AMD FX Build - under $600 [Video Editing CS6 Adobe]

qzyxya

Honorable
Oct 10, 2012
162
0
10,680
I'm building a new rig soon and I want to be sure to get the best performance. I will be using it for mainly video editing (After Effects/Premiere/photoshop cs6) and 3d work (blender 3d) so I assume the CPU matters the most in this case. I will be doing a bit of gaming but I don't really care weather I can do medium or high or ultra settings, I just want gameplay to be smooth. I play Tf2, battlefield BC2, BF3, Portal, and assassins creed mostly (Will probably get more games in the future) at 1080p. My budget is around $500 but i can stretch it to maybe $600-650 if its really worth it.
What I've been thinking is the new amd fx 8 core processors since they are supposed to be better at multithreaded things (like video 3d work), but maybe I'd be better off with just a phenom x4 965 since its cheaper and then investing extra HDDs and SSDs and maybe a good video card and ram or something else.
Basically I just want to know some recommendations on a good build for me.

Is the 8120/8320/8350 worth it over the 4 or 6 cores? And how does the phenom 965 compare to it? What kind of graphics card should I get? I've pretty much decided on the gtx560 since its NVIDIA and supports the CUDA in after effects, but maybe I should spend the extra $50 on the GTX 660 with 3x as many cuda cores? Or would I be better off with a better CPU and a cheaper GPU? I am probably going to keep the monitor/HDD/windows 7 copy/disk drive from my old system but the mobo and cpu and gpu and everything are horrible and not worth keeping.

Could someone give me a good build around the fx 8120 or some goodfx cpu?

Would this be a good build?

Rosewill Challenger - $40


GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard
$109.99 (Or maybe the cheaper 970 for $80 is it worth it to get this 990 over that?)


GIGABYTE GV-N660OC-2GD GeForce GTX 660 2GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
$239
NVIDIA Gift PC Game Assassin's Creed 3
Item #: N82E16800999298
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
-$49.99 Saving
$49.99
$0.00

Could I afford to just get a $140 gtx 560? Not sure I really want this expensive 660

COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M2 RS620-SPM2E3-US 620W ATX12V V2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Full Modular ...
Item #: N82E16817171068
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
Protect Your Investment (expand for options)
-$30.00 Instant
$25.00 Mail-in Rebate Card
$119.99
$89.99

not sure about this one at all, could i get a cheaper one? How many watts do i need? ^


G.SKILL Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C10D-16GAO
Item #: N82E16820231558
Return Policy: Iron Egg Guarantee Return Policy
$69.99

Really cheap and I could potentially upgrade in the future to 32gb, lol.

AMD FX-8120 Zambezi 3.1GHz Socket AM3+ 125W Eight-Core Desktop Processor FD8120FRGUBOX
$160

I know I need to cheap out somewhere but Im not sure where.
 

butremor

Honorable
Oct 23, 2012
1,563
0
12,160
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor ($129.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock 970 Extreme3 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($84.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: XFX Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card ($231.98 @ Newegg)
Case: Cooler Master Elite 430 ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V Power Supply ($41.98 @ Newegg)
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-222BB/BEBE DVD/CD Writer ($37.77 @ Mac Connection)
Total: $696.68
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-11-20 18:02 EST-0500)
 

qzyxya

Honorable
Oct 10, 2012
162
0
10,680

Thanks, How would the fx 6 core compare to the fx 8 core? Also, could someone confirm that the programs I use can actually make use of all of these cores? Because if after effects can only use say 4 cores then I will have wasted a lot of money lol.

I don't think i'll need the gtx 660 since i don't care that much about gaming and getting the best graphics preformance (medium settings is fine and i dont need like 100+fps lol) Would the gtx 560 be a good fit for me? What about the gtx550 or 650? I am pretty much set on the nvidia graphics because of the cuda support, otherwise i'd probably go with a 6870 or whatever.
 
