Will my scorpius platform configuration work?

[timarp000]

will my config work?

mobo- asus crosshair V formula
cpu- amd bulldozer fx-8150 or 8170 relasein in 2012 Q1
GPU- msi hd 6970 lightning edition
PSU- corsair hx850
case- cooler master storm enforcer
CPU Cooler- corsair h100 (push-pull)
Hard drive- wd 2 tb caviar black and patriot pyro 60gb ssd
optical drives- lite-on bluray burner, lite-on dvd burner
RAM- corsair xms3 8gb dual channel


later a may go for 6970 crossfire


i want to stick on to amd not intel and possibly overclock bulldozer.

 

[megadelayed]

will my config work?

mobo- asus crosshair V formula
cpu- amd bulldozer fx-8150 or 8170 relasein in 2012 Q1
GPU- msi hd 6970 lightning edition
PSU- corsair hx850
case- cooler master storm enforcer
CPU Cooler- corsair h100 (push-pull)
Hard drive- wd 2 tb caviar black and patriot pyro 60gb ssd
optical drives- lite-on bluray burner, lite-on dvd burner
RAM- corsair xms3 8gb dual channel


later a may go for 6970 crossfire


i want to stick on to amd not intel and possibly overclock bulldozer.

this should be fine but if you are going to get the 8170 you might need a bios update for your motherboard.
anyway whats wrong with intel, their quad core i5 and i7's offer near equal if not better performance than bulldozer while using less power and if you buy the "k" cpu's you will also get a hefty oc on them as well

 

[casualbuilder]

What is your build primarily used for? Gaming, renderring, video editting, multi-threaded applications?

 

[timarp000]

What is your build primarily used for? Gaming, renderring, video editting, multi-threaded applications?

ill use it for gaming and movie watching but i would like the extra horsepower, i would like my pc as futureproof as possible

 

[timarp000]

this should be fine but if you are going to get the 8170 you might need a bios update for your motherboard.
anyway whats wrong with intel, their quad core i5 and i7's offer near equal if not better performance than bulldozer while using less power and if you buy the "k" cpu's you will also get a hefty oc on them as well

I considered the i7 2600k and its a beast in gaming but in the future my dad or myself might to some hd video editing and photo editing. btw, i kinda trust amd alot because my dad has an old 7 year old pc running on amd athlon 64 and no problems except hdd fail, its an hp a1129n. my dad uses it for his business.

do you think there could be any improvements in the config, to save some cash

 

[casualbuilder]

if you are going to buy a Bulldozer, save your money and buy an i5 2500k. It benches much better than even the 8150, and is roughly $20 cheaper. Go with either an Asrock/Asus or Gigabyte P67 GEN 3 board. a Pro version would suffice. should be priced at around $145. This will also hold the new Ivy Bridge cpu's, so later on you can upgrade if necessary.

Unless you NEED a silent setup, the H100 is unecessarily expensive, and can be substituted for a Hyper 212+ EVO if you aren't going to heavily OC everything, or stock cooler if no OC at all. Heavy OC i would recommend very good thermal paste and a Noctua D14. It is very quiet, and is one of the best performance coolers on the market.

Last thing is your SSD. If you want solid and dependable performance, i highly recommend you go with a Crucial M4. They are the best on the market right now, and they are a synchronous SSD, unlike most of the cheap SSD's out there that are asynchronous. This means that unlike most drives, they dont slow down until 80% capacity, instead of 50%. This is a huge benefit, especially with a smaller SSD like that 60Gb you showed. That will hold your OS and maybe a couple apps, thats it. I would recommend their 128Gb drive, that way you can write everything on there, and transfer over to your WD drive when it is getting near to capacity.

NOW, if you arent going to intel, as im an AMD fanboy myself, i would say the 8120 is the best buldozer chip out there for you. You may want to look at Asrock's 990FX bare bottom board though. I think it retails on newegg for around $140. Very good quality board. If you dont go there, ASUS' high end boards are my #1 choice. I highly recommend intel though for what you want to do. They are #1 for a reason.

 

[timarp000]

if you are going to buy a Bulldozer, save your money and buy an i5 2500k. It benches much better than even the 8150, and is roughly $20 cheaper. Go with either an Asrock/Asus or Gigabyte P67 GEN 3 board. a Pro version would suffice. should be priced at around $145. This will also hold the new Ivy Bridge cpu's, so later on you can upgrade if necessary.

Unless you NEED a silent setup, the H100 is unecessarily expensive, and can be substituted for a Hyper 212+ EVO if you aren't going to heavily OC everything, or stock cooler if no OC at all. Heavy OC i would recommend very good thermal paste and a Noctua D14. It is very quiet, and is one of the best performance coolers on the market.

