Just Upgrade or Build From Scratch?

[Bustos]

First piece of the build. Shoutout to Brando. This will give me a good bit of future-proofing as I see newer games recommending 16GBs of RAM for higher graphic settings. Dual, possibly triple, monitor set up so I’ll have other programs running while gaming. No need for alt tabbing. Samsung B dies so if I can, I might push them to 3600 cl16. If not, I’ll be happy with 3200 cl14. I’ve also come across a few free games and Surge 2 just came out. The temptation to not wait until Black Friday/Cyber Monday is growing.

 

[Bustos]

I went ahead and ordered the rest of my build. The case comes tomorrow.

Updated Part List

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PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yM67YH

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor (Purchased For $330.00)

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler (Purchased For $90.00)

Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 AORUS PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard (Purchased For $261.00)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (Purchased For $220.00)

Storage: Intel 660p Series 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (Purchased For $45.00)

Storage: Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (Purchased For $100.00)

Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $0.00)

Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB Black Video Card (Purchased For $1060.00)

Case: Fractal Design Meshify S2 ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For $151.00)

Power Supply: SeaSonic PRIME 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $150.00)

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($99.95 @ Amazon)

Monitor: Asus ROG SWIFT PG278QR 27.0" 2560x1440 165 Hz Monitor ($519.48 @ Amazon)

Total: $3026.43

Prices are what I paid rounded up, almost no RGB, no glass window, and pushed the limit on the budget. Who knows when wifey will have a momentary lapse in judgement when it comes to pc parts?

After seeing some people buying and upgrading and coming across free games, I started building up my cart online with MC and Newegg. Thank goodness I did. MC was $250-$300 higher because of the sales tax. I had not factored that into my budget. Newegg is also going to start collecting KS sales tax tomorrow. Any potential Black Friday/Cyber Monday savings I was planning for would be eaten up by the sales tax! Thanks for enabling me! Black Friday/Cyber Monday is now.

The only things I haven’t bought yet are the OS and monitor. Going to create my own Win10 USB once I put everything together to make sure everything works. From there, I may go the grey market route for a key. The monitor I’ll be getting from MC, so if there are any issues with it, easy return. The tax on that I call insurance.

I may be able to put this all together as soon as the case arrives or not until next week.

 

[Bustos]

My baseline benchmarks at stock speeds and settings. AGESA 1.0.0.3 ABBA bios and and XMP profile for RAM 14-14-14-34 3200. Any other free benchmarks I should run or you would like to see? Do people still use Prime95 and/or HW monitor? I downloaded a few core games (but old) and should get some play time later tonight. COD Modern Warfare and Xbox Game Pass came with the 2080ti so I'll be able to test recent games once I get them set up. MSI Afterburner is the program that tracks/logs stats in game right?

1 core hit 4.3+, 6 cores hit 4.2+ and the last core hit 4.1+.

AIDA64

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CineBench

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3DMark

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PCMark

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[Zerileous]

I use Prime95 to stress test. Small FFT for CPU and blend with a custom memory usage set to use most of my RAM for IMC/memory.

Looks like a sweet rig Bustos, how are your temps with the D15?

 

[EarthDog]

I use AIDA64. For my uses (typically email/web/gaming/image editing/encoding), A64 does a great job and temps are not quite as high as P95 (which will never be reached in normal computing).

Everyone will have their own ideas of what test and how long.

 

[DaveB]

I use AIDA64. For my uses (typically email/web/gaming/image editing/encoding), A64 does a great job and temps are not quit as high as P95 (which will never be reached in normal computing).

Everyone will have their own ideas of what test and how long.

on AIDA64. IMO Prime95 is way overkill and plus AIDA64 has lot of fun benches to run, especially for Ryzens with so many cores/threads.

 

[Bustos]

I use Prime95 to stress test. Small FFT for CPU and blend with a custom memory usage set to use most of my RAM for IMC/memory.

Looks like a sweet rig Bustos, how are your temps with the D15?

Thanks. I ran AIDA64 for 2 hours; temp peaked at 88, averaged 77.8, idles between 32-35.

 

[Zerileous]

nice. Under 90 is doing pretty well for this CPU!

 

[Bustos]

The media creation tool worked as easy as 1, 2, 3 and installed Win 10 pro. Boot and storage drives doing their thing. Loving the boot and loading times, I can get used to this.

The 88 degree peak was at the beginning of the AIDA64 stress test. Took a second or two for the D15 to start taking the heat away from the chip. I am using both fans on the D15. I did have to raise the outside fan due to the RAM as expected. Side panel still closed with room to spare. I knew the RAM was going be too tall. The D15 was $20 more than the D15S. The Noctua fans are $25 a pop. I figured if I couldn’t make the 2nd fan work, I’d add it as a 3rd front fan and save $5 on the fan. CPU and GPU cooling is adequate for my uses so no additional fans.

Figured out MSI AB and it’s ingame tracking. How reliable is MSI AB? I saw 4.4GHz speeds while playing Assassin’s Creed Unity, Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion, and Crusader Kings II.

