How's this setup?

A

Alex G

New Member
Okay so I'm buying computer parts for my brother for his birthday. He's really been wanting a gaming PC, so i figured we could build one together for his birthday. Here's what I got:

Zotac GeForce GTX 960 4GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDMI DVI

Crucial ballistix Sport 8GB Single DDR3

Corsair carbide Series 100R

2 Kingwin 120 mm fans (extra fans because the case only comes with one)

Amd FX-6300 6th core Black edition

Gigabyte Am3+ Amd DDR3 1333 760G HDMI USB 3.0 Micro ATX Motherboard

Seagate 1TB Desktop HDD Sata

EVGA 600 watt power supply Bronze edition

I begged him to wait for the RX480 to come out, but he's so stubborn when it comes to choosing from AMD or Nvidia. I figured the motherboard would work good for a starter PC, but he could always upgrade if he wanted to.
 
What's your overall budget you want to spend?


The AM3+ socket is coming to an end very soon as AM4 is around the corner.
 
swap the gpu for an rx 480 card.
although am3 is coming to an end, its still a good chip and offers good bang for buck.
 
beers said:
With AM4 just around the corner, I wouldn't either.
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Something new is always around the corner, which is why future proofing its mostly futile. If an AM3+ offers the best price for performance in your workload and price range then it should be a consideration, but if AM4 is coming very soon and your not in a hurry to buy then it might be an idea to wait and see how they compare price to performance.

The FX 6300 is 100 dollars and quite good for the price, its even cheaper than intel's i3 cpu's, e.g the i3 6100 which is 10 dollars more but slower.
The FX 3850 is also good for its price, but not as good as the A10-7890K which is cheaper and faster.
 
Shlouski said:
The FX 6300 is 100 dollars and quite good for the price, its even cheaper than intel's i3 cpu's, e.g the i3 6100 which is 10 dollars more but slower.
The FX 3850 is also good for its price, but not as good as the A10-7890K which is cheaper and faster.
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+$10, slightly slower, but less TDP, better efficiency in core usage and overall, a better CPU for most uses barring things needing strong multi-core clocks. The 6100 outperforms all three of those by at least some margin.

Sorry not sorry, but until AM4 drops, I refuse to recommend AMD CPUs unless absolutely necessary. Intels might be marginally more expensive, but currently, it's worth every penny over buying into a dying/dead architecture. The money you save won't be worth it when you're so far behind the 2016 status quo.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i3-6100-vs-AMD-FX-6300/3511vs1555
 
Shlouski said:
Something new is always around the corner, which is why future proofing its mostly futile.
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I would disagree. While something new is always coming out at some point, there are times when it's better to wait and other times when it's better to buy now. For instance, buying an AM3+ system now is not a smart move seeing as how they have been around for several years, and AM4 is almost out. Once AM4 is out, a replacement won't be around for a few years most likely.

Same for video cards, it would have been worth waiting if you were looking to buy a video card a couple months ago since the GTX 1000 series and AMD models were almost out, but now it will be another year or so before anything new comes out.

You just need to do your research and buy at the right time.
 
I think most new software will be taking advantage of more cores specially in the future, the 6100 is only a dual core and I think most cpu demanding software these days will be using more than 2 cores. I'm guessing that 960 will be used for gaming and many (if not most) games support more than 2 cores and the impact of only having 2 cores is significant:
http://www.game-debate.com/cpu/index.php?pid=2410&pid2=1146&compare=core-i3-6100-3-7ghz-vs-fx-6300

There is a noticeable difference in power consumption between the two cpu's, but an extra 50 watts or less on top of a system already using the best part of 400 watts isn't a big deal and I think more people would prefer the extra performance.

Origin Saint said:
Sorry not sorry, but until AM4 drops, I refuse to recommend AMD CPUs unless absolutely necessary. Intels might be marginally more expensive, but currently, it's worth every penny over buying into a dying/dead architecture. The money you save won't be worth it when you're so far behind the 2016 status quo.
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At the 100 dollar and less price point AMD is the winner on price for performance, Intel for sure destroys AMD at around the 200 dollar and onwards performance for price. The Intel i5 4000 series performs really well for a budget cpu, but they are priced around the 160 to 180 dollar mark, which is 60% to 80% more expensive, which is not marginal. What I would personally go for the Intel as I'm willing to pay more and get more performance for it, but if he is on a tight budget then the extra money spent on the cpu may need to come out of another component e.g less ram or slower GPU. In your words it might be worth every penny to go intel, but he might not have any more pennies to spend, it might be that he has scrapped together all he can afford, all I stated was the fx 6300 performed well at that price point.

Shlouski said:
if AM4 is coming very soon and your not in a hurry to buy then it might be an idea to wait and see how they compare price to performance.
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Clearly I was suggesting to see what AM4 brings if possible, but its his choice.
 
Geoff said:
AM3+ system now is not a smart move seeing as how they have been around for several years
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Does not take anything away from their performance. Considering we a talking about future proofing here, if he went AM4 and decided to upgrade in 4 or 5 years do you think AMD's newest line up will still be working on AM4?
Also I bet about 2 years later AM4+ cpu's will be released, which won't work on the AM4 boards.

I bought a 3770k on socket 1155 when it was released, which was only 4-5 years ago, now of Intel's new line up which cpu do you suggest I upgrade to?
Sorry really I was asking to much, even easier suggest any cpu on 1155 that would be a worth me upgrading to?
These are rhetorical questions of course and just one example, but I have never owned a pc that was worth upgrading a few years later, maybe because I always buy one of the best cpu's released for the socket, which leaves me with nowhere to go. I would guess that its only worth upgrading if you bought a cheap cpu from the start, then after a year or two upgrading to a new cpu released on the same socket.

Geoff said:
Same for video cards, it would have been worth waiting if you were looking to buy a video card a couple months ago since the GTX 1000 series and AMD models were almost out, but now it will be another year or so before anything new comes out.
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You quoted me talking about future proofing in response to cpu's, not graphics cards, please don't take me out of context. Graphics cards are not a problem when it come to future proofing, assuming you have psu powerful enough and case large enough, as long as they continue to use pci-e slots then upgrading should not be a problem.
 
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I still differ from your opinion. I see your point, but once a new platform comes out prices on the older platform usually have significant discounts. If you could save a lot of money by waiting a month, why not?
 
Geoff said:
I still differ from your opinion. I see your point, but once a new platform comes out prices on the older platform usually have significant discounts. If you could save a lot of money by waiting a month, why not?
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Maybe are markets differ somewhat and that's great if prices there drop significantly, it would be a compelling reason to wait, but my experience shopping in the UK and Spain is that older and/or used components depreciate very slowly. I see so many used items, especially cpu's and gpu's, which over year old and are still very close to the new price and then depreciate slowly and in my opinion too much for something that may also not be covered by a warranty or guarantee.
 
North American prices are definitely different when it comes to old stuff. It's quite the opposite over here. Even if the new product's not out yet, you'll see discounts left, right, and centre on the stuff that is being replaced fairly soon. Let alone when the product's out. The old stuff will be cheap as balls.
 
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