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$1400 Gaming Rig/Suggestions

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Turbulance1902

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May 2, 2013
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Hello there, I'm new to the forums so I would like a little help with my new gaming rig.

I want to make a computer that can run all games at 1920x1080 resolutions for at least 3 years or more if possible. My budget is 1400 as stated in the title but I can push it to $1500 maximum.

Generally speaking, is the build any good? Thanks!

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($179.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Phanteks PH-TC14PE_BK 78.1 CFM CPU Cooler ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($174.99 @ NCIX US)
Memory: G.Skill Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($62.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: OCZ Vector Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($96.87 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Card ($389.99 @ NCIX US)
Case: NZXT Phantom (White) ATX Full Tower Case ($102.68 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1302.48
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-02 15:08 EDT-0400)
 
Solution
marshallbradley
Is there something specifically better about the Sabertooth's BIOS? Remember you're only going to be spending around 10 minutes maybe when you first set up the computer, and then an hour or two when you're actually overclocking it in there. For the rest of the 3 years or so of the computer's lifetime, the BIOS will be completely irrelevant (unless it allows you to overclock better, which would surprise me).

Personally I would never rely on just one source when buying computer parts. Having said that, I admit those videos are interesting, since what every computer enthusiast has been hearing for some time now is Intel > AMD. A couple of things about those videos stand out to me as slightly odd though:

A) The number of games he's using...
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Looks really good.

One change I would make is go for an i5 + ASRock Extreme4 or something in that price range of motherboards (ASUS P8Z77-LK for example). Your gaming performance increase will vary from game to game, but in some games it will be maybe 30% or more faster on the i5.

If you really want to stick with AMD though go with a cheaper motherboard. The Sabertooth series is really overpriced, and you can get a motherboard with the exact same features for $80, or even more, cheaper.

Also are you sure you want a full tower? They're massive. I would only really recommend them for multi-videocard setups and/or proper custom water cooling loops. The NZXT Phantom 410 for example, looks very similar, and has very similar features, only in a much more manageable size. It's also $20 cheaper: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/nzxt-case-caph410w1 This is the sort of size difference between full and mid towers (obviously with different cases, but the dimensions/ratio should similar): http://www.empowernetwork.com/moneyneversleep/files/2012/10/a71253c7_cm17.jpg?id=moneyneversleep You can still upgrade to CrossFire or even 3 way CrossFire if you really want in the mid-tower.

EDIT: Looking at the dimensions, the 410 is not all that much smaller, but it's a bit thinner and not as long which is great for storage. The standard Phantom is an absolute giant of a case you've got to remember. It's also more well suited for air cooling, with mesh on the intakes instead of plastic as in the standard Phantom (which can restrict air flow).

M
 
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Thanks for your feedback. Yes I went with AMD because of the benchmarks I've seen it runs smoother with games I want to play rather than the 3570k Intel does. Also, what motherboard would you recommend? I want to overclock my CPU so I searched for a solid motherboard with reliability. And about the case, I have plenty of space in my room which will surely fit it in there. Won't that give the internal area more room for better airflow, or am I wrong? And lastly, should I consider doing CrossFire? If I save money I will be able to obtain another 7970 in about 2 months or so. Will that PSU handle one 7970? And how much wattage would I need for two?

Sorry for all these questions which might seem too many, and I wouldn't be surprised if you can't answer one or two, but you see I'm new to this stuff and I'm really interested in learning.
 
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I put together an alternative build, though reading your current comment about your CPU choice you may wish to revise it. I used a slightly newer NZXT full tower, but you could drop it down to a Phantom 410 to save money/space as needed.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Core i5-3570K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($220.98 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X60 98.3 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V LE PLUS ATX LGA1155 Motherboard ($129.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($67.16 @ NCIX US)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($69.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($139.67 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($69.98 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB Video Card ($453.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Case: NZXT Phantom 630 (White) ATX Full Tower Case ($179.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 620W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($74.99 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($19.96 @ Outlet PC)
Total: $1522.67
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-05-02 15:40 EDT-0400)

If you're not a fan of water cooling, you can switch the Kraken out for a Noctua DH14.
 
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Can you direct me to the benchmarks you're talking about, I'm honestly struggling very hard to think of a single game where the FX 8350 out performs an i5.

