• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

build advice

Page 4 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
So instead of editing one of your posts, you decided you'd make one more post, this time with the exact same information that your previous posts had. Okay then 😵. But I'm happy to help.

and when i ask is it good enough i suppose i am asking is there any reason to buy a more expensive one.
Click to expand...

I don't see any. Nothing you do requires more than a midrange motherboard.

does a vrm heatsink make a difference?
Click to expand...

VRM's are designed to handle high temperatures, not having a heatsink is fine for running a stock CPU. If you were overclocking and overvolting, VRM heatsinks would add a bit of extra safety
 
Last edited:
lehtv said:
First off, please learn to use the edit button. No need to post six posts in a row.
Click to expand...

sorry i was flipping back and forth between the forum and store sites.

lehtv said:
So instead of editing one of your posts, you decided you'd make one more post, this time with the exact same information that your previous posts had. Okay then
Click to expand...

i typed that before your edit showed up.
 
the moemory brand is apatop.

any thoughts on ssd brands? adata, sandisk, toshiba? right now i have the ultra star as my ssd pick.

since windows 9 is unknown as to what it may be would there be any reason to buy the retail windows 7 so that i may move it over to the next computer i buy. also should i buy premium or professional.
 
the moemory brand is apatop.
Click to expand...

Apotop? Some smaller brand, I haven't heard of them before. Looks to be Taiwanese. They offer lifetime warranty. I suppose they're OK... as I said, RAM is RAM. In any case, the Team and G.Skill kits offer better value at the moment.

any thoughts on ssd brands? adata, sandisk, toshiba? right now i have the ultra star as my ssd pick.
Click to expand...

I would consider all those as second tier brands. Not that they wouldn't work, but I just don't see any reason to buy one of them when you can get a Crucial drive with their mature and very reliable in-house controller for less money. The Crucial M500 120GB for $87 was the cheapest one I could find from Amazon or Newegg in that size class, so I just don't see what the point is of mulling over other options. Just buy it.

since windows 9 is unknown as to what it may be would there be any reason to buy the retail windows 7 so that i may move it over to the next computer i buy. also should i buy premium or professional.
Click to expand...

An OEM license is tied to the motherboard. You can upgrade any other component without any problems. If you upgrade the motherboard, your Windows will not be activated, but it can usually be easily reactivated in MS's automated phone service. I did this when I moved from an LGA1366 build to LGA1155 build.

You should buy the Home Premium license. Although I'd get Win 8.1.
 
Last edited:
have thought of overclocking recently at a mild to moderate overclock. i know the 8350 can esily be overclocked to 4.5 ghz and even 5.0 ghz. what is the maximum clock on the stock cooler? what about a smaller closed loop cooler from corsair? i will run some mmos like planetside 2 so the 8350 looks like a good processor to me. also planetside 2 is being optimized for the ps4 so it will support 8 threads. the new patch really sped things up before my computer had problems.

so the current stock at newegg is this

asus direct cu 2 top $220

sapphire vapor x $220

msi hawk $230

which one should i buy?
 
I wouldn't say 5GHz is easy. You need a very high performance cooler and a capable motherboard to do that.

I wouldn't use the stock cooler for overclocking at all.

If you want to be able to overclock, then I recommend Asus M5A97 R2.0 $95.

i will run some mmos like planetside 2 so the 8350 looks like a good processor to me. also planetside 2 is being optimized for the ps4 so it will support 8 threads.
Click to expand...

What was your budget again?

The FX-8350 is not a good choice. You don't really do anything with those extra threads. Saying that MMO's benefit from having eight cores versus six is utterly wrong, MMO's are typically not heavily multithreaded software. This includes PS2, it is optimized for quad cores, and that it is being currently developed for PS4 has absolutely no bearing on how it runs or will run on PC's.

PS2 is also very CPU dependent - there are no CPUs in existence that are fast enough to run it at perfect 60 fps at all times. Even my i7-3770K @4.2Ghz dips to the low 40s in bigger fights - an AMD FX-8350 would perform worse, even at 5GHz. So if you want to spend more than what the FX-6300 costs, I can't recommend any other options than
(a) spend more on overclockability (incidentally, FX-6300 overclocks a bit better than FX-83xx)
(b) buy Intel (which you won't do for some weird ideological reasons)

FX-8350 is just a bad choice that barely performs better than FX-6300 in your scenario but costs nearly as much as an i5-4670K.

which one should i buy?
Click to expand...

What's wrong with the GTX 760 I linked? 270X isn't really competitive at current prices.. The GTX 760 comes with two free games which makes it much better value. EDIT: FYI, game codes can be sold on forums or eBay for a decent amount of cash.
 
