Build Thread 3.0

[Azdeus]

4 hours ago, Pidesco said:

This one is pretty stable too.

Oh, damn, seem like you've got some artifacting in the top right corner there

[Sarex]

I still can't believe that GPUs are going for over 3k euros. FFS, the 3070ti is going for over 1k... If my GPU goes I'm ****ed...

[Malcador]

I wonder when they'll start offering financing options for GPUs.

[Pidesco]

Prices have gone up again in the past couple of weeks.

[Azdeus]

Yeah, it seems the world is conspiring to raise electronics prices.

[Sarex]

Pulled the trigger on a new CPU. It's making it's way from Pakistan. It's a mighty 6950x to replace my 5820k.

 

Wish me luck.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Sarex

[Totally not Gorgon]

core i 5 12500k 

Arctic Liquid Freezer II 280 

TUF GAMING B660M-PLUS D4

64 gb Crucial DDR 4 3600 mhz

Asus RTX 3070 ti 

Fujitsu  4TB SATA 3200 RPM

2 x 1 TB Samsung 960 evo SSD 

The cooler is total overkill, the crappy intel stock would have been fine, thought i was getting a core i9, but they kept putting off delivery. 

It's sitting at 24 degreecs celcius under full load. 

 

 

[Totally not Gorgon]

Ohh and I forgot to uninstall GPU drivers when changed graphics cards. I only upgrade once every 4-6 years, and I ALWAYS FORGET

All is not well, a number of games report no RTX functionality. Don't really use it anyway, I'd rather have more FPS, but still. 

[Malcador]

PC is acting up, so have to start seriously detail a new build.  I think an i5-12400F is the best value right now ?

[Totally not Gorgon]

Yep, it's definately a good buy.

[Humanoid]

Locally the 5600X has been dropping in price such that it edges out the 12400F once total platform costs are added up, but that will change as decent B660 boards drop in price (and they also offer an upgrade path to 13th gen). Both very much viable so I would spec something up with both options and compare side-by-side. It may also be worth waiting for the imminent Zen 3D release (late this month?) to see how much improvement it offers.

 

A little update for me as I opportunistically replaced my i3-4130 in the HTPC with an i5-11400. I had some spare DDR4 lying around because of an Amazon shipping error, so I picked up the CPU bundled with a B560M Mortar for $314 AUD which is outrageously cheap. Could easily retain everything else ...except the SATA cables. Stupid side-facing SATA ports butting up against an internal plate in the case meant I had to buy two  270-degree (a.k.a. left-angle) SATA cables for $8 each which stings.

[Totally not Gorgon]

Why do i have 4 PCI devices that are unrecognized in device manager, and no PCI devices other than my GPU. Sata drivers not installed maybe ?

I forgot something chipset related

[Sarex]

Maybe some Mobo baked in functionality. You could be missing some vendor drivers.

[Malcador]

12 hours ago, Humanoid said:

Locally the 5600X has been dropping in price such that it edges out the 12400F once total platform costs are added up, but that will change as decent B660 boards drop in price

In Canada, I don't think prices ever fall. 5600X looks to be $30 more than the 12400F when I checked some stores here.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Malcador

[Humanoid]

Yeah, it's about the same difference here. However, that's offset by the fact that a quality B550 motherboard for the Ryzen is cheaper than the cheapest decent B660 board for the Intel right now by about the same gap. Indeed it's a net saving if you're happy with a fairly basic B550 board, which is easier to get away with because the more efficient Ryzen chip doesn't need nearly as robust a power delivery system as Intel CPUs do, though obviously you'd also be sacrificing things like onboard audio, 2.5Gbit Ethernet, ax WiFi and would probably need to settle for a microATX board (but then the affordable B660 boards are microATX too).

So what I've generally found with pricing here is that like-for-like, the final pricing ends up about the same, with the Ryzen holding a slight performance advantage, trading off against future upgradability and more PCI-E lanes for things like the PCI-E 5.0 slot for the video card (not that any such video cards exist yet), and running multiple PCI-E 4.0 SSDs (whereas you can only run one such SSD on B550).

 

EDIT: To give an example, the MSI B550M Pro-VDH is a very good lower-midrange board, and it'll happily run any Ryzen CPU around, even the top-of-the-range models. For about $120 here, it comes with basic ac WiFi, basic onboard sound, Gigabit Ethernet, and a USB-C header but no rear-USB-C port.

By contrast, the cheapest decent B660 board is probably the Gigabyte B660M DS3H. For about $190 here it has no WiFi (but an ax version is available for $30 more), mystery-meat onboard sound (they refuse to say what it is), 2.5Gbit Ethernet, a rear USB-C port but no header for the front. Its PCI-E x16 slot is also only certified for version 4.0, unlike on the mid-range B660 boards.

