sounds like a typical uninformed computer user.

"I want the power of a $10,000 computer but I only want to pay $500 for it"

half of it is going to be spent on the hard drive and a "legit" version of windows. The processor he wants will be the other half EASY.

luckybob wrote:

sounds like a typical uninformed computer user.

Very typical, and of course these requirements for a super computer have only come to light recently. All he asked for initially was a "server" based on whatever I had lying around in the shed. So I gathered together a decent P4 machine, but now it's "4 to 8 cores please".

to achieve good performance, good processor & good RAM need to placed on 'good-quality' mainboard,
I learned it the hard way.

Joey_sw wrote:

to achieve good performance, good processor & good RAM need to placed on 'good-quality' mainboard,
I learned it the hard way.

Not to forget a good quality PSU.

Anyway, this summer I build myself a new triple core machine for roughly €400 or so. I'll give you the specs, just to give you an idea 😉

AMD Triple core 3.4Ghz using the stock cooler(was around €50 or so?)
Second hand AM3 motherboard (€30)
4GB of DDR3 (DDR3 is really cheap at this time, this was €25??)
500W OCZ PSU (was around €60 iirc)
A 6670 DDR3 (cost around €60)
1TB harddrive I bought 1 or 2 years ago for around €60
I'm at €285 now I think, must be forgetting something 😁
Edit:I forgot about the case, I used an older one of mine (with 12cm fan), the one I had put the Northwood in, so the Northwood rig now lays in pieces) endedit

I basically build this machine to play BF2 as the single cores I had were just about not cutting it anymore with al the modding I threw at it 😜

But for 500 whatevers, you can go a long way.

Another thing: I've also had people asking me if I could build them a nice rig, but they expected me to have semi-new (2 year old) stuff just laying around 🤣
One other person wanted a high-end graphics AGP grapics card from me for free, but I had to actually explain to him that I bought these also.
When people learn you're into computers, they kinda think I got it all for free 🤣!

Edit2:

badmofo wrote:

EDIT: I guess the main question is around the CPU. With that decided I can build the system around it based on what motherboards, etc are available locally.

If he wants a 3+Ghz CPU, why not go with an AM3(non+) Phenom II?
They should be relatively cheap by now
I checked my local prices, they are roughly €70 now for a 3.0Ghz Phenom II over here in Europe.
Or (if he wants cheap) he could go buy a triple core and hope the 4th core can be unlocked.
If you get him a triple core Athlon II and you save yourself another €10 or so. Also you could get an AM3+ motherboard and upgrade later when he has more money.
Just be sure that whatever CPU you get, get one that comes with a cooler (saves you some money again).

I wouldn't recommend going with a second hand DDR2 quadcore now as DDR2 is quite a bit more expensive these days and the older quadcores typically run slower then 3Ghz.

Also 500GB harddrives are barely any cheaper then 1TB drives. Might as well go for the terabyte drive then 😜

+1 For bang for buck, I'd go for an AM3 build with a Phenom II build.

Buy the processor used as people are chucking them by the droves due to the current "Core i" madness. Make sure to get the heatsink as well- you'll save some money there. Get a new motherboard with onboard if he doesn't game, a reasonably good brand name psu around 400-500w, 2x4gb of kingston/ corsair or similar generic ddr3, any new 7200rpm 500gb-1000gb disk and Win 7 64 bit. You could go used for the optical drive and case as well to skim a bit more off the bill.

The new Piledriver CPUs are great as well. I mean look at the 8320. 8 cores, 3.5GHz and it can hit 4GHz just like that. I think they go for about 160$ and 130-140$ for the 6300 which is 6 cores, 3.5GHz and also hits 4GHz very very easily.

8Gigs of DDR 3 ram is also pretty cheap these days, like what 40$?
50-70$ for a subpar graphics card is expected as well, he is not going to play any games now is he?

But I think the best option for what he wants to do would be an APU from AMD. CPU + Graphics card on the same package! The A8-5600K is just great, I think it retails for 100-110$ and it is 4core, clocked at 3.6GHz and it's graphics card is just as good as 60-70$ cards.
It will certainly lower the costs!
The choice is ultimately yours!

Ghz is pointless, IPC is where it counts. I have 1.8 ghz vpu in my brother's new machine oced to 2ghz and it's faster than his his older athlon which runs at 2.5/2.6ghz.

The 8320 is 4 core, 4 module. The Phenom 2 still excels at single threaded applications.

If he isn't a serious user then consider a cheap A8 Llano or a A10 Trinity build as it will be cheaper. The other options are either around a cheap Pentium (1155) or Phenom build, if you decide on one of those two may as well get a 7770 or a wimpy GTX650.

cdoublejj wrote:

Ghz is pointless, IPC is where it counts. I have 1.8 ghz vpu in my brother's new machine oced to 2ghz and it's faster than his his older athlon which runs at 2.5/2.6ghz.

The 8320 is 4 core, 4 module. The Phenom 2 still excels at single threaded applications.

The 8320 is not 4 core. It is 8 core/4 module.
The Phenom II indeed is faster in Single Threaded Applications than the Bulldozer, not entirely sure about Piledriver though.
However the future is Multithreaded and you can't deny that. I still think an Piledriver is a better choice.

Such CPU demands don't fit the budget well (500,- AUD = E 400,-)
And when the budget is tight you might as well consider your energy bill.
For me AMD is out of the game, unfortunately.
Intel Sandy/Ivy Bridge mainboards are very reliable. You can plug in a good value E 55,- 2,6GHz Pentium Dual Core and it will be quite fast. This is a limited version of the core i3/i5/i7. You can easily put in a faster CPU when prices drop, but then again; Retail CPU prices do not drop like before.

Either way, Saving on a Mainboard or PSU quality usually costs one time and money later on.

nforce4max wrote:

If he isn't a serious user then consider a cheap A8 Llano or a A10 Trinity build as it will be cheaper. The other options are either around a cheap Pentium (1155) or Phenom build, if you decide on one of those two may as well get a 7770 or a wimpy GTX650.

Agreed Llano kicks ass.

Also AMD is very much in the game there e350s ate ATOMs for breakfast and then preceded to shit them out. The APUs kick ass too sure the CPU portion isn't as strong but, it is still plenty of power and you get a GPU for hd content and even games if you wish. Put simply they are pretty balanced.

The FX series is known to edge out the i5 in some tasks specially when OCed but, there is no denying Intel has the superior architecture, I can tell you Intel makes some damn fine chips.

What really matters in the end is what you want to do with it and how much you want to spend.

Also skimp on everything but the main board and PSU and main board and PSU can last you several years if you the kind that doesn't mind medium graphics settings in your games.

Earlier this year I put together a very cheap system based on an 2.4Ghz Celeron G530 Sandy bridge. I think at that time it was the cheapest dual core CPU intel made. I think I paid $40 for it, and it kicks the crap out of my old Core2 system. Low heat and fan noise are very high up on my priority list. I can't remember the exact prices of the entire build, but it was dirt cheap:

$40 for CPU
$40 for microATX Gigabyte motherboard (fully OSX86 compatible)
$25 for RAM
$20 for GeForce 210
$40 for 500mb HDD

I don't think I have been this satisfied with a desktop build in years. I used to be a big spender, but now I'm convinced the trailing edge is the way to go.

sgt76 wrote:

+1 For bang for buck, I'd go for an AM3 build with a Phenom II build.

Buy the processor used as people are chucking them by the droves due to the current "Core i" madness. Make sure to get the heatsink as well- you'll save some money there. Get a new motherboard with onboard if he doesn't game, a reasonably good brand name psu around 400-500w, 2x4gb of kingston/ corsair or similar generic ddr3, any new 7200rpm 500gb-1000gb disk and Win 7 64 bit. You could go used for the optical drive and case as well to skim a bit more off the bill.

That's right, the Phenom II's are being sold a lot on the second hand market right now.
Personally I prefer AMD over Intel when it comes to the possibility of future upgrades. Intel likes to socket-hop a lot faster then AMD does. Though this only matters if he intends to upgrade in the near future.
Also AMD CPU's seem to drop more in price then Intel ones on the second hand market as well as in the stores over here in The Netherlands.

It all comes down to what you want in the end. I gave the specs of my triple core machine, just to show what can be done with a very limited budget.

And I agree with the mainboard and PSU being the 2 most important parts in any machine. The rest you can always upgrade later when you have more money.

Intel quadcores seem much more expensive compared to AMD ones though. I'm not sure how good Intels dualcores are as I never used one.
The amount of power the CPU's use is somewhat negligible for 2 reasons though:
1)The CPU is but one part of the system, the rest of the system (even the PSU!) also uses up electricity
2)All modern CPU's use a lot less power when not being used, so max power isn't as important as it seems to be.
At least, in my opinion.

But theres no denying comparable Intel CPU's eat less electricity for the same amount of computational power, though it seems that comes with a pricetag.

Edit:

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I don't think I have been this satisfied with a desktop build in years. I used to be a big spender, but now I'm convinced the trailing edge is the way to go.

Agrees 😁

I think the best bet is an AMD APU. Prices and availability are probably different in Australia, but just as an example from browsing Newegg (and not counting promo codes or rebates):

A6-5400K APU - $75
Asrock FM2A75M-DGS - $50
Crucuial Ballistix Sport DDR3-1333, 2 x 4GB - $30
WD Blue 500gb - $50
Corsair CX430 PSU - $45

That leaves $250 to cover a case, optical drive (if necessary), wireless card (or USB thingy) and any other peripherals. With some careful shopping around, you may even be able to fit a cheap monitor in the budget.

And yes, I did not include Windows... people seem to be assuming it's necessary, but that statistics software will run just fine on Linux. In fact, it could even run better on Linux, since it seems to be primarily designed around Unix-type OSes.

Edit: was writing in reply to cdoublejj before the other posts appeared.

OK, but AMD E350 and Intel ATOMs are not sufficient for a serious notebook.
I was actually very interested in Atom and E350 at the time,
But Atom did not get any worthwhile improvement since its introduction in 2008. E350 has about 20% more CPU power compared to newer Atoms. I agree the integrated Graphics are nice, but the CPU power remains very limiting.
For reference: My eee PC with classic Atom N280 cannot run GZDoom properly when using Fluidsynth. the music lags sometimes. My Tualatin does a better job.

On the whole, for desktops and notebooks: AMD graphics is a plus, but AMD is too far behind Intel regarding 'CPU Performance per Watt'. So much so, that I do not consider AMD currently. Even though I do like people to buy AMD if only because Intel should have competition.

Note that I don't select hardware for modern games, but for reliable office use.

Well the E350 has a thing or two that makes them a joy to work with mainly the low power consumption but that is where that ends. The single channel memory controller is horrendous and hold EVERY thing back as does the half clocked L2 cache does for the cpu and to top it off almost all are clock locked so no overclocking. DDR3 1066 is terrible for an apu of almost any grade and the gpu isn't that bad but it could do a lot more if it had the bandwidth.

I suggest that you go with a decent Trinity or Llano system and don't cheap out by buying low end ram when 1866 and above makes these apu-s fly. I got a Llano based laptop and the gpu is good enough to enjoy Skyrim at decent settings.

and don't cheap out by buying low end ram when 1866 and above makes these apu-s fly.

What does it matter? It's not going to be a gaming system, it just needs to run statistics software. Going with fancy ram to max out the graphics performance is a waste of money on an already tight budget.

A trailing edge box, with added SSD boot/main app drive to make life easy. Price sans OS in budget. Prices mix eBay/Newegg:

50 ASUS M4A79XTD EVO [perfectly fine in Phenom/USB-SATA2 world]
50 AMD Phenom II 555 BE [unlock 4 cores, easy multiplier OC @3.8], or 965 and above if price is right
70 Radeon HD 5770/1gb
90 128gb SSD SATA2 boot/main apps. like an OCZ Agility
80 500gb SATA2 data drive
40 Cooler Master 430 Elite case
60 500w PS, lots to choose from, you get what you pay for
45 4gb PC1600 DDR3
15 CDR
70 W8

I have just ordered the AMD 8350 + Gigabyte Mobo for my gaming rig upgrade.

I am then going to swap over my old Phenom II, Model 655 into my file server as it's still running an older Phenom I, Model 8320 CPU.

That Phenom II CPU runs at 3.2GHz with 4 cores/4 threads and has server my gaming needs quite well.

You can find them still for sale, although it's the faster 965 and 980 models but still for a good price and any AM3/AM3+ mobo should work fine.