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Crossfire V + AMD FX 8150 + What parts next ???

JAYuill
Level 7
Hey

Anyone out there able to help.

I got a Crossfire V Formula MB + AMD FX-8150 for £300 together.

Q1. If i put 32GB (4x 8GB) of Ram in the 4 DIMM slots. I heard the MB default speed is only 1333 with full capacity. Does that mean i can only get 2133 is by loading 2x 8GB or possibly with 4x 4GB.

Q2. I still have decided which Graphics Card to get between 680 GTX or go for older 580 GTX. The reason is will i be able to unleash the full power of 680 GTX through the PCIe 2.0 or better going for old 580 GTX.

Q3. Does anyone have much idea on how the Corsair Accelerator Cache Drives effect Gaming Proformance. I'm so confussed I have 3 idea floating in my head.

a)120 GB SSD SATA III + 750+ GB Normal HDD SATA III 64MB Cache
b)120 GB SSD SATA III + Seagate 750GB MomentusXT Hybrid SATA III 32MB Cache
c)120 GB SSD SATA III + (60GB Corsair Accelerator Series, 2.5" SATA II Cache Drive + 750+ GB Normal HDD SATA II/III)

I have no idea what one to pick as each as has advantages and disavantages.

Q4. I'm not sure what the min Watts I will need from PSU. Which is a stupid question as depends on set up and what I overclock to but don't want to buy 1500 Watt PSU when i could have 850 Watt PSU. Also not sure what brand to take buy as i know Corsair and Enermax have worked well for me in past but they are more expensive models.

I'll ask the rest of the questions later for minor tweeks and Overclocking once i've decide my core parts.
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19 REPLIES 19

loli
Level 7
I put a 1200w PSU in mine, which is running similar setup as yours (CHVF + 8150) because I plan on playing with overclocking. You should always over-spec your power supply because going under-spec is the last thing you want to do.

If you plan on doing no overclocking then I'd recommend a 1000w Corsair Pro series as they have awesome efficiencies.

Don't go cheap on a PSU or it will likely end up costing you, a generic 1000w PSU will run on multiple 12v rails, whereas the one I have (1200w) just has 1 fat rail.

Also if you're looking at cooling I'd jump on EK blocks while theyre still in stock as you can still at the time of posting pick up the full north block (VRM/MOSFET & Northbridge chip) cooler that replaces the ROG heatsync and the waterblock for the CPU to match, but thats only if you want to watercool.

If you're going with the 8150 then be careful what ram you buy, as I've heard especially when fiddling with overclocking, using RAM with a higher voltage than 1.5v can damage the chip, but I don't have personal experience in it so have no idea how true that is.

If you want to be running a heavy graphics card I'd suggest not going less than 1000w in a PSU and going for a Corsair Pro series one at that for efficiency, plus theyre fully modular so epicly tidy in the case.

Can't answer your Q5 though, sorry...

Here's my CHVF & 8150 if you want a bit of inspiration 🙂 (the one in the silver case) http://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?261-New-member-Introduce-yourself-here.&p=84351&viewfull=1#...

Syber
Level 8
As loli said, dont cheap out on the psu. look for reliable brands like Corsair, Coolermaster,XFX etc. But if you are planning to run a single 580 or 680, a 700W psu is fine. 1000W is fun and all, but then get it if you are going to run SLI

on the ram it doesnt matter, if you decide on 2x8gb then put them in slot 1+3 or slot 2+4 otherwise the 4x4gb go in all slots and there is no performance difference if it is the same speed and latency etc.
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The Choice Of Champions - Asus ROG.

Yeah, So a 1000+ Watt PSU is minimum requirement from a know brand.

The reason I ask about the RAM and GPU is bandwidths. I read the Crosshair V Formula manual and it says the Memory speeds are dependent on CPU as older AM3 CPUs won't be able to run 1600+ MHz. It's irrelevent to me as i'll be using FX-8150 which is AM3+. I'm trying not to confuse but does that mean I can install 32 GBs of RAM and push expected operating range of say 1866/2133. Most resellers say that 32GB packs are designed for Intel X79 mobos and that recommended I follow user guide which doesn't recommend anything bigger than 16GB at time of publishing. I don't want to fork out for £400+ on 32GB 1866 MHz and have it not stable or worse under preform when i could have paid £150 for 16GB 2133 MHz.

