard in I'll be happy. I've basically got three options for this build now, after research and your advice, see which one you think is best for the money and my needs. The only difference between the systems is the processor and motherboard. When I was looking for a motherboard all I was looking for was USB3 support, DDR3 1600MHz support and SATAIII 6Gb/s: DECIDED: Memory - 4GB (2x2GB) Corsair XMS3 Classic DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 8-8-8-24, XMP, 1.65V, £83.67 HDD - 1TB Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache, 8.9 ms, NCQ, OEM, £44.87 PSU - 650W Corsair CMPSU-650TX, SLi/Xfire,Single 12V Rail, 80%+ Efficient, 120mm Quiet Fan, ATX12V v2.2, £59.91 CPU Cooler - Titan Fenrir V2 TTC-NK85TZ 120mm PWM 17dBA+ "HDT" CPU Cooler (775/1156/1366/K8/AM2/AM3), £28.78 Graphics - 1GB Asus HD 5770 CuCore, PCI-E 2.1 (x16), 4800MHz GDDR5, GPU 850MHz, 800Cores + Battlefield Coupon*, £126.39 £343.62 AMD X4 CPU - AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, S AM3, 3.4GHz, 8MB Cache, 125W, Retail, £129.12 Motherboard - MSI 870A-G54 AMD 870, AM3, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 1800/2000(OC), SATA III 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX, £77.40 INTEL i5 CPU - Intel i5 760, S 1156, Lynnfield Quad Core, 2.8 GHz, 8MB Cache, Core Ratio 21x, 95W, Retail, £146.82 Motherboard - MSI P55A-G55, Intel P55, S1156, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 2133(OC), SATA 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX, £93.47 INTEL i3 CPU - Intel i3 550, Sok 1156, Dual Core, 3.20 GHz, 4MB Cache, Core Ratio 23x, 73W, Retail, £110.60 Motherboard - MSI P55A-G55, Intel P55, S1156, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 2133(OC), SATA 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX, £93.47 PRICES AMD X4 - £550.14 Intel i5 - £583.91 Intel i3 - £547.69
Add an AMD hex core to that: AMD X6 CPU - AMD Phenom II X6 1055T, Thuban, Sok AM3, 2.8GHz, 9MB Total Cache, 125W, Retail, £152.22 Motherboard - MSI 870A-G54 AMD 870, AM3, PCI-E 2.0 (x16), DDR3 1800/2000(OC), SATA III 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX, £77.40 Totals: AMD X4 - £550.14 AMD X6 - £573.24 Intel i5 - £583.91 Intel i3 - £547.69 That's all from scan too. Shopping around may save a few quid (ie the i5 760 is £135.11 on aria and a VTX 1GB 5770 is £99.99) All are within budget, just!
Just ordered it all from Scan, will pick up tomorrow and built tomorrow evening. Went for the AMD hex core 1055T Thanks for all the help guys.
thanks Yeah they have 1 day left on ebay and all together are at £550 at the moment. Decided to build a media centre PC with the stuff I'm taking out of my old one, so any extra money I make is going on a case for that! I'm pretty pleased to be honest. I'm just leaving the house now to go to Scan in Bolton to pick up the parts and I'll do the build tonight.
Hey guys. Thought I'd update. The build is now done, went ok and now I've installed everything back to the way I like it and I'm up to speed again. I didn't get the figures for the windows experience index on my old rig (should have done to compare!) but here's the new figures which I'm happy with: Processor - 7.4 Memory - 7.4 Graphics - 7.4 Gaming graphics - 7.4 Hard Disk - 5.9 All standard, nothing overclocked. Obvious down side is the HDD, the 1TB Samsung 3Gb/s but 7.4 across the board for the other stuff I'm happy with. Thanks again for the advice, happy with what I've ended up with.