Last thing is your SSD. If you want solid and dependable performance, i highly recommend you go with a Crucial M4. They are the best on the market right now, and they are a synchronous SSD, unlike most of the cheap SSD's out there that are asynchronous. This means that unlike most drives, they dont slow down until 80% capacity, instead of 50%. This is a huge benefit, especially with a smaller SSD like that 60Gb you showed. That will hold your OS and maybe a couple apps, thats it. I would recommend their 128Gb drive, that way you can write everything on there, and transfer over to your WD drive when it is getting near to capacity.

NOW, if you arent going to intel, as im an AMD fanboy myself, i would say the 8120 is the best buldozer chip out there for you. You may want to look at Asrock's 990FX bare bottom board though. I think it retails on newegg for around $140. Very good quality board. If you dont go there, ASUS' high end boards are my #1 choice. I highly recommend intel though for what you want to do. They are #1 for a reason.

I want to stick to bulldozer, i sure 8 cores will be more future-proof than 4 and intel is very good but at this stage ill will only be gaming. The intel 8 core may come in 2012 on ivybridge but im sure they will overprice the chip. AMD said that windows 7 will come with a new patch which will increase the performance of bulldozer, is this true?

Yes, i want a very silent setup because my computer is on always all the time so ill stay with h100 and i prefer liquid over air cooling. Can Bulldozer 8150/8170 clock to 5.0 GHz?

About ssd you are right about the 60gig ssd but i only want to use it as boot drive and crucial m4 128GB is almost 200$ which is not in my range so i though of ocz solid 3 60GB, is it any good?

the hardest choice is the case because i want usb 3.0 using 20 pin header. any suggestion? My budget is under 150.

Sorry for all the questions im new in this

Thanks for the detailed answer!!!

P.S:- I am amd fanboy

 

[timarp000]

EDIT: I might also upgrade ram to 16gb if needed. will it work or am i stressing the PSU?

 

[casualbuilder]

ok, dont go under a 60GB SSD. Windows 7 with all the updates and stuff will go over the 30Gb mark, or cause major performance decrease with all the things you will be putting on it. My personal suggestion, pass on it for now, and either get a 2nd 7200rpm drive to run RAID0, or upgrade to 10k rpm drives like a WD velociraptor. As far as the cpu, if you are going for gaming, dont waste your money on the BD. A Phenom IIx4 is the best chip from AMD at the moment for gaming. Gaming recquires 2-4 High Speed cores. They need to run quickly independently. FX-4xxx-8xxx run off of multi-threaded technology right now, and are terrible at single core performance. do you want to spend all that money on a sub-par gaming cpu? Lastly, cpu's really dont do a ton for gaming. So, with all that knowledge i just gave you, remember that cpu's dont run games, gpu's do.
Save your money for a better SSD, and buy a Phenom IIx4, as that will not bottleneck any 6xxx out there. Lastly, are you running triple monitor or single? This is huge as to what gpu you should be looking at.

 

[timarp000]

ok, dont go under a 60GB SSD. Windows 7 with all the updates and stuff will go over the 30Gb mark, or cause major performance decrease with all the things you will be putting on it. My personal suggestion, pass on it for now, and either get a 2nd 7200rpm drive to run RAID0, or upgrade to 10k rpm drives like a WD velociraptor. As far as the cpu, if you are going for gaming, dont waste your money on the BD. A Phenom IIx4 is the best chip from AMD at the moment for gaming. Gaming recquires 2-4 High Speed cores. They need to run quickly independently. FX-4xxx-8xxx run off of multi-threaded technology right now, and are terrible at single core performance. do you want to spend all that money on a sub-par gaming cpu? Lastly, cpu's really dont do a ton for gaming. So, with all that knowledge i just gave you, remember that cpu's dont run games, gpu's do.
Save your money for a better SSD, and buy a Phenom IIx4, as that will not bottleneck any 6xxx out there. Lastly, are you running triple monitor or single? This is huge as to what gpu you should be looking at.

At first i will run single but later i will switch to eyefinity. how is the phenom ii x4 980 in hd video editing and how does it overclock?

what if i buy a ocz solid 3 120gig ssd and a seagate barracuda green 2 tb drive for storage?

Im buying off tigerdirect. just an FYI

what is a use asus crosshair v formula with phenom ii 980 and later upgrade to 8170 when needed?

 

[casualbuilder]

Buy a 955BE, as they all OC wonderful. I have my 955BE OC'd to 4.32GHz at the moment, and its a freakin beast! no problems, and it runs everything. I only have a GTX560, but i plan on picking up a GTX580 soon, and selling the GTX560 in a build for someone.

