Build Thread 3.0

[Keyrock]

I'm starting to work on bending the tubing. I ruined the first piece I tried, after that I got better at it.

Ugly bends but perfectly functional. There are a couple tight bends I'll need to do, those will be tough. Good thing I have significantly more tubing than what I need.

[Keyrock]

I had some leakage issues on first fill. I had to address them (sealant came into play), extensively test to make sure nothing was leaking any more and I gave it a couple days to make sure everything was dry, even though I was 98% sure no liquid got on anything important. Finally plugged it in and got it up and running.

[Humanoid]

Not sure if that's a PC or a a part of your truck engine.

[Sarex]

How are the temps?

[ComradeYellow]

I hear  you should connect the tubes to the radiators from the top not the bottom because of gravity.  But that's just what I heard.

[Keyrock]

4 hours ago, Sarex said:

How are the temps?

Cool as a cucumber, but that's at stock. I get back on the road tomorrow morning and I have a bunch of stuff to do today like laundry and taxes, so I won't mess with OCing for a while.

2 hours ago, ComradeMaster said:

I hear  you should connect the tubes to the radiators from the top not the bottom because of gravity.  But that's just what I heard.

GN did a video on it, although it's more aimed at AIOs:

The upshot is that the most important thing is that the pump is not at the top of the loop. In my case, had I mounted the pump/reservoir verticality it wouldn't have mattered since the reservoir would still be above the pump, but I didn't have room in the case to mount vertically. I had to put it where I put it because it was the only place it would fit comfortably.

Note to self: Next time, use a full-sized tower rather than a mid tower.

Edited February 9, 2021 by Keyrock

[Azdeus]

I hope you get lucky with that fluid and it doesn't create to much deposits, it's a problem with coloured fluids I've heard.

I like it though

[LadyCrimson]

I suddenly want some orange taffy.

...looks pretty cool - pun intended. I'd be way too scared (and unskilled...) to do something like that myself.  It's strange how I'm not typically into light-shows or colors or "windows" etc. on my PC's, but sometimes those water cooled towers are really neat-o looking. So space-age-y or something.

[Bartimaeus]

I bought a 5800X directly from the AMD website this morning. We'll see if it actually ships. I'll have to actually buy a motherboard and RAM if it does...I already have a case and PSU. Don't particularly love spending this much on a CPU, but as I use my CPU way more than my GPU (and my builds tend to last for ~5 years), it it did make sense to get it. Honestly, Intel CPUs make a lot more sense in terms of price/performance right now...the i7-10700k is 95% of the CPU for $100 less, but I figure I'd probably mostly make up the difference in electricity bills over the next five years, . Will be replacing an i7-4700k. Not looking forward to buying 32 GB of DDR4, but alas, 32 GB is the minimum for me these days.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Azdeus]

I'm looking greedilly at the abundance of 5800X's, but I can't decide on motherboard.

This vexes me.

[Keyrock]

46 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

the i7-10700k is 95% of the CPU for $100 less, but I figure I'd probably mostly make up the difference in electricity bills over the next five years, .

You jest, but $100 spread over 5 years works out to $1.67/month, so you may not be that far off from the truth.

[Bartimaeus]

27 minutes ago, Azdeus said:

I'm looking greedilly at the abundance of 5800X's, but I can't decide on motherboard.

This vexes me.

Yeah, I have literally no idea what I'm going to do about motherboards yet - haven't looked at or paid any attention at all what's been going on in this arena for a long while.

@Keyrock I also hate heat, so it makes sense from that perspective too. $100 sense? ...Eh, but what's done is done, I've wanted a Ryzen for years now. AMD just emailed me and send my order was confirmed and can no longer be cancelled. RIP the 5900x dream, but I almost purchased a 5600X several times over the past few months, so at least I get that sweet 8/16 configuration.

[ComradeYellow]

I like my 10/20 10900k 5.1gz because I'm too lazy to close background apps while gaming.  I can have 20 tabs, Steam and EGS running and still have plenty of breathing room.  Will either wait for Meteor Lake or Zen 5 and decide then where to go from here.

