Light Gaming Rig

Wait for a while and get G4560 + B250/H110 mobo when prices are sane. Add 1050Ti later. Buying current AM4 APU's doesn't makes sense to me.

I am sticking with AMD.

After much deliberation I have decided on this APU. My needs are minimum and cannot afford more at this juncture but with a viable upgrade path for future.

Is there any more value for money AM4 board out there? I prefer ASUS.

Also which would be a budget PSU for me considering that I might buy a graphics card in future?

if you want to stick with amd apu..
wait 2-3weeks

A6 9500 appeared in india only 10-12 days ago . maybe A8 9600 may launch in a few weeks.. or simply ask mdcomputers or primeabgb if and when they are expected to launch...

A8 9600 has double the cpu cores and should only cost around 1200-1400rs more than A6 9500 ..

plus it appears tax on PSU has been reduced to 18% from 28%.. so wait for that to reflect in new prices and you might save another 350 Rs + Corsair CX 450 to come back in stock in mdcomputers or other sites.. ( no proper review yet though)

mobo .. there is asus prime A320M K available for Rs 4700.. no overclocking on this plus i am not sure whether ryzen 3rd gen (zen 2 - 2019 ) might be supported on it or not.. am4 compatibility is certain till 2020 but whether oem will allow low end chipsets to be updated i am not sure

and i think selling this apu might be hard..

I like your suggestion of A8-9600 but at present it is not available. I will go for it if it becomes available in the next 2 weeks.

About motherboard I am unable to decide between Gigabyte GA-AB350M-HD3 and GA-AB350M-D3H. One has 4 RAM slots and the other 2. I am more interested in PS/2 ports for mouse/keyboard and PCI slots to plug all sorts of things like TV tuner card/backup network card etc in future.

Is Corsair VS450 a good choice considering that I may add a graphics card in the future?

HDD - Is Western Digital a good choice? There is no 7200 RPM Blue model in 2 TB.

I am not worried about selling this APU as in such a case I will just build a backup system or donate it to a cousin.

Final edit before sleeping:
This is the configuration I am looking for now
CPU : AMD A6-9500 / AMD A8-9600
RAM : Corsair Vengeance 2400 MHz 8 GB
Motherboard : Gigabyte GA-AB350M-HD3 / GA-AB350M-D3H
HDD : WD Blue 1 TB 7200 RPM / WD Black 2 TB 7200 RPM
PSU : Corsair CX450

Corsair VS450 is not a good psu.
POWER SUPPLY CORSAIR CX SERIES™ CX450 — 450 WATT 80 PLUS® BRONZE CERTIFIED ATX PSU

whitestar_999 said:

Corsair VS450 is not a good psu.
POWER SUPPLY CORSAIR CX SERIES CX450 — 450 WATT 80 PLUS BRONZE CERTIFIED ATX PSU

Click to expand...

OK. Done.

My plan is to give the final list to a cousin in Bengalooru to try and source them. If the prices are not attractive or out of stock, then I will go online.

I decided to wait for A8-9600. Then today on Newegg I saw these prices

A8-9600 Rs. 4516 + Rs. 2000 shipping AMD A8-9600 Bristol Ridge Quad-Core 3.1 GHz Socket AM4 65W AD9600AGABBOX Desktop Processor Radeon R7 - Newegg.com
A10-9700 Rs. 5803 + Rs. 2000 shipping AMD A10-9700 Bristol Ridge Quad-Core 3.5 GHz Socket AM4 65W AD9700AGABBOX Desktop Processor Radeon R7 - Newegg.com

The prices seem too good to be true considering that Amazon is selling an imported A8-9600 at 11+K as of today (it was 13 K a few days back there). What is the catch here in Newegg? Is it taxes added later?

EDIT: Looks like customs duty. For A10 it is estimated at around 3.1 K. Has anyone bought from Newegg recently? Is it safe? Is there any change in the final price?

I finally bought this configuration from MD Computers this week:
APU - Ryzen 3 2200G - 8732 Rs
Motherboard - ASUS Prime B350 Plus - 7739 Rs
RAM - ADATA XPG RGB 3000MHz 16GB(8GBx2) - 14632 Rs
PSU - Corsair CX450 - 3304 Rs
HDD - Western Digital Blue 7200 RPM 1 TB - 3009 Rs
Key-Mouse - Logitech MK200 USB combo - 767 Rs
Shipping - 500 Rs
Total -38,679.

Thank you all for the help.

