I made a correction to my previous reply
should have read (and now does):

I think that is what you might have read, but a missing 'not' is a bit embarrassing. In some ways, I'm also a bit embarrassed to have paused your previous buying intention, as that would have been a perfectly serviceable system. Depending on your exact priorities, a different system might be slightly better for you, though.

Given that a large number of people feel that a quieter machine contributes to their sense of tranquillity, and their ability to get on with useful work, it is surprising how few are prepared to actually do what is necessary to make the noise less intrusive. There is a definite trend for cheap power supplies to sound worse, so do be prepared to spend a little on a better quality power supply (one of several reasons to spend on a better power supply - not necessarily extravagantly sized, but of better quality). The processor fan is another significant noise source, so, if you get an unsatisfactory one with the processor, be prepared to throw that away in favour of a low-noise alternative, if necessary.

I wouldn't even consider an Core i3 processor, it is a low cost product and in the low cost sector you get more power for your money from AMD.

You're in pretty good hands here, so I'm a bit diffident about adding my two bob's worth, which is:
For a quiet machine, go for a low-power processor. Low power means less heat to get rid of, so fans can run more slowly. You can also use a less-powerful power supply. AMD have a line of 45w CPU's the model numbers of which end in e (405e, 425e etc). I have a 4850e (old, no longer available) in a home-built box which is so quiet that I cannot hear it unless I get down on hands and knees and stick my ear next to it.
Silentpcreview is a good place to learn about cutting the noise down.
For general PC building, Build your own PCThey are UK based and have a forum with a "Proposed Specs" thread which has some example PC specs.

Good advice. Put that together with a good aftermarket cooler and you will get something you can't hear. We actually had some problems with ASUS boards together with low power CPUs and the Scythe Katana. It ran so slow that the motherboard was thinking the fan was failing, so we had to disable the CPU fan warning (have to see how my new ASUS board will act together with my Mugen 2). Together with a silent PSU, a passively cooled graphics card (or onboard/onchip graphics) and vibe fixers for the harddisks you have a nearly noiseless system.

More good advice, I fully agree.

I would add:
If you block all the holes in the front and sides of the case, use a micro ATX motherboard as someone suggested above, add a 12cm case fan (they are not very dear) you can have a ducted system like mine: air enters low at the back, passes through a duct made of 3mm hardboard, then through the 12cm fan. It passes through the power supply fan, in the bottom of the power supply, and exits at the back, up top. All other holes in the case are covered. A Scythe heatsink/fan (good quality, but not the biggest and bestest: with a low power CPU you don't need it) takes the heat away from the CPU. The hard drives are supported by (clamped to) four 1.6mm synthetic braided cords, which don't transmit the noise of the HD heads moving.

It perhaps wouldn't work on a high-power gaming PC to rely on the power supply to remove the heat from the CPU, GPU and what have you. It works very well for me; I don't think my CPU's have ever gone above 45°C, even running benchmarks. I stopped worrying long ago.

There's no point in giving you the details of my box, since hardware changes so rapidly, but the principles are as follows:
1 Start with the quietest components that you can find or afford.
2 Ensure GOOD air flow which enters and leaves the case in the part farthest from your ears, ie the back. In at the bottom, out at the top.
3 Noise travels in straight lines without much attenuation, but doesn't go well around corners, particularly if the corners are made of something which doesn't reflect sound waves well, like foam, carpet, corrugated cardboard or similar. So block up all holes , even tiny ones, in the front of the case. Either take the CD drive right out of the case, or insulate it acoustically, so that noise can't pass through the gaps at the sides. (Noise, like rain, is thin).
And since you probably don't need it, tie your floppy drive to a stake, and shoot it at dawn.
Also block holes in the sides of the case: usually they serve no purpose, and it's easy to do away with them.
4 Limit the transmission of HD noise and vibration by using a flexible mounting system.

Almost anything will serve to block holes: felt, foam, masking tape, silicone goo, underpants, even chewing gum, if you have no shame. My last computer relied on masking tape and cardboard, and was pretty quiet, it would have been very quiet if I had chosen quiet components to begin with. That is the most important thing.

Sorry for a long and sententious post. I forgot I was addressing someone who is (just) my senior.

Assuming that you mean computing power, and not current draw, that is a more difficult case to make, these days. While I don't know of any really good Linux benchmarking that you can compare, you can look here for benchmarking using another platform.

