Evaluate my silent gaming PC build please

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cura

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Greetings,

My girlfriend asked me to build her a silent gaming PC because I work in IT. Problem is I'm a server administrator and I know nothing of computer hardware. :)

I asked a co-worker with help to build this PC and we got to this set-up:


FX-8320 8 Core Bulldozer cpu € 124,68
M5A97 R2.0 moederbord € 81,77
Silencio 652 behuizing € 87,20
2X 8gb ddr3 1600 8GBRL CL9.0 memory (kit) € 156,29 (in totaal)
Radeon R9 270X DirectCU II TOP 4gb grafische kaart € 207,60
Hyper 412S CPU Cooler € 33,50
Pure Power L8 530Watt Modular voeding € 72,92
SSD Crucial M550 256gb hardeschijf € 133,34
S24C650BW syncmaster monitor € 238,08

Total Incl. BTW € 1.135,38


Do you guys think this would work for this purpose:
- It should be placed in our living room so it should be silent!
- It's purpose would mainly be gaming and playing a couple of movies/tv-shows, it doesn't have to be a high end power rig but she'd like to be able to play the latest and future games without fps lag. So it should be around the latest recommended specifications.
- We have a storage server at home, hence the low amount of HD space.

Some extra questions about this build:
- Is this motherboard too old?
- Is AM3 still the middle class for decent AMD CPU's or is it something else now?
- I figured 2x 8Gb RAM for redundancy, is it better to buy 1x 16Gb?
- Is the GFX card still good enough for future games?


Thanks in advance!
 
Solution
SproutSchon


There are very few office, gaming, video playing applications that will require more than two threads. The i3 has hyperthreading with 4 virtual cores which is more than enough. But they do outperfom AMD CPUs all the way especially IPC wise. Basically going for an i7 (4 cores, 8 virtual) is an overkill unless you are doing a lot of video editing/streaming, data processing that require parallelization, ...

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i7Baby

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I'd prefer the current 990fx chipset mobos.

AM3+ is the only path for high end amd cpus. Intel i5s and i7s are higher end and use less power.

For home theatre 4gb is OK. For gaming 8gb is OK. The mobo will be dual channel ram, so use 2 x 4gb. 1866 cl9 1.5v is best bang for the buck.

The 270x will be fine for home theater for a long time. Its a mid tier gaming card. OK for all mid tier games. Use lower settings for high end games (eg Battlefield 4)
 
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SproutSchon

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You don't need 16GB of RAM, 8 is more than enough for your use.

Overall it is balanced but the price seems super high to me.
I recently built from France a PC for my father in law: i5-4440, R9 280, 8GB of RAM, 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD for less than 700€ (monitor excluded).
Are you sure you looked for the best deal for each part on different retailer websites?

For the price you are paying and for quiet purpose I would either go with the Fractal Design R4 or R5 or the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1.
They are the best silent case in that price range but I agree cases are in big part subjective due to design.
 
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cura

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Budget around 1000 euros, location Belgium.


So you'd switch to Intel instead of AMD? Reason why I picked AMD is because I have no experience with intel for PC's and I have some spare parts for AMD things lying around for troubleshooting, which is not the case for intel parts. :/


Very well, since i7Baby and you mention the 8Gb RAM I'll switch to x2 4Gb. The cases you mentioned look fine for me aswell, I'll ask my girlfriend what she thinks about the design. :)

Guess I'll look around some more for price though.
Thanks!

 
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SproutSchon

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I agree with him, an Intel i5 offers the best performance now and a better upgrade path while being slightly expensive.
For a budget build I would go i3 (offering the same upgrade path), which will be more than enough for home theater and perfectly on par with the i5 in 90% of the games.

Intel or AMD won't change anything regarding the use you will have of your PC.
The mobo will have a different socket but that's it.
AMD stopped competing with Intel on high-end / very high-end CPUs so that's something to keep in mind.

In conclusion have a look to this website they do have price from Belgium: http://www.logicalincrements.com/
For the price you are paying (903€ without monitor) you can afford the "excellent" config that will perform much better with respect of gaming.
 
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cura

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The core i3 (which has about the same price as the AMD CPU in my original build) only has 2 cores though, while the CPU in my build has 8. Understand I come from a server administrator point of view where the number of cores are very important, is this not the case for home computers?

Thanks for the link, there's a couple of things I don't like about the excellent build (MSI, asrock, gigabyte and corsair parts) but it does show that the build can go a lot better pricewise!
 
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SproutSchon

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There are very few office, gaming, video playing applications that will require more than two threads. The i3 has hyperthreading with 4 virtual cores which is more than enough. But they do outperfom AMD CPUs all the way especially IPC wise. Basically going for an i7 (4 cores, 8 virtual) is an overkill unless you are doing a lot of video editing/streaming, data processing that require parallelization, ...



Yes I do agree, I wouldn't buy such an expensive mobo for your use too. A cheap reliable B85 chipset one would be perfect.
You should also stick with your 256GB SSD only because of your storage server.
But this gives an idea where to shop and price range for the most essential/expensive components aka CPU/GPU as well as total budget.
 
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cura

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Very well, I'll replace it by intel and look for better prices because obviously I'd be paying way too much. :)

I'd like to share the "solution" with both SproutSchon and i7Baby, but I can't do this so I'll just give it to SproutSchon, which doesn't mean your replies weren't appreciated i7Baby. :)
 
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cura

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For people that might be looking for a similar build I'll mention I figured going for the following replacements btw:

Intel Core i5 4460 / 3.2 Ghz
Asus B85M-G
 
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cura

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Not sure if I should post this in the same thread or make a new one, but here goes:

Someone mentioned that because of my switch to Intel I should also switch to Nvidia instead of ATI, is that true or not?
 
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SproutSchon

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cura

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Thanks! The Asus B85M-E would go for about 67,90€ the M-G 71,90€ but I think the M-E would be more suitable. The Gigabyte B85M-D3H would cost about the same in that shop, around 72,90€.
 
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SproutSchon

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Yep pick the cheapest as long as it has the feature you need and it is a trusted manufacturer.
I suggested this one because I was looking on the basic US PCpartpicker and the Gigabyte was almost half the price of the Asus.
 
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cura

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Well it looks like the M-E has a terribly short QVL for memory so I'll have to re-evaluate. Basically since she'll never put a 2nd GFX card in her mobo I think I'll go with the M-G.
 
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SproutSchon

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Exactly don't pay for features you will never use.
You may even give a look to H81 chipset.
If you don't intend to use (unnecessary) super high clocked RAM and are ok with the amount of USB ports it should be even cheaper.
 
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