Building a PC - Let's Talk About Processors

[Quintillus]

Unless you plan on overclocking, the third-party cooler (Cooler Master Hyper TX3 in tokala's list) is unnecessary. Since the i5-4590 can't be overclocked anyway, there's no good reason to go for it. I could see a case for going with a third-party cooler if you were going for a less expensive overclockable AMD processor (one of the aforementioned FX CPUs, or the Athlon X4 750K, perhaps), and using the overclock to get closer to more expensive Intel processors in performance, but even then it's questionable on a budget.

Swap the i5-4590K for the Athlon X4 750K, overclock the latter a bit, get a socket FM2 motherboard for $10 or so less than the Intel one, and you've saved $149 ($119 CPU + $10 mobo + $20 no third-party cooler), more than the cost of a Windows license. Sure, the Athlon won't be as fast even overclocked, but as you said, you aren't planning to set the world on fire. Then swap the 8 GB of RAM for a single 4 GB stick at $36 - less prestigious name but one that's been around awhile, and easy to upgrade later when needed (and when prices may well be lower - RAM's still about 2.5 times as expensive per GB as when I bought it in 2011). That's $189 saved. Subtract $100 of savings for Windows, and you're at $89 saved, or $558 total cost including Windows. That leaves about $150 for a monitor, which ought to allow for something decent (and the monitor's what you're going to be looking at, so you don't really want to totally cheap out on it).

tokala's configuration would have the edge in, say, Civ5 AI turn times. Graphically, the difference would be less noticeable. And with a higher budget, sure, tokala's configuration is preferable. But it's something to consider for an enjoyable experience that's strictly within your original budget.

It's also worth considering local retailers and non-Newegg ones at times. I was able to buy a Core i5-2500K for $180, about $50 below standard pricing at the time and below standard prices for the inferior i5-2400 as well, by pricematching MicroCenter's price on NCIX. You can't always get that good, but you might be able to save a Jackson or two, or get a slightly better part for the same price as the one you'd originally intended to buy.

 

[Zelig]

PCPartPicker is good for putting together builds, it also lists the cheapest place to order from for each part. (Of web stores it has in its database, obviously.)

I wouldn't give up dual channel RAM - if I wanted to upgrade later I'd just offload the 2x2gb for $10 or whatever on craigslist and buy some more.

 

[tokala]

Since the i5-4590 can't be overclocked anyway, there's no good reason to go for it.

Are the boxed coolers that good these days?
With its turbo mode, the i5 will use all of its thermal design power under load, and given that my close-to-stock 3570k needs a 120mm fan and a monstrous heatsink to stay reasonably quiet under heavy load, I imagine the boxed cooler to get quite annoying under load.
But of course this might be a "luxury item" for a lot of users.

Then swap the 8 GB of RAM for a single 4 GB stick at $36 - less prestigious name but one that's been around awhile, and easy to upgrade later when needed

That's indeed a good option, shifting a bit of the cost to a later date, while still losing not that much performance in most cases. But I would still suggest a "prestigious" (kingston, crucial, samsung etc.) stick that can be expected to be available until you add the second one, two different models may cause compatibility issues.

 

[Zelig]

Are the boxed coolers that good these days?
With its turbo mode, the i5 will use all of its thermal design power under load, and given that my close-to-stock 3570k needs a 120mm fan and a monstrous heatsink to stay reasonably quiet under heavy load, I imagine the boxed cooler to get quite annoying under load.
But of course this might be a "luxury item" for a lot of users.

Depends on case and configuration. The Mac Pro stays reasonably quiet with a 3.0 GHz Turbo 12-core 130 W TDP Xeon with a single 140mm fan for the entire system. The i5 won't actually use all of its TDP under load unless you're running small FFT tests in Prime95. Even then, there's some leeway - the 4590 has a 4-core turbo of 3.5 GHz with an 84 W TDP, while the 4790 goes to 3.8 GHz with no increase in TDP.

That's indeed a good option, shifting a bit of the cost to a later date, while still losing not that much performance in most cases. But I would still suggest a "prestigious" (kingston, crucial, samsung etc.) stick that can be expected to be available until you add the second one, two different models may cause compatibility issues.