The amount of room inside your case will have no difference on the amount of airflow (you can have very good temps in for example something like the BitFenix Prodigy). What will make a difference is well positioned fans. As I said before the 410 has mesh intakes, which does lead to better airflow, unlike a couple more cubic inches of volume.

For CrossFire 7970s, with a 8350, I'd go for a 850W power-supply, just to be safe, and since you say you're overclocking. For an i5 you could get away with a 750W one, since the TDP is about half IIRC. I would strongly recommend against going CrossFire though. For 1080p the 7970 already pushes 100+ FPS across 95% of modern titles, so you really won't need another 7970 (unless you buy a couple more screens for Eyefinity). Don't think that you'll want to upgrade to CrossFire 7970s in like 3 years time either. There will be much newer stuff that will be much better at that point (quieter, not as hot, runs faster than 2x 7970s, doesn't drain anywhere near that sort of power).

If you still want to go with AMD, something like the UD3 from Gigabyte would be nice: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514 Granted it's not as cheap as Intel's equivalent Z77 motherboards, so the price difference isn't as much between a Sabertooth Z77 and say an ASRock Extreme4 Z77, but it's still a fairly reasonable saving.

@Jack $180 is an insane amount to spend on a case, for him he's really not gaining anything over the Phantom 410 (which is $100 less). The Gigabyte 7970 is generally seen to be better than the Sapphire one as well.

M
 
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As said, a downgrade is perfectly compatible with my build. I suggested the 630 because he was already looking at an NZXT full tower and the 630 beats the classic Phantom.
I disagree regarding the 7970. I've heard glowing praise for the Vapor-X model and not much at all about the Gigabyte. Not to say that it's bad, but it's certainly not a one-sided debate.
 
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OK yes sorry, I was perhaps a little hasty saying the Gigabyte is universally "better". What it is though is $60 dollars cheaper for the exact same clock speed. Given that it's likely to be a very close fight between the two (and I would like to see a comparison, since I'm the opposite and have heard a lot of praise for the Gigabyte, with less for the Sapphire) I'm not sure that 15-20% premium is really worth it.

M
 
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The reason I suggested the Sapphire (and bought a CrossFire's worth of them myself) was the Vapor-X cooler. Generally rated as one of the best GPU coolers around, in the places I've looked.

Edit: Realized this sounded a bit terse. I understand where you're coming from with the Gigabyte, and it's definitely better value for money. I just tend feel that it's worth the extra 15% to be sure of your GPU cooling.
 
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AMD FX 8350 vs Intel 3570K vs 3770K vs 3820
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu8Sekdb-IE

AMD FX 8350 OC vs i5 3570k OC Using an EVGA GTX 670
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4et7kDGSRfc

I really like Sabertooth's BIOS but perfomance-wise I might be wrong... So what should I do with the motherboards? It's a dilemma...
 
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Is there something specifically better about the Sabertooth's BIOS? Remember you're only going to be spending around 10 minutes maybe when you first set up the computer, and then an hour or two when you're actually overclocking it in there. For the rest of the 3 years or so of the computer's lifetime, the BIOS will be completely irrelevant (unless it allows you to overclock better, which would surprise me).

Personally I would never rely on just one source when buying computer parts. Having said that, I admit those videos are interesting, since what every computer enthusiast has been hearing for some time now is Intel > AMD. A couple of things about those videos stand out to me as slightly odd though:

A) The number of games he's using is quite limited, and there's a lot of overlap between the two videos, meaning the overall sample of games is like 5-6 titles: (Far Cry 3, Skryim, Crysis Warhead, Crysis 2, Trine 2 and ArmA 2 are the (fairly) modern ones -- I'm ignoring Black Mesa, since Source is a very old engine). Of these titles the i5 is better in Crysis 2 and Skryim according to his benchmarks. Like I said before, I never put all my eggs in one basket. The results between the two videos are even contradictory at points (in the first video Metro 2033 runs better on the AMD, yet in the second Metro 2033 is faster on every benchmark -- he seemingly quotes "new drivers" as being the reason, which given that CPUs don't have drivers, I find it a little strange).

B) He uses mid-range graphics (mostly talking about the 7870 here) rather than the usual CPU bench-marking strategy, which is to use the best GPU possible, so it has as little of an effect on gaming performance. This leaves him very prone to bottlenecking, esp. at 1440p, which in turn tends to churn out anomalous results (well perhaps not anomalous, but who games at 1440p on a 7870??). You might say well this "approximates a real world system better", which is valid and perhaps true (again no one would use a 7870 at 1440p...), but it doesn't apply to you, since you're getting a 7970 at the very least. There are other benchmarks with systems much closer to your planned one that would be better to look at I think.

