Nick's AMD FX-8120 Bulldozer Build

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nick09

nick09

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nlck09
This will be replacing my current machine and I will be reusing the SSD in the the bulldozer build. After I confirm that the parts work I will be selling the current machine to cover half of my budget.

Now to go on about the new machine. I decided to upgrade since my current machine was showing it's limits with it's onboard GPU(CPU still good) after nearly 2 years of adaptions and use. So I am making a new computer to catch up with the trends and see how bulldozer is like. I will be seeing many improvements over my current Core 2 Duo machine which is overclocked currently @3.5GHz(used to be 3.8GHz for almost a month but made it 3.5GHz for heat and power stability). I will be getting most of the parts from Newegg on Wednesday and be getting the ATX Mini Tower on Thursday. I will be getting the FX-8120 CPU from Tigerdirect on Thursday since Newegg sold out on the CPU when I tried to order it all on Saturday. I have a limited budget due to the fact it is my Birthday/Christmas gift from my parents. So yes, as of the 15th of October I turned 20.

Now for the list of parts. The parts cost $678 in total with shipping. $17 of the total cost was shipping for only two items.

COOLER MASTER Elite 360 RC-360-KKN1-GP Black Steel / Plastic ATX Mini Tower Computer Case - $39.99
SILVERSTONE Strider Essential series ST60F-ES 600W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - $69.99
ASUS M5A97 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS - $99.99
AMD FX-8120 Processor - Eight Core, 8MB L3 Cache, 8MB L2 Cache, 3.10GHz (4.00GHz Max Turbo), Socket AM3+, 125W, Fan, Unlocked, Retail - $219.99
Team Xtreem Dark Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model TXD38192M1600HC9DC-D - $44.99
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD5000AAKX 500GB 7200 RPM - $39.99
ASUS 24X DVD Burner DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS - OEM - $18.99
ASUS EAH6770 DC/2DI/1GD5 Radeon HD 6770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 - $124.99

I will be updating this thread as I get the parts. I'm supposed to get a Antec Kuhler H2O 620 Liquid Cooling System in the mail but I don't know when. So I might not be able to use it in my system. If I was to get the water cooling unit I would set the radiator part on the top 120mm fan mount in the case and move the fan to the 120mm side mount to move the graphics card heat away from the water cooling unit and mount two 80mm fans to push air into the case to help bring fresh air to the water cooler.

If I don't get the water cooling unit from Antec I would use the Scythe ULTRA KAZE DFS123812H-3000 120mm fan as the top exhaust fan, Vantec Tornado 80mm fan as an intake fan, and an old 80mm Antec fan from an old Antec SOHO case as an intake fan next to the Vantec. I am going to move the included 120mm fan from the cooler master case as the side exhaust fan. The Sythe and the Vantec fan will be controlled by a Sunbeam fan controller hidden inside the case to bring the noise down to Antec's fan noise(which is very silent for the amount of air it pushes). I will be using this setup until I either get the water cooling unit in the mail or save up for my own.
 
I applaud you for going down the Bulldozer route. 👍
Can I ask, why did you chose the Bulldozer?
 
korza493
I applaud you for going down the Bulldozer route. 👍
Can I ask, why did you chose the Bulldozer?
Click to expand...

I believe his main constraints were cost and size. The size motherboard he needed meant that an AMD chipset with an FX-8120 would have been cheaper than an i5 2500k with a comparable motherboard.

When I was building my rig I didn't even look at the price of AMD chipsets, I based my decision purely on the processors (Though BD wasn't out at that point so it was a no-brainer).
 
Well a childish reason would be "A 8 core CPU is cool!" but I did it because I wanted to see how the bulldozer really ranks along with the i5-2500K(how AMD priced the FX-8120 to the same price as an i5-2500K). I have some benchmark results I made myself of a i5-2500K 6 months ago I will be comparing to the FX-8120. I also do some tech work as a side job myself and I would like to know how good a processor is. So I will be comparing the benchmarks of an i5-2500K with stock Intel cooler with aftermarket thermal paste to an FX-8120 with the stock cooler with aftermarket thermal paste to try to keep things even as I've seen many benchmarks that don't use a stock cooler that comes with the processors.

