Build Pictures:

Look what arrived!!

















































It almost didn't fit the cooler. I might consider in the future swapping it out for a AIO water cooler, with the cooler mounted to the side.

 

Benchmarks:

All Benchmarks are done with the following settings:

CPU: Stock
Memory: 2400Mhz
iGPU: 800Mhz

GPU: 1050Mhz
Memory: 1200Mhz

Heaven: High settings @ 1080p



Heaven GPU Usage



Tomb Raider (2013) @ 1080p Ultra Settings



Tomb Raider (2013) @ 1080p High Settings



Dirt 3 @ 1080p Ultra



Dirt 3 @ 1080p High



I will update with more games as I get them installed, I don't have my steam library downloaded on anything else so it takes a while to download each game. Eventually I will post with overclocks and hopefully non beta drivers. I am happy with what it can do right now, Tomb Raider looks to have about doubled in FPS compared with when I was simply running the R7 250.

If you have benchmark request, feel free to ask, I will do my best to post them.

 

In.

Looking forward to the build and some numbers!

 

Updated with Pictures - everything is all together and installing Windows 8.1

Some current notes:

1. I'm not a fan of the AMD mounting system!
2. I used a 750GB 7200rpm laptop drive that was pulled from my MBP
3. Initially after setting XMP the system wouldn't boot, pulling the GPU just to reset the cmos was annoying.
4. The case front came damaged, you can't see it because i covered it with black tape (last picture between the shiny side and front panel its dull black, thats the tape, looks pretty good i'd have to say, but I'm going to get a new front panel)
5. Wasn't sure I'd like the black drives with the silver front, but its growing on me.
6. The SD Card reader has the brightest red light ever!

 

subbed!

 

How does it perform ?

 

I just got finished installing Windows 8.1 and now i'm in the (long) process of installing updates, drivers, etc. I will start posting benchmarks as they become available.

 

Hi, I have the same setup so far as the 7850 and the R7 250 and for the life of me cannot get Dual Graphics to work. So I'd be curious to know if you were successful. Regardless if the 7850 is primary, or the R7, one will come up as primary and the other as disabled. Frustrating as hell.

 

- Build Update

So I have swapped out the motherboard and the HDD, here is what I have swapped them out for:

Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-D3H

I went with this one as it had a lot more features, was the same price and seems to have better support. The BIOS update is from 2/5 so it is extremely current. I was having issues with my previous motherboard trying to get dual graphics enabled.

SSD: Kingston 120V 128GB

I was tired of slow boot times, it was $70, it seemed well worth it.

Other things I tried:

I tried putting in a AIO water cooler - it technically fit, but when I got around to stress testing the system with a game, it failed miserably as the radiator blocked too much of the side panel to let out heat. Now I'm running again with the other cooler. There is no real way to monitor temperatures as current Temp monitors don't recognize the 7850K.

I am running AMD Driver 14.1 and it took quite a bit of playing around with the bios to finally get the dual graphics to happen. I was almost resigned to the fact that they wouldn't work with GDDR5 memory, but after playing around with some settings and booting into windows, it finally popped up saying that I could enable dual graphics, which made me pretty happy!

The other annoying things with the setup is when I have my monitor plugged into the XFX GPU, it will only display a maximum of 1920 x 1080 (my monitor is 2560 x 1600), so it seems that the DVI port is simply a single link and not a dual link which is disappointing. The onboard DVI supports 2560 x 1600, though I don't currently have it plugged into that as I'm really only concerned with 1080p games for console style entertainment.

 

I have a question on the water cooler you used. Did it fail because of the case you had it in? The reason I'm asking is I'm building virtually the same thing but in a micro atx tower case.

 

The case simply did not have enough space / ventilation for the cooler. The cooler was connected to the side panel which has mesh on it, as the rad blocked all the mesh and the fan could not push enough air volume through the rad and out the case, everything heated up.

 

May I ask you what BIOS settings you have for dual graphics?

I'm currently having the same setup, but with a Asus A88XM-Plus, and I simply can't enable dual graphics, it just wont happen.