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Fraggiebaby

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Long as we have been sharing builds and build guides figured I'd show this one. It is very comprehensive, and detailed even on some things moist probably take for granted. Hope you all enjoy.

 

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14 hours ago, ArchieKun said:

So I want to get this topic moving again at least for those who are interested by asking a few questions.

1. Favorite activities that you use your computer for. This can be anything from gaming/research, or even just forums. 

2. What is your favorite software, or apps that you like, and use a lot.

3. Favorite web browser. Yes this is a app, or application but it is so popular, and used so much it gets its own section. :) 

4. Why do you like computers, I realize this one is very subjective.

 

I don't really have a favorite computer activity.  I use my computer for everything.  Programming, entertainment, productivity, research, communication... 

Favorite software ....  I usually have a web browser open (with about a million tabs), discord, about a dozen bash terminals, email, and spotify.  After that it kind of depends on the activity of the moment.

My web browser is currently firefox.  Never got into chrome but I've been toying with the idea of trying brave.

Computers help me think.  If I want to move a heavy physical object I get a lever.  If I want to travel I use wheels.  If I want to get something into or out of my brain I use a computer.

 

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10 minutes ago, efaardvark said:

I've been toying with the idea of trying brave.

Brave is awesome it is very easy to switch too esoterically if you used chrome sense its based on same api. Though coming from Firefox may be little adjustment period. It just depends on hhow dependent you're on chrome extensions. All, or most anyway work with Brave.

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1 hour ago, ArchieKun said:

Long as we have been sharing builds and build guides figured I'd show this one. It is very comprehensive, and detailed even on some things moist probably take for granted. Hope you all enjoy.

 

These days I'd totally go for something to put in that M.2 slot instead of the SATA SSD.  A 250GB drive is only about $50 for the M.2 version and you'll save a cable and thus get a neater build.  If your motherboard allows (and most do these days, especially for AMD CPUs) you can upgrade to an NVME SSD, which can run at PCI bus speeds and literally be many times faster than the SATA protocol allows.  That SATA SSD in the video maxes out at about 6Gb or ~550 megabytes/second data transfer rates and costs $50.  An NVME drive from the same mfr and with the same capacity can hit about 1,800 megabytes/sec writes for ~$70.  And if you're willing to spend a bit more for the performance you can get a high-performance name-brand (here's a Samsung) that'll hit 3,500MB/s reads and 2,300MB/s writes for only $83, again at the same capacity.

Also I prefer a fully-modular power supply.  They're a bit more expensive but you only use the sockets you need so it won't leave you with unused cables flopping around inside your case and potentially getting into trouble with the fans.  Again, cleaner build, and fewer cables means better air flow & cooling.

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35 minutes ago, efaardvark said:

These days I'd totally go for something to put in that M.2 slot instead of the SATA SSD.  A 250GB drive is only about $50 for the M.2 version and you'll save a cable and thus get a neater build.  If your motherboard allows (and most do these days, especially for AMD CPUs) you can upgrade to an NVME SSD, which can run at PCI bus speeds and literally be many times faster than the SATA protocol allows.  That SATA SSD in the video maxes out at about 6Gb or ~550 megabytes/second data transfer rates and costs $50.  An NVME drive from the same mfr and with the same capacity can hit about 1,800 megabytes/sec writes for ~$70.  And if you're willing to spend a bit more for the performance you can get a high-performance name-brand (here's a Samsung) that'll hit 3,500MB/s reads and 2,300MB/s writes for only $83, again at the same capacity.

Also I prefer a fully-modular power supply.  They're a bit more expensive but you only use the sockets you need so it won't leave you with unused cables flopping around inside your case and potentially getting into trouble with the fans.  Again, cleaner build, and fewer cables means better air flow & cooling.

Yah the SATA standard is basically relegated to to mass storage SANs, or even RGB setups sometimes, but as a main OS/system drove NVME is the way to go. I have a 512GB one for my OS drive, and even a extra for gaming storage. 

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11 hours ago, ArchieKun said:

Yah the SATA standard is basically relegated to to mass storage SANs, or even RGB setups sometimes, but as a main OS/system drove NVME is the way to go. I have a 512GB one for my OS drive, and even a extra for gaming storage. 

I usually put a 500GB nvme ssd in as a system/boot drive, then mount a network drive that has all my data on it from my Synology NAS.  500G is kind of overkill as a system drive but it does give me plenty of space to store active project/games locally to take advantage of the SSDs speed if I need it.  Most stuff I just leave on the NAS drive though.  I have a gigabit LAN so that’s plenty fast for most things.  It wasn’t so long ago that 800mbit FireWire was the bees knees, and gigabit ether is at least as fast.

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9 hours ago, efaardvark said:

I usually put a 500GB nvme ssd in as a system/boot drive, then mount a network drive that has all my data on it from my Synology NAS.  500G is kind of overkill as a system drive but it does give me plenty of space to store active project/games locally to take advantage of the SSDs speed if I need it.  Most stuff I just leave on the NAS drive though.  I have a gigabit LAN so that’s plenty fast for most things.  It wasn’t so long ago that 800mbit FireWire was the bees knees, and gigabit ether is at least as fast.

Oh yah I know right FireWire certainly stuck around for some time. I am glad we have true gigabit LAN as our base standard now though, and soon we'll start tto see 10gb  networking in the home in a few years. 

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Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is out and I just upgraded my system from 19.10.  Not a lot different in terms of desktop environment but a few things have been added to the software repository that might make the newbie experience a lot less intimidating.  Things like Steam and Minecraft are now available as point-and-click installs from the software catalog for instance.  Current versions too, not last-years'.  Even the latest version of Folding@Home is in there.  At least now the newbies rage-quitting Windows 10 have less of a cliff and more of a hill to climb if they turn to Ubuntu Linux.  This being a Long Term Support release there will be a tighter focus on bug fixes and stability as well.  Canonical still has plenty of room to improve but the progress is there.

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On 5/8/2020 at 10:02 PM, efaardvark said:

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is out and I just upgraded my system from 19.10.  Not a lot different in terms of desktop environment but a few things have been added to the software repository that might make the newbie experience a lot less intimidating.  Things like Steam and Minecraft are now available as point-and-click installs from the software catalog for instance.  Current versions too, not last-years'.  Even the latest version of Folding@Home is in there.  At least now the newbies rage-quitting Windows 10 have less of a cliff and more of a hill to climb if they turn to Ubuntu Linux.  This being a Long Term Support release there will be a tighter focus on bug fixes and stability as well.  Canonical still has plenty of room to improve but the progress is there.