Bandwidth Place 2

So I am starting to plan out my next workstation. This one, while still highly functional, seems to have at least
one major issue and it's starting to become a deal breaker.

My current X58 chipset board (ASRock X58 Extreme) has always had a memory "issue". Some times the system
would fail to boot randomly. It would seem that if I power off the machine, and unplug it... after about 30 min it
almost always boots just fine. It's fairly rare, and seemingly random. The machine managed not to do it at all I think
until the return period was over. I'd say it happens around once or so a month, maybe a little less. What does seem
to trigger it more often is if I remove any internal component, or remove its power cord for an extended period of time.

I've also had an issue where now the 6GB of memory I have is just not enough (it's been not enough for a while). So I bought
another 3x2GB set of DDR3 memory (same brand... accidentally bought different speed) but my board refused at first to boot
with the new sticks in. Once I finally got it to get into BIOS with the new sticks in, two pairs were missing. Reseated sticks and
reboot.... one of the pairs shows up and another goes away (for a total of still two missing pairs). I ended up taking them back
out and just running with the 3x2GB setup that I have had since I built this in June 2010.

I REALLY need more ram, and it's getting annoying that I sometimes can't use the machine for upwards of half an hour. I think if
I could get the machine running with the 12GB of ram, that I might continue to use this machine a good while longer.

I don't plan on building until the beginning of 2018. This is just a preliminary list.

New Build A

Motherboard GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 199
CPU Core i7 6700K Skylake 299
Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 + 30
Ram 1 6GB 2X8GB G.Skill DDR4 53
Power Supply Corsair RM750x 130
GPU GTX 1070 350
SSD SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB 320
ODD (?)
HDD (storage?)



New Build B

Motherboard GIGABYTE Z170-GAMING K3 165
CPU Core i5-6600K 249
Cooler Cooler Master Hyper 212 + 30
Ram 16GB 2X8GB G.Skill DDR4 53
Power Supply Corsair RM750x 130
GPU GTX 1070 350
SSD SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB 320
ODD (?)
HDD (storage?)


Total for Build A with "non sale" prices is around $1,380.00

Total for Build B with "non sale" prices is around $1,297.00

Not a lot of difference, mainly the difference in price between the 6700K (i7) and the 6600K (i5).
Right now, I don't know if it is worth it for me to go with an i7. The only way I can see this being
a problem is if the 6600K has issues or limitations with virtualization that the 6700K doesn't. The
cost of the 6700K isn't much more though. Considering how long my machines stay in use I don't
know if it's worth saving the $50. I probably won't OC, but can if I'd ever like too. At 4.0ghz (1.8ghz
faster than my old i7 930) and being several generations newer I don't think I'll need it.

I run a virtual machine to VPN into my company network, and then connect to my amazon VM workstation...
so I do really want to retain the ability to smoothly work with my VM. I don't need any aggressive "performance"
as my local machine and the virtual machine it hosts are basically thin clients to my amazon machine, it does all
the "heavy lifting".

Motherboards are "placeholders" basically. I really like the gigabyte board in Build A... but it has a serious issue with
it's audio chip. Quick research indicates it's not shielded, and placed too closely to components that create a ton of interference
that this thing picks up resulting it so major audio problems. Gigabyte is supposedly going back to a realtek chipset in the
next models... hopefully that are just as nice as the one I have picked minus the audio problem.

I can probably easily stay with a traditional SATA III SSD. Sure the 950 PRO M.2 I have listed is much much faster,
but the 850 EVO I have is easily fast enough for my needs. I don't know that it's worth the essentially double the price.

The last debating point for me is if or not I need the GTX 1070. It's a great card, and great for the money but I just don't
game a lot... hardly ever on the PC and rarely even on my PS4. Do I need a top tier card chugging away, depreciating, while
it rarely ever gets a chance to flex it's muscle? I don't even have, or plan to buy, 4K screens. I might drop down to something
fairly recent with excellent 1080p performance as that is all I really need. By Q1 2018, such a card might be very very cheap.


