It looks like my AMD A6-5400 is dying. AMD has offered a warranty return on it, but with a single user streaming & transcoding video, pegging the CPU at 100% and still getting some stuttering, it's time for an upgrade. I'd like to just swap out the CPU instead of also replacing the motherboard & RAM.

 

I'm running a bunch of dockers and plugs-ins (see signature) but no VMs. I might, someday, play with installing a VM or two, but I've got enough physical machines sitting around that I can use one of those if I need to test something. I would expect 2, maybe 3 simultaneous video streams with transcoding, but no other major CPU intensive operations at any given time.

 

I've got a Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H motherboard with FM2+ support. According to Gigabyte's website it will support the last of the FM2+ APUs (I've recently updated BIOS to F10a, which is the latest they offer, so it will support them all w/o additional work). At the top of the list are the A10-8750 and A10-78xx series. These are all quad-core running between 3.6 & 4.1GHz. These CPUs seem to currently be in $150-$175 range which I deem "reasonable", considering it's a server, not a gaming or video editing machine.

 

Are these reasonable choices for my needs? Am I going too big? Will this support (in terms of horsepower) a VM or two in addition, should I chose to go that route in the future? Any other thoughts or suggestions?

 

 

The A10-7890K is about the best you can do with your board.  Is it reasonable?  That depends on how much you want to spend.  DDR4 is crazy money right now which prohibits an economical upgrade as it can cost as much as a board and CPU by itself.  If $150-$175 is what you want to spend then the 7890K is it and will be a noticeable upgrade from what you currently have.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

I guess the real question is "Is it overkill for my intended use?"

 

I notice that it's a 4-core CPU but it's an 8-core GPU. I'd really rather have that on my desktop where I'm driving 4 monitors and using Photoshop and occasionally Premiere. I guess that would be a good reason to set up a VM...

I was looking at it from CPU (passmark) upgrade point of view, not GPU.  Regardless, it is the best you can do when keeping current board.  Even if you don't use the GPU capability the one suggested has the best numbers out of the choices available for your configuration.

thanks, @unevent. New CPU ordered.

 

Now, I wonder how many more reboots I'll have before it gets here...