Wednesday 20 November 2013

Still pondering the upgrade

I wrote some thoughts about building a new PC six months ago. I still haven't pulled the trigger, although I did get an SSD for the current PC. I need to re-install that to make it operational again.

I've just been putting together a shopping list of components. This ought to give me a big performance boost, mainly due to the CPU.

  • AMD APU A10 6700 4.3GHz: Nearly double the clock speed of the current unit and double the cores. I don't really want to have to get a separate graphics card. This should be enough for the few simple games I might play. It's a 65W TDP model, which I assume means it will need less cooling than the 100W models. From what I've read Linux has support for the graphics, but there's not a huge amount of information on this
  • Biostar Hi-Fi A85W Socket FM2: Just a generic ATX motherboard with the PCI slots I need for my audio interface. I don't need much from the motherboard. I've used smaller boards before, but they can be fiddly to work on
  • Corsair 8GB DDR3 1866Mhz: 8GB is probably enough for now. Not going for anything too fancy as I don't plan to overclock
  • be quiet! PURE POWER L8 400W: 400W is probably more than enough. I mainly need quietness
  • Fractal Design Define R4: A friend has this case. It has some sound-deadening material in it. It will be under my desk, so size is not a major issue
  • SANDISK ULTRA PLUS SSD 128GB: This will be the boot drive
  • Seagate 2TB BARRACUDA 3.5" SATA-III: The data drive. That's far more than I have now
  • I've not settled on a CPU cooler. Not seeing too many that say they work on the FM2 socket. Looking for something up to £25. Any suggestions?
  • Audio interface and DVD will be moved from the old PC
That lot comes in at around £500. Making it totally silent could add around £100 for a better power supply and cooler. Some of these parts have got cheaper since I looked a few months back. I probably won't be buying anything until the new year, but they may get even cheaper.