Need Harware advice for a new ryzen rig

[knoober]

I recently decided to upgrade my rig to something modern because I have been using deprecated hardware for long enough. So far I have a case and PSU (white fractal meshify C with tempered glass side and a 750W Superflower Leadex), and now I need to fill in the rest of the components. This post ,however,r is more about aesthetics than chipsets. I know that I want a Zen3 cpu and a 6800xt or better (and am aware of how long the line is for those). What I do not know is what B550 or X570 mobo will match my color scheme (white black or gray). I am still waiting to see what partner cards become available for the 6000 series, but the FE matches pretty well already.

Again, I am simply asking for aesthetic suggestions here. Performance and price can/will be sorted through later. Just the thought of scrolling through all the different hardware and piecing together a black/white/grayscale part list is more than I want to do at this point and I am open to suggestions for the visible components. Ram and cooling I guess should be considered as well. I still haven't decided between air and AIO for cooling. Looks will play more of a role here I think because the Zen chips have such low TDP. Any case fan will likely be a Noctua Redux because they fit the color scheme.

If I forgot any pertinent details let me know, and thanks in advance for your suggestions.

Edit: RGB is icky but okay

 

[EarthDog]

Aesthetics are up to you. What we may like or think matches the theme you may not.

That said, if you're looking for a 'white/Grey's board, ASrock Steel series or Giga Vision boards should fit the bill. Id look through board partners website and sort by chipset and see what they have to offer. This way you can see each partner's boards at once and decide from there.

Maybe get a list of what works for you and we can help with which is better hardware wise?

 

[JLK03F150]

The gigabyte x570 aorus elite wifi is black & grey. It has a small amount of rbg (that is orange by default), which you could set to white.

The biggest thing lacking IMO on this board is fan headers. It only has two case fan headers and two cpu headers. Of course you can run a bunch of case fans off one header using a powered splitter if needed.

 

[Woomack]

MSI Unify series is black on black, no built-in RGB but has ARGB/RGB headers so can connect something. There are new B550 motherboards too but I haven't seen them in stores yet. Not really overpriced, with good memory support etc.

Btw. Ryzens' low TDP is only in specs. It's not really bad but have to get stronger coolers than expected and CPUs wattage is also significantly higher than on paper. Just saying so you won't be surprised, especially under full CPU load with AVX instructions.

 

[knoober]

That said, if you're looking for a 'white/Grey's board, ASrock Steel series or Giga Vision boards should fit the bill. Id look through board partners website and sort by chipset and see what they have to offer. This way you can see each partner's boards at once and decide from there.

See this right here is why I asked. I had been casually looking through B550 and X570 boards and hadn't seen either one of those. Im leaning Steel series X570 atm simply because it is the same price as the B550 @Newegg. I am still going to bargain hunt this project , but the thread was about looks and Steel and Vision both are quite nice so TY.

The biggest thing lacking IMO on this board is fan headers.

Gig has been my 'goto' board for a while and I like them quite a bit. I was pretty turned off by the orange on the Aorus, but didnt know you could change it. Still back in the AM3+ days I guess And TY for reminding me that fan headers are something I need to consider. I have been frustrated by lack of fan headers in the past but kind of forgot that I need to be mindful of that with this new build.

It's not really bad but have to get stronger coolers than expected and CPUs wattage is also significantly higher than on paper.

This is interesting. I will look into it for myself of course, but if anyone has some links to some real world examples of this. Up until reading this I had planned to cool ~95/120-ish(?) watts depending on how agressive an OC. I usually only try to tighten things up a bit (lower the voltage as much as possible and bump up a few 100 Mhz) and not get real aggressive with OC. Once again, though, I have still been living in the AM3+ era and have no clue what it takes to manage Ryzen, much less the new Zen3. For instance are Ryzen still best paired with B die ram? Will larger modules be harder to OC (as in the FX/Phenom days when 32gb of ram was harder to OC than 16gb)?

Thanks for the help so far guys. All been solid so far and I appreciate it

 

[Zerileous]

For your OC, a few notes. First is that you probably will not want to OC this chip. Best single thread performance is had out of the box. Moderate multi threaded gains can be had with an OC. The CPU itself will boost based on the workload pretty much to it's maximum clocks. Any OC that you set will thus limit the maximum single core clock, as you will not be able to get an all core OC to match that.

Stock my 3700x will draw 90w. The TDP rating is 65w. For more cores and higher voltage, it will rise. Not as much an issue for the 6 to 8 core models as the 12 to 16 cores. Here is a nice breakdown:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/1621...e-review-5950x-5900x-5800x-and-5700x-tested/8

 

[Woomack]

This is interesting. I will look into it for myself of course, but if anyone has some links to some real world examples of this. Up until reading this I had planned to cool ~95/120-ish(?) watts depending on how agressive an OC. I usually only try to tighten things up a bit (lower the voltage as much as possible and bump up a few 100 Mhz) and not get real aggressive with OC. Once again, though, I have still been living in the AM3+ era and have no clue what it takes to manage Ryzen, much less the new Zen3. For instance are Ryzen still best paired with B die ram? Will larger modules be harder to OC (as in the FX/Phenom days when 32gb of ram was harder to OC than 16gb)?

Thanks for the help so far guys. All been solid so far and I appreciate it

I've tested multiple coolers and Ryzen CPUs so it's like my experience but also confirmed by some cooler brands like Noctua. I sometimes add Noctua as an example because I have contact with them and some things are confirmed by their tech team. They had to remove their whole cooler list with TDP requirements for CPUs because nothing was matching for both, AMD and Intel in the last generations. TDP is a value which suppose to help end-users picking the right cooler while it's far from reality. Typically, you need anything between 30 to 100W TPD stronger, depends on the CPU.
TDP isn't power in watts. It's more like a heat translated into power and required to be transfered by the cooler. However, it's not really possible to test it on a PC so all are using CPU wattage which can be checked with a popular software like hwinfo64.
Zerileous already gave some examples but it's not always the same as it depends on tests, motherboard (LLC and other power related things) and some more variables. I had higher wattage on 6 core chips but most of this list matches my tests.

Regarding memory, Samsung B is still the best for tweaking and in the most part competitive benchmarking. Out of that, easier for overclocking are new Micron or Hynix IC that also come in higher capacities per module. The most important is to get something DDR4-3600 and next recommended is at least CL16-18-18/16-19-19. If you get better Samsung B series then it will be 3600 CL16-16-16 or 14-15-15/14-16-16 but may cost up to twice as much while in real it doesn't matter much.