What is the best I can do with $500?

[gpalm05]

I have a little over $500 to spend to upgrade my computer. My PSU went out in my old one so I figured why not upgrade. The things I am looking to upgrade are-

Power Supply-
Motherboard-
CPU-
RAM-

And possibly get a SSD. I mostly use the computer for playing games but I don't need to be able to max the settings out until I can actually afford it. I will use my old case, monitor, video card (Radeon HD 6770), etc...

I have been looking around and I am leaning towards getting-

AMD FX-4170 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/amd-cpu-fd4170frgubox

ASRock 990FX Extreme4 ATX AM3+ Motherboard
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asrock-motherboard-990fxextreme4

G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/gskill-memory-f314900cl9d8gbxl

OCZ 700W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/ocz-power-supply-ocz700mxsp

Samsung 830 Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz7pc128bww

Those parts are going to cost me around $515. If anyone has any opinions or better ideas for me please let me know. I will be looking to upgrade the video card and a few other things in a couple of months, but for now I just want a fairly decent computer that will be easily upgradable.

 

[Shockattackr]

Drop the Solid State, I know its all flashy but in a 500$ build last thing you want to do is drop 130 on a SSD

AS for upgradability you would have to wait for Piledriver to come out for AMD, the one you have now is pretty decent, but if you can get a Phenom 2 965 BE do so. It is much better for gaming then the Bulldozer Chips

 

[amkronos]

If you are looking to upgrade down the line the CPU I might suggest going with Intel.

Get a decent Z68 or Z77 board with an i3 core or i5 cpu and build up from there.

You don't need that PSU to run this system, that's about 350-400w of wasted power. Unless you really plan on going SLI/XFire in the very near future you can go lower and be just fine.

Suggestions:

Motherboard: ASRock Z77 Extreme4 LGA 1155
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293

SSD: Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2CCA 2.5" 128GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148448

PSU: Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182200

CPU + RAM: Intel Core i3-2120 Sandy Bridge + CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1001142

Total: $445

If you can swing it and get an upgrade to an i5 this combo with the same memory and an i5 2310:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1001151

is only $70 more.

 

[nekulturny]

Forget about the solid state altogether. If you want an AMD CPU, the Phenom II 965 is a much better performing CPU than the FX-4170.

Cheaper AMD mobo thats good quality
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131767

Better CPU-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103727

Buying an i3 and intending to upgrade to an i5 later is a waste of money, and just plain bad financial planning. Get the i5 NOW if you want it, and save up until you can afford it if you can't now and still want one.

 

[AyuX]

Get a core i3 2120, asus h61 Mobo, HD 6850, NO SSD, and a 500W PSU

 

[nekulturny]

asus h61 Mobo,

You can have all the H61 boards as far as I'm concerned. They need to all be burned in a fire.

 

[DarkOutlaw]

look at the budget rig in my sig @ $506 it is just barely over your budget.

Edit: Ha scratch that, it is now sitting @ $491

 

[amkronos]

asus h61 Mobo,

You can have all the H61 boards as far as I'm concerned. They need to all be burned in a fire.

I agree. If you don't plan on overclocking at all get an H77 or B75 chipset.

 

[ram1009]

"What is the best I can do with $500?


Send it to me.

 

[swifty_morgan]

what do you have for an opsys and is it 32 or 64bit ?.......... and do you have the disc ?

what is your current HD and how old is it ?

what size motherboard can your case support ? atx/micro atx, etc.

 

[nekulturny]

look at the budget rig in my sig @ $506 it is just barely over your budget.

Edit: Ha scratch that, it is now sitting @ $491

Yea, but honestly for gaming you would have been better off dropping the 2500K in favor of an overclocked Phenom II or i3-2120. A 7850 with either of those CPUs is going to outgame your 2500K w/ 550 TI any day of the week.

I agree. If you don't plan on overclocking at all get an H77 or B75 chipset.

Well there are a couple H61 boards that have SATA III and USB 3.0, but any of em that don't. Garbage.

