Deciding on a processor... suggestions!

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Sinister_kid

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 19, 2011
Messages
182
Well, my dad is always complaining about how slow is computer is, and I hate how slow it is when I actually need to use his computer, so I have decided maybe i'll build him a new faster one. The one is he using now is a hand-down from my moms work that is pretty slow.

My question is, what would you guys recommend as far as a CPU goes? Does he really need a 2+ core processor for just web browsing/paying bills/light load games?

I'm looking to stay fairly cheap for the build, I already have case/drives/hdd to use, so i'm really only looking at MB, cpu, memory, and a psu.

I have selected this mobo (open to suggestions if you guys have any!:) ) :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131595

I have quickly found these processors which sorta caught my eye because of price and power:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103698
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103846
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103872


So basically what would you guys recommend as far as a CPU, are any of those 3 good?

Thanks.
 
The Phenom II 555 is overkill for what he needs, especially if no overclocking is going on. The X3 445 is a decent choice or for $14 less you could go with the X2 255.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103896
I wouldn't go as low as a single core Sempron anymore for any PC that is being actively used (may be okay for a fileserver on the home network). For the most part single-core may be fine but even something simple like a daily anti-virus update can hog an entire core and leave the system sluggish or unresponsive.

Are you sure you want to get a DDR2 board? We've already reached the point where DDR3 is slightly cheaper for the same quality/speed as it's DDR2 equivalent.
 
DedEmbryonicCe11 said:
The Phenom II 555 is overkill for what he needs, especially if no overclocking is going on. The X3 445 is a decent choice or for $14 less you could go with the X2 255.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103896
I wouldn't go as low as a single core Sempron anymore for any PC that is being actively used (may be okay for a fileserver on the home network). For the most part single-core may be fine but even something simple like a daily anti-virus update can hog an entire core and leave the system sluggish or unresponsive.

Are you sure you want to get a DDR2 board? We've already reached the point where DDR3 is slightly cheaper for the same quality/speed as it's DDR2 equivalent.
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Thanks for the input. I was actually looking at the x2 255 after posting that.

I was not sure on whether I wanted DDR2 or 3. I'm guessing it would be better to go with 3. I will have to look for a 3 motherboard.
 
Depending on how much money you have, I'd look at 2x2GB of memory instead of just 2x1GB, but other than that, it looks like a pretty straight forward build that should suit your needs.
 
kirbyrj said:
Depending on how much money you have, I'd look at 2x2GB of memory instead of just 2x1GB, but other than that, it looks like a pretty straight forward build that should suit your needs.
Click to expand...

Any specific product you would recommend? I'm looking to stay under $225 and right now, with the 3 things listed above plus a Thermaltake 430W PSU, it's sitting at $202. So I have some room to move still.
 
Sinister_kid said:
Alright found this:
Gigabyte 760G http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128455

coupled with
Corsair ram http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145252

To go along with the AMD x2 255
Click to expand...

Yeah not good choices at all:
- At $33 shipped, that Corsair RAM is very overpriced since for $7 more, you can get 4GB of RAM:
$40 - G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNT 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM

- That motherboard is very very overpriced at $73 shipped. Especially since you get a more fully featured mobo for $2 more via this combo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.592387

Do note that combo expires February 28th

- Also do not get that shitty Themaltake PSU. You can get a far far superior PSU for less than the price of that piece of shit Thermaltake 430W:
$40 - Antec Earthwatts Green EA380D 380W PSU
 
Danny Bui said:
Yeah not good choices at all:
- At $33 shipped, that Corsair RAM is very overpriced since for $7 more, you can get 4GB of RAM:
$40 - G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNT 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM

- That motherboard is very very overpriced at $73 shipped. Especially since you get a more fully featured mobo for $2 more via this combo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.592387

Do note that combo expires February 28th

- Also do not get that shitty Themaltake PSU. You can get a far far superior PSU for less than the price of that piece of shit Thermaltake 430W:
$40 - Antec Earthwatts Green EA380D 380W PSU
Click to expand...

Alright, took into consideration what you said here.. opted for that RAM and the PSU, but that combo was a bit much for me. Switched out the mobo for this one instead:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131669

thoughts?
 
i would go with danny bui's choice ...simply because its danny, check how many computer builds this guy has adviced on.....check all his posts and you'll see that he knows what he is telling you!
 
Sinister_kid said:
Alright, took into consideration what you said here.. opted for that RAM and the PSU, but that combo was a bit much for me. Switched out the mobo for this one instead:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131669

thoughts?
Click to expand...
Not a good choice: That mobo uses a Nvidia chipset. Which means that it's slower, less stable, of lesser quality, has several driver issues, and the fact that Nvidia hasn't done any chipset development since October of 2009 means that support for that mobo is almost non-existent.