C) He includes the streaming performance as a metric. Streaming is a very multi-threaded task (which is why the i7 is recommended a lot for streamers). Unless you're planning on streaming, I wouldn't take this into consideration.

D) On the topic of what games he's chosen, he says he prefers "independent stuff because they are less likely to optimize their stuff for Intel over AMD" (at least this is why he's included Trine 2/Black Mesa, though I think ArmA 2 probably falls into this category, since it's really just a badly optimized game all-round). This argument is completely backwards. Surely if all the big titles are being optimized for Intel, you should buy Intel, rather than buying AMD and saying, "well it's only because games are well optimized for Intel that I get worse performance". As a gamer, all you care about is the best performance on the titles you play, it's of no concern to you that your performance "should be better, if the game was better optimized for your hardware", the fact is it simply isn't.

Now let's look at the games where the i5 is faster:

Crysis 3 (close, but the FX has a lower minimum frame rate): http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crysis-3-performance-benchmark-gaming,3451-8.html

Total War 2 (and Skyrim, but we already know that it's faster on Intel): http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2012/11/06/amd-fx-8350-review/6

Batman AC: http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/pc-components/processors/amd-fx-8350-1110369/review

ArmA II (again conflicting results): http://www.behardware.com/articles/880-13/amd-fx-8350-review-is-amd-back.html

F1 2012: http://www.behardware.com/articles/880-14/amd-fx-8350-review-is-amd-back.html

Far Cry 3 (again conflicting results, notice though that this benchmark is using a 7970 -- which is your planned setup -- whereas the video used a GTX 670): http://www.techspot.com/review/615-far-cry-3-performance/page6.html It's only by 1 FPS compared to a i5-3470 (just a slower i5-3570K), but it does seem to shed some doubt on his benchmark where the FX had nearly double the FPS.

So that's why I think unless you only play Crysis Warhead and Trine the i5 is probably a better bet. There might even be benchmarks out there showing that these perform better on Intel too, you never know! My point is never rely on benchmarks from only 1 source. I've made that mistake in the past, and I ended up with a terrifically noisy graphics card.

I'm not saying the FX isn't viable, I just personally think that generally, across the board the i5 is stronger.

M
 
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Solution


Thanks a lot! With all that being said, should I go with an Intel instead? Also, what if video editing comes to the table in the future and I don't want to spend 300$ on an i7, the 8350 would be better at editing than the 3570k right?
 
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That really depends on the software you're using and how it's optimized. By the time software starts using 7-8 cores, the FX 8350 shows it's strength. I would say that media-encoding/productivity is one place where it tends to perform well, but "video-editing" is a bit too much of an umbrella term for me to really give you solid advice. Having a look at Tom's productivity/media-encoding tests, we can see that there is quite a bit of back and forth between the two, but I would say that overall the FX 8350 for the most part wins out: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-10.html and http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-12.html It's still very hard to say though. The FX is better in 5/8 tests, which would seem to point to it being "better" for these tasks. Then again, when the i5 beats the FX, it beats it good. Look at the iTunes encoding for example, the Intel is 33% faster, showing how atrocious the FX 8350's single threaded performance is. Exactly the same story with Lame. However when the Intel chip loses, it's seemingly only by 10-15%, which, unless you're encoding something that takes hours to encode, is not going to be noticeable. For me I'd rather have something that is mostly just a little bit slower, but is consistent, than something which is a little bit faster, but sometimes just straight up sucks at a task. Are there any specific programs you plan on using/tasks you wish to accomplish?

The thing is you're talking about such small percentage differences (mostly 10-15% either way) that you're not going to notice a difference 95% of the time. What matters is that when the FX 8350 does badly, it does really badly. This is almost entirely because of the awful single threaded performance, and the sad truth is that a lot of things out there are and will continue to be single threaded tasks. What you care about when you choose a CPU is not that it has a "3.4 seconds faster conversion time from X to Y", but that you trust that whatever program you throw at it, it will run it at a reasonably fast rate, which may or may not be the case when you look at the FX.

The i5 does overclock better as well (as in it gains more from overclocking, simply because the FX is already at such a high clock-speed, that the i5 has "more to gain" so to speak from the extra speed, and the Intel is a much cooler chip).

