Build Thread 3.0

[Azdeus]

I feel I need to buy a new motherboard and 5800x so I can get some insights to assist you. Yes.

Definetly no other reason. 

I've stopped reading the AMD reddit lately, but I've seen posts there detailing that they've lowered temps and increased performance somewhat with just undervolting and using PBO2. Might want to have a looksee over there.

 

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, undervolting would be the next step to further reducing the unnecessarily ridiculous power draw for the 5800X, but I don't know squat about it.

[Azdeus]

15 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Yeah, undervolting would be the next step to further reducing the unnecessarily ridiculous power draw for the 5800X, but I don't know squat about it.

I haven't properly read through this post yet, but I saved it for later since I'm off for work, you could have a look and see if there's anything you can make sense of that is interesting

 

[Bartimaeus]

1 hour ago, Azdeus said:

I haven't properly read through this post yet, but I saved it for later since I'm off for work, you could have a look and see if there's anything you can make sense of that is interesting

Those three values (PPT, TDC, EDC) are what I was manually messing around with. However, while they do affect how much power the chip can draw, they don't seem to much affect the efficiency of the power that the chip draws, which is why you start losing performance once you start lowering those values (and where, if you know your way around with voltage settings, you would then potentially be able to claw some of it back with more efficient settings). So effectively all I've done is lower the power ceiling on the chip and suffered a minor performance loss at 16 thread utilization in exchange for much better temperatures, which IMO is a worthy trade (AMD says 90c is 'fine', but I would generally like to be at least a little lower than the absolute maximum allowed, and would rather power throttle than temperature throttle, )...but I could probably do more.

(e): I found this extremely helpful video on how to undervolt + optimally use the Curve Optimizer (e: lmao hell of a thumbnail here, but it's good stuff):

 

Edited February 24, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Bartimaeus]

Sold the 5700 XT for about $700 to someone I was reasonably sure wouldn't scam me - back on my GTX 1060 for the time being. Apparently, it's a bad, terrible, no good idea to sell GPUs on eBay right now due to the amount of scammers and eBay/PayPal almost always taking the buyer's side, so I found a place to sell it where I could select a buyer myself instead of being at the mercy of whoever clicks the buy button first. Less money for it, but that's not a huge deal to me to avoid getting scammed entirely.

Did lots of different benchmarking and testing of my undervolted CPU. In Curve Optimizer, most cores are around -20: one that's -15, one that's -10, one that's -30, and a couple that are -25, and these seem to be quite stable while reducing both reducing power draw a small amount and increasing performance seemingly. As I understand it, each -1 is about 3 to 5 millivolts, so that's about close to -0.1 on some of the most reduced ones - not too shabby.

And finally, I ended up getting a Mushkin Pilot-E 2TB for my SSD needs. Even with the 1 TB I have right now, I've generally been very strapped for space (and has made a transfer over to the new PC difficult), so it'll be a welcome respite.

Case: Fractal Design Meshify C Blackout
PSU: SuperFlower Leadex III Gold 750W
MB: MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800x
Cooler: Scythe FUMA 2
RAM: G.Skill 32GB 3600
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1060 Windforce OC
SSD: Mushkin Pilot-E 2TB

If nothing else, it's a great time to not need a particularly good GPU, .

Edited March 8, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Keyrock]

I'm going to be looking at replacing my lappy in the next year or two. I may not necessarily replace it with another lappy, though. I pretty much never use the screen on the lappy, I just HDMI out to the cheap ass 27" 1440p monitor in the truck, so a miniPC would work just as well for my needs. The dream would be to not even need a discrete GPU. What are the odds AMD or Intel puts out an APU/iGPU (someone needs to come up with a vendor agnostic term) that can do 1440p @60Hz in the next 2 years?

[Bartimaeus]

I keep hearing talk how there's likely to be a hard drive shortage in the near future. Don't know if it's going to happen for sure, but happened to see some 14 TBs for $200 each and bought 4 rather than risking it and regretting it. It's just as well - I was at the limits of my ~16 TB anyways, and I like to keep my data in at least a basic mirror.

Edited April 20, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Malcador]

That's a lot of porn, man.

[Bartimaeus]

...Yes, and definitely not 16K Sailor Moon rips that I don't have. I mean, who would even want such a thing?

(Real talk: TV and movies take up a lot of space, particularly if you have an OCD thing where you prefer not to encode your favorite shows/movies from raw bluray dumps because transcodes are inherently evil.)

[Malcador]

I do need to get a new external drive to back up stuff, should look into a NAS.

[Bartimaeus]

1 minute ago, Malcador said:

I do need to get a new external drive to back up stuff, should look into a NAS.

