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Hey Guys,

So I have a peculiar situation. I was perusing the net when I stumbled upon (in my opinion) an amazing deal on a bundle, $150 (AR).

The bundle being:

GIGABYTE GA-78LMT-S2P AM3+ AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Phenom II x6 1045T
8GB 1333 DDR3 ADATA RAM
Case/430 Watt PS

Now I happened to have (don't ask why) a spare SSD so I said, what the hell, it's better than my current E8400 + 4890 setup. Let me get this build and put together a low budget multi-core beast (I do a decent amount of parallel computing). Because it was affordable for my budget, I said why the heck not throw in a 7850 1GB?! So I did. Pulled the trigger since it was a "limited time" offer, was happy.

Additional parts

Kingston v300 SSD
7850 1GB
Monitor

I received the parts and realized, I hadn't paid attention to the mobo specs. The mobo is a 3+1 phase (no overclock for 1045t), it only has SATA 3 Gb/s (no full potential for my spare ssd), and lacks 3-pin fan control.

Based on that I realized I have a couple problems the mobo will limit potentially two things:

The 7850 will be bottle necked by the 1045t at stock speeds (correct me if I am wrong)
SSD won't be used at full capability (less of an issue)

I've basically been thinking I'll have to bite the bullet and get a new mobo, CPU hsf, and overclock the 1045t to not bottleneck the 7850.
So my question to yall experienced ladies and gentlemen is, what is the recommended course of action, new mobo, new cpu, run it all at stock on that mobo?

What would the restocking fee be on that bundle? Is that number larger than the buyer's remorse that you're feeling?

Those parts will all work together. The real speed of the SSD is felt in the lower latency compared to a hard-drive, not in the sequential transfer rate, so it'll still feel pretty snappy even with the slightly slower SATA connection.

2.7GHz on a Phenom II is a little rough- it has the cores, which are stout, but the single-threaded performance is a little low.

Likely the motherboard will need to be replaced, and you'll want to look into cooling for an overclocked X6, but I'd suggest giving it a try for what you play now if you can do that without increasing a restocking fee.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

What would the restocking fee be on that bundle? Is that number larger than the buyer's remorse that you're feeling?

Those parts will all work together. The real speed of the SSD is felt in the lower latency compared to a hard-drive, not in the sequential transfer rate, so it'll still feel pretty snappy even with the slightly slower SATA connection.

Pretty sure its un-returnable since a couple parts had rebates, so the UPC is missing. Fortunately it's not buyers remorse as much as it is, "I am an idiot that didn't read" remorse. Seeing a 3+1 phase would have turned me off instantly. This board apparently is on rev 5.0, where rev 3.0 and before had 4+1 phase and low RDS mosfets...

Yea I figured the SSD perf (SATA 2 vs SATA 3) wouldn't be noticeable to me at all since my uses aren't IO heavy.

Airmantharp wrote:

2.7GHz on a Phenom II is a little rough- it has the cores, which are stout, but the single-threaded performance is a little low.

Likely the motherboard will need to be replaced, and you'll want to look into cooling for an overclocked X6, but I'd suggest giving it a try for what you play now if you can do that without increasing a restocking fee.

This was what I was thinking as well, see if it meets my expectations... However, I don't believe the motherboard is returnable since the UPC's been cut out. At the worst I would have to buy a new one and see if I can sell this one.

I'm still wondering if the x6 1045t will bottle neck the 7850 1gb?

It'll be fine IMHO unless you play games that will really be hampered by a single slower thread.

I'd be more concerned with actually loading down that 430 watt PSU...

Waco wrote:

It'll be fine IMHO unless you play games that will really be hampered by a single slower thread.

I'd be more concerned with actually loading down that 430 watt PSU...

Won't be running a DVD drive in there, I thought it would be enough for just the CPU, Mobo, and 7850. I can always swap it out for a 500 Watt I have in closet server.

The 760G/SB710 chipset is over 4 years old; very odd choice for an AM3+ board. Must be Gigabyte's entry level AM3+ board.

I'm thinking your best bet is to save that board for a secondary/spare PC build and get something with beefier VRMs and a more modern chipset for this build to allow you to get the most out of that 1045T.

just brew it! wrote:

The 760G/SB710 chipset is over 4 years old; very odd choice for an AM3+ board. Must be Gigabyte's entry level AM3+ board.

I'm thinking your best bet is to save that board for a secondary/spare PC build and get something with beefier VRMs and a more modern chipset for this build to allow you to get the most out of that 1045T.

I'm basically torn between what you've said and what was recommended by others to see how it performs all stock... It'll definitely be better than my legacy E8400 setup either way.

Would you happen to have a particular mobo you'd recommend?

Ravioli wrote:

I'm basically torn between what you've said and what was recommended by others to see how it performs all stock... It'll definitely be better than my legacy E8400 setup either way.

Would you happen to have a particular mobo you'd recommend?

Well, you can certainly do both. Run on the existing board for now and maybe swap it out later. Will probably need to call for re-activation on Windows though, unless you skip activation and make a decision before the activation timer runs out (30 days).

I'd recommend pretty much anything Asus except their bottom tier budget boards (which are fine for what they are, but probably not a huge step up from the board you already have). M5A97 R2.0 is probably a good baseline; move up their product line from there as your budget permits.

just brew it! wrote:

M5A97 R2.0 is probably a good baseline; move up their product line from there as your budget permits.

Thanks, I think I will try as suggested and run as is for now and swap out the mobo later if needed. I will keep an eye out for Windows activation. Thank you all for your suggestions. Last question, would a 430 watt be enough for the CPU, Mobo, and 7850? I am not planning on including a DVD drive or mechanical drives at all (have NAS for media).

Ravioli wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

M5A97 R2.0 is probably a good baseline; move up their product line from there as your budget permits.

