The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Indeed, from what I've heard it's roughly 5-10%, such that the 4Ghz Stock Piledriver is the equivalent of about a 4.2-4.3Ghz Bulldozer, offering a total improvement of about 12% over the FX-8150. This brings the FX-8320 up to a broadly similar level of performance per core as the X6 1090T, just under, and allows it in a fully multi-threaded environment to compete with the i7 3770K in the same way as the FX-8150 competed with the i7 2600K. Anything less than full 8 thread support though, and it's still a long way behind. Status quo remains broadly unchanged with the release of Piledriver and Ivy Bridge, slight gains in performance overall and in performance per watt, but minimal gains in performance per clock. Intel's thermals have also worsened due to the cheaper construction of Ivy Bridge CPUs, whereas AMD's haven't, but arguably since the temperature ratings of AMDs are less 'accurate' and the thermal tolerance of the AMDs is lower, again, things are about even here.

The FX-8320 is of course, barely half the price of the i7 3770K, which is a significant advantage. As long as you use 8 threads, the AMD CPUs are bargains. Otherwise, well, you get what you pay for...

 

Originally posted by Mr-Movies: The Piledriver (AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core 4.0GHz native) from what I've read is suppose to be much better, if you wish to believe that. That is what I'm buying for my new build so time will tell. Of course I'll be running it on a new motherboard which will be faster as well so it will be tough to make direct comparisons, accurate, unless I compare on the same board setups. It will be nice to see truly how much faster the newly tweaked Piledrivers really are? I'd be surprised if it was by a huge amount on a single core comparison, at best my guess would be below 10-15%, more likely 5-10% probably. They've supposedly streamlined the memory controller on the new processors increasing performance dramatically, supposedly?

Glad to hear you figured out your problem Russ, what a bugger....

Stevo

Stevo,

The 1090t is in the 990XA-UD3, The FX-8320 is in the 990FXA-UD5. I have one of the newly tweaked, second generation Piledrivers. It was produced in November, and one of the first out the door, at least that's what the card that came with it said. What I see the problem to be with the Visheras is, diminishing returns start early in the OC with the Visheras. What I mean is the percentage of increase starts declining fairly quick, at about 3.7GHz with the 8320. At 4.0GHz. With the 1090t from 3.9 to 4.0GHz. Heat in the C/M RC-534+ was 1 to 2C over stock, so heat was a non issue. That was in the 790X motherboard. It took 1.424v to hit 4.0GHz in it. In the 990XFA-UD3, it's 1.296v, idling at 28 to 30C at 4.3GHz, it's 29 to 31C. The FX-8350 is good for about 4.5 to 4.6 GHz, but needs serious water cooling to go higher, has been my findings

I installed the new Arctic Cooling 120mm 600 to 1350 rpm, max 74 cfm to replace the noisy Corsair fan on the H60, which is supposed to be 1700 rpm, but spins as high as 1900 rpm. It's PWM too, and almost silent! Highly recommended.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186078

I've got the UD5, mostly assembled, but I need to route the modular wiring, the sata cables and the H60, and then I can fire it up. Saturday night probably. I'm going to rest tomorrow.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

What? And miss all this fun? LOL.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Some benchmarks, Stock 3.2GHz @4800 HT



Memory bandwidth, DDR3/1333 cas7 @4800 HT


Russ

 

I wasn't aware that they were upgrading the older processors to the newer Piledriver architecture but it makes sense that they would considering that they typically use one basic mask/die and tweak them accordingly for the different tiers of processors. AMD's biggest problem is the their memory controller so even with the refined new structure I'm not surprised you still have issues performing a higher clock level, it's always the weakest link that keeps you down, and that is an important one.

That is good to know and sounds like I should be able to hit mid 4's without water cooling and possibly 5GHz or close to it with.

I was looking at Corsair for water cooling but they didn't give me a warm fuzzy when looking at them, sounds like my feeling was correct. These are the fans on my list;

ARCTIC F14 PWM Case Fan $18~
AeroCool Shark 140mm Black Edition 140mm Case cooler $18
AeroCool Shark 140mm Red, Red LED Case Fan $19
LOGISYS Computer SF140 140mm Case Fan $11
Rosewill ROCF-11003 Hyperborea 140mm Case Fan $13

They've increased the 140mm fan selection since I searched for them last and there seems to be a decent selection now a days.

