Budget 21-30k For home use

sky said:
Then please suggest entry level (below 7k) mobo based on 980G/990X chipset?
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The 980G is not available in the market (at-least online sites that I swept through) and most expensive chipsets 990X do not feature any video OUTPUT's.

Suggest you wait till the FX-4300 shows up as well as you can purchase a basic card like the HD55** / HD65** for ~2500/-.

Hope this helps, Cheers!
 
@ALPHA17

I put my purchase on hold, traveling to South India for office work for few months. I think after 1-2 months picture will get more clear about FX4300 and 980G/990X chipsets mobo and I will save some money.

Rest items are already shortlisted so will wait for cpu, mobo and gpu. I will bump this thread when I am ready for the purchase.

Thanks for your suggestions and Happy New Year to all TE members!!
 
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sky said:
I put my purchase on hold, traveling to South India for office work for few months. I think after 1-2 months picture will get more clear about FX4300 and 980G/990X chipsets mobo and I will save some money.

Rest items are already shortlisted so will wait for cpu, mobo and gpu. I will bump this thread when I am ready for the purchase.

Thanks for your suggestions and Happy New Year to all TE members!!
Click to expand...

Good call Sire.

Wishing you and you family a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year as well.

And safe journey's. Cheerio!
 
@ALPHA17

Is FX-4300 work with Asus M5A88? Socket is supported but just crosschecking from experts.

My friend was going for mobo+cpu upgrade. He was sticking to 4100+M5A88-M. But I told him to go for FX4300+M5A97, but since this mobo doesn't have onboard GPU so he is sticking with M5A88-M to save money spending on external GPU which will cost him more than 7-8k (cheapest DDR5 GPU).

His use will he watching HD, downloading, basic photo-editing.

And I din't see 4300 on flipkart yet. Is it out in market or not yet?
I also checked 990 based chipsets, they are very expensive, even the cheapest is 9k+.
 
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sky said:
Is FX-4300 work with Asus M5A88? Socket is supported but just crosschecking from experts.

My friend was going for mobo+cpu upgrade. He was sticking to 4100+M5A88-M. But I told him to go for FX4300+M5A97, but since this mobo doesn't have onboard GPU so he is sticking with M5A88-M to save money spending on external GPU which will cost him more than 7-8k (cheapest DDR5 GPU).

His use will he watching HD, downloading, basic photo-editing.
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It should work technically but if your friend is only interested in viewing HD content and other assorted light tasks, I would highly recommend an Intel based system. Following configuration should work and turn out cheaper --
Intel Core i3 3220 ~7000/-
GIGABYTE-B75M-D3H ~4200/-
Corsair Vengeance 2GB x2 1600MHz ~1600/-
Corsair CX v2 430W ~2700/-

If he finds photo-editing to be his thing, add a HD7750 later.

About the FX-4300 I am still in the dark, so I will PM you once I get a hint of its availability.

The 990GX chipsets are premium components and are thus out of the reckoning for such a system.

Hope this helps, Cheerio!
 
Actually he is AMD fan, biased towards AMD because of number of cores in same cost as i3.

BTW I also saw this mobo, same price as Asus M5A88-M or M5A97:

ASRock 970 Extreme 4 Motherboard

They mentioned that "NOTICE: Although this board is labelled as a 970 chipset and sold according to price, it is technically a 990X chipset board due to the presence of 8x-8x PCI-E link and SLI support."

Your comments about it. Is it ok or Asus M5A88-M or M5A97 are better option than that.
 
sky said:
Actually he is AMD fan, biased towards AMD because of number of cores in same cost as i3.

BTW I also saw this mobo, same price as Asus M5A88-M or M5A97:

ASRock 970 Extreme 4 Motherboard

They mentioned that "NOTICE: Although this board is labelled as a 970 chipset and sold according to price, it is technically a 990X chipset board due to the presence of 8x-8x PCI-E link and SLI support."

Your comments about it. Is it ok or Asus M5A88-M or M5A97 are better option than that.
Click to expand...

The number of cores are going to do squat for him. Unless he plans to render 4K resolution images all day.

ASRock. Please avoid.

They must have added the extra PCIe lanes via some sort of controller chip, I am not sure.

Weakest power phase design of 4+1 while ASUS is offering 6+2 and GIGABYTE is going all out for 8+2.

