Budget mobo+gfx+proc+ram for under 500

[soren32]

Looking at upgrading my comp to play new games and need these components. Would like to spend sub 500. Will be playing games at 1920x1200.

Currently looking at a Radeon 6870 for $140 after MIR. May get a 6850 for 120 after MIR. The next step up is GTX 560 Ti which is about 200-220 so probably not worth it.

That leaves around 300-350 for a processor+mobo. I want a combo that will not bottleneck my comp when playing games (so it can match the gfx card performance).

Should I wait until November for the next iteration of gfx cards/procs? I'm in no real rush.

looking at this combo for $375 after mir+cashback:

proc+mobo:http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...6&Sku=B69-5356

gfx card: http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-DL-DV...p_ob_e_title_3

ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231277

will the mobo+proc be sufficient for the gfx card? I don't want to OC unless it's really easy. if it is very easy, can someone tell me how to do it and if that will make the proc not bottleneck the gfx card?

 

[lehtv]

At a $500 budget you can easily go with a quad core intel.

i3-2400 $190 (newegg) or $150 (microcenter) or i5-2500K $180 (microcenter)
Asrock Z68 Pro3 ATX $105
G.skill value 2x4GB 1333 $42 (newegg)

That leaves enough for a 6870 or GTX 560. Another option, since you play at 1920x1200 where VRAM may become a problem in some games in the near future, is to go for an i3-2100 ($125) and an Asrock H67 board ($80) and the above memory, which just leaves $250 for a 6950 2GB.

 

[soren32]

At a $500 budget you can easily go with a quad core intel.

i3-2400 $190 (newegg) or $150 (microcenter) or i5-2500K $180 (microcenter)
Asrock Z68 Pro3 ATX $105
G.skill value 2x4GB 1333 $42 (newegg)

That leaves enough for a 6870 or GTX 560. Another option, since you play at 1920x1200 where VRAM may become a problem in some games in the near future, is to go for an i3-2100 ($125) and an Asrock H67 board ($80) and the above memory, which just leaves $250 for a 6950 2GB.

true, I could go with an intel, but would it make a difference in game? I don't intend to do CPU-heavy tasks outside of gaming. and while my budget is 500, I'm looking maximum "bang for buck"

the i3 is same price as the phenom here: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...8&Sku=B69-5311

however, I've done some research and it seems the 955 performs on par with the i3 at 1920x1200 (worse at lower res, I guess). it is also much easier to OC (just change multiplier to 18x in the BIOS) than the i3. according to tom's hardware, the change to 18x multiplier puts the 955 on par with a i5-760.

 

[lehtv]

i3-2100 and 955 are pretty much toe to toe in every application: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=289

However, I must say that the 6950 may not be a good idea after all on this limited budget. It'd just take away from CPU performance. In addition, next-gen GPUs are much faster to current ones, whereas Ivy Bridge is not much faster than Sandy. Therefore the best idea would be to upgrade to a quad Sandy now, and upgrade the 6870 to a next-gen GPU when it feels slow.

If you look at this: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/88?vs=363 i5-2400 is easily faster in games than 955. And if you look here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/293?vs=290 you'll see 6950 is faster than 6870 by roughly the same factor. In the end, you'd get the same gaming performance with either of the two setups (2100+6950 vs 2400+6870), but with the 2400 you'd also get faster all round computing and better longevity.

i5-2400 can still be overclocked to a bit by increasing the turbo boost multiplier and increasing the base clock from 100 to 103-105Mhz (needs the Z68 chipset)

 

[soren32]

hmm, good point. I'm thinking of getting this: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...0&Sku=B69-5271

it's $90 more, but hopefully should last a lot longer than the phenom/i3.

will this combo allow me to OC?

 

[soren32]

Ok, I revised the following build to:

proc: http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0354590 $150+$10tax (in-store pickup)

mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...D=izmvj1szrl1h $54

gfx: http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-DL-DV...p_ob_e_title_3 $140 after MIR

ram: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231422 $42

altogether, $396.

is the mobo all right? i don't care much about ocing with the i5-2400 so if it can't do that, but can function otherwise, that's good enough for me.

also, I have a corsair 600W PS right now. will that be sufficient?

