Building a PC with AMD's FX 8350 in 2023... Can It Still Game?

this is the FX a350 a popular CPU from AMD before they went on to launch their ryzen line of processors this released back in October 2012 make it over 10 years old by this point but I wouldn't be surprised if a number of budget PC gamers are still rocking these in their systems in 2023. sound off in the comments if you are by the way either this or any of the other FX chips every time I see people talk about these online there are two very distinct sides to the aisle there's the people that hated the FX chips due to amd's deceptive marketing of the core counts and how bad the single threaded performance was compared to what Intel had at the time and then there are the people that finally remembered it praising it for its good multi-threaded capabilities for the price at the time as well as the overclocking potential that these had regardless of how this was received though in this video we are going to build a PC around it because I really enjoy doing stuff like this I find it very interesting to go back and play with old hardware and see how it holds up because there's more of a sense of like a mystery or surprise we already know that modern CPUs and gpus can run almost anything thrown at them they're kind of expected to being new and all even the entry level stuff like i3s and ryzen 3s but what about stuff that's a decade old sometimes I find that way more interesting so this is the next installment of that this build was made possible thanks to antec who is sponsoring this and sent over some of their products to be featured we've got a case some case fans here and an AIO and I filled out the rest of the parts with stuff that I either picked up recently or already had on hand so yeah we're gonna give this almost 11 Euro TPU a glow up and put it to the test so let's go over the parts real quickly paired with that in terms of the graphics card is going to be the Red Devil from Power color RX 6700 XT now this graphics card is by all means overkill for this processor but I did that intentionally because I want to force the bottleneck into the CPU the motherboard that I'm pairing with the processor this is one that I picked up on the channel recently and I made a video about it this is the gigabyte 990fx aud3 the 990fx was like the top of the line chipset when it came to overclocking and I intentionally picked up a higher end board like this because I'm going to want to overclock the FX a350 given that we do have a pretty beefy AIO here which we'll talk about in a second for the SSD I've got my benchmarking one terabyte two and a half inch uh Vulcan Z from Team group the memory I've just got 16 gigabytes of 1600 megahertz cl-11 Ram from Team group as well for the power supply we've got the antec HCG High current gamer uh 750 watt gold rated power supply this is like a tier a power supply from the tier list 750 watts I should be plenty to power the processor which is 125 watts TDP as well as the 67 XT plenty of power here so now let's get on to some of the stuff that antek sent over they sent over two packs of their three storm uh these are just plain black fans each of these fans come with four pin pwm connectors uh as well as as additional connector to daisy chain the next fan aside from the fans and Tech sent over their Vortex 360 a RGB cooler so yeah we're gonna have 360 millimeters of radiator here so that we can hopefully overclock I don't know what the Silicon Lottery of the a350s yet as well as uh the true potential of the motherboard but uh yeah hopefully we can get a pretty good overclock on it and keep that cool because I have 8350 if you look at it on Andy's official website it lists the TJ Maxx at 61 degrees if you compare that to modern day processors you know modern day CPUs can run easily into the 90 plus degrees if not 100 before they start throttling and or shutting down but yeah the fx850 only 61 degrees officially according to AMD I'm not sure how much I believe that though because using amb overdrive which funny enough if you go to the website the official website it says that it is Obsolete and to buy yourself a ryzen chip instead if you want to overclock which I found kind of funny but if you use the overdrive software it doesn't give you what the CPU temperature actually is it just gives you what they call a thermal margin now I looked at that next to Hardware info and what the CPU temperature was with that thermal margin it always added up to 70 degrees C so I don't know why AMD put 61 degrees on their you know official product page but I think realistically when it comes to at least the overlays I'm going to show later on in the video uh the chip can hit 70 degrees before throttling or you know running into any issues last but not least we have the case so this is the P20 case which has a pretty uh sleek and unassuming look to it there's nothing flashy or crazy going on here there's no RGB included on this case in terms of RGB ships or anything on it and the fans included are not RGB at all they are uh just plain black fans so if you're one of those types of people who like you know Simplicity or uh clean looks uh this would be the case for you but yeah plenty of room uh we do have a built-in graphics card kind of like a sag bracket here which is always nice to see grommeted holes for the cables to go through built-in velcro straps for the cable management front mesh panel so that there's plenty of airflow nothing's getting blocked off easier to remove filter and all of that uh so yeah overall I'd say this is a pretty solid case from antec but all right those were all the parts let's get to building this thing all right so first up let's get the CPU on here for the AIO I think I have to remove these two plastic brackets that come on these AMD motherboards oh wait I don't it looks like it might actually use this the latching mechanism oh snaps heck yeah I don't have to remove it these clips just go on to the pump block like so and it just Clips in yeah for am3 right there awesome so I don't have to put any brackets on the back side or anything like that we could just go as it so let me get the memory on the motherboard real quick that's pretty much it pretty simple uh no Envy me drive or anything like that so uh let's get this into the case now all right so for the case I'm actually going to replace the fans that come stock in here in the front and I'm gonna put the RGB fans in here because we are going to be top mounting the radiator so I don't think you know it's gonna look that good up top you can't see it as much as