Giving a friend help.

[Abstract Hero]

Got a friend getting into PC building and gaming.

Right now he's got a Athlon x2 3600+ on 3gb of 800 DDR2 and a crappy foxconn board.

He has a great start besides that. Rosewill case, Antec EW 650w and a GTX 560ti (mine, sold it to him dirty cheap since I support the habit.)

I wanted to get him going a bit more so I priced out some parts based on a Asrock 970 board, G.Skill 4gb and an Athlon II x4 for under $200 but what would be a cheap way to go so he can game until he has enough to build something better?

 

[PP Mguire]

AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor HDZ965FBGMBOX - Newegg.com
ASRock 880GM-LE FX Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Newegg.com
Newegg.com - Silicon Power 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model SP008GBLTU160N21

Tell him to upgrade his board later. That supports 125w processors, gives him 8GB of RAM, and a badass quad that will be better than a mid tier quad and a good board.

 

[Abstract Hero]

I did figure that as a noob he wasn't gonna OC so stock speeds are cool and don't really need the full atx board.

I'll let him know. We were both talking last night and were gonna wait until Maxwell was in full swing but his CPU and ram are just awful so... Now we can both be in a similiar boat and I can help him next gen.

(Oh, and unrelated. Bought the Neutron GTX, next day it was 15% off. -_- Oh well.)

 

[PP Mguire]

I did figure that as a noob he wasn't gonna OC so stock speeds are cool and don't really need the full atx board.

I'll let him know. We were both talking last night and were gonna wait until Maxwell was in full swing but his CPU and ram are just awful so... Now we can both be in a similiar boat and I can help him next gen.

(Oh, and unrelated. Bought the Neutron GTX, next day it was 15% off. -_- Oh well.)

That board will still OC, just not as high as a better board with more phases.

Yea, same thing happened to me. Was 99 bucks 2 days after my purchase.

 

[Abstract Hero]

That board will still OC, just not as high as a better board with more phases.

Yea, same thing happened to me. Was 99 bucks 2 days after my purchase.

Well, of course it will. I just meant we didn't need all the luxuries a high end board give.

 

[PP Mguire]

Well, of course it will. I just meant we didn't need all the luxuries a high end board give.

Oh ok, I thought you were trying to say cause it's mATX that it won't OC. I was like....wut

There are only 2 things I don't like about it. IGP, and no SATA3. It supports FX though.