 

[mfenn]

The mobo is fine as long as you don't care about SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0, and upgrading the memory. The rest of the parts look good as well, however, you could get a decent boost in gaming performance by going up to $500 and getting a 6950 2GB.

EDIT: I'm assuming that you have the 600CX, in which case it is plenty.

 

[soren32]

The mobo is fine as long as you don't care about SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.0, and upgrading the memory. The rest of the parts look good as well, however, you could get a decent boost in gaming performance by going up to $500 and getting a 6950 2GB.

EDIT: I'm assuming that you have the 600CX, in which case it is plenty.

what do you mean upgrading the memory?

and ya, i'm thinking of getting the 6950, but maybe i'll wait for a deal.

 

[lehtv]

Well the mobo certainly is cheap! H61 doesn't support USB3 and Sata 6gb/s. If you ever buy an SSD in the following years (as they get cheaper) you'd be limited by the 3gb/s bandwidth.

I would go with the Asrock Z68 Pro3 full size ATX board. Having extra expansion slots, Sata 6gb/s, the possibility of SSD caching, four DIMM slots, Turbo Boost multiplier control, possibility of overclocking an Ivy Bridge with unlocked multiplier, other video outputs than just D-sub (the integrated GPU can be used to drive a second monitor, or as a backup) - these combined make it easily worth $50 more for me.

I have a corsair 600W PS right now. will that be sufficient?

Easily

i don't care much about ocing with the i5-2400 so if it can't do that

Not sure why you'd care about OC'ing the X4 955 then?

 

[mfenn]

what do you mean upgrading the memory?

Only 2 DIMM slots.

and ya, i'm thinking of getting the 6950, but maybe i'll wait for a deal.

$250 is a pretty fair price IMHO. You're not likely to do better until the 7000 series or Kepler come out.

 

[lehtv]

Comapred to the $140 Sapphire 6870, it's actually a pretty sheit ... $110 more for 20% faster? Granted, 20% faster can mean the difference between playable at high settings and not playable, but on a budget it's not worth it IMO

 

[soren32]

Well the mobo certainly is cheap! H61 doesn't support USB3 and Sata 6gb/s. If you ever buy an SSD in the following years (as they get cheaper) you'd be limited by the 3gb/s bandwidth.

I would go with the Asrock Z68 Pro3 full size ATX board. Having extra expansion slots, Sata 6gb/s, the possibility of SSD caching, four DIMM slots, Turbo Boost multiplier control, possibility of overclocking an Ivy Bridge with unlocked multiplier, other video outputs than just D-sub (the integrated GPU can be used to drive a second monitor, or as a backup) - these combined make it easily worth $50 more for me.

How about this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16813138308R

Has everything you mentioned except usb 3.0 (Which I don't care about) and a different overclock utility. would that utility work the same as turbo boost?

 

[lehtv]

Turbo Boost isn't a motherboard utility, it's a a mechanism in the CPU. At load, it boosts the clock frequency up from the nominal clock frequency of the CPU, and the amount boosted depends on how many cores are active. For one core active, it can boost from 3.1GHz to 3.4GHz effective (on an i5-2400), when using the standard turbo boost multiplier. This multiplier cannot be modified in H61/H67 boards, you need P67 or Z68 to do that. With a P67/Z68 board you could increase the multiplier to hit up to 3.8GHz on stock voltages.

USB3 and overclockability* aren't the only things missing compared to Asrock Pro3. It's also missing SSD caching, full ATX size and a number of expansion slots, as well as HDMI and DVI outputs. And the Biostar H67 being an open box item, you may not get all the accessories that you normally would on a retail product (I don't know what they actually provide, could be just the board itself and nothing else like SATA cables, manual, etc).

*not just of the 2400, but potentially of an unlocked Ivy Bridge CPU as well, should you want to upgrade a year from now

Whether you go with that board or the H61 board to save money is up to you - I'm just bringing it to your attention that the Asrock Z68 board would be, in my opinion, worth paying for.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Here's a question, we know that H61 and H67 explicitly don't support overclocking. Do they support the CPU's built-in Turbo Boost function? Or is that neutered too?

 

[lehtv]

They support Turbo Boost at the default multiplier.

 

[mfenn]

Whether you go with that board or the H61 board to save money is up to you - I'm just bringing it to your attention that the Asrock Z68 board would be, in my opinion, worth paying for.

