Budget build once again, Hi to all reading and thanks for your time. I have a few questions firstly it's about two processors: http://www.ebuyer.com/409186-amd-fx...mb-cache-retail-boxed-processor-fd8320frhkbox http://www.ebuyer.com/409191-amd-fx...mb-cache-retail-boxed-processor-fd6300wmhkbox Already have an aftermarket cooler for the CPU. Both a still quite budget, but I'm hoping the 8320 will give me the boost to be able to upgrade later on when I have more money! Board: http://www.ebuyer.com/398366-asrock...-1-channel-audio-atx-motherboard-970-extreme3 - Cheap board with everything I need. USB 3.0 is the only major difference this board has with some others around it's price. Case: http://www.ebuyer.com/409943-corsair-carbide-series-200r-compact-atx-case-black-cc-9011023-ww - Cheap and nice little case able to fit everything in. SSD: http://www.ebuyer.com/411671-kingston-60gb-ssdnow-v300-ssd-sv300s37a-60g - Dont know if it's worth getting a bigger one and not spending as much on a large HDD instead. As I'm going to install the OS onto the SSD for boot times, but when installing a large amount of games and programs how will that work if the C:\ is only 60GBs? Will i still be able to install into another program files folder on the HDD? Keeping my old GTX 460 at the moment until more money comes in. Keeping my Corsair CX500 PSU as well for the moment. My last question comes to RAM, as i've been looking into a few different ones and didnt want to go over £80-90 for a good 8-16GB sets. Also I dont know if the motherboard is still anygood. Any help will be much appreciated guys thanks!
Is this for gaming? If so I would strongly consider a GPU upgrade, as the GTX 460 is really showing its age now. As for ram, this should suffice; http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-...c3-12800-(1600)-non-ecc-cas-9-9-9-24-xmp-150v 2 x 4Gb at 1600Mhz is good enough for most situations. If you're going for the AMD route over intel, have you got adequate cooling for the CPU and the case? Those chips perform pretty well especially in windows 8, but they get pretty toasty. Motherboard seems pretty good, with good overclocking support and support for multiple GPUs and Overclocked RAM. The price of SSDs at the moment makes it almost foolish not to get at least a 120GB SSD at only about £50 for some of them. You can completely get away with putting your games, videos and photos on a separate hard drive; you can even set up windows to have things like My documents on the HDD. You will lose a little bit of performance for games if they're on a HDD, though.
That board is no good. Any Asrock Extreme 3 or 4 on AMD are only 4+1. I would go with this. http://www.amazon.co.uk/M5A97-R2-0-...TF8&qid=1397238708&sr=8-1&keywords=asus+m5a97 It's 4+2 but has very good VRM cooling so you can hit up to 4.3ghz. If you want anything beyond that you'll need an 8+1 board and that will run you £90 or so. In gaming right now? I would take the 8 core. Games that use less tend not to need as much grunt, and games that use them all all benefit from 8 cores. Just be sure to use Windows 8 or above so that the CPU actually works properly. You don't need 16gb ram unless you are doing anything but gaming. If you're running tons of VMs then get 16gb, otherwise just stick with 8gb and get fast ram.
How many cores does windows 7 access properly? As I prefer to use windows 7 as I have a copy of it ready to use.. Thanks for the board I'll have a look into it further, but at it but at first glance it looks like everything I'm after! thanks
That RAM is exactly the same sort of thing i've been looking at don't really know the difference there seem to be hundreds of the same sort of speeds/times on them. I understand RAM but not to the point of differentiating between the different versions! Also yes for gaming but im going to save up and spend a large sum of money on a proper graphics card instead of getting a budget one now! As I still need the computer for uni work such as autodesk maya and coding compilers. Thanks for the tips i'll look into setting up the SSD and the HDD's together! I know i've been watching the SSDs go down and down.