I believe his main constraints were cost and size. The size motherboard he needed meant that an AMD chipset with an FX-8120 would have been cheaper than an i5 2500k with a comparable motherboard.
Click to expand...

Very true. 👍

If I wanted to use the many features introduced by bulldozer I needed a 9 series chipset motherboard from AMD. I got a good ASUS 970 chipset ATX motherboard for $99.99. So I was limited to an ATX sized motherboard and bought the Cooler Master case since it was the smallest sized computer case that would accept an ATX sized motherboard.
 
There are currently no Micro-ATX motherboards with a 9 series chipset and AMD never mentioned anything from their website about bulldozer support on a 7 or a 8 series chipset motherboard.
 
Yes, I wanted to make sure I could make full advantage of bulldozer when I have the system up and running.

Edit: Well got most of the parts for my bulldozer PC Build and I will have to wait for the computer tower and the FX-8120 CPU to come in the mail. Decided to make videos of the parts I got in the mail since I was too lazy to take lots of pictures. Currently compressing videos for upload right now.

Edit2: Videos are uploaded:







Took quite a while to upload those videos after compressing them! I'm going to get the computer tower and the processor in today so I'll be making a video of that and a video when I get everything setup in the case.
 
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That's pretty cool Nick! Those heatpipes on the 6770 are MASSIVE! I'm looking forward to the CPU unboxing! You kinda sound like you're about to cry in the videos for some reason...
 
Sorry for a double post but I got updates on my videos:




Been trying to get the 1600 clock on the ram but the closest I can get is 1496MHz. I'll be running some games and I will be compiling some benchmarks together(gonna photoshop them together!).
 
bergauk
Typically they do. You want to try to get stability out of the machine before you try to get benchmarks out of it.
Click to expand...

Stability? I doubt he will overclock that in such a small case, especially with a stock cooler.
 
Not if I got a Water Cooling unit in the mail today? I finally got my unit of the Antec H2O 620 water cooling in the mail from winning it from Tweaktown. Uploading video as I type. Also my stock cooler runs at 30C idle and 50C load while compressing videos with handbrake(using all 8 cores).
 
Well I did say I would include it if I got it in the mail in the first post. Plus Nissan sometimes you have to fiddle with the settings to get memory back to advertised values. I'm having problems with this right now. Can't get more than 1496Mhz on the RAM. It's supposed to be able to do 1600. I could use help in this.
 
Have you tried adjusting the RAM timings? RMA it? I set my freq. to Auto, since I have tight RAM timings.
 
Auto just sets the dimms at 1333. Last I checked the 1600MHz profile just crashed the computer.

Edit: The video is up. Enjoy, you get a sneak peek to the PC.
 
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NissanSkylineN1
Wouldn't you just RMA it?

Watercooling? Woah, that's new news! Well, reach for the skies!
Click to expand...

That is only the case if something is defective really. Sometimes getting the drivers and OS and all that fun stuff to work together optimally, and then work with the benchmark software, can take a bit of fiddling.
 
It wouldn't be a driver problem though.. I mean doesn't the BIOS tell you what speed it runs at?

..Driver installation is awesomely fun, because it makes you think your computer is going to go even faster.
 
NissanSkylineN1
It wouldn't be a driver problem though.. I mean doesn't the BIOS tell you what speed it runs at?

..Driver installation is awesomely fun, because it makes you think your computer is going to go even faster.
Click to expand...

Umm... What?

Stability has far more related to it than just whether the CPU is running at a stable speed for the cooling...
 
No, I was responding to your previous post.

Azuremen
That is only the case if something is defective really. Sometimes getting the drivers and OS and all that fun stuff to work together optimally, and then work with the benchmark software, can take a bit of fiddling.
Click to expand...

Also, I never really mentioned that it only is stable due to heat. In fact there are other things that can give a bigger effect on stability than heat.
 
nick09
Well I did say I would include it if I got it in the mail in the first post. Plus Nissan sometimes you have to fiddle with the settings to get memory back to advertised values. I'm having problems with this right now. Can't get more than 1496Mhz on the RAM. It's supposed to be able to do 1600. I could use help in this.
Click to expand...

Tweak the voltage?
 

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