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Started by Masdock | | 12 answers
Building a new computer, just need opinions and recommendations
Building a new computer! :D 

Hey! So i'm building a computer with a friend and I was wondering if you could check over my work to see if it's all compatible, and possibly give me suggestions on where I can find better or cheaper parts?

Budget: £625

Please could you recommend parts with a ? next to it.

Parts:

1) CPU - AMD Kaveri A10-7850k 3.7Ghz Processor
2) Motherboard - ASUS A88XM-PLUS Motherboard
3) RAM - 8GB 1600Mhz DDR3 Crucial Ballistix Sport RAM
4) PSU - Stealth X Stream 2 Power Supply PSU (Already have this part from an older build)
5) Optical drive - Standard optical drive
6) Case - Zalman Z12 Midi Tower Case - Black (Recommendation's for sexier cases would be awesome!)
7) Network card - ?
8) GPU - ?
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a b V Motherboard
October 15, 2014 4:50:31 PM

Masdock said:
darkbreeze said:
Revised with FX series, if you prefer. Or, you can go the other way too. Both are ok. This one is probably a bit better and like I said, you can always upgrade the CPU to an 8 core later if you want.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6350 3.9GHz 6-Core Processor (£89.56 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£41.00 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£59.44 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Black Edition Double Dissipation Video Card (£149.14 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Fractal Design FD-CA-CORE-3300-BL ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.95 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic M12II 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£71.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer (£15.60 @ Kustom PCs)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.29 @ Aria PC)
Total: £581.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-11 01:36 BST+0100


Any need for soundcard? Been looking at the motherboard and I'm not sure.


It depends... Do you love high quality sound? Are you an "audiophile" as some may call?
a b V Motherboard
a b ) Power supply
October 15, 2014 3:16:02 PM

8-channel high definition audio is integrated into the motherboard. Unless you're doing professional track editing or something that requires a high end sound card, it should be fine with that.

The onboard 8-channel HD audio (High Definition Audio, previously codenamed Azalia) CODEC enables high-quality 192KHz/24-bit audio output and jack-detect feature that automatically detects and identifies what types of peripherals are plugged into the audio I/O jacks and notifies users of inappropriate connection, which means there will be no more confusion of Line-in, Line-out, and Mic jacks.
October 15, 2014 11:51:28 AM

darkbreeze said:
Revised with FX series, if you prefer. Or, you can go the other way too. Both are ok. This one is probably a bit better and like I said, you can always upgrade the CPU to an 8 core later if you want.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6350 3.9GHz 6-Core Processor (£89.56 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£41.00 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£59.44 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Black Edition Double Dissipation Video Card (£149.14 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Fractal Design FD-CA-CORE-3300-BL ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.95 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic M12II 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£71.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer (£15.60 @ Kustom PCs)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.29 @ Aria PC)
Total: £581.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-11 01:36 BST+0100


Any need for soundcard? Been looking at the motherboard and I'm not sure.
a b V Motherboard
a b ) Power supply
October 10, 2014 5:37:28 PM

Revised with FX series, if you prefer. Or, you can go the other way too. Both are ok. This one is probably a bit better and like I said, you can always upgrade the CPU to an 8 core later if you want.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6350 3.9GHz 6-Core Processor (£89.56 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£41.00 @ Ebuyer)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory (£59.44 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£35.94 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: XFX Radeon R9 280 3GB Black Edition Double Dissipation Video Card (£149.14 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Fractal Design FD-CA-CORE-3300-BL ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.95 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic M12II 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£71.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer (£15.60 @ Kustom PCs)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) (£69.29 @ Aria PC)
Total: £581.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-11 01:36 BST+0100
a b V Motherboard
a b ) Power supply
October 10, 2014 5:30:51 PM

Revised build on the way.
a b V Motherboard
a b ) Power supply
October 10, 2014 4:46:46 PM

I need to remember there's a 6350. I always forget about it. It's an option as well. And it does leave you some amount of room to upgrade later with an 8 core, I just don't know that it's the best option. AM3+ is a dead end at this point whereas FM2+ might see some interesting releases in the future. It probably doesn't matter which way you go, you'd be ok.
a b V Motherboard
October 10, 2014 3:58:01 PM

????

FX-6350 has six cores and a higher base clock speed for about $50 less than the A10. That's the one I'd go for. That and the 6300 are possibly the only AMD processor I'd go for in a gaming build. Much higher budget, and you want an i5. Much lower budget, and then you're in the territory where an APU sans graphics card really might be worth looking at.
a b V Motherboard
a b ) Power supply
October 10, 2014 11:32:11 AM

capt_taco said:
My question is, why are you spending the money on an A10 APU when you're also using a standalone graphics card? You can get an FX-series CPU that's more powerful and for less money.


None of the FX series that are worth having, are cheaper. If you drop down to a 6 core FX you might as well be using the A10 and it's higher clock speed. Plus, it has a much lower TDP, especially if you have to overclock the FX to keep it relevant which then incurs the cost of a decent CPU cooler as well. Just my opinion but I'd personally rather have that A10 than a stock 6300.

Plus, if you ever have a GPU failure you can at least use the integrated graphics until you can get the problem sorted out or the GPU replaced. As I've said many times before, I would not personally choose any of the A series configurations, I'd go with an 8 core FX for budget reasons or some configuration of an i5 or i7, but some folks have less availability of parts and much different pricing than we have here so they don't have as much wiggle room for choosing options.
a b V Motherboard
October 10, 2014 10:27:05 AM

My question is, why are you spending the money on an A10 APU when you're also using a standalone graphics card? You can get an FX-series CPU that's more powerful and for less money.
October 10, 2014 10:06:44 AM

darkbreeze said:
This is under you budget by a bit, and includes the PSU and 280x GPU. This should do just about anything you want within reason. I also upgraded the RAM as that board and cpu both support the higher speed RAM. The Seasonic PSU has plenty of juice for the GPU and is a very solid unit. If you are absolutely confident in the PSU you have, you could drop it off the list, although I would again recommend a new PSU with a new CPU, motherboard, higher speed RAM and big card.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD A10-7850K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor (£122.98 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: Asus A88XM-PLUS/CSM Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard (£55.46 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory (£70.71 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 280X 3GB Dual-X Video Card (£199.99 @ Novatech)
Case: Fractal Design FD-CA-CORE-3300-BL ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.95 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic M12II 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£71.58 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24F1ST DVD/CD Writer (£15.60 @ Kustom PCs)
Total: £586.27
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-10-01 07:07 BST+0100


Sorry for the slow response. Yeah this looks good but the problem is we will also need to buy a copy of windows 7 and also a hard drive which will take money off of it. Anyway you can lower the price to fit it in?

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