Build Thread 3.0

[ComradeYellow]

5 hours ago, ComradeMaster said:

IceGiant Prosiphon Elite has arrived!  It's quite slimmer than the prototype version seen on the videos but it sports 4 fans, 2 intake, 2 exhaust.  Will report performance and compare it with my current beefy air cooler.

And after testing it's....not much different than what I had, temperature wise anyway.  Perhaps it works better on Ryzen CPU's but right now I would say nothing beats a good aio cooler (or better, all out water cooling if you want to get really ambitious). 

There are tons of variables though I'm gonna have to tinker with (did I even install it correctly?) but right this second I would say don't bother, it's very loud and doesn't look like a significant difference.

EDIT: Upon checking 3rd party reviews, yes, this thing definitely works best on multiple die Ryzen CPU's and not so much Intel's smaller more refined one die and I did have a NH-15 air cooler (which is the cream of the crop for Intel air coolers) so this explains a lot.  Whelp, I now have the 2 best air coolers for both CPU brands so I guess that broadens my horizons a bit.... 

Edited November 27, 2020 by ComradeMaster

[AwesomeOcelot]

Yeah, Linus said the Pro Siphon doesn't work better than a NH-D15 on an Intel, which I have for a 5900x is it arrives. Hopefully the Pro Siphon 2 will have copper and more condenser cores. It's not going to do much better on Ryzen unless you're stressing all cores like in Cinebench, that's what it's designed for, to be better than AIO in that situation. It's a shame it's loud, I hope they do a 140mm fan version.

[kirottu]

Do you guys think B450 chipset motherboard would be enough, or should I go with B550 for future proofing?

[Humanoid]

6 minutes ago, kirottu said:

Do you guys think B450 chipset motherboard would be enough, or should I go with B550 for future proofing?

There is no future-proofing to be had because this is the last generation of CPU to use the AM4 socket. Some B450 boards are still awaiting a BIOS update for 5000-series CPU compatibility, but that'll arrive early next year at the latest. Therefore in terms of what hardware each board will support, there is no meaningful difference.

That said, there are some "nice-to-have" things in the newer chipset like the new PCI-E 4.0 standard (tiny performance gain for top-end cards) and support for AMD Smart Access Memory (but for now a 5000 series CPU is needed for that). If you shell out for some of the nicer boards you also get access to newer improvements like 2.5Gbit ethernet and Wi-Fi 6 (ax), though check the specs of individual boards to see if they actually feature those.

In the end it depends on the price difference somewhat. Personally I'd be happy to pay perhaps $10 more on a budget board for the upgrade. On a mid-range or better board (over 150EUR, say), I'd go B550 all the way. Back when B550 boards first launched, there was a pretty hefty price premium, but that has since narrowed quite a bit. The current value darling of the internet, the Asrock B550M Pro4, is cheaper here than the old favourite MSI B450 Tomahawk Max. Yes I know it's a bit unfair to compare a microATX board to a full-sized one, but those are the boards I most often see recommended for budget-to-midrange builds.

[Humanoid]

On my own side, I'm unfortunately 1 for 3 in the Black Friday stakes so far. Got the motherboard I was after, but missed out on the monitor and amp.

My pick ended up being the MSI B550 Gaming Edge WiFi. Not a huge discount - on the order of 10-15% off the regular price, but acceptable for me. Objectively it's probably overkill as I don't even need the WiFi, which is its only real selling point over the $20-30 cheaper B550 Tomahawk, but I save, uh, $5 on a Bluetooth dongle I guess? And the WiFi is simply a nice-to-have backup for when my regular internet goes down. I had an Asus PCE-AC68 WiFi expansion card spare but I won't have to mess with it now. I had originally intended to go with a Gigabyte board this generation, but they were a bit slow to the party and didn't have what I wanted back when I was doing the research. (Since then the Aorus Pro ax has arrived to match MSI's featureset, but it's a bit late and therefore has ever so slightly worse price and availability, and is also relatively untested in consumer hands)

The two misses were the Dell S2721DGF monitor, of which the entire 1000 unit allocation sold out in one minute, and the Loxjie A30 DAC/amp combo unit which evidently sold out a few days ago already. Oh well, both were far from essential, just being upgrades to things that already worked well.

