budget 250$. Need CPU+Motherboard

[orangpelupa]

Hello
continuing my exploded computer...

now i have 250 dollar budget to buy CPU + Motherboard. Any suggestion?

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i have been pulling my hair for almost a week now, looking at intel solution.
this 140$ mainboard http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z87 Pro4/?cat=Specifications is the cheapest that have SPDIF port.

But looking at CPU, the cheapest 4 cores is 230$ Core i5-4460.

this is over budget
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now when i look at AMD solution, the mainboard have same price, give or take 10 dollar. But the cpu is bloody cheap, including those with 8 cores. They starts from 170$.

this is still over budget, but i can opt to get the 6 core variants to be inside budget.

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But when i look at the TDP... Intel's 4 cores is around 30-50% less than AMD's 4,6,8 cores. With the PC is always on 24/7, i think it will affect electricity bill (dunno how much, the electricity company did not disclose their price to public)

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My main usage for PC (when it was using Phenom II x2 550 unlocked to 4 cores):
- on 24/7
- transcoding
- 4 camera CCTV motion monitoring and recording + 1 mic
- photo + video edit
- video games
- watching movies upsampled to 60fps

*gaming often done while doing all above except transcoding and movies

 

[orangpelupa]

btw im not really sure i need optical out
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...gital-live-and-dts-interactive.193148/page-34

it seems microsoft still tumbling with the fix,they has been saying "its fixed in internal test" like since Preview (there is one preview built that the problm got fixed, broken again in future built and final release).

so even if the mainboard have Optical out, i wont be able to use it as 5.1 surround until unknown future when MS decided to fix it.

 

[Jawed]

Watch out for CPU compatibility with the old AMD motherboards that are cheap. My M5A99X EVO revision 1 doesn't support newer than FX 8350 (I'm upgrading to one of those this weekend). ASUS provides a compatibility list, not sure about the other companies.

A lot of these have slower SATA, only 3Gbps but some support 6Gbps. Connectivity is generally better on the more expensive mobos.

Samsung's newest SSDs (e.g. 850 EVO) are not fully compatible with AMD, running at reduced performance:

[The forum software corrupts this link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk

/gp/customer-reviews/R37RAH1O3X6RY6

so you need to assemble it by hand from the two lines above]

I bought a 1TB Crucial MX200 instead.

I suppose you can assemble your own scatter plot:

http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/14

using the combined CPU and mobo cost.

And work out the performance per watt:

http://techreport.com/review/26996/amd-fx-8370e-processor-reviewed/3

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Just as last time when you were asking for advice about a home cinema set, all I can sayis: woulwouldn't it be better to wait a little longer and buy the Intel?

 

[BRiT]

Here is my advice that you will ignore, save up for the Intel system.

 

[eastmen]

+1 on the just get intel .

You might end up spending a little more now but it will save you from having to rebuy in the future.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Do you have decent used components market going on over there. If so then maybe look at something like Sandy Bridge i5 2500k.

 

[Rurouni]

Btw, if you're satisfied with Phenom II X2 (with 4 cores), then you actually don't need to go to i5. A modern i3 should be faster or at least have similar performance vs a phenom II 4 cores at the same speed (even at 3d rendering or fully multi threaded program). It should be within your budget.

Comparing an i3 with similarly priced fx (6 core series), fx should win at benchmark where the cores are utilized at 100% (like a rendering program), but the difference isn't really big. For a program that can't utilize all the core at 100%, the i3 should win it. If you feel that you must go with Intel but your budget are really limited and you need the PC now, then go with i3. Of course i5 is much better, but the i3 is only around 60% of i5 price with roughly 60% of i5 performance.

 

[Infinisearch]

Here is my advice that you will ignore, save up for the Intel system.

He speaks the truth, you should listen.

 

[Blazkowicz]

i3 Skylake would be very good - i3 6100. With ddr3 lower end motherboards if needed. Even the new version of Quicksync would be useful. I don't know about availability though : over here i5 6400 and 6500 have just been available (in stock) for a few days.
A lot of good enough H264 encoding with Quicksync will save you kilowatt-hours if that's important to you.

AMD does have the Athlon 860K : very decent but it's similar to a Phenom II that would use a bit less power. (Has AVX..)
FX 8320E is their other best CPU (an underclocked 8350) but still an older design. So worst for power use at idle, while 860K is probably better at idle and Intel Haswell and up beat everything else.

 

[Rurouni]

Skylake is much more expensive. The one comparable in price with fx 6300 is i3 41xx