Bandwidth Place 2

So now budget is a decent bit less of a concern, as I'm getting back a fair amount more than I thought in my tax return. I usually get bent over pretty hard, even though I pay max taxes out of each pay, but I still have a lot of stuff I need to buy and so on... bought my first house a few months back and that alone took up a large chunk of the money I had stashed away. Even still, I'm really leaning towards Ryzen.... probably even a Ryzen 5 model. That will depend on how Intel answers on pricing.

I'm also pretty excited to see what the new Vega GPU's will do once they launch. I consider the GTX 1070 to be the "card to beat" at the moment, and will go with that card unless something out of the Vega lineup makes a strong enough case. Interestingly enough, memory speed seems to factor in heavily in terms of how Ryzen chips perform. So far, DDR 3200mhz ram seems to be the "sweet spot".... but if I can get say a 4000mhz kit at a reasonable price, and there isn't a bit hit on diminishing returns.... I might go that route.

I'm pretty surprised Intel has not answered on pricing at all so far... I mean, I know they have different priorities, but this just seems negligent.

I've detailed my personal experience for why I swear off Radeons, so you know where I stand on the GPU side.

I do remember your post detailing your issues with your Radeon GPU. I don't have issues similar with my HD5870, but it did have it's own unique issue running a dual display unit even with both DVI's plug into the card itself. I had to flash the BIOS for the card to ensure the clockspeed never fluctuated, otherwise I'd get artifacts and banding every time the clock cycle adjusted... pretty annoying problem.

I'm hoping if anything, the Vega GPU's will cause the 1070 to become available at or just under the $300 mark. That seems legit to me. According to some supposed leaks, the highest Vega GPU that's been announced so far will be about on par with the 1070.... but should be fairly cheap in consideration, like mid 200's cheap. I'll probably still not be building anything for a few more months, just so that there is ample time for all the rocks to be turned over.

I was wrong about those cards, the cards I was talking about in my last post were rebagged Polaris cards... not Vega cards.

Still though, if I can get a 1070 for $300 or less that's probably what I'll do.

I bet someone I could make a respectable 1080p gaming desktop for $600, figure I'd post it here for fun.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/rBpKgL

Sad thing is, this build would cost the same as a single GTX 1080 I've bought.

So, I've ordered parts....

This x58 system is just way too old and unreliable. It's a pain, I'm tired of it. My ability to work is affected by the ability to keep this machine running. It's not like I need a ton of raw horsepower, but reliability is very important and the reliability of this system is garbage any more.

CPU: Ryzen 7 1700X - $300 (Amazon)
MOBO: MSI X370 SLI PLus - $130 (Amazon)
Case: Corsair Carbide 200R - $70 (Amazon)
Cooler: Cyroig H7 - $35 (Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200 - $160 (Amazon)
PSU: EVGA 550 G3 - $85 (IIRC... bought a few months ago)

Reusing from old setup:
Optical Drives
Radeon HD5870


Just SO tired of the old setup. I can use my thinkpad and it's dock, and while it is "ok" it just doesn't have the power that my desktop (even my 7 year old desktop)
has. I feel it's just time.

I could have got a 7700K for a bit more money, but I like the 8C/16T and the fact that this system over clocks fairly well and very easily.


I'm going to sell off my Gigabyte x58 board, the CPU, the Hyper 212 Evo, and the memory sticks. Should net around $300 from all that.... so I should be able to upgrade
for about $400 right now.

I still need a new GPU but they are CRAZY expensive right now. Ram is also nutty compared to just a few months ago. I somehow / somewhere got a price for 32GB of ram
at $150 and now 16GB is that much. Unless it was some slower than dirt kit on a stupid good sale. GPU's will stay crazy until the crypto currency stuff settles back down.


I plan(ned) to get a GTX 1070 and was shooting for 32GB of ram. 16GB should be fine for now, and with how little I game and how old / low demanding the games I play are
the 5870 can hold out until the prices come back down to earth.


Should be much happier with this for now.

That sounds sweet, and looks like you've read about how much fast RAM benefits Ryzen! Probably means the design is starved for bandwidth.. Intel's 8 core CPUs have quad channel vs Ryzen's dual channel.

Due to how new Ryzen is and how many new features and kinks they work on with each update, I would not classify the Ryzen platform to have a "if it works, don't fix it" level of maturity, so be sure to do BIOS updates and whatnot!

Noted about the compatibility/stability and keeping up to date with BIOS revisions. I'm betting it will probably be quite some time before the Ryzen bios is mature. I find it kinda dumb that Ryzen needs the faster memory, but I can't complain. To be honest, one of the biggest reasons I even bought a Ryzen chip is because of what it means for the future. If Ryzen gets decent mainstream support/adoption, at the very least it makes the Intel world better for the Intel folks who don't want to change. The 7700K was nearly a $400 chip before Ryzen, and when I bought my 1700X for $299 the 7700K was (IIRC) $10 more. This isn't to say I'm "punishing" myself or forcing the platform on myself just to help the other sides users in the long run. My next system (which won't be 7 years away) very well may be Intel based, and Ryzens level of success could really impact how much I get for my money for the better.

Went to build my Ryzen system last night and ran into a little problem....

The mounting bracket for the Cyroig H7 isn't AM4 compatible. I guess this one is on me, as there is plenty of information out there suggesting that Cyroig is willing to provide free AM4 brackets for some of their coolers that didn't ship with them. I either missed the part where I needed to send out for it, or figured by this point it would already be included. Oh well, now I get to wait on that thing to appear. So I put in the request for the AM4 bracket.

