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I don't think install of the CPU and cooler has changed much and it's more or less as difficult as the hardware that comes with the cooler and case space makes it. The only change I've seen is with regards to the thermal paste where my last build was back when best practice was applying a specific amount and then credit card spreading an even layer; it looks like nowadays just putting a reasonable pea sized amount down and dropping the cooler on top works just fine.
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Jul 21, 2020 18:41
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Mackieman posted:General question on CPU coolers: are they as much of a bitch to install as they used to be? I stopped building computers about 15 years ago (socket AM2 days) because I got older and had less free time to dick with things and play games in general. But I used to have the hardest time getting coolers and heat sinks to install with thermal paste and all that good stuff. I do remember trying to install one about 10 or so years ago and having a terrible time. That said I recently completed a new build and went with an aftermarket cooler for the first time in a long time. I went with the Coolermaster Hyper 212 Black Edition and it was pretty easy to install actually. I actually watched this video beforehand and it was easy to do everything he did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSbW-UcLS-g Just remember to tighten any screws completely. I left a few screws not fully tightened and had to go back and tighten them up to get the temps lower.
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Jul 21, 2020 18:56
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Makes sense, thanks. 
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Jul 21, 2020 19:12
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Mackieman posted:General question on CPU coolers: are they as much of a bitch to install as they used to be? If you're remembering that godforsaken hell-born "repeatedly stab your motherboard and/or yourself" tension clip, no, things aren't that bad anymore. Most coolers now attach with some kind of screw system. Some of the designs are so space-constrained that you can only really install/remove them using the specific weirdo screwdriver the cooler vendor provided (don't lose it), but that's still easier and much less bloody. Pretty simple stuff as the other goons said.
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Jul 21, 2020 20:17
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Molten Llama posted:If you're remembering that godforsaken hell-born "repeatedly stab your motherboard and/or yourself" tension clip, no, things aren't that bad anymore. Most coolers now attach with some kind of screw system. That is exactly what I'm talking about. I can't tell you how many times the screwdriver slipped off the loving thing and stabbed the poo poo out of the motherboard PCB. I never had any real damage but one does not need the typical new build blood sacrifices to be augmented by making GBS threads one's pants.
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Jul 22, 2020 00:14
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Klyith posted:For a cheap basic backup / media storage type NAS I'm not sure that the SMR thing is really a big deal. orcane posted:Oh definitely. If you're just looking for GB/$ and don't care about the performance, SMR with ext4 (or NTFS
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Jul 22, 2020 02:12
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Molten Llama posted:If you're remembering that godforsaken hell-born "repeatedly stab your motherboard and/or yourself" tension clip, no, things aren't that bad anymore. Most coolers now attach with some kind of screw system. gently caress! I hated these. Especially since they were all seemingly designed for mid-tower cases where the mobo was parallel to the floor, and I loved full towers where it was perpendicular to the floor. Nothing like mounting a 10lbs cooler with a matching backbrace so the PCB doesn't split apart... 
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Jul 22, 2020 03:40
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I remember assembling parts to upgrade to a Pentium 3 (1 GHz  ) on a Friday evening, but the plastic lever of the bundled Intel cooler broke when I was attaching it and I had to wait until Monday to get it replaced because the shop where I bought it was closed over the weekend 
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Jul 22, 2020 11:02
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Hey, goons I'm at the point where I've come to terms with having to buy new PC stuff since my current setup is old af and can barely keep up with the current world of gaming. I already know that I need to buy a new case, main, GPU and probably RAM sticks too but I'm unsure if I need a new CPU as well. Currently I'm using an intel i7-4790 with four cores. My quick search on the net told me that the cpu still is okay but after reading the op I'm not so sure anymore as the part about CPU talks about six cores as the current basic place to be at. So I guess my old CPU should go into the attic then? Also I'm still using a HD drive since that's what I grew up with and change is scary but since everyone is talking about SD drives as the hot thing to use I assume I should change to that too. Would be neat if someone could educate me why those are better aside from the size I guess. For reference, I mainly use my PC for gaming/entertainment with some occasional video editing
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Jul 22, 2020 13:01
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Tin Tim posted:Hey, goons OP posted:21. Do hard disks have any place in a modern computer? Speed is the answer.
