Budget Workstation PC! Opinions and Ideas Wanted!

Jackrossamd

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Jan 8, 2016
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Hi Guys, My name is Jack. I have so far built 2 PC's For myself. I'm not against Intel I just have not chosen to go with any of there cpu's so far. Mainly due to my budget. My Latest PC was an 8350 at 4.8GHz With a Windforce R9 280. This was for gaming. Since then I have had to sell it due to the cost of moving in to a new house with my Fiance. In my eyes I know a lot in depth about building computers and How they work. I have been saving to build a Budget Workstation PC. So far I have an AMD Athlon 5350 On an ASUS AM1M-A Motherboard. I know it isn't the most powerful of things but I am hoping to Overclock it a little to increase the performance of the PC. I have yet to buy everything else. I Have a Spare 350W PSU But not sure if it will be viable. I'm also hoping to Buy 2 SSD's and use them in Raid 0 To Speed the PC up A Little And hopefully windows 10 will help with Optimization. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with the 5350 Chip and knows how to get the best performance out of it, Weather to invest in a GPU, what ram to use and more!
Thanks,
Jack.

Also just to add, I have not purchased the 5350 Chip yet and if there is a better alternative that would also work on an ASUS AM1M-A Motherboard I would like to know of it. Would have to be around the same price range as the 5350 and Overclockable!
 
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That's the best CPU you can buy for that motherboard but I still wouldn't recommend it. Just to illustrate my point, the 5350 only gets a score of 2587 on Passmark. (That's a rough idea of how powerful the CPU is if fully utilised.) By contrast a simple Celeron G1840 gets 3002, that's almost 20% more powerful and it only costs £27.79. I'd recommend aiming for an Athlon 860K if possible for your usage though, that scores 5612 and costs £57.79.

I'd try and save some more cash and get something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor (£57.79 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-HD2 Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard...
I would just get a different CPU and motherboard, the 5350 is designed for a very basic office PC or maybe HTPC. It would do some word processing, web browsing and watching videos but that's about it.

Also SSD's don't really benefit much from RAID 0, especially just for opening programs etc. I would just get a single SSD.

What's your budget and what programs are you using?
 

Jackrossamd

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Jan 8, 2016
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My Budget is £150 And Photoshop, Lightroom and Vegas. Thanks.
 
That's the best CPU you can buy for that motherboard but I still wouldn't recommend it. Just to illustrate my point, the 5350 only gets a score of 2587 on Passmark. (That's a rough idea of how powerful the CPU is if fully utilised.) By contrast a simple Celeron G1840 gets 3002, that's almost 20% more powerful and it only costs £27.79. I'd recommend aiming for an Athlon 860K if possible for your usage though, that scores 5612 and costs £57.79.

I'd try and save some more cash and get something like this:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor (£57.79 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A68HM-HD2 Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard (£32.99 @ Aria PC)
Memory: Patriot Signature 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£27.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£19.00 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus GeForce GT 730 1GB Video Card (£42.38 @ More Computers)
Case: Zalman ZM-T4 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£20.02 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Green 380W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£38.26 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £238.43
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-10 16:34 GMT+0000


If you can't then you will have to build something around the 5350, I just think you might be disappointed with it.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD 5350 2.05Ghz Quad-Core Processor (£36.48 @ Ebuyer)
Motherboard: Asus AM1M-A Micro ATX AM1 Motherboard (Purchased For £0.00)
Memory: Patriot Signature 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£27.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Sandisk Z400s 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£31.98 @ Novatech)
Case: Zalman ZM-T4 MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£20.02 @ CCL Computers)
Power Supply: EVGA 430W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply (£29.94 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £146.41
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-10 16:38 GMT+0000

That's assuming 120GB is enough space, if it isn't then you will have to go with a hard drive. I wouldn't recommend re-using a PSU in general unless it is a good quality one like a Seasonic, Antec or Superflower or something. Even then I only would if it is less than 3-5 years old.
 
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