THIS FIRST POST IS FROM SEP 2017!

So I started to feel the pressure to have a better pc and realise I would need to get a new motherboard and processor and RAM. Windows would be €125 = too much so not even considered. I can reuse my current PSU. I really need a new computer case that is smaller, quieter and has working fans in it. Not buying new 80mm fans for my current case.

Setting my goals at a satisfactory level:

Fractal Design Core 1000 No PSU (pc case) €40

Arctic Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 €26

Corsair Vengeance LPX Red DDR4 PC19200/2400MHz CL16 2x8GB €143

Intel Core i5 7600K 3,8GHz tray €246

Palit GeForce GTX 1050 Ti StormX HDMI DP 4GB €167

Samsung 850 EVO MZ-75E500B/EU 500GB SSD €170

Asus Prime Z270M-Plus mATX, Socket 1151, Intel Z270 €139
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total including VAT (tax) €931

Too expensive, so I remove the SSD with a sigh. Left to pay €761

Still too much :-( OK, I will make do with my old GPU €594

Sigh! I guess I will need to set my goals lower as I cannot really cannot afford that.

New system:

Fractal Design Core 1000 No PSU (pc case) €40

Corsair Vengeance LPX Red DDR4 PC19200/2400MHz CL16 2x8GB €143

Intel Core i3-7100 3,9 GHz LGA1151 boxed €119

cheapest LGA1151 motherboard I can find €60
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total including VAT €362

Might need one more case fan so add ~€16 if so.

I guess I could go with half the RAM but I certainly do not want to. Too little RAM is one of the main reasons I need an upgrade. How low dare I go when choosing a chipset? the i3-7100 cannot be overclocked so no need for the Z270 and two DIMM slots are enough for me.

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A couple of years later I got around to buying the parts. I needed a new mouse too. Quite a bit more powerful than the Core i3-7100 system above. Anything not seen in the foreground of the picture is recycled from my old build.

Things have changed, unless you buy an i7 7700k, you get better performance getting a Ryzen processor.

If you have already gone low enough to get an i3 7100, then I recommend a cheaper, but more powerful, alternative.

Ryzen r3 1300x and a b350 motherboard.

Also, if you are willing to do some overclocking, then you might as well go for a r3 1200 and overclock it to the values of an 1300x.

If you really want to go for Intel cheaper build go for G4560 and B250 mobo. You can upgrade to i7-7700K in few years.If you go AMD route you can get Ryzen 3 1300X and B350 mobo. In few years you can get better CPU since AMD plans to stick with AM4 socket until 2020. Also, if you go with Ryzen, buy 2666MHz RAM.

I advise not buying Palit GPU's, a few months ago I needed a lower end model and the card kept crashing and restarting the driver making the PC unusable, sometimes even freezing the system, After replacing it with an EVGA model all the problems went away. I'm not going to say they're all like this because I've seen many other Palit cards working good, but I've grown wary of the brand and prefer others such as MSI and EVGA.

Also for the price of an Intel i3, you'll get a better deal with a Ryzen 3 1300X CPU, not only it performs on par with the i3 in gaming but it also has 4 full cores.

Ryzen... If AMD makes a true 4 core chip I am very interested but all the current Ryzen processors are 8 core chips, just several models come with some cores disabled. Sadly, I guess at least partly due to the aforementioned fact, they draw too much power especially under light load (reading, writing, watching a film... some of us do not game all the time). They have lower clock rates than the Intel processors I am looking at and a bit lower work done/speed but alright, they can be overclocked, which leads to even higher power draw. If I would need six or eight cores, Ryzen would be the natural choice but I do not. I have to pay my power bill too.

Alright, I found some very nice prices on Ryzen (offer ends today?) so hmm:

AMD Ryzen 3 1300X 3.7GHz, 10MB, AM4 ,65W, Stealth cooler €144

AMD RYZEN 5 1400 * 3,2 / 3,4 GHz * 8MB * TDP: 65 W €169

Asus PRIME B350M-K AM4 mATX motherboard €82

So a bit more than a i3-7100 but with four true cores and AMD's equivalent of hyper threading (forgot what they call it but it seems to be exactly the same, probably licensed from Intel.) Not only are the processores a tad more but the cheapest motherboard I could find is also.

With those the prices would be €409 respectively €434 and this with no new graphics card. It would be a hard sell if my power consumption does not go down significantly from now.

Maybe I just need to hang on a bit and wait for new models to appear. 10nm to beat the current processors totally maybe? I am kind of amazed that I am able to play games on an eight year old system.

Trust me, for anything other than average browsing and office tasks, you don't want to go below an i5. You really feel the lack of Turbo Boost when gaming - I should know, I've had one for years.

I'd rather wait a bit more, save up and then go for that GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. Pascal boards are really worth the investment, the performance boost you get compared to previous generations is above average to say the least.

Your first build looks good to me.

Having upgraded to an R7 1700 earlier this year, I'd recommend going with a Ryzen based system. Unlike AMD's previous generation of CPUs Ryzen is actually good, and the AM4 socket is to be supported for 3-4 years so they should offer an upgrade path if you want to upgrade to something more powerful later. They all allow overclocking, and the heatspreaders on AMD's CPUs are soldered to the dies so it's a lot easier to keep them cooled. Plus AMD's stock cooler is actually supposed to be pretty good (I use a Noctua cooler with mine though).

