Doing upgrade, budget $300-400

[titanic3]

Alright folks, I plan on upgrading my PC, I have a couple of parts I can reuse and I would like to keep it under 400 bucks if possible.

I already have:
Radeon 6870
4GB DDR3 RAM
1TB HDD
Corsair TX 750 (750W) PSU

I'm looking for a Core i5 set up, a case that will fit it all, and have room for future upgrades, not going to overclock, and preferably a second smaller HDD to store my OS (or SSD) if there's still money left. If not, I'll just put the OS on my 1TB HDD.

[titanic3]

Alright, so I did a little research and was thinking of going with a i5 -3450 (I don't plan to OC), and a ASRock Z77 Extreme 4. I'm havingdifficulties finding a sub $100 case though. Any recommendations?

P.S. If anyone has an extra copy of Windows 7 they can sell/give, that'd be awesome too.

[edog1977]

Are you going to reuse an optical drive or do you need to buy one? If you need to buy one that is an additional $15-$20. I think it will be difficult to stay under $400 if you need to buy an OS. The i5 processor alone is going to eat up half of your budget.

Check out this case:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811146083

I have no experience with it but the reviews seem positive.

[titanic3]

Yea, been doing some math in my head and it's rather hard to keep it under 400. But, Black Friday is coming up so I'm hoping I'll get around $100 off from deals.

[Tac]

Why not use AMD ? Much cheaper and just as good.

[realgood]

 YUP AMD is agood setup for around $400        

[titanic3]

I thought AMD was not as good compared to Intel in terms of best bang for your buck. I remember reading an article where an AMD had to be overclocked like mad (something like >4.5Ghz) just to beat an Intel i5 3570 at stock speeds.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I thought AMD was not as good compared to Intel in terms of best bang for your buck. I remember reading an article where an AMD had to be overclocked like mad (something like >4.5Ghz) just to beat an Intel i5 3570 at stock speeds.

In very low price range AMD is competitive. Especially the new piledriver cpus do well in Windows8, there was some timing related issue that was fixed in win8.

[guncrasher]

I think there's issues with amd and aces high if you gonna use it for playing the game.


midway

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I think there's issues with amd and aces high if you gonna use it for playing the game.


midway

That's past history. Even some Intel motherboards had problems with the high resolution timer. I had one, got the spinning clipboard bug if I left the high resolution timer on.

[realgood]

 I got a ASUS MB a 850W PS niva grafic card  1GB  ouad 4 phemon 2.1 ghz 8 gb of ram with windons 7  in game play of 60 fps max for under 400. but done my research for what would work and what would not . in game vidmed  4050  . done a few of this                                 

[Spikes]

I got a ASUS MB a 850W PS niva grafic card  1GB  ouad 4 phemon 2.1 ghz 8 gb of ram with windons 7  in game play of 60 fps max for under 400. but done my research for what would work and what would not . in game vidmed  4050  . done a few of this                                 

Wow.

[Skuzzy]

That's past history. Even some Intel motherboards had problems with the high resolution timer. I had one, got the spinning clipboard bug if I left the high resolution timer on.

Still not past history with AMD.  There are still CPU's and motherboards which AMD's fix identifies and shuts down use of multiple cores.  Quite frankly, it is a crap shoot with AMD.

[Spikes]

Still not past history with AMD.  There are still CPU's and motherboards which AMD's fix identifies and shuts down use of multiple cores.  Quite frankly, it is a crap shoot with AMD.

Agreed. I am not a fanboy of either, I tend to put AMD CPU's in builds that are used for light duty stuff such as browsing, email etc, since they are dirt cheap for a decent dual core (or even triple/quad core). I've always stuck with Intel personally, however I use my PC for a lot of gaming so I'd prefer to have as much stability as possible.

[Debrody]

Still not past history with AMD.  There are still CPU's and motherboards which AMD's fix identifies and shuts down use of multiple cores.  Quite frankly, it is a crap shoot with AMD.

Could you explain which ones are you talking about? I got a phenomIIx4 955, gigabyte mobo with the old 790 series chipset, if it means something?

Btw speaking about performance, the AMD FX8350 is about 5-10% faster than the i5 3570 but a good 10-15% slower than the i7 3770. Not bad for its price, but has the TDP of 145W (!!!)
Not to talk about, the intel's architecture is much stronger in one thread, so once an application is not optimized well for multi-threading, the AMD will MUCH slower.
Intel is the way. And yea i am an AMD fanboi.