Comparing an Athlon II x4 645 (mentioned earlier in this thread, about £80) with an i3 2100 (£95) and just looking at the tests where one processor or the other has a significant win, the Intel CPU has about twice as many significant wins as the AMD part. To give the AMD part more of a fair chance in this fight, you need to step up a bit and go for, eg, a Phenom II (although that doesn't increase the performance in every benchmark, but you do gain more than you lose, just about). So, with a Ph II X2 565 you are still at about the same price as the Ath II 645, but you get a bit closer in performance. To get back the extra couple of cores against the Ath II x4, you are looking at something more like a Ph II X4 970, and now the price has crept up to more like £120 (slightly shockingly, that is pretty much the same price as a Ph II X6 1055T - I am not really suggesting that for a desktop, but that really is a serious processor, if you can take advantage of the six cores, which mostly you won't be able to, on today's software).

So, it seems difficult to claim that it is as simple as 'AMD is better in the low cost sector'. That was absolutely true, say, a year ago, but Intel now seem to have decided that AMD won't have a sector where they, Intel, just say 'We don't care about that sector...let AMD have it' and so Intel are now, no longer just putting out the odd no-hoper part just to be present in the sector, and selling to just the people who want the Intel name, and don't care if they get a lousy part, so long as the logo says Intel.

The trouble with AMD's 'plile em high, and sell em cheap' strategy with cores is that it only really delivers when you can actually take advantage of all of, or most of, the cores. This makes the fact that you can get six core parts without going broke a bit irrelevant, for the desktop, and even four core parts are not contributing that much over a two core part, for most people, most of the time, and, in many cases, if the lower core count part is accompanied by a higher clock speed, it can be quite an interesting comparison.

So, you really want each core to be fast, and that comes from the product of clock speed and instructions per clock. In instructions per clock, Intel has currently got AMD skinned, with no apparent (immediate) way of fighting back. And, given that Intel has had, and will retain for the immediate future, process technology leadership, attempting to compete at the higher end of consumer computing is difficult for AMD. In fact, short of fire sale pricing on the lower-to-medium end parts, life is quite difficult for AMD, because Intel has decided that is how difficult AMD's life should be, and AMD can only do so much of the fire sale pricing on their bread and butter parts because it imperils the margins that they so sorely need to develop future parts.

But that doesn't matter that much, if AMD really offers enough clockspeed for the money, and right now, AMD is struggling to do that (and the push-the-clockspeed-as-far-as-we-can approach tends to lead to processors that need more electrical power). You get the impression that AMD is struggling to keep up, and that Intel could (but won't, unless pushed to do it) ramp clockspeeds on those lower-end parts any time they wanted to, and is currently taking a calibrated approach to inflicting pain on AMD.

Yes, we need AMD, but given the difficulties that they face, might it turn out that the AMD that AMD wants to be is something more like the biggest fish in the ARM pool, rather than the first of the losers in the x86 pool? Not exactly a great outcome, but I fear that's where we are headed, unless they can manage some truly spectacular x86 improvements. You know, if Intel forces AMD out of x86 (effectively), it is unclear whether that will even be to Intel's advantage.

In Germany it is totally possible to get a Core i3 2100 system (4GB RAM, 500GB harddisk) for the same price as a Phenom II x4 960 system (4GB RAM, 750GB harddisk). I know which I would choose. Also keep in mind that the OP plans to use the system for 5+ years, so that nowadays applications are not as multithreaded as they can be doesn't mean they will be in some years. Even browsers tend to multithreading. And I don't think that it is a not normal use case to run some computing tasks in the background (for example encoding a video or batch processing your holiday photos) while listening to music and surfing the net in the foreground. Those tasks will benefit more from a quad-core than from a higher clocked dual-core.
But it is up to the OP, of course which one to buy, I personally would rather go for more cores than for higher clock-speeds.

I think the best approach to a 5+ year system life is to plan an upgrade half way through; more RAM and a processor speed bump. RAM will get cheaper, in general (although things like floods and earthquakes can intervene). The question with the processor upgrade is how long the socket will continue to get upgraded processors, and for that you have to look into the roadmaps of the various manufacturers, and realise that these are predictions, not guarantees. And, when a socket is coming to the end of its life, be prepared to be decisive, even if that wasn't what you were planning on doing.

Some people think this is too much work. Well, that is of course up to the OP.

So do I, but I would feel uncomfortable, as I would rather be buying an AMD system.

It is true enough that multitasking/multithreading will become more prevalent over time; in an ideal world, you'd go for high per core throughput and a high cpu count. Unfortunately, that position on the 'fast, good, cheap' space is unavailable at a bargain price. If Bulldozer had turned out as the AMD publicity machine suggested that it would, there would have been a clear answer, even the way things are, a FX-4xxx isn't a bad choice, just not the standout choice that it should have been.

Right now, I'd choose the max throughput (over a range of applications, multi-threaded and single thread) and accept that this means in some circumstances there will be more context switches than you'd have with more cores. After all, with more raw throughput, the throughput should take care of it. A few fast cores can always cope with multithreaded tasks by switching tasks, whereas with single threaded tasks a many-thread processor can only leave its potential for threads unused.

