so my dad wants to buy a desktop PC from me this is my chance to get a new CPU and MB

[iiiankiii]

If you plan on keeping this for atleast 3-5 years, there's no reason not to get an i5/i7. There are plenty of games out there that will take advantage of 4 or more cores. If you cheap out now, you'll find yourself selling your recently bought system, AGAIN. Seriously, nobody is trolling you here. An i5 is just better than an i3 in gaming, overall. A couple years ago, you can argue that an i3 is just as good as i5 in gaming. Now, if you look around, most newer games will take advantage of 4 cores. No question about it.

You can cheap out on a GPU b/c that will the bottleneck most of the time. It takes much longer to bottleneck a CPU. Grab an i5/i7 or wait until you can. No way around it. Go used if you have to. A sandy bridge i5 is still pretty powerful. They can easily overclock to 4.0-4.5 at stock voltage.

 

[john5220]

hmm I just canceled the order because

I could get a $50 mainboard haswell on amazon and

And the 3.6GHZ i3 is $122

So this means this setup is costing just $10 more than FX 6300 AMD

So it seems to make more sense to order the intel

 

[Yuriman]

OP probably can't swing the extra $70 or so for an i5 over an FX / i3. He's likely a minor without regular income, making budgets complicated.

However, I'm in agreement that it can be false economy to cheap out if you can afford not to, as the cost of upgrading always exceeds the cost of buying the better chip to begin with.

Edit: my vote continues to be with the i3 if you can't afford an i5. That board is very barebones, with little room for upgrading, but you'll likely not do better at that price.

Before you buy, check the classifieds here for a used i5.

 

[john5220]

hey yuri you are very correct I am in college so limited on a certain budget I am given which is what makes this decision hard.

This is $56 I might aswell spend the $19 bucks more and go a solid i3 intel

I can afford this build with the 3.6 GHZ 4160 i3 its $19 extra but I can squeeze it. and a $70 stick of 8GB DDR 3 Ram, does this board look good to you? I don't want anything fancy just something basic and decent for mid range gaming. I see its all solid cap capacitors also, looks durable to me and pretty good for 56 bucks, I don't know how I feel about used stuff from a classifieds on this website, this is a delicate decision for me I would prefer to buy new from amazon as I have my account already setup with them and I know I am safe with them, the i3 scores about same as i5 for nearly all games anyways.

I am not interested in over clocking. I just want something that will setup and run without doing anything after to it I like to just leave stuff normal.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4867#ov

 

[Yuriman]

I'd see if you can find a board with 4 RAM slots (it may be cheaper to get 2x 4gb), ideally, though the gigabyte board would be a fine choice. Can you fit an H97 board into your budget?

http://m.newegg.com/ProductList?Keyword=h97 asrock&Sort=PRICE

I'd rather put the $19 into a newer chipset than a slightly higher clock speed. You'll be glad when you're ready to upgrade.

 

[john5220]

also note I am not going to be in any sort of heavy gaming guys I have lots of studies so new games I won't even have time for.

I just need a system to run some battlefield 4 and diablo 3 in my free time maybe some COD. I am studying computer engineering, so I don't really have time for much anything which is why high end is of no use to me when I am done and I get a Job I can afford the best i7 in the world.

My pentium G3220 was however a huge mistake, it cannot play multi player games online like battlefield 3 or 4 and it gets raped by a crappy 2007 AMD quad core CPU

 

[john5220]

I'd see if you can find a board with 4 RAM slots (it may be cheaper to get 2x 4gb), ideally, though the gigabyte board would be a fine choice. Can you fit an H97 board into your budget?

http://m.newegg.com/ProductList?Keyword=h97%20asrock&Sort=PRICE

I'd rather put the $19 into a newer chipset than a slightly higher clock speed. You'll be glad when you're ready to upgrade.

Hi my budget is $260 US for a board, ram and CPU, I will use old case and PSU to give my dad for free. He will have to buy either a SSD or a HDD whatever he wants at a local PC shop.
I have a few dvd burners lying around the house I will throw in free for him else they would go in the trash I thinks. The idea is to give him my mainboard, cpu and ram he has no need for anything higher than a pentium G anyways all he does is use youtube, download and watch his TV episodes and thats about it maybe read up on BBC world.

PS i found this for $71

http://www.amazon.com/PNY-1600Mhz-D...qid=1415865573&sr=8-17&keywords=8GB+RAM+ddr+3

its cheaper than the combo kits and its only 1 single 8GB so I will still have 1 slot free.

 

[Yuriman]

Looks to me like an ASRock H97 (preferably the Pro4) + i3 4150/4160 and 1x8gb DDR3 goes over by about $5, can you swing that?

 

[john5220]

Where you getting that AS rock for so cheap?

they seem to be $90 on Amazon for the cheapest ASrock H97

BTW any particular reason to buy that H97 chipset? will it be for future upgrades? I won't be using this board later on I will actually sell out my entire PC and build a super duper rig once I am out of college. I need something for about 3 years of use. Light on electric bill and no sort of over clocking. Just lean and stable for 24/7 use

 

[Yuriman]

Newegg has them for just over $70.

