Endless Paradigm

Hey EP^^

A friend asked me to build a completely new PC for him and since his budget is bigger than my usual upgrade budget I'm able to look into Intel parts for him. Now the thing is I have been out of the loop with Intel ever since 2006 so after putting two possible build ideas together I wanted to ask if a i5 3330 + a GeForce GTX 660 or a Phenom II 955 + a GeForce 660 Ti would net him better performance on the long run. Overclocking is a non-factor as he is new to PCs and as he lives quite far away from me support can be troublesome

Most of my friends lean towards the i5 + GTX 660and I believe them though you can never have too many opinions^^

Here are the complete builds I put together:

AMD:


Intel:


Note: I'm aware the PSU in the AMD build is overkill and I already put a different one in place!

Thanks for help in advance!

Looks fine.

2 suggestions:

• 500GB HDDs these days are very bad value for money, the sweet point is 2TB and 3TB.  I recommend you get at least 1TB, costs like $10-15 more for double the amount of space.
  
  
• On a tight budget, I would recommend getting a cheaper PSU.  The reasoning behind it is that if you put more money into the CPU or GPU it increases performance, while putting lots of money is the PSU doesn't really do much.  So get an entry level from a known company (eg: Coolermaster Xtreme, Thermaltake Lite Power, Antec VP <- this is the one I got and is also 80+), don't get the super cheap ones that are 700W for $20 or something, those aren't safe and might explode.
  

SkyDX Wrote: [ -> ]I wanted to ask if a i5 3330 + a GeForce GTX 660 or a Phenom II 955 + a GeForce 660 Ti would net him better performance on the long run.

i5 + GTX660.  A 3GHz i5 is way faster than a 3.2GHz PII.  I don't mean a little bit I mean like 50% faster or something.  Not really a fair comparison though considering the i5 costs twice as much as the PII.

Oh yeah see if you can get a Radeon 7870 at the price of the GTX660.  Over here they are priced similarly, and the 7870 is a little bit faster.

im an nvidia guy but i read everywhere that the 7XXX series cards do perform well for less  (i forgot which cards in particular though xD)
so yeah, i5+7870 would be a better option, put the money saved to more storage :)

phenom II is old, id probably just get an FX4300 or something if it were me

Well first of all thanks for the replies Assassinator and boogschd! :D

Assassinator Wrote: [ -> ]Looks fine.

2 suggestions:

• 500GB HDDs these days are very bad value for money, the sweet point is 2TB and 3TB.  I recommend you get at least 1TB, costs like $10-15 more for double the amount of space.
  
  
• On a tight budget, I would recommend getting a cheaper PSU.  The reasoning behind it is that if you put more money into the CPU or GPU it increases performance, while putting lots of money is the PSU doesn't really do much.  So get an entry level from a known company (eg: Coolermaster Xtreme, Thermaltake Lite Power, Antec VP <- this is the one I got and is also 80+), don't get the super cheap ones that are 700W for $20 or something, those aren't safe and might explode.
  

SkyDX Wrote: [ -> ]I wanted to ask if a i5 3330 + a GeForce GTX 660 or a Phenom II 955 + a GeForce 660 Ti would net him better performance on the long run.

i5 + GTX660.  A 3GHz i5 is way faster than a 3.2GHz PII.  I don't mean a little bit I mean like 50% faster or something.  Not really a fair comparison though considering the i5 costs twice as much as the PII.

Oh yeah see if you can get a Radeon 7870 at the price of the GTX660.  Over here they are priced similarly, and the 7870 is a little bit faster.

Well the thing is I was already very tight on the budget so I asked my friend where wee could take some shortcuts and the HDD was the first thing wee agreed on sizing done, I'm aware that was a bad choice but wee hardly had any wiggle-room there >.<

And yeah you are very right on the PSU, that's why I opted for a 500w Corsair PSU in the end for 49€ which seemed like a good deal^^

boogschd Wrote: [ -> ]im an nvidia guy but i read everywhere that the 7XXX series cards do perform well for less  (i forgot which cards in particular though xD)
so yeah, i5+7870 would be a better option, put the money saved to more storage :)

phenom II is old, id probably just get an FX4300 or something if it were me

And ugh I wish I would have read this about the 7xxx series sooner as I already placed the order with the 660 and it would be a major hassle to undo that now >.< I will keep this in mind when I upgrade next year though and I had a feeling I would regret using nVidia as I'm more of a AMD person and then I saw the benchmarks being so close together... Oh well what is done is done, thanks for the help again^^

don't get me wrong . the 660 is a good card
its just that . youll get more for your money with the 7870

boogschd Wrote: [ -> ]don't get me wrong . the 660 is a good card
its just that . youll get more for your money with the 7870

Oh I know I know don't worry that's also why I always use AMD cards in my own PCs^^ I currently have a MSI 6850 Cyclone Power Edition 1GB and am very happy with it

Non-K Intel CPUs don't overclock, so if the idea of the CPU cooler was for OCing, well...
i5 3470 and 3570 (non-K) are only a little more expensive than the 3330, up to you whether it's worth it.
Motherboard comparison is totally unfair - you've got a fairly low end one for the Intel build and a decent one for the AMD.
Does a DVD-RW drive seriously cost 22EUR?
Why did you get an AV hard drive?  Unnecessary price premium there.
Difference between 660 and 660 Ti is fairly minimal.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote: [ -> ]Motherboard comparison is totally unfair - you've got a fairly low end one for the Intel build and a decent one for the AMD.