I decided against a proper NAS myself - I've set up a couple before, and I think it's just too much hassle to manage for all of my different needs. Up until recently, I was using my old Phenom II X4 system from like ten years back as a fairly rudimentary Windows HTPC with the Plex Server software on it that also had local network shares and remoting in enabled, and just had it running 24/7. Since I upgraded to a Ryzen system recently though, I just swapped it out and now am using my previous i7-4770k system for that purpose instead - a bit more efficient, and mercifully a lot more powerful than the old Phenom II system, . Also, thanks to the increased threads and RAM of the "new" HTPC, I can have VMs on that system permanently running for some other purposes.

I know some folks who literally have 100+ TBs of storage, and it's a bit loony tunes - I'm not one of the big boys...but I did get a little closer today, . The fact that I always mirror everything will always make everything a lot more difficult, of course - I can't not mirror, I hate data loss too much.

[Azdeus]

So, upgraded my CPU, MB and RAM. I expected this would take about an hour, but in total it took me about 3 hours and one totally ruined back. Once I started digging into the chassis I found more and more dirt/grime/dust so it ended up as almost a complete rebuild.

So the current specs;

Chassis; Corsair 900D

Motherboard; MSI X570 MEG Unify

CPU; Ryzen 7 5800X

Cooler; Fractal Design Celsius S36, added some rubber vibration dampeners to the fans to get them even quieter.

RAM; 32GB GSkill 3600 CL14 Ripjaws

GPU; ASUS Geforce RTX 3080 OC

PSU; EVGA Supernova G2 750W

Soundcard(Yes, they still make them); Creative SoundBlaster Z

NZXT Grid controller for the front fans, biggest mistake in my entire build.

Storage;

3 TB Seagate Barracuda 3.5" 7200RPM

750GB Western Digital Black 3.5"

Kingston 120GB SSD

1TB Samsung 970 EVO m.2

 

[LadyCrimson]

1 hour ago, Azdeus said:

and one totally ruined back.

You know what this means, don't you ... your workbench is not big tall enough.  

Sounds like a nice upgrade tho. Enjoy!
Also...I can't live without my Soundblaster.  Onboard sound ... pffft.

[Bartimaeus]

At this point in my life, I would basically never completely take apart an already finished build if I don't have to. It's way too much hassle and pain to dissemble a PC - would rather just pay for another chassis than to try to rip a motherboard out of one just to put another back in, . Looks like you got some expensive RAM there - 3600 CL14, wowie!

I kind of regret getting a 5800X and not waiting for a 5900X. I'm not one for liquid coolers, but the 5800Xs basically need one to really work at their full potential due to the entire CPU being on one chiplet and producing a ridiculous amount of concentrated heat - the 5900X cools better and is more power efficient even with it having 4 more cores due to being on two chiplets, . Still a great CPU, but can't help but feel like I made the wrong decision, which isn't a feeling I've really ever had before (and certainly do not like) when building a PC.

[Azdeus]

3 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

You know what this means, don't you ... your workbench is not big tall enough.  

Sounds like a nice upgrade tho. Enjoy!
Also...I can't live without my Soundblaster.  Onboard sound ... pffft.

I choose to see it as me being to tall

Thank you, yeah, it does make a big difference to have those soundcards.

11 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

At this point in my life, I would basically never completely take apart an already finished build if I don't have to. It's way too much hassle and pain to dissemble a PC - would rather just pay for another chassis than to try to rip a motherboard out of one just to put another back in, . Looks like you got some expensive RAM there - 3600 CL14, wowie!

I kind of regret getting a 5800X and not waiting for a 5900X. I'm not one for liquid coolers, but the 5800Xs basically need one to really work at their full potential due to the entire CPU being on one chiplet and producing a ridiculous amount of concentrated heat - the 5900X cools better and is more power efficient even with it having 4 more cores due to being on two chiplets, . Still a great CPU, but can't help but feel like I made the wrong decision, which isn't a feeling I've really ever had before (and certainly do not like) when building a PC.

Haha! Yeah, it's a major pita but it's worth it, the amount of dust that had collected everywhere was getting on my nerves as I saw all of it, I couldn't leave it since I already had the motherboard and other components out, golden opportunity.

Yeah, the RAM sticks are nice, not as costly as I thought they'd be though. They didn't have any 16GB packs that didn't have any RGB, that I wouldn't have to wait for, and the smaller capacity sticks had worse latency aswell so I splurged a little.