like a direct front on view of the front mesh all right time to put the RGB fans in the front now oh the fans are in there now so I can put this filter back on foreign panel all right now for the AIO so I think just based on the way the tubes are naturally bending we're gonna go with the barbs at the rear of the PC it's just a much more natural Bend all right so I got my aerial orientation but I just realized while I was trying to fit that in there that I need to get the power supply in so that I can get my top cables routed and done before the io gets in there and gets all in the way foreign so we've got the power supply connectors in so now we can get the AIO in now to daisy chain these three together so that I only need one connector for all three of them and we are pretty much good to go [Music] it is time to now install the graphics card oh yeah I need to move this down right here too the SAG bracket that's built in so yeah this slides up and down foreign for it to be straight it would need to be moved up just slightly like that that's where this piece back here is going to come in I'm going to lift this up and then tighten it in the back and there you go sag bracket it's holding it up all right we are pretty much good to go just need to use some cable management in the back here get some fan connectors yeah that's pretty much it [Music] [Music] all right let's power this on foreign [Music] so this PC is built and I like how it came out you can't really tell that it's an older platform since it has pretty neutral colors it doesn't have kind of like that bright blue and white look to it that a lot of this era of Parts had and I've got all RGB set up to a unified color for that overall black and yellow look by using the included controller since again these older motherboards don't have RGB headers on them so the controller and hub from the AIO is clutch here now let's take a look at the performance I'll be testing the FX a350 both stock and overclocked for overclocking I was able to get it to a stable 4.9 gigahertz at 1.55 volts and I was really trying to get that nice round five gigahertz but I just couldn't get there without pushing the higher voltage and I wasn't trying to do that and risk the cpu's lifespan regardless of how good the temps were and speaking of temps though one thing you should definitely pay attention to during the benchmarks is that CPU temperature this 360 AIO keeps it really cool even at that high of a voltage so keep an eye out for that I won't bother any lightweight Esports games because it's not a surprise to anyone that stuff like League of Legends CS go Valerian stuff like that will all run fine on older Hardware all the games that I'm going to test will be more modern at 1080p which the RX 6700 XT in here will be able to handle with no issues and for the graphic settings I'm just going to choose whatever is appropriate to make sure that the ad350 is being bottlenecked so yeah I'm gonna get to benchmarking now but you all get to fast forward straight to the results [Music] [Music] sing it [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] I Sing About God [Music] foreign [Music] foreign so there you have it the FX a350 against a bunch of titles that came out long after it was released I don't know about you but I'm kind of impressed that it was able to play all those games it was able to at least hit 30 FPS in all the heavy AAA single player ones and for the multiplayer titles at least 60 FPS if not higher given the age of the 8350 you'd expect that it shouldn't be able to run some of these titles at all especially the newer ones uh let alone be anywhere near playable but the results just show and prove otherwise now I do have to talk about some issues with using this processor and this platform kind of any old Hardware actually whether it be this or something else because there were some glaring issues and they mostly revolved around loading times booting into Windows was fine there was no problems there but oh my goodness loading into some of these games especially the newer games it takes such a long time this is with an ssd2 but the load times are reliant on how fast your CPU is so the slower that is and this one is pretty slow compared to modern day Hardware the longer the load times and that's not even talking about the Shader optimization too oh my God games these days Shader optimization everywhere why for Last of Us it was actually going so slow that after like an hour or so I swear it was only like 20 of the way through the Shader optimization so I just left it overnight to finish and I went to sleep I don't know how long it actually took unfortunately the overclock did not make any earth-shattering differences at all in any of this at stock the CPU already boosts to around 4.1 gigahertz all core so an overclock of 4.9 gigahertz is just shy of like a 20 overclock and in the CPU specific benchmarks yeah we saw close to a direct translation in performance gains but in actual gaming it was closer to like 10 to 15 so yeah overall fun to overclock is you know cool to see the temps stay so low with that big AIO in there especially at that higher voltages but practicality wise if anything the amount of cooling Headroom is nice to give you the ability to run like the fans at lower speeds to reduce like the overall ambient fan noise uh but that's pretty much it uh but yeah that's pretty much gonna wrap it up for this video though hope you all enjoyed and found this either useful or entertaining in one way or another let me know down in the comments below how you think the FX 8350 did against these modern titles and if you out there are still rocking an fx chip right now in 2023 how's that holding up for you I look forward to reading your sponsors Down Below in the comments I want to thank antec for sponsoring this video and for sending these products over to make this build possible I want to thank you all as always for watching and for continued support the channel and of course thanks to the channel members as always for their above and beyond support be safe out there and I'll see you all down in the comments as well as the next stream and our video bye

Channel: Nerd on a Budget

Views: 25,309

Keywords: nerd, on, budget, noab, geeky, gamer, gaming, games, video, nerdy, computer, pc, build, console, technology, windows, killer, nvidia, amd, radeon, intel, extreme, value, super, cheap, parts, reddit, hardwareswap, deal, hunter's, showcase, hardware, deals, best

Id: a3GbMnbv0Rs

Length: 18min 36sec (1116 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 30 2023