Recent Build

[Scu84St3v3420]

So I have been bouncing around getting advice for my recent build, first I've done in over 10 years. This is also my very first dive into overclocking.

Chassis: Fractal Designs Meshify-C TG

MB: Asus ROG Strix X470-F Gaming

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X @ 4.2 GHz (All Core) (+800 MHz from stock) 1.45 V

Ram: G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) (PC4 25600) F4-3200C16D-16GTZR @ 3600 18-20-20-40 1.35 V (+400 MHz from stock)

GPU: Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Advanced Gaming @ 2050 MHz (GPU) and 1425 MHz (Vram) 1.050V

PSU: EVGA SuperNova G3 650 Watt

Cooling: Master Cooler ML420R (CPU) and 3 Master Cooler MF120R Pro (chassis)(adding a 4th soon)

Currently temps are around 31C Idle and 64C under full load on the CPU and I haven't seen over 45C on the GPU ever.

I chose to OC the CPU against much of what I've read and seen to some extent. Indeed this chip will boost to 4.25, but that is at idle conditions, under load it was hitting 4.1 at best and more often at 4.05. And that was while still showing roughly the same voltage usage.

I have a few more smaller cosmetic items to purchase and then I will begin to mod the case. Haven't fully committed to a theme yet, a few I have considered are Rick and Morty, Resident Evil (Umbrella Corp), Deadpool, ROG and The Joker. In all case the mod ideas are roughly the same. I will be adding an etched design to the tempered glass panel, painting the front mesh panel, making a custom PSU shroud cover using Plexi, paint and led lighting and possibly a custom GPU back plate similar to the plan with the custom psu shroud.

I am getting below average (but close to average) scores on my GPU on Nova Bench and would love to hear some advice on tweaking the GPU to improve its performance. I am considering Liquid Cooling the GPU down the road via EKWB's Modular Custom Loop or creating a custom loop of my own.

I would love to add a photo for viewing, but every attempt in every fashion to upload photos here has failed for me for whatever reason.

Any insight and suggestions are welcome, as are questions.

*EDIT* Here are some pics:

 

[Blaylock]

 

[trents]

So I have been bouncing around getting advice for my recent build, first I've done in over 10 years. This is also my very first dive into overclocking.

Chassis: Fractal Designs Meshify-C TG

MB: Asus ROG Strix X470-F Gaming

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X @ 4.2 GHz (All Core) (+800 MHz from stock) 1.45 V

Ram: G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) (PC4 25600) F4-3200C16D-16GTZR @ 3600 18-20-20-40 1.35 V (+400 MHz from stock)

GPU: Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Advanced Gaming @ 2050 MHz (GPU) and 1425 MHz (Vram) 1.050V

PSU: EVGA SuperNova G3 650 Watt

Cooling: Master Cooler ML420R (CPU) and 3 Master Cooler MF120R Pro (chassis)(adding a 4th soon)

Currently temps are around 31C Idle and 64C under full load on the CPU and I haven't seen over 45C on the GPU ever.

I chose to OC the CPU against much of what I've read and seen to some extent. Indeed this chip will boost to 4.25, but that is at idle conditions, under load it was hitting 4.1 at best and more often at 4.05. And that was while still showing roughly the same voltage usage.

I have a few more smaller cosmetic items to purchase and then I will begin to mod the case. Haven't fully committed to a theme yet, a few I have considered are Rick and Morty, Resident Evil (Umbrella Corp), Deadpool, ROG and The Joker. In all case the mod ideas are roughly the same. I will be adding an etched design to the tempered glass panel, painting the front mesh panel, making a custom PSU shroud cover using Plexi, paint and led lighting and possibly a custom GPU back plate similar to the plan with the custom psu shroud.

I am getting below average (but close to average) scores on my GPU on Nova Bench and would love to hear some advice on tweaking the GPU to improve its performance. I am considering Liquid Cooling the GPU down the road via EKWB's Modular Custom Loop or creating a custom loop of my own.

I would love to add a photo for viewing, but every attempt in every fashion to upload photos here has failed for me for whatever reason.

Any insight and suggestions are welcome, as are questions.

Is this your CPU cooler?: http://www.coolermaster.com/cooling/cpu-liquid-cooler/masterliquid-maker-240/

I think you have a typo.

