AMD R9 380X & FX 8370 Gaming PC Build for Star Wars Battlefront at $1000 USD
PCWizKid has been waiting for the Star Wars Battlefront game to be released all these past weeks and finally we have it and tested on a new $1000 ATX gaming PC build aimed at those wanting a fluid gaming performance at 1080p and, to a lesser extent, 1440p at a mix of high and ultra settings. This mid range gaming PC build is fully capable of playing games like Fallout 4, Star Wars Battlefront and more at high and Ultra high graphic settings at 1080p and 1440p resolutions!Today’s ~$1000 PC build uses an AMD FX 8370 CPU in conjunction with an AMD R9 380X graphics card. Together, the R9 380X and FX 8370 PC build outputs an FPS exceeding 60FPS in Star Wars Battlefront (1080p and 1440p), easily running most games at Ultra settings with 1080p (as seen in PCWizkid's benchmark results).
| Gaming Parts List | Name | Price - USD |
| Graphics Card | Asus Strix R9 380X OC Edition | $240 after rebate on Newegg.com |
| CPU | AMD FX 8370 | $179 on sale at Newegg.com(currently sold out), $200 regular price |
| CPU Cooler | *Zalman Reserator 3 Max Dual Ultimate Liquid CPU Cooler | $150 on Newegg.com (alternatives below) |
| Motherboard | MSI 990FXA Gaming | $130 |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX Savage 8GB DDR3 2133Mhz CL11 | $50 |
| HDD/SSD | *OCZ Vector 180 - 240GB Solid State Drive | $130 |
| Power Supply | Zalman ZM850-EBT Modular PSU | $120 |
| Case | Zalman Z11 Neo Mid Tower Case | $70 |
| Total | $1070 USD |
*You can save an additional $180 if you get a AIR CPU Cooler and a standard hardrive instead:
| Alternate Parts List - cheaper parts | Price - USD |
| CPU Cooler - GeminII S524 | $40 |
| 1TB HDD - Western Digital Black | $70 |
The important thing to note here is that if you are not planning on overclocking and will run the CPU / GPU at default clocks, you can use a standard AIR CPU Cooler and perhaps add an additional fan or two in the Tower case to keep things running cool. Also you can use a standard Hard drive instead of a SSD if you believe that waiting a few more seconds for programs, apps and games to load is not an issue for you. Note that using a SSD for your Operating system will drastically improve performance and load times and is monly well spent, the downfall is that SSD's are not cheap if you are planning on getting something larger than 480GB in size.
The main 3 components delivering the high performance are the:
CPU
The AMD FX-8370 sits above the older FX-8350, both have dropped in price at Newegg.com. With eight cores and a top Turbo Core clock speed (without overclocking) of 4.3GHz, AMD’s FX 8370 chip is a decent option for those who are building a new system, or looking to upgrade an existing PC that has an older FX chip and an AM3+ motherboard. That said, it’s still a good value if you don’t care much about power consumption and are looking to step up from an older quad-core CPU or Intel Core i5 alternative.
Graphics Card
The AMD R9 380X uses a revised version of last year’s Tonga GPU core. The core used inside the R9 380X has its full set of 2,048 stream processors split into 32 compute units, which is a step up from every previous Tonga-based part; they’ve all had 1,792 stream processors inside 28 units. AMD is also taking the fight to Nvidia. Between Nvidia's GTX 960 and its GTX 970 there's a huge void for consumers that can be taken advantage of. AMD’s latest card proved adept at 1080p and 1440p gameplay – but don’t expect a giant leap forward from the standard R9 380. Good thing is that the Asus Strix OC Edition of this GPU came slightly overclocked out of the box to give it an additional boost. Overclocking the GPU manually was also done easily.
Motherboard
The MSI 990FXA-Gaming provides a very feature-rich product that appeals to gamers and enthusiasts. The cooling of the VRMS and chipset is again above average and the board runs great. The firmware is fully featured and easy to overclock. It is one of the few USB 3.1 boards currently available for the AM3+ market. It has excellent audio characteristics and the inclusion of the SoundBlaster software. The Killer NIC is a positive also for those multiplayer based gamers. Well rounded board that is priced well for the budget enthusiast.