R&D ns 2 a NATHAN EDWARDS SENIOR EDITOR Rumbling into Bulldozerland Can AMD's eight-core CPU be the centerpiece of a kick-ass rig? LENGTHOFTIME:3 HOURS | LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: INTERMEDIATE THE MISSION AMD's Bulldozer architecture fi- nally hit retail in October 2011, and deputy edi- tor Gordan Mah Ung put the highest-perform. ing chip, the FX-B180, through the wringer [see our Holiday 2011 issuel. His conclusion: It's a decent competitor to Intel's i§-2500K, but no match for the Imuch more expensivel Sandy Bridge-E or 2600K parts. And that's OK; there are plenty of reasons to want a solid midrange performer. Maybe you really, really want to be able to say you have an eight-core processor. Maybe you're opposed to Intel for religious reasons. Or maybe you just want real PCle x16 lanes without having te put out for the pricey X79 platform, Whatever your reason, an FX-8150 can be a respectable foundation for a solid gaming rig since modern gaming is still more about the | GPU than the CPU. For this build, | took AMD's flagship processor and built a $1,500 gaming rig around it. In the end, I realized that $1.500 gets you lot of PC these days, 66 mame | Fee 2012 | maximINGREDIENTS PART/URL Paice: ase oer Piao Sinisa 7 su corer 17502 Semvcrencom ses Hobo Aco abril “yevn.a5u5.com, it $189 ePu aio rcarsn Sram sus "cooler Ato ule in Caing Ki ‘yew amd.com cn $100 GPU xx Radeon HO 670 Sensatron $220 aM 3868 Patria 2 R/U Sat em se opie rive Postar 85054 OVD bara se plestorcom $35 Hard rive 708 Seo Momeni Xt wow Seagate.com i $239 05nd 7 Potent OEM! Sram mirza com st TOL sis0e ASSEMBLING THE HARDWARE a PREP THE BOARD TOINSTALL THE CPU, lit the socket arm and gently lower theCPUinto place, makingsurethetriangleon the CPU scornerisalignedwiththecotrectcornerin the socket image Al, Lowerthe leverbackintoplace Install the RAM inte the second and fourth stots the tan ones! BUILDING FROM THE CPU OUT ‘CENTRAL TO MY MUL, ofcourse, is AMD's top-tier Bulldozer part, the 3.6GHz FX-B150. It'll rest in Asus's Sabertooth 990FX mother’bcard, ‘whieh has USB 3.0, six SATA 6Gb/s ports, and plenty of PCle x16 lanes. The 990FX isnt markodl ifforent fram B90, except for one glaring change: Board vendors are now offering SLi “support” [read: unlock codes! inthe BIOS. | was originally going to use Cooler Master's Hyper 212Evo CPUcodler, butin he caurse of overclocking | decidedto swapit ‘ut for AMD's Asotek- built Bulldozer FX liquid cooler, which bearsavery strong resemblance to Antec's Kihler 920 [also built by Asete To keep things inthe AMD house and atthe $1,500 price point, my graphics card of choice is the Radeon HD 6970 I's got encugh juice to ower any game on the market at reasonable settings, and at $3301 fits ‘well wth my budget without being a budget car. NZXTsjust-launched Phantom 410 is a smaller version ofthe orii- ral Phantom, with a few more fans and USB 3.0 support. Corsair's ‘TX750 v2 PSU is more than enough power for my overclocks and any extra graphics cards want toad later. The one wild card in my build isthe hard drive. Thanks to the stil ‘ngoing Thailand floods, the price of a 750GB 25-inch hybrid drive is Lat press time! only a litle more than a 1TB 35-inch drive. The 8CB of NAND cache on the Momentus XT gives a performance boost to my most irequenllyaccessed sectors ofthe dick, so boot and of-used pro- grams ile faster.(BY PREP THE CASE AND INSTALL fo, MOTHERBOARD TART building into the case it's time tomove semefans. Remove the side, top, and front panels from the case, then remove therear1Zem exhaust fan and top 1dem exhaust fan, Thiswillinvelve unplugging them from their fan controller connectors behind the motherboard tray. Use the long screws provided to install the 12em fan in the front of the case, directly above the existing intake fan mage Bl, Reconnect ito ane ofthe fan control connectors behind the motherboard ray. Set aside the 1dem fan and its screws for now. Install the motherboard standatfs in standard ATX configuration, putthe motherboard /0 shieldin place, then install the motherboard inthe case imag INSTALL THE CPU COOLER FF YOU'RE getting llashbacks to Last month, I don't blame you ‘AMD's Buldozer-branded liquid-coaling system is built by Asetek the same OEM that makes Intel’ RST2O11LC liquid cooler, and is,infact,neariyidentical tothe Asetek-made Antec Kuhler 920 The instructions say to install the cooling fans.as intakes, but wwe going to use ours as exhaust Attach onefan to theinside of the cooler, then attach theather through the exhaust fan mounts tothe radiator [image 0). Run the radiator fans’ power cables behind the motherboard tray. Assemble the caoler mounting bracket as shown in AMD's instructions and ctipit tothe CPU heatsink {image El, Unscrew the four screws attaching AMD's cooling mountto the backplate and remove the plastic mounts. Mount the CPU cooler/pump Unit the AMO backplate, tightening the mounting scrows in an X shaped pattern image Fl Attach the3-pin pump power cable tothe CPU_FAN header and run the radiator fan Y-connector behind the motherboard tray tothe radiator fan cables limage 6), Run the USB 2.0 cable behind the motherboard tray te the ‘bottom of the