Building my cousin a new PC. Need opinions.

PlymouthJoseph

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Okay, to start this off... I am doing a cheap build, so I will NOT be going with Intel. He will be playing games at 60FPS and not fussed about graphic settings. He will also be recording, editing and uploading videos. My current list for him is:

AMD FX-8350 (£140)
Corsair H80i GT w/ Noctua NF-F12 push fan (£96)
MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard (£90)
Kingston HyperX Fury 2x4GB (£30)
EVGA GTX 960 SSC ACX 2.0 (£160)
Aerocool X-Worrior (£52)
Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB SSD (£58)
Western Digital 1TB HDD (£41)
EVGA SuperNova G2 750watt PSU (£90)

Total - £757 (Rough estimate, only used Amazon.co.uk for my pricing)

He is a overclocking fanatic, and has already broken 3 CPUs and 1 GPU & 1 motherboard due to overclocking. I am just wanting to make sure that with this build, the MSI 970 Gaming will be okay for overclocking. I've read that the MSI 970A Krait Edition is rubbish for overclocking, and I currently cannot afford the MSI 990FXA Gaming, but if I could. Would it be worth it? It's another £27 and I'm struggling to afford this as it is. It's for this birthday which is on April 28th.

If there is anything you would change, keeping it within the price range, please tell me. And please tell me if you think it is worth the extra £27 for the better motherboard. Oh, and what is the Power Fazes for the MSI 970, 970A & 990FXA. Just curious for this, due to him breaking a old Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 I had once. (It was an unused PC, so I let him have it to do as he wished and he overclocked the FX-4100 and burnt out the Motherboard I think. He did manage to get the CPU to 5GHz on a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo)

Many thanks for taking your time to read this.

- Joe (PlymouthJoseph)
 
Solution
I would personally opt for the GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3P (rev. 1.0) over the MSI 970 Gaming. The GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3P (rev. 1.0) has 8+2 power phase and also has LLC which will give it a big advantage in overclocking and managing vDrop under load. As long as your cousin isn't looking to crossfire or SLI the GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3P (rev. 1.0) would be a better motherboard for pure overclocking. In fact the only thing a 990 board really has over the GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3P (rev. 1.0) is crossfire / SLI support.

PlymouthJoseph

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That is a good thing to keep in mind. I may get 4x4GB sticks if that is the case. Thank you.
 

PlymouthJoseph

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The first is made for the AM3+ socket while the second is for the older AM3 socket.
Go for the first one, as it is what your CPU socket is.

 

PlymouthJoseph

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Okay, that's fair enough... But other than that?
 
I would personally opt for the GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3P (rev. 1.0) over the MSI 970 Gaming. The GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3P (rev. 1.0) has 8+2 power phase and also has LLC which will give it a big advantage in overclocking and managing vDrop under load. As long as your cousin isn't looking to crossfire or SLI the GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3P (rev. 1.0) would be a better motherboard for pure overclocking. In fact the only thing a 990 board really has over the GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3P (rev. 1.0) is crossfire / SLI support.
 
Solution