Here are cpu fans on my list:
COOLER MASTER V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler $48
Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 140mm and 120mm SSO CPU Cooler $90

And these two are for my MicroATX Desktop case HTPC build:
Noctua NH-L9a 92mm SSO2 CPU Cooler $50
SILVERSTONE NT06-E 1 x 120mm fan (optional) CPU Cooler $47+3=$50

Also I'm leaning towards the UD7 now and probably will go that route given money isn't an issue when I pull the trigger.

Sleep is a good thing trust me on that....

Take care Russ,
Stevo

 

Stevo,

I would seriously take a second look at the Corsair the H80. If you go for a high end video card or cards in SLI or Crossfire, the H100 would be your best bet, if you can roof mount it. It's a fact, hot air is lighter than cool air, and with the rad on the roof, almost all the CPU heat is in the rad, not the case, and the "exit door" is always open. That's the problem with most case cooling, is enough air to cool the CPU, and then getting that heat out of the case. It stands to reason that if the heat isn't there to begin with, you don't have to worry about removing it. What suffers the most is VRM cooling, because these large air coolers need both push and pull, with the rear fan of the cooler almost covering the vrms. The only mistake I made was in not mounting the rad,with the rads tanks side to side, instead of front to rear, with the hoses in the rear, to give me enough clearance for the top ram locks, so like a dope, I removed the locks. I've since rectified the problem by rotating the rad 90 degrees counter clockwise, with the hoses in the rear. That's what happens when you get tired! LOL!!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181017

Where are you getting the idea that I'm having problems with my overclock? I've never said that, because I'm not. The 1090t is not going to be overclocked at all, and pumps out right at 74,500 MIPS with the bare minimum of tweaking, and that's with 1333 memory. I will get the HT up to 5200MHz, once I figure out what I have to adjust to do it. Lots of new and better adjustments in the bios, in smaller increments than the older motherboards had. I'll figure it out, I always do! LOL!!

BTW, how about this memory for mine?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231539

I'm guessing I've found a winner.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I didn't say you were having problems persay with OC'n I was responding to the points where OC'n became an issue for you between air-cooled and water-cooled, then from that tried to draw conclusions, hypothetical of course, for what I might be able to do with the new 8 core. If that was wrong I'm sorry...

The Corsair is too noisy for my blood and I will go with a quieter version of it offered by Thermaltake and yes I can mount to the top or rear of my case in which I would mount to the top probably. The advantage of mounting to the back would be that the radiator would be outside of the case and if for some reason there was a leak if would be removed the electrical system. In fact I could install a drip plate as well which could be done internal mount or external for that matter.

Here is may solution:
Thermaltake CLW0217 Water 2.0 Extreme/All-In-One Liquid Cooling System $110
This solution is much quieter although it lacks by approximately 10cfm from the Corsair which I can live with given the much greater noise generated. And a bonus to my solution is that you can control it by provided software, a big bonus I think.

Although your memory solution is definitely a good one it doesn't meat my requirement of 32GB's of RAM so I would need 8GB modules instead of four.

I've been looking at fanless video cards thinking that multiple cards could make up for the lack of steams/cores in those cheaper cards but none of the ones I've found are SLi or Crossfire solutions so I guess that path gets chaired for now.

Keep up the good input Russ & thanks,
Stevo

 

Parts got here yesterday, PSU, cooler, fan. Going to the hardware store today to get my mounting hardware and get my side panel project ready to finish. Going to spray it with black, semi-gloss enamel, so should contrast the HAF's original finish nicely.

Photos to come in a few days

BTW the Hyper 212 Evo looks to be very good quality and is pretty heavy. Seems promising. No wonder they're so popular.