Edit: Also the PCIe is standard 2.0 not the newer 3.0. So much for extra lanes. Source -- ASRock > 970 Extreme4

I should say your friend should go with the Intel RIG. If he is adamant over an AMD build, go for the ASUS M5A88-M but do realize that he will not garner any of the benefits of the Piledriver architectures power management and efficiency.

Hope this helps, Cheerio!
 
Thanks for highlighting ASRock 970 Ext4 weakness

Actually he already had i3, which he gave to his brother. And he also upgraded his cousin mobo+cpu+ram with some asus mobo+Phenom II 560 Processor+2*2GB. And he said that Phenom was much faster than his i3 in browsing and multitasking.

Now he decided to go with AMD only. So if he is going with M5A88-M, then it doesn't matter whether he use FX-4100 or 4300, right? He can go with 4100 instead of waiting of 4300.
Only advantage of 4300 is achieved when going with 990 chipset mobo. I agree with you on that 4300+990x+GPU will be much costly then going with i3+B75M-D3H and add additional GPU later when required.
 
sky said:
Did anyone heared about CIRCLE company? One of my friend's friend is its distributor. He is providing 500W PSU in 2k and cabinets in 2-3k range.
Click to expand...

I am interested in knowing about this too. This question was missed earlier, and has not been answered.

I had asked about Circle in my thread too, but there too it was given a miss.

Would like to know how this company is, because it's now available on shops, and retailers are suggesting their products to customers. Even Flipkart is having their products now.

- - - Updated - - -

sky said:
I have old SATA 160GB which I am planning to use as boot disk. New 2TB will be used as data only. Do you recommend keeping single partition of 2TB disk or partition it in 2 parts?
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Sorry to be a little late on this one, but thought its important, and I hope it helps.

The old SATA hard drive must be SATA 2.0 ? If yes, then I think you should use the newer hard drive(which I assume will be SATA 3.0) as your boot disk.

I built a new system pretty recently, and I bought a SATA 3.0(6GB/s) 1 TB Seagate hard drive, and like you, I too have a 160 GB old SATA 2.0 hard drive. First, I was thinking of using the old one as the boot disk, but I decided against it, and I am glad I did so. That's because SATA 3.0 is really significantly faster than SATA 2.0, and it makes a lot of difference in performance. That's what I have observed as per my experience. Since you are investing so much on a new computer, my opinion is that you should also get the full advantage of it, the higher speed and all. Therefore, use the newer SATA 3.0 hard drive as the boot disk, and it will offer greater performance than SATA 2.0 hard drive. Do make sure to partition the drive properly, so that the OS partition is separate.

For my 1 TB hard drive, I have given 250 GB for the OS, so that in case of OS trouble, I can simply format and reinstall OS on that partition, and the rest of the data remains safe and intact.

If you intend to use the newer hard drive as a data drive, then it's on you whether you want to partition it or not. Partition is generally done to keep the OS partition separate from the data one, but since there will be no OS on the data drive, you can keep it as one single partition only.
However, if you want, you can create partitions, to keep things organized in different partitions.
 
CapriAnupam said:
That's because SATA 3.0 is really significantly faster than SATA 2.0, and it makes a lot of difference in performance. That's what I have observed as per my experience. Since you are investing so much on a new computer, my opinion is that you should also get the full advantage of it, the higher speed and all. Therefore, use the newer SATA 3.0 hard drive as the boot disk, and it will offer greater performance than SATA 2.0 hard drive. Do make sure to partition the drive properly, so that the OS partition is separate.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that SATA III have much better performance over SATA II. But as far as I know about disk from my professional life, I haven't seen desktops or home use applications hitting the maximum IOPS for even SATA II. May be when we play games we will hit that threshold and see latency, havn't tried that in my home pc. And 2TB are more prone to failure as compare to 1TB. So if I have to use SATA III drive as boot disk I will go with 1TB else 2TB for data dump. Will decide when I purchase.


CapriAnupam said:
For my 1 TB hard drive, I have given 250 GB for the OS, so that in case of OS trouble, I can simply format and reinstall OS on that partition, and the rest of the data remains safe and intact.
However, if you want, you can create partitions, to keep things organized in different partitions.
Click to expand...