EDIT: Although I wrote this earlier, at the last moment I had to remove one stick of 8GB RAM to bring down the total to around 30ish K. I have later added another of the same type.

How much was the shipping charge?

500.

That's good.Do post a small review/comment about your new system's performance here when you get some free time.

Installing the hardware took some effort as I have to make do with an old case for now. Motherboard did not come with screws to fix it. There was a single screw which acts like a pillar under the board. I guess it also provides earthing or something like that. There were 2 SATA cables one with a bent connector and one straight.
While installing the CPU, I had to loop the fan cable in order to stop it from fouling with fan because of its length and location.
The cable bundle out of PSU is very thick and takes a lot of room.

I have installed 64 bit Windows 10 Professional. All normal operations are smooth so far. Coming from my previous Athlon X2 3600+ this is like night and day!

I have kept 2 GB RAM for video. 6 GB for Windows. I have installed latest drivers from AMD for graphics.

Installed Alan Wake and went to play. It said my system is low spec and put my resolution to 1024x768 and settings to LOW
In this mode I get 25 to 30 FPS. I have a Full HD monitor by the way.

The motherboard has series of red LEDs at the back and they pulsate nicely when system is on. Also the ADATA RAM too has RGB lighting. Nice to see.

I don't get it, the performance seems too low for a 2200g... Alan wake is quite old by now.. 2011 or so I think.. I think it might be because you have single channel RAM... I think the 2200g is capable of 1920x1080 low..

I too was expecting that. I thought even with the limitations I would get playable speed in low settings for FullHD resolution.

I will create a thread in Gaming section requesting help with troubleshooting this.

with single channel ram you loose as much as 40% performance in many games..

this person is getting around 40-45 fps in 1280x720 resoultion HIGH with Gt 1030 ,

And he is recording with the same rig.. so you should be getting way more FPS... lol his hindi commentary is funny xD.

2200g at stock is slightly slower than GT 1030 , plus he is using single channel that will cost him a lot of performance.. .. as much as 40% performance loss

too many variables here to make decent comparison

Need to test with some other games , especially those that have already been tested with 2200g with single channel and dual channel and then compare your results

Please help with the discussion here

Optimal settings for Alan Wake?

I have ordered another 8 GB ADATA 3000 MHz RAM of the same type today. Since so much importance is put on making sure that both sticks are of the same type/latency etc. and if I wait for sometime and ADATA stops producing the same RAM, I will have to replace both sticks then. To avoid that I ordered one today itself. I hope this will in addition make it future proof for at least 4 years.

EDIT: Wait... why did I write that I had bought 2 sticks of 8 GB RAM in my earlier post of the final configuration above? I had only bought one then and just bought the second stick now. I think I had planned to buy 2 earlier but had to bring the budget down to 30ish K level. Anyway I am correcting it now.

sling-shot said:

Installing the hardware took some effort as I have to make do with an old case for now. Motherboard did not come with screws to fix it. There was a single screw which acts like a pillar under the board. I guess it also provides earthing or something like that. There were 2 SATA cables one with a bent connector and one straight.
While installing the CPU, I had to loop the fan cable in order to stop it from fouling with fan because of its length and location.
The cable bundle out of PSU is very thick and takes a lot of room.

I have installed 64 bit Windows 10 Professional. All normal operations are smooth so far. Coming from my previous Athlon X2 3600+ this is like night and day!

I have kept 2 GB RAM for video. 6 GB for Windows. I have installed latest drivers from AMD for graphics.

Installed Alan Wake and went to play. It said my system is low spec and put my resolution to 1024x768 and settings to LOW
In this mode I get 25 to 30 FPS. I have a Full HD monitor by the way.

The motherboard has series of red LEDs at the back and they pulsate nicely when system is on. Also the ADATA RAM too has RGB lighting. Nice to see.

Click to expand...

Since you bought an ATX Motherboard what Cabinet did you use to fit it?
In case you want to buy any new Cabinet then go with this:
ANTEC GX200 WITH TRANSPARENT SIDE PANEL (BLACK)
Link:ANTEC MID TOWER CABINET (ATX) - GX200 WITH TRANSPARENT SIDE PANEL (BLACK)

I am re-using a 10 year old Zebronics cabinet right now. But I have ordered this today
ANTEC GX200 With WINDOW Blue Led Fan ATX COMPUTER CASE
*www.amazon.in/gp/product/B00XPUTS7I/

Get this UPS also because it has 2 years warranty:
APC BX600C-IN 600VA, 230V Back UPS
Link:Amazon.in: Buying Choices: APC BX600C-IN 600VA, 230V Back UPS

APC has no service in my area. I am in a taluk place.

