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trying to choose mb/cpu

C

CorNut

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 14, 2005
Messages
269
I just bought a Silverstone FT03B mini itx case and a silverstone sfx PS. I'm thinking maybe I'll try to re-use a 95w Phenom II x4 955 (3.2ghz) I have laying around but the selection of ITX AM3 boards is slim pickins. I found an Asus one for $75 that has a pcie x16 slot (I'm adding a GPU) but there is no Windows 8 drivers which is the OS I'll be using. The board is discontinued now (this is it: here but it's in-stock at a few other places). I have a 120GB Vertex 3 sitting around that I'll be using but the board only supports Sata2, is that really that big of a deal? I assume I can just download some windows 8 chipset drivers directly from AMD and if Windows 8 doesn't recognize the LAN/Audio etc I can just visit the realtek site or whoever does the audio on that board etc.. I'm sure I can get the drivers I need. The GPU will be a GTX 460 short term but I'll upgrade that soon. I'm just looking at using that and an old CPU so I can get this thing up and running for very little $.

The PC I'm putting together is for another house, it won't be my primary PC but I do want it capable of playing BF3 and similar games. I hope to play on high but guessing a single 460 at 1920x1080 may struggle some? I don't mind getting an i5 since there is plenty of 1155 ITX boards with windows 8 drivers, they even have USB 3.0 headers, Sata3, and pcie 3.0 which the posted AMD board does not have. Do you think I'll regret it if I go cheap and get that Asus board or should I splurge and go Intel which would require CPU plus board? I'm just not certain how big of a bottleneck that phenom and sata2 will be. The lack of USB 3.0 headers isn't a big deal because I have no USB 3.0 devices and if I get one there is some on the back of that mobo and I'm sure I'll move on to another mb/cpu before pcie 3.0 will be a big enough deal to hurt me anyway. To splurge or not to splurge?
 
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Not counting what you've already bought, what's your budget for the rest of the build? And out of curiosity, which specific (model) PSU did you buy?

Your performance on BF3 will be tied to the X4 955 processor and the GTX 460 video card. (As long as you have 8GB of RAM to work with -- and the board you're considering uses notebook RAM, or SO-DIMM -- you're fine.) If you're not satisfied with the performance already, then you may want to consider buying a whole new platform. But before we go to far into that, we need to know whether or not you have the budget for a new processor, motherboard, (memory) and video card.
 
I don't really have a "budget" but it is sorta piece by piece. I've been working on it for a while. The power supply I have is this one here. It's a 450W SilverStone 80 bronze SFX sized PS. I already have a slot load blu ray drive (Sony) I've had for probably 6 months. I've been wanting to build a system in this case for a while but I've been putting it off.

The parts I have:

Case/PS/optical drive/Vertex 3 120gb SSD/Win 8 Pro/2tb 5400 rpm drive for storage

Old parts I have that are collecting dust:

EVGA GTX 460 and an AMD Phenom II x4 955 (95w version)

Those are the best of the CPU's and GPU's I have laying around anyway, I have tons more I need to donate :D to get rid of. Using the phenom and 460 I can spend a hundred bucks (well $125 if you think I need 8gb ram) and have it up and running now. If I need to ditch the phenom and get an i5/i7 it'll cost me closer to $400 which will probably delay the build a bit longer because instead of needing just mb/ram I'll need mb/ram/cpu and a decent cpu isn't cheap ;). The GTX 460 will go in the system no matter what route I go but only temporarily. I do plan on upgrading that eventually too, it was my old GPU in my current rig.

The PC I'm wanting to put together is to actually replace a PC (Athlon 64 3200 :eek:) I'm stuck using when I'm at my other house. I don't need this PC to be absolute top of the line but I don't want the CPU to be a huge bottleneck within a year or 2 with new games. If the GPU is the bottleneck I'm totally ok with that because it'll motivate me to upgrade my main rig's GPU so I can recycle a 670 over to the ITX build. The SilverStone FT03 mini-itx case can fit the 670 too so that isn't a concern

This is the case here

I'm definitely looking forward to the day I can play some bf3 to pass the time instead of playing words with friends all night :eek:


edit* nm, only $100 to get it going, with the current $10 promo code on the item page, 8gb of this ram is only $30 shipped if I order by 12/5. Inexpensive for sure. 8GB (2x4GB) gskill 1600 I've gotta admit, the ram being that inexpensive makes the Phenom route look mighty tempting lol.
 
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Here's the bad news: The X4 955 at stock speeds is outperformed by the current-gen (Sandy/Ivy Bridge) Intel Core i3 dual cores in many of today's games. You're essentially looking at bottlenecks in both the CPU and GPU when it comes to some of the newer, more resource-intensive games.

Since you don't have much to start with, go ahead and grab the Asus M4A88T-I Deluxe (Buy.com seems to have the best price) and the G.Skill RAM (that's on sale) now.
 
I went ahead and purchased the mb/memory. It's running me just under $110 for them and everything else will be recycled for the time being. Really isn't a bad deal at that price but now I may have to upgrade in 2-3 years to keep up if I want to play current games but that's alright I suppose, maybe I won't have to? we'll see
 
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