December 26th Ultimate AMD Value APU PC Build Guide

[Bentheguy]

Why not use the nzxt source 210? It is a cheaper and better case.

[K Rich]

I don't see the point at all. Its not a value when you want more and decide to buy a GPU instead of using the APU. Would cost more to do that, than it would to just buy better equipment at first.

[David89]

Tell me more, what'S up with it not ebign AMD's fault..thye do the research.

 

 

They don't do it 100%. Global Foundries has a lot to say in that, and ATM GF just doesn't get 22 Nm Fabs.

[TFresh]

I'm kind of curious as to why you didn't mention any of the 6000 series cards as options for this build run in pseudo crossfire with the A10.  I know they're by no means the most impressive card, but seeing as you can find a 6670 on sale for $30-$40 dollars I feel like it's a viable option for a inexpensive boost in performance.

 

And for anyone better educated than me on the subject, why can't you dual graphics anything other then 6000 series with the APU's?  The 7000 series have some of the best price for performance you can find on a Radeon card, yet don't support dual graphics for APU's. 

[Hans Power]

I'm kind of curious as to why you didn't mention any of the 6000 series cards as options for this build run in pseudo crossfire with the A10.  I know they're by no means the most impressive card, but seeing as you can find a 6670 on sale for $30-$40 dollars I feel like it's a viable option for a inexpensive boost in performance.

 

And for anyone better educated than me on the subject, why can't you dual graphics anything other then 6000 series with the APU's?  The 7000 series have some of the best price for performance you can find on a Radeon card, yet don't support dual graphics for APU's. 

 

I did some research a while back because I also found it to be a compelling idea but what came out is that the crossfire unfortunately doesn't scale very well. In crossfire mode with a 6670 it's even slower that a standalone 6670. So either you use the onboard graphics or you go for a dedicated card. The crossfire combination doesn't make much sence, unfortunately.

Source: http://media.bestofmicro.com/L/5/311801/original/01_Crossfire.png

(The article where the chart is from is in german, that's why I only posted the chart itself. Here's the original article: http://www.tomshardware.de/Silent-PC-Gaming-Cube-2,testberichte-240888-2.html )

 

I have to correct myself - there is a slight performance boost when coupled with a  6570 but it's not that much and in the end propably not enough anyway to play most games at decent framerates. And I'm guessing that the reason, that 7000 series cards aren't supported is that like with the 6670 the APU would throttle the card in crossfire rather than improve performance.

[deadravel]

any other board option other than ASRock FM2A55M-DGS R2.0?

cause it is hard to find this board in my place  :wacko: better to have USB3.0
 

[LOST TALE]

any other board option other than ASRock FM2A55M-DGS R2.0?

cause it is hard to find this board in my place  :wacko: better to have USB3.0

 

Do you even have a usb 3.0 cable, a device that uses 3.0?

I don<T and so idc. You probably don<t so told you about this.

[deadravel]

Do you even have a usb 3.0 cable, a device that uses 3.0?

I don<T and so idc. You probably don<t so told you about this.

ermm. yeah i do. i have few external harddisk with usb3.0

[LOST TALE]

ermm. yeah i do. i have few external harddisk with usb3.0

Ah, well if you do need more transfer speeds on those then go ahead.

USB is backwards compatible. You should be able to make a clever decision on your own.

Enjoy.

[David89]

Sorry, but what kind of advice is that?? Because just right now you don't have a USB 3.0 device, doesn't mean you will never use it? Apart from that, every USB 3.0 capable board has also USB 2.0 ports.

 

@ deadravel: Everything with a A78 or A88 Chipset is good. ASRock FM2A88M-HD+, Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-DS2, MSI A78M-E35, Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-HD3 and so on. But personally, i wouldn't buy anything without coolers on the voltage regulators. They tend to get quite warm (especially with that A10) and everyone who has something to do with silicon knows, that only 10°C more is about 1-2 Years of "statistical" life less. (Thats btw another reason why i think the Build Linus did is not very good) The ASRock FM2A88X Extreme4+ is a VERY good board and has coolers on the voltage regulatros...and at least here in germany it costs only 5 Euros more then that FM2A55M-DGS R2.0

[Hans Power]

any other board option other than ASRock FM2A55M-DGS R2.0?

cause it is hard to find this board in my place  :wacko: better to have USB3.0

 

 

Where are you located?