Two different models shouldn't cause compatibility issues, RAM will simply run at the slower speed/timings of any installed chips.

And regardless of brand, even sticks with identical model numbers aren't guaranteed to be the same actual chips in the future, or to have the same sub-timings.

 

[Zelig]

Swap the i5-4590K for the Athlon X4 750K, overclock the latter a bit, get a socket FM2 motherboard for $10 or so less than the Intel one, and you've saved $149 ($119 CPU + $10 mobo + $20 no third-party cooler), more than the cost of a Windows license. Sure, the Athlon won't be as fast even overclocked, but as you said, you aren't planning to set the world on fire. Then swap the 8 GB of RAM for a single 4 GB stick at $36 - less prestigious name but one that's been around awhile, and easy to upgrade later when needed (and when prices may well be lower - RAM's still about 2.5 times as expensive per GB as when I bought it in 2011). That's $189 saved. Subtract $100 of savings for Windows, and you're at $89 saved, or $558 total cost including Windows. That leaves about $150 for a monitor, which ought to allow for something decent (and the monitor's what you're going to be looking at, so you don't really want to totally cheap out on it).

On that note, Tom's actually did a budget gaming PC build based on the X4 750K a few days ago: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/budget-gaming-pc,3854.html

They come out at $619 including OS cost. Write-up looks interesting, though I'm at work right now and don't have time to read through all of it.

 

[marlowe221]

Yeah, I've been playing around with PCpartpicker.com the past few days. I followed a link on /r buildapc found myself in PC-builder's heaven!

I have to say that reserving funds for a monitor and OS definitely makes my budget TIGHT. I will definitely have to scale back a bit on some of the parts I have been looking at but upgrades should be relatively inexpensive going forward.

On the Intel side, it's going to be tough to swing an i5. It can be done but juuuuuust barely.

On the AMD side, well, it's difficult to know what to do in that scenario. From what I have read it looks like AM3+ is going nowhere (maybe). Meanwhile they are doing interesting things with Kaveri/FM2+ and dual graphics/mantle/etc.

Very different design philosophies - it's difficult to tell what it would be best to do.

 

[Zelig]

I would in general not plan to upgrade any CPU.

The problem with upgrading a CPU is that any socket has a rather limited option for compatible CPUs, so there aren't a ton of products available going from (say) low-end socket 1155 to high-end socket 1155. This makes it essentially impossible to sell (which is presumably what you're doing with your old hardware) your low-end socket 1155 CPU, since nobody owns a compatible mobo where they don't already have a CPU at least as good as the one you're trying to sell.

Furthermore, if you wait a couple years to upgrade the CPU, any high-end CPU for the socket will be more expensive than a faster CPU for newer sockets, since everyone is trying to upgrade the CPU on their old computers by now.

I just treat a mobo/cpu as a single unit to sell off on craigslist for an appropriate price when you upgrade to a new mobo/cpu.

 

[Quintillus]

Are the boxed coolers that good these days?
With its turbo mode, the i5 will use all of its thermal design power under load, and given that my close-to-stock 3570k needs a 120mm fan and a monstrous heatsink to stay reasonably quiet under heavy load, I imagine the boxed cooler to get quite annoying under load.
But of course this might be a "luxury item" for a lot of users.

I've been using the stock cooler with my i5 2500k for 2.5 years now, and haven't even taken the time to dust it off (there is some visible, but not an absurd amount). For awhile I had it at 3.9 GHz, but that was pushing it a bit with stock, so nowadays I keep it at 3.3 GHz. 2.5 years down the road, it hits the low 80's under load, which is a bit warm, but also higher than it was new. Being used to a hot notebook previously, I don't consider it too bad for a stock cooler (although I do plan to get a third-party cooler at some point this year).

Although the other caveat is that I have a full ATX case, so there's plenty of room inside. Airflow isn't great, though, as I often have the door on the front closed. But my conclusion is that, while a third-party cooler is nice-to-have, I wouldn't consider it necessary, particularly when trying to keep costs low.