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Jul 22, 2020 13:20
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Tin Tim posted:Hey, goons What are the rest of your specs? Amount of RAM, video card, etc.? You may literally just need a video card and SSD that you can carry over if you want a new system in 1-2 years. 4 core 8 thread CPU is probably fine for a while.
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Jul 22, 2020 13:25
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That said the (non-k) 4790 is another 10% slower clocked than the 4790k, can't be overclocked and might be paired with slow DDR3-RAM on a non-Z mainboard. It might still be fine for a lot of stuff, but if you run a software configuration crippled by Spectre mitigation or want to try high refresh rate / e-sports stuff, get ready to replace your stuff. And don't buy new DDR3 RAM even if you can find it and your mainboard supports it, at that point cut your losses and go with a new platform and DDR4 stuff.
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Jul 22, 2020 13:30
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orcane posted:That said the (non-k) 4790 is another 10% slower clocked than the 4790k, can't be overclocked and might be paired with slow DDR3-RAM on a non-Z mainboard. It might still be fine for a lot of stuff, but if you run a software configuration crippled by Spectre mitigation or want to try high refresh rate / e-sports stuff, get ready to replace your stuff. All good points .
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Jul 22, 2020 13:32
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Butterfly Valley posted:Speed is the answer. sean10mm posted:What are the rest of your specs? Amount of RAM, video card, etc.? Aight here goes. Sry for not including it before CPU= intel i7-4790 GPU= Nvidia Gefore GT 710 2048MB (lol) Board= ASUS Z97-K (probably also a lol) RAM= 16gig (two 8gig sticks, DDR3) HD= HITACHI HDS721010CLA330 (1TB) My soundcard and OS probably don't matter  orcane posted:That said the (non-k) 4790 is another 10% slower clocked than the 4790k, can't be overclocked and might be paired with slow DDR3-RAM on a non-Z mainboard. It might still be fine for a lot of stuff, but if you run a software configuration crippled by Spectre mitigation or want to try high refresh rate / e-sports stuff, get ready to replace your stuff. Thanks for the input, everyone
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Jul 22, 2020 13:50
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It's a Z97 board at least, maybe you could sell it for a profit to 4790k users if it still works Tin Tim posted:Thanks. Can you elaborate where that speed actually matters? I'm only semi-competent when it comes to computers Where it's really night and day is just using your computer in Windows (boot times, opening new windows, launching applications etc.) and any time you use stuff that does a lot of file operations (scratch disks for video/photo editing, extracting/writing compressed data etc.). Your entire computer will just be much more responsive.
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Jul 22, 2020 14:05
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Is there any benefit going to 3600mhz ram from 3200mhz ram on a 3700x? I have some TridentZ 16 Gb 3200mhz cas 14 and they are showing as QVL supported by the X570 Tomahawk but I am getting conflicting information about what RAM I should be using on Zen 2. Some are saying that it is better to use 3600mhz for the infinity fabric calculations while others are saying that the 3200mhz with the lower cas reduces latency thus the better choice.
