Get a SSD. If there is one single item in your setup you will actually notice your money it is with a SSD drive for your operating system and most used programs.

Rest of the parts looks good, though if you don't need as powerful PSU for that graphics card, but it's always good to have some extra juice incase you upgrade in the future.

One more thing, do you have more drives available? The price pr. GB is less on a 2TB or 3TB drive and having just 1TB is a bit small for HD capture + Windows + games/programs. If I were you I would go for a SSD drive and a 2 or 3TB WD drive.

Don't go with AMD. Seriously. Even Phenom II, which at least has real cores beats Bulldozer per clock. If you want AMD get a Phenom II X4/X6 for cheap which will beat any FX by far for gaming.

Aside from that I would rather stick with Asus or Gigabyte for Motherboards, but that's more of a personal choice I guess...

d1stortion wrote:

Don't go with AMD. Seriously. Even Phenom II, which at least has real cores beats Bulldozer per clock. If you want AMD get a Phenom II X4/X6 for cheap which will beat any FX by far for gaming.

Isn't his system also for video rendering? I'm not going to be 100% sure on this, but isn't FX better suited for that?

Gemini: You should also get hold of some editing/rendering software that supports Nvidia's CUDA. The reduced time on rendering using the graphics card as help will be substantial!

If it's mainly about that... yeah, it is. I don't see any aftermarket cooler on his list though. The stock cooler is going to suck big time with an eight-"core" CPU. And with AMD you'll want the possibility of overclocking in any case to make performance bearable. There's a good reason for all FX CPUs being unlocked.

If you really want a FX by all means at least go with Piledriver (FX-*3**). And even the MSI board should support them with a BIOS update.

vetz wrote:

Get a SSD. If there is one single item in your setup you will actually notice your money it is with a SSD drive for your operating system and most used programs.

Part of the trouble though is that everything I'm reading up about SSDs don't show them to be any more or less reliable than HDs in the long run. (Though in the short run, they are definitely more reliable.) This means sometime down the road I'd probably have to worry about getting a new SSD AND a new HD. I already perform regular backups so I'd rather just worry about one storage device and not two, even if the SSD would allow for much faster loading of OS stuff.

vetz wrote:

One more thing, do you have more drives available? The price pr. GB is less on a 2TB or 3TB drive and having just 1TB is a bit small for HD capture + Windows + games/programs. If I were you I would go for a SSD drive and a 2 or 3TB WD drive.

I use surprisingly little HD space. I've been working with a 250 GB drive for the past couple years that's only had between 10 to 30 GB free at any point in time. I have no idea how I'd burn a full TB, and even if I did, 80% of it could probably be offloaded to permanent backup media, like DVD-Rs.

d1stortion wrote:

Don't go with AMD. Seriously. Even Phenom II, which at least has real cores beats Bulldozer per clock. If you want AMD get a Phenom II X4/X6 for cheap which will beat any FX by far for gaming.

Unfortunately, my best Phenom II choice at the moment is only 2.6 GHz. :P

And if I go non-AMD, the CPU price will double at the least, maybe even triple. I may have a chunk of money coming in to spend on this but I still don't want to spend hundreds more than I have to just to get my FPS up 1 or 2 more or cut a 20 minute video render down to 19. :P

d1stortion wrote:

Aside from that I would rather stick with Asus or Gigabyte for Motherboards, but that's more of a personal choice I guess...

I've had bad experiences with ASUS products in general... but feel free to recommend a Gigabyte board that would support AMD FX processors. :)

d1stortion wrote:

If you really want a FX by all means at least go with Piledriver (FX-*3**). And even the MSI board should support them with a BIOS update.

The trouble is getting the BIOS update applied if it can't already work the CPU properly. And even after applying updates, people have STILL had problems with the combination. :/

As long as they have the proper BIOS every AM3+ board will support those CPUs. You should ask your seller about that, often mainboard manufacturers put stickers on the packaging to indicate the BIOS version. If lots of people are having trouble than it might the board itself...

I personally use a GA-970A-UD3 with a PIIX4. Great for overclocking too. IMO the 990FX chipset is wasted money. Better get a good aftermarket cooler for that money.

If you want to stick to AMD CPUs, take something like a gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 MB, it's perfectly reliable, works with FX. Then take a 8320 and push it to 4GHz, it's the same as a 3850 for less.

But an i5 3570 is not THAT more expensive, and will go to 4+GHz easily and overall be better than the FX (cooler, faster, more potential)

Same for graphic card, there's nothing wrong with the 660, but here, it's AMD who'll give you better bang for buck, as native english ppl say. A 7950 can easily go to 7970+ performances and is very strong overall.

I'm pretty confident a i5 3570 + 7950 would be nice improvement over FX + 660, even if a bit more expensive.