[Sarex]

Well no new PC for me anytime soon, money went bye bye... Guess I'm waiting on the next gen.

[Bartimaeus]

The next gen is always the best gen anyways!

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

35 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Well no new PC for me anytime soon, money went bye bye... Guess I'm waiting on the next gen.

Man I know that feel.

[Humanoid]

For motherboards, B550 offers all most people need. You'd need to run multiple PCI-E 4.0 SSDs to even start getting benefit from an X570 board. Since I was shopping not so long ago, these are my recommendations, so the notes are clearly biased towards the things I find important. Note I've excluded boards with the potentially faulty Intel I225-V LAN chip because even though more recently manufactured boards may have the fixed chip, I wouldn't want to gamble on it. P.S. Bolded the options I liked best.

Budget: Asrock B550M Pro4 (no USB-C front-panel header, also lacks BIOS Flashback, so you'll likely need to either borrow a CPU in order to update, or get the store to do it.)
Budget with Wi-Fi: MSI B550M Pro-VDH WiFi (oddly it has a USB-C header for the front panel, but no rear USB-C port)

Mid-range options:
Asrock B550 Steel Legend - probably the cheapest, still gives up Flashback though.
Asus TUF Gaming B550 Plus - lacks a USB-C header.
Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro V2 - note the V1 lacks a USB-C header.
MSI B550 Tomahawk - feature-complete but does tend to cost a bit more than the competitors above.

Mid-range options with WiFi:
Asus TUF Gaming B550 Plus WiFi - again lacks a USB-C header
Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro ax - make sure it's not the superseded Pro ac which has slower WiFi and lacks front-panel USB-C.
MSI B550 Gaming Edge WiFi - I went for this personally, but probably would have picked the Gigabyte if it was available at the time. The Gigabyte has more USB ports and better onboard audio.

MicroATX mid-range:
Asrock B550M Steel Legend - unlike the full sized version, lacks USB-C header
Asus TUF Gaming B550M Plus (WiFi version also available) - just like the full-sized it lacks a USB-C header
Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro-P - it's weird, they released this improved P version but still chose not to put a USB-C header on it.
MSI B550M Mortar (WiFi version also available) - seem the most feature-complete mATX boards either way.

If you want X570 anyway:
MSI X570 Tomahawk WiFi - relatively small premium for a fully-featured X570 board compared to competitors.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Humanoid

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, I've always liked that AMD hasn't deliberately and totally ruined their lower-end chipsets like Intel usually has, and as a result, OEMs actually make some solid motherboards (with even some pretty good VRM components/configurations) for the lower-end chipsets. Thanks for the advice - some of these were ones I'd already seen mentioned as good and sensible options elsewhere, so it's only reinforcing. I'm usually particular to Gigabyte and MSI boards (although from what I'm vaguely recalling, MSI has been kind of scummy for a few reasons lately), and have only had numerous troubles with ASUS boards...but we'll see what I end up with.

Edited February 13, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Azdeus]

I'd sort of like that MSI X570 Tomahawk, if it didn't have that wifi there, they're one of the few manufacturers that place the chip-fan away from the GPU, which I like, but as Bart says, MSI are kinda dickish

[ComradeYellow]

I like MSI's BIOS the best, personally.  Simple yet effective.

[Bartimaeus]

Well, my Frankenstein system is more or less complete. Borrowed 32 GB (out of 64) from a different PC until I see RAM I like at a half-decent price, and I've got an "old" 5700 XT that I received for free sometime back but couldn't use due to its power draw (noting once again that I barely use my GPU, so I may end up going back to my GTX 1060 if I have too many driver problems, especially since a number of cutting-edge emulators, including for the PS3/Wii U/Switch, reportedly play poorly with AMD cards due to said drivers issues, and that's more important to me than anything else). As for my motherboard, I ended up going with a solid but unspectacular choice in the MSI X470 Gaming Max Plus. No bells and whistles, but I wasn't looking for any - just decent VRM/power phase design and all the standard features, and strangely, this board punches a bit above its weight, having tested for better VRM design than many boards literally twice what I paid for it. Didn't go for watercooling (I never overclock and the thought of running liquid in my system is skeevy to me), but the FUMA 2 I got tests just as well as some significantly pricier options and is even quieter.