matherboard and connectit tea USB 2.0 header: Install the GPU in to the topmost x16 PCle stot twumanng | Fe@ 2032R&D = INSTALL THE DRIVES REMOVE THETOP optical srivebezelandreplace thecase'sfrnt panel. Slide theoptical drive intathat bay andsecure it with he toolless mechanism. Add thumbscreves you'd ite. Toke shard five tray rem te cage and remove the mounting posts trom the sides, nstallthe Momentus XT sing the 25-inch mounting holes on the ottom ofthe ray image, Repla ‘in bay, B FINISH THE WIRING REPLACE THE TOP T4em fan, but fipitaround sothati'sused asanintake tanrather than exhaust, Tiswitkeep thematherbeardveltageregulators under the ragiatar from overheating image ‘Connect the fan power lead to one ofthe fan controller connectors behind the matherboard tray ect the irant-panel connecter power and LED switches tothe board, aswell as the HD Audio, USB 2.0, nd USB3.0connactors. Connect SATA power and data cables tothe optical and hard drives, then connect (Gb/s SATA cables rom the lowest set of SATA ports on the motherboare Use zipties tote excess fan controller connectors and case wiring to ‘ofthe motherboard tray image KJ. Bundle the unused power connectorshere aswell, fyoucaa it them, u WRAP IT UP ATTHISPOINT youshouldeanneetyourmoriter, mouse, andkeybeardand turnontherig, Enter the BI0S's Advonced Node, go to Boct, and deselect Wait for Ft an Error.” This wil prevent the system from hanging up due to.a perceived fan-speed error trom the pump. Exit out ofthe 3I0S, and install Windows and your drivers as narmal, making sure to install the ChilControl settware forthe CPU cooler ‘Once Windows set upand working, i's time totweok the CPU alte bit. Bulldozer parts sem tovaryintheirevorctocking stability: Alter many everly ambitious overciacks, I got to & 2GHz, mostly by upping the CPU rmltipir, but Ive sen overclocks a over 4.8GHz with the same CPU and rmothorboard, s0 your mileage may vary. the 70 | suse | Fee 20%2 | mason ' INSTALL THE PSU |NSTALLTHE POWER supplyinto the casewiththe fan acing dv, Bring the dual-pin ATK auxiliary power cable, 2upin ATX power cable and to pin Pole powor cables through the cutout nearest ‘hePSUtothobackatthe motherboard tray Bring the auiliaryATX power cable threughthe operingatthe top ofthe motherboard try anécennectitlimage!.Bringthe24-in motherboard power cable ‘through the top side cutout and connect, then connee the 6-pn PCieconnectorstothe GPU-one wll requ the use ofthe 2-pin Eornectr. aswel i fyAlthwereAsetek.tafeet pretty-go6d—both intel andAMDrecommendtne (OEM's coolers for thelr {oprolthe-tine chips 2, AMD's Radeon HD 6970 is a great GPU for the price 3. TheNZXTPhantoms10, hasalototharddivetrays, butl'monly using one 4, Springing the extra $20 orsofora modular power supply can elimi ratecablebunchingatthe hottom ofthe case MIDDLE-CLASS DREAMS ACHIEVED GIVEN TWAT GORDON had already benchmarked the FX-B150, | wosn't expecting miracles, nd didn't got thom. The Bulldozer rigpulled down respectable 00 rg, but I didnt realy see any benefit fromeightcoresat4.2GHz that wasnt exceeded by aquad-corei7-920 at 4,50H2,Iwasreally surprised by bath the fficulty of maintaininga stable ‘overclock and the lack o aomph Igot when! did manage to overclock Mierspendinghourstryingta stabilize my Bulldozer system at 4.9GHz and 4.6GHz, both of which 'é seen run onthe same motherboard with the same processor, | had to lower my sighs ait. finaly settled on a stable 4.2GH2—17 percent faster than stock. On CPU-bound bench ‘marks, though ike Vegas Pro and MainConcept Reference, | ea thana 10pereent improvement over the FX-B180at stock, ond the other benchmarks showed even ess improvement. X-8150 chips seemtobe BENCHMARKS: ce (ase |e ae | uaten i 3 | eon (igo) Tasolere i foe ok ke om me vatiablein their tolerance for overclocks, soyou might havebetter luck Of course, the lower scores on enceding tests could also have to do with my boot drive. normaly preter to run with an SSD boot drive, but | wentwitha hybrid drive this time, The disk access speed and slower than-solid-state write speeds doubtless affected the encoding test wich all involve reading and writing large fies te the dis That said, Bulldozer does offer better thermal performance, My FX-8150 never got above 55 C, even running Primo9S at 4.2GHz, which is afar lower temperature than we'd see from the overclocked i7-720 in our zero-point est bed, your Budget alloweforit. you may want togofora multiGi Unlike Sandy Bridge motherboards, which can run wo x16 PClevideo cards but only atx8, the Sabretooth 990FX.canrun themat theirfullx16 speed. Doesit really make a big difference? In thevast majority ofcase setup. iin the noses of your fr hing at speeds Fora $1,500machine,the Bulldezerrig does, oiler alotofperfermance,althoughunless youre running heavilymulithreaded applications you cbably won'tnoticethe differencedetweenits cighteores anda decent quad-core—especially ifthe quad has Hyper-Threading, At this point fichard AMD fans will probably just be happy te hear that a Bulldozer-powered rig hold own at its price point A Bulldozer rig isnt the fastest money canbuy, but forthe price, youget nlotof cores, decent performance, ndtull PCIe ul anes to grow into. van | 7A