Time to step it up!

[KetoSoi]

Apparently the Alphacool I ordered disappeared into the ether at amazon, now refunded. I saw that the priced dropped on the Thermaltake and ordered that one, so that should be here tomorrow. For the price and the included TIM, why not. Once it shows, I'll take it apart and post some pics.

K

 

[KetoSoi]

Been doing some comparisons between X570 and B550 based boards, and in my case I dont see any notable advantage. Amazon had a Prime-day deal on the 'Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WiFi II' for $142, hard to pass up. All indications show the board is solid, has an excellent VRM setup, and good onboard cooling. I picked up a NiB 5950x for $349. Found some G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4-4000 16gb kit for $40. Should be a nice durable rig for what I am doing, definitely several steps up from my FX-8350 Rig. Board will be here Friday, so I know what I'll be doing on Saturday

 

[Woomack]

I'm unsure if buying that generation is a good idea right now. As long as it meets your needs, it's fine, especially since it doesn't cost much. It definitely is a clear improvement over the FX series (much faster and cooler).
I can only say that I had B550-E Gaming WiFi, which was a great mobo overall. It's almost the same as the F version. I think they even share BIOS releases.

 

[KetoSoi]

I'm unsure if buying that generation is a good idea right now.

Why's that?

What can I say, I like semi-vintage builds Right now availability is still good, and prices have dropped quite a bit on many of the 'slightly older' new components.

 

[Woomack]

I'm unsure because it's already old stuff, looking at how everything improves. It's not slow, so for the money, it won't be bad. However, some 7k series CPUs are getting price cuts too. It's just that for 7k, you need DDR5, which will cost some more than $40.

 

[KetoSoi]

Just finished the overhaul on my system, and it came out quite nicely I think. Thanks to all for the tips and advice Updated specs in my sig. The system is damn fast compared to the old FX-8350 I was running for so long. Running it with a DOCP setup for the DDR4-4000 RAM I got, seems to have adjusted everything reasonably based on that. Didnt really adjust much else beyond disabling spread-spectrum. BIOS options are definitely a different animal compared to what I was familiar with on the Sabertooth board.

I let P95 loose on it for a while, and it held up fine overnight. Ambient temp 27.8c, idle temps run ~30c. P95 blend had it 66-67c CPU, Package ~76c, pretty consistently. A couple times it would spike little higher for a second or 2, but settled down immediately. Still fine-tuning the pump/fan settings, but I think its close.

The big thing for me was ffmpeg performance. I compile my own ffmpeg, and I benchmark based on it. I have a particular video I use (if you are familiar, de-interlace via h264 nnedi3 nns2-q2), on my old system it was always 7 hours 30 mins +/- 3 mins, if the ffmpeg build was good. This system did it in 1 hour 43 mins. CPU temp never went over 56c.

Some CPU-Z info:







Going to go back over the BIOS settings again, trying to bias the system towards performance rather than 'power saving'. If anyone has any suggestions at what to look at, or tweak, or something doesnt look right in cpu-z, please do tell At this point, I see no need to dive into heavy OC'ing.


K

 

[JLK03F150]

Nice!

However,
You want the Uncore Frequency to match the DRAM Frequency. You might need to set your RAM manually to something lower than DDR4-4000. I'd start at DDR4-3600 & work your way up (3733, 3800, etc) to see where you max out with the 1:1 ratio.

 

[KetoSoi]

Nice!

However,
You want the Uncore Frequency to match the DRAM Frequency. You might need to set your RAM manually to something lower than DDR4-4000. I'd start at DDR4-3600 & work your way up (3733, 3800, etc) to see where you max out with the 1:1 ratio.

Thanks

It was my understanding that uncore (Intel) in cpu-z is actually IFB for AMD systems. Its supposed to show half of DRAM freq in that field. Is that not correct?

 

[JLK03F150]

If you run your RAM faster than 3600 the infinity fabric is automatically set to 2:1, but the is a reduction in performance. If you can run 3800 with a 1:1 IF, you should see it is better than 4000 with a 2:1 ratio.

My RAM (DDR4-3600) has been manually been set to 3733 1:1 & 2:1. I ran benches with both setups & saw better performance 1:1.
I seem to recall @Woomack saying that you need to get to about 4600 or 4800 2:1 to match 3600 to 3800 1:1.

 

[KetoSoi]

If you run your RAM faster than 3600 the infinity fabric is automatically set to 2:1, but......

Interesting. yes, I see what you mean. I had to do a bit of reading, and it makes sense.


I set it to 3600, but had to manually adjust the Timings, the BIOS set them oddly high, maybe JEDEC defaults?

I'll do a little benching and compare. Thanks for the tip and education on that

K

 

[Zerileous]

However,
You want the Uncore Frequency to match the DRAM Frequency. You might need to set your RAM manually to something lower than DDR4-4000. I'd start at DDR4-3600 & work your way up (3733, 3800, etc) to see where you max out with the 1:1 ratio.

Nice catch!

You can copy the primary timings from the DOCP profile manually, or I've had luck enabling DOCP first and then changing the speed but it's probably bios dependent. I don't think you'll see real world benefit from trying to get tighter timings, but you can if you figure out what modules your kit uses and look at similar kits (same modules and configuration) at that rated speed. Or just stepwise trial and error but it can be very time consuming. Most people do fine letting the BIOS set secondary timings unless you want to benchmark competitively.

 

[KetoSoi]

Yeah, its definitely an improvement. Some simple benching showed an overall performance increase. The real test was my video processing test, knocked another 7 mins off the process time, down to 1h36. Ran it twice and it repeated, which is pretty damn impressive. Thanks JLK!

K

 

[JLK03F150]

Where did you land on memory frequency? Glad to read you saw real-world improvement!

Here's my small overclock on my DDR4-3600 kit.

 

[KetoSoi]

Where did you land on memory frequency? Glad to read you saw real-world improvement!

Here's my small overclock on my DDR4-3600 kit.

Heh, thanks

I just set it to 3600, adjusted the timings to published spec, and left everything else as is. Havent tried to OC past that yet.