cheap cpu for 280x Cheapest CPU for R9 280x

[Sikator]

About 4 months ago a lightning strike hit the outside wall, taking modem, CPU, motherboard, gpu and 2 monitors with it.

 

I've bought a new pc since then but i just tested the R9 280x that was taken in the strike. and it worked... i had some problems at first.

first try it went straight to bios.

second time nothing.

third time it was stable after resetting the bios, temps and everything is all good running 34c at idle in a 24c room.

 

 

So i figured that i would want to see if i could invest in a quick LAN PC for friends if they were over but at first i don't have the cash for an i5 or generally any new stuff. So i am currently trying to find the cheapest CPU that can get at least 80-90% out of the GPU. This is what i need help with.

 

 

 

Budget? I guess for motherboard, ram and CPU max 60-70$ (60€) ish.

I also have 8GB of DDR3 RAM.

Would be nice with at least 1 Sata 6Gb/s

 

I just want to see and feel how much i can get for as little as possible

 

 

EDIT: I forgot but buying second hand is the plan! Sorry for forgetting that.

[DocSwag]

You probably wouldn't be able to get everything out of your GPU at those prices...

Here's what I came up with, though it's quite a bit above your budget.

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/QtPByc

[WarWeeny]

intel celeron at 70 dollar, lol

[crystal6tak]

You should look into getting second hand stuff then... Try looking around ebay? You'll find plenty of sellers there shipping worldwide.

[Sikator]

6 hours ago, crystal6tak said:

You should look into getting second hand stuff then... Try looking around ebay? You'll find plenty of sellers there shipping worldwide.

I edited the post, Buying second hand parts was what i thought of. But looking around i just wanted to know exactly what is my best option.

 

Ebay isn't too much of an option as if i buy for more than 30$ i will have to pay prob 10-15$ in taxes.

There is a lot of local stuff, people selling 10-20 CPU's etc but they are way out of my league of knowledge as most dual cores and generally older CPU's Especially AMD isn't my field.

 

My goal is to find how low i can go with still maintaining the GPU's performance.

[crystal6tak]

52 minutes ago, Sikator said:

I edited the post, Buying second hand parts was what i thought of. But looking around i just wanted to know exactly what is my best option.

 

Ebay isn't too much of an option as if i buy for more than 30$ i will have to pay prob 10-15$ in taxes.

There is a lot of local stuff, people selling 10-20 CPU's etc but they are way out of my league of knowledge as most dual cores and generally older CPU's Especially AMD isn't my field.

 

My goal is to find how low i can go with still maintaining the GPU's performance.

Right I see...well, if it helps, I'll use codenames for reference then. I haven't actually tried buying any second hand parts before so I don't know what's the most popular, sorry! 

 

At the intel side:

Nehalem 4 or more cores (i7/i5 900/800 series) at 3 Ghz or higher is good.

Sandy bridge/Ivy bridge/Haswell/Skylake 2 or more core (i3/i5/i7 2000/3000/4000/6000 series) at 3Ghz or higher is good.

Honorable mention is the Q6600, I believe this one is quite popular in the second hand market. Pair it with an overclocking board and it'll be a decent chip. Not good, just decent.

 

At the AMD side:

Phenom x4 900 series (4 cores, higher named x6) at 3 Ghz or higher is decent.

FX chips, 4 or more core at 3 Ghz or higher is decent.

Athlon x4 700/800 series is decent.

 

Hope this helps!

[Sikator]

10 hours ago, crystal6tak said:

Right I see...well, if it helps, I'll use codenames for reference then. I haven't actually tried buying any second hand parts before so I don't know what's the most popular, sorry! 

 

At the intel side:

Nehalem 4 or more cores (i7/i5 900/800 series) at 3 Ghz or higher is good.

Sandy bridge/Ivy bridge/Haswell/Skylake 2 or more core (i3/i5/i7 2000/3000/4000/6000 series) at 3Ghz or higher is good.

Honorable mention is the Q6600, I believe this one is quite popular in the second hand market. Pair it with an overclocking board and it'll be a decent chip. Not good, just decent.

 

At the AMD side:

Phenom x4 900 series (4 cores, higher named x6) at 3 Ghz or higher is decent.

FX chips, 4 or more core at 3 Ghz or higher is decent.

Athlon x4 700/800 series is decent.

 

Hope this helps!

Waow thanks! I love this! 

I managed to find 3x i7-920 cpus ranging from 30-45$ each. Tho i realised why i didn't even try these in the first place. Motherboards. impossible to find.

Ill keep searching and see if i find some matches!

[crystal6tak]

1 hour ago, Sikator said:

Waow thanks! I love this! 

I managed to find 3x i7-920 cpus ranging from 30-45$ each. Tho i realised why i didn't even try these in the first place. Motherboards. impossible to find.

Ill keep searching and see if i find some matches!

Welcome!

 

I did forgot to mention a few more things lol. Firstly pentiums. Just remembered intel has some newer pentiums. Those are dual core chips without hyperthreading. Sandy bridge/ivy bridge/haswell/skylake pentiums are all decent at 3ghz or higher like before. Not good cause they don't have hyperthreading, just decent.

 

Then there are the xeons, with an entirely different set of names. Refer to wiki I guess lol. But just like before, nehalem, sandy bridge etc etc to skylake are all options. Xeons aren't some special magical CPU's, a quad core sandy bridge i7 is the same as a quad core sandy bridge xeon (Even the socket for the motherboard is the very likely the same!). Only difference being the xeon is locked, more efficient, more stable and supports ECC memory. So yea, you might get lucky and snag a xeon, who knows  The only issue with xeons are that some consumer motherboards need BIOS updates to recognize the xeon chips...