First Build low budget AM3+

[Guest]

Hey everyone. This is the first real build I'm planning so I would really appreciate any advice and help.

Motherboard: ASRock 970 EXTREME3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 640 Propus 3.0GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor ADX640WFGMBOX
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-8GBRL
PSU: COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M600 RS-600-AMBA-D3 600W ATX12V V2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Bronze Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
GPU: Already have an AMD/ATI 6770
HDD: Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive


Approximate Purchase Date: February 2012
Budget Range: 400-500
System Usage from Most to Least Important: Gaming
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: newegg, but open to other
Country: Argentina. Everything will be bought in the US
Parts Preferences: AMD CPU/VideoCard
Overclocking: Maybe
SLI or Crossfire: Maybe
Monitor Resolution: 1920x1080
Additional Comments: I cannot go over 500$ under any circumstances. Intel and Nvidia won't be considered for this build. My intention is to change the CPU ASAP, but given my limited budget I have to buy a mid-end one first.

 

[Outlander_04]

Use an FX 4100 rather than the Phenom .

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+FX-4100+Quad-Core
http://community.futuremark.com/hardware/cpu/AMD+FX-4100/review

You wont need a 600 watt psu to run that rig . The Corsair CX 430 will be fine

 

[blazorthon]

If you already have the video card does that mean that the budget does not include the video card?

 

[Guest]

As i have the video card there's no need to include its price on the budget

 

[blazorthon]

Use an FX 4100 rather than the Phenom .

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+FX-4100+Quad-Core
http://community.futuremark.com/hardware/cpu/AMD+FX-4100/review

You wont need a 600 watt psu to run that rig . The Corsair CX 430 will be fine

What Phenom? nachioos is looking at an Athlon. The FX-4100 should be a little faster than an Athlon but it is NOT faster than any Phenom quad or six core and probably can't beat a Phenom tri core either. The FX-4100 has no chance of touching an Intel Sandy Bridge quad core either.

 

[blazorthon]

You would be much better off getting an Intel machine or at least a Phenom qaud core BE and overclock the BE. Either option would be similar in price because the Phenom will need a more expensive cooler than the i5 quad cores would and that offsets the increased price of the i5-2500K to a moot point.

The i5-2400 would use the stock cooler (it can't be overclocked but it is already faster than the Phenom and FX CPUs anyway) and costs around $180 or so, pair it with an $70-90 H67 motherboard and it will beat all of AMD's CPUs that aren't obscenely overclocked while being cheaper than such highly overclocked AMD CPU+coolers.

The i5-2500K with a $20 Cooler Master hyper 212 could easily reach around 4.4GHz stably making it faster than all of AMD's CPUs regardless of how much you overclock them. It would only need a $90-120 motherboard to get that fast.

 

[Outlander_04]

What Phenom? nachioos is looking at an Athlon. The FX-4100 should be a little faster than an Athlon but it is NOT faster than any Phenom quad or six core and probably can't beat a Phenom tri core either. The FX-4100 has no chance of touching an Intel Sandy Bridge quad core either.

You should probably have read the links I posted . The FX 4100 generally performs somewhere between a 965 and a 970 , but overclocks much higher than any phenom
Its 3D mark scores are significantly higher than Phenom

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1766/14/

Not bad at all ,for what is essentially a dual core with 4 integer execution units

 

[Guest]

Best answer selected by nachioos.