I believe that is always the best way and should be followed, and I am following it since last 10+ years :) . I am taking advantage of 2 drives (IDE+SATA). On primary drive, I make a 10GB OS partition, installed OS and all required applications. On secondary I make a 5GB partition (optional) and install only OS in that, rest space is used for data dump. Then I prepare ghost image by booting from secondary. And whenever there are problems or I test lot of apps (this is now replaced by VMs) which led in slow performance, I just restore that image in 15mins, which will bring that OS in same stage. Doing this since last 7yrs, which saves lot of time.
 
sky said:
I agree with you that SATA III have much better performance over SATA II. But as far as I know about disk from my professional life, I haven't seen desktops or home use applications hitting the maximum IOPS for even SATA II. May be when we play games we will hit that threshold and see latency, havn't tried that in my home pc. And 2TB are more prone to failure as compare to 1TB. So if I have to use SATA III drive as boot disk I will go with 1TB else 2TB for data dump. Will decide when I purchase.
Click to expand...

Well, with my experience, I have felt the difference. For copy operations with movie files, I experience fast performance within the new SATA 3.0 drive, but when I perform copy operations with the older hard drive, SATA 2.0, it feels slower.

Have the same experience with USB 3.0, and 2.0. USB 3.0 is seriously faster than USB 2.0.

I agree about your point of 1 TB, and 2 TB though.. makes sense :). For data dump, maybe you can think of buying an external drive, if you can afford that, besides the internal hard drive. It will also provide a good option for backup, in case of hard drive failure.

sky said:
I believe that is always the best way and should be followed, and I am following it since last 10+ years :) . I am taking advantage of 2 drives (IDE+SATA). On primary drive, I make a 10GB OS partition, installed OS and all required applications. On secondary I make a 5GB partition (optional) and install only OS in that, rest space is used for data dump. Then I prepare ghost image by booting from secondary. And whenever there are problems or I test lot of apps (this is now replaced by VMs) which led in slow performance, I just restore that image in 15mins, which will bring that OS in same stage. Doing this since last 7yrs, which saves lot of time.
Click to expand...

That is a good practice, and also good thinking :). I do the same too. Like I have the older drive. I will soon be taking all data out of it, and then format it, and install Windows XP on it. This will help me to test software, and also, in case of any problem in the newer drive, OS related or anything, I can boot from the older hard drive, and take out data from newer one. And yes, it provides an option for backup too.

I have yet to make an image of my new hard drive though. Should do it soon. I use Paragon Backup and Recovery free, and it does a great job with image backup, and restoration too.
 
@ALPHA17 -> Instead of AMD Fx-4300 I am also considering for Intel, as 4300+99XMobo+Gpu (24K) is costing more then i5+GA-B75M-D3H and i5 suffice my purpose for providing me 4 cores. I will add GPU with Intel config later,if required, as I am not into gaming or play only small/entry level games so will manage with integrated GPU of Gigabyte mobo.

But I also read in some threads about new socket based Haswell Intel cpu. In that case how future proof are the current gen IB cpus? I am looking for atleast 5 yrs from now.

And how much new cpu and their mobo will hit more to buyers comparatively to current gen devices?

@CapriAnupam -> I was planning to try "Paragon Backup and Recovery free". But it is asking for product key, even though it is free.
Also does it have feature of partition backup and restore, or it make image of whole drive only?
 
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Let me get this right - you are comparing a configuration with a FX4300 and a discrete GPU with the i5 and integrated graphics? You are aware that in the Intel systems the motherboards do not have graphics chips, the processor does? And you know how bad the HD3000/4000 are for gaming, let alone lesser avatars?

Chalk and cheese.

The *only* thing the Intel platform will have over the AMD one in real terms in day-to-day use is power consumption. That alone is one reason to go for the Intel rig.

Then again, you could opt for a Trinity combo, and get something that will spank the Intel silly in gaming, run with reasonable power consumption and do everything you want to. CPU performance is meaningless in today's world. A SSD is a far better place to spend your money than a CPU for example, and the obsolescence is much less in its case.

I have said it before and I'll say it again. Analyse the total platform and its suitability to your needs. Don't get hung up on one aspect or the other, you will end up making a bad decision. The Intel CPU offers a lot more horsepower for sure, but 99% of users will end up never needing it. And if you do need it, the B75 is the wrong way to go.
 
@cranky thanks for your inputs. I was also preferring AMD over Intel when I was planning to make rig even though they were equal at equal cpu performance.
It was only cost which forced me to consider Intel as I was thinking that I don't have to invest in GPU from day 1.
If this is the case then i5+B75+GPU costs almost same as AMD rig.

My application is CPU intensive and I have to run multiple VM (memory intensive) that is why I was preferring 4300 over i3 as it gave me 4 cores. And I hold my plans to save more money and think again on this rig.
 