If you're certain you won't be grabbing a broadwell chip next year or adding RAM, the H81 will be fine. H97 has other goodies like RAID support, more ports/connections, likely is paired with a higher quality audio chipset, but all said it's not a very big difference.

No point in buying what you won't use.

 

[john5220]

^ yeah I am 100000% positive I won't be changing anything within the next 3 or heck 4 years LOL

I won't even have money to upgrade LOL this was just a stroke of luck here that my dad is handing me cash to build him a desktop because luck just so has it his laptop isn't charging and i convinced him to build a desktop LOL

My next upgrade will not have a budget limitation. Soon as I get a Job in 3 to 4 years time and finish my degree I will buy a $200 ASUS mainboard and devils canyon or whatever they will have in the future. Will also surely Be stuff like SLI aswell.

for now I will go with my original plan the $56 gigabyte with full solid caps and the 4160 i3 and single stick of 8GB RAM

I won't be upgrading ram at all, the reason for going for single stick apart from the pny being cheaper than everything else at $71, is incase one ram slot goes bad I could always toss it in the next slot. So its a good thing I canceled the order on the FX 6300, 2007 board and cpu tech felt a bit too dated psychologically even for El Cheapo like me LOL

 

[nenforcer]

buy guys 1150 is also a dead socket.

How do we even know skylake is going to be 1150?

http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-p...port-compatible-lga-1151-socket-z170-chipset/

Sorry it was my mistake to refer him to an upgrade path to Skylake which is a new socket 1151 and chipset Z170.

Broadwell is his upgrade path and it will be compatible with Socket 1150 Z97 chipsets.

 

[john5220]

Ideally for my diablo 3 needs a 4.5 GHZ pentium G would have been the best choice.

But I am so scared of overclocking, just imagine how the lifespan of those mainboards shorten when you OC

so its best to stick to i3 for me.

 

[john5220]

ok guys so I bought this, hopefully all goes well and the mainboard boots up nicely etc

came up to $259 the exact price of my budget free shipping. And I also have a HD 7850 1GB card on the way I got that sucker for $55 used with amazon fullfillment. Should be a massive upgrade over my 512MB hd 4870 will try to sell my HD 4870 for $19 or so.

http://www.amazon.com/ADATA-USA-1600...=adata+8GB+RAM

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Intel...50+motherboard

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-I3-4160-...-4&keywords=i3

 

[Arachnotronic]

ok guys so I bought this, hopefully all goes well and the mainboard boots up nicely etc

came up to $259 the exact price of my budget free shipping. And I also have a HD 7850 1GB card on the way I got that sucker for $55 used with amazon fullfillment. Should be a massive upgrade over my 512MB hd 4870 will try to sell my HD 4870 for $19 or so.

http://www.amazon.com/ADATA-USA-1600...=adata+8GB+RAM

http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Intel...50+motherboard

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-I3-4160-...-4&keywords=i3

Congratulations! Should be a potent system, esp. with that 7850.

 

[john5220]

he hee seeing all these colors in this order I made makes me feel all clean and all intel and all fuzzy inside.

I also tossed in this 128 GB intel SSD I got it for $64 on Amazon convinced my dad to get it, in reality I am taking this and giving him my SSD I have a pretty good 128 GB ssd so won't have to reinstall windows 7 for him he will practically get my current system in just a new tower that I have lying around. Have a couple nice ones sitting collecting dust will just give it a nice wipe down. I use SSD for main OS and stuff, and I install games on a 1TB HDD I have.

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Solid-St...=ATVPDKIKX0DER

 

[john5220]

Guys one question should I install windows 7 or 8? is it worth it for performance because I really hate windows 8. But I may upgrade GPU in a couple years time so maybe its best to use a windows that will support direct X 12 right?

I won't have to pay for OS software, LOL that I know how to get have been using windows 7 for years now I know how to activate it really easy.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Guys one question should I install windows 7 or 8? is it worth it for performance because I really hate windows 8.

I use Windows 7.

 

[Yuriman]

I'm on Windows 8.1 right now, but I use a program called Classic Start Menu to get rid of the metro start screen. 8.1 is a bit lighter on resources and the installation is a bit smaller, so I couldn't find a compelling reason to stick with 7 last time I upgraded.

 

[john5220]

Not sure if I really want to get windows 8 at all.

Win 7 supports DX 11.3?

One of the reasons is I already have Windows 7.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Is that a Haswell refresh i3? Is that going to work with an H81 board without a BIOS update? I guess it's not a big deal though since you can install your G3220 first to update the BIOS, and then install the i3-4160 if so.

 

[john5220]

No I am using the gigabyte board and yes from the supported cpu list on gigabyte website it says it supporgts the haswell refresh. I assume the board comes with the latest bios etc

my current board with the pentiunm G is going to the PC for my dad, i have no thermal paste so I am not even removing that CPU from that board.

 

[Yuriman]

Congrats, I hope you love your new system!

 

[john5220]

yeah dude and thanks for helping me out

You guys have been a great help, this was money wisely and well spent if I do say so myself

 

[escrow4]

Good choices. I would have gone for a Gigabyte H81 AMP Up, purely due to the better audio codec, but core parts are good. And SSD. :thumbsup: