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Sure phenom is old, that is correct, but this is a pc on a budget, old is fine as long as it performs. what is wrong with old?
The bulldozer chips are not good,. this is fact, and the phenom chip out performs them in many ways.
I've run the 955T BE and 1100T BE beside a FX8120 machine, apart from having more cores there was no increase in performance.
They all use the same socket AM3/AM3+ too so i don't see how you would consider it OLD,.. maby just not as new.
As for the temps i've had an I7 running beside the 1100T,. and the I7 was like a cooker, they are better chip but damn they use some power and chuck out some heat.
As for the HDD,. my fault,. typo,. i meant 7200rpm, sorry to confuse you by getting one digit wrong.
As for storage ive had 5400 back in the day,. still use 7200's for storage now, and a 10000 before ssd's came out, had good times with a OCZ vertex3 60gb,. but now ive moved to a OCZ 240gb x2 revo drive.
Also tried 'ram-disk' software and made a partition for the page file on ram, also tried mounting a game completely on to the ram-disk partition to see if performance increased.
However only certain games would show any real benefit from such things, i.e the lame ass arma2 engine by reducing texture 'pop' as it renders landscapes,. with coh2 you wouldn't see much difference expect for load times.
PSU,. well if you've only bought one brand of PSU and always bought expensive units how can you be sure of your knowledge? Sure atm I'm running a OCZ thing, also had a corsair, some re branded thing (i forget name 'x' something), and even some ultra cheap in-house psu's from ARIA.
What you say is correct,. if the PSU craps out on you it 'could' damage all your components, but have you had it happen? Hell ive made rigs from parts ive found in the dump and skips, ive yet to have a psu 'pop' on me (1 exception when i spilt a cup of tea on one, i recommend avoiding doing that)
Now you all seem to be of the same opinion, and yet you all have different components in your rigs, the fact is you've all read the same articles on the net, this however produces fallacy's with what you believe to be fact, hell ive read the same articles.
The difference is that I have always been on a budget and needed to get the best value for money, and i was lucky enough to need several machines for work (botting for real money trading in games), so i was able to have multiple machines running many different combinations of components, and the only way i could be sure was to buy and try everything in every combination i could afford, so i did. |
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Well for a budget you don't want to paint yourself into a corner with saving money by buying something you can't upgrade easily in the future, so dont go too cheap and pay attention to sockets and such.
CPU: I'd go AMD as you get the biggest bang for your buck, Intels I5's and I7's are great, but you pay for it. plus they run hot and are power hungry.
So on to amd cpu's, i highly recommend the 1100T 6core BE phenom, best chip out of amd imo, haven't tested a 955T BE on coh2 but i think it would cope.
Steer clear of anything running the FX 'bulldozer' architecture as its poorly designed and loses to the phenom chips in almost every aspect apart from having more cores for the 8's. (some of the more expensive chips do give better results, but we're going for budget)
I hear better things about the newer cpu's with the 'piledriver' arc, but these are new and you'll be paying more for them when a cheaper chip will do just fine for your coh2 needs.
also the phenom, bulldozer and piledriver chips all use the AM3+ socket, so if you wish to upgrade your cpu in the future you will be able to do so without having to fork out for a new mobo.
Motherboard: buy anything with the AM3+ socket with FX support for the latest cpus,. as long as it has 4 ram slots, a pci-e x16 slot it will work just fine,. with most premium mobos your paying for the latest chip-set (990fx i think for AMD boards), but anything will work as long as it has right socket, buying the latest mobo will be a waste of money as regard to gaming performance.
RAM: i'd say 8gb is absolute minimum, 16gb preferred. g.skill ripjaws have always seemed well priced for capacity and speed imo. Also ddr3 will be kept as the standard for a few more years yet so feel free to confidently spend some money on ram without it being outclassed in the near future, infact RAM is probably the most stable component (future preformance-wise) of any PC, as cpus/gpus are seeing several new 'generations' over a year.
I have tryed the 'value' ram you see about a lot running 32gb in a board, but you really could notice the difference in performance.
Graphic card:, again anything nvidia is great, but you'll be paying a premium for it, and again AMD/ATI gives best value for money.
I know many see it as a risk but ebay is your best option here. you sit in fear of having an Overclocked card burnt to death,. but out of all the components within the PC the graphics card is the one that is upgraded the most due the the latest and best card lasting for about 3-4 months until a newer model is brought out,. which means a higher turn over, which leads to a greater supply of second hand cards and subsequently lower prices as they devalue so quick.
At the moment my card is old, I've got a R6950 MSI 2gb card, but to be honest it runs the game just fine, no frame-rate drop during 4v4 battles with intense fighting. Granted i have no AA enabled however in RTS's it not such a big deal, and AA is where the real strain on gpus comes. Textures, snow etc are all on high and the game looks great.
For an example in the price drop for older cards,. i payed 270 pounds sterling for my card new a few years ago, and the other day i picked up a second one used for 70 pounds (i plan to crossfire them for a cheaper performance increase alternative)
Graphics cards are like cars, as soon as they come off the lot they loose 50% of their value,.. sure some second hand cars are lemons, but 90% of the time a second hand car will be fine and reliable.
PSU: any old shit will do to be honest,. just make sure you get the appropriate wattage,. 600-700 i'd say for the rig.
buy new as the capacitor degradation effects power output a lot,. and obviously the cheaper you buy the faster this will be,. but if it lasts a year or 2 its not bad value
Storage: SSD's are very nice, but if you wanna save cash just get a HDD at 7600rpm. SSD will give the best performance increase of any component as to general pc performance,. but to games such as coh2 you wont see any tangible benefit.
thats all i can think of as regard for building a budget PC.
Oh 1 thing regarding the construction of you PC,. and maby the most important thing of all!!!
HEATPASTE!!!!!! and the use of it.
LESS IS MORE! trust me on this, a very very common thing i see is people slapping on too much thinking it will help, where infact is only buffers the heat exchange and causes a lot of over heating problems.
Buy high end heat paste for sure, its defiantly worth spending some money on (however good stuff is only 5-6 pounds), but remember the heat pastes job is merely to fill in the micro fine texture of a machined metal surface, so only a tiny amount is required, any more and it will be counter productive and only serve to stop the heat exchange to the heat sink
many heat pastes boast a high metal content (i use artic silver formula 5), even so a pastes ability to transfer heat is nothing compared to a solid lump of metal, so the less you use the better transfer of energy you will get.
TL: DR
CPU: AMD Phenom
GPU: ATI 6950 or above
PSU:600-700w any brand
Storgae: HDD 7600rpm
Heatpaste: less is more
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Kieran Wood 96
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