@Jack Thanks! It proved a worthy distraction from revising for exams... Oh dear.... D:

M
 
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Yes there are. Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11, Adobe After Effects combined with Photoshop though I need to point out that it's probably going to be REALLY light editing for school projects and gaming montage. And I will probably be recording gameplay at times with fraps. Also, I just did a quick search on google and it seems like games like Battlefield and future games are starting to manipulate more cores as technology goes. Doesn't that make it future proof?
 
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For light editing don't bother worrying about either one, even a Pentium G2120 would work I'd imagine.

"Futureproof" is one of the most misleading terms I think.

First off, this is purely speculation, just because 1 or 2 well optimized games got released this year, doesn't mean that's how things are going to turn out. Crysis 3 and BF3 tend to be referenced a lot I find. Crytek have historically released games 2-3 years ahead of their time (at least in terms of the hardware needed), so unless you're building in 2016, so it's not really an issue. They are designed as technological showcases, with a much higher emphasis on very good optimization than 95% of games studios. A lot of people also say BF 3 runs better on a higher number of cores, but you certainly can't tell from the benchmarks (might be different in multi-player): http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-13.html By that logic you should by a Phenom II X4! I would go so far as to say BF 3 is perhaps one of the least CPU affected games out there (at least single player wise).

Secondly since the consoles take up such a massive market share, games are built and optimized around them. I think the number of cores of the Xbox Infinity and the PS4 would be a good indicator of what the next few years of computer gaming will end up looking like (atleast the big titles), would it not? PS3: 7 cores vs PS4: 8 cores. Xbox 360: 6 logical cores vs Xbox Infinity 8 cores. Somehow I doubt that 1-2 cores difference will bring on a revolution in the way games are designed an optimized. I think what will happen is that PC games by and large will tend to be fairly lazy console ports, which really do favor strong single threaded performance, since hey, who games on a PC anyway? If PC sales continue to fall, it is certainly in the economic interests of a game studio to continue to produce games which aren't very multi-threaded, with probably something like 95% or so of people using a quad/duo-core CPU. You have to realise that people using more than 4 cores are in a vast minority, and therefore not as well catered for, particularly because Intel is so dominant at the moment. It's sort of a self inflicted cycle I guess, but you buying AMD isn't going to break the trend. I think this issue will be further increased by the fact that Haswell has no increase in core count. Why bother optimizing when 85% of the world is on Intel: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20121106225537_AMD_s_Market_Share_Drops_Below_17_Due_to_Market_Conditions_Competition_with_Intel.html ? It's a pretty mean approach, but economically it's what makes sense.

The take home message is that both are very fast CPUs that will likely be sufficient for whatever you throw at them. I just think that in the case the Intel would suit you better and be better bang for your buck (esp. as the motherboards tend to be cheaper/more readily available), but if you're well and truly sold on the AMD, I don't think it will let you down. You tend to get a lot of conflicting opinions on things like AMD vs. Intel. I think it's mainly because when people spend $200 on a piece of hardware, they want to know that they made the "right choice". There is no "right choice", only the one you end up taking (deep stuff I know). There are positives and negatives either way, and it's up to you which ones you place value on.

Bloody revision....

M
 
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Wow, that is some really valuable information right there! Since the difference is only about 10 to 15 bucks why not go with an Intel? And I will probably go for a cheaper motherboard that is. Is the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 good for overclocking? Any new occurring incompatibility issues? Thanks again, I really appreciate it!!
 
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Yep the ASRock Extreme4 is a fine motherboard, and definitely a hit with the overclockers (the overclock in my sig for example is with no voltage change, which is awesome).

No, everything will transfer over fine. The one change I would make would be fore $4 more I would go with some 1600Mhz RAM that Jack linked over the G.Skill Snipers: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/corsair-memory-cml8gx3m2a1600c9 (btw Jack you have 2 kits of RAM in your build, just noticed). Corsair LP is great RAM which unlike some modules is compatible with every CPU heatsink out there because of the Low Profile heat spreaders, and for only $4 it's probably worth going for the faster stuff for memory bandwidth bottle-necked games like Skyrim and PlanetSide 2 (I did some tests on PlanetSide 2, and there was a 20% or so difference between faster and slower RAM settings).

Otherwise you're good to go,

M
 
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