Legit Reviews

Well, the old Warmachine is starting to look like she needs an engine rebuild. While she's served me faithfully for nearly two years now it's time to rebuild.

Lately I've been devoting a lot of my excess cash to travel and tweaking out my new toy a 2003 Mini CooperS so my budget for this project isn't exactly as big as I'd like it to be. Fortunately I think I'm going to be able to reuse a bunch of my existing hardware this time around to get my rig off the ground. After talking to a couple of trusted friends I think I'm going to put off upgrading my GPU's and instead upgrade the motherboard/proc/RAM.

Currently I'm running a Core2Duo E6600 OC'd to 3.3G thanks to a massive Swiftech setup. This is running on an ASUS P5DH-Delux motherboard that I've had a love hate relationship with ever since I built this thing. While at it's core it's a great board I'm really growing to become tired of the ASUS Swiss Army Knife way of doing things. If I need a corkscrew, scissors, and a can opener it's great. What I really want is something to stab the enemy with. That's were you need a K-BAR. ASUS has this habit of cramming everything they possibly can into one board. This board has WiFi (never used), a remote (never used), some weird MP3 playback feature without booting (never used), eSATA (never used), etc.

So that brings me here. I'm ready to rebuild. I'm going back to AMD this time. And I need your help.

Here's the parts I'll be recycling into the next build:

COMPUTER PARTS
2 X PowerColor PCS+ HD4870 1GB GDDR5 GPU
2 X Wester Digital Caviar Black 640GB WD6401AALS Drive in RAID 0
Lite OnLH-20A1L05 SATA DVD-R/W
Corsair HX620 Modular Power Supply

CASE AND COOLING
NZXT Sentry LX Fan Controller
5 x Yate Loon 120mm High Speed Fans
Swiftech MCR320-QP Tripple Radiator
Swiftech Apogee GTZ CPU Waterblock (after purchasing adapter bracket from Swiftech)
Swiftech MCP-655 Pump
Feser One F1 Coolant (new)
Artic Silver Thermal Paste (new)

I have a Corsair Obsidian 800D case I plan to move all of this into that I've had sitting in my closet for about 9 months or so.


Here's my thought process right now. Bulldozer will come out sometime in the next year or so. If I buy a motherboard with an AM3+ slot I should eventually be able to a Bulldozer proc. I'm thinking if I buy a rock solid, no frills, overclockable motherboard and a decent proc (Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition) I should be good for another year or so. I've got tons of thermal management power with that Swiftech radiator so I should be able to crank that thing up to a full 4G or better based on what I've read. I think a 20% OC is being conservative.

So my questions are this. Do you think this is a good plan for gaining the best performance for the money? What motherboards do you like? Right now I'm looking at the GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 which Nate and CO haven't reviewed just yet.

With all the leaks about bulldozer coming out, I wouldn't be surprised if we see bulldozer by the end of the year or earlier. Once the leaks start happening the parts seem to come out shortly after. May wanna wait until then rather than buying the 1090t just to have the fx chips come out right after.

That's a good point. Either way I won't be an early adopter. Price points just to high for me. If I were building an entirely new rig I'd probably do that. But as it stands, I can't justify a couple hundred dollars on a processor that's going to really need a couple hundred MORE dollars to take advantage of by buying new GPU's and extremely high end RAM. Speaking of... RAM recommendations?

Well, I'm running 16Gb of G.Skill in my rig and haven't had an issue yet, and I have 6gb kits of Corsair Dominator for testing and my x58 system, as well as 2x4Gb kits of Corsair Vengeance that haven't given me any issues. I wouldn't hesitate to use any of those again

If you're building with the assumption of picking up a Zambezi down the road go for the cheaper X4. Unless you're doing a lot of video creation/editing now and want the extra cores. Make sure you pick up a Black Edition CPU so you can overclock the CPU with just adjusting the multiplier.

Ok, how's this parts list sound?

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 mobo
G.Skill Sniper 16GB kit (4x4 DDR3 1600)
AMD Phenom X4 970 Black Edition

My Apogee GTZ should work just fine for this proc, right?

