Dragon Slayer AMD Gaming/School Rig

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2m8Vn


Added a cooler.
Better ram.
You should overclock.
A good overclock can almost get you 9590 speeds

Yeah, watercooling would be better.
But good air cooling would be sufficient.

if its about 6 months.... these parts can completely change.

all you can do this early is start to get a few ideas on whats out there

if you plan on OC i would NOT use that case.

i would use something with no less than 120mm fans. no need for 80mm fans in this day and age for pc cases. they are louder and move less air.

also having fan slots on the bottom are ideal in case you wanted to add some.

i'd personally find another case which worked a bit better...

generally.....

FRONT - intakes
REAR - exhausts
LEFT (side the window is on) - intakes
RIGHT - nothing (since this is where the mobo sits)
TOP - exhausts
BOTTOM - intakes

generally there are two ways to mount psus.

1) for top fan or end fan psus to have the fan on the inside of the case pulling air outside the case to the rear. the psu is sucking hot air but doesnt have to deal with as much dust or debris.

2)having the psu inverted (upside down) sucking air from the bottom of the case and pushing it out the rear. the psu gets cooler air but has to deal with dust and debris unless you use a fan filter. also the case would need to be designed for this.

honestly neither is really any better than the other... but if you fix the dust issue the second is likely the way i would go if possible. if not then the first would also work.

remember that some atx cases will take a matx board.

perhaps look at some of the cases from corsair

this isnt to say that you could not use the case you had picked out. its just always nice to have some extra fan slots.

the prodigy m isnt a terrible looking base but the airflow is backwards on them..

being completely honest here... its completely possible to even fit such a build into a case like the cougar spike which is tiny. a few concessions of course.... but possible.

anyways just have a look around see if you can dig up anything.

concessions:

1x120 front intake, 2x120 side intake
1x120 rear exhaust, psu exhaust.
pretty much no bottom or top vents so i'd use some half decent fans in there. honestly... in a case that compact there isnt much you can do (i think its even smaller than the prodigy m by quite a bit).

temps will be higher than a mid tower case. the larger the case and the more fans you have the lower the temps will be. you can offset this by adding some higher cfm fans at the expense of a little noise.

you need a fully modular psu. no room for all the extra cables in non-modular.

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the phenom case has the same general airflow pattern as the prodigy m (which is backwards.... air flows downwards) as well as having sli become an issue because it blocks the optical drive port and blocks you from using fans up top.

the phenom or prodigy m arent terrible cases if you take this odd airflow into account by using stronger fans since you are working against natural thermodynamics. one good thing is that the gpus suck cool air.

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what are your thoughts on the corsair 540?

its smaller in height but wider.

overclocking and sli are better supported and it has better airflow.

probably twice as wide as the spike case though.

i already looked up the CM HAF XB

cooling isnt terrible... but the mesh makes it look even cheaper build quality than the spike.

it does have convenient carry handles...

one thing i can see which *might* be an issue is how there is something (drive cage?) rather close to the psu. this may make cable routing a bit irritating unless it is removeable.

personally i'd probably take the 540 over it... but the design of the xb isnt too bad for cooling considering the size. your call.. there are other cases of course as well.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($198.98 @ OutletPC)
how crazy did you want to try and overclock this? if only to 4.4ghz or so i would go with a fx-8320 instead and save cash since that is what a 8320 typically overclocks to unless you get a lucky chip. the 8350 tends to be able to go up to 4.7/4.8 but its also still luck (highest i've seen was 5.5 but thats luck and crazy cooling).

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 240M 86.2 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($69.99 @ Newegg)
the nzxt kraken x60 is likely a more powerfull and better cooler http://www.anandtech.com/show/6916/cooler-master-seidon-240m-and-12-more-coolers-the-retest-and-megaroundup/6


Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3-1866 Memory ($154.99 @ Newegg)
is there a reason why you went with 4x4 instead of 2x8? basically this eliminates your ability to add in more ram later on. are you stuck on using gskill? my choice would be either corsair or mushkin myself.

Storage: Sandisk 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk ($69.99 @ TigerDirect)
the only brands i personally trust are samsung and intel. also i'd suggest giving yourself a 250gb (something like the evo would work and its not too expensive)


Storage: Western Digital VelociRaptor 600GB 2.5" 10000RPM Internal Hard Drive ($115.78 @ Amazon)
i dont see a need for a velociraptor. it makes more sense to put programs onto a larger ssd drive so they run faster and just use a 7200rpm 1tb drive for backup purposes. less heat, less noise, cheaper and wd blacks have 5 year warranty.


Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 270X 2GB Video Card ($215.91 @ Newegg)
while this most certainly would work for the current games you play i would suggest a 280x instead if you want to play some of the really hard hitting titles on very high/ultra.

Case: Cooler Master HAF XB EVO ATX Desktop Case ($100.00 @ NCIX US)
we discussed this. personally i think the corsair 540 gives you more options so that would be my recommendation but the xb is doable if you wanted to go that route. keep in mind the corsair case isnt really "bigger" its only 3/8" wider and 1 3/8" deeper which isnt much of an issue. considering it offers 2x140 front (or 3x120), 2x140 top (or 2x120) and 1x140 rear (or 1x120) it has superior cooling capacity over the xb.

Case Fan: Cooler Master Blade Master 76.8 CFM 120mm Fan ($8.99 @ NCIX US)
Case Fan: Cooler Master Blade Master 76.8 CFM 120mm Fan ($8.99 @ NCIX US)
Case Fan: Cooler Master Blade Master 76.8 CFM 120mm Fan ($8.99 @ NCIX US)
Case Fan: Cooler Master R4-MFJR-07FK-R1 110.0 CFM 200mm Fan ($15.98 @ OutletPC)
i would go with 140mm fans on the other case. more or equal airflow at less noise. edit: well other than the 200mm which is fairly silent. however 200mm is an odd size and there arent many options in that range.

Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Gold Evolution 750W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($137.98 @ Newegg)
i would go with a seasonic psu or xfx (which is made by seasonic). 750w though higher than what you need gives a nice big headroom for future expanding. i agree with fully modular and if you can get gold+ all the better.


Optical Drive: Pioneer BDC-207DBK Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($49.98 @ OutletPC)
this works


Other: Motherboard:::ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS AMD 760G Motherboard - Micro ATX, AMD 760G Chipset, 1866MHz DDR3 (O.C.), SATA 3.0 Gb/s, RAID, 8-CH Audio, Gigabit LAN, Hybrid CrossFire, AMD FX Ready ($59.99)
your choice. i had the /usb3 model used in other builds and this appears similar.

Other: short PSU cables ($24.99)
do you really need this?


Total: $1241.53
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-19 10:50 EST-0500)

while true that ssd drives have a certain life expectancy... it is also true that they are not all the same. there was a community test done and every single brand except intel and samsung failed against the MTBF (mean time before failure) ratings they were listed at. both intel and samsung in general exceeeded such listings. also... unless you are writing excessive amounts of data to the drive you arent likely to burn it up at all. going with a larger drive that what you need also means that you arent as succeptible to wearing it out. i'm on my 4th ssd and i've never had a problem and i use photohop, office, windows, games and i do some file conversions and some basic video editing all of which use temp files. unless you are a serious power users its not an issue.



2x 270x $410 1x 280x $320 .... $90 more for barely any improvement at all. keep in mind that crossfire can work against you in certain games and give you lower scores. its always better to go with a single stronger card than crossfire if you can help it. yes you could always add in another 280x in the future if you wanted too.

best airflow pattern is 2x140 front input, 2x140 top output 1x 140 rear output. you will want to run the front fans faster or use more cfm fans since you want positive pressure. i would suggest using a fan controller myself. your choice though.

yes but i'm saying that the seasonic brand is considered the most reliable. xfx is made by seagate. honestly reliability is #1, everything is secondary. you will probably be getting a fully modular psu anyways. i wouldnt worry about cable lengths as with the corsair 540 you can tuck them in the side compartment. if you are worried about extra cables or multiple headed cables... there are cables you can buy which have less connectors.

personally i would go with windows 7. i'm at 3% cpu usage and 2.21gb ram usage just browsing the forums here with 3 tabs open. thats not much at all. i've heard that windows 8.1 isnt nearly as bad as 8.0 but it still not that great. i've used windows 8 since my brother has it on his g75 laptop and since i'm the resident pc guru i get stuck fixing everyones computer. i absolutely hate windows 8 since it is such a pain to work with. its even worse of a switch than windows 7 was from xp. my opinion of course.

you're right you probably could have gone with cheaper parts like we discussed but what you picked out does work.

only two things i'd like to point out...

a caviar black hard drive has a 5 year warranty. the blue only has a two year. might be worth an upgrade if you care about such things.

technically you will have two extra 140mm fans. the x60 comes with two (not sure on the performance of them though) they wont match the other ones though (which are solid black) so you may just want to keep them as spares?

other than that... i think we covered everything.

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Daffa/saved/3bUW

I don't include an eight cores CPU because most of demanding games right now only uses four cores, but you can upgrade the CPU later if you want more power (but I think six cores are enough).