An APU build...

[Wrb]

PC Link: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/8mwgwV.

 

Skip until the end if you want my thoughts and some photos...

 

As most people do in the beginning, I started of saying "I'm going to build a PC"... 2 months later I actually announced this to my parents and they were like "Urm no, we will buy you a prebuilt one". So after a while I convinced my dad and he said he'd pay £200 for the pc and that I could add in more if I wanted too. However, being fairly young (15) and not having a job yet I didn't have much to put into it. So I settled for a £250 budget (which by the end went to £280).

 

Anyways, after spending too much time researching things like 1080s and i7s, I settled on an AMD A10 7870 because it was simple, easy and seemed to be decent in the reviews. I also looked around and found some discounts on stuff, only to then be denied and my dad said let's buy it all new on ebuyer. Luckily I didn't have to pay anymore that I could have paid.

 

My thoughts:

The APU is a very good chip, it handles web browsing, programming (mostly python but I also have Java on it when I want to) and as long as you are reasonable in your games chooses it does gaming quite well. I play most games at 60fps: CS:GO, EVE online and Ultra modded Minecraft(150+ mods) and some at 30-20 fps: Terra Tech(in Alpha) and cities skylines in 720p.

Everything else is good, not much to comment on, the case is nice, the HDD fairly fast and motherboard is great.

 

End of review, any helpful comments are welcomed. Thanks.

 

Photos are coming later...

 

 

Edited August 21, 2016 by Wrb

[PRTI]

I would of added a couple more bucks and go with faster ram

[Darel321]

ehh.. cant say much.. its a nice build for that price, and seems like you dont expect it be amazing soo... gl on your build I would avoid seagate and corsair tho. seagate are bound to fail and the cx psu are meh, its probably better to get evga or even a gigabyte for psu

[EPPHO]

Would have many benefits from faster RAM

[Funtron5000]

Faster RAM won't actually help. DDR3 2400 is actually the point of diminishing returns for RAM on an APU. However, you'll be well over 60 fps in CS:GO and we'll under 150+ fps in Minecraft at ultra. The two are actually almost reverse. The main thing in those systems is that the APU won't handle anti-aliasing well. So, that's one graphics setting you won't want to turn on.

 

And your case is mid ATX. It'll be very large for your m-ATX board. You can change to an m-ATX case if you'd like.

[srmarkovic]

Great build! No need for faster RAM! This PC will be good enough for intended tasks.

[Wrb]

Thanks guys, just to clarify thereason I bought the CX power supply was that it was on sale and was semi modular as well. And I had trouble finding a fairly decent cheap board which would take 2400+ MHz RAM and I read it didn't make much difference anyway.

 

Side note, I was a tiny bit worried about posting this since I didn't see many APU builds and didn't know if you guys were anti-apu or didn't recommend them. (I also thought you guys were a bit disapproving of people who didn't spend £1000+ on their computer but this has shown me your not) But if anyone wants to get into PCs or play decent games I'd thoroughly recommend a build like this to start with.

[Funtron5000]

2 minutes ago, Wrb said:

Thanks guys, just to clarify thereason I bought the CX power supply was that it was on sale and was semi modular as well. And I had trouble finding a fairly decent cheap board which would take 2400+ MHz RAM and I read it didn't make much difference anyway.

 

Side note, I was a tiny bit worried about posting this since I didn't see many APU builds and didn't know if you guys were anti-apu or didn't recommend them. (I also thought you guys were a bit disapproving of people who didn't spend £1000+ on their computer but this has shown me your not) But if anyone wants to get into PCs or play decent games I'd thoroughly recommend a build like this to start with.

I had built a system very similar to this for my younger brother. And I know its capabilities. The only thing weird is reading temperature is weird. Most applications don't show a real number. Just use rivatuner when configuring games to make sure you're getting the settings just right for the system. And even on the stock cooler, you can do just a tad of overclocking if you need to.

[Wrb]

I'm using HWinfo and it gives me a number, but I think it might be overestimating. Stock seems normal (~50) but I've got it up to 85°C while running some benchmarks and I thought the max was 72°C. And I have the if it's too hot turn off thing on, I think it's done it before while I was playing Cities skylines.

 

Also, forgot to mention, I've built it already.

 

[Urishima]

19 hours ago, Wrb said:

they were like "Urm no, we will buy you a prebuilt one"

See, that's what the water spray bottle is for. Spray them every time they say something like that. Works like a charm. Cat's, parents, the feds, everything.

[SLAYR]

18 hours ago, Wrb said:

I'm using HWinfo and it gives me a number, but I think it might be overestimating. Stock seems normal (~50) but I've got it up to 85°C while running some benchmarks and I thought the max was 72°C. And I have the if it's too hot turn off thing on, I think it's done it before while I was playing Cities skylines.

 

Also, forgot to mention, I've built it already.

 

The stock cooler isn't too good unless it is the new wraith cooler, but only programs like amd overdrive/ nzxt cam can actually read the temps correct as amd uses a thermal margin (temperature until the chip overheats) instead of showing the actual temp so most monitoring software won't work right. 

 

If you have a better cooler most of these can go up to 4.3-4.5GHz on the cpu, and 1Ghz on the gpu.

[Wrb]

On 22/08/2016 at 4:51 PM, SLAYR said:

The stock cooler isn't too good unless it is the new wraith cooler, but only programs like amd overdrive/ nzxt cam can actually read the temps correct as amd uses a thermal margin (temperature until the chip overheats) instead of showing the actual temp so most monitoring software won't work right. 

 

If you have a better cooler most of these can go up to 4.3-4.5GHz on the cpu, and 1Ghz on the gpu.

It's not the wraith, it's the old 95 watt "near silent" one. So a cooler upgrade is what I'm thinking for a Christmas upgrade, maybe a hyper 212 evo or something similar. Any ideas?