 

I could've easilly managed with a 5600X (If they were available) but I didn't want to go from 8 to 6 cores either, even if they're much faster than the old ones. I have noticed the heat the past couple of hours, I've got a 360mm radiator and I hit peaks around 65C and the heatsoak for all the water sits at around 44C when idle currently, I'm not entirely suprised though since all the cores boost to 4.7Ghz, it'll be interesting to see if I can overclock it a bit more. The Thermal Grizzly paste is doing it's job well!

[Bartimaeus]

If you run Cinebench R23 on multicore (only takes a minute or two), what score do you get after a couple of runs? Presuming you haven't overclocked or anything and are still just running stock everything - want to see how badly yours beats mine when you presumably won't have yours throttling like mine is because I'm on an air cooler.

https://www.guru3d.com/files-get/download-maxon-cinebench-r23,1.html

Edited May 2, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Azdeus]

1 hour ago, Bartimaeus said:

If you run Cinebench R23 on multicore (only takes a minute or two), what score do you get after a couple of runs? Presuming you haven't overclocked or anything and are still just running stock everything - want to see how badly yours beats mine when you presumably won't have yours throttling like mine is because I'm on an air cooler.

https://www.guru3d.com/files-get/download-maxon-cinebench-r23,1.html

I did three runs, the first one seemed low though to numbers I've read in other places, so I closed a couple of background programs I had for the second and third run. To be fair, the memory is running on it's XMP profile, but that should have very little effect here.

14752
15183
15145

The temps go to about 70C during these tests, and the water is decently heatsoaked, so no shenanigans there. I went through all twelves passes though I should say it does take a little bit more than one minute

Edited May 2, 2021 by Azdeus

[Bartimaeus]

IIRC, it does make a little difference, but not enough to discount the gap between our numbers. Mine maxes out at just ever so slightly below 14000, and I have a danged good quality air cooler too - just not enough for the 5800X, sadly. Thanks for the test - shows how much these chips really need their cooling to not throttle. I had a buddy that was using an old Hyper 212 Evo to cool his, and I could hardly believe anybody would still have one of those in this day and age, much less try to cool a 5800X with it...he was getting more like 11500-12000 with his. Yikes.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Azdeus]

11 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

IIRC, it does make a little difference, but not enough to discount the gap between our numbers. Mine maxes out at just ever so slightly below 14000, and I have a danged good quality air cooler too - just not enough for the 5800X, sadly. Thanks for the test - shows how much these chips really need their cooling to not throttle. I had a buddy that was using an old Hyper 212 Evo to cool his, and I could hardly believe anybody would still have one of those in this day and age, much less try to cool a 5800X with it...he was getting more like 11500-12000 with his. Yikes.

Wow, dang. I went to look at that cooler of yours, and it's no slouch. I've seen plenty of people get better results than mine on air though, maybe the thermal paste isn't up to snuff or didn't get a good spread or contact?

[Bartimaeus]

Hmm...maybe! I'll be adding a couple of additional fans I purchased recently to the case, maybe I'll try re-mounting it then, because it is definitely thermally limited from what I tested.

[Azdeus]

1 minute ago, Bartimaeus said:

Hmm...maybe! I'll be adding a couple of additional fans I purchased recently to the case, maybe I'll try re-mounting it then, because it is definitely thermally limited from what I tested.

I went a bit overboard with the paste, the Kryonaut has crazy performance compared to most others. It's basically overkill if you have a standard use case, though not maybe as much if one is running a really hot cpu

[Bartimaeus]

26 minutes ago, Azdeus said:

I went a bit overboard with the paste, the Kryonaut has crazy performance compared to most others. It's basically overkill if you have a standard use case, though not maybe as much if one is running a really hot cpu

I have a big tube of Prolimatech PK-3 I've had for a few years. Not quite as good as the Kyronaut, but close enough:

Did I mess up the mounting? To be determined...

Edited May 2, 2021 by Bartimaeus

[Azdeus]

5 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

I have a big tube of Prolimatech PK-3 I've had for a few years. Not quite as good as the Kyronaut, but close enough:

 

Did I mess up the mounting? To be determined...

A few years? I wonder how long it'll stay "good" as it were.

[Bartimaeus]

The advice I read online seems to generally be "if it doesn't seem noticeably wrong when you try to apply it, like being runny or too solid or flaky, then it's fine - make sure you seal it and don't store it in the sunlight", .

[Azdeus]

10 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

The advice I read online seems to generally be "if it doesn't seem noticeably wrong when you try to apply it, like being runny or too solid or flaky, then it's fine - make sure you seal it and don't store it in the sunlight", .

I'm thinking I've got to write some emails tomorrow when I wake up, I'm really curious!

That said, I have a tube of paste from 2003 that is still useable, it works, but it was never really good to begin with either.