Best Value CPU/MB combo right now

[Fun Guy]

Even though I just passed the 15 year mark here at AnandTech :awe: I have been out of the loop for a couple of years, and don't know what's out there.

I am upgrading from a LGA775 Xeon E3110. I'm mainly doing it to get more RAM - the Gigabyte G31M-ES2L that I have has a maximum of 4GB and I need more.

Ideally I'd like to have a low-profile, small form-factor PC (minimum of a uATX, would like MiniITX or similar), and since I am not a gamer I could use built-in graphics.

Ideas?

 

[richierich1212]

You should list what you use your computer for. That will help.

 

[crashtech]

Mini-ITX generally carries a price premium, so if you can use µATX, you will likely save money, plus you can get easily get µATX boards with 4 RAM slots.

 

[Fun Guy]

Okay, uATX it is then.

I use my PC for everything - statistics; creating, editing and watching video; photo editing; MS Office stuff; email and surfing the web; etc.

 

[DominionSeraph]

Since you want integrated graphics, just get a Haswell i5. You could go i7 but that's not the best value.

 

[AllWhacked]

Sub-$100 range, get a G3258 and overclock it. You could go with an i3, but with a G3258 overclocked to 4.2 or higher with z87/z97 board and aftermarket cooler, it will be about as fast as the fastest i3 at 1/3 to 1/2 the cost.

$200 range, get an i5-4590 or i5-4690K for $220 and overclock the latter.

$260 range, get the Xeon E3-1231 V3. It's like an i7-4770, but $50 cheaper. It's also 100Mhz slower under Turbo Boost and lacks integrated graphics, so you will need to buy a graphics card. Though if you game, you'll be doing that anyway. Or if not, a low-end GPU should set you back $15-$30.

$330+ range, get an i7-4790K. If you do need the instruction sets that the Xeon lack, then get any i7 though it you want to overclock, go with i7-4790K. Even without overclock, the factory turbo boost of 4.4GHz (4.2Ghz with all 4 cores) is as fast as my i7-4770K under it's maximum overclock.

Other than that, make sure before you buy your motherboard that it's compatible with your CPU. Most older motherboards (H81/H87/B85/Z87) will work with the Haswell refresh after bios updates. If you want straight up haswell refresh compatibility and future support for Intel's next CPU, Broadwell, then go H97/Z97. Also if you want to overclock anything besides the Pentium G3258, then get a Z87/Z97 motherboard.

 

[Erenhardt]

If your creative stuff can be gpu accelerated I would vote for apu. If budged is tight you can grab A8-7600. If you have more $ you can get a10-7850k since it can fully utilize 512 GCN cores without memory bottleneck apparent in games:

A10-7850k beats everything when it makes use of integrated graphics:

OpenCL support gives huge boost compared to running it on (powerful) CPU

See if your apps benefit and then make a decision.