New Build Now or Zen? (Looks Like Zen)

[Nethlyn]

Following on from Panelgate the Southern sequel, I'm also in the general market for an upgrade and I've got the various bits in the dual core PC that still work that can be re-used:

SATA Burner
Power Supply (subject to cleanout and test)
Case and Fans

So the big question is whether to get an updated APU build now which would be the right side of affordable or hold out for AMD Zen which would be immediately dearer because it will use DDR4 never mind using a higher spec motherboard - and its performance is totally unknown.

Has anyone else made a recent new build? Memory amount was always more important than memory speed so if I had 16GB of DDR3 I'm assuming it would be able to do more than 8GB of DDR4.

Otherwise I'm thinking

FM2+ mobo at £50 average
16Gig DDR3 RAM at £60-70 depending on CAS and other specs
FM2+ APU like the Athlon X4 840, £50-60 as I'd want to keep the TDP at the same 65W as the dual core I'd be replacing.
After that £40 on top for a new HDD as well.

All thoughts welcome and naturally I'd hope for any Easter deals on everything aside from the Hard drive which seems like a fixed RRP. Might think about a brand new case (over and above any graphics card as I can edit video with the integrated GPU) but that would be the treat as I could clean up the Cooler Master and have one last build with it.

[Nethlyn]

And also, most of my games have been Source and Contagion has such low requirements that I could probably get away with a Radeon 5450 or GeForce GT 710, whatever's in the £30-40 range, but let me know what's the modern day equivalent of the 4670, something that could punch above its weight in Source and be reasonable for other old to new-ish games like Max Payne 3 and Wolfenstein New Order.

[Me]

At the moment I don't think there's much between DDR 3 and 4, so you more of 3 would be better especially on a cheap build. I can't really make any other recommendations as I generally only look a gaming builds, so I don't know which affordable GFX cards are any good, I've a 960GTX which is pretty awesome in noise terms and performs very well for the price, but that is £100 over your budget. To be fair with your specs 16GB might be a bit over kill, unless you're doing any video rendering or the like? The biggest general performance improvement any system can make is an SSD if you can fit a small OS one into the budget. An SSD will make windows faster than any CPU or RAM update.

[Lee]

FM2 is a bit dead if your looking at some lifespan for the machine or is it just a filler for now machine your looking for Neth?

If not I'd try to spend a bit more and get a bundle deal off scan for cpu/cooler/mobo/ram for about £300 that will give you some peace of mind when gaming https://www.scan.co.uk/products/3xs-ove ... uiet-dark-

And Me is right about speed increase if you can get even a small size SDD for windows it self. Kingston have a good budget range for just £33 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb-k ... -85000-iop Not the fastest but still hell of a increase over a mechanical one.

[Nethlyn]

Well the good news is my PC's not dead after all! \o/ but I have never EVER seen a PC refuse to boot up and act dead if it judged a CMOS battery to not have enough juice, it gave me one warning then nothing. So now I don't have to have any desktop to fill the gap and can plan it properly with no rush.

It's all about price to size Lee mate, I need one last mechanical before considering SSDs, by that point the cheap ones might be up at or above 200Gigs, at least now I can check out Intel's Z9x chipset series and get back up to date tech-wise before thinking about the upgrade.

If there was a upgrade-requiring game out there then I'd be more impatient to do it (possibly Elite Dangerous?) but PC gaming's thankfully timeless and every game you might want to play needs that test with Win 10 and Steam before picking it up.

[Nethlyn]

Finally properly looked at the power usage on the 2013 APU machine I built for the rellie and once I saw it do all the same idling in Windows to 45-50W and then drop to 2.1W in standby and wake up again without crashing - I can't pass up electric bill savings that good.

So at some point there may be a stand-in PC and I'd just get some sort of matched kit to cut way down on the constant 100W this dual core is burning through. Now that I've got 1Tb hard drives for both 2.5 and 3.5 sizes, the comparison will always be an AMD APU vs the next laptop.