Now buying an cheaper Intel board isn't inherently a terrible thing. However there is an issue in that while it will no doubt run something like an 12400 with no problems, I would not necessarily trust it with an i7 or above, and who knows if the 13th gen CPUs releasing at the end of the year will be even thirstier. Therefore going with a cheap board sort of undermines the upgradability argument of going with Intel in the first place, and so I would tend to recommend spending more on something like an Asus TUF which is around $240. As you can see, to get the full benefits of the Intel platform you do end up spending quite a bit more despite the cheaper (and slower) CPU.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Humanoid

[Malcador]

I prefer using a sound card, onboard Wi-Fi might be handy, even though I have a card here (2.4 only though.).  But yeah, I take your point on the 5600x, the price's not that much more anyway, is sort of negligible over all.   Paying for whatever GPU I get is going to hurt so much.

[Totally not Gorgon]

I thought it was going to be torture watching my RTX 3070 ti depreciate in value every day until it bottomed out around summer. Actually the price hasn't moved at all. Probably inflation ?

30 series will lose 50-75 % of its value come q3 of course, with RTX 4000. But, that's a loss I would have taken anyway buying a stop gap card. I'm willing to bet I can still recover a decent chunk selling it used. GPUs are not going down in price, the market is still going to be thirsty, even with everything intel and AMD are doing. 

[Totally not Gorgon]

I mean after the supply situation has been alleviated and the market has finally stabilized, and we will sit at probably old MSRP + 30 %, something like that. As opposed to 200%.

 

not going down after that. 

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, Malcador said:

I prefer using a sound card, onboard Wi-Fi might be handy, even though I have a card here (2.4 only though.).  But yeah, I take your point on the 5600x, the price's not that much more anyway, is sort of negligible over all.   Paying for whatever GPU I get is going to hurt so much.

You can get an intel ax210 wifi card from aliexpress for 20 buck. You get the latest wifi standard and 5.2 bt.

[Sarex]

On 3/9/2022 at 10:24 PM, Sarex said:

Pulled the trigger on a new CPU. It's making it's way from Pakistan. It's a mighty 6950x to replace my 5820k.

 

Wish me luck.

It arrived and is working. The default XMP overclock profile locks all all cores to 4Ghz and is working with no crashes for the hour I had it applied, but on prime95 some cores almost hit 100 degrees Celsius. If I find the willpower to go through some guides I'll see if I can get an overclock with sub 1.2 voltage (the xmp had it at 1.24v), because by default it's base 3Ghz, with turbo to 4Ghz on one core while the rest max out at 3.5Ghz and the memory is 2133mhz instead of the intended 2666mhz for the kit I have.

Wonder if there is a second hand kit with some faster speeds on ebay...

On a separate note it seems that if you are sending something in/from Pakistan via mail you need to attach a copy of your ID. Wonder if they had issues with bombs in the mail so they started requiring it.

[Sarex]

I need more ram. Been playing a newish game and it's eating my 16gb to the point that I can't even open a browser on another screen without is stuttering to hell. I'm looking at high frequency c14 or c15 kits on ebay and locally but other then this nothing jumps out and I'm kind of suspect of that kit and seller. I am kind of looking for something between 200-250euros, I would prefer 64gb but if I find a good deal I'll grab 32gb. Also I need it to be low profile to fit under my Noctua NH-D15, otherwise I need to grab another cooler, which is probably going to cost me 200-250 euros more...

Edited May 2, 2022 by Sarex

[Bartimaeus]

My previous PC only had 16 GB for many years until I found and installed a dupe of its memory kit, but before then I remember my PC basically imploding when I would use Photoshop on high resolution images combined with having a browser open. Admittedly, I've had my pagefile disabled for nearly a decade now, which definitely played into it (that's a real "for better and for worse" kind of tweak...), but still - stuff can be pretty memory hungry.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[Sarex]

9 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

My previous PC only had 16 GB for many years until I found and installed a dupe of its memory kit, but before then I remember my PC basically imploding when I would use Photoshop on high resolution images combined with having a browser open. Admittedly, I've had my pagefile disabled for nearly a decade now, which definitely played into it (that's a real "for better and for worse" kind of tweak...), but still - stuff can be pretty memory hungry.

I was kind of surprised to be honest, but I guess I haven't been playing newer games. I thought about duping my own memory but it's around 8 year old model now.

[Humanoid]

That eBay listing is for 8x8GB sticks, so that's not going to be practical.

That said, depending on your case, you can increase the RAM clearance of the D15 by raising the fan somewhat. Just move the wire clip up a few notches until the fan is right up against the side panel. Hopefully that can widen your choices a little. 3200C14 will generally be expensive Samsung B-die, but Hynix-based 3600C16 is a decent alternative that comes reasonably decent at stock.

[Sarex]

I'm on an x99 chipset so I have no problem with 8 ram sticks, I just need a minimum of 4.

I don't think it will fit if I do that, the alternative is to remove it altogether, but I don't think that is going to work for the temps of the cpu. I could also get another fan to replace it but at that point I'll just bite the bullet and get an AIO system which I can transfer later on.

I'm waiting on a price quote for a new Corsair 64gb Vengeance LPX CMK64GX4M4C3000C15 kit, although I doubt he will want less than 300 eur for it...

edit: Ah, seems the newer revisions of this memory are now using Hynix die. Well that's too bad, but I don't think it should be an issue as I don't plan to mix it with other memory.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Sarex