I don't know if i should ask on Nvidia Forums about 680GTX bandwidth but i'll ask here first. Is it true that PCIe 3.0 has a 8GT/ S while PCIe 2.0 has 5 GT/S so does that mean a 680 GTX will under preform on my Crosshair V board while strangely Nvidia post a Graph saying 590 GTX sets higher benchmark than a 680 GTX in 3D Mark

http://www.geforce.co.uk/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-680/performance

HiVizMan
Level 40
The current Gen2 PCIe lanes are not nearly max'd out with the 680GTX nor the HD7970 so it really makes no difference to be blunt. You and I will never be able to notice real world (or in game) difference based on what I personally have seen.
To help us help you - please provide as much information about your system and the problem as possible.

Cheers for all the advice. I think I know what to get or look for

Memory - 16GB (4x 4Gb) 2133Mhz
Graphics - Nvidia 680 GTX
PSU - £200+ "Brand" PSU
1st Hard Drive = 120GB SSD SATA III
2nd Hard Drive = Still deciding
Case = Depends what I get given
Cooling = Depends on the case
Extras = ???

Myk_SilentShado
Level 15
You can try running running a PCIe 3.0 card on the board, but it won't work at it's full potential because the board doesn't support that Gen of PCIe. And you may aswell save yourself some money and just get some 1866 MHz RAM rather than the 2133 as the CPU isn't capable of supporting anything further than 1866MHz RAM.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/processors/amdfx/Pages/amdfx-model-number-comparison.aspx

From what I've read, you won't notice much with OC ram anyhow in gaming.

I can tell you though, 1000 watts is way more than you need. You might still want it if you go SLI but I think most people vastly over estimate their power draw.

I have a Cyberpower 1350 which can display power draw and my system maxes out at 450 watts (my earthwatts 650 should be around ~80% efficient so that's about 360 watts of actual system power use). I have a Gigabyte Super Over Clocked GTX 580, an AMD 940 OC'd to 3.6 GHz on an older Gigabyte GA-MA770 board with 4 hard drives, 1 SSD, 1 DVD-RW and 5 case fans (including 2 in my Noctua D14).

Get an Corsair Ax850 and save some money.

An SSD really doesn't affect gaming performance as in FPS. It makes games load up in 3 seconds vs 15 seconds. I've got a Sandisk Extreme 120 as my boot drive and even downgraded to SATA 2 speeds (~250 Mb/s) it's flaming fast.

Myk SilentShadow wrote:
You can try running running a PCIe 3.0 card on the board, but it won't work at it's full potential because the board doesn't support that Gen of PCIe. And you may aswell save yourself some money and just get some 1866 MHz RAM rather than the 2133 as the CPU isn't capable of supporting anything further than 1866MHz RAM.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/processors/amdfx/Pages/amdfx-model-number-comparison.aspx


Just wanted to clarify some of what you posted.

1: FX chips do not "OFFICIALLY" support over 1866, but they are completely capable of operating memory at much higher speeds, north of 2400, some as high as 2650ish. How high you can push ram has to do with so many variables that you cannot simply say "it wont work", because to be frank, it will, unofficially.

2: The PCIE 3.0 cards WILL work at their full potential as long as the PCIE 2.0 bus can feed them at the rate they are consuming data. 16x PCIE 2.0 does this fine for 7970 and 680 when setup as single card solutions and you absolutely will not notice the difference on a 2.0 16x vs 3.0 PCIE board all else being equal.

There is documentation of both of these points everywhere on the internet to support both points. Advertising propoganda parroting helps no one.

Chris_Manico
Level 10
I'm using Gskill 2133 MHZ ram 2x 4 GB and have no problems what so eever @ these speeds, and set up was as simple as switching to DOCP, and picking the 2133 mhz XMP profile. and I'll have to agree with Badmana, the AX850 is a solid PSU.
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