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Jul 22, 2020 15:02
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Tin Tim posted:Thanks. Can you elaborate where that speed actually matters? I'm only semi-competent when it comes to computers It's a really bad time to do a new build. If you get a new GPU, provided you can find one that will fit in your case (PCIe is backwards and forwards compatible, so any card will work in your motherboard), your rig should be perfectly usable, the 710 is by far the weakest point in it and any GPU could be carried to a new build. You might be CPU bound sometimes but 60fps really isn't that high a bar. Also, very yes buy an SSD. Games will load markedly faster, but moreover so will everything else. Startup no longer takes minutes waiting for things to load and startup programs, there's no delay when opening a folder or a file; it completely changes the idea of responsiveness in a computer. I had to use a HDD in a work computer for a while and everything felt like pulling teeth after using an SSD for the last ~4 years. Fantastic Foreskin fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 15:03
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Whiskey A Go Go! posted:Is there any benefit going to 3600mhz ram from 3200mhz ram on a 3700x? I have some TridentZ 16 Gb 3200mhz cas 14 and they are showing as QVL supported by the X570 Tomahawk but I am getting conflicting information about what RAM I should be using on Zen 2. Some are saying that it is better to use 3600mhz for the infinity fabric calculations while others are saying that the 3200mhz with the lower cas reduces latency thus the better choice. The difference is more 'measureable' than 'real'. Low single digit fps gains in situations where the ram is the limiting factor. AMD had "3600 is the sweet spot for price-to-perf with Zen2" in a pre-release slide which people latched on to, but the numbers didn't bear it out, at least for gaming.
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Jul 22, 2020 15:06
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Some Goon posted:It's a really bad time to do a new build. If you get a new GPU, provided you can find one that will fit in your case (PCIe is backwards and forwards compatible, so any card will work in your motherboard), your rig should be perfectly usable, the 710 is by far the weakest point in it and any GPU could be carried to a new build. You might be CPU bound sometimes but 60fps really isn't that high a bar. And yeah I knew that my GPU is a pos by current standards but I'm surprised that my board is still considered decent given the age and ddr3 slots
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Jul 22, 2020 15:24
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Tin Tim posted:Thank you for the info! Can you elaborate on why it's a bad time? I mean I'm aware of the general time around us being bad atm but I'm not in a pressure situation where I can't spend the money COVID has hosed supplies making things hard to get and, especially for PSUs, much more expensive than they have been. Add in that new CPUs out of AMD and new GPUs out of Nvidia later this year (though the latter probably isn't real relevant to you since it will mostly impact the high res / high refresh crowd) and buying all new parts right now results in a situation where you're paying inflated prices for soon to be obsolete tech. Since your CPU probably has some life left in it, buying a GPU and seeing if that gets you the performance you're after is a safer bet with really no downsides. Your stuff is old, no doubt about it, but between Intel spinning their wheels and the long-rear end console generation there hasn't been that much movement in the CPU space. More cores is the biggest advancement, but 4c/8t CPUs haven't shown any issues yet. The non -k ness of your CPU may be limiting eventually, but for 60fps is probably able to keep up in most cases, though that's going to be a game-by-game kind of deal. Since you have a Z series motherboard it will have an unreasonably high resale value for people who did buy the 4790k and are willing to throw good money after bad rather than just buy a new CPU and RAM.