Last edited:
A $750 PC is very different from a $1000 PC. You have to decide how much you really want to spend. However, I would urge not to spend $1000 and still buy an AMD CPU. If you spend that much (even including the Windows license), buying Intel is the only sensible thing to do.
 
fx-6300 $110
Asus mobo $95
Cooler $50 (I'd suggest Thermalright True Spirit 140, the Thermaltake case I linked can fit it)
RAM $63
GTX760 $240 AR
Seagate HDD $60
Crucial SSD $87
Thermaltake case $50 AR
reuse power supply $0
Windows 7 $89

= $844 AR

Spending more than that would only make sense if you needed more storage space or a bigger SSD, or wanted to improve CPU performance by buying Intel 4670K.

edit:
so with the h55 how fast could i get on a safe overclock? any other closed loop coolers that are just as good or better at the price point?
Click to expand...
The Thermalright cooler I linked would perform better than a low end water cooler; a water cooler better than that Thermalright would make more sense to me. The case could actually fit a 140mm water cooler like Corsair H90 in the rear slot. However, I don't consider high end cooling a good idea with AMD CPUs for the simple reason that the money spent on high end cooling would be better spent on a faster Intel CPU.
 
Last edited:
any reasons to buy a huge air cooler over a smaller closed loop cooler?
Click to expand...

It performs better and makes less noise.

some of the reviews recently said that the closed loop cool just as good as any of the air coolers.
Click to expand...

That's a rather general statement, while this particular comparison was between a not-so-typical air cooler and a low end water cooler. The Thermalright True Spirit 140 is extremely good, it performs better than many more expensive air coolers while being very quiet thanks to a low speed 140mm fan.

Would 4.5 ghz be fairly easy with one of those coolers?
Click to expand...

Yes.

cost inclueds windows license
Click to expand...

Yep, I included that in my $844 AR total

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835103099

how good is this cooler?
Click to expand...

It's good, but not really $41 good. I'd buy it for $35 max. The TS-140 will outperform it

also i run a fair amount of older programs including games from the late 90s so would professional with xp compatibility mode be good to have?
Click to expand...

There are free software that do the same thing, no need to pay MS for that functionality. You may also want to check out DOSBox
 
Last edited:
lehtv said:
DOSBox
Click to expand...

have used it. i got sim ant to run but other programs did nosem to run the basic dos box environment. apparantly you have to link the game files with the dos box program and then run the game file instead of dos box. i ran simant by booting or loading simant into dosbox and then running simant.
 
so with the true spirit 140 and a asus 970 pro 2.0 or 990fx motherboard what could i overclock to and be completely stable? would the 990fx make any difference as far as to overcloack speed or stability?
 
lehtv said:
Although I'd get Win 8.1.
Click to expand...

why would you get 8.1?

at christmas i used windows 8 on a touch laptop and while it seems like it was a good fit for my grandma i really did not like how it was used. i heard that the network settings have been completely messed up in windows 8. is this true?
 
norseamd said:
so with the true spirit 140 and a asus 970 pro 2.0 or 990fx motherboard what could i overclock to and be completely stable? would the 990fx make any difference as far as to overcloack speed or stability?
Click to expand...

The motherboard barely makes a difference in overclocking, unless you go completely crazy with a LN2 phase cooler and are pumping extreme voltage through the CPU (which you shouldn't do for typical usage, because it will destroy the CPU in matter of days, if not hours). The amount you can overclock varies chip by chip; I would increase it by 100MHz increments and then do a brief (1hr or so) stress test; when the CPU begins failing those stress tests or you're happy with the speed, do a much longer stress test (as long as you're willing to go; I went 12 hours each on 2 different tests) just to makes sure it's stable. A 8320/8350 should max out around 4.6GHz, so it won't take long; HOWEVER, DO THE STRESS TESTS AND RAISE CPU SPEED INCREMENTALLY. Otherwise, you are asking for errors and problems.
 
norseamd said:
anything you can tell me about the varoious brands of air coolers so that i have a wide selection?
Click to expand...

In general, cooler performance is determined by
- the mass and fin area of the heatsink
- the number of heatpipes
- the RPM and blade area of the fan

So for instance if you take any 120mm cooler you should expect similar performance to any other 120mm cooler with similar heatsink construction and a similar RPM fan. Brand doesn't matter all that much for performance, but it does matter in terms of quality, noise levels and noise profile, as well customer service and warranty related things.

Cooler Master 212 (EVO) is popular and decent for what it costs (though as I mentioned the 212 EVO is currently a bit overpriced). Given the above paragraph, several other brands offer a very similar product at about the same price. Some examples: Arctic i30, Enermax ETS-T40, Thermalright True Spirit 120M. Somehow though 212 has managed to grab that spot for the mainstream 120mm cooler.