And again, you forgot to factor in shipping. Once you factor in shipping, that Asus Nvidia mobo is only $12 less than the mobo I recommended. I think the higher quality, better driver support, greater stability, and higher performance is well worth the extra $12 for the Biostar mobo in that combo deal.
 
Danny Bui said:
Not a good choice: That mobo uses a Nvidia chipset. Which means that it's slower, less stable, of lesser quality, has several driver issues, and the fact that Nvidia hasn't done any chipset development since October of 2009 means that support for that mobo is almost non-existent.

And again, you forgot to factor in shipping. Once you factor in shipping, that Asus Nvidia mobo is only $12 less than the mobo I recommended. I think the higher quality, better driver support, greater stability, and higher performance is well worth the extra $12 for the Biostar mobo in that combo deal.
Click to expand...

I have factored in shipping. With shipping the whole setup (That I have posted) comes to a total of $205.29, that is with 3 day guaranteed shipping.

The combo deal you provided alone is $165 which is only 23 dollars less that the setup I have selected, including memory and psu ($80 combined). There is no way I can swing to get all four items for under $225.

Now, I am not sure which companies are good for making motherboards anymore these days.. but (taking into considering your information about Nvidia chipsets, and going with AMD ones) I have found these boards:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007625%20600036384%20600009017%20600008296&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&CompareItemList=22|13-138-283^13-138-283-TS%2C13-138-197^13-138-197-TS%2C13-131-619^13-131-619-TS%2C13-138-290^13-138-290-TS

I am not sure what makes a bad mobo from a good mobo, so any help is appreciated. Will all of those work with the x2 255? It looks like they will but 3 say they support Athlon II and only 1 says it supports Athlon II X2...
 
Basically any AM2/AM2+/AM3 motherboard will support the x2 255. The only ones that might have issues are the older AM2 motherboards that don't have bios updates (not relevant since there are no DDR3 AM2 motherboards). DDR3 is exclusively AM3.
 
Sinister_kid said:
I have factored in shipping. With shipping the whole setup (That I have posted) comes to a total of $205.29, that is with 3 day guaranteed shipping.
Click to expand...

What setup are you talking about? The one with the poor RAM choice, shitty PSU, and the overpriced Gigabyte motherboard?
Sinister_kid said:
The combo deal you provided alone is $165 which is only 23 dollars less that the setup I have selected, including memory and psu ($80 combined). There is no way I can swing to get all four items for under $225.
Click to expand...
Hmm I see. That means that we'll have to downgrade from the Phenom II X2 555 (the CPU in the combo I linked) to the Athlon II X3 450:
$130 - AMD Athlon II X3 450 CPU + Biostar A880G+ AM3 AMD 880G HDMI mATX Motherboard combo
$40 - G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNT 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$45 - Antec Earthwatts Green EA380D 380W PSU
---
Total: $218 shipped

The above Biostar mobo is of decent quality. We've been recommending that same mobo several times over in the General Hardware subforum for quite some time now. Yes the PSU went up in price since I first recommended the PSU.
 
Do you have a microcenter nearby?

You can get an athlon ii x4 + board for $95 + tax.
 
I agree that for his applications the Phenom II is probably overkill.

That being said I just built a system with one of those 555BE's for my stepson and successfully unlocked all four cores and pushed it to 4.2Ghz :p

For $80 at Microcenter that's not bad :p
 
Danny Bui said:
Hmm I see. That means that we'll have to downgrade from the Phenom II X2 555 (the CPU in the combo I linked) to the Athlon II X3 450:
$130 - AMD Athlon II X3 450 CPU + Biostar A880G+ AM3 AMD 880G HDMI mATX Motherboard combo
$40 - G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNT 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$45 - Antec Earthwatts Green EA380D 380W PSU
---
Total: $218 shipped

The above Biostar mobo is of decent quality. We've been recommending that same mobo several times over in the General Hardware subforum for quite some time now. Yes the PSU went up in price since I first recommended the PSU.
Click to expand...

Alright thank you.
 
There's also a pretty good chance that x3 will unlock to an Athlon II x4.
 
I've recently built 3 identical PCs using the X3 450 and Gigabyte GA-MA78LMT-S2. The Gigabyte board is ROCK SOLID. I successfully unlocked the 4th core (no crashes or oddities after 8 hour stress tests) on all of the X3s I bought from Newegg. You have a good chance of being able to unlock the 4th core successfully on the X3 450 (or 445), just try it out. Might as well get the 450 since so many people have had better luck unlocking them..it's only like $3 more compared to the 445. It's a fast setup with 4gb ram and Windows 7 64 bit.
 