When the time comes, a processor with more cores and good per core throughput should be cheap by today's prices, if you can still remember them, by then.

And, that is not really the choice: Intel is offering better throughput per core per clock cycle. AMD can compete (on the right applications) with high clock speeds and more cores, but choosing Intel isn't the 'blazing clock speed' option that it would have once been. they max out at at about 2.8/3.1 G, where the Athlon was 3.1 and a ph II 560 is 3.3 GHz. And, if you want to go for the cheapest Dullbrowser (4 cores), you'd be looking at 3.6 GHz, although if you were prepared to step up to the FX-6100 that would drop back to 3.3 GHz (only make the problem of poorer single thread perf worse, imho, but you would be prepared for all the threads that the world could throw at you, but the price really isn't that bad at £120 - directly comparable with the Ph II X4 970, and the Ph II X6 1055T).

I actually think that it would be difficult to choose a bad processor out of the ones listed here, and every one would be a very obvious step from where the OP is now, it is just that some processors will end up being better than others.

Hi All,

Sorry I haven't posted in the last day or two. Relations have turned up for Christmas and taken over the computer room. Hmmm.

Anyway, you have decidedly steered me in the right direction. I now have an inkling of how chipsets and cores operate, and have made my decision on which manufacturer to go with. I'm not going to tell you what the decision is in case somebody posts something that I should reply to. This is in case I couldn't respond in an appropriate time, of course.

So this is my thank you to everybody who has contributed to a most interesting thread. I'd like you to stick around for another five years when, if decrepitude permits, I'll probably want to upgrade again.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a satisfying computing 2012.

Very best wishes,

betula

Yours or ours?

Best wishes, anyway.

@ salasi- "Piledriver Instructions per Clock improvement of up to 15%?" AFAIK the original roadmaps had that, like here-

http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/...Q3-2012-3.jpg/

But AMD has pulled that down to 10%, with caveats ("digital media workload")-

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...Advantage.html

Intel never really let AMD have the budget market, it just worked out that way. Intel has always been very aggressive in its opinion that it 'owns' x86 (just as aggressive as microsoft is about 'owning' 'personal computing' IMO), it just couldnt face putting chips on the market at comptitive prices in the low end.

Now intel has so much manufacturing capability and turnover, and 'average' prices have dropped enough that intel is willing to push AMD at the low end as well.

I really dont believe the 'AMD is moving to ARM' idea-

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/10...t-not-with-arm

Very cunning and interesting point about it possibly not being to intels advantage to force AMD out of the market (lets be honest, out of business really). I dont think that Intel sees it that way.

@ impert- yeah, I'm always suprised at how few people actually do much about noise, even those that moan about it. I've got a few different idea to you, but I love the 'carpet and cardboard' attitude. Very DYI, very cheap, easy, and it works.

I'm always amazed at how many people think I'm a freak becuase I have a taped up (internally) case for my media box, and a fan suspended by wires (passive cooled card, it just gets to hot in that case in summer, and rather than mounting a noisy GPU fan I just used a nice, slow running 92mm fan on wires)

I can sort of see why you would do that.

I'm actually curious to see which way you jumped. I'll admit I am probably the biggest AMD fanboy on this thread (hey, I'm prepered to admit it) but even I would understand if you went to intel.

Persoanlly, I wouldnt get an intel, but that is just as much motivated by the politics of technology as it is by technical aspects. Its your money, its your choice.

Dont feel pressured at all by the technical/political aspects that we've dragged up. salasi put it best-

Enjoy your new system, when you get it.

Cascase9,

Sorry. You all worked so hard to give me the information I needed that I realise it was rude of me not to tell you my choices. So here they are:

Mobo: Gigabyte ga-970a-d3. This seems to have all I need now and probably in the future too.
CPU: Athlon 11 x 4 640. As recommended by TobiSGD.
Memory: 4gb (2x2) Kingston 1066.

All this is well within budget and I now think that I should include a quality 500w psu. I'm grappling with 12v, 8pins, two rails, split connectors etc, etc, at the moment while I harbour the thought that the whole business of computing is overly complex. No wonder I have a headache. Time for a brandy before bedtime.....

Best wishes

No pressure, LOL.

About the only thing I would consider changing is DDR3-1066, I'd get DDR3-1333 (that is the maximum memory speed you can run on a Athlon II without 'overclocking' the RAM). Still, wont make a huge difference, and DDR3-1066 isnt a problem.

Dont sweat the details to much.

Any quality ATX 500watt PSU from the last few years will run that system just fine.

As far as multirails go, the only people that typically have to worry about that is people who want to run power hungry 'gamers' video cards. Soem of them demand that the PSU has a minimum of 'X' amps from a single rail.

As long as you are not planning on installing a $250+ high end video card, dont worry about multirails. To the point where you dont have to worry if it isnt even a mutlirail PSU.