System is up and running but nothing's formatted yet and it likely won't be for a while because a migration is going to be very difficult. I have not yet decided whether I'll use Windows 7 Ultimate or Windows 10 LTSC. Windows 7 is my preferred option, but man is it getting lean in the years - and it'll take a bit of tinkering to get it to work with the 5000 series CPU. Windows 10 LTSC...is a compromise, but one I've been using for some time with my laptop, I'm not sure if I'm ready to fully jump over yet for my main desktop, though...I wish there was an even further modded version of Windows 10 than LTSC that stripped out some of remaining annoyances and problems to make it a little more hands-off Windows 7-style...perhaps I should do some investigation, since there are certain to be others who feel the same way.

Complete specifications for now:

Case: Fractal Design Meshify C Blackout
PSU: SuperFlower Leadex III Gold 750 W
MB: MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800x
Cooler: Scythe FUMA 2
RAM: 32 GB something or another (temporary) G.Skill 32 GB 3600
GPU: Asus Radeon XT 5700
SSD: TBD, want a 2 TB TLC+DRAM drive, saw one I almost bought yesterday for a great price, but hidden in the details was the fact that it was QLC - no deal!

Edited February 19, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

I'm about to chuck this 5700 XT out the freakin' window, it doesn't work for anything I want to use it for. All the emulators are broken, its fan is ridiculous, and it's unreasonably power hungry. What does this thing sell for on ebay? ...$700-$800? ...Well, maybe I won't chuck it out the window, but maybe I will sell it and buy a GPU that actually has functioning drivers. ...Or wait, no, I'll just keep the money, go back to my GTX 1070 since it's already more than powerful enough for my needs, and then put the money towards something in the future when GPU prices aren't insane.

[Bartimaeus]

So...apparently, the power draw on specifically the 5800X can be kind of dumb on some motherboards. It's TDP is 105W (up from 65W for the model down, the 5600X), and some motherboards have it draw power like that even though its design is more that of somewhere more between that of a 70W and 80W TDP (unless you heavily overclock it), and the power ends up being wasted with unneeded increases in temperature to show for it. I ended up doing some benchmarks and discovered that setting it to emulate what is essentially about a 75W TDP made my temperatures for a 16 thread 100% utlization torture test max out at about 70C (instead of the thermal throttling limit, 90C) in exchange for...absolutely zero performance impact on 100% utilization of between 0-4 threads, a sub-1% performance impact on 100% utilization of between 4-8 threads, and just about 1% performance impact on 100% utilization of between 8-16 threads. I guess I'm going to take that trade, since that's virtually no performance impact in exchange for not running at 90c max all the time when encoding stuff with all 16 threads. MSI, get your crap together.

Edited February 23, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Zoraptor]

IIRC BIOS has a formal 'economy mode' (not absolutely sure of the name) you can turn on which drops the set TDP from 105W with options down to laptop level draws. Pretty sure it's an AMD/ AGESA setting so supported by all boards.

[Bartimaeus]

9 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

IIRC BIOS has a formal 'economy mode' (not absolutely sure of the name) you can turn on which drops the set TDP from 105W with options down to laptop level draws. Pretty sure it's an AMD/ AGESA setting so supported by all boards.

Yep, I did see that, but the options were kind of silly. You can do either 95W, 65W, or 45W. 95W did nothing because the limits are still too high for the 5800X, while 65W is a little too much of a limit and starts affecting dual and quad-thread performance (although only by a very small amount, like 1-2%, so it wouldn't be too big of a deal if you didn't want to mess around and just stuck with that in exchange for sane temperatures). I did model my power draw profile after seeing what was used for the 65W profile, though, by looking at what the actual individual settings were were via hwinfo64 and increasing them mildly from there. I think I got a pretty good compromise, since using 0-8 threads at 100% is virtually unaffected and even 8-16 is only affected by a small amount.

Edited February 24, 2021 by Bartimaeus