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Building a computer - general advice needed

Mr RayMr Ray Sarcasm sphereRegistered User regular
edited October 2012 in Help / Advice Forum
Alright, so I'm not a complete novice to this thing, having assembled my last tower on my own, I am however pretty out of the loop when it comes to hardware e.t.c. I'm in the market for a new processor, as my current one is pretty ancient, and possibly the source of my overheating issues. It seems like socket 775 isn't really a thing anymore, and so I'm going to have to get a whole new motherboard as well. It seems like the new standards are intel 1155, intel 2011, amd 940 and amd FM1. I also see FM2 processors on the parts list I'm looking at but no FM2 motherboards, so am I right in thinking they're "backwards compatible"? I have no idea which of these are the newer standards and which are older, and whether one is "better" than the other; 2011 pin seems excessively pricey though so unless someone can tell me that's 100% guaranteed to be a completely future-proof socket type I won't be getting one of those. I'm vaguely aware that i7 is better than i5, but I have no idea how or why, and whether i5 is just "not quite top of the line" or "about to be obsolete".

I'm looking to buy from the parts list here:

http://www.msy.com.au/Parts/PARTS.pdf

I've used intel before for no particular reason, but looking at the price list here AMD seems to be considerably cheaper. From the reviews I'm reading at the moment, it seems as though this is because the latest batch of AMD processors are generally terrible.

My price-range is around $300 for a motherboard and processor, but if someone can convince me that paying more will be a good investment I can do so. Just looking for general advice really, so far all I've really learned is "avoid AMD bulldozer processors" and "Intel is really expensive now". Help me internet people!

*edit*

Shit, if I'm getting a new motherboard my RAM might not be compatible anymore. I'll need to confirm what I've got, but is that likely to be an issue? What sort of frequency should I be looking at if I'm going for a whole new set of RAM?

Mr Ray on
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