To add pics to your post (we prefer that to links), just click on the "Go Advanced" choice at the bottom right corner of any new post window. The rest will be obvious. When pics fail to attach the reason is they are usually too large. There is a file size limit for attachments on OCF. Use something like irfanview to reduce the size of the files by "resampling". Sounds like a fascinating project. We would love to see pics.

I think what you are experiencing with frequencies falling below max boost under load is the normal way Ryzen behaves according to the power schemes AMD has built into those chips. A vcore of 1.45 is higher than I would feel comfortable with for 24/7 use.

It would be helpful for us helping you to have you install a free program called HWInfo64, have it open while you run a stress test and then upload a pic of it as an attachment with a subsequent post. It will show a lot of info about voltages.

And speaking of stress testing, what stress testing have you done to confirm the stability of this overclock on the CPU and RAm? I am a little surprised you were able to overclock that memory by 400 mhz when it isn't the Samsung "B" die version of G Skill Trident Z. You do mention you benched the GPU with Nova Bench but you did not mention stress testing the CPU and RAM. I might suggest the Realbench stress test for at least 1 hr.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

Edit:

So having done extensive stress testing with Real Bench, I have had to make some adjustments to my settings.

Current System:

MB: Asus ROG Strix X470-F Gaming
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X @ 4.15 GHz 1.4 V 30 C Idle/61 C under load
Cooling: Master Cooler ML240R + 3 Master Fan Pro 120 RGB
RAM: G.Skill TridentZ RGB 16 GB 3200 MHz 16-18-18-38 1.35 V @ 3733 MHz 18-20-20-40 1.35 V
GPU: Asus ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 8 GB @ 2100 MHz/11000 MHz 1.075 V 25 C Idle/ 45 C under load
Storage: Patriot Burst 240GB SSD (This was just to get the system built, will be replacing with 250 GB M.2 for boot drive and 1TB Samsung SSD for storage)
PSU: EVGA G3 650 Watt
Chassis: Fractal Designs Meshify-C TG

This system has pass Real Bench stress test set to 1 hr.

Thanks for giving me the heads up on the Voltage and Stability testing. After further reading, I found 1.4 V is the max you want for a 24/7 setting. And from what I can see its not drawing more than 1.35 V under load.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

After testing the RAM OC with MemTest I found that 3733 MHz fail. After extensive testing, I found a max stable RAM OC of 3400 MHz 18-16-16-38 1.35 V. Which I am satisfied with, it's 200 MHz above the stock XMP frequency with the same timings and voltage. Now anyone got advice on stability testing for GPU OC?

 

[trents]

GPU stress testing is done along with CPU stress testing in Realbench. It's the openCl rendering that is done with the GPU in the Realbench stress test.

3DMark is also a good GPU stress tester.

Furmark is also an old standby but be careful with it and watch temps closely.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

GPU stress testing is done along with CPU stress testing in Realbench. It's the openCl rendering that is done with the GPU in the Realbench stress test.

3DMark is also a good GPU stress tester.

Furmark is also an old standby but be careful with it and watch temps closely.

Ok, I've run Furmark both benchmarking and ran the stress test for over 1 hr without issue with my current settings. Never gets above 55 C.

 

[trents]

Looks good to me.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

Those are strictly OC settings for the purpose of multi-threaded benchmarking mind you.

This is without needing encoding level stability for gaming purposes:











This configuration passed IBT on 4 and 8 threads very high, but wasn't stable for all 12 threads. Again not appropriate for heavy work loads, but perfectly acceptable for the purpose of this machine which is high FPS 1440p gaming.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

So currently my only storage is a 240 GB Patriot Burst 2.5" SSD. I just ordered a Samsung 970 Evo 250 GB M.2 NVMe SSD, this will become my boot drive and the current 2.5" SSD will become strictly storage. Additionally the current 2.5" SSD will be getting replaced down the road with a Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2 SSD. I know I could get a comparable capacity 2.5" SSD for half of the price, but at a 1/3 of the performance and it's 2018, wireless is the new black (with the exception of internet bandwidth and peripherals).

The way I look at it is this, I chose the X470 platform as the current AMD Socket is expected to be the standard for AMD for the next 2+ plus years. So I can just upgrade CPU during that time on the same MB, which has good headroom for overclocking should AMD bring us chips worth the effort of doing so. The RAM compatibility is in line with my needs. M.2 NVMe drives should be future proof for the next 5 years minimum I'd wager, so similar to my other hardware choices, they should withstand the need for upgrade for a life time of this PC.