Dual-channel RAM is another thing that I think is a bit overstated in importance. Sure, it's nice, but in most benchmarks the performance difference is very low. I'd rather have the easy upgrade later, if the cost is similar, but that is personal preference. Having the same brand for all RAM is also something that I think is overrated, as long as you don't have total no-name RAM. I've mixed and matched RAM on my laptop without care, for a short while even mixing a 533 Mhz 512 MB DIMM and a 667 MHz 2 GB DIMM, and haven't had any problems. I have G. Skill RAM in my desktop currently, since it was the cheapest DDR3 1600 MHz at the time ($30/8 GB), but wouldn't insist on more G. Skill if/when I upgrade.

I do agree with Zelig that in general you shouldn't plan on upgrading your CPU. There often just isn't enough of a performance upgrade available without also upgrading your motherboard. And the phenomenon of older CPUs that you can upgrade to being unduly expensive does happen. In particular, the fastest models tend to be inordinately expensive to upgrade to relative to buying a new CPU/motherboard with a newer socket. Sometimes a few notches away from the top is significantly cheaper. As an example, when looking at upgrading my laptop's CPU awhile back, the best CPU was the Core 2 Extreme X9000, which was going for an absurd price considering how much faster i5's were by then. But the second-best CPU available was less than half the cost. I witnessed something similar when looking up possible upgrades for a friend's AMD laptop - the second-best APU he could upgrade to was half the price of the best.

The Radeon M7 265 in Tom's review is an interesting option. Looking up a review of it vs. the GTX 750 Ti, it appears to be 15-20% faster. Although it really comes down to the best deal at the time. tokala's link to the GTX 750 Ti is $110 if you get the mail-in-rebate (MIR), and if you count it at that price, it's a better option than the M7 265. But if you don't do MIRs (and I don't typically count them since I've had less than stellar luck in having them honored), it's a $10 difference, and the M7 265 looks like a better deal. It's certainly one of those things where it depends on when you're buying as to which is better.

AMD's Kaveri is interesting, IMO. Although with mobile Kaveri coming within spitting distance of the desktop version's performance, particularly in gaming, I find it more interesting on laptops than desktops. Provided some OEMs do end up delivering laptops with high-end Kaveri parts, that is. The desktop A10 Kaveri APUs are also an interesting budget option, particularly with budgets a bit below yours where a dedicated GPU starts to really push it.

 

[tokala]

On the AMD side, well, it's difficult to know what to do in that scenario. From what I have read it looks like AM3+ is going nowhere (maybe). Meanwhile they are doing interesting things with Kaveri/FM2+ and dual graphics/mantle/etc.

Very different design philosophies - it's difficult to tell what it would be best to do.

It's probably best to consider both FM2(+) and AM3+ to be unupgradable, it's very very unlilely that AMD will get out something substantially faster than what they have now (next gen probably in 2016) that will still work on todays boards.
Dual graphics in a no-go, unless in the absolute high-end its a gimmick.
Mantle sure looks nice, but is really situational und if it really works out is likely to result in something similar incorporated in DirectX.

Dual-channel RAM is another thing that I think is a bit overstated in importance. Sure, it's nice, but in most benchmarks the performance difference is very low. I'd rather have the easy upgrade later, if the cost is similar, but that is personal preference.

Yeah, it maybe 10-20% loss as a worst case in real life cases, and that worst case happens very rarely, this is the same deal as with CPU limited scenes in games.
Apart from high-end integrated graphics, of course.

I do agree with Zelig that in general you shouldn't plan on upgrading your CPU. There often just isn't enough of a performance upgrade available without also upgrading your motherboard.

I generally agree, too, building my PCs for something like 20 years now, and managed to get a sensible upgrade two times, If I remember correctly. And one of those two was with a dedicated "throw-away" low-end CPU bought in a cash strapped situation like marlowe is in now (Duron 700--> Thunderbird 1400), the other one on that exceptionally long-lived super-socket7.

Somewhat crazy, but this might be actually an option, getting a Haswell Pentium with 4GB now, and upgrading later to a i5 and 8GB. It looks like socket 1150 will be with us for a few more years, so no problem in getting that i5 in a year or two.