 

[timarp000]

Buy a 955BE, as they all OC wonderful. I have my 955BE OC'd to 4.32GHz at the moment, and its a freakin beast! no problems, and it runs everything. I only have a GTX560, but i plan on picking up a GTX580 soon, and selling the GTX560 in a build for someone.

how is this?

mobo- asus crosshair V formula
cpu- amd phenom ii 980BE later will upgrade to fx-8170
GPU- msi hd 6970 lightning edition
PSU- corsair hx850
case- cooler master storm enforcer
CPU Cooler- corsair h100 (push-pull)
HDD- seagate barracuda xt tb 5900rpm
SSD- ocz solid 3 120gb
optical drives- lite-on bluray burner, lite-on dvd burner
RAM- corsair xms3 8gb dual channel

Is this better?

 

[casualbuilder]

again, everything looks good. I will say this, you are wasting your money on a 980BE. Get the 955BE. With OC, they clock the EXACT SAME.

 

[casualbuilder]

build is tight though!

 

[timarp000]

build is tight though!

how is the phenom ii 1100t or 1090t perform in vedio editing is there is no difference ill take the 955 and overclock it
Thanks alot...
anything i can inprove on?
pls let me know

 

[FinneousPJ]

I dunno, with the H100 the 980 will probably obtain a higher overclock than a 955. Is it worth the extra money, probably not.

 

[FinneousPJ]

Obviously in an application optimized for scaling beyond four threads an X6 will beat an X4 by up to 50%.

 

[casualbuilder]

IME, they clock the same, same chipset series. If anything, the 980BE might obtain up to an extra 100Mhz. Is it worth an extra $40? not a chance! Over 4.0GHz, its all about pride. However, if you wanted, the Zosma 960T is a GREAT quad-core chip, same price almost as the 955BE, and the same clock potential as it is a black edition. Only thing is it has the POTENTIAL to unlock to a 6-core processor. If you would like, this option allows you maximum gaming potential inside AMD, and allows you to get a 5th or even 6th core at a quad core price. Could make your system a best bang for AMD buck.

 

[casualbuilder]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103995&Tpk=zosma%20960T

 

[FinneousPJ]

IME, they clock the same, same chipset series. If anything, the 980BE might obtain up to an extra 100Mhz. Is it worth an extra $40? not a chance! Over 4.0GHz, its all about pride. However, if you wanted, the Zosma 960T is a GREAT quad-core chip, same price almost as the 955BE, and the same clock potential as it is a black edition. Only thing is it has the POTENTIAL to unlock to a 6-core processor. If you would like, this option allows you maximum gaming potential inside AMD, and allows you to get a 5th or even 6th core at a quad core price. Could make your system a best bang for AMD buck.

Presumably the market place for the chip is based on testing by AMD, the best chips obviously being 980s with the highest price. 955s are the lowest performing chips and are sold for the cheapest. What the practical difference is (especially at this point when the process is relatively mature) is anyone's guess.

 

[timarp000]

FX-4100 is cheaper than Phenom ii 980 and FX-6100 is cheaper than phenom ii 1100t
should i consider bulldozer 4 core and 6 core versions especially 6 core version?
and BD is 32 nm technology so power usage will also be less and cache is more on BD

and btw, im not on a tight leash with the money i can go to 2000$ or stretch it to 2100$ so id want the best for that price range and if amd wont work out that well now i can also consider intel 'K' sereis chipsif it makes a big difference but ill stick on to ATI graphics over Nvidia...
I will build the rig in april or may so theres no rush but i need a clear idea in my head

ive not done this before so i dont want to make a mistake and regret it.

 

[FinneousPJ]

Sigh, in April it's going to be a whole different story.

 

[casualbuilder]

haha, if you are not on that tight of a budget, and you are willing to move, then the i5 2500k is where you want to be. if you really want amd, i would get the Zosma 960T. It has a chance to unlock to a 6-core. 6-core's do not help with gaming, but with some of the other side things you will do, could end up helping a bit. intel's hyper-threading though will certainly outperform anything that a 6-core AMD chip does though.

As for the issue on "better chips". Yes factory the 980BE is clocked higher, but that is within AMD standards on stock HSF. If you want to be honest with yourself, the 955BE at 4.32GHz is not common, and takes a good case and a great HSF. However, 3.8-4.0 is achievable on it with a decent set of case/HSF. a 980BE might hit 4.32GHz with the same set up, or be lower or higher. Its all up to that specific chip. OC'ing is a total crapshoot. You never know what the chip will be able to hit. To pay more to get the same results on average (within 50Mhz) is absolutely ridiculous. To pay more and get better performance (i.e. intel i5) or to get more cores (i.e. quad core to 6 core) is a great investment.

My 2 choices are these:

Zosma 960T
i5 2500k

Best bang for your buck in either intel or AMD.

 

[timarp000]

Sigh, in April it's going to be a whole different story.

i can build in December during Christmas if i consider fx-8170.
and if i wait till april ill consider radeon 7000 sereis

 

[casualbuilder]

bulldozers are server chips. not recommended by AMD or any on Tom's for normal desktop/consumer use. Its a waste of money.