Some opinion required.

[Christicles]

So my motherboard on my desktop has seemed to have died and it could not have happened at a worse time. My current setup is in my signature and I have been planning an upgrade for some time in the near future(when I'm not a poor final year CS student). Basically I was planning an overhaul of the internals namely the Motherboard, CPU, Ram, GPU and internal storage. However the fact that my current board has just died has forced me to contemplate updating a little bit sooner than I would like. Now originally my plan was to buy all the parts around the same time once I had finalized what I wanted to get, but I think I'm going to have to split up the buy and get what I can now and upgrade a little bit later on down the line.

So, I have narrowed it down to the things that I will absolutely need to get up and running again, but can add to/improve later on, namely the motherboard, ram and internal storage. With this in mind my plan is to get a motherboard with a current AMD chipset, that will last me a while, buy a cheaper CPU that I can replace later with something better, the minimum amount of ram I would like and then buy an internal HDD as a stand in until I can afford an ssd.

So what AM3+/AM3 CUP would I be best of getting( at this point pretty much all of them are better than what I currently have), knowing that I intend to swap it out later on?

(I know it would be better to upgrade to the CPU I would Ideally want, but this is kind of an emergency situation.)

[TheYoungEnthusiast]

Having run a very solid AMD system previously, I think I may be able to help. For a temporary CPU, I would say that maybe a Phenom II X2 would suit your needs. It is only a dual core, and you can pick one up for a pretty reasonable price these days. It is socket AM3 and should run on any AM3/AM3+ board, so if you pick up a 990FX board for your future upgrade, the processor will be compatible. I hope I answered your question okay.

[bradscoolio]

Why don't you upgrade/replace your motherboard now and put all the old stuff back in... then when you have more money you can do the all the upgrades except for the motherboard which you already upgraded :P

stick a m5a99x evo r2.0 there and call it a day. it's a noice board too, i use to run one in my main system :)

[Christicles]

Why don't you upgrade/replace your motherboard now and put all the old stuff back in... then when you have more money you can do the all the upgrades except for the motherboard which you already upgraded

Well that is what I was planning on doing. I was just looking for some thoughts on a temporary CPU. I had intended on waiting for steamroller to come out before I went with a full upgrade, but my MOBO dying has forced me to go a bit earlier than I would like.

That board does seem like a good one, though I think I'm leaning more towards the 990FX chipset, as I would like to have the option of the dual x16 slots at the same time as currently I have 2 monitors that have different max resolutions so I need to run them off 2 separate cards and I would also like the option to crossfire when i upgrade my GPU(s) later on.