Funny then I suppose that despite all my claims of not building the darned thing until next year, I'm only technically a CPU away from having a new bootable PC. The system drive, RAM and video card would be placeholders, but still.

[kirottu]

At least you have picked up something. I literally had to go for a walk to try to clear my head. 

[Keyrock]

The way it's looking, I probably won't be finishing my rig until next year. Kinda sucks because I have almost everything except the CPU and GPU, but it is what it is. I wouldn't have had much time to build and use it anyway, since I plan to be home 1 day before driving to my folks for X-Mas then another 1 day when I get back around New Year's before going back on the road. With any luck, this madness dies down by late January/early February which would likely be my next time home.

[LadyCrimson]

Yeah,  the delays/lack of stock etc are terrible if you want to build a new system right now.  I'd be horribly frustrated if I was in that situation - and I'm an extra impatient person.   :(    Hope you can get the stuff when you expect/want, at this point.

 

[Keyrock]

I scooped up a Das Keyboard 4Q during their Black Friday sale. Even on sale, it's an expensive keyboard, but they make top-notch products, this particular model uses Cherry MX Brown switches, which are my jam, plus they have native Linux software. I don't mind paying a little extra to support a company that supports my OS of choice, given that the product is high quality, which it is.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Keyrock

[kirottu]

I might have had some sort of breakdown yesterday. I couldn't make up my mind on what motherboard to get. I think it was because deep down I hadn't yet decided what CPU to get. So I ordered one motherboard, cancelled the order, ordered another one, cancelled that order, ordered a third one, cancelled that too, and finally ordered the motherboard that I had ordered first: GIGABYTE B550 AORUS PRO V2 for 158€. And I'm getting the Ryzen 5 5600X to go with it. Better to have that power and not need it than need it and not have it. I mean, at very least it's going to very quiet for the first few years.

I spend so much time trying to figure out what motherboard to get, I missed on two different sales on 1tb NVMe SSD drives. So I went back to my first idea and bought 250gb NVMe SSD and 1tb SATA SSD. I literally paid more to have less performance, but I don't mind. I'm just glad it's over.. for a while.

I bought four parts for my new computer and it felt like hell.

[Humanoid]

Glad you got it all sorted though, and if it's any help, I've had those parts (well, the v1, but same deal) in my shopping cart in the past month before I decided to delay my build. The disks aren't something I'd stress about at all, since you can just keep adding more and more over the next several years, and they'll keep getting better, faster, cheaper, etc.

 

In the meantime I had a stickybeak at some amplifier prices after missing out on the little Loxjie one, and maybe it's just as well - Amazon are selling Marantz hi-fi amps at very good prices from the UK, and by good I mean third cheaper than they are locally. I'm not about to drop $800-ish on an amp right now while my money is tied up in building a PC, but in a year or two, sure. It's a fair chunk of change, and costs about as much as an RTX 3070, but something like that could easily last 20+ years. I don't know when it happened, but sometime during the past decade, including a DAC with this kind of mainstream amp had become the norm rather than the exception, and I'm glad for it.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Humanoid

[Gizmo]

On 11/17/2020 at 8:32 PM, LadyCrimson said:

I've also discovered the LG "auto dimming" feature, which you aren't allowed to turn off without buying a service remote and using it voids warranty?  So on desktop use, if I leave a browser (or anything) open untouched for 60 seconds, the screen dims drastically (eg, static image protection) then rebrightens when you click again.

Perhaps this (or something like it) could solve the issue:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/move-mouse/9nq4ql59xlbf

*Just a subtle (perhaps imperceptible) twitch now and then.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Gizmo

[kirottu]

Great news everyone, but mostly for me, I'm getting Geforce 1060 for free. Well almost free, I probably have to buy him a bottle of booze or something. 1060 should be good for 1080p for at least couple of years, right? Though this means I won't have a pure AMD machine.