I have opted to most likely not include an optical disk drive, if I do use one I will reuse the existing DVDRW and BDRW drives I have
now. I have also opted to most likely not include a hard disk drive. I will be upping my SSD based storage to 512 GB and I think it's
about time to "clean up" my long term storage files. So much of it I never use or look at, no sense in keeping a lot of it around for years
if I don't use it at all.

Lastly I'm not sure what case I'll go with, or if I'll re use my current Antec P180. I will most likely go with a new case... just not sure.

If the primary use is really just a thin client for a VM -> encryption -> remote desktop, and you hardly game much, I'd argue you could purpose build something more basic (and reliable apparently) than what you have now.

First off, should you really run a VM? What about a dedicated work computer that only does VPN and remote desktop? That makes its requirements truly "thin".

I don't know what kind of VPN your work uses, but let's say it uses AES... it would then be prudent to choose a CPU that has AES-NI (which is pretty much all of them). If you're still going to run in a VM, then the CPU also needs to have VT-d (which is pretty much all of them). I should note that while any modern CPU has hardware acceleration for AES encryption, I'm not sure a VM hypervisor would be able to make use of the host CPU's AES-NI functionality. This would be an argument against running in a VM.

Food for thought: imagine your build drafts with a more basic SATA SSD and only integrated graphics, intended for your work purposes. If and when you want to make it a gaming machine you can add a video card.

The sentiment I've been reading about high quality sound is that you want to avoid having the DAC in the PC at all. Having a USB sound card is the way to go because it allows you to separate from the interference-ridden cage that is the inside of a PC.
https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/com ... io/cr16xe9

I could easily do away with the VM on my local machine.

So instead of local machine ---> local VM ---> VPN ---> amazon VM I could just

local machine ---> VPN ---> amazon VM


The main reason I run the VM on my local machine is to encapsulate all that "work" traffic and keep
it separate from my local machines traffic. Two big reasons I like this:

1) It allows me to keep "privacy" from what I do on my machine. That activity / data doesn't need to go
through the filtering / monitoring of the company I work for.

2) We work with sensitive / classified information on a regular basis and I feel that the VM is more secure
than just directly running through my local machine. Perhaps this isn't as secure as I think it is, but being
the machines are separate I'd tend to reason that if one gets infected the other stands a chance of not being
compromised.

I probably could get away with just putting more ram and an SSD in my thinkpad T520 and running it as a work computer.
I just need to get it set up to use a pair of monitors and leave the computers actual screen for email only.


Lots of ways I can go with this... just not sure what is the best yet.

Considering how little I game and how little I care about 4K,
I will most likely stick with a GTX 1060 or Radeon RX 480.

They will be around half the price or maybe less, and will
fit my needs just fine. If I ever do game, it will be at 1080p
and this card should pack enough of a punch for most of it's
"useful lifespan".

I think I'm also more than likely going to stick with just a regular
SATA SSD. Don't really see a need to pay a premium for the extra
speed of a PCI SSD when you consider my usages. It would be like
upgrading my cable to fiber for internet. Yeah the bandwidth would
be much higher, but I wouldn't notice any real world differences in
what I do with it.

The external DAC for sound is a neat idea. They aren't expensive at
all and can be a considerable boost to sound quality. While I'm not an
audiophile per say, this is something I might want to do. Pretty decent
DAC's can be had for less that $100.

I've also been really intrigued by the Raspberry Pi lately. The announcement
of the NES mini is quite interesting. The original NES was a beloved childhood
console for me, the first one I ever owned back when I was 5 years old. I'm
interested, but not nuts over the $60 "mini" version coming out this fall that will
have 60 built in games.

That turns to where the Raspberry Pi catches my eye. For less than $20 you can
get a raspberry pi zero or spend just a bit more and get a Pi 3. Using retroPi you
can basically create an all in one retro gaming station that is easily portable and
has HDMI out. Half the price of the NES mini, way more functionality. Many systems,
with complete rom sets (if you have / can find them).