16GB of RAM?!?!?!?!?! From what I've read the newer AMD chips benefit from faster RAM (i.e. 1866). You might be better off picking up 8GB of 1866 instead of 16GB 1600.
This is Llano but from what I gather it has a lot of similarities with the Bulldozer core. If I'm wrong then someone should correct me.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1652/1/

This is what I found on the GTZ.
http://www.swiftech.com/apogeegtz.aspx
That link shows it mouting on the AM2 platform. From what I can tell it's the same as the AM3+.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... 28howto%29
This is written instructions on how to mount it.

I've never regretted having to much RAM. It wasn't much more expensive to get 16gb than 8gb of DDR3 1600.

Choices for RAM are:

G.Skill Sniper 8GB (2x4GB DDR3 1866) for $70

Or

G.Skill Ripjaws X Series (4x4GB DDR3 1866) for $150


I'm thinking if I really feel like 16gb of RAM two sets of the Sniper series.

Well, you can buy one 8GB kit now and, if you feel the need for more, buy second one later.

My final build list is looking like this:

Core Components
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition
8GB G.Skill Sniper RAM (DDR3 1866 2x4GB)
2 X PowerColor PCS+ HD4870 1GB GDDR5 GPU
2 X Wester Digital Caviar Black 640GB WD6401AALS Drive in RAID 0
Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium
Lite OnLH-20A1L05 SATA DVD-R/W
Corsair HX620 Modular Power Supply

Cooling/Case Components
Corsair 700D Obsidian Case w/ Window Panel
NZXT Sentry LX Fan Controller
5 x Yate Loon 120mm High Speed Fans
Swiftech MCR320-QP Tripple Radiator
Swiftech Apogee GTZ CPU Waterblock w/ AMD AM2/AM3 bracket
Swiftech MCP-655 Pump
Feser One F1 Coolant
Artic Silver Thermal Paste


So just to confirm no one sees any problems using the lower end of the 990FXA series of boards from Gigabyte? I can't seem to find anything on the boards to justify the higher costs of the UD5 and UD7. Come on guys, pick this apart. I've not used AMD in a while. Should I expect to see decent overclocks from the Denib? I know the 1866 RAM is overkill for now, but when the new proc's come out I'd like to be ready for them.

Skippman wrote:My final build list is looking like this:

Core Components
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 970 Black Edition
8GB G.Skill Sniper RAM (DDR3 1866 2x4GB)
2 X PowerColor PCS+ HD4870 1GB GDDR5 GPU
2 X Wester Digital Caviar Black 640GB WD6401AALS Drive in RAID 0
Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium
Lite OnLH-20A1L05 SATA DVD-R/W
Corsair HX620 Modular Power Supply

Cooling/Case Components
Corsair 700D Obsidian Case w/ Window Panel
NZXT Sentry LX Fan Controller
5 x Yate Loon 120mm High Speed Fans
Swiftech MCR320-QP Tripple Radiator
Swiftech Apogee GTZ CPU Waterblock w/ AMD AM2/AM3 bracket
Swiftech MCP-655 Pump
Feser One F1 Coolant
Artic Silver Thermal Paste


So just to confirm no one sees any problems using the lower end of the 990FXA series of boards from Gigabyte? I can't seem to find anything on the boards to justify the higher costs of the UD5 and UD7. Come on guys, pick this apart. I've not used AMD in a while. Should I expect to see decent overclocks from the Denib? I know the 1866 RAM is overkill for now, but when the new proc's come out I'd like to be ready for them.

I wish I could help. The last AMD build I did for myself is the Phenom X3 w/ nForce 430. From what I've read it seems like the 990FX is a FX. Meaning that the only thing that's going to cost more (i.e. UD5 or UD7) is features. They probably have more PCIe lanes, USB 3.0 connections, internal SATA III ports, etc... The only recommendation I would make is to skip Gigabyte this round. After playing with a UEFI board I don't want to go back. I know Gigabyte is dragging their feet with that but I don't know if the board you picked has it. From what I've read the ASRock 990FX boards are way to go. You get just as much hardware as a highend ASUS board for 20%-30% less.
ASRock 990FX Extreme4
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157266
ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional - I think you're just paying for the Fatal1ty name here.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157267

As far as the Deneb goes you'll probably get around 4.0GHz. Seems like most of them hit a 3.7ish wall with air and a little more with water. But as O/Cing goes there's only one way to find out.