High-End AMD-Based Gaming PC
Five entrants were chosen to compete in this quarter’s High-End AMD-Based Gaming PC.
The choosing of this quarter’s AMD enthusiast system was a heated battle. But every battle has a victor, and in the end, g-unit1111’s Build smoked rival Mjmj’s No Microstutter AMD Rig by a single vote.
Congratulations to forum member g-unit1111 for having his recommended build picked by the Tom's Hardware community this quarter!
With a budget of $2,000, forum member g-unit1111 was making it rain over at Newegg. Naturally, any top-of-the-line AMD rig is built around the Vishera-based FX-8350, the company’s current flagship CPU. Keeping this octo-core chip cool and ready for heavy-duty overclocking is Noctua’s NH-D14, a behemoth of a heat sink that smashes all but the priciest liquid-cooling systems in thermal performance.
The choice of motherboard hammers home the overclocked theme of this build. As an enthusiast platform, Asus' Sabertooth 990FX has a BIOS loaded with every option an old-school overclocker could want.
While this build only has 8 GB of G.Skill Ares DDR3-1600 memory, additional RAM isn’t really necessary for gaming.
A pair of Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards from Sapphire brings a ton of graphics horsepower, though the motherboard leaves room for yet another set of cards.
The OCZ Vertez 4 acts as a 256 GB boot and application drive, while a 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint serves as a spacious-enough data disk. Keeping this collection of hardware running stably is PC Power & Cooling’s Silencer Mk II 950W 80 PLUS Silver PSU.
The entire build is enclosed in the iconic white NZXT Phantom 410. In a somewhat refreshing change of pace, g-unit1111 chose a Lite-On DVD writer for the optical drive.
When originally spec’ed out, this rig rang up to $2,006.84. The current prices of g-unit1111’s Build can be found in the BestConfigs shopping tables.