Thanks, I think I will try as suggested and run as is for now and swap out the mobo later if needed. I will keep an eye out for Windows activation. Thank you all for your suggestions. Last question, would a 430 watt be enough for the CPU, Mobo, and 7850? I am not planning on including a DVD drive or mechanical drives at all (have NAS for media).

If it's a high quality PSU - it'll most likely be enough (your whole system's power consumption will most likely be less than 180w at full load). If it's a crappy one (the numbers of watts on PSU can be very misleading on low quality models) - probably not Either way, you won't know until you'll try it yourself.

While what you purchased is by no means state of the art, it is still a reasonable build, even more so considering the purchase price.

I have an AMD system very similar to yours in my office right now - it is now part of my PC fleet, having been retired from active gaming use about 60 days ago. My son is the gamer in the family and I recently granted him a new system with an i7 3770 and a GTX680. My AMD system has a 1055T and a HD5870, but otherwise is similar to yours in the 8GB of RAM and 120GB SSD with a 500GB Seagate mechanical drive as a 2nd drive. It still runs quite well and has never given us a moment of problem in the 2.5+ years we've owned it. It is a Dell Studio XPS 7100 and like I mentioned, it is very similar to yours in many respects. The Dell actually uses a Foxconn manufactured motherboard very similar to yours.

I think you'll be quite surprised a how well it performs. Running benchmarks like Heaven 3 in default DX11 mode yields about 65fps for my system (1920x1080). I'm sure that you are familiar with the Phenom II AMD chips turbo mode (3.2 GHz for your 1045T) that allows them to automatically increase their clock speeds if only a couple of threads are busy, otherwise having 6 cores is really incredible when the system needs them. According to Anandtech's GPU Bench comparison http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/511?vs=549 ), your 7850 is 10-20% faster than the 5870 in my system, which more than makes up for the difference between the 1045T and 1055T. The SSD makes everything super fast. I have SSD's in systems running SATAIII and SATAII and I really can't tell the difference between the two, especially if I'm running the same model SSD in the two systems. Yes, the SATA III systems benchmark faster, but the overall experience comes from the dramatic improvements in random access times and seek times, both of which are present in any SSD equipped systems. I've used the Kingston V300 SSD in a couple of systems, and it performs quite well especially considering the cost. I was able to procure both of mine for less than $100 each.

In short, don't stress over the specs. Build the system and enjoy it. It will perform well. I don't think that you'll find the 7850 limited at all by the 1045T.

I agree with JBI, just try it out and see how it performs. The 1045T isn't slow, but wouldn't attempt OC on your board. When I had my SSD with SATA II then upgraded to SATA III, I noticed little overall change.

Thank you all, I will try it out as is, and go from there! Definitely appreciate the insight chucko helped ease my concerns on long term.

Where are you getting phase counts for this mobo? I'm seeing the same number of chokes on all revisions. Here's a guide on how to determine phase counts in the absense of numbers provided by the manufacturer. I would say that board at least has 4 phases dedicated to the CPU. The board also looks like it would lend itself well to VRM heatsinks.

The revisions are definitely different in layout, although the basic phase count is the same.

The CPU you got is 95W TDP. Does the board support 125W or 140W CPUs? If so, there probably is some overclocking headroom as far as the power delivery is concerned.

DPete27 wrote:

Where are you getting phase counts for this mobo? I'm seeing the same number of chokes on all revisions.

MadManOriginal wrote:

The revisions are definitely different in layout, although the basic phase count is the same.

Look closer at the rev 3.1 pic, it has an extra choke in the CPU VRM area & an extra MOSFET. The rev 3.1 appears to be a 4+1 phase design, whereas the rev 4.x and 5.x appear to be 3+1.

DPete27 wrote:

Here's a guide on how to determine phase counts in the absense of numbers provided by the manufacturer. I would say that board at least has 4 phases dedicated to the CPU. The board also looks like it would lend itself well to VRM heatsinks.

Yes, there are 4 phases total, but one of them is dedicated to the integrated memory controller so you've effectively got only 3 phases for the CPU cores on the rev 4.x and 5.x boards. That's why it is a "3+1" VRM.

Edit: It looks like on the rev 4.0 and later they dropped one of the phases, but kept the number of filter caps on the output side the same as previously. If you were counting filter caps instead of chokes that would be the reason for the confusion.

I was thinking that the two chokes by the RAM slots might have been used for the memory controller. I suppose they are a little far away from the CPU socket to be used for that purpose. And yes, the rev. 3.1 does have 4+1. I can't count apparently.

Also, I dont see any 125W processors listed on the CPU support list for Rev. 5.x but the 1045T is there. The board is obviously not an "overclocking enthusiast" board, but that doesn't mean you CAN'T overclock. I wouldn't raise any voltages though.

DPete27 wrote:

I was thinking that the two chokes by the RAM slots might have been used for the memory controller. I suppose they are a little far away from the CPU socket to be used for that purpose. And yes, the rev. 3.1 does have 4+1. I can't count apparently.

The chokes by the RAM slots are for the RAM; the DIMMs get their own VRM. Ditto the ones over by the southbridge.

As buyer's remorse goes, this could be a whole lot worse. Make sure the PSU's made by a reliable manufacturer and delivers enough on the 12V rail, don't overclock it too much, and take advantage of those plural cores - the Phenom II X6 is still a brute for video encoding, and contributing some spare CPU cycles (and GPU time) to distributed computing projects would be a good use when it's not being pushed hard by new games. As you say, the 7850 could be somewhat bottlenecked in those cases where a game only leans on a couple of CPU cores, but it's hard to imagine performance not living up to expectations there anyway... Most newer games are better about it, and older games will (fingers crossed) run quickly due to their age and relative computational simplicity.