Where I live the following models are the cheapest FM2+ Boards:

1) GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-HD3 @ 55€ - It's the cheapest model from gigabyte but still has USB 3. Also has the latest chipset (A88x) which supports 8 SATA ports as well as RAID 5.

2) MSI A78M-E35 @ 52€. Has USB3 but only has the A78 Chipset which means no RAID 5 and only 6 SATA Ports

3) MSI A88XM-E35 @ 57€ An improved version of the previous one with the A88x Chipset. Thus Raid 5 + 8 SATA Ports.

 

I wouldn't recommend the Asrock board anyway - the ones I just listed are only a few bugs more expensive if not even at the same price and offer more features like USB3 and more connectivity for Hard drives. I didn't list any ASUS boards because they don't offer that much bang for the bug (their A88x Boards start off at 68€ and there are only A55 Boards at the same price range as the ones I listed). There's also another competitor which showed up quite recently called "biostar". I don't have any knowledge about them though, so I hesitate to recommend them until I hear some positiv stuff from trusted sources.

I hope that helps and gives you an idea of what's available besides the asrock board.

 

Edit: I wouldn't buy an AMD APU right now, though. Their new APU series, the "kaveri" is supposed to come out in january, so better grab one of those, then, or buy the current model if prices go down after the new one released.

[deadravel]

Sorry, but what kind of advice is that?? Because just right now you don't have a USB 3.0 device, doesn't mean you will never use it? Apart from that, every USB 3.0 capable board has also USB 2.0 ports.

 

@ deadravel: Everything with a A78 or A88 Chipset is good. ASRock FM2A88M-HD+, Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-DS2, MSI A78M-E35, Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-HD3 and so on. But personally, i wouldn't buy anything without coolers on the voltage regulators. They tend to get quite warm (especially with that A10) and everyone who has something to do with silicon knows, that only 10°C more is about 1-2 Years of "statistical" life less. (Thats btw another reason why i think the Build Linus did is not very good) The ASRock FM2A88X Extreme4+ is a VERY good board and has coolers on the voltage regulatros...and at least here in germany it costs only 5 Euros more then that FM2A55M-DGS R2.0

thanks for that, im thinking of going for msi a85xma-e35. ASRock board are hard to find in my place

[morritse]

4gb ram..? No OS? 1gb vram?

You can also crossfire APU and discrete GPUs for extra performance in certain cases.

No, your build will not perform the same as an APU build like that.

I don't really want to argue. But it is very similar performance. I could have thrown in a 7870 and it still would have been $100 cheaper. Linus' build doesn't have an OS either. Don't see that argument. 4GB is definitely

Enough for gaming. 1GB VRAM will suffice at 1080p, but the 2GB cards are not $10 more or so. Athlons overclock a lot better than those APU's

[deadravel]

Where are you located?

Where I live the following models are the cheapest FM2+ Boards:

1) GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-HD3 @ 55€ - It's the cheapest model from gigabyte but still has USB 3. Also has the latest chipset (A88x) which supports 8 SATA ports as well as RAID 5.

2) MSI A78M-E35 @ 52€. Has USB3 but only has the A78 Chipset which means no RAID 5 and only 6 SATA Ports

3) MSI A88XM-E35 @ 57€ An improved version of the previous one with the A88x Chipset. Thus Raid 5 + 8 SATA Ports.

 

I wouldn't recommend the Asrock board anyway - the ones I just listed are only a few bugs more expensive if not even at the same price and offer more features like USB3 and more connectivity for Hard drives. I didn't list any ASUS boards because they don't offer that much bang for the bug (their A88x Boards start off at 68€ and there are only A55 Boards at the same price range as the ones I listed). There's also another competitor which showed up quite recently called "biostar". I don't have any knowledge about them though, so I hesitate to recommend them until I hear some positiv stuff from trusted sources.

I hope that helps and gives you an idea of what's available besides the asrock board.