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Jul 22, 2020 15:36
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Yeah Z97 was the last DDR3 chipset, it's unlocked (both for CPU- and RAM overclocking) and the Asus board is decent. At least it has USB 3.0 and you could even put a NVMe SSD on it (even if that's limited to - I think - PCI-e 2.0 x2) 
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Jul 22, 2020 15:43
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Some Goon posted:COVID has hosed supplies making things hard to get and, especially for PSUs, much more expensive than they have been. Add in that new CPUs out of AMD and new GPUs out of Nvidia later this year (though the latter probably isn't real relevant to you since it will mostly impact the high res / high refresh crowd) and buying all new parts right now results in a situation where you're paying inflated prices for soon to be obsolete tech. Since your CPU probably has some life left in it, buying a GPU and seeing if that gets you the performance you're after is a safer bet with really no downsides. Funny that you mention PSU prices btw. It all started with my PSU dying a few days ago where I to scramble to get a new one cause I had an online exam the next day. I picked up a Be Quiet System Power 9 from my local shop for like 10 bucks above the average online price which is kinda par for the course for small shops I think. Seems like I got "lucky" in that area then Anyway what I'm taking away from this is that I'm picking up a new GPU and an SSD and should evaluate the other parts at the end of the year again. Will check out GPUs today and call up my uncle about an SSD. He's been hounding me about switching to one for the last two years and will probably be happy to hear from me on that front
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Jul 22, 2020 16:07
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So the gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi is now on sale for 289.00 CAD at Canada Computers. Supply seems to be normalizing and there’s an abundance of these motherboards now. Is it worth it or should I pay extra for the pro version or wait for the next chipset? How reliable are these boards? Kraftwerk fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 17:10
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Some Goon posted:The difference is more 'measureable' than 'real'. Low single digit fps gains in situations where the ram is the limiting factor. Figured there was a loony toons logic when it came to this whole thing when I did my research. Would be worth the effort of setting the values of the ram via the DRAM calculator or just set XMP and forget? I'm not overclocking.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:23
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RAM OC is really finicky and if you're lucky the DRAM calc's settings work first try and run stable with anything ie. free performance yay. Or you spend hours tweaking values to get close to stable but not quite, so you have another few days of tweaking ahead of you, either to reach the sweet "free" performance or just going gently caress it turn on XMP. If you ask the hardcore RAM overclockers they will tell you they get 20% better performance out of their system with it (in very specific situation and who's counting the week of running stability tests to get the system stable in the apps they care about - may not be stable in every game or application though). Since you're not overclocking anything else I don't think you really want to deal with that, so just running XMP is fine.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:35
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Whiskey A Go Go! posted:Figured there was a loony toons logic when it came to this whole thing when I did my research. Would be worth the effort of setting the values of the ram via the DRAM calculator or just set XMP and forget? I'm not overclocking. There are gains to be had with heavy RAM tuning, but I have no idea how much effort that represents. Setting XMP is probably good enough, and the option of RAM tuning is always on the table if you feel you need more performance / aren't being held back by your GPU.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:37
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It really depends, if your RAM sticks turn out to be golden samples that run with your board/CPU and BIOS in perfect harmony it may be as easy as calculating a "safe" or even faster preset with the Ryzen DRAM Calculator, putting in the values and everything just works. You might run into the opposite situation though, and your RAM can barely run XMP profiles and to figure out which timing is the critical one that's getting you bluescreens or errors in the memory testing programs, you might spend an abnormal amount of time to figure it out and in the end you have 5% more performance in CPU bound tasks to show for it.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:43
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Some Goon posted:The difference is more 'measureable' than 'real'. Low single digit fps gains in situations where the ram is the limiting factor. GamersNexus came to the "3600 is the sweet spot" with actual testing, but were also very up-front that the difference is trivial IRL. The best reason to go with 3600 CL16 is that it's often not much more expensive compared to 3200 CL16. It's not a difference to spend real money on, but a few bucks in a $1,500 build or whatever? Sure why not. Kind of how the markup to move up from a "value" SSD to a faster (theoretically) WD SN750 or whatever isn't "really" worth it, but it's also so small compared to the overall price of a non-budget build that there's not much reason NOT to get it either. sean10mm fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 18:43
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orcane posted:RAM OC is really finicky and if you're lucky the DRAM calc's settings work first try and run stable with anything ie. free performance yay. Seeing how I just got off of a highly unstable 8th gen intel 8600k that stuttered under load at stock and Gigabyte z370 motherboard that I had to tweak for it to even boot into windows, I will take the "set and forget' route on this. Putting all that work for a 5% gain seems pointless and I rather being doing anything else than shorting my CMOS all weekend for no noticeable gains. TacticalHoodie fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 18:57
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Kraftwerk posted:So the gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi is now on sale for 289.00 CAD at Canada Computers. Supply seems to be normalizing and there’s an abundance of these motherboards now. I have one, and it seems perfectly reliable when it’s running, but every other time I put it to sleep, it spins up and freezes and has to be hard shutdown. YMMV.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:59
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sean10mm posted:GamersNexus came to the "3600 is the sweet spot" with actual testing, but were also very up-front that the difference is trivial IRL. https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3508-ryzen-3000-memory-benchmark-best-ram-fclk-uclock-mclock Yeah, that's where the "low-single-digits" comes from; if AMD hadn't stated it no one would care, unless they were looking to do their own RAM tuning. At even a $10 gap there's probably somewhere better to put the money. To the OP of this question, the article above is what anyone will be referencing when talking about RAM and Zen2 as afaik it's the only rigorous testing that's been done.
