Oc Air Cooled Amd System For Gaming

n4mel355 · April 29, 2013

Slowly overtime I have obtained an increasing pool of money to throw at my system. At the moment it is solely air-cooled, however if I can save enough cash I might invest in a top end water cooling solution.

Running Win7 Pro 64bit

Before my upgrade the system specs were:

Asus ROG crosshair III formula

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition

Aftermarket cooler: Noctua NH-U9B-SE2 CPU Cooler w/Dual NF-B9 Fan

Corsair Dominator 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600

Old school generic chassis

Sapphire HD 5970 2GB reference

Aftermarket cooler: Arctic Cooling Accelero TWIN TURBO PRO

BenQ G2420HD 24" 2ms HDMI Full HD LCD

Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARX 2TB 64MB Cache SATA3

OCZ Vertex 3 120GB 2.5" SandForce SSD SATA3

Microsoft SideWinder X8 Mouse

Generic black mousepad

Microsoft Sidewinder X6 Keyboard

Cooler Master Silent Pro M 850W

Now my system specs are as follows: (all prices are USD at the time of purchase)

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 AM3+ $254

AMD FX8350 Vishera 4.0Ghz 16MB Cache Scoket AM3+ $246

Aftermarket cooler:Noctua NH-U9B-SE2 CPU Cooler w/Dual NF-B9 Fan $118

Corsair Dominator Platinum 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3-1866 CL9 $322

Fractal Design Define R4 USB3.0 Mid Tower Case $212

Sapphire Radeon HD7970 3GB Dual X OC $510

Sapphire Radeon HD7970 3GB Refernce $595

PCIe 2.0 16x Crossfire setup

BenQ G2420HD 23.6" 2ms HDMI Full HD LCD $285

BenQ G2410HD 23.6" 2ms LCD $149 (2nd hand)

AOC e2450Swh 23.6' 2ms HDMI LED Monitor $153 (2nd hand)

Capable of eyefinity at 1080i resolution on each monitor using DVI inputs.

Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB 64MB Cache SATA3 $151

OCZ Vertex 3 120GB 2.5" SandForce SSD SATA3 $242

Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T. 9 Mouse $220

Razer Megasoma Gaming Surface $51

Microsoft Sidewinder X6 Keyboard $70

Cooler Master Silent Pro M 850W $270

3x40mm Fans intake

2x40mm fans outtake

Turtle beach Ear Force PX3

Over the years the system has cost me over 4000 USD which is around $4700 in my own currency.

Both GPUs have a core clock of 1Ghz and memory clock of 1.425Ghz

The non reference OC card is very quiet and idles 5 degrees above room temp with stock fan profiles while at full load the temp maxs out at 73 degrees Celsius. The reference card will max at 90 degrees at full load and idles at 63 degrees with stock cooling profiles. So unfortunately when I am gaming I manually set the fan speed on the reference card to 55% - 60% (stupidly loud) where is will max at 72 degrees under full load. The configuration I have the cards in crossfire do vary in the pics and that is due to me not being able to afford a display port to DVI adapter as I am now flat broke.

Ram is stably clocked at ~1466 mhz (9 9 9 24, 1.52 V) at the moment, could not make it stable above 1700mhz but I didn't really try if I am honest.

CPU is stably clocked at 4.525 Ghz (220.75 x 20.5, 1.38V).

Extended periods of time at 100% load on all cores using CLC genomics workbench the max temp of the cores is 60 degrees Celsius and idles around 21 degrees with an ambient room temp of ~18 degrees.

Now for the pics. I am not really in to the making the system pretty with LEDs or matching colors etc.

The pic displaying eyefinity is with Crysis 3 on the screen, the opening scene, that was at the highest settings which was not actually playable. On a single monitor at 1080i with all setting maxed out both my 7970s were at full load and frame rates were typically around 40-60 which is very playable.