Best upgrade path with existing motherboards

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strikerty

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Jun 14, 2003
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My 14 year old son has been rocking the same cpu since he was about 8 ( guessing here), a Phenom X4 630. He recently was upgraded to a R9 380 with 4 gb and his games are struggling a bit such as Ark Survival Evolved and Black Ops 3 I believe.

I am trying to get him a new cpu for his upcoming birthday and I have 2 motherboards, one ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0 ( AMD) and another MSI board with 1155 socket that are just collecting dust at the moment. My budget is in the 100 to 130 dollar range and I have been struggling with the purchase doing alot of research but unable to come to any kind of conclusion.

I can pick up a brand new FX 6300 on Amazon for 99 bucks which leaves me 30 bucks for a decent air cooler for overclocking. There is the FX 8320E I found for around 120. I can pick up a refurbished ( refurbished cpu ie used LOL) I5 3470 for 135 on Amazon. And then if I stretch a little I can get a used 2500k for 140 which makes me a little nervous because a used 2500k has a high chance of having been overclocked for the last 4 years. Just looking for some pointers or ideas and with that GPU how much difference will it make for him.

Thanks ahead of time guys You guys always give me good advice.
 
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synphul
Either sell off the used stuff and consolidate to a newer build as smorzio suggested or pick up the i5 3570. That i5 is still a solid cpu and will vastly outperform his existing setup. Even the locked i5 would be a better bet than trying to oc an fx cpu whether it's a 6xxx or 8xxx.
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smorizio

smorizio

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Jan 22, 2010
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i would sell the two motherboards and pick up a newer mb and cpu and ddr4 ram. if you have a local micro center look at combo deals. look at a locked i5 and a h chipset mb. micro soft posted that there newer os will only support the newer chipset and cpu. on system speeds i have older 1155 i5 3540 cpu. I build my dad a new pc to replace his 10 year old dell with xp. used a h170 mb and a g4400 cpu and 256g samsung ssd. the newer pc boots faster (have the same ssd in my pc) and i can tell just running web/word the newer cpu is faster then my older rig. if money tight look to an i3 cpu and h 100 mb. the newer cpu you can get the better it be for the gpu to get higher frame rates in games.
 
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strikerty

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I just found a i5 3570 ( non k) used for 110 plus 5 dollars shipping. Its on Amazon so its fairly protected if there is an issue. Im thinking even used that is a smoking deal and will run much quicker than any of the AMDs. Whats your opinion on that?
 
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synphul

synphul

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Mar 11, 2011
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Either sell off the used stuff and consolidate to a newer build as smorzio suggested or pick up the i5 3570. That i5 is still a solid cpu and will vastly outperform his existing setup. Even the locked i5 would be a better bet than trying to oc an fx cpu whether it's a 6xxx or 8xxx.
 
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