I agree with Andy there. I'd prefer an Asus over an Asrock where possible; they do tend to be much more stable and it's slightly cheaper. If you've got windows 7 and don't want to spend on an upgrade, go with that. But he was just saying as well as myself; Windows 8 is coded to utilise all of the cores on those CPUs whilst it's limited for windows 7. The newer OS is just coded to take advantage of nearly all hardware, making it a dream for even older hardware. Windows 7 only just utilises Quads properly and some of the Intel 6 core CPUs, AMD isn't so lucky. For what you want, 1600Mhz ram is fine since AMD CPUs require you to put some overclocks on to get RAM higher than that. It seems to be the sweet spot for those CPUs if you know what I mean. More cores will help for things like autodesk and maya; but if you're saving for a new graphics card, save for a new PSU as well as the one you have can't handle much more than what you're planning.
Windows 7 does not work with the FX CPUs properly. It does not know how to handle the cores correctly and thus ends up dumping the cache mid operation causing lag. This is a big part of the reason why the FX CPUs got a bad press when they launched and underperformed. There's also another issue with 7 and the FX. You can read about both here. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2645594 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2646060 However you'll probably realise if you try to download either of those hot fixes the links are dead. This is because neither worked properly and as such were pulled by Microsoft. I'm not being funny man but there's a reason why Microsoft want you on 8, and it's not just because of the god awful Metro. As for how many cores 7 supports? tbh? I would say 4. Even Intel users were having serious issues with core parking and games like BF3 not working very well with HT enabled. Windows 8 spreads the core load across every core you give it, evenly. Instead of erratic use on odd cores. You're more than welcome to use Windows 7, but, just know the caveats. It does not work properly with the FX CPUs and probably never will as Microsoft did not bother with the FX until Windows 8.
Alright, officially stupid! Found out Dreamspark has windows 8 on it. So i'm sorted for operating system thank you very much for your assistance! Yeah I like ASUS as every board before has been ASUS but i couldnt find a USB 3.0 due to my case needing one for a start! As for PSU and GPU i'm not going to be updating them for a bit, sadly they arent what I need right now. I'll be sure to seek assistance for the gurus of bit-tech
When it comes to AM3/+ Asus are pretty much the only company who gave a crap. Gigabyte made a couple of half decent boards but price and overclocking still doesn't match Asus' range. Asus were the only company who genuinely took the FX CPUs seriously. I think it's because they knew how good they were (they were just lacking in software, but it's coming....) That's why AMD haven't really bothered to make anything else. It was the same story with their 64 bit CPUs. They were initially a laughing stock, now we're pretty much all using X64 OSes and computers.
With Windows 8 and its updates, FX chips are incredibly competitive when it comes to multi-threaded tasks (such as editing or Autodesk for example) but also compete pretty closely to intels finest chips when it comes to gaming now. AMD used to be a joke as Andy said, but now each way is a good choice coupled with a competent GPU. I love Asus Boards myself; never had one go wrong on me and I've lost count of how many motherboards i've bought over the years for both myself and client builds. That's why the Asus Crosshair V is so sought after at the moment, it's possibly the greatest board for unlocking the FX chip's potential.
In productivity the AMD CPU for the price is absolutely unbeatable. Ever since I got my Westmere prototype chip (engineering sample, 2ghz over 6 cores 32nm with 12 threads) I've been comparing the two. The AMD is around 70% faster. Now I know the Westmere is derped by the clock speed but tbh? you'd need it running around 3ghz or more to match the AMD when it comes to video editing or anything that can see it and use it properly. It's like I said above; AMD have not changed it or bothered replacing it for a reason. AMD basically launched a server CPU into the desktop market. The difference was, though, that nobody bothers with AMD any more and nobody takes them seriously. Recent software (and Windows 8) almost happened by accident. It's quite funny really, but put one to task now with the latest games and software and you can see what AMD were trying to do.
I've seen some recent benchmarks and I'm strongly considering an FX chip the next time I upgrade. I can't really afford something like an i5 with the price of a decent motherboard to match and FX chips are priced pretty well. They overclock incredibly well also.