This thread title seems to have been edited by a moderator? But there is no notification/alert about this?

sling-shot said:

I have ordered another 8 GB ADATA 3000 MHz RAM of the same type today. Since so much importance is put on making sure that both sticks are of the same type/latency etc. and if I wait for sometime and ADATA stops producing the same RAM, I will have to replace both sticks then. To avoid that I ordered one today itself. I hope this will in addition make it future proof for at least 4 years.

EDIT: Wait... why did I write that I had bought 2 sticks of 8 GB RAM in my earlier post of the final configuration above? I had only bought one then and just bought the second stick now. I think I had planned to buy 2 earlier but had to bring the budget down to 30ish K level. Anyway I am correcting it now.

Click to expand...

I don't think adding one more stick would have made a hell lot of difference. How's the performance now?

The RAM is still in transit. MD Computers took 2 days to pack and dispatch it. It has just been picked up by FedEx today and scheduled to be delivered on 15th.

There are some videos on YouTube showing that memory in dual channel configuration actually helps the APUs a lot as much as 40% in some limited cases. I am expecting a 10% gain in practical use because now I will be able to use the additional 8 GB as dual channel RAM. It also allows more headroom for playing with VirtualBox and keeping 179 tabs open in Firefox

sling-shot said:

The RAM is still in transit. MD Computers took 2 days to pack and dispatch it. It has just been picked up by FedEx today and scheduled to be delivered on 15th.

There are some videos on YouTube showing that memory in dual channel configuration actually helps the APUs a lot as much as 40% in some limited cases. I am expecting a 10% gain in practical use because now I will be able to use the additional 8 GB as dual channel RAM. It also allows more headroom for playing with VirtualBox and keeping 179 tabs open in Firefox

Click to expand...

All 179 loaded at same time or just a few loaded while rest inactive until clicked upon?

Man, don't hit up on some exaggeration. But I do tend to have 50+ tabs open often because I begin with Reddit and Google News, then keep opening links.

There is another user logged in (family) sometimes with tabs open for different e-papers.

Presently I have seen Rainmeter showing upto 70% RAM usage (may be 4.7 out of 6 GB or so).

I have not yet begun using other applications on this machine yet.

sling-shot said:

Man, don't hit up on some exaggeration. But I do tend to have 50+ tabs open often because I begin with Reddit and Google News, then keep opening links.

There is another user logged in (family) sometimes with tabs open for different e-papers.

Presently I have seen Rainmeter showing upto 70% RAM usage (may be 4.7 out of 6 GB or so).

I have not yet begun using other applications on this machine yet.

Click to expand...

I just meant to get some info,nothing else.I usually have 500+ tabs open in my browser but at any time only about 50 something are active/loaded but sometimes I do cross 100 open tabs & because of that my browser always crashes after ram usage cross 85% of 4gb ram.I thought may be you are using some "tricks" to successfully running all these tabs at same time which may help me.

Got another 8 GB stick today.

I have installed it in RAM slot A2. Previous was sitting in B2.

How to find if they are actually working in dual channel mode?

sling-shot said:

Got another 8 GB stick today.

I have installed it in RAM slot A2. Previous was sitting in B2.

How to find if they are actually working in dual channel mode?

Click to expand...

CPU-Z | Softwares | CPUID

*i.stack.imgur.com/WqZqM.png

OK. CPU-Z shows RAM as being Dual Channel. DRAM Frequency is displayed as ~900 MHz. Is this correct or should it be 3000 MHz?

DDR ram means multiply the ram frequency by 2 to get the rate.I am guessing it is working at 1866MHz.You need to tinker with your mobo settings to make it work at 1500MHz(aka 1500 in cpu-z,3000 in practice).

You were right. In the BIOS it was showing at 1866 MHz. I had to select D.O.C.P. Profile #1 to get higher value. Now it is showing around 2900.

CPU-Z shows variable speeds in the 1300-1400 range now.

how is the performance now .. getting significantly more fps in alan wake and other games ?

I could not do exact before/after comparison. Partly due to the numerous settings changes done in the meanwhile.

I think there is around 5 - 10 FPS gain now.

What is this for? It was in the motherboard package.



I had thought this storage pocket had a lid by looking at Amazon images. Turns out this going to be a collection centre for dust.

sling-shot said:

APC has no service in my area. I am in a taluk place.

Click to expand...

Then get something from luminous