 

Stevo,

I might just change your mind about the Corsair, because of what I just discovered. The Corsair pump apparently has some intelligence. I ran 5 passes of IBT, fully expecting the temps to be the highest on the last pass, that's about 30 minutes with 8GB ram. I did some adjusting to the fan profiles in easytune before I ran the tests, and the results were, first pass 50C. Second through fifth passes were all 49C, ambient temperature, 75F/23C. That's the first time I ever saw the temps not increase, or go down, normally due to heat soaking, caused by heat migration from the CPU to the Northbridge along the electrical connections between the two of them, along with Video and Memory heat. The system temp stayed at 30C for all 5 runs. It never moved! Obviously there is no additional heat inside the case. the Arctic Cooling PWM fan at top speed is as quiet as I hoped it would be, making an already quite computer, even quieter.

BTW, be careful with that Thermaltake. The pump looks like the same one that was on the original Corsairs, and many of those leaked do to failed pump gaskets. Probably made by the same manufacturer, as the Corsair.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Just an FYI Stevo, Thermaltake measure their noise levels at around 5m rather than the 1m standard, so if you determined it was quieter by the decibel rating then you may end up getting a louder product.

 

db ratings are hardly ever accurate. The best way is to buy them and see for yourself. My twin Scythe S-Flexes are very reasonable at 1600RPM. Nice and subdued, though not inaudible. Some have said these fans are very loud due to the advertised db rating.

 

I feel you guys on being overworked. Have worked two 56 hour weeks in a row on night shift. Going to be three in a row after Saturday. Good money, but I'm soooo worn out. Bed at noon to be up in reasonable time so I can be at work by 10, which is an hour away. Luckily I work with some very nice people. My boss has been asking me to come in on these overtime shifts because nobody else can do my job. It's kinda nice to be a valuable commodity. The shift supervisors argue over me sometimes

Not hard work by any stretch, but a lot of time on your feet on concrete and a lot of working with your hands and mind. Can be taxing on slow nights. Basically, work in a shipping warehouse for catalog order food gift products. Ready-to-mail packages are scanned in to be put in trucks, and those that don't scan properly or aren't otherwise up to spec are dumped to me. I verify the package and either fix it, send it to be loaded, or send it to be re-wrapped. I run 1 conveyor, 3 sets of rollers, 4 computer screens, and 2 different radios. Again, not overly hard. Any of you fine gentlemen could learn it in a day or two. But taxing, and slow work orders make for a looooooong night. Best to stay busy, as time flies.

Okay pay, 401k, soon to be minor insurance benefits. But only seasonal. Christmas, Easter, Halloween. 4-5 week seasons.

 

I sure know the OT nightmare and no sleep because of back problems plus getting the house in order for Christmas, too much.

That's good to know about how Thermaltake measures, or cheats, like sooo many do to create their spec's. Standard should be 1 meter this is true in the audio world as well as a 3db measurements or F3. I typically stay away from Thermaltake PSU's as years ago I had all sorts of problems with compatibility and Intel motherboards plus they are expensive or were at the time!

Maybe I'll go with the Corsair after all and just use Easy Tweak or something else to control it.

Thanks,
Stevo

 

Stevo,

I still feel I owe Sam a 120mm fan. On my recommendation, Sam bought a Thermaltake "ThunderBlade" a number of years back. I had based my input on newegg reviews and mfg. specs (yes, I was that naive). When I installed mine in Oxi, I found out why it was named "ThunderBlade"! I tested it in the Anechoic chamber where I was working at the time, and it was something like 36dBA! It should have been called Model "LMF". :0)

Sam graciously refused my offer to pay for it. I've since developed my own way of interpreting outside reviews by weeding out the morons, and people who don't actually own the item yet. I just concentrate on the ones that have some actual knowledge of computers, logical and common sense types.

Looks like Scythe went belly up! Newegg and others have been out of stock of any model for a couple of months now.