Now only thing left is the power source. I was thinking something in the range of 500W to 600W. That should be enough for mid range build.  

[LadyCrimson]

^  Sure, especially if it's the 6GB one (3GB would be ok too but...   ).  Even 1440/60 in many cases.  I think it's about the equivalent as the 980 or at least very close to it.

[Humanoid]

It's competent, in that it's about the level of entry level gaming cards being sold today, which is basically the RX 570 or GTX 1650 Super. Certainly keep an eye on the next gen low-midrange cards coming out next year, but it'll do for now especially as there's no great value to be had with the current product lineups of either colour.

And yeah, 500W (well, typically they'd be 550W) PSUs will handle your system with ease assuming you don't overclock. The CPU will consume well under 100W, and the graphics card maybe 150W tops - and if you pick up a new mid-range card will probably be 200W max. Even the big 1000EUR video cards are ~250-300W, so yeah.

Edited November 30, 2020 by Humanoid

[Keyrock]

I ordered a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2 TB today. I got the beefy AF Sabrent heatsink to go along with it. It's probably unnecessary, but given how much I spent on that SSD, what's another $25 to keep it nice and chill?

[LadyCrimson]

54 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus

*google*  ... notice it comes in 4TB.  Notice it probably needs a different mobo etc.

...hey guys stop giving me reasons to spend more money, I'm trying to wait a few years, kthx.  

[Keyrock]

12 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

*google*  ... notice it comes in 4TB.  Notice it probably needs a different mobo etc.

You can put it in a mobo that doesn't have PCIE4and it will work, but the PCIE interface (presumably gen 3 in your case) will bottleneck the transfer rates, so you are better off buying a cheaper PCIE3 SSD.

[Malcador]

Should try nabbing a 5600xt for Christmas, will be a great step up from my 980.  Think they are out of stock entirely though.

[Totally not Gorgon]

I'm really getting tired of my old rig, but with all the shortages it's not even like I can order everything at once. 

I suppose I'll just bear the load screens and occasional stutters on my way through cyberpunk. 

[Wormerine]

Hey folks!

I am looking for an advice regarding motherboard.

My laptop died, and I have enough funds to plan PC build for Q1 2021 (assuming I will manage to get my hands on a graphics card ).

so as far as core components go, I am hoping for:

RYZEN 5600X

RTX 3070

From what I understand I have a choice between a B550 and X570 chips. As I don’t understand the advantage of X570 I assume I can stick to B550s. Still, looking at ASUS they rock a wide range of B550s, and I fail to comprehend the choice. Anything I should be looking for/be wary of?

Edited December 18, 2020 by Wormerine

[Humanoid]

X570 has more PCI lanes, but that only matters if you want to run more than one PCI-E NVMe SSD, when a typical PC these days runs none. Generally speaking they just have more of what you already get, more fast USB ports, more SATA (if they choose to configure it to maximise that) ...and also more noise because they have an extra fan cooling the motherboard.

Choosing a motherboard is largely down to picking one that has the features you need. Number of slots/ports (be it PCI-E, USB, M.2, SATA, whatever), Wi-Fi/Bluetooth inclusions, Gigabit Ethernet vs 2.5Gbit Ethernet, the quality of the onboard sound chip if you need to use it, Thunderbolt support, LED bling, etc. This tier list is based on US pricing but can give you an idea of what the more well-regarded boards in each price bracket are, plus any notable shortcomings of individual models that may not be immediately obvious, such as missing a USB-C front panel header.

Edited December 18, 2020 by Humanoid

[Wormerine]

57 minutes ago, Humanoid said:

This tier list is based on US pricing but can give you an idea of what the more well-regarded boards in each price bracket are, plus any notable shortcomings of individual models that may not be immediately obvious, such as missing a USB-C front panel header.

That’s amazing, and more helpful then I could hope for. Thanks a lot!

[Wormerine]

As of today this is my draft

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/sF8TwP

any comments?

Edited December 18, 2020 by Wormerine

[Sarex]

Looks good.