which pc gives more bang for my buck

Andrew Hren

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Jul 5, 2014
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So I'm buying a new pc off of Craigslist and there are two good options and they are both the same price, 600$. I would like to know which one is a better deal to buy, because I'm not very familiar with AMD processors.
Option one:
Corsair Air 540 case
Amd Phenom 2 1090t 6 core 3.2 Ghz CPU turbo boost to 3.6Ghz
ASUS M4A89TD_PROUSB3 motherboard
Coolit ECO A.L.C. Water cooler
8GB DDR3 1600Mhz Kingston HyperBlu ram
MSI GTX 760 Twin Frozr 2GB NVIDIA video card
1gb sata hard drive
Corsair TX650 650 watt power supply
Creative sound blaster X-FI SB0460 sound card
Option two:
AMD 3.5GHz Quad core processor
8GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM
AMD R9 290 4GB Graphics
320GB SATA Harddrive
700W power supply
DVD multidrive
Cooler Master N200 case with USB 3.0 on front panel
802.11g Wifi
Windows 8.1 Pro with media center
Office 2010 Pro

Well I found a third I don't think it's a competitor but just in case...
Third:
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 motherboard, very nice strong motherboard
G.SKILL Sniper Series 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 8GB ram, fast and big enough for anything I have done, but the PC can support 16GBs (2 more chips)
Western Digital 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s, big storage for gaming, and very fast
AMD 3.4 Quad Processor, fast
Sapphire AMD HD 7850 1GB graphics card. A very good bang for buck video card, a second one can be added for twice the power
Asus Dvd Burner Drive (Best reviewed dvd drive on the market)
Built in WiFi card, picks up signal GREA



Currently I'm set on the second.
 
Solution
If it's the reference cooler, just stick with option 1. If it's a decent aftermarket cooler, then you could go with the r9 290, but I think you'll have a possible bottleneck in the system.
I think option 1 is probably the most balanced. The phenom isn't horribly outdated to the point where the gtx 760 would probably create a huge bottleneck. And knowing the PSU now gives you options on if you want to upgrade the system with anything later on. The sound card's a plus, but not necessary. The system will support a decent overclock if you want to, which would help minimize the bottleneck if there is one.

I think option 2 isn't the best option just because there's no information on the psu nor the gpu aside from what it says. If it's a reference r9 290, then it's going to be a bit problematic because of thermals and noise. If its a fx 4xxx cpu, then you'll have the option to get a fx 83xx or something similar later down the line if you want, but it's mostly the graphics card I'd be more worried about.
 

Andrew Hren

Reputable
Jul 5, 2014
13
0
4,510
I've read reviews about the thermals and noise but will this cause it to break down or perform badly? Besides those issues I've read it performs very well and I also don't want to spend extra money on upgrades.