Your PSU choice is totally overkill. Take a 520W and use the money difference to get the i5/7950.
FX : 130W, 660 : 150W
i5 : 77W, 7950 : 180W

A SSD is a must have as a system disk (youi can still capture on a HDD). It can survive 40GB write a day for 5 years garanteed. It's a life changer, more than going from 4 to 6 cores IMHO. I tried Samsung and Intel, both were great and reliable, OCZ was not good until Vertex2, but Vector seems great and Vertex3 stable. Crucial has had a lot of tricky firmware update problems with the M4.

My 2 cents 😀

Every single time the question is the same. How much money do you want to spend, and what will you use it for. I guess it would be for editing ADG episodes and some serious gaming, so picking the right components is essential.

So here are some of my recommendations.

For the case I would get one from Fractal Design and more specifically the Define R4. Very minimalistic and customisable case, with tons of options. Has USB 3.0 front I/O ports, dust filters and pretty much everything you need. Mounting large radiators is not an issue and cable management is easy.
Link: http://www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&c … egory=2&prod=99

For the power supply always 80+ and single 12V rail. SeaSonic is always the best option, they use solid caps and pretty much quality components. XFX is also great, uses the same SeaSonic components. If you are going to use a single graphics card you don't need that much power. 650W is more than enough, or even less if you don't plan to add another GPU later on.
Link: http://www.seasonic.com/product/pc_atx.jsp

Motherboard... ASUS, MSI or GIGABYTE. But it shouldn't matter that much, only if you are overclocking. Some MSI boards are individually tested and hand picked, some are not. ASUS has USB BIOS flashback and you can update the the UEFI without a CPU or any RAM installed. Overclocking is a piece of cake on those boards, you just click a button in the BIOS and done. On the GIGABYTE boards you get pretty much the same stuff, and tons of accessories. Pretty much all of them should have digital vrms. ASUS even have a military grade board under the Sabertooth brand. Those are very nice.

Link: http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/AMD_990FXSB950
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page. … spx?pid=3880#ov

Well so far this is an AMD build so the FX-8350 would be a great choice. You can overclock it like crazy, it should be ok for gaming and rendering. Intel has Quicksync, so that can speed up rendering, but you have to pay premium price for for the CPU itself. For rendering if you use Adobe products and NVIDIA card is the best option. GPU rendering with CUDA is way more faster than on the CPU.

For the graphics card doesn't really matter what brand you choose. EVGA, ASUS, MSI are ok. All of them use the same chips. The reference cards will be a little bit hotter than the ones with a custom PCB. Some have dual fans and those can reduce the temperature quite a lot when the card is under a heavy load. Grab a GTX 660Ti or a 670 if you have the money. Currently in Adobe products there's no support for OpenCL but it's comming and you can use it with a Radeon card just like on Macs.

For the RAM get some Kingston HyperX Beast memory. That thing is stupid fast and great for editing. Very overclockable, but may not be the cheapest one out there.

For storage I would get an SSD. Trust me it will speed up everything a lot. Just slap the OS and your other software in there and you will be amazed how fast it is. Mechanical hard drive is essential for storage, so that depends how much stuff you have. I had several WD drives failed on my machine. Currently I use a Seagate Barracuda 1TB drive and it's still going. SSD: Kingston HyperX, ADATA and OCZ Vertex are my favorites. Just get one seriously!

This is what I would get if I had to build a rig. Hope you found something cool in this list. These are just my opinions and this is what I consider a stable machine. Good luck with this Kris!

d1stortion wrote:

As long as they have the proper BIOS every AM3+ board will support those CPUs. You should ask your seller about that, often mainboard manufacturers put stickers on the packaging to indicate the BIOS version. If lots of people are having trouble than it might the board itself...

Well, here's the confusing thing. There's two revisions of the board I'm looking into, the original 990FXA-GD80 and the 990FXA-GD80V2. The V2's BIOS updates only go up to v11.9. The originals updates go up to v11.13. For v11.9 and every version prior, the files to download are IDENTICAL for both boards.

I sent an eMail to MSI asking them to clarify this. No reply yet but then I only just sent the request late Sunday, so it may still be a day or two before I hear back.

sunaiac wrote:

If you want to stick to AMD CPUs, take something like a gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3 MB, it's perfectly reliable

...and not available from the place I want to order all these parts from. :/

Still, I'll look into my options for getting it from elsewhere in the event it turns out to be a better choice. :)

sunaiac wrote:

But an i5 3570 is not THAT more expensive, and will go to 4+GHz easily and overall be better than the FX (cooler, faster, more potential)

I'd rather not overclock the CPU or GPU. At base clock speeds, the FX-8150 outperforms the i5 3570. Not by a lot, but since the i5 3570 is more expensive, the choice is obvious. :P

sunaiac wrote:

Same for graphic card, there's nothing wrong with the 660, but here, it's AMD who'll give you better bang for buck, as native english ppl say. A 7950 can easily go to 7970+ performances and is very strong overall.