Phanteks and Noctua offer premium grade products for those who want to pay for quality, although I'd say when you compare the absolute highest end air coolers, Phanteks and Noctua also offer the best value in that segment. Noctua in particular is specialized in excellent acoustic performance.

Scythe (not available in the US) and Thermalright (only available in a few places in the US) both offer coolers that perform very well for what they cost and stay quiet as well. They're my favourite air cooler brands. Scythe in particular typically uses fans that are capable of extremely low RPM operation when idling, while everything Thermalright makes just performs better than almost anything that costs the same.

Arctic Cooling and Noctua are the only ones that offer 6 year warranty, that I know of.

I won't comment on other brands, there are just so many of them and these are the ones that stand out, to me.

norseamd said:
so with the true spirit 140 and a asus 970 pro 2.0 or 990fx motherboard what could i overclock to and be completely stable? would the 990fx make any difference as far as to overcloack speed or stability?
Click to expand...

The M5A97 R2.0 (notice no Pro in there) is what you need to get to 4.5Ghz. It has standard Asus overclocking features, 6 phase CPU power and heatsinks, all you need for a relatively high OC.

why would you get 8.1?

at christmas i used windows 8 on a touch laptop and while it seems like it was a good fit for my grandma i really did not like how it was used.
Click to expand...

Firstly, because it's newer, improves performance slightly over 7, improves boot times, and has plenty of other improvements "under the hood" (which don't really show though). Secondly, because I've used a laptop with it (not touch screen and not 8.1 at that time) and I liked the user interface.

i heard that the network settings have been completely messed up in windows 8. is this true?
Click to expand...

No idea.
 
Last edited:
just ordered. soryy i could not wait.

amazon

amd 8350 $190
sandisk ultra plus 128 gb $90
toshiba 2 tb $80
true spirit 140 $50
windows 7 $90

newegg
asus 990fx $130
asus 270x direct cu 2 top $220
thermaltake reve gene $50
Apotop 8gb 1866 9-10-9-27 $78
 
norseamd said:
just ordered. soryy i could not wait.
Click to expand...

I think it's good you didn't waste our time any longer. I guess I should say I hope you'll like it, but... really? 8350, Sandisk SSD, 990Fx board, 270X, Apotop RAM? It's like talking to a brick wall.
 
990 fx board
would of ordered the 970 if i had read your previous post but you were gone so i ordered the safe choice for stability lost money is better than a blown board
apatop ram because it was the cheapest 1866 ram available with 9-10-9-27 timings and it was only 8 more than the cheapest team which was faster but that would not do me any good
8350 and 270x because i like amd
sandisk ssd the other guy said it was good so i figured i would buy it
 
would of ordered the 970 if i had read your previous post but you were gone so i ordered the safe choice for stability lost money is better than a blown board
Click to expand...

Wrong. The Asus 970 board would've been a safe choice. I wouldn't have recommended it otherwise. Hell, even the $60 MSI board would've probably worked fine, I just recommended the M5A97 to be safe.

apatop ram because it was the cheapest 1866 ram available with 9-10-9-27 timings and it was only 8 more than the cheapest team which was faster but that would not do me any good
Click to expand...

Wrong. If you had understood what I said earlier, you'd know that RAM speed is not relevant for real world usage, and that timings are less relevant than MHz. The Team RAM would've been both faster and cheaper. The only reason I picked the Team RAM was that it was among the cheapest 2x4 kits of DDR3 of at least 1600mhz that I could find from newegg on a quick notice. I just got lucky that it was 2400 MHz.

8350 and 270x because i like amd
Click to expand...

FX-6300 is still AMD. For your uses, you would not notice any difference between systems using and OC'd FX-8350 versus OC'd FX-6300. In short you wasted $80 minus the potential difference in resale value. If you just want to give AMD free money though because you like them, be my guest.

As for the 270X, you never said you will not consider NVIDIA. You should've been clearer on that point, and I fail to understand how it is possible that you mention it only now.

sandisk ssd the other guy said it was good so i figured i would buy it
Click to expand...

And I said Crucial is good, and that I consider Sandisk a second tier SSD brand. Crucial was also cheaper. Your decision makes no sense to me.

Also, what other guy? The only people who have mentioned Sandisk in this thread are you and me.
 
Last edited:
lehtv said:
The GTX 760 comes with two free games which makes it much better value. EDIT: FYI, game codes can be sold on forums or eBay for a decent amount of cash.
Click to expand...

Just don't try to sell NV "free" game codes on THIS forum, or you get a complimentary vacation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top