Even the engineering related projects that you can do with the Pi are quite interesting.
From my days of working on pinball machines and other arcade hardware, it's something
that would be cool to dabble in. For the low cost of the hardware, seems like you can't go
wrong. I was even thinking of trying to use it to construct a mini PC to do my work from.
Seeing as how windows doesn't really run well on them, that may be a bit of an issue.

Not sure if I can do everything I need to do running a linux distro.

Yeah an SATA SSD is plenty still, and I'd argue that as far as SSD's go it would be more beneficial to try to get higher capacity ones instead of going for PCI-E ones for higher speed (though both would be great of course ). Anything that can help phase out the use of HDDs is good! Only thing to note:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comme ... ial_bx200/

I bought four Raspberry Pi 2 in January (which resulted in my horror after seeing the announcement of the Pi 3 in February) with the intent of running SmokePing on them in various locations in order to have some internet/LAN reliability metrics. There turns out to be some issues I have with the idea and most of them are no longer maintained or are collecting dust...

Another idea was to have some rpi-based thing on my garage door so that I could have some way to tell if I forgot to close it, and toggle it remotely if needed, but I haven't put any effort into that at all. Most significant problem: I am not an adopter of the "Internet of Things". As far as I'm concerned, none of our computing devices can be trusted to be secure and the idea of allowing the internet to control physical objects in my house is ridiculous.

For the most part though, I just don't put in the time to play with my Raspberry Pi's, and it's kind of sad. :\

Yeah I totally agree.

I'll probably still have a secondary mechanical SATA drive for storage, but I am going
to look into leaning out the data I'm keeping a hold of. So much of it I have NEVER
really used since I physically put it on one of my externals. Why keep it if I never look
at or use it?

I have two WD pass port drives, they are 2TB each and I will probably designate one
that will house all of this data that just builds up and I don't use.

So, I'll probably just go with a 500GB SSD unless I score a great deal on a 1TB during
black friday!

I will probably stay with the 850 EVO. Good tip about the BX200 though, sucks when a
company puts out great drives and then switches up stuff that totally sucks. People assume
since the previous drives made by them were great, this one would be good. Total A HOLE
move on crucial's part.

I did see some 1070GTX's available today for $399, but I still don't think I need one.

So some updates on choices:

The graphics card market continues to get so much
more competitive. It's crazy what cards in the $200
price point can do these days. I'm not sure I want
to go with a GTX 1070 for a few reasons, and as of
now price isn't #1. The biggest reason is what you
can get for the money in the $200 range. The GTX 1060
/ RX480 cards offer incredible performance in the 1080p
sector. The only way a GTX 1070 would be a consideration
is if I could snag one very close to the $300 mark.

I do not need or want a PCI SSD. I'm either going to go with a
1TB Samsung 850 EVO (or the newer model, if they have one at
that time) or a 500GB model and use the extra $150 elsewhere.

I'm going to be swapping out that power supply for an EVGA P2
super nova. I really would like one from the T2 lineup, but for now
that "Titanium" efficiency rating is nutty expensive. The P2 and T2
series from EVGA are made from some very reputable third parties.

I most likely will opt for the Core i7 edition. The way I look at it, is
that the current system will probably have lasted me almost 8 years
by the time I go to rebuild (if it holds up and I can hold out that long).
Spending the extra $50 or so on the i7 vs the i5 doesn't require a second
thought when you consider the fact that even at half that life span, it's
way too cheap to even care about.

The other thing I've been kicking around is going for a water cooling solution.
Most like something like a corsair hydro H110i / H115i. Seems to beat even
the best air coolers even while being configured to be nearly silent. Noise
isn't my concern, it would be the much better thermal performance I would
care most about.

With the money I'll be saving on the SSD choice, I'll probably bump my ram from
16GB to 32GB for the same reason as going i7 vs i5. If I have this system for
4-6 years, I don't want to need to buy memory down the road. I'd rather just get
it now.

Why do your posts have progressively longer lines?
http://www.mylilsite.net/images/diagonaltextformat.png

Based on my own experience (which I've posted a rant about before), I'd say fuck the Radeon and get the GeForce... but maybe you'd have better luck.

