SquallStrife wrote:

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

Stick with Antec Earthwatts, Corsair HX, or Corsair TX.

Antec brand is tricky to get here in Canada. Corsair is rated about equal to CoolerMaster from what I can find and is slightly more expensive. Plus I'm having trouble finding what kind of power connections the Corsair PSUs come with. Both 750w models have Active PFC and the same energy efficiency ratings as well.

nforce4max wrote:

I suggest that you avoid AMD unless your mind is made up to where there is no other options.

Says the person with the spinning AMD cube for an avatar. :D

AMD chips are cheaper per amount of power you get according to the benchmarks I've been looking up. The FX-8350 is also substantially better than the FX-8150, despite being only 400 MHz different in speed.

Yes, many Intel chips outrank the FX-8350, but all of them are MUCH more expensive, save for the ones that benchmark only tiny amounts better, but those ones are still more expensive anyways. :P

nforce4max wrote:

a 1TB Blue edition isn't all that great either and they don't always perform to their best.

What kind of HD would you recommend?

Gemini000 wrote:

Corsair is rated about equal to CoolerMaster from what I can find and is slightly more expensive.

Where have you been looking? CoolerMaster is pretty widely acknowledged to ordinary compared to Corsair. The higher price is reflected in the quietness, increased longevity, and better warranty service.

CoolerMaster aren't terrible, mind you, but by spending a little more you get a PSU that will last longer and perform better.

Gemini000 wrote:

Plus I'm having trouble finding what kind of power connections the Corsair PSUs come with.

Did you look on Corsair's site? Under Tech Specs. It lists out how many of each connector it has, across their range.

Your Google-fu is weak grasshopper! 😜

Gemini000 wrote:

Both 750w models have Active PFC and the same energy efficiency ratings as well.

Both of CoolerMaster's 750W-rated PSUs have a bronze 80 Plus rating. Three of Corsair's have a gold rating. 😀

http://www.plugloadsolutions.com/80PlusPowerSupplies.aspx

SquallStrife wrote:

Both of CoolerMaster's 750W-rated PSUs have a bronze 80 Plus rating. Three of Corsair's have a gold rating.

Unfortunately, none of their gold-rated 750w PSUs are available from the store I'm buying all of this from. The moment I split away from the store and go elsewhere, shipping almost certainly becomes a factor and adds to the cost of anything I want to purchase. Unless you can suggest an online Canadian retailer aside from TigerDirect that does free shipping or has actual physical locations that an order can be picked up from.

EDIT: Still looking up more info. I do agree that the warranty details for Corsair look better than for CoolerMaster. Hmm...

After being an AMD fan since the s939 days, I upgraded my main rig from a Phenom II 955 @ 3.6ghz to an X79 3820 @ 4.3ghz last year. The performance leap was staggering. But if you're hell bent on an AMD build, my advice is:

1) You don't need a full tower for the proposed parts.
2) 750w is overkill for this build- 550w is more like it.
3) Asus is the way to go for an FX - either Sabretooth or Crosshair V. FX's will burn lesser motherboards.
4) Buy an FX8320 instead of 8350
5) Consider a Radeon 7950.
6) Get 8gb of generic ram 1,333-1600 will do fine. FX's don't benefit from having uber high frequency ram.
7) Get an SSD. I would never go back to using a system without one ever again. This is the single most important thing on this list arguably.

sgt76 wrote:

1) You don't need a full tower for the proposed parts.

I know... but I really like the features of this tower, plus every mid-tower I considered prior had something about it that didn't sit well with me. Plus, I'm not buying aftermarket cooling stuff, so I want maximum airflow.

sgt76 wrote:

2) 750w is overkill for this build- 550w is more like it.

I know... again. :D

This is mostly just in case I perform large upgrades in the future.

sgt76 wrote:

3) Asus is the way to go for an FX - either Sabretooth or Crosshair V. FX's will burn lesser motherboards.

Yeah... it's looking like I'm gonna go with that particular Sabertooth 990Fx/Gen3 board.

sgt76 wrote:

4) Buy an FX8320 instead of 8350

According to the benchmarks that are out there, that's a terrible idea. The price difference is less than the power difference. :P

sgt76 wrote:

5) Consider a Radeon 7950.