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I recently built a budget AMD build. I used the ECS 785 black edition mATX board which has nice features but it's not on sale anymore so I won't recommend it at $100. However, I made sure to get a board with at least 1 PCIe x1 slot (my ECS board has 2 x1's and 1 x16), whereas the biostar boards listed here don't have any x1's. They do have x16 slots but if you want to add a USB 3.0 card at some point, you'll be out of luck, unless you don't mind using the x16 slot for that.

I also went with the sempron140 but I haven't had a chance to really test it out so I can't yet say how it "feels." I'll try and get back to you on that. This is for my own personal use. MY last build was a quad core phenom II and it was definitely overkill, though I occasionally did some video editing with it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131619
$55 after rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104069
$30 after rebate

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104203
$20 after promo code and rebate (4 gigs of DDR3-1600 for $20!!!)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103926
X2 245, $60. It's PLENTY fast. Triple core, quad core -> waste. Don't even bother unlocking/overclocking. The x2 255 is fine too obviously!

Price in cart (without promo code) $231.00
Price after rebates/promo code $174.00 shipped
 
If you have concerns about the power supply brand, check out their 400w model. It happens to have less of a rebate, and therefore is slightly more expensive, but check out the reviews. 5 "eggs" with 190 reviews is very good. The 500w model I linked only has 1 review for some reason. This is one of my favorite companies, excellent results in my limited experience.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104953
 
Benny Blanco said:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104069
$30 after rebate
Click to expand...

Benny Blanco said:
If you have concerns about the power supply brand, check out their 400w model. It happens to have less of a rebate, and therefore is slightly more expensive, but check out the reviews. 5 "eggs" with 190 reviews is very good. The 500w model I linked only has 1 review for some reason. This is one of my favorite companies, excellent results in my limited experience.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817104953
Click to expand...

I wouldn't recommend any of the above FSP PSUs at all due to the simple fact that there are significantly better quality PSUs for similar shipped prices:
$35 - Antec NEO ECO 400C 400W PSU
$40 - Antec Earthwatts Green EA380D 380W PSU
$43 - Corsair 430CX 430W PSU
 
Umm, I seriously don't think those are significantly better quality than FSP (no offense. but FSP does have a very good reputation). The Antec NEO does look very good for the price, AND free shipping? Wow. Definitely the winner!

Here is the correct link by the way.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371029

$50 for a PSU is just a bit high for a budget build, don't you think? :D

(Edit: referring to the Antec Earthwatts, which is $47.99 plus 2.99 shipping, not $40 as you listed it)
 
Danny Bui said:
What setup are you talking about? The one with the poor RAM choice, shitty PSU, and the overpriced Gigabyte motherboard?

Hmm I see. That means that we'll have to downgrade from the Phenom II X2 555 (the CPU in the combo I linked) to the Athlon II X3 450:
$130 - AMD Athlon II X3 450 CPU + Biostar A880G+ AM3 AMD 880G HDMI mATX Motherboard combo
$40 - G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNT 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$45 - Antec Earthwatts Green EA380D 380W PSU
---
Total: $218 shipped

The above Biostar mobo is of decent quality. We've been recommending that same mobo several times over in the General Hardware subforum for quite some time now. Yes the PSU went up in price since I first recommended the PSU.
Click to expand...



Nix that PSU.. It went up & the Neo Eco 400 went down. Better PSU I think anyhow & at 10 bucks less its definitely a better buy.

Edit: Oh & I did a build not long ago for a friend with an Athlon x3 & that same board.. I Couldn't recommend anything else for anywhere near that low of a price. Just an excellent value..
 
Benny Blanco said:
Umm, I seriously don't think those are significantly better quality than FSP (no offense. but FSP does have a very good reputation).
Click to expand...
Yeah, FSP doesn't have that great of a reputation any more. Just look at their Episilon based PSUs. Considering that Delta and Seasonic manufacturered the Antec PSUs I mentioned above, it's very fair to say those PSUs are of significantly better quality than any FSP PSU.

Benny Blanco said:
(Edit: referring to the Antec Earthwatts, which is $47.99 plus 2.99 shipping, not $40 as you listed it)
Click to expand...

It was $40 this morning. Forgot to update the price. It's still better than the FSP
 
No microcenters around here.. but we do have a Fry's which seems to be the same thing as said microcenter, I will have to go check it out sometime. Unfortunately it's like an hour south of me.
 
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