Hardware & Technical Help me decide on my PC upgrade.

[MickyG1982]

Honestly, as much as I like AMD, I cannot recommend the 860K at all, not with Zen just around the corner & even though I OWN a system with the 860K in it. You will literally be throwing good money after bad if you do.

I like it, it's a decent enough chip, but there is no upgrade path from it & that makes it almost worthless in a new build.

My recommendation, if you are going cheap and don't plan on overclocking is something along the line of this:

Intel Skylake Core i3 6100: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-BX80662I36100-Skylake-Dual-Core-Processor/dp/B015VPX2EO £92.91 (Yes I know it's dual core, but it will still outperform the Athlon 860K, plus you can upgrade from it without having to change the motherboard

Gigabyte H110M-S2H Micro ATX motherboard https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-H110M-S2H-Motherboard-Socket-Express/dp/B01649KMZS/ref=pd_bxgy_147_img_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=H9PQ7YYPRAMB8A95E94S £51.61

8GB HyperX Fury RAM DDR4 https://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-Mem...g_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=H9PQ7YYPRAMB8A95E94S £35.05

Total cost of £179.57 or around 207 Euro

Changing the i3 6100 for an i5 6500 ups the price to around £300, the extra performance is worth it (if you can afford the cost) but the i3 will still outperform an 860k in all respects at 1080p.

Your 860K build would cost around the same but have DDR3 Memory instead and no upgrade path.

As much as I hate to say it, I'd go for Intel at this point in time.

I have a little bit of a change to my ideal specs for this mini build, especially if you want to stay with AMD GPU's in the future, Swap out my original motherboard for this one:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-H...g_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=H9PQ7YYPRAMB8A95E94S it costs a grand total of £5 more but allows for 4 memory slots & crossfire, that makes it a tremendously good value board. You will still miss overclocking, but other than that it's a far better choice.

 

[AlphaOneDashOne]

I play on a old PC and I am currently saving to upgrade my MB, CPU and of course going to buy new ram sticks.

I am on very low budget. The reason I do not mention buying a video card is because, been old, my video card is the one for the old cards that can do DX 11.

I can tell you that I play ED well with my current setup and some other games that are a bit demanding too, of course I always need to adjust graphics settings.

For my shame, here are my current specs:

Athlon 64 XP X2 Dual Core 5000 2.6mhz

Asus M2R-MVP 32 -

5GB ram - (I know, dont ask lol)

HD 7750 VGA

I play on a Asus 21" monitor at 1680x1050 60hz

This is a old system, the MB alone is like 10 years old, and sometimes i have problems with the computer due testing hardware and other stuff, lets just say, my case is opened often.

I cannot buy a shiny new CPU or the latest kickass graphics card.

I was waiting for ZEN CPU's from AMD since the new RX video cards already came out.

Since my video card is, I guess, ok, I can wait to upgrade it in a few months when the recent ATI cards get more cheaper. (sorry Nvidea fans, I am all AMD )

I am going to buy a cheap mini atx board from MSI ( MSI A88XM-E35-V2) and a AMD Athlon X4 860K 4-Core 3.7GHz.

Have not decided yet what brand and what kind but the ram sticks are going to be kingston or corsair, DDR3 (prob corsair) 2x4Gb 2133mhz.

These are my short term upgrade. I can still use my video card and the rest of the stuff.

Then I will get a SSD, a hardrive with 2 or 3 TB and then the video card.

What are your thoughts about this plan and the hardware involved? Also, I would like to know if there are any people with similar hardware and their thoughts on how well ED runs.

Thanks.

If you have low budget why waste money in athlon x4 860k? if you really like yourself or even Amd wait for ZeN, do another upgrades for now that will last you longer, have better re-sell value and can do 3 monitors like you want.