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Jul 22, 2020 19:02
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brap posted:I have one, and it seems perfectly reliable when it’s running, but every other time I put it to sleep, it spins up and freezes and has to be hard shutdown. YMMV. That's really annoying and I'd be happy to pay more to have a "Set it and forget it" motherboard with a bios flashback button on the back so I don't need to open the case. I'm going to put a 4000 series CPU into it as soon as they come out.
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Jul 22, 2020 19:06
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If I were willing to slowly accumulate pieces for a ~2.2k budget gaming PC (including display) what parts are recommended/available/at a reasonable price currently. Or should I hold off on everything until we get more solid info on new gen gpus?
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Jul 22, 2020 19:11
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Sextro posted:If I were willing to slowly accumulate pieces for a ~2.2k budget gaming PC (including display) what parts are recommended/available/at a reasonable price currently. Or should I hold off on everything until we get more solid info on new gen gpus? Generally slowly accumulating parts is a bad idea since by the time you have enough to test what you've bought you'll be out of the return window and have to deal with the much more complicated warranty RMA process. With that budget you're building a high end machine and will want to wait for news on the GPUs, though it may be a couple months before you're likely to get one in your hands.
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Jul 22, 2020 19:19
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Kraftwerk posted:That's really annoying and I'd be happy to pay more to have a "Set it and forget it" motherboard with a bios flashback button on the back so I don't need to open the case. I wouldn't rule out that one board just because one goon had an odd bug with it. IMO all the major board makers are mostly good, and all of them ship the occasional lemon. Some make models that are relatively bad for the price, but I don't think the Aorus Elite is one of those. it's a well reviewed part overall. Waiting for the next chipset is probably pushing you well into 2021. I wouldn't worry about it. One nice thing about B550 boards is that a lot of them have bios flashback in the $180-190 range while X570 largely doesn't, and unless you want to run a bunch of M.2 drives + SATA drives + PCIe expansion cards at once they perform the same as X570 in benchmarks I've seen. B550 has less PCIe 4.0 connectivity (one video card and one M.2 SSD basically), but most people don't have a need for more than that anyway. e: Plus PCIe 4.0 kind of doesn't really DO anything yet IRL. The 4.0 SSDs on the market now are absolutely not worth it and it's unclear if even a 3090 Super Ti JUGGERNAUT YYZ will saturate a PCIe 3.0 16x slot's bandwidth either. sean10mm fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Jul 22, 2020 |
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Jul 22, 2020 19:21
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sean10mm posted:I wouldn't rule out that one board just because one goon had an odd bug with it. IMO all the major board makers are mostly good, and all of them ship the occasional lemon. Some make models that are relatively bad for the price, but I don't think the Aorus Elite is one of those. it's a well reviewed part overall. Once again this thread is saving me some serious money and grief. B550 looks like a WAY better solution for me than X570. No stupid chipset fan and all the goodies I want for a cheaper price. I don't need backwards compatbility. I just need full Zen 3 support and the OPTION to use PCIE 4.0 for video cards and M2 slots. Once again my plan has always been to have a games/system drive in M2 which I would want to benefit from 4.0 and a normal storage M2 drive. Does the normal M2 drive degrade the performance of the video card and main drive slot?
