Building new low budget PC for January 2014.

[sedona]

I'm still using an old generation PC built in 2009:

Processor: Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 @2.5GHz (overclocked to 3.55GHz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP43-DS3L (DDR2, SATA 3Gb/s, PCIe 2.0, USB 2.0)
Memory: 2x2GB DDR2
Graphics: Gigabyte GeForce 9400 GT 1GB
Harddisk: Western Digital 320GB SATA 3GB/s
Power Supply: Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 460 (420W)
Display: Dell 23" LCD (dual monitors on DVI-D)
Casing: Gigabyte GZ-X6 mid tower (ATX)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP3

I just bought a second-hand Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0 graphics card for the price of a new GT 630 2GB DDR3. However I realized later that the HD 6850 needed "500W or greater" which my current 420W power supply was not able to meet. I tried playing Sims 3 which is not a heavy game and the system was producing some hissing and whining noises. I'm not sure if the sound came from the power supply or the front/rear 120mm fans in the casing which are 5 years old. The old 420W power supply that came with the Gigabyte casing died so this Cooler Master is relatively newer.

Anyway here're my options:

Haswell build,
1. Processor: Intel Core i3-4130 3.4GHz (LGA 1150)
2. Motherboard: [strike]ASRock H81M-DGS[/strike] ASUS H81M-A
3. Memory: 2x4GB DDR3 Geil Evo Leggera C9 1600Mhz
4. Graphics: Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0
5. Harddisk: Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue SATA 6GB/s
6. Power Supply: FSP Hexa 500
7. Casing: Fractal Design Core 1000

Ivy Bridge build,
1. Processor: Intel Core [strike]i3-3220 3.3GHz (LGA 1155)[/strike] i5-3350P (6M Cache, up to 3.30 GHz)
2. Motherboard: ASRock [strike]H71M-DGS (H61 chipset)[/strike] B75M-DGS

Does it make sense for me to save a few dollars and go with previous generation Ivy Bridge build, or just pay a bit more for the latest Haswell architecture? It's unlikely that I will upgrade my CPU for next 5 years, not even the Broadwell architecture with same LGA 1150. I will of course change to a better graphics card later, albeit on second-hand discounted price. Later I will get 128GB or 250GB SSD. I may add cooling fans to the Fractal Design casing.

My thinking is that by the time I want to spend money again, it would be Skylake architecture on LGA 1151 socket so both these CPU+motherboard combinations will be obsoleted again.

Will the FSP Hexa 500 be able to power the Radeon HD 6850 card? I don't want to buy 600W power supply if I absolutely don't need to. The Seasonic S12II 520W is also more expensive.
http://www.fsplifestyle.com/product.php?LID=1&PSN=60#

I'm trying to save $10, $20, $40 wherever I can. It will still be a major improvement over my E5200 processor and GeForce 9400 GT. I believe neither of the i3-3220 or i3-4130 processors will bottleneck the HD 6850 card, and vice versa. I'm aware that the Radeon HD 6850 is old 2010 technology but the card I bought was built in 2012 and still powerful for my purpose.

I haven't decided on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.

Welcome any comments. Should I go with i3-3220 (cheaper) or i3-4130 (newer)?

 

[Muku]

Well, if you are not going to upgrade your CPU in next five years then its better to go with Haswell i3-4130.
but
If you are planning to upgrade your GPU within the next five years then its wiser to go with a 4 core processor like i5 as newer and powerful GPU's will be bottlenecked by a 2 core processor.
or
if you have a serious budget constraint then you can choose a 4/6 core processor from AMD like FX-63xx/43xx series

Any good PSU with 500 watts will be able to power a 6850.
but
I'd suggest you to go with seasonic 520 watt 80+ bronze PSU.
Seasonic makes one of the most dependable PSUs worldwide. Though it is costly, it is much much better than the FSP hexa 500 model which has no 80+ certification. Seasonic 520 watt will be able to power even much higher cards like a 7870 if you plan a upgrade in the future.

 

[sedona]

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with AMD processors and didn't factor that into my consideration. A quick check on prices it seemed AMD CPU+motherboard is more expensive than Intel combination.

I just found an even cheaper motherboard, ASRock H71M-DGS based on H61 chipset. It has no native USB 3.0 support and only SATA II 3GB/s. I have read that a SATAIII harddisk like Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue will not even max out the SATAII connection so the feature won't be missed. I use DropBox and MediaFire so I don't really need USB 3.0 either.

 

[Muku]

Unfortunately I'm not familiar with AMD processors and didn't factor that into my consideration. A quick check on prices it seemed AMD CPU+motherboard is more expensive than Intel combination.

If you are not interested in AMD then you can easily go for INTEL. Intel processors are very good when it comes to gaming provided you have a 4 core processor.
AMD provides a good solution for budget oriented people who wants a 4 core performance but not willing to pay as much as intel.

However you can take a look at this chart to find the equivalent processors of AMD and Intel:
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

in this benchmark
Intel i3 4130, 2 cores, scores 4911 (US $ 120)
Amd FX 4350, 4 cores - 5304 (US $ 145)
AMD FX 6350, 6 cores - 7016 (US $ 139)
Intel i5 4670, 4 cores - 7504 (US $ 218)
AMD FX 8320, 8 cores - 8117 (US $ 159)

Higher the score, better the performance
Here you can see an AMD 6 core FX 6350 which is considerably lower priced than an INTEL 4 core, performs quite similarly
And an AMD 8 core FX 8320 which is also much lower priced, out performs an intel 4 core.

Ashrock produces cheaper boards but are not reliable. Better to go with ASUS or GIGABYTE.

 

[sedona]

For the M-ATX casing Fractal Design Core 1000, there is only one front 120mm fan. There are options to add a 92mm rear fan or 120mm side panel fan. Since I'm using Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5, would it make sense to add the two fans or just one more? Which one would be better for cooling such a small casing? The rear fan or the side panel fan (facing the graphics card)?

http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/core-series/core-1000-usb-30

 

[Muku]

For the M-ATX casing Fractal Design Core 1000, there is only one front 120mm fan. There are options to add a 92mm rear fan or 120mm side panel fan. Since I'm using Radeon HD 6850 1GB GDDR5, would it make sense to add the two fans or just one more? Which one would be better for cooling such a small casing? The rear fan or the side panel fan (facing the graphics card)?

http://www.fractal-design.com/home/product/cases/core-series/core-1000-usb-30

The best option is to go with a 120mm rear exhaust fan. Putting one fan as the front intake and another as the rear exhaust helps to maintain a stream line air flow within the case which is the most effective ventilation system. But if your GPU gets excessive hot then you can add a side fan. Otherwise its not that necessary.

 

[sedona]

I'm curious about how my 8GB memory is being used. I loaded all the applications I normally use, and watch the Windows 7 Resource Monitor below.

What is that 56MB reserved for hardware? I turned off IGPU Multi Monitor in BIOS already. Is that 56MB related to the discrete graphics card?

2848MB in use, so I could have just bought 4GB of memory. The blue color "Standby" filled up 2951MB of memory, is that related to the Windows 7 prefetch or superfetch cache? Does it mean that since the 8GB memory is sufficient, that my harddisk pagefile is not used?

Looking at this picture, it does look like my choice of 8GB total memory is OK. I wouldn't need 16GB.