For things like Civ5 and probably most turn-based strategy, that Pentium will work almost as good as a i5.
Pretty much any game older than 2-3 will work very well on it, and a lot of modern games, too.
You would have to accept that some modern games won't run well, or even not at all, until you can get that upgrade.
On the plus side, you would have a bit of wiggle room for the other components now, e.g. getting a slightly better case, mainboard and display.

The Radeon M7 265 in Tom's review is an interesting option. Looking up a review of it vs. the GTX 750 Ti, it appears to be 15-20% faster.

By performance the 265 is the best option in our price range, correct. But there are some not-so-tangible things in favor of the 750ti, like efficiency and drivers (especially important for the linux option)

AMD's Kaveri is interesting, IMO. Although with mobile Kaveri coming within spitting distance of the desktop version's performance, particularly in gaming, I find it more interesting on laptops than desktops. Provided some OEMs do end up delivering laptops with high-end Kaveri parts, that is. The desktop A10 Kaveri APUs are also an interesting budget option, particularly with budgets a bit below yours where a dedicated GPU starts to really push it.

This would be another somewhat crazy option, get a Kaveri (or more sensibly a 6600K) with 2x4GB of fast memory now, and skip the dedicated video card until later (high memory bandwith will be important in that case)

 

[marlowe221]

Does it matter at all that I am most likely not going to get a 1080p monitor at this point?

The wife and I live in a relatively small house - I do have some space considerations to take into account. I've been looking at monitors that are mostly just under 20" and most of them seem to be in the 900p neighborhood.

 

[Zelig]

Don't get less than 1080p. You can get a 21.5" 1080p screen for $100, free shipping: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009437

 

[tokala]

Anything larger than a 17" 1280x1024 won't be much smaller than a 21,5" FullHD display, and getting below 1000 vertical pixels isn't a good idea.

 

[marlowe221]

Oh, OK. For some reason I had it in my head that a 1080p monitor would be a lot bigger than that.

Just out of curiosity, what is so bad about a 720p or 900p monitor?

 

[tokala]

Oh, OK. For some reason I had it in my head that a 1080p monitor would be a lot bigger than that.

Just out of curiosity, what is so bad about a 720p or 900p monitor?

Try do get some work done on it, and you will see ...

User Interfaces, especially those designed in the pre-widescreen era, are usually taking up some more or less fixed number of vertikal pixels, which leads to a disproportional loss of space left for the "meat" of the game/application.
Adding to the problem that there isn't much vertical space on smaller 16:9 screens in the first place.

 

[Quintillus]

For gaming, 1600x900 would be okay, and would reduce the importance of having a strong graphics card. It wouldn't look quite as nice, but that would be the tradeoff.

I do agree though that for serious productivity, 900 vertical pixels isn't a whole lot. If you've never had that many, it will be an upgrade. But it's hard to go back when you've had more. I'm used to 1200 vertical pixels (as I have a 1920x1200 monitor), and even the 1920x1080 ones I have at work seem a bit small (such that I've switched my taskbar to the left side of the screen on them for a few more vertical pixels). It's not as noticeable for games (although if I play EU4 on my 1280x800 laptop, I do bemoan the lost pixels from my 1920x1200 desktop). So... 1080p is optional for pure gaming, but I'd still recommend it. And ideally 1920x1200, but it's unlikely you'll be able to find that outside of higher-end (and thus pricier) monitors.

And I do agree with tokala that Mantle is situational. Unless the game you play benefits a ton from it, it's a minor factor at most.

 

[marlowe221]

Here's a few builds I've been playing around with on pcpartpicker.

AMD FX

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($119.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: MSI 970A-G43 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($59.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Kingston Blu Red Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($79.99 @ Best Buy)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270 2GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($169.19 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master HAF 912 ATX Mid Tower Case ($53.99 @ Mwave)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($49.98 @ OutletPC)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-224DB/RSBS DVD/CD Writer ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit) ($94.98 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: BenQ GW2255 60Hz 21.5" Monitor ($102.13 @ Amazon)
Total: $789.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

