This forum never seems to be quiet and full of fuss. I'll try to make this straightforward:
So I'm planning to get a new rig after new years or like on christmas. Planning to spend around $950(~2400LTL) So the parts I'm looking after right now are:
CPU: AMD's 8350
MB: Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
RAM: Kingston HyperX Beast 8GB
VGC: Sapphire Radeon R7 260X
PSU: Corsair CX 750W
Cooling: Corsair H55
Now for the part where I say what I would use it for:
Course I game, but I'm a person who doesn't care much for graphics. I just want it to run smooth. And for general use, I play with Photoshop a lot so thats needs some more RAM, but I think I can manage with 8GB no problem. Also want to get into AfterEffects, but I have no idea what that thing needs most, I'm just assuming it need's much. Also some editing here and there with Vegas so I really want that OpenCL to be available. Now for when I need to "fix" somebody's computer I want a little bit more SATA cables ,but I'm not quite sure how the wiring works on that board. I do some programing, but that doesn't require any horsepower at all.(Got as raspberry pi for that anyway) And to top it I really want to get into 3D animation, cause I had the chanse to try out my abilities. I understood it and loved it.
Now my thoughs about the parts:
Like I said, I'm only planning so the list is irregular. I'm looking after the 8350 cause I'm sick and tired of having my machines being so damn old that I can't open up AE or having to suffer the hyper threading when opening up 8 chrome tabs at once(I should probably use firefox anyway.). The cooler is chosen from a mistake of my friend, he got the 8350 as I recomended and my god how that thing burns. He didn't get any aftermarket cooler so now he has 3 random fans blowing from all directions to the stock cooler just to shut it up cause it makes some loud noises for no much reason. The motherboard is probably not something I would need, but I wanted something that would last a while and it looks promising(although I have witnessed how they come in from the shop with a fucked up bios.no idea how or why, but we got the chip reprogramed in a minute). Not so sure about the ram since there are tons of different thing, but I kinda trust kingston and want fast instead of much in particular. The PSU is probably a whatever thing: it's big ,it pulls. And for the graphics, I kinda wanted something from the HD 78** line, but the new R7's don't look that bad for the price so I donno, maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't I'll see if they have any more here later. But the thing that kinda bugs me is that the R7 uses PCI-e 3 while the sabertooth 2.0 only has PCI-e 2. It kinda makes a bottleneck, but I think I can live with that. Unless somebody spots that phantom R2.0/GEN 3 board witch has PCI-e 3. The thing is wanted all around but I never saw it for sale anywhere. [quick edit in before I post: I never said anything about storage but here goes: I got a kingston 60gb ssd witch is well enough for me for what it does. But I do probably want a single Terabyte drive.(Or can I just rip apart one of my usb hdds?) ]
Okay enough of that. aand just in case: I live in Europe(witch also means I no speaka english well sometimes) so I don't need any links to amazon or newegg. Looking for some opinions or even better rants!
cooler: Although I definitely recommend an aftermarket cooler I wouldn't go for one of the closed loops other than the h80 or h100, anything below that I would recommend air cooling instead (unless you can get one absurdly cheap, there is nothing wrong with them after all).
motherboard: you can probably save some money here, this is a good board but it does tend to come at a premium and if you aren't going to make use of the features (particularly overclocking) then I doubt its worth it for you. I would look at a chipset comparison and decide upon the minimum you need first then go for peer reviews. Don't get me wrong, great board, but is there any point if the features aren't that useful to you. Furthermore, don't worry about pcie 3.0 with this set up, you will not hit the bottleneck with any current consumer grade graphics card.
RAM: thats good ram, but I would probably recommend more, after effects can fill it up quick when you are playing with a lot of stuff.The upside of this is you can grab 2x 4gb sticks for now and double it later.
Graphics card: totally up to you, if you get heavily into the 3d stuff you will have to change it up anyway. But I would say that I love my new asus r9 280x, but part of that is just because of how much I remember drooling over the 7970 not so long ago haha.
PSU: can't complain. You don't need that much power for this system, but extra power availability means more expansion headroom in the future.
Storage: you seem to have that in hand, you can normally rip apart a usb hard drive and stuff it in no problem HOWEVER I have seen a good few 2.5" hdds that have no sata, just usb straight on the board. so, you could be unlucky.
I asked about the drive cause I saw a sata connection when I found out that the front half of the thing can come off. It's like a sata to usb3 accessory thingie. Some Seagate backup plus 500GB 2.5 drive inside, the thing is - no screws. I would need to break the thing to get it and will it be worth it? a little 500gb 2.5 drive or should I just invest in a manly 3.5 drive that I would assume would be faster or just better in general.
again with the motherboard: I had 2 MB's with AMD and they outlived anything intel, only one problem though - some jackass managed to throw on some toothpaste stuff on my CPU(couldnt have repaired myself at the time) so the fucking paste melted into the socket and started to block CPU power connectors so I would end up with a working MB, but if you put in a CPU it would start to scream. Yeah um, so back about the sabertooth - yeah it's like an overkill cause I just want something that will serve me some quite a while and by what they judge it should. Overclocking is also in my plans thus the cooler. It's just that I'm not planning on doing some insane overcloking. I just like to buff it.
I have seen that the 8320 is also a good option instead of the 8350. But I never investigated in how much they differ in comparison to the price.
Now liqud coolers... never seen any somehow. no idea how they work, but they do look promising. The H55 here costs aboout + - 75 bucks in usd and the H80 is something like $110. Almost any air cooling seems weak after I saw the 8350 buring at my friends house yet I dont really want to buy something too extreme cause I wont be overcloking that much.
yeeaah I'm kind of drooling at those bentchmarks. I would go for that, but I just really want something ahead of my needs currently. although I probably should reconsider my chosen psu. maybe I can just use my current one - come Coba branded 500W, witch is insanely over of what it drives. Anyway, thank You!
storage: yeah that drive will be slower and less versatile than a few 3.5 inch drives, but it would be faster over sata than usb. if you wanna keep it portable then fair enough, but don't worry about breaking the case, most are secured by hidden clip tabs inside but it matters little you can get sata-sub 2.5 inch HDD caddies for pennies.
mobo: fair enough, you can't really go wrong with the sabertooth, it will last.
processor: your choice, I would go with the 8350
cooler: the liquid coolers are good, but when it comes to performance they are normally beaten by top end air coolers, unless you step up to the h80 or h100. For example, the noctua NH-d14 is currently close to $75 on newegg and the thermalright silver arrow is often a similar price, and both of those are so very nearly as good as the top liquid coolers, the noctua is a lot quieter and would destroy a h55. if you are spending $75 on cooling you will get a LOT more for your money with one of them, provided they fit in your case, which is their only real downside. However if you want to rev the nuts off it like I do then those top watercoolers are the way to go.