I've worked with Radeon stuff before and experience has taught me to stay away from modern Radeon cards due to their poor compatibility with older software.

sgt76 wrote:

6) Get 8gb of generic ram 1,333-1600 will do fine. FX's don't benefit from having uber high frequency ram.

The ASUS motherboard I selected goes up to 1833 without overclocking, and it's very inexpensive to go from 1600 to 1833. I think it was only about a $10 difference.

sgt76 wrote:

7) Get an SSD. I would never go back to using a system without one ever again. This is the single most important thing on this list arguably.

I'd have to sacrifice a ton of other features to bring the cost of the build down to the point where I could put one in. I might get one later on but consider the system I'm working on right now is EIGHT TIMES less powerful than what I've got planned. Even an 8x boost is gonna be epic for me. :)

I personally went with the following:

AMD FX 8350
Cooler Master Hyper N520 CPU Cooler
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 Mobo
Corsair 8GB of DDR3/1600 Ram (2 x 4GB)
Gigabyte GV-R7970OC-3GD GPU
Monster Digital Daytona 240GB SSD

I'm still using my Cooler Master CM-830 Stacker Full Size chassis with the Antec 1000 Watt PSU.

I use a very similar setup for new file server, difference being motherboard and ram and this sits in a new Raidmax Platinum Full Size Chassis.

A lot of hate towards AMD here. Just a couple of points here:

The FX 8core CPUs come in two flavors, 81xx and 83xx.
Avoid the 81xx ones, they are based on the Bulldozer architecture which introduced the FX chips. D1stortion is semi right about Phenom II X6 kicking their asses. It really depends on the application.
AMD revised the series with the Piledriver CPUs, the 83xx ones. Much better and very competitive overall. Phenom II is now distanced quite a bit. I'd suggest getting the 8320 as it can be found a little bit less than the 8350 and you can easily get it to the clock as the latter one. It's really just a couple of multipliers you have to adjust.
But it's your call, you're not missing much though if you get the 8320 and leave it as is.
The AMD coolers are great! I love the mounting method (which AFAIK hasn't changed since s939) and the stock cooler for the FX CPUs are excellent for the job.

Have fun building the system!

F2bnp wrote:

A lot of hate towards AMD here.

I agree with what F2bnp writes. AMD works fine and it is certainly more bang for your buck.

I don't think that AMD still gives the most for the money. Not since Sandy Bridge processors that overclock to 4.5 GHz on stock voltage. Single threaded performance is still way too important because some games don't even make proper use of two cores. I don't know what AMD was thinking when they put out an architecture that doesn't even run to its fullest depending on the OS. There was a lot of banter on how the alleged Win7 Bulldozer patch by MS actually lowered the performance and how BD needs Win8 to take advantage of the module system. A Phenom III X8 would be a far better processor, even though people would complain about how they stick with the same architecture.

Besides, efficiency is still horrible with Piledriver. Most performance benefits can be attributed to the higher default clocks.

Keep in mind though that not every CPU can overclock that well. And besides, most people don't want to overclock as they think it voids the warranty and are generally afraid of it. Us technically knowledgable of course know how it works 😀.

Besides, I think the FX CPUs can do 4.5 GHz rather easily most of the time.
Another point that no one mentioned is the socket. Look at how many sockets Intel has changed since s775. s1366 then s1156 then s1155 and now they're coming out with s1150 for Haswell. I'm interested in seeing Haswell in action, but this is just idiotic. They also fucked people up by revising sockets a few years ago. Socket 370 and 478 and even 775. AMD fairs FAR better in this matter.

Just so people don't think I'm an AMD fan or anything, I've been using Intel since...forever really. I built my first AMD built this January and loving it so far. And that was only because I got a great deal for most of the parts. I was rocking just fine with my Q9450 at 3.5GHz, but Phenom II X6 at 3.5GHz plus SATA III and USB 3.0 and of course not to mention future compatibility thanks to AM3+ won me. I made more money selling my PC with DDR2 than I paid for the exact same parts for my Phenom II X6 machine. Awesome 😁.

Performance per watt is really the weak point of AMD. If you don't care about your power bill, AMD is fine. But what most people don't get is that the initial cost of the CPU is just one element. They tend to forget the running costs.

F2bnp wrote:

Look at how many sockets Intel has changed since s775. s1366 then s1156 then s1155 and now they're coming out with s1150 for Haswell.

