Intel i3 build

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MSI H81M-P33
Intel Core i3 4330 3,5GHz Socket 1150 Box
Sapphire Radeon R9 270X Dual-X OC HDMI DisplayPort Dual-DVI 2GB Grafikkort (PCI Express)
Crucial Ballistix Sport XT DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9 2x4GB
Zalman ZM450-GS 450W
Crucial M500 SSD 2.5" 240GB

http://www.prisjakt.nu/list.php?l=2525720&view=l

Divide by 10 to get prices in £.

I have a mid-tower case. Will buy additional HDD later, or use an old one, although i'm not sure if i can connect it the the motherboard, it has a pATA(?) connetion I think.

The H81-M was the cheapest mobo I could find. Will it work fine using a m-ATX mobo in a midtower with these components? And advice?

I'm in Sweden. Total cost is about 470£ / $780. System will be used for gaming.
 
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tiny voices
I would guess that at 1080p, your specs could deliver smooth play at a mix of medium and high settings in multiplayer. Possibly mostly high settings, but definitely not max.

No matter what, the i3 will hold you back in any games that is coded for more than 2 cores.

Here is a good example: DayZ does not really benefit from more than 2 cores. My girlfriend has an i3 and I have an i5. Both chips run the game the same. But if we both run Starcraft 2 or BF3, there is an ENORMOUS difference. Her i3 sits locked at 100% usage and holding the game back while my i5 sits at 65% usage and chugs right along. It really is all on a game for game basis.
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tiny voices

tiny voices

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Sep 6, 2012
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That PSU is trash. You need a 500w unit form Antec, XFX, Corsair (not CX, CS, RM), Seasonic.

The i3 will bottleneck the 270x but only in select games that use ALOT of CPU power like BF4. Otherwise it should be fine.

You NEED a SATA drive for use with that motherboard.

 
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tiny voices

tiny voices

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Sep 6, 2012
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any PSU is REQUIRED to have an Active PFC to be considered for 80+ ratings. IF a CPU doesn't have an Active PFC, and isn't the Antec VP series, its trash. An active PFC is NOT a measure of quality at all. It is a decent unit but for basically the same price, you can have a better 500-550w unit like an XFX 550. 450w might be ok for this computer but you wouldn't want to overclock on it or change the GPU to anything more powerful. It really limits your upgrade potential.

Mantle may help a bit but do not expect to gain any huge amount of FPS with it. You will probably increase performance by 15% at most. (probably less than 10% in most games actually) If you were getting 45fps, now you will get 51.75fps, for example. Most of the Mantle benchmarks you see and using $500+ GPUs (r9 290x) and BOTTOM end CPUs like APUs. This is obviously to exaggerate the results and make mantle look like a life saver. With a GPU and CPU more closely matched for each other, you can't expect anything like the results they say.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7728/battlefield-4-mantle-preview have a look at the bottom chart. See how when the use a junk CPU the results are crazy, but when they use a CPU more suited to the 290x, the results DRASTICALLY decrease to even less than 10%.

Mantle is cool, but anyone who builds a proper rig with properly matched parts will see little gains with it.
 
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From what I understand reading the Anand article. With Mantle, the CPU will be freed up from processing some of those "draw calls". Even the i7 benefits from that, and for a low performance CPU that means Mantle is freeing up CPU time, enabling it to push out more frames to the GPU. If it's a fast GPU that will be translated into FPS, but a slower GPU won't be able to take advantage of that as much as the 290x.

But it does look like the i3 in the graph AMD provided gains from Mantle. But i see what you mean, that the 270 won't be fast enough to benefit as much as a 290x.

It's quite difficult to find benchmarks and such with Bf4 running in multiplayer, especially testing CPU bottlenecks. And single-player appears to not be very translatable to the performance on a full server in multiplayer. There are some tests from the BF4 beta but the software has been tweaked since then. Would you guess the specs i listed could deliver ~45 fps in bf4 multiplayer and would that be enough for a smooth game? Actually right now I have only have a 900p monitor, getting a 1080p would be the next thing to upgrade.

I'm not hoping for miracles with the 270x and an i3. At the moment this is right around my budget limit. And like you said, other games, or even Bf4 in single-player don't seem to need the CPU so much.
 
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tiny voices

tiny voices

Titan
Sep 6, 2012
34,175
5
99,965
I would guess that at 1080p, your specs could deliver smooth play at a mix of medium and high settings in multiplayer. Possibly mostly high settings, but definitely not max.

No matter what, the i3 will hold you back in any games that is coded for more than 2 cores.

Here is a good example: DayZ does not really benefit from more than 2 cores. My girlfriend has an i3 and I have an i5. Both chips run the game the same. But if we both run Starcraft 2 or BF3, there is an ENORMOUS difference. Her i3 sits locked at 100% usage and holding the game back while my i5 sits at 65% usage and chugs right along. It really is all on a game for game basis.
 
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Thanks alot for your help!
I switched the PSU to a XFX Core 550W. I think it's better than the Zalman and almost as cheap.

Here's a link to XFX. I think it's the same series but the 550W version isn't listed for some reason.
http://products.xfxforce.com/en-gb/Power_Supplies/Pro_Series_650W_PSU/P1-650S-UKB9


So I just put down the order for:

MSI H81M-P33
Intel Core i3 4330 3,5GHz Socket 1150 Box
Crucial Ballistix Sport XT DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9 2x4GB
Zalman ZM450-GS 450W
Crucial M500 SSD 2.5" 240GB
XFX Core Edition 550W (one 12V rail rated for 44A)

And within a few days, planning to buy the
Sapphire Radeon R9 270X Dual-X OC HDMI DisplayPort Dual-DVI 2GB


I have a midtower case, and will buy some case fans at my local store. What else will I need to put everything together. First time building a computer. Will I need to buy additional SATA cables, or does that usually ship with the SSD? I probably need some sort of mounting kit for the SSD?

 
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tiny voices

tiny voices

Titan
Sep 6, 2012
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That PSU is VERY good. Much better than the Zalman

The motherboard comes with the sATA cables.

The case should have a mounting bracket for the SSD if it is modern enough.

That SSD will be full fast and you need to leave it 20% open. I assume you have or are buying an additional HDD?
 
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Yes I will be buying an HDD after the graphics card. :)
That's good advice to keep 20% free!

I'm probably buying a new case so shouldn't be a problem with the SSD, otherwise i found a 2,5" adapter for 5£ in my local store.

Thanks for all the help!
 
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