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Jul 22, 2020 20:33
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Kraftwerk posted:Once again this thread is saving me some serious money and grief. Every B550 board has a PCie 4.0 16x slot and M.2 PCie 4.0 x4 SSD slot that go straight to the CPU, nothing messes with those. They're off to the side by themselves, you never have to worry about those because they don't even interact with the chipset really. Where things can get confusing is how the board juggles the second M.2 slot, the other PCIe 3.0 slots and the SATA ports. B550 boards can't run all of them at full bandwidth simultaneously. If you use the M.2 slot some boards deactivate SATA ports and some deactivate PCIe 3.0 slots. Some boards only run the second M.2 slot at 3.0 2x instead of 3.0 4x speed, or will slow down the second M.2 slot if you plug in too many PCIe cards. Basically you have to read the manual for the board to be sure how it handles it. For most people none of these limitations matter, if they do just get X570 and run 2x M.2 drives and 6x SATA drives and multiple 16x cards or whatever and go hog wild. But by then you're spending so much on extra poo poo to plug in that the premium for a high end X570 really doesn't matter.
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Jul 22, 2020 21:17
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But also if you're plugging in more than like two SATA devices you should probably be looking at a NAS first
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Jul 22, 2020 21:49
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I'd appreciate some critique of my choices here - I'm upgrading from an i5 3570 that runs stably at 4.5Ghz, with 16GB of RAM and a much smaller SSD. Mainly looking to refresh everything as it's all a bit old now. I've recently upgraded the GPU to a 5700XT and am getting 60-75FPS 1440p at high settings without maxing out the GPU, although in a few years I'll probably get a 4k monitor. My current PSU should be fine for now. I've gone for what looks like a good value for money with decent performance. Prices in the UK seem to be about what they usually are and the new AMD processors still seem to be months way? The website offering the motherboard offers you to pay £10 extra to ensure the BIOS is updated - I guess that's worth the hassle of having to return it if it isn't. I chose 3200 memory as it's 2/3 the price and there doesn't seem to be much performance difference. Any thoughts? Is there any upgrade path on the CPU when the time comes or will the socket change with the next iteration of AMD CPUs? Will I see much performance improvement from moving from an old SSD, DDR3 and the old i5 to the newer stuff? Is there a chance anything could actually run slower, given the Ghz speed of the old CPU is actually higher than the new one? PCPartPicker Part List CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£158.97 @ Aria PC) Motherboard: *ASRock B450 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£79.99 @ CCL Computers) Memory: *Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£60.98 @ Amazon UK) Storage: *Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£99.78 @ BT Shop) Case: Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case (£89.99 @ Currys PC World) Total: £489.71 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available *Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-07-22 21:47 BST+0100
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Jul 22, 2020 22:02
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GTO posted:I'd appreciate some critique of my choices here - I'm upgrading from an i5 3570 that runs stably at 4.5Ghz, with 16GB of RAM and a much smaller SSD. Mainly looking to refresh everything as it's all a bit old now. I've recently upgraded the GPU to a 5700XT and am getting 60-75FPS 1440p at high settings without maxing out the GPU, although in a few years I'll probably get a 4k monitor. My current PSU should be fine for now. The difference between 3200 and 3600 RAM doesn't matter, really only get the 3600 if you find a great deal that puts it near 3200 pricing. Pay the small upcharge to get a WD SN550 instead of the P1. It uses better TLC memory instead of the QLC in the P1. I have an OC'd i5 and the problem you run into is newer games actually need a processor that can handle more threads than 4. The 3600 is unlikely to let you down (newer games in particular demand more threads, and in those it will kill an i5), but if you're paranoid and have the budget the 3700X is really nice. e: There is already a generation of AMD CPU after the 3000s coming out later this year that should run on B450 with a bios update, so you should have an upgrade path there.
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Jul 22, 2020 22:11
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