They do it because they can afford it. Intel (and Nvidia, for that matter) hardware keeps its price pretty well anyway; crazy to think that C2Q CPUs still go for around €100 on ebay, whereas an equivalent AMD CPU can be had for half of that price if bought used, or even still slightly less if bought new.

By the way, AMD killed FM1 off after about a year or so without any plausible reasons.

-DP sorry-

d1stortion wrote:

They do it because they can afford it. Intel (and Nvidia, for that matter) hardware keeps its price pretty well anyway; crazy to think that C2Q CPUs still go for around €100 on ebay, whereas an equivalent AMD CPU can be had for half of that price if bought used, or even still slightly less if bought new.

Core 2 Quad processors, high-end P35/P45/X38/X48 boards and 2x2gb DDR2 modules are stupidly priced. I realized this a couple of months back and took advantage of it by selling off my collection of Core 2 stuff and with the cash from the sales, part funded another X79 rig.

Gemini000 wrote:

EDIT: Still looking up more info. I do agree that the warranty details for Corsair look better than for CoolerMaster. Hmm...

Depends on which Corsair and which Coolermaster we're talking about. The Corsair TX is a legend in terms reliability. The AX850 less so, and the AX860 is even worse and has got coil whine problems to boot. How fast they return your RMA'ed item also depends on that manufacturer's strength in that location.

d1stortion wrote:

... A Phenom III X8 would be a far better processor, even though people would complain about how they stick with the same architecture ...

Wholly agreed, a pity AMD never launched a 32nm true eight-core 'Phenom III' with 8~12 MB of L3.

This movie is a picturesque remake, with ironically reversed roles, of an old classic:

Pentium III => Willamette => Northwood

Phenom II => Bulldozer => Piledriver

The 32nm 'Phenom III' X8 could have been AMD's version of the Tualatin/Banias/Dotham underdog saga 😁 .

d1stortion wrote:

They do it because they can afford it. Intel (and Nvidia, for that matter) hardware keeps its price pretty well anyway; crazy to think that C2Q CPUs still go for around €100 on ebay, whereas an equivalent AMD CPU can be had for half of that price if bought used, or even still slightly less if bought new.

By the way, AMD killed FM1 off after about a year or so without any plausible reasons.

I don't get your point. What do you mean they can afford it? About a year ago I wanted to get a C2Q as an upgrade and had to resort to second hand.
You're absolutely right about FM1 though. Why the hell did they come out with an FM2? I still find it unacceptable, despite the socket not being their mainstream one.
They haven't totally abandoned it though, they have released new chipsets for it AFAIK. I think they're using it for the absolute low end APU CPUs. Speaking of which, why the hell are there Athlon II CPUs for FM1 and FM2? Isn't the point of the socket just to support the APUs?

F2bnp wrote:

I don't get your point. What do you mean they can afford it?

I simply meant that they can bring out new sockets every two years because their CPUs are faster than the competition anyway. AMD on the other hand is basically forced to offer long time support for a single socket in order to stay competitive.

And yeah given the prices for those Intel quad cores there must be a lot of people wanting to upgrade their dual cores and keep using their old boards. Not sure if it's worth investing that kind of money in a 5+ year old platform. With AMD you can at least "hope" that the 3rd or 4th BD revision will be decent.

TELVM wrote:

Wholly agreed, a pity AMD never launched a 32nm true eight-core 'Phenom III' with 8~12 MB of L3.

I think it's funny how they loaded BD up with all the new instruction sets that their previous CPUs were missing, and yet it still performs worse on a clock-for-clock basis.

I don't see how that's a valid point. A friend of mine wanted to upgrade his i5 750. Fuck him right?
They're releasing new sockets all the time, it's one of my main grudges against Intel.

Also, on the subject of power consumption. The difference is 77W TDP for the Intel CPUs versus 95W or more likely 125W on the AMD ones. That's a 50W difference you're saving, not really going to save you a lot of money, certainly not enough to make up for the difference. Just turn off a few lights in the house if it's bothering you that much 😜/

I never thought that this would be possible here at VOGONS, some members spitting nonsense about how FX CPU's aren't a good choice or even worse, FX's don't have REAL cores...

Gemini you'll be fine with FX 8350.

I thought they are called modules 😀