Last thing to check off for the build is a Win 10 Pro key. Dragging my feet as I hardly notice the watermark.

I haven’t messed with any performance tweaks yet but looking forward to doing so. I need to take a few photos of the set up once I get the wires in the back cleaned up.

 

[Zerileous]

I never questioned it's reliability, glad you're seeing the advertised boost clocks. You can always run HWiNFO64 in the background and check the max as well if you're curious. I don't usually run the OSD unless I'm having performance or stability issues, but it was really helpful dialing things in at first

 

[Woomack]

On Ryzen 3000 you can hit the same max temps in AIDA64 and Prime95. Only run CPU+FPU test. At least I was comparing that when I was testing coolers. On Intel when you run only FPU test then temps are higher than with CPU+FPU and Prime95 is usually giving a bit higher temps (2-5°C, depends on the chip). AMD is acting a bit different.

 

[Bustos]

I never questioned it's reliability, glad you're seeing the advertised boost clocks. You can always run HWiNFO64 in the background and check the max as well if you're curious. I don't usually run the OSD unless I'm having performance or stability issues, but it was really helpful dialing things in at first

With all of the issues surrounding boost clocks, I never expected to see 4.4Ghz. Didn’t see 4.4Ghz with the 2hrs of standard AIDA64 stress testing. I wondered if MSI AB was known for rounding numbers or something. I’ll run HWiNFO64 for confirmation; good idea. I ran OSD to watch for FPS and had the other stats because why not. No way I’m not going to confirm that this TI is doing it’s job. At first I was still capping at 60 after I got the Swift in Unity and SCII. Meanwhile LOL showed 240 FPS. Tinkered with settings and couldn’t figure out what was holding the two games back. I downloaded and updated the drivers for the monitor. Didn’t see a change. Installed GeForce Experience and let it optimize the settings in my games and that did the trick. I don’t know what it did that I wasn’t doing. I’m not complaining though.

On Ryzen 3000 you can hit the same max temps in AIDA64 and Prime95. Only run CPU+FPU test. At least I was comparing that when I was testing coolers. On Intel when you run only FPU test then temps are higher than with CPU+FPU and Prime95 is usually giving a bit higher temps (2-5°C, depends on the chip). AMD is acting a bit different.

Ah, I’ll have to try CPU+FPU test. If that can push up the temps, maybe I’ll see AIDA64 hit 4.4Ghz during the test.



My first new game will be COD Modern Warfare. The TI came with an activation key. Not a huge fan of first person shooter multiplayer games but it’ll be the only modern game in my library.

 

[Zerileous]

It's been some time since I've use4d AIDA64, but AFAIK it only produces and all core load, and a quite taxing one at that. You're not going to see any Ryzen hit max boost with a multi core load. The max boost is only for single core loads. If you want to test it out, you can run single core cinebench following the instructions here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScrtHk-YUlploicyuVpkd9tzwRuE3F1QNfIQHNgL6CNXwpy5w/viewform (note I wouldn't bother actually submitting, I don't think the data is being used anymore). It may also be more likely to reach max boost in a less stressful load, such as certain games.

 

[Bustos]

Tried single core on Cinebench when I ran my original benchmarks. The problem is that it doesn’t run the fastest core on either chip during the test so I didn’t bother posting the results.

I’ve seen testing where they tried to take advantage of the faster cores on the chips but doesn’t give much of a boost because the stronger cores are not prioritized. It appears there isn’t anything to drive the work through the faster cores over the slower ones.

 

[Zerileous]

Strange. It should (or at least does, on my system) cycle through most if not all of the cores for the workload, rather than keeping a single core loaded up for the entire render.

 

[Bustos]

Strange. It should (or at least does, on my system) cycle through most if not all of the cores for the workload, rather than keeping a single core loaded up for the entire render.

Ryzen Master showed it would cycle between the two chiplets but largely ran on the same core per chiplet. How do you know it cycled through your cores?

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4.392GHz while gaming.

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Peaked at 4.31 then steady at 3.99 while using CPU+FPU only. Temp peaked at 85 although I ran it for only 30mins for this run.

 

[ronss]

You can pick up an OEM Windows 10 Pro key here for around $15. Many of us use this site and I don't know of anyone having had a problem activating the software. This site has been up and running for some time and MS has not seen fit to shut it down. Seems to be legit. Then you could just make your own installer using MS's Media Creation Tool website. Yes, you are correct in that you cannot use your existing Widows license on a new motherboard.

https://www.urcdkeys.com/

dont see windows 10 pro key????

 

[Bustos]

Try the following. The links still work in the article.

https://www.techpowerup.com/259657/...dows-10-enterprise-and-office-2019-saving-big

Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC and Office 2019, don't forget to use the discount key

 

[Zerileous]

Maybe cycled is not the correct term, more like randomly bounced around, but every core seemed to take a turn at shouldering the load. I confirmed this behavior again yesterday for a different thread. It seems you can set the affinity to a specific thread in task manager to avoid that if you're interested in testing specific cores (per this post).

 

[ronss]

Try the following. The links still work in the article.

ok