Motherboard kit for light user no gaming

The high horse brigade

I have been tasked with specing a PC upgrade for a colleague and I'm not up to date on what's available atm. So I need a motherboard kit to rebuild this PC. He not needing anything fancy possibly i3 or i5 plenty as he does not game and got 8-10 years out of his last Core2. He has Sata drives, just bought an SSD and has a decent ATX case and upgraded the PSU so all i need is the recommendation for a motherboard kit or the parts separate. TIA

Homelander

If he wants another decade out of it, best value is probably a cheap a320m motherboard, a ryzen 2600 processor, and 16gb of ddr4 ram (it's very cheap at the moment so worth getting the 16, esp when he plans having it that long). Won't be much more than £220 or so.

The Intel equivalent would probably be the i5 9400f processor, H310M motherboard + the RAM but the ryzen is generally better value.

minitrue

Ryzen 2600 won't have onboard graphics though and likely major overkill, snap for an i5 9400f? Given the implied desire for it to last a decade I'd probably go the extra for a r5 2400g but an r3 2200g is probably also plenty, in reality a dual core athlon/celeron is probably enough but if it's going to last a decade I'd go with a quad (modern i3 or the r3/r5)!

I would go with the 16GB though for value and as the ways things have gone in the last decade would suggest we'll want it just for browsing by 2030

The high horse brigade

minitrue wrote: »

Ryzen 2600 won't have onboard graphics though and likely major overkill, snap for an i5 9400f? Given the implied desire for it to last a decade I'd probably go the extra for a r5 2400g but an r3 2200g is probably also plenty, in reality a dual core athlon/celeron is probably enough but if it's going to last a decade I'd go with a quad (modern i3 or the r3/r5)!

I would go with the 16GB though for value and as the ways things have gone in the last decade would suggest we'll want it just for browsing by 2030

So can you link me a kit on Amazon :cool:
I don't know what motherboards are compatible and with what ram

minitrue

It's a slight pain to be totally certain you will get a motherboard which isn't old stock and therefore won't have an updated bios to support the cpu :-/ If you find a bundle it should but ...

You could get something like https://www.cclonline.com/page/customise/MBB-AMD-RYZFAM/ and customise it to have 2*8GB (go with the 3000MHz) but then you are looking at 14-16 days for them to assemble it. Dual channel ram is very preferable especially when using the onboard graphics so I'd resist going with the standard 1*8GB option :-/

If you grab the parts then I'm not sure how you can 100% guarantee a compatible bios for the 3200G so the sanest approach is to get a board that can flash a new bios without even needing a cpu so best I can spot right now in stock is:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor (£80.98 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI B450-A PRO MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard (£88.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£56.50 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £226.47

About £10 more than the bundle (£9.95 delivery from ccl) but a much better board.

There might well be a cheaper board which can't come with a bios that doesn't support the cpu but I'm not sure, I thought any of the MSI MAX boards would but once I found one which doesn't I gave up on trying to work that out. Someone else might chip in with the knowledge or a better board (what video outputs you want may come into play though so a good idea to post that)! There was also a company who you could pay a little to update the bios but someone here did that and ended up getting a board where they hadn't so I'm not going to try and figure out who it was!

You could also drop to a 2200G and make the bios problem pretty much go away but when it's for someone who will presumably use it long term I'd probably just get the better board unless funds are tight. If this is way under budget even with the pricier board then bumping it to the 3400G cpu isn't crazy.

Unless you are in a major rush though I'd hang on for someone else to jump in with a better idea

minitrue

And same as the video outputs question, if you need a micro-atx board better shout as that's a full atx board in the list of parts! It does have vga/dvi/hdmi though.

Homelander

I forgot about needing a graphics card for the Ryzen 2600 but you could add a basic GT710 for output for £30.

Or else get the 2200G and A320M and 16GB DDR4, very little difference between 2200g and 3200g and there are no motherboard concerns to think about. A lot slower than Ryzen 2600 but will last years for general use.

The Intel 9100F is also cheaper than the 3200g/2200g and there aren't any motherboard concerns either, so the £70 9100F and a £60 H310M will do just fine. Integrated graphics are weaker but outside of games makes no difference.

EG:

CPU:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Intel-i3-9100F-Desktop-Processor-Graphics/dp/B07R7Q3JZH/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=9100f&qid=1576417462&sr=8-1
Motherboard:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-H310M-PRO-VDH-Plus-Motherboard/dp/B07K883GZC/ref=sr_1_14?keywords=h310m&qid=1576417484&sr=8-14
RAM:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMK16GX4M2B3000C15-Vengeance-Performance-Desktop/dp/B0134EW7G8/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=16gb+ddr4&qid=1576417638&sr=8-3

minitrue

9100F (£68) does NOT have any graphics capability and an 8100 (£107) or 9100 (non-F £130) costs a lot more.

Personally I wouldn't consider a GT7xx at this stage with a long term life in mind and a GT1030/rx550 would be £67.

Homelander

Sorry, totally right. I keep forgetting that about the F processors. I think the best choice in this case is a 2200G then, with an a320M (Or B350 or B450) and 16GB DDR4 3000mhz. If budget is a factor.

If it's really not about budget, which would be understandable given it's likely to be used for the next decade, an Msi MAX model B450 + a Ryzen 3400G would be a pretty sound option with plenty upgrade potential if needed.

That or a Ryzen 2600, A320M + RX550 4GB. This is a considerably more powerful solution in general despite being older parts, but realistically by the time a 3400g is noticeably obsolete for general use the way Core 2 is now in most scenarios, it'll be the best part of another decade.

Otherwise, again, if budget's not a big deal, a Ryzen 3600, B450m MAX, 16GB DDR4 3000mhz and an RX550 4GB would be a really solid core for a general purpose/media machine for at least a decade and wouldn't be expensive in the context of how long it would last....maybe around £500 including a new case and power supply.

wotzgoingon

8GB's of RAM is plenty for a non gaming build.

Sure I was gaming on 6GB's for nearly 10 years and even at 4k the past while and 1440p before that until I updated my system recently.

The high horse brigade

wotzgoingon wrote: »

8GB's of RAM is plenty for a non gaming build.

Sure I was gaming on 6GB's for nearly 10 years until I updated my system recently.

I can see a point, ram is cheap now and will be more expensive if you want to upgrade later

Skerries

wotzgoingon wrote: »

8GB's of RAM is plenty for a non gaming build.

Sure I was gaming on 6GB's for nearly 10 years and even at 4k the past while and 1440p before that until I updated my system recently.

Browsers are using a lot more ram these days especially if you are tab whore like myself 20+