Been out of the loop for too long.. help me choose :)

[Philgag]

Hey guys!

I've been out of the loop for a while... Im currently rocking an 3-4 years old AMD system with 5200+ X2 CPU. I've had a couple of break down lately: 2 hard drive went, integrated LAN following a power surge, GPu fan died. This system is getting long in the tooth and I decided I new a new tower. I have a tight budget of around 500 at most.

Here whats I have gathered so far:

Thermaltake v3 Black edition case 30
Fan 120 mm blue led CoolerMaster 6
PowerSupply 500W OCZ modular 32
HDD SATA Seagate 500GB 35
XFX AMD HD6870 1GB 155

I'm keeping 19'' lcd monitor speakers mouse keyboard etc. . I now need to know where to go as far as the CPU is concerned.

The tower will be used as an "home base" computer (storing files, doing the more cpu intensive stuff that arise sometimes mostly encode and burn a dvd with media movie maker and of course some good old gaming when times allow 🙂 SC2, Diablo3, BF3...etc).

I am not in a hurry as a like to gather hardware over time and get good deals (deux ex free yay! 🙂. It seems from what I can read that the Phenom line is not that good compared to intel but at the pricepoint i'm looking MAX 300 for CPU+mobo+ram maybe its to tight to squeeze an intel platform? What about BullDozer? ARGH! 😛 I would also like to have 8gb of ram and features like USB 3.0...

Any input? Thanks!

 

[Nemesis 1]

Just buy another AMD. In a month Bang for Buck

 

[Idontcare]

HDD SATA Seagate 500GB

D:

Your computing experience will be fastly improved if you can swing a larger drive which has higher platter density simply for the sake of improving those random read/write access times.

You can find good deals for $50 SSD's that are sized just large enough to hold your OS and apps. Watch Newegg for their specials on clearing out 32GB-60GB SSD's. Its the one component in your system that seriously does eliminate a bottleneck and make the computer much more snappy and responsive.

$300 for the mobo+cpu+ram is totally doable and you won't be settling for a side-grade at that price-point either.

If you can hold off until AMD releases bulldozer (even if you aren't getting one) then prices will only go down between now and then, whether you are getting Intel or AMD.

Ram prices are really cheap right now. Just remember if you are looking to go Intel then you want to keep an eye out for the 1.5V DDR3 stuff and try to avoid the 1.6-1.65V stuff. AMD is not so picky about the DDR3 voltage right now, BD might be different though.

 

[exar333]

If you live around a MC, $300 for CPU + MB + RAM (2500k) is doable. Otherwise, wait a little bit and grab the best performer after BD is released. There could be some more price cuts on the Intel low-end, or some attractive BD options.