New mobo-cpu-ram

Hello everyone!

I am looking for some advice on my choices regarding an upgrade, and I'd really appreciate any input.

The main use of my pc is interent-office use, some movie watching (720p and why not fullhd) and occasional old gaming (diablo 2, ut2004). I use linux, so the hardware bundled software are not that important. I do not overclock. Ever. My needs are in order of importance:

Stablility-reliability, longlevity, performance.

A low tdp is also a thing to mention as I like to keep it as quiet as possible. I will be using a scythe ninja2 rev.B, and that means it can be passive for tdp up to 65W. Overkill, I know it, but I really like the idea I also have a radeon 5670 vga which maybe I could continue using.

I am thinking of the following setup:

cpu: AMD A6 3500 (FM1)
mb: gigabyte A75M-D2H
ram: corsair XMS 4GB 2*2GB 1600MHz (in dual channel)

I am planning to invest an amount of 150-200euro on this, and the above setup costs me 170euro.

Please let me know what you think of my setup or any other thoughts of combinations. Could this cpu work in "crossfire" with my 5670 vga? Not that it really matters, I could also go for an intel solution and use the 5670 on its own for graphics.

thnx in advance

Well thats a pretty decent setup. The graphics on that a6 should be sufficient so to lower your power usage I wouldnt use your 5670.

hello there, thnx for your reply

Yes that did cross my mind. And besides power usage, it would decrease heat emission inside the case too. Additionally, airflow would increase through the cpu heatsink fins.

Would 2*4GB ram be pointless, or help a linux system more? It does increase the budget though...

Also looking for other manufacturers like gskill, mushkin etc

all that if fm2 does not get released in the following weeks. I remember having read somewhere it was planned ofr june 2012, but I doubt I can wait for that...

thnx again!

The answer will depend on what apps you are running - you have not mentioned that part of your office use. Generally with a 64 bit OS running graphics or processor intensive apps more is better.

By office use, I mean word proccessor and spreadsheets, with no more than 3 files open at the same time. I also use kig to make some diagrams. I consider all of them not that demanding.

I do not multitask in general, the most intensive activity I would do is have a torrent running and watch a hd film (720p) at the same time.

So far (in my system that recently died) I had a 2*1gb ddr2 800MHz that seemed to do the job right, apart from the full HD videos that I could definitely live without (but I think that's more of a cpu thing). On the other hand, I did have a seperate vga with its own ram, where in the new setup, cpu and embedded graphics share the ram. That's the first reason I looked into bigger capacities. The second one is that I had heared somewhere that linux uses as much ram as you have and benefits from it. But is such a benefit worth the extra money for my low demanding apps? The most demanding (in my opinion) is either torrent+hd movie, or the nexuiz game I seldom play (running in full detail).

thnx again

Based on your above specification, what's your hard disk capacity you will be used for that purpose?