$500 Budget Gaming Build Advice - Page 2

it's pending. send the op a pm and inquire if you like . . .

http://www.overclock.net/t/1279333/asus-crosshair-iv-formula-960t-ddr3-1600mhz-sale-pending

edit: check for more good deals. i saw a i3 sb on sale, too.
Edited by rdr09 - 7/11/12 at 5:05am

bought my mobo used here in ocn. works good and prolly better than most newer/latest boards. sold some of my stuff, too, and i know the new owners are benefitting from them. in a budget, used may be the answer.

Now... why is my build much better than an APU. Well the APUs aren't bad. They provide basic performance. But the 460 I suggested in my link is simply a more powerful graphics card. You can play on higher settings in a larger number of games. So what is an APU? It's AMD's term for a processor (CPU) with a highly integrated graphics unit (integrated GPU). Like the processor you picked out in your original post. That's an APU. The main selling points of those processors are that you get (relatively) very good integrated graphics for a price not that much above Intel's offerings. But even the integrated graphics of an APU cannot match the power of the better discrete cards - like the 460 I linked. The only way to get equivalent graphics power with an APU would be to buy a discrete graphics card like the 460 or better - completely negating the whole reason you would even bother to consider an APU in ANY scenario - the integrated graphics. So... the graphics power of the 460 is above the theoretical maximium graphics power an APU can provide (while using its integrated graphics).

The flip side of the APUs is that the processor is relatively quite slow on a per-core basis. The i3 is not. Frankly, my build is a nice combination of sales, and you'd be a fool not to take advantage of it .

Your brother is simply wrong when it comes to his recommendation. You could replace the i3 with a Phenom II x4 if you wanted the right sticker on the side of your box, but you'd have to pay more if you wanted decent performance (overclocking). As you can see by the price of that used deal.

Unless you live near a microcenter. They have some great combo deals for AMD processors & motherboards. But that's an exception, and I already mentioned that.

What games are you playing? If you are playing CPU intensive games like SCII, Civ5 and Skyrim you are going to want to grab an i3 or Pentium. If you arent playing these games, it wont matter anyways. And at stock, a PIIx4 is not better than an i3 for gaming, only when overclocked 3.8GHz+ it will be better. You should not be overclocking on that board. That would be a gamble.

An alternative to that GPU is that you can change it to a 7770, about equal in performance for slightly more. This way you can drop the PSU down to a CX430.

Also, I would steer clear of the CX500, it really isn't that great. Look at a Rosewill Green or Antec Earthwatts PSU.
Edited by Ironman517 - 7/11/12 at 7:53am

No, you won't need a molex-to-pci-e adaptor with the CX500, it comes with 2 PCI-e connectors already. However, be advised that Corsair's CX-series sometimes develops coil whine, an irritating noise that persists even when the computer is turned off.

Build sounds about right. Spend a little more, get a Phenom II x4. Note that its performance won't match the i3 in gaming unless you overclock pretty heavily. If you can overclock it pretty high, you should be quite happy with it. But as Ironman noted, that takes a good motherboard (more $).
Edited by MisterFred - 7/11/12 at 7:54am

Yeah, it is a phenom II x4. I was just noting that it was more expensive than the i3 . As for valve or emulator games - it pretty much won't matter what processor you have for them. You'll get the same good performance regardless, as they don't require anything fancy. For Skyrim, the i3 will be better. For minecraft... I dunno actually.