AMD Athlon (incl. cpu cooler)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD Athlon X4 760K 3.8GHz Quad-Core Processor ($82.78 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Xigmatek Dark Knight II SD1283 89.5 CFM CPU Cooler ($43.98 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus A88XM-E Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard ($74.99 @ Mac Mall)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 Memory ($75.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.92 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 270 2GB TWIN FROZR Video Card ($169.19 @ Amazon)
Case: Rosewill Galaxy-03 ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($42.30 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NSB0 DVD/CD Writer ($15.98 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 - 64-bit (OEM) (64-bit) ($94.98 @ OutletPC)
Monitor: BenQ GW2255 60Hz 21.5" Monitor ($102.13 @ Amazon)
Total: $795.23
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Intel i5 (just a little over budget)

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4590 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($199.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI B85M-P33 Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($60.24 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($73.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($52.92 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI Radeon R7 265 2GB Video Card ($149.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Rosewill Galaxy-03 ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($49.98 @ OutletPC)
Optical Drive: LG GH24NSB0 DVD/CD Writer ($15.98 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (OEM) (64-bit) ($89.99 @ NCIX US)
Monitor: Acer UM.WV6AA.A02 (V226HQL Abmd) 60Hz 21.5" Monitor ($97.39 @ NCIX US)
Total: $830.45
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

All builds include Windows 8.1 and a place-holder ~$100 1080p monitor.

What do you all think?

 

[tokala]

Some (non-exhaustive) thoughts:

the Cooler Master case doesn't have USB3 front ports

my personal preference would be the 265 over the 270, performance gain is minimal compared to the additional power consumption, but both are valid choices

both the FM2+ and the LGA 1150 board look a bit too bare-bones, and the FM2+ board is too expensive, you can get a much more flexible board for about the same money, or a similar board for less.

The Athlon doesn't need super-fast memory, and I would stay away from 1.65V memory in general, especially those with bombastic "heatsinks" (which in most cases are inhibiting heat dissipation, rather than enhancing it), which also might get in the way of a tower cooler.

It doesn't need that $40 cooler either, and if you plan to overclock, the Athlon is not very likely to give you any noticable performance increase for those additional ~$50 put into cooler and memory

 

[Zelig]

They all look fairly reasonable... I guess in that budget range, the compromises you're looking at tend to be gaming vs. general use compromise, or gaming vs. upgrade potential.

AMD vs. Intel - AMD is cheaper, but gaming (as opposed to desktop tasks) is a particular weak point vs. Intel.
CPU vs. GPU - Gaming benefits more from GPU, but it's easier to get a stronger CPU now and upgrade GPU later.
CPU/GPU vs. SSD - If you have enough RAM, SSD doesn't make much difference to games outside of load times, but they probably have the single greatest effect on desktop usability of any system component.

Sorry no real advice on what to get.

edit: Good call on the memory, tokala, I also stick to 1.5V. This would be my pick for budget memory, 1.5V DDR3-1600 CAS9 for pretty much as cheap as it gets.

edit2: Also, I'm not very enthusiastic on the cooling on those MSI cards. Instead of exhausting from the case it just blows air through the heatsink. This gives you better cooling numbers if your case already has good airflow, but hurts the overall cooling capacity of the case vs. a card that exhausts the hot air.

 

[marlowe221]

@tokala -

Roger that on the case, totally whiffed on that one.

I will look at other FM2+ boards. As far as the 1150 board goes, I'm having difficulty fitting the i5 into my budget as it is (I'm over it at the moment in fact). Which chipsets should I be looking at for a good budget 1150 board?

RAM - that was just user error. I certainly meant to have DIMM-1600 in there. Whoops!

Cooler - Yeah, I wasn't sure if an OC on the Athlon would be worth it or not. The Athlon is my super-budget build at the moment. Well, as "budget" as I'm willing to go I suppose.


@Zelig -

I had heard/read some very good things about the MSI branded cards, which is the only reason why I chose MSI in particular. How do I tell by looking at the card if the ventilation/fan is in the proper direction? Are there any brands you recommend over MSI?

 

[Zelig]

"Proper" direction is mostly a matter of preference and case cooling capacity, it's just generally my preference to prioritize case cooling over GPU cooling.

Cards with exhaust coolers look something like this (i.e. sealed, so the only place for the air the fan draws in to go is out of the case), but it looks like the reference R9 270 cooler has received fairly poor reviews - and I don't really see many options for even purchasing it, everyone seems to only offer their own cooling solutions.