 

Edit: I wouldn't buy an AMD APU right now, though. Their new APU series, the "kaveri" is supposed to come out in january, so better grab one of those, then, or buy the current model if prices go down after the new one released.

thanks for the advice, i will not be buying anytime soon, at least wait till after Feb. so maybe i will be looking for cheaper processor

and any advice on other choices of AMD graphic cards that is suitable? appreciated

edit: btw, im living in Malaysia 

[Hans Power]

thanks for the advice, i will not be buying anytime soon, at least wait till after Feb. so maybe i will be looking for cheaper processor

and any advice on other choices of AMD graphic cards that is suitable? appreciated

edit: btw, im living in Malaysia 

 

Okay, I asked for your location to maybe check the prices in some online shops in your region but I don't think, my Browser could even view the language correctly and well I don't speak the language, anyway.

BUT, I can tell you about performance and price differences at least.

So, for a budget gaming PC at the very least I would go for an HD7770 or an R7 260x. The better choice, though would be an R9 270x or an HD 7950 (even faster) if you can still find one. The latter ones would be capable of playing most games on high, sometimes max settings (especially with the 7950) with a framerate of above 30 FPS and oftentimes 60 FPS. The 60 FPS is what you want if you aim for a better than console smooth and fluid gaming experience although I consider anything above 30 FPS to be pretty okay. I have an Nvidia GTX 760 which should be exactly between the two cards and I am very satisfied with it performance wise.

The HD 7770 amd the R7 260x would be a decent experience with the tradeoff that you'd have to tune down some of the graphics settings for many games to medium, sometimes high to get a Framerate of 30 or above. I definately wouldn't go any lower than that - performance wouldn't be satisfactory most of the time and the price to performance ratio just sucks with the lower end cards.

[travisrice]

Thank you so much for making this video.  So this rig(with the graphics card) will be sufficient to run just about any game that I want to play?  I am a huge gamer and as of the last 6 months have played exclusively on the PC, though all I have is a shitty laptop.  Obviously I am limited to what I can play and really want to build a good machine without having to hash out $2,000.  Having only played consoles and low end PCs I am not a huge stickler for perfect graphics, but I would like to be able to play just about any game on high or close to high settings.  Do you think a build like this would work out for me?

[bransasko]

I really want to ask about the VGA card choice.

Why you choose r7 260x.and if you choose HD 6670 it will crossfire with the APU and performe better and cheaper too.

What is your opinion about that??

[Constantine]

This was an interesting watch. I'd love if Linus did something similar with an mITX build. Something like a 'SteamBox' build guide

[yurygreene]

Linus would u recommend me a WIFI adapter for this build please I tweeted to you on Twitter never got a reply

[muhdmeem]

wht if i want to build a pc with this spec . but with 4 gb ram ? would it be possible ?

and what will affect me ?

hope u could answer...

 

im a fan from malaysia

[Potato_:P]

What MOBO do you recommend for Canadians, there's no NCIX link...

[Wingo Bambino]

Will this motherboard work with these other components

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157473&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

[RCmc]

Do you have a alternative to the mobo.

[Asmeon]

My budget is $420 apu or pc ? what the best spec i can get ?

[hirodashi]

Hey folks, just adding my experience to the pot.

 

I built a an A10-7850k machine with 16 gigs of 2400mhz ram and a R7250. I ran the processor and gpu in dual graphics mode for a bit during those two weeks, just playing some Bioshock infinite oh high settings,  is performed well. I have the processor closed cooled with a cooler master kit, SDD, and so on.

While playing Bioshock, and a whle after starting to stream to a friend through Steam I got a red screen of death and the PC hasn't been the same since.

 

I ended up with one bad stick of ram with tons of errors and upon reinstalling my OS to start fresh couldn't get the omega detector/installer to install correctly and it would blue screen and restart everytime while it seemed to try to activate the drivers.

 

By the way, I can't say I saw the video card fan run even once, and thought that maybe it wasn't under enough load with a slightly older game like Infinite.

I removed the GPU and faulty ram stick and now it works like a dream with just the APU and 8gigs of ram.

I later saw on the video card box that it recommends 500w for systems running in dual graphics mode, something I hadn't noticed.

 

Could not having enough power have completely ruined my system or was I probably done in by a broken GPU fan that caused cascading damage?