Speaking of others, TigerDirect is being a lot less honest with their customers. They started stacking their reviews. Fred sent me a link for the OCZ Agility 4 AGT4-25SAT3-256G 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal SSD for $134.99 from TigerDirect. The majority of the reviews were positive. Open the Newegg link below and check how many 1 eggs. 29%, 16 out of 56 had major problems, which is what misled me when I thought my Intel had failed. Lots of complaints about not being able to install an OS on them too, on the net. Newegg is just as bad. They hire someone to write some of the reviews. I saw:"Great Performance and Reliability" on one. No one but an advertising person would write that! I mean, what reliability? You just bought it! ROFLMSOAO!! They aren't even smart enough, to cover the math, or maybe they think people are dumb enough, not to notice

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227808

In all fairness, Intel SSDs sell themselves by virtue of their extremely low number of 1 eggs, 4 out of 104. That's 3%! Yes it costs more, unless you catch a sale like I did. $187.05 w/tax and free shipping for two.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167121&Tpk=SSDSC2CT120A3K5

Before you even open the box, it reeks of quality, as the clever packaging does everything possible to see that the retailer's shipping dept. doesn't destroy it. I want to turn the 60GB Patriot Pyro into a cache drive for my already very fast WD 500GB Black edition, with 64MB of cache.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236345

All I have to do is figure out how to do it, as I haven't done it before. Any links or advice would be appreciated.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

You can add your SSD drive to the system and then point to it in Environment Variables just like you do in XP. You will need to change the User variables for Russ lets say but also make the change in the System variables too.

There are several ways to get to Environment Variables but probably the easiest using the GUI is open up Control Panel/System/Advanced Settings/System Properties/Advanced (tab)/Environment Variables... (button). In this same area you can also change your Page File location under Performance/Settings (button).

However for Internet cache you will need open Control Panel/Internet Options/Internet Properties/General (tab)/Browser History/Settings... (button)/Temporary Internet Files and History Settings/Move folder... (button).

This should cover most of the cache-able files for your system if I've missed something let me know.

I too am pretty good about weeding out the BS on customer feed backs and I think you're right that OCZ SSD's tend to have quality control issues, not all of the negative feed back was by morons like you stated.

 

Mr-Movies,

I didn't intend it to mean the all the negative posts were made by morons, I was just weeding the obvious ones out of the mix, and paying more attention to the rest.

Russ

 

Russ, Scythe USA have gone bust. However, they traded as a separate entity from the USA corporation. The main corporation in Japan however, continues to trade and manufacture products, so I'm unsure how this will affect Europe. As of now, plenty of Scythe stuff still in stock where I shop. Scythe claim they'll have another US outfit set up in the future, so the US not being able to buy Scythe products probably won't be permanent. Must be annoying though.

The Thermaltake fan I could live with the noise, as it was cheap (£3), but for the fact it failed altogether after a few months, becoming a short circuit (pretty nasty really, but I discovered it as at the time I was using an external AA-powered PSU for it, trashed a set of batteries, but oh well!).
If anything I more lament buying three Silverstone FM121s on your recommendation. Don't think for a minute I hold it against you or want anything off you, but nonetheless, a £35 expenditure versus the £3 of the Thermaltake netted me three fans that were powerful for their noise output, but very difficult to work with, and in the end one actually caught fire when being powered by a standard Rheobus controller. The second lost a blade when the loosely dangling separate rpm connector made contact at the full 2400rpm. The third is still about but since going with Slipstreams there's just been no need for it.
Not the only money I wasted on fans actually, I had some 120mm Noctuas which had a horrible 550Hz bearing noise which I couldn't tolerate. The best fans I've had have got to be the Scythe S-Flexes, they've lasted over 5 years and none have even the slightest hint of bearing noise, unlike any of my other fans. The slipstreams are nice, but the bearings aren't perfect at low speed, and one of the 6 had to be replaced fairly early on.

 

Russ, I was agreeing with you that not all of the feedback, negative, was by morons. Not that all morons gave negative feedback. I can see were that was confusing but again it wasn't my intent the way you took it.

 

Mr-Movies,

I think we both needed more sleep! ROFL

Russ

 

Sam,

As I recall, you plugged the FM-121 fan into your Rheobus controller direct, without the control rheostat. Unfortunately the electronics for the control rheostat were in the fan motor. That's why it finally went up in smoke.

Best Regards,
Russ