OcUK and custom system builds Steamroller vs. Piledriver

[disi]

A couple of questions up front and don't tell me to buy Nvidia (AMD fanboy)

I looked at your water cooled solution and couldn't really find the way I want them. Now if I tell you what hardware to use, could you put it together and ship it to me? I only built two water cooled systems in my life, the last one was with dual Radeon HD 4770 and it worked OK but looked awful. Saws and such are not the kind of tools I am good at.

Spending some time on this the last couple of days, I found you really need to choose your water cooling over the hardware you want. Especially the graphic card blocks are only available for a few manufacturers and models.

The following was my first idea, because I love new technology and dual graphics with the benefits of the APU just makes my ears ringing, plus AMD multitasking advantage.

AMD Kaveri 7850K 12 Compute Core APU w/ Radeon R7 Graphics (4 CPU + 8 GPU Compute Cores) 3.7GHz Socket:FM2+ £140
MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming Edition LE 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £230
Beast - 32GB Kit* (4x8GB) - DDR3 2400MHz CL11 Intel XMP £300
Gigabyte G1.Sniper A88X AMD A88X Chipset (Socket FM2+) DDR3 ATX Motherboard (is thei PCIe gen 3.0?) £90

£760

600W PSU £70
OCZ Vector 150 Series 19nm 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail (VTR150-25SAT3-240G) £170
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD20EZRX) HDD £70
Corsair Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Black £130

£440

£1200

Cooling Kit 280mm:
OcUK Tech Lab - V8 Turbo Watercooling Kit 280 - £220
GPU - EK-FC7970 - Nickel CSQ £100 (fits on R7? Could I downgrade to R7 for less problems with dual graphics)
extra tubing - £10

£330

£1530

The APU should not take much power, only one green HD and the single graphics card should be OK for a 600W PSU, if not less?
Water cooling for this system is easy, because you only got one graphics card and can easily build one loop for it. The graphics card is recent with blocks available.

At the moment I got an i7 2820QM in my laptop with AMD 6970M (original GTX 480M) and could someone tell me, if this A10 build would be similar or faster in speed?

I know there might be stuttering in the dual graphics mode or not available at all at first, because the R9 is faster than the APU. This can be fixed by software though and I trust AMD to get it working at some stage. I am absolute open to suggestions for other cards, which work in dual graphics with the APU and have a proper water cooling solution.

If the above is absolute crappy and will never work, I thought up another more conservative solution using CrossfireX:

AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 9590 Black Edition 4.70GHz (5.00GHz Turbo) (Socket AM3+) £240
VTX3D HD 7870 X-Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £150
VTX3D HD 7870 X-Edition 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £150
Kingston HyperX Beast 32GB (4x8GB) PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX21C11T3K4/32X) £290
Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 Rev 3.0 AMD 990FX (Socket AM3+) DDR3 £220 << not set in stone, looking for PCIe gen 3.0 and faster RAM support

£1050

600W PSU £70 (probably needs 800W+)
OCZ Vector 150 Series 19nm 240GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - Retail (VTR150-25SAT3-240G) £170
Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (WD20EZRX) HDD £70
Corsair Carbide 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Black £130

£440

£1490

OcUK Tech Lab - V8 Turbo Watercooling Kit 280 - £220
EK Water Blocks EK-FC7870 Full Cover Waterblock - Nickel £80
EK Water Blocks EK-FC7870 Full Cover Waterblock - Nickel £80
extra tubing - £20

£400

£1890

Both system ideas are with future upgrade-ability in mind. The AM3 and FM2 are both rock solid sockets and thankfully to AMD they don't change them with every CPU upgrade.

 

[Fulax]

What will this system be used for and what is your budget?

 

[disi]

What will this system be used for and what is your budget?

More of an all-rounder, there will be desktop apps (simultaneously), some development including compilation with GCC and others, rpg gaming with the most extreme probably something like Skyrim at the moment.

I didn't really want to go beyond £2000 with this and it should all be water cooled. If this is absolute out of reach of getting the system built, then I might be able to do some myself.

I also considered going with air cooled at first and then change to water cooled as an upgrade later, given all the water blocks etc. are available for the hardware. But again, getting the system built is absolute preferred

p.s. on top of the listed estomated prices does of course come the building/setup charge, which I don't know and therefore exclude from the setup.

 

[Fulax]

£2000 build with an AMD CPU makes me sad Nothing wrong with Intel, is there? There is an X79 build forming in my mind...

Certainly do not bother with an APU at that price - a dedicated CPU and a dedicated GPU will beat an APU with a dedicated GPU.

I don't know what GCC is, but I assume that's why you want 32gb RAM?

Would you require a monitor, OS, and peripherals in that budget?

 

[disi]

£2000 build with an AMD CPU makes me sad Nothing wrong with Intel, is there? There is an X79 build forming in my mind...

Certainly do not bother with an APU at that price - a dedicated CPU and a dedicated GPU will beat an APU with a dedicated GPU.

I don't know what GCC is, but I assume that's why you want 32gb RAM?

Would you require a monitor, OS, and peripherals in that budget?

GNU C Compiler, nothing but a tool to build binaries of source code and uses lots of processing power, preferred maximum to be done faster with it. In Linux I tend to do the compilation in virtual drives of memory. The current laptop has 16GB for example. It is also very nice to not care about the memory and they come in a bundle.

This is why I want to try dual graphics and what haunts me for months now, since A10 came out. To combine the iGPU with the dedicated GPU in a form of crossfire.

I love this built "Infinity Tesseract" Intel Core i7 4770K @ 4.7GHz Overclocked Watercooled Extreme Gaming PC:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-390-OE&groupid=43&catid=2474&subcat=2482
All they need to do: swap the CPU/motherboard and remove one graphics card?

No peripherals needed really, I still got my good old G15 and Acer 1716 monitor Soon to be upgraded but not important...

 

[Fulax]

A Kaveri APU can't be Crossfired with any GPU, just as you can't just use any two GPUs in SLI or Crossfire. Only lower end GPUs are supported - R7 250 and 240, I think I remember reading somewhere.

 

[disi]

A Kaveri APU can't be Crossfired with any GPU, just as you can't just use any two GPUs in SLI or Crossfire. Only lower end GPUs are supported - R7 250 and 240, I think I remember reading somewhere.

This is true and I am going back and forth on this one. A reason to ask in the forums if someone tested it yet. I read on another forum someone has the 6800k running with a Radeon 7990 in dual graphics, which is also not recommended by AMD.

I think you need to have at least R7 with Kaveri APU?

Like here:
R7 240 or R7 250(DDR5/DDR3) That's what an AMD official said,But There is a Youtube Video with R9 290x Hybrid Crossfire
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1979970/crossfire-a10-7850k.html

Many/most of the other cards don't have full water blocks like the R7 cards. There is one for the Radeon 7870, but it got released nearly two years ago...

//edit: now thinking about upgrades and future APU's. I already have mantle support etc. and with the R9 and the highest APU at the moment, the iGPU will slow down the dGPU. In the future I don't have to change any tubing etc. Just swap the APU against a newer one and over time they will be level. In the meantime I can still play every current title at good framerates.

//edit: Thanks for the inside Fulax, it made me thinking. The APU/GPU built is ordered now and I cannot wait to lay my hands on it to tinker around