I would call EVGA the third party and the actual PSU manufacturer the OEM

Do some research about issues with the Corsair water pumps. Back when I tried one in... 2012? The model I got had some compatibility issues with some PSUs. I can't find much of what I found about it back then, but here's an intro:
http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112256
My memory of the issue was that if the voltage provided by the PSU was slightly higher than it should be (ie. not exactly 12.00V but maybe 12.05V), it causes the pump to make some unnatural and annoying noise. That noise, on top of the fact that mounting a water pump right onto the CPU socket meant that all pump vibrations permeated the entire PC, caused me to quickly return it and have not revisited those coolers since.

Definitely get as much RAM as you can.

Your not the first person to notice, and comment on the fact that my lines get longer like that!
I think for whatever reason I tend to start out with shorter lines, but let them get longer and
longer. Normally you'd think that might bother you (or me in this case) but what happens is that
the shorter text is out of sight on the editor window as I type. Unless I'm purposely trying not to
do that, it normally winds up happening. The only time it really never does is when all of the
text I am writing shows up in the window at once.

As far as the water pump, I'd most likely stay with air. As long as their is a hyper 212 evo or
equivalent/better for the money, I have little reason to go with water. I most likely won't OC
and noise is never really an issue for me. I'm usually running at least one box fan in the room
and it's louder then the computer by far. In the winter I usually don't, but for some reason the
sound of the fans coming from the PC never really bothered me much.

Agree 100% on ATI. My 5870 does a really annoying thing when using it in dual display setups
causing graphical oddities. I had to manually adjust CPU frequencies to make this stop. I think
the 1070 might be a great choice, but early reviews seem to indicate this is overkill for 1080p
resolution gaming. Maybe the 1060 might be a good fit?

Why not let the text word-wrap on its own?

If you won't OC then just use the stock cooler. I barely hear it if at all over other parts of the PC and just opt to use it in my dad's PC and my server. If anything, use the stock cooler and see how you like it and decide on getting an aftermarket if you see fit. You lose nothing.

Just realized I have a D0 stepping i7 930....

Although the system doesn't feel slow to me at all, I am running it at stock 2.8ghz and it seems likely I could top 4.0ghz pretty easy with an OC. At this point I think the real issue holding me up is the 6GB of ram. Part of me wants to try to keep using what I have, but another part of me is screaming that if I wait longer then I'll have even more things I need to spend the money on instead of upgrading the computer lol.

Since I rarely if ever game on the computer, as much as it is kinda disappointing, I may just try to get a 12GB set of memory sticks (3x4GB) and see how well they work. If I can get them working, I might hold off another 1-2 years. I really am curious to see how "Ryzen" (as they call it now" shakes up the CPU game.

So Ryzen really has me intrigued.... I'm just going to let hype be hype until the platform lands
and people have some time to play around with it, but I just couldn't help but scout out a basic
preliminary parts list if these new AMD chips deliver....


Potential Ryzen Build

Motherboard ASUS Prime B350 Plus $150
CPU Ryzen 5 1600x $260
Cooler Thermaltake Water 3.0 360mm $125
Ram 32GB 2X16GB G.Skill DDR4 $160
Power Supply Corsair RM750x $110
GPU GTX 1070 $350
SSD Crucial 575 GB MX 300 Already have
Case Fractal Design Define S $70


The new total with these changes is $1,225, but I really feel like this system has the potential to be
a lot better than the "New Build A" I posted above.. featuring the 6700K. IF these Ryzen chips
live up to the rumors, and my chip can boost into the 4.5ghz range with this water cooling solution
than I really feel like performance wise this setup can compete with those featuring intel's $1000
CPU's. 6 cores / 12 threads with automatic overclocking up to the limit of your cooling capacity for
$260 IMO is crazy good. The big thing will be to see how far these chips can go with good cooling.
I don't expect the chip to hit the 5 ghz threshold, but it really doesn't need too either. With these
chips hitting in a little over two weeks, there is still a lot of time to wait and see. If I were to build
this way, I probably wouldn't do so until around June or July to get a good feel of how well these
components really do. That's still a lot sooner than I'd have been rebuilding anyways. It will be nice
to finally see some real competition for Intel, pending any answer they might have up their own
sleeves.