May as well just buy a low end one.  Totally don't need a high end mobo if you aren't going to overclock or aren't going to dual GPU setup.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote: [ -> ]Does a DVD-RW drive seriously cost 22EUR?

Yeah, I was wondering about that too.  Costs like $20 here, and euro is worth a lot more.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote: [ -> ]Non-K Intel CPUs don't overclock, so if the idea of the CPU cooler was for OCing, well...
i5 3470 and 3570 (non-K) are only a little more expensive than the 3330, up to you whether it's worth it.
Motherboard comparison is totally unfair - you've got a fairly low end one for the Intel build and a decent one for the AMD.
Does a DVD-RW drive seriously cost 22EUR?
Why did you get an AV hard drive?  Unnecessary price premium there.
Difference between 660 and 660 Ti is fairly minimal.

Thanks for the input Zinga, I appreciate it and in regard to this, let me explain some things^^

This PC is for a friend of mine and wee had to work with a hard-set budget of 680€ including shipping etc. and not a single cent more since the actual budget was 650€ though after getting really close to it my friend agreed to break a bit more of his bank-account and raise it to 680€ >.< And the problem is the Intel build checked out at 701.97€ now which means  I'm actually gifting him 20€ so the whole thing works out^^;; And another condition for it to work was that wee exclusively order at a German online-shop called "Atelco.de" since they have service-centers spread across the country which makes it way easier should things break :/ That's also why I had to pick this harddrive as it was the cheapest 500GB drive available there that didn't have a shipping time of 1-2 weeks...  

Also I'm aware only the K processors overclock though at this point even 5-10€ more would have seriously went over the limit as he said he doesn't want me to spend too much for him either and he said he doesn't want to play emulated Wii games on the PC so it was okay in my book^^ The reason why I opted for the TX3 in the end was noise and ease of cleaning as I heard various horror-stories about Intel's stock coolers and this PC will stand in my friends living room he shares with his girlfriend so I wanted to avoid a PC that sounds like a jet-engine starting up when a bit more dust is inside^^; And if he wants to clean it he just has to unclamp the fan from the heatsink, clean everything and then clamp it back without removing the entire thing

Oh and the hard budget wee had was also why I had to cheap out on the motherboard sadly >.< The 80€ Phenom II left me alot of wiggle room for quality vs. cost while the price of the Intel CPU alone forced me to be a bit more aggressive on the savings The reason why I went with a more expensive GIGABYTE mobo in the proposed AMD build was simply because I had MSI boards break on me and ASUS boards being picky with RAM while ever since I use Gigabyte for almost 5 years now I never had a single motherboard related hardware failure Sadly a comparable Gigabyte Intel Mobo would have cost 100€ and a friend of mine vouched that AsRock are very decent too ever since ASUS let them go two years ago and I trust her on this^^

I would have made a few different choices if that would be my own PC but the friend I'm building it for lives two hours away from me so it wouldn't be easy to just visit him should something break, that's why wee made the decision with Atelco and the service centers and also a more sensible cooler design^^

Assassinator Wrote: [ -> ]

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote: [ -> ]Motherboard comparison is totally unfair - you've got a fairly low end one for the Intel build and a decent one for the AMD.

May as well just buy a low end one.  Totally don't need a high end mobo if you aren't going to overclock or aren't going to dual GPU setup.

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote: [ -> ]Does a DVD-RW drive seriously cost 22EUR?

Yeah, I was wondering about that too.  Costs like $20 here, and euro is worth a lot more.

And for the DVD drive, well welcome to price-globalization in Europe, most of the time companies just swap the $ sign for a € sign and completely screw us out of the stronger currency I could have saved 3€ by going for a 19€ no-name drive but he wanted a RW one and the Samsung was the cheapest available :/

And again thanks for the help^^

SkyDX Wrote: [ -> ]The reason why I opted for the TX3 in the end was noise and ease of cleaning as I heard various horror-stories about Intel's stock coolers

Stock coolers are bad, but not THAT bad.  Just don't overclock with them, and they're generally fine.

SkyDX Wrote: [ -> ]And for the DVD drive, well welcome to price-globalization in Europe, most of the time companies just swap the $ sign for a € sign and completely screw us out of the stronger currency.

Is that the case for everything, or just computer parts?

Computer parts here are only a little more expensive than the US and Asia, but food and everyday good are significantly more expensive.  Well wee're a giant island in the middle of the ocean far away from everything else, so it sort of makes sense.