In the mean time, I already tore down and mostly apart my old machine (before I even found this problem) so I'm not interested in putting it back together to hold me over (for work) until I get the new machine built. I set my thinkpad T520 back up with the dock, hooked it in to my monitors and all is good. Changed over to performance mode while plugged in. Runs pretty well, almost well enough to be 100% dedicated workstation (almost removing the need for the ryzen build).... but it's perfomance even playing hearthstone at 1080P isn't totally smooth and sometimes youtube lags a tiny bit. Enough to annoy me, and enough to make it not a viable daily driver.

Oh well, it's been over 7 years.... another week or two won't kill me.

Did the mounting bracket come in yet?

Unfortunately I have yet to receive it in the mail. I'm hoping it will be here within the next few days.

Also REALLY hoping GPU prices come back down to earth some time soon... I kick myself so hard for
passing on a $300 1070GTX a few months ago.

Got my GTX 1050Ti cheap enough. I'll bet the 1070 rocks.

So the part came in the mail yesterday, and I was able to put everything together!


I will say this.... I wish I had put the motherboard into the case first. A mistake I should not have made since this isn't my first build. I've probably done a dozen builds by now and if I had put the motherboard in first, mounting the backing plate and cooler to the CPU would have been SO MUCH easier. Utter fail when your case has a cutout under the CPU area for easy access to installing new mounting plates and you DON'T use it.

It would have been a lot harder to have known ahead of time, but I would have plugged the power cable into the CPU power slot before mounting the cooler. Not a lot of room at all for my hands after
the board was in the case and the cooler mounted to the board and I'd say my hands are medium sized.

Took me around 3 hours, I was being a bit meticulous since I wanted to have decent cable management this time around and the case I've ordered supports cable management fairly well. While it's fairly clean, I can do better and will probably clean it up a little more in the future. Still miles better than any other build I've done in terms of cable management. I think one or two small changes and this case would be very cable management friendly. Overall, pretty happy with the case.

I don't care much for the motherboards splash screen... seems to be a strange thing to get "annoyed" at... but for some reason when win 10 boots it basically leaves the splash screen up with a tiny two inch by two inch square showing the circling dots.. why not just show the normal win 10 booting animation. The UEFI bios is kinda nice. I haven't messed with anything yet, but it's very easy to navigate and seems to have all the features you'd want.

Power cables seem very nice on the EVGA supply, it's fully modular and very quiet.


Not much else to say about the hardware. I think it's sorta dumb that AMD didn't include a cooler with the 1700X. Even if it is an overclocking oriented processor, that doesn't mean the added cost of a cooler should automatically apply. They should provide a stock cooler that can cool the chip at stock temps adequately... but I guess Intel does this as well so no major con there. The memory isn't running at 3200 mhz... yet. I did update the board's BIOS as I had quite a bit of stability issues after initially installing windows 10 pro. After a few hours of usage today, I feel that the problem was mostly the really old build of win 10 I used to do the initial install. It was like version 1507 or something, almost two years old or so. After updating to the latest version, the system has been rock solid stable. For those reasons, I'll leave the ram at the 2133 mhz its now running at for a week or so. After I'm happy the system is stable, I'll try the XMP profile to get it running at 3200mhz.

So far, so good! Now to get a new GPU (when prices come back to reality) and add a 3rd 24" monitor. I need a new desk before I can do that though.


EDIT: Also, I purchased two of the square trade warranties.... one for each the motherboard and the memory. One was $5 and the other $7.... I forgot about that, but seemed like a worthwhile investment to protect both of those for 3 years. They seem like the main things that are going to potentially fail, if anything.

Benchmarks?

Hypocritical of me though, I haven't gotten around to processing my pictures/videos/benchmarks in months lol :O

Funny thing is I learned to always install the CPU stuff before putting the mobo in the case, because not all cases have the gaping hole on the tray, and not all of those gaping holes actually line up with the socket...

Yeah.... I hear you on the CPU stuff. This stuff is the exception and not the rule for sure. Perfect scenario for mounting the cooler and bracket AFTER the motherboard is in the case... those situations are rare though.

As far as benchmarks, I plan to do some after I get my ram running at 3200mhz. The systems been really stable so far, almost happy enough to call it good and them turn on the XMP profile. I didn't take any pictures of the build process, but I can take some of the rig and post them. Now that I think about it, I should bench before and after to see how memory speeds affect the benchmarks. Too bad I have this crappy 7 year old GPU still clinging on for dear life... would be cool to do some game benchmarks as well on the before and after. I guess it's pretty easy to change the speed in the BIOS.... I can do that down the road when GPU prices come back to reality (they have too some time...... right?)

So I must say I'm pretty cheesed off with Corsair right now.

I spend extra money on a 3200 mhz rated kit, I took the time to make sure it was listed as compatabile with my motherboard and rated for that speed... and I can't get it to post over 2133 mhz.

What REALLY pisses me off is the fact that it's because Corsair pulled a bait and switch. They used Samsung B-Die memory chips on the original sets and those that were used by MSI for "certification" and now they are using SK Hynix chips in the most recent products. Same kit, same SKU.... only differential is a new "Version" number which I suppose is on the sticker on the ram chip. It's not on the box anywhere, and no documentation is in the box. Total BS in my book. Hopefully MSI will get the compatability down so that this memory set can be supported at 3200mhz. The kingston SSD crap all over again.