Exactly. OP, I didn't meant to imply that the H61 wasn't worth getting, you just need to make sure that you know what you're getting into.

 

[mfenn]

Comapred to the $140 Sapphire 6870, it's actually a pretty sheit ... $110 more for 20% faster? Granted, 20% faster can mean the difference between playable at high settings and not playable, but on a budget it's not worth it IMO

Very true, the $150 cards are the best value in terms of $/FPS at lower res/details. If you want to crank up the resolution and AA (basically anything that sucks VRAM), the 1GB cards will quickly fall flat on their faces.

 

[soren32]

Very true, the $150 cards are the best value in terms of $/FPS at lower res/details. If you want to crank up the resolution and AA (basically anything that sucks VRAM), the 1GB cards will quickly fall flat on their faces.

benchmarks show that the 6700 do pretty good at 1920x1200 res w/o AA and max details for every game including the witcher 2. by pretty good I mean ~30 fps at least, which is all that matters, no?

I guess I'm missing out on AA, but that's an extra $110 for details I may not care about when I'm actually playing a game instead of admiring the slightly smoother lines on a static image.

 

[mfenn]

I don't consider an average of 30 FPS playable because that means your minimums are likely in the upper teens. To each his own however.

 

[soren32]

I don't consider an average of 30 FPS playable because that means your minimums are likely in the upper teens. To each his own however.

good point. what do you think a good average is? 40?

 

[lehtv]

I don't consider a minimum of 40 acceptable. Every time a game gets that low in FPS, I instantly get distracted from whatever I'm doing. It breaks the spell. I like to keep things at 45-50 minimum (I can spare that 5fps if there's a big difference in image quality, though I still do notice it), ~55-60fps average (with vsync on in SP games. In MP games, I want 60+fps minimum.)

What someone else finds acceptable can be completely different. Many people don't mind at all if the game has a few frames missing here and there, just like some people don't care about AA at all and others need 4x minimum.

 

[Shikyo]

Well, 1920x1200 is a rather demanding resolution. What kind of games do you play? Apart from Starcraft II, afaik nothing bottlenecks a 2500k so that's a bit of a waste in my opinion if you're only getting a 6870. I'd rather have you get a 6950 or a GTX 560 Ti, which will handle the resolution much better.

A cheap H61 motherboard and i5 2400 should run every game without problems in 1920x1200 without bottlenecking a 560 Ti, and those are going to cost around 60 + 180 + 220 which is still well below 500$.

For maximum upgradeability, it'd be best if you could go for 2500k with a P67 and either a 6950 or 560 Ti as in that resolution, I have my doubts about the performance of a 6870 being ideal. However, that's going to cost around 100 + 220 + 220 which is already 40$ above your budget. You'd also need an aftermarket heatsink like a hyper 212+, which would be another 28$. It'd still be my composition of choice, if you have the money.

 

[thecrecarc]

I offer 2 suggestions:
i5 2500K + Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 http://www.microcenter.com/search/se...=200121+484964
Microcenter combo: $240
8gb 2x4gb ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820161364
$42
Nvidia 560 ti http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133377
$195

total: $477

or

Intel i5 2400 + MSI H61M-P23 http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0359807
Microcenter combo: $170
8gb 2x4gb ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820161364
$42
AMD 6870 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131378
$140 (Coupon code POW1X5)
Total: 352

 

[soren32]

I offer 2 suggestions:
i5 2500K + Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 http://www.microcenter.com/search/se...=200121+484964
Microcenter combo: $240
8gb 2x4gb ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820161364
$42
Nvidia 560 ti http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133377
$195

total: $477

or

Intel i5 2400 + MSI H61M-P23 http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0359807
Microcenter combo: $170
8gb 2x4gb ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820161364
$42
AMD 6870 http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-DL-DV...p_ob_e_title_3
$140
Total: 352

thanks! the 6870 is 160 after MIR now, though. i'm actually considering getting a 6950 used on ebay for ~200, but maybe i'll get the 560 Ti instead.

 

[thecrecarc]

thanks! the 6870 is 160 after MIR now, though. i'm actually considering getting a 6950 used on ebay for ~200, but maybe i'll get the 560 Ti instead.

Sorry, I did not notice. Use this instead: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131378

Powercolor 6870 $140 (use coupon code POW1X5)

I have updated the above post to show the change.