I am very not impressed with Radeon cards. I can't stand their driver configuration interface and two of my friends who recently acquired them run into issues with them when it comes to older software. My own research further proved that nVidia is the better choice to retain compatibility with older games.

sunaiac wrote:

Your PSU choice is totally overkill.

Just in case I perform upgrades in the future. ;)

Also, not getting a UPS for this rig because getting one that could handle it would be VERY pricy, so I like the reviews about how well my PSU selection can handle brief power flickers. Given how much more powerful it is than I need, it should handle them even better. :D

Gemini000 wrote:

I use surprisingly little HD space. I've been working with a 250 GB drive for the past couple years that's only had between 10 to 30 GB free at any point in time. I have no idea how I'd burn a full TB, and even if I did, 80% of it could probably be offloaded to permanent backup media, like DVD-Rs.

Thought you said you wanted to capture anything with the new computer (in another thread) and if you're going to do some FRAPS in HD or HD material in general then the GB will fly away on your harddrive. I use approximately 200GB for each episode I make with all the raw material. You could ofc delete it/back up to DVDs, but that is a bit cumbersome. The price-step from 1TB to 2/3TB is not very steep.

P4R4D0X wrote:

ASUS even have a military grade board under the Sabertooth brand. Those are very nice.

...damnit, that IS a nice board... if only my past experience with ASUS wasn't as bad as it is... x_x;

I'd be able to get faster RAM by default without having to overclock it, go back to the FX-8350 over the 8150...

More research is clearly required.

I wouldn't spend so much extra money on faster RAM. The standard RAM is more than good enough since you don't plan on overclocking and the extra performance you get by having faster and more expensive RAM is not worth it imo. Better get an SSD then 😉

OK, if I change the Motherboard, CPU and RAM around to the following selections:

MOTHERBOARD: Asus Sabetooth 990Fx/Gen3 AMD 990FX/SB950 Motherboard
CPU: AMD FD8350FRHKBOX FX-8350 Eight-Core 4GHz
RAM: Kingston Hyper X Beast KHX18C10T3K2/16X 16GB - 1866 MHz

...it only costs $68 more, but I'm bumping up the RAM speed, avoiding RAM bus overclocking on the motherboard, getting 400 MHz of CPU speed back, and still getting military-grade components on the motherboard that will likely outlive the system as a whole.

This puts me a bit over the $1,300 limit I was aiming for, but not substantially. I just need to make sure the CPU and motherboard combination is solid, and that the motherboard is worth the extra $46, and it looks like this new selection may be solid. :)

If you are looking at the non GEN3 version of that board and the BIOS update change logs you will see 10 entries there, most of them improving system stability. So it should be "Rock solid, Heart touching" just as their slogan used to be. The GEN3 R2.0 board should have almost the same stability as the first board. There are only some USB compatibility updates. ASUS shouldn't be that bad anymore like they used to be...

Edit: Termal Armor/Radar and DIGI+ VRM is really nice. Also AI Suite II is the best utility I've used so far that came with a motherboard.

I would also highly recommend an Intel build.

Not sure what benchmarks you compare, but the i5 is a very fast CPU. Now a big part of your workload is video rendering. Does your rendering software support Intel QuickSync?

The other thing is power draw. The AMD CPU will suck around twice as much power, so any savings on the CPU will quickly disappear. Intel also doesn't need highly clocked RAM to perform well, so you can save there.

I have the GTX660 (not the TI version) as well and it's a very powerful card.

Your Ram and mainboard sound expensive. When I built my main office machine last year I got a basic H77 chipset board, cheapest 8GB of Ram but a top CPU, the i7 3770. Especially for video rendering this CPU is amazing. With QuckSync (which PowerDirector supports) the final render is super fast. I never benchmarked it but its several times faster than real-time (Full HD videos). My videos tend to be much longer than yours, some several hours and that's when the speed helps.

I also recommend SSD. I have a 256 in my machine and it's the best upgrade you can do to a machine when you work a lot with many applications. Everything will just load that much faster. But I can understand your point about cost. You could just go with a 60GB cache SSD.

So all in all: Buy Intel, save on the mainboard and RAM, get the best CPU you can afford.

I think this Quicksync feature is only available when just the integrated GPU is used...

d1stortion wrote:

I think this Quicksync feature is only available when just the integrated GPU is used...

On the cheaper chipset boards, yes. On the Z77 chipset boards this isn't an issue.

But yes, good point for mentioning this. In my office PC I only use the onboard GPU. I have a dedicated gaming PC in another room.

My 2c: CoolerMaster power supplies are traditionally pretty ordinary.

Stick with Antec Earthwatts, Corsair HX, or Corsair TX. These ranges have good PFC and top notch build quality. They will last you through many a system.

Got better and did so with the fraction of the cost not but but three times, sadly two of those rigs are ashes. I suggest that you avoid AMD unless your mind is made up to where there is no other options. For the same price a i5 k edition would be a lot better and a 1TB Blue edition isn't all that great either and they don't always perform to their best.