 

[DarkOutlaw]

Yea, but honestly for gaming you would have been better off dropping the 2500K in favor of an overclocked Phenom II or i3-2120. A 7850 with either of those CPUs is going to outgame your 2500K w/ 550 TI any day of the week..

Intel Beats out AMD at...well everything. And the 7850 Should preform better than the 550 TI because it costs twice as much. It is a good few tiers higher, but on $500 bucks I wouldnt go over $100 on the GPU. The mobo/cpu will run $200 that leaves you with $200 to buy everything else you need.

 

[nekulturny]

Intel Beats out AMD at...well everything. And the 7850 Should preform better than the 550 TI because it costs twice as much. It is a good few tiers higher, but on $500 bucks I wouldnt go over $100 on the GPU. The mobo/cpu will run $200 that leaves you with $200 to buy everything else you need.

Phenom IIs perform just as well as i3s at gaming, and multithreading, the Phenom II will outperform the i3. In the most CPU intensive games Tom's could find to benchmark, the most difference they got was 1-5FPS, thats not a real difference. Thats not even considering the fact that most games aren't CPU intensive to begin with.

And thats not entirely accurate. i5-2300s, were a very shortlived model number at the $180 price point.. Why?

i3-2120 Cinebench Single threaded 1.33, 4 threads 3.23 (~25% less than a Phenom II at 4.0)
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1650/9/

You can keep your i3 at $125 lol. I'll take a Phenom II 965 for $110 with a $20 CoolerMaster 212 plus any day. :lol:

 

[djscribbles]

I'd like to ask what your current system is, and are you sure that upgrading your mobo/ram/CPU is what you want to do?

You may be able to get a lot better performance improvement from a PSU + GPU purchase. Typically, games are more likely to bottleneck on the GPU than the CPU, a good CPU from 3 years ago can still keep good framerates at any quality level for the majority of games (there are exceptions, CPU utilization is extremely game dependent).

 

[DarkOutlaw]

i3-2120 Cinebench Single threaded 1.33, 4 threads 3.23 (~25% less than a Phenom II at 4.0)
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1650/9/

You can keep your i3 at $125 lol. I'll take a Phenom II 965 for $110 with a $20 CoolerMaster 212 plus any day. :lol:

Thats fine by me. Try playing Diablo 3, or look at the battle.net forums to see how bad AMD users got $*^% on. I trust quality over quantity. If that means buying a better CPU with slightly less performance for $5 less, so be it. .27 mp/s is not something I would brag about since that AMD phenom is a quad core? and the i3 is a dual core?

Edit:
Unless I am looking at the wrong Phenom II 965, which I could be, Intel's dual core preforms at the same level as AMD's quad core...that kinda tells me right there AMD doesnt have it all together...

 

[nekulturny]

Thats fine by me. Try playing Diablo 3, or look at the battle.net forums to see how bad AMD users got $*^% on. I trust quality over quantity. If that means buying a better CPU with slightly less performance for $5 less, so be it.

Even heavily downclocked, the Phenom II manages to greatly exceed the 60FPS frame rate limitation of a computer monitor. Anyone complaining on Battlenet is a moron. Sorry, not trying to be abrasive, but thats just the facts.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/diablo-iii-performance-benchmark,3195-6.html

.27 mp/s is not something I would brag about since that AMD phenom is a quad core? and the i3 is a dual core?

Considering that the Phenom II is a 4 year old design, and the Sandy Bridge is a year old, I'd say the i3 has nothing to brag about personally. The i3 is a dual core with 4 threads. But I guess benches are open to interpretation. 4 threads vs 4 threads sounds perfectly fair to me.

Unless I am looking at the wrong Phenom II 965, which I could be, Intel's dual core preforms at the same level as AMD's quad core...that kinda tells me right there AMD doesnt have it all together...

So what? Its a $110 CPU vs one that costs $125. Don't get me wrong, I'm not disputing that Intel makes better CPUs, but lets drop the fanboy crap shall we?