You are right in thinking you will encode faster with the FX processor

More cores the better , so the best option for performance is the FX 8320 .
Avoid the older 81xx processors if you can

If you are only using one graphics card then the motherboards with a 970 series chip set should be your first options. They cost less and perform the same .
Avoid the MSI models
 

qzyxya

Honorable
Oct 10, 2012
162
0
10,680

Avoid MSI models? Why is this? I found the msi 970 for only $60.
How would this build do? http://pcpartpicker.com/p/oxOQ
 

qzyxya

Honorable
Oct 10, 2012
162
0
10,680
I'm thinking that it might actually be worth it to get the 990 so that its future proof, in case I ever want to crossfire two gpus. Do you think i would ever want to do that? Would I just upgrade the whole build before I do that? The MSI seems to have some pretty good reviews and is a steal at $60, or looks like it.
 

oxford373

Distinguished
Jun 22, 2009
618
0
19,060

qzyxya

Honorable
Oct 10, 2012
162
0
10,680

Oh wow thats pretty bad. What board should I get then?
edit
I read on a 970 review that it did not work well with overclocking, and for a 8 core (they said 8350, pretty much same as the 8320) it would not work well. Could someone confirm this? If it doesn't work with the bigger 8 core fxs then i'll have to go with the 990, but maybe its just that single brand.
 

ckholt83

Honorable
Jun 27, 2012
468
0
10,860
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor ($179.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Xigmatek GAIA SD1283 56.3 CFM CPU Cooler ($19.99 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($149.98 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Galaxy GeForce GTX 650 Ti 1GB Video Card ($139.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Zalman ZM-Z9 U3 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Antec Neo Eco 520W 80 PLUS Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply ($58.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $585.92
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2012-11-20 20:26 EST-0500)


Motherboard currently comes with 8GB of RAM for free, would still leave you room to add more later if desired.
 
I like the original mb you posted .
The only disadvantage of the gigabytes is that they dont use a UEFI BIOS , but thats only going to be an issue for the first 10 minutes you own it .....and have to set things up using a keyboard up and down arrows instead of clicking with a mouse
 

qzyxya

Honorable
Oct 10, 2012
162
0
10,680
Is that motherboard worth it over this one? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128514&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=
I can just buy the 8gb ram with the money I save buying the other one. Are there any other reasons to buy it other than the free ram?
 



I think thats a very decent build for purpose and price , with the exception of the case .

The challengers reputation is based on the earlier [ no usb 3] model winning an award from Tomshardware . But that award was for being cheap . They commented it had cheap plastic and thin metal and wished they'd had $5 more in the budget so they could have bought an Antec 300 .


As current alternatives I would suggest
Antec One
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129181

Or the HAF 912
CM 430 elite
BitFenix Outlaw
But none of these have a front USB 3 port

The Antec 300 Two is also very good but its $70
 

qzyxya

Honorable
Oct 10, 2012
162
0
10,680


Not sure I need the front usb 3.0 port. I just chose that one since it was $40 and i saw some reviews and it looked pretty decent. How is the Zalman Z9 plus? It looks pretty nice. Also, this case looks pretty good too. I'ts a cooler master 690 ii, and has a bunch of stock coolers and a cool feature is a built in hard drive port on the top. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119216. THanks for the feedback guys.
 

ckholt83

Honorable
Jun 27, 2012
468
0
10,860
I recently did a build in a ZM-Z9 U3 and I was pretty impressed. You get a lot of high end features like dust filters, fan controller and temp sensor, cable management, etc. for an entry level price when you can catch it on sale for ~$50.

 

qzyxya

Honorable
Oct 10, 2012
162
0
10,680
What about ram? Could someone explain what the 9,9,9,24 thing and the 1333 vs 1600 vs 1866 vs 21 whatever is?
What speed do I need? Also is the GTX660 worth it over the 560? I don't really care too much about power consumption, only preformance (ie cuda)
 

oxford373

Distinguished
Jun 22, 2009
618
0
19,060
9-9-9-24 the abbreviation of this latency is CL9 which is stand for the CAS latency. It's the delay time(in clock cycles) between when a memory controller tells the RAM to access data in a particular section of the RAM and when the data is actually sent.
the lower latency is the faster,but no difference to be worth the extra money on lower RAM latency,1600mhz RAM also should be fast enough 1866 is 2% faster which you wont notice,it would be better to spend the extra money on better graphics card than faster RAM or lower RAM latency.
according to this, photoshop CS6 aftereffect use open GL and open CL
so you will be fine with both nvidia and AMD graphics cards.
http://blogs.amd.com/play/2012/06/22/worlds-fastest-gpu/
benchmarks for nvidia 5sries vs 6series http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1019643
Quote from this Q&A about photoshop CS6 http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1021085
( Also, AMD cards aren't supported by After Effects on Windows 7 correct?
That's not correct.
There's only one feature in After Effects CS6 that requires a specific Nvidia card: the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer. Every other GPU feature in After Effects CS6 works on AMD cards.
Details are here:
http://bit.ly/aftereffects_cs6_gpu )