My first AMD Rig

[Taylor2254]

Hi guys, I have finally plucked up the courage and posted my old computer on Ebay to fund my first DIY Rig.

I think I have wholly decided on using AMD for the CPU and GPU, the reason for this is that my current computer had intel and nvidia, and I was never overly impressed.

Case - Corsair Vengeance C70 (Green) - £92
Motherboard - Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 Motherboard - £128
Graphics - VTX3D AMD Radeon R9 280 X-Edition - £191
Power Supply - XFX 650W XXX Edition 80+ Bronze Semi-Modular Power Supply - £63
SSD - Crucial 256GB MX100 SATA 2.5 - £79
Cooling - Corsair Hydro Series H100i - £88

So far this totals £641, and according to ebay I currently have £800 to spend...Ill update you as I get more bids in though.

I need help with the following;
The choice between an AMD FX-8370 (at £160.91) and the FX-9590 (at £194.95) - Is it worth the extra £30??

After the CPU, the total would be either £801 or £836 - which is fine. I would then have about £100 for RAM and anything else that ive missed.

So if you guys could offer your throughts on the processor, thoughts for RAM and any other ideas that may save me some money.

Cheers in advance.

[watercooled]

TBH I'd probably go with an 8350 for £125, which is nearly the same turbo clock as the 8370 anyway.

Are you planning on overclocking the CPU? If not, you might be able to get away with a much cheaper cooler. If you don't want to use the stock one and want something quieter, a 20-30 quid air cooler would be more than enough.

[Taylor2254]

I was planning to overclock, but more of an educational exercise than anything else. Ive always wanted to overclock, but never had a system capable of it.

I thought the 100i would be the best all round and would give me the option to overclock, but I never knew it was that noisy?

[watercooled]

I didn't mean to imply it was noisy, I mean the stock AMD cooler which you get in the box with the CPU can be noisy (depending on case airflow, and what you consider to be loud, etc).

What I meant was, you could save money if high-end cooling isn't a priority, which it wouldn't be if you're not overclocking. Still, a decent air cooler should allow some amount of overclocking, just generally not quite as much as a more expensive cooler like the one you listed before heat starts becoming a problem. The difference in clock speed/performance often isn't massive though.

[Taylor2254]

Ahh, I see. Well I do want the ability to overclock, but have also been lead to believe that the higher end FX CPUs run hot as they are, never mind when you start to overclock them.

I just thought for peace of mind and for a little overclocking headroom, the 100i would be good. Unless you thinks its really unnessessary?

[watercooled]

TBH I'm not experienced with overclocking that line of CPUs so I'm not really sure. But if you're happy paying that price for a cooler and want the headroom, then fair enough.

The 8000 FX CPUs aren't particularly hot at stock settings; the 9000 series which are somewhat like factory-overclocked 8000 series are though, from what I've read.

[D1DM]

If you're willing to use someone other than Amazon, then you can get a 280X with superior cooling system for a bit cheaper (probably even after delivery charges are added):

Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Vapor-X OC (£180)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...56&subcat=1842

Personally I'm not convinced a case like the Corsair Vengeance C70 is really worth ~£90, I'd be looking at something else in that price range. I would suggest looking at Phanteks Enthoo Pro.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It might be worth getting an FX8320E?

[Kanoe]

Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+ OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £227.99
Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £142.99
AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £104.99
Phanteks Enthoo Pro Mid Tower Enthusiast Case without Window £79.99
Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9) £77.99
SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £71.99
Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator CPU Cooler £65.99

Shipping : £8.00

Total : £901.51

Just chucking something together from OCUK into a basket I think if I was going for an AMD build of around your budget of 900 that is what I would do:

- Like the mobo choice (would obvs get it from amazon as is cheaper than stated in my basket above)

- I would go for the 8320 CPU part and OC it

- Agreed with D1DM about case choice, got the full size Phanteks myself and loving it, they got some good cases in their range at the mo, for a little more could go for the one with the side window if you wanted

- SSD changed to slightly more expensive Samsung cause I think they are doing some good drives at the mo and prefer drives with Toggle mode NAND in to give more consistant performance across a range of workloads (although anything over a mechanical HDD is win in performance )

- CPU cooler changed to air cooling of the Noctua NH-D14 loved it on my AMD rig, its big but oh so nice and still managed to get a very decent OC on my cpu at very sensible temps

- GFX tried to go a little above with a 290 just to get the newer features over the 7 series re-badge. If you could stretch an extra £50 I would say go for a 290X

Just my thoughts

Kanoe

[Dooms]

I'm currently running on a Sabertooth 2.0, 8350 and 290.

It's been great for the last 14 months (except for recent problems) and still plays everything I throw at it mostly maxed @ 1080... Have to knock it down to high @ 1440p on new stuff.

This may help you if the Sabertooth 2.0 you buy is running an old bios revision

[Taylor2254]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys... I have made a few decisions today before I read the replies.

Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+ OC 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £227.99
Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £142.99
AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
Samsung 250GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE250BW) £104.99
Phanteks Enthoo Pro Mid Tower Enthusiast Case without Window £79.99
Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (CML8GX3M2A1600C9) £77.99
SuperFlower Golden Green HX 650W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply - Black £71.99
Noctua NH-D14 Dual Radiator CPU Cooler £65.99

I have decided to go for the AMD FX 8350. I think it is the best balance of price and performance, and looks promising to be able to push an OC to 4.7GHZ.For overclocking like that, im guessing I would need to keep my liquid cooler? Correct me if im wrong?

Ill have a look at reviews for both of the SSDs, as again I want to balance price and performance. Ill see if there are any known issues with the crucial one.

For RAM I have seen an 8GM stick (means I can add another 8GB when I have the money) from HyperX or Fury Link. Again, I am gonna check out some reviews, but for the price difference, I dont see why not, unless any of you have any horror experiences?

If you're willing to use someone other than Amazon, then you can get a 280X with superior cooling system for a bit cheaper (probably even after delivery charges are added):

Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Vapor-X OC (£180)
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...56&subcat=1842

Personally I'm not convinced a case like the Corsair Vengeance C70 is really worth ~£90, I'd be looking at something else in that price range. I would suggest looking at Phanteks Enthoo Pro.

Graphics card wise....I have found a R9 290 tri-X from Sapphire for £215. I think this would be better than the 280X (Again correct me if I am wrong?), as I am getting one of the new 29" Ultrawide 21:9 monitors, so figured I could use the headroom graphics wise.

I need to know if a 650W PSU will handle all this. Also, I am kinda stuck on the C70! I love the look of it, and the Sapphire card I mentioned is long, and just fits in this case.... Ive seen reviews and people have had to remove their hard drive cage just to fit it in.

Let me know what you guys think?

[Taylor2254]

So, Just done a quick part-picker list for what I said above.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor (£125.00 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i 77.0 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£85.31 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard (£127.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB Tri-X Video Card (£214.98 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Corsair C70 Military Green (Green) ATX Mid Tower Case (£84.99 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £638.27

So that leaves RAM, Storage and PSU to be decided.
My laptop is still sitting at £800 on ebay, so that leaves ~£250 to get the above. Is that possible?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The reason I said the FX8320E is since it appears to be a newer stepping than the FX8320 and FX8350. Anandtech got their FX8320E to 4.8GHZ:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8864/a...er-95w-vishera

[Taylor2254]

The reason I said the FX8320E is since it appears to be a newer stepping than the FX8320 and FX8350. Anandtech got their FX8320E to 4.8GHZ:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8864/a...er-95w-vishera

Thanks again for the suggestion. I had a look at that, and the FX 8350 still appeared to come out on top, and with the 8320E being a drop to 3.2GHZ, and only £15 cheaper. I just feel that that amount of overclocking would be risky for a first timer like me, getting 4.8 out of the already clocked 4ghz 8350 seems more appetizing. Again, unless you have any compelling arguments for the 8320E?

Heres a look at the comparison if your interested!

[Kanoe]

For RAM I have seen an 8GM stick (means I can add another 8GB when I have the money) from HyperX or Fury Link. Again, I am gonna check out some reviews, but for the price difference, I dont see why not, unless any of you have any horror experiences?

I need to know if a 650W PSU will handle all this.[/B]

I would avoid just having 1 stick of RAM in the PC, go with a 2 x 4GB pack if you cant go to 2 x 8GB straight away then add another 2 sticks later to go to 16GB if you felt the need. Some people think that anything over 8 is overkill at the moment anyway so you might find you stick with the 8 in the end.

Defo look at the 290 over the 280X, its got more features than the 280X.

A quality 650W PSU should be good enough to run all that.

Thanks again for the suggestion. I had a look at that, and the FX 8350 still appeared to come out on top, and with the 8320E being a drop to 3.2GHZ, and only £15 cheaper. I just feel that that amount of overclocking would be risky for a first timer like me, getting 4.8 out of the already clocked 4ghz 8350 seems more appetizing. Again, unless you have any compelling arguments for the 8320E?

Think CAT is going for the fact that the 8320E is lower power and will therefore run cooler and may overclock more on less voltage than the 8350.

[Taylor2254]

I would avoid just having 1 stick of RAM in the PC, go with a 2 x 4GB pack if you cant go to 2 x 8GB straight away then add another 2 sticks later to go to 16GB if you felt the need. Some people think that anything over 8 is overkill at the moment anyway so you might find you stick with the 8 in the end.

I currently have 8GB in my PC and I use between 75% and 80% most of the time. I was thinking that 2x8GB would be much better in the long term, but for affordability I can get 1 just now and 1 next month? Or is that really not sensible?

Also, did you have a chance to look at the ram I suggested, the Hyper Fury one? Could you tell me if that seems okay?