 

[DarkOutlaw]

CNET Review

Intel's standard CPU performance superiority seems to give it the edge there and with programs that rely on more traditional CPU processing. If you regularly use a program designed to make use of multiple processing cores, the A8-3850 is a better choice.

And thats why we have the i5 and i7 for this. Since a game doesnt care about multiple processing cores...yeah...

OP, Intel is the way to go here. If you can afford the 2500k or 3750k, I would go with the i3.

 

[nekulturny]

That CNET review is of an AMD Fusion, you really are being a fan boy, throwing up reviews that aren't even talking about the products in question.. LOL. Yes, there are some games that care about multiple cores. Skyrim, Battlefield 3, and Crysis, Metro 2033 to name a few.

 

[Shockattackr]

if you want to be able to upgrade go with the i3 if not stick with the Phenom II x4 965be this processor is an old one I LOVED MINE, did everything and anything but die

 

[DarkOutlaw]

i3-2120 Cinebench Single threaded 1.33, 4 threads 3.23 (~25% less than a Phenom II at 4.0)
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1650/9/

You can keep your i3 at $125 lol. I'll take a Phenom II 965 for $110 with a $20 CoolerMaster 212 plus any day. :lol:

That CNET review is of an AMD Fusion, you really are being a fan boy, throwing up reviews that aren't even talking about the products in question.. LOL. Yes, there are some games that care about multiple cores. Skyrim, Battlefield 3, and Crysis, Metro 2033 to name a few.

Thats because this is the review he posted, the AMD A8-3850. Reguardless of the model, quality (intel) over quantity (amd).

 

[nekulturny]

Thats because this is the review he posted, the AMD A8-3850. Reguardless of the model, quality (intel) over quantity (amd).

Maybe I missed a post somewhere, but thats still not a reasonable comparison. An AMD Fusion is basically an Athlon II with an onboard graphics chip. Athlon IIs are basically Phenom IIs without an L3 cache. That lack of L3 cache can affect performance as heavily as 25%. Which puts you squarely back on.. err where we started. I put that link up to show the Cinebench scores of an i3. Since I don't own one myself to Cinebench. What review it happens to be part of is not going to change the Cinebench score of the i3.

Thats because this is the review he posted, the AMD A8-3850. Reguardless of the model, quality (intel) over quantity (amd).

I show evidence that shows the Phenom II being superior and somehow Intel i3 still has better "quality".. Whatever makes you feel like you're winning. LOL, I don't actually care what CPU the OP goes with, but if you're going to give flawed and inaccurate information, you're going to run into a wall that is "Nekulturny".

 

[amkronos]

Ok here ya go OP. Under $500 for the parts you asked for:

Motherboard: ASRock Z75 Pro3 LGA 1155
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157304

SSD: Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2CCA 2.5" 128GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148448

PSU: Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182200

CPU + RAM: Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge + CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1001124

$497

 

[nekulturny]

Ok here ya go OP. Under $500 for the parts you asked for:

Motherboard: ASRock Z75 Pro3 LGA 1155
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157304

SSD: Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2CCA 2.5" 128GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148448

PSU: Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182200

CPU + RAM: Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge + CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1001124

$497

*claps* I am Nekulturny, and I approve of this configuration. Very, very nice find.

 

[DarkOutlaw]

Benchmarks


Not to mention that if the OP wants to upgrade the i3 to an i5 he will not need to buy a new motherboard.

 

[nekulturny]

Benchmarks

You haven't really been paying attention to a word I've said have you? Now, find one that shows a Phenom II @ 4.0 GHZ against the same CPU. If the i3 were overclockable, oh wait.. It isn't! Go away.

Not to mention that if the OP wants to upgrade the i3 to an i5 he will not need to buy a new motherboard.

Let me quote myself from earlier in this thread:
Buying an i3 and intending to upgrade to an i5 later is a waste of money, and just plain bad financial planning. Get the i5 NOW if you want it, and save up until you can afford it if you can't now and still want one.