Also order custom made PSU cables from CableMod this week. Nvidia green and purple is my color scheme for this build.

Still at a loss for the overall theme for this build, but once decided I can begin the minor mods to the case. Which again will include a custom etching on the glass panel, a custom designed plexi cover for the PSU shroud and paint. Maybe a custom GPU back plate.

I am going to start a log in the Case Mod Sub-Forum soon, as a place to reflect that work. This thread was to get a start and advice on my attempts at overclocking my system.

 

[trents]

So currently my only storage is a 240 GB Patriot Burst 2.5" SSD. I just ordered a Samsung 970 Evo 250 GB M.2 NVMe SSD, this will become my boot drive and the current 2.5" SSD will become strictly storage. Additionally the current 2.5" SSD will be getting replaced down the road with a Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2 SSD. I know I could get a comparable capacity 2.5" SSD for half of the price, but at a 1/3 of the performance and it's 2018, wireless is the new black (with the exception of internet bandwidth and peripherals).

The way I look at it is this, I chose the X470 platform as the current AMD Socket is expected to be the standard for AMD for the next 2+ plus years. So I can just upgrade CPU during that time on the same MB, which has good headroom for overclocking should AMD bring us chips worth the effort of doing so. The RAM compatibility is in line with my needs. M.2 NVMe drives should be future proof for the next 5 years minimum I'd wager, so similar to my other hardware choices, they should withstand the need for upgrade for a life time of this PC.

Also order custom made PSU cables from CableMod this week. Nvidia green and purple is my color scheme for this build.

Still at a loss for the overall theme for this build, but once decided I can begin the minor mods to the case. Which again will include a custom etching on the glass panel, a custom designed plexi cover for the PSU shroud and paint. Maybe a custom GPU back plate.

I am going to start a log in the Case Mod Sub-Forum soon, as a place to reflect that work. This thread was to get a start and advice on my attempts at overclocking my system.

You are mistaken, my friend. In terms of real world performance there are only small differences at best between the expensive Samsung series and the inexpensive models of other companies. You won't even see much difference between an NVME and an SSD except in boot times. The only major real world performance improvement will be between spinner hard drives and SSD/NVME. The more important difference between SSD brands and models may be reliability and longevity but you may not need to pay premium prices to get a good, long lasting reliable drive.

 

[Scu84St3v3420]

You are mistaken, my friend. In terms of real world performance there are only small differences at best between the expensive Samsung series and the inexpensive models of other companies. You won't even see much difference between an NVME and an SSD except in boot times. The only major real world performance improvement will be between spinner hard drives and SSD/NVME. The more important difference between SSD brands and models may be reliability and longevity but you may not need to pay premium prices to get a good, long lasting reliable drive.

Yes I agree after I did some research, I am still going to grab a 250 GB M.2 from Samsung for a boot drive and getting 3 1 TB 2.5" SSD's for storage for about the same prices as the 1 TB M.2 drive. However I disagree with your opinion of actual performance, in my researching I found most (aside from a few like WD and Adata) that there is a difference, it's about 1000-1500 MB/s in read time performance difference. Now as to weather or not this can be seen to the human eye in use, doubtful. But it is existent and where it isn't the pricing is in line with Samsung's pricing. Just my 2 cents, again I am sure you can't see it with your eyes aside from boot times, thus I am not bothering with it for my actual storage.

 

[trents]

Yes I agree after I did some research, I am still going to grab a 250 GB M.2 from Samsung for a boot drive and getting 3 1 TB 2.5" SSD's for storage for about the same prices as the 1 TB M.2 drive. However I disagree with your opinion of actual performance, in my researching I found most (aside from a few like WD and Adata) that there is a difference, it's about 1000-1500 MB/s in read time performance difference. Now as to weather or not this can be seen to the human eye in use, doubtful. But it is existent and where it isn't the pricing is in line with Samsung's pricing. Just my 2 cents, again I am sure you can't see it with your eyes aside from boot times, thus I am not bothering with it for my actual storage.

That is what I mean by real world performance. Only matters much if you are into benchmarking. I have been pleased with Adata SSD products and have found them to be good performers and reliable at a modest price.