First thought is... I'm skeptical of Ryzen's performance. So far the only numbers we get are straight from AMD and I want to see third party independent results. Case in point, "automatic overclocking up to the limit of your cooling capacity" makes things very hard to judge. How good was their cooling for their CPU vs Intel's? And if their CPU was really running at the limit, while the Intel CPU, at best, could go up to the rated Turbo speed, that means there's some more performance headroom that was left on the table on the Intel side.

Second thought... even with AMD's full boasting, they only show Ryzen marginally outperforming Intel's offering. They had ~5 years since Bulldozer's release to R&D a better chip, and they only managed to catch up? :\

As far as pricing, the rule of thumb I've used for years for both CPU and GPU is that the price is the true judgement of performance - the true ranking. These companies aren't stupid, they aren't going to sell a slower product for more than the competitor is charging (or at least, about the same). If these Ryzens live up to the hype, that just means Intel will bring their prices back in line to be competitive. Comparing prices right now is meaningless. From the other perspective, why is AMD charging so little? They just need to undercut Intel, but their prices are wayyy lower. That's simply hurting their own profit margins for no reason. Maybe my rule of thumb applies here and the CPUs aren't all they're hyped up to be.

Your points are entirely valid. These numbers and meaningless in a sense, but yeah we will see exactly what these chips are capable of in the coming weeks. I think the real reason AMD has priced their chips so aggressively, is so that they can strongly encourage people to buy them over the Intel chip. If Ryzens 1800X chip holds water, that will be similar to the 6900K for half the price. Similar products, at extremely different prices, is an easy choice IMO. Now we don't really know how well the 1800X trades blows with the 6900K in a variety of applications yet, but we will soon and we know that it will launch at half the price. I'm interested in seeing those two chips at equal clock speeds. Even if the 6900K is still better at equal clocks... unless it's nearly twice as powerful at those similar clocks... there is no reason to not by the 1800X once the platform proves it's reliable and has no compatibility issues.

I've said elsewhere, even if Intel simply slashes prices... that's a win for the customer. I don't need an 8 core / 16 thread monster.... but if I can pick up the part that I was looking to get, at half the price..... well then that's extra cash in my pocket for something else. If all this stands up, AMD will have a true contender to Intels top of the line offerings. The race will tighten up like crazy, and who knows who will be out in front in the coming months or years. Maybe Intels next iteration will put Ryzen in it's place... maybe AMD already has plans for whatever answer Intel might possibly have. All I know is, the price / performance fight is going to get a lot more interesting in the next few months.


As far as my potential Ryzen build goes. I will most likely not be using the Water 3.0. I will probably get a Noctua NH-D15. It's $40 cheaper, and it cools every bit as well and runs quieter. No reason to go with a more expensive solution when there isn't a big difference in performance.

"The multitude of sensors in Ryzen also allow for a feature called Extended Frequency Range (XFR). XFR is an extension of Ryzen's 4GHz boost clock, giving users with a good cooling solution—including AMD's own RGB-laden "Wraith Max" air cooler—an extra 100MHz boost without manual overclocking. The caveat is that XFR only works across two of the Ryzen cores at any one time, rather than all eight."

Okay, so it doesn't actually overclock to the limit of the cooling capacity. It just adds 100MHz to two cores. This is similar to the feature on my 6900K where it goes up to 3.7GHz but one core will go up by 300MHz, to 4GHz.

Looking at Handbrake benchmarks since I care about video encoding:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11170/the ... nd-1700/20

It does alright, definitely a better bang for your buck until Intel falls in line. Still sad though... all this R&D time and Intel being lazy for generations (since Sandybridge) and AMD still has only caught up - maybe not even that.