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4300 does not have 4 cores, it has 4 modules (not the same thing).

I agree with the opinion that the 880G is long in the tooth, and not suitable for rigs being built today.

Trinity '8-core' with suitable A85 chipset motherboard would be one way to go - good GPU performance, reasonable CPU performance, and well-controlled power consumption.

Intel still has major issues with getting a good chipset in place - the B75 is much, much better then their previous attempts, but the Intel iGPUs still have some ground to cover. Haswell should has it, but we'll have to see. I suspect you will have to pay top dollar for good GPU and CPUs - Intel has never held back on charging good money for their performers.
 
The danger of looking at comparos is that even I can post a graph that turns the situation on its head:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6332/amd-trinity-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-part-1/2

Compared to Ivy Bridge, well, there's no comparison. Trinity is significantly faster than Intel's HD 4000, and compared to HD 2500 the advantage is tremendous.
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Also the power consumption gap is less that I was thinking it was:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6347/amd-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-trinity-on-the-desktop-part-2/8

So let's not examine quick summaries.

I can tell you one thing, and that is CPU performance means squat in the real world. Unless you bog yourself down with the slowest piece of crap you can buy, even a Pentium G620 will see you through pretty much anything you throw at it today. In reality systems are bogged down by poor power supplies, slow mechanical hard disks, bad drivers (Intel is king of the hill at this particular aspect), inefficient cooling strategy and improper memory, network and OS optimisation.

A well-tuned bucket of bolts will smoke a poorly maintained machine, even if the latter is using high-end parts. Buying good bits is only the first step in getting a good rig going, and all the money in the world can't buy optimisation - you have to do it yourself.

When you say CPU-intensive, unless you are running 24x7 collaborative computing projects I don't see how the performance difference is going to help you on a day-to-day basis.

I have 5 machines in my house and three of those are Intel (really!), a big change from a year or so ago when all were AMD. However, I call a spade a spade and while the Intels may offer better CPU performance, AMD still offers a very solid platform at a reasonable cost. My top gaming machine, for example, is still AMD. I wish my HTPC were not Intel - that set of components was a stupid mistake. Intel still hasn't understood a lot about how consumers use stuff, I keep losing HDMI connection and Intel's solution is "get a better cable" as if people hadn't thought of that already.

And finally, there's cost. The 3470 is just around 11k, the 5800 around 8.5k. You can get a cheap A55 motherboard, but I would recommend the A85x FM2 boards which will push you into the 8-8.5k range. Intel's equivalent would be the H61 (low-end) or the H77 (medium-end). The B75 is a 'business' chipset but the motherboard that is so often recommended on this forum, the Gigabyte B75M-D3H, is a piece of junk. I curse mine every day. Here's a start:

http://www.flipkart.com/amd-a10-580...WWPH&ref=366bc4a4-543e-411a-9638-ffd0087d12be

http://www.lynx-india.com/index.php?productID=20324

Good Luck
 
cranky said:
The B75 is a 'business' chipset but the motherboard that is so often recommended on this forum, the Gigabyte B75M-D3H, is a piece of junk. I curse mine every day. Here's a start:
Click to expand...

Can you enlighten us about the reason cranky ?
 
JuGGa said:
Can you enlighten us about the reason cranky ?
Click to expand...

1. Regular dropouts over HDMI, even while on desktop mode, and connected to either TV or AVR. Works only with a computer display

2. Very high DPC latency to the point that audio pops under W7x64

3. Unable to handle connected HDMI displays/receivers if they use CEC

4. Unable to play 24p content without jitter every few minutes

5. Horrible graphics drivers that allow limited scanning control, fixed colour correction for video mode independently

6. PCI slot power control is lousy, can hear lots of HF noise through my soundcard

The previous M3A78EM was much better in this (and every other) regard, but was unable to stream more than 2-ch audio over HDMI. I thought this would be an upgraede, it wasn't.
 
#cranky
What are the AMD configs that you have running at your place and how would you rate their performance.
I was considering the B75M-D3H earlier, but my main gripe with it is the single Sata 6GBps port! Seriously! is that that place Intel decided to save costs on?
On the other end AMD with its A85x and 7 Sata 6GBps ports which is excessive. But I am still interested in an AMD solution so would like to know the config you are using and your views on it.

As for OP's requirements, does the A10-5800K have native virtualization support(it is called VT-x or something I think)?
 
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