And then there's stuff like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/6pptsc/intel_anticompetitive_anticonsumer_antitechnology/

Alternatively you could just buy an SSD for your current system for a relatively cheap immediate boost & save up to buy parts for a better system later. SSDs make such a huge difference to responsiveness that I won't consider building a PC without one now. This is much the same for many of Intel's CPUs too... first because it is extremely costly to produce the tooling, and second because the manufacturing process is far from perfect & there'll always be a substantial number of CPU dies with sections that aren't completely functional. They have two options for the imperfect dies: either scrap them and take a loss, or disable the broken parts (this is normally done by using a laser to cut the connections to them) and use those dies as a lesser model instead. Whether you get an Intel or AMD CPU, the idle power draw shouldn't be that much different as all modern CPUs have power saving options that allow downclocking & downvolting (or even powering down completely) of cores that are idle.

Hi Finnish bro, prices are not good at the moment and it doesn't look like a good period to build a new system. 1050ti is a good choice for 1080p, prices are crazy in Europe for 1060 and 1070.

Anything less than i7 7700 has no meaning now. Agree with the AMD road, but I suggest R5 or R7, specifically R5 1600, 1600X, or R7 1700.

What is your PSU and how old is it? Unless it's tier 1-2, I wouldn't risk an old PSU in a new system, a PSU's life will end at some point, you don't want it to fry the rest of your stuff.

You can find Windows keys online for about $30, I haven't bought any personally but a lot of people have and the keys work as they should.

You could also wait a bit more for Black Friday to get some good deals, where will you buy the parts from?

I'd say go AMD way this time. R5-1600 or R7-1700.
R3's are not worth it: barely better than FX which (or its equivalent) you already have. R3's are just placehilders for later upgrade but there is no point to stock on socket AM4 motherboards right now (current early versions are extremely buggy and have lacking firmware/EFI).
Don't waste money on Intel's i3 junk (you knew i3's are actually i7 refuse with broken cores, right?)
And that AMD processors are hot is simply not true. Nothing can be hotter than a good old late (Prescott) Intel Pentium 4! ;) LOL! Are you suggesting to pay for bootlegged Windows keys? I. e. to trow away money to some pirates? That's the most stupid thing to do. To use the unactivated Windows will be smarter than this (yes, you will have watermark and black screen in place of wallpaper but who cares?). This, or to get an actual license that will not be revoked with some update. Or, you know, use Linux instead (I'm not pushing that descision though, that's personal choise).

Get a fast processor with four cores or more or forget it? I guess I will stick to my phenomenal antiquated 3 cores as I cannot afford to pay that much. It was just a pipe dream to get a newer computer, maybe in 2019 I will look at it again. Good thing there are lots of old games to play :-)

I hear Noctua makes good coolers. I would not know as they are not in my range at €85+

SSDs are awesome but do not increase the amount of newer games I can play. Sure in games like Bethesda's Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, the tiny pause when it loads more of the map would be less disturbing.

The idea with not getting a GPU now was that it could be added next year just as well as my current one is newer than the rest of my computer.

My PSU is good, I do not buy cheap ones ever again (long ago had one die and take the motherboard and processor and RAM with it) as I had to replace the last one that broke.

I would not pirate my main OS and absolutely NOT pay to other pirates for it. You never see me in shops like G2A ever. Linux is what I use on my laptop and it works on desktops too naturally, except there are a bunch of games that do not work on it but there is Wine and things can be arranged.

No Friday is blacker than others here, some are just a bit darker as the days grow shorter. For my prices I looked in two big shops with good online shops but when shopping for real I guess I would add two more shops that have good prices. I only do my shopping in shops where I can go to the physical shop easily, so no ordering from the other side of the globe. No need to deal with customs and paying extra tax and that then.

I know about disabled cores, I have one in my pc now as well and the i3-7100 I was looking at certainly is of the same kind.

I guess I could buy a graphics card and/or a couple of RAM sticks to improve my current pc.

There is an Intel CPU that is an below an i5 that is good for gaming.

If you can wait then you should absolutely do that. The competition between Intel and AMD is just heating up, so prices are bound to drop. It will be interesting to see how good Coffee Lake ends up being. However you should consider that you'll be forced to buy a brand new 300 series motherboard, which will drive the overall prices quite high.

Also, I didn't know about the 2+2 cores of the r3 and 3+3 cores of the r5. Thanks for hinting at it, which led me to search about it.

EDIT: As far as Cannon Lake(10nm), who knows. I'm getting this feeling that by the time intel manages to release anything on 10nm, AMD will announce Zen2 on 7nm. But at this time it's all supposition.

The motherboard is the foundation of any system. I would buy the best mobo that will support my dream machine, and then save early money on the cpu, graphics, ram, etc. Later, as you can afford it, you can upgrade your machine piece by piece.

This is how I build a great computer on a tight budget. :)

It has already been suggested that you buy a SSD for your current machine for a quick performance boost. You may also consider buying other upgrades for your current system that will eventually become parts of your new machine. Will the new GPU you want work in your current system? How about the PSU? Some nice fans will improve cooling and reduce noise in your current system, and they are easily moved to a new case when the time comes.

This is the heart of personal computers: the high degree of versatility in builds as well as functions. Allow me to share a song with the right sentiment...

One piece at a time.

With the upcoming Coffee Lake processors coming soon, you might even grab i3-8300 (4/4 C/T, 4 GHz, 8MB L3, 65W) for ~150€.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/european-core-i7-8700k-coffee-lake-prices-spotted-in-germany.html

Did you see that "Colgate TIM" in the comments. I cannot stop laughing :-D :-D

Yeah, maybe that one will be it or prices of current processors will come down.

I agree that one should not skimp too much on the motherboard but I have no plans to pay €200 or more.

Upgrade plans shelved for now except I will keep looking for a 2nd hand graphics card.