New AMD gaming build! Suggestions? - Page 3

Hold off on the H100 till the new i model comes out, otherwise I agree with StayFrosty.

+1 to this.

I especially agree with the selection of a closed-loop water cooler over even a monster HSF cooler. If you're going to get a Vishera chip, you want to overclock, and you're a beginner/intermediate level builder, you're going to want a closed loop cooler. These cooler are very simple to install these days - very nearly the same as a conventional HSF. You can either save $60 and go for the ~$60 Antec 620 (which I have and really like) which will give you the best cooling for ~$60, or splurge on the Corsair H100 for ~$120. The corsair will give you between ~300MHz of additional overclocking headroom over the 620, but you'll have to decide if that's worth the extra money to you.

The closed-loop water cooler, it'll be much quieter, unless you're really pushing it to the bleeding edge, and for another, you will get much more stable and better temps. What you lose with the water cooler is some air flow over your mosfets/north bridge, so I'd be reluctant to go with the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3, which I just bought and returned for the very reason that I'm not thrilled with the heat buildup on that northbridge. I know many say that it's ok for it to be so hot, but I can't get over how close to a second degree burn I almost got touching it. Compared to my Gigabyte GA-790X-UDP4, there is just no comparison. I would imagine StayFrosty has some knowledge of how much better the north bridge cooling is on the Asrock 990FX Extreme 4, so I'll defer judgement on it, but I've heard positive things about it.

I also heartily agree with the emphasis in the above build on spending more on the graphics card, as games are becoming increasingly GPU limited, rather than CPU limited. Yes, there are older games, or games still built using older single-threaded engines which will run noticeably better on an Intel CPU, but these are becoming a thing of the past very quickly. There was once a time when it made sense to spend more on a CPU than a GPU, but not anymore. These days, spending more than ~$220 on a CPU for gaming is virtually pointless, and spending less than ~$300 on a GPU is a bad move.

Good luck with your build.

Get a 7950.. $100 cheaper and almost as good, get some Samsung WonderRAM, a fair bit cheaper too. Get a Samsung 830 you won't notice much/any difference and get a 2TB Blue drive with the money saved.. Don't get a H100, get a NH-D14 or similar or wait for Corsairs new H100i it looks to be a fair bit better.

Well, PC part picker chose a RAM kit that costs 2x what you should pay for for 2x4GB DDR3-1600

I always put together manually.... but with Firefox addons like InvisibleHand and PriceBlink to compare site costs quickly.

 

Watch the flaming you guys. We're watching you.

 

My comments on 8320 vs 3570k and multi-threading in games:
Games are going to start using more cores, period. With the latest gen consoles having been confirmed to be taking quad core processors (in fact they are APUs from AMD themselves), games will be optimized for 4 x86 cores both on consoles and for PC where they are ported. They will also be more optimized for the Piledriver core or some better future generation, depending. That is where the world is headed. For the rest of the titles today, you have more extra cores to dedicate to other tasks you might do at the same time such as transcoding or FRAPs or whatever you'd like to do to be more productive while you game. The FX-8320 provides a more consistent experience for price with its extra physical core pushing power.

Let's not bash AMD vs Intel, if you want to PM about it for the sake of everyone, pleeeeeease!

They both have their ups and their downs, besides that's not the point in this thread. The OP stated that he wants an AMD.
If you're going to go AMD you need to either go all in or just go for an i3, anything other then a 8320+ isn't really that great. The 6300 is really a triple core in a way etc.

OP should get a 8320 + 990FX board for sure, he'll want 8GB/16GB of 1866MHz ram (Or WonderRAM as myself and others have suggested), along with a 7950/7970 (preferably a 7950) as they are MUCH better value to money than a 670/680. There's no real point at all to getting nVidia if you're only gaming.

EDIT: Go for a Samsung 830, and a high end air cooler or get a custom loop if you're keen.. That H100 is a rip off for what other cooling solutions can do. If you're really not keen on air/custom loops get a H100i when it's released.

Cheaper usually.. But that ones a bit more it's got more features though.

RAID, an extra SATA port, it also has the USB 3.0 bracket if your case doesn't have USB 3 inbuilt.

GO with the AsRock. Its a much better board IMO. I have the older 970 E3 and its solid so the newer E4 would be even better.