The biggest issue I have with the AMDs is that they need a good board. If you don't use a good board then you're asking for trouble. It's not even that some are bad clockers.. Some boards simply can't even run the FX CPUs at stock speeds without VRM problems. It's happened because most board manus just updated the bios on boards that were designed for Thuban chips. As such the VRMs can only run at around 53c before they will throttle the crap about of the CPU. It's bad.. Really bad. When playing Crysis 3 on my first 8320 (I have two) I could not even hold stock speeds, even with a H60. My CPU *and* VRMs were overheating and my CPU was cutting itself back to 1.7ghz. This made the game lag like crazy. It's amazing how many people have issues with the FX, simply because the information out there is so bloody muddy. The best budget board is the Asus M5197 rev 2.0. The best high end boards are the Saber and the CHVFZ but both are pretty expensive.. Get one right though? as I say, they're incredibly powerful chips. The board price is almost offset completely by the cost of the CPU. As for overclocking? yeah it's crazy fun with the FX. I've had my second one running at 5.3ghz and benched it at 5ghz. Once you start reaching 4.6ghz you start to see huge gains over stock speeds. Mind you, even at 4.3ghz it still makes a serious case for itself. The only one worth having really is the 8320. Mostly because when AMD ramped up quality checking and started making the Centurions that meant a lot of 'almost there' 8 core chips they then box up for the consumer. AMD do stuff like that all the time (unlocking GPUs and CPUs and so on..) good company for an Easter egg
Apols for DP but.. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-128-KS Unlike Intel AMD CPUs benefit from faster ram. It's because the FSB is actually usable when it comes to overclocking. RE - overclocking - when it comes to solid stable clocks the FSB is actually better than the multi. I found that multi needs a shed load more voltage and generated much more heat than the FSB. So basically the trick is to leave the multi stock, crank the FSB until it won't go any more then slowly add multi. The issue of course is that as you crank the FSB the memory gets it too. You can offset the memory, but you'll end up with 1400mhz or so (well, it's that or around 1900mhz on a 240ish mhz FSB). Hence, get the fastest ram you can lay your hands on as trust me, you'll need it. I have 8gb 1600mhz Mushkin Blackine in my 4.9ghz rig. I bought a set of 2133 4gb and threw it in for a laugh and I could get 5ghz and beyond using that. I'll look at my clock settings on the 4.3ghz rig later and upload some data for you as it will probably help you out
although its CL11 that ram is blinding value - and AM3 FX`s happily get a slight speed bump for 1866 ram over 1600 - might even do CL9@ 1866!
1800 is around the sort of speed you really need to hold the FSB clocks tbh. Yeah that ram is uber cheap.. Maybe it's a signal that ram prices are about to drop again? I hope so. I could really do with faster ram for my gaming rig tbh.
Agree with everything you've said, apart from the PSU part. I know the FX series CPU's are more power hungry than the equivalent Intel but still, the CX500 has 2 x 6 pin PCI-E connectors so I think that's fine for a decent graphics card. Think the money would be better spent else where on the build. Link below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajiN9aVOv4A Regards, Richard.
Just because it has two 6 pin power connectors, that doesn't mean it'll take any graphics card with 2 x 6 pin connectors and be able to run it with an FX chip. With an FX chip and a GTX 460, he'd already be cutting it pretty close together with things like Sata drives, peripherals etc.
I'm running my FX @ 4.9ghz with a 7990 (also overclocked) a H100, six hard drives (and a PCIE SSD) as well as a ton of fans, LCD screen and god knows what else from a RM 750. Now granted, a RM 750 is a better quality PSU than the CX but I must be running close to the edge.... I wouldn't worry too much. The GTX 6xx series use very little power compared to Fermi any way, so an upgrade could actually use less power than sticking with what he has now.
Evening, Sorry, i didn't explain very well. What i meant with the 2 x 6pins is that it gives more flexibility when choosing the graphics card. The cx430 for example only has 1 x 6pin, so he wouldn't be limited in that sense. I didn't mean it could run anything just because the connectors are there. Hopefully you see where i was coming from. Also, the newer graphics cards are more power efficient for a similar frame rate; the Gtx750 Ti is a good example of this. Hope that clears things up. Regards, Richard.
