New Build, using existing parts.

[icehouse78]

Greeting first of all, and I thank those of you ahead of time for answering any questions I may have.

I am not a complete and total noob when it comes to building pc's, I have built my wife and I's pc's in 2008 and I believe it is time to upgrade.

First, we will be reusing our current mid tower cases and power supplies(both are Antec 500w) our HD's and our video cards, both of which are 1gb HIS Radeon 4670's.

We want the best possible bang for our buck, and would love to stay with a budget of $500 between the 2 upgrades.If it exceeds the budget I should be able to work around it a bit.

Preferably, we would both love to have the PhenomX2 6core, motherboard and ram isn't a huge deal, as long as we can stay within the budget.

We do game, and are currently playing RIFT and awaiting the release of Guild Wars 2, best performance per dollar is what I seek.

I am a little out of the loop as far as newer components go, and would appreciate any and all help you could provide.

 

[Outlander_04]

so $250 of parts per computer?

and you want mb/cpu/ RAM ?

 

[Raiddinn]

What are your current computer stats?

Some things from 2008 may still be useful.

 

[icehouse78]

What are your current computer stats?

Some things from 2008 may still be useful.

As I mentioned, the 4670 vid card, Athlonx2 dual core. 4gigs ddr2 gskill ram. 160gig hd. 500w antec powersupply.

 

[Raiddinn]

You can get 2 x 1055T processors for $300 here

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103851

Two of these for $100

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157204

and 2x 2x 4GBs of these for $80

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148347

That is about the best you will do for $500 in total.

- edit - you will need Windows 7 64 bit to use the 8GBs of ram, otherwise just get 2x 2x 2GBs Crucial or Kingston instead.

 

[FinneousPJ]

I think the best value for money CPU from AMD is the 960T. It has a chance of unlocking one or two cores, but even a quad core will be great for your purpose. It's $125.

 

[Raiddinn]

960T isn't bad if you have a UCC capable motherboard that can unlock cores. You may not be able to unlock any successfully, but the possibility is there.

The boards I suggested DO have UCC.

The extra $25 per processor does guarantee you x6 though instead of guaranteeing you x4 with a possible x6.

 

[FinneousPJ]

Yes, but I doubt Rift and Guild Wars use a six core CPU, thus you're not really getting anything for your $25. If you buy the Zosma and unlock, that's a bonus. If it doesn't unlock no problem, you still saved $25 for no reduction in performance. Heck, it probably performs better, being a higher clocked chip and easier to overclock too.

 

[Raiddinn]

The OP would love to have Phenom 2 x6s, I am just meeting the requirements.

 

[FinneousPJ]

Yeah, I know, but does it really make sense for him?

 

[Raiddinn]

The difference is small and we don't really know all the cool stuff that will come out in the next 3 - 4 years that WILL use 6 cores.

It would suck if they ended up with 960Ts that don't unlock (or 1 that does and 1 that doesn't... spousal gaming PC envy...) and they want to do something that does use 6 cores fully.

If we were over the budget already I wouldn't have a problem dropping back to 960s, but even with the $500 budget for 2 whole cores we are still under by $50 and I don't see a super huge need to shave further atm.

We both have good points, I mean the OP can take his wife out to dinner on the savings, but the guarantees aren't there.