New Build, Scorpius experiment

Overheal

So my old man was getting tired of his old machine, thought he could keep me out of loop and bought an off-brand PC at costco. This thing had an i7, 16gb of ram, etc. for $799. Great deal! If the motherboard wasn't garbage. It took the thing over an hour to get anywhere and at that it went into startup repair mode and ......... yeah. It's going back. I don't know wtf is going on there.

So I built him something nicer, something he'll actually use rather than something based off the latest i7 Pleb-hype. "Oh but i7 is the fastest derp?" yes, technically. But do I care?

Here is the build. After a bit of research I discovered someone mention Scorpius to me: apparently combining an FX Processor with the 990FX Northbridge and an HD 6000 series is akin to having sex with Voltron. Me being in love with even the remotest reference to Voltron, I had to try this out. Not that I hear the specs are mindblowing or anything, I just predict that they will work well together. Along with a Sabertooth board (dun heard they were reliable or something) this should be a good one! Pics will follow in the next week.

Part | Link | Price
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131736 | $184.99
AMD Zambezi FX-8150 3.6ghz | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103960 | $269.99
Sapphire HD 6870 | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102948 | $164.99
4x2GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 8-8-8-24 | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145348 | $89.98
Corsair Pro-series 850W 80+ Gold | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139015 | $189.99
Crucial 64GB SSD SATA III | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148441 | $104.99
Corsair Graphite-series CC600TM Tower | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139007 | $159.99
Cooler Master V6 GT Cooler | http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103089 | $59.99
Win 7 HP | who cares | $99.99
Dirt3 | who cares | $0.00
Arctic Silver 5 | meh | $12.98
Total | with shipping ($33.13) | $1371.01

I'm sure I could have scaled back on the PSU but I hung onto it after trying a few different things, the 650W was $20 less, so screw it. At one point he was convinced he needed an MSI X79 board and a 2011 socket i7.... em, no. Hell no. Well I mean yessss....But hell no.

Card and Disc readers be damned. All the man does is play Zynga Poker FFS he just insists on having a lot of computer to do it on, so I might as well get some cheap thrills out of it.

Actually was the most hesitant about the motherboard. I steered away from Sabertooth before just because I think it looks like mud but watching an interview with one of the big heads at ASUS talking about the thing made me change my mind pretty rapidly.

He gave me a target of $1500... at most, all I could really add is a twin SSD and go RAID 0 on it to make it scream. Kinda tempted to really...

Monotype

I'm sure he would have been just as happy with a cheap CPU and graphics card if you paired it with the SSD.

Does the person who mentioned Scorpios work for AMD? Anyhow stock power consumption is okay on those CPUs but they really start to munch though the power if overclocked.

Overheal

I doubt there will be any overclocking involved, and no it was one of the newegg buyers guide videos, they do their own.

Overheal

ugh.

First snag: the cooler and the RAM dont get along.

That awkward moment when you aren't sure whether to blame the motherboard, the RAM, or the cooler.

Monotype

Yeah, I'd usually recommend people to avoid that RAM with new systems as the heatsinks are just annoyingly high. If you're replacing that, buy 2x4GB instead. Not much sense in having 4x2GB when it's dearer and there's less opportunity for expansion.

Overheal

Yeah we just used the stock cooler

I am shocked to see what the system bottleneck is for a change: