I gave myself a project to build a virtual pinball setup. I wanted to be able to run tables from The Pinball Arcade and Pinball FX2. Some of the tables can be fairly demanding at the highest settings, so I needed a good mid-range system with adequate CPU, RAM, and GPU. I bought a custom-built mid-tower system off someone nearby on Craigslist.
Gigabyte motherboard with AM3+ CPU socket
Athlon II FX4 640 CPU with Rocketfish cooler
8GB RAM
250GB SSD (with Win10)
500 GB HDD (for other storage)
GeForce GTX 750 Ti GPU
DVD/RW optical drive
Network card
6 USB3 ports
All at a very attractive price. I added an Xbox controller with force feedback to work the flippers, plunger, and select tables. I also built a frame to set a 46" Samsung 1080p TV sloped in the vertical orientation, as the pinball playing surface. I stand up and play or sit on a bar stool. It's the same height as a real pinball machine. Finally, I mounted satellite speakers to the sides of the frame, and added a subwoofer from an old PC speaker set.
I loaded Steam and the pinball software, and then bought and downloaded about 20 tables. They ran pretty well, and we had a lot of fun in the rec room. You could sometimes experience a slight lag with the flippers and sometimes in multiball when a lot of activity was going on. I could tweak the settings to minimize this.
After about 5 months, I decided an upgrade to a beefier CPU would get it up to prime specs for pinball. The AM3+ supports the final generation of AMD FX chips. I was looking at the FX-8300, FX-8320, and FX-8350. While they all come from the same die, the 8320 and 8350 passed higher benchmark tests at the factory when overclocked. You can really push these chips. The last 2 run at 125 watts, while the 8300 runs at 95 watts. Not a big issue, but we all want our chips to run as cool as possible.
For the price/performance, and power issues, the FX-8300 was the best option. I do not plan on overclocking, as it is fast out of the box. It's nice to know this CPU arrives unlocked, and my bios allows me to boost if if I want.
The Verdict:
I couldn't believe how much faster this CPU runs than the old Athlon quad core CPU. It's night and day. Windows boots faster, the games load faster, and they run perfectly smooth on high settings. I am extremely happy with this CPU and I highly recommend it to anyone who has an AM3+ CPU socket. It's not the latest and greatest, but for the money, it is hard if not impossible to get more computing power at a price anywhere close to this. Any Intel chip that is comparable costs twice as much.
With the 46" TV, the booming speakers, and the flipper controller, it looks great, sounds great, and plays great. I expect to have many pinball sessions with friends and family over the years. New tables are available every few months, and there are already well over 100 to choose from, so I will never run out of new pinball tables to play. It's like having a massive pinball collection in my rec room. In some ways, it is not the same as playing the real thing, but I'll never have to repair a finicky pinball machine, as they are always breaking down. My system should be trouble-free for many years. Some day I may build a more authentic looking cabinet so it looks and feels more like a real pinball machine.
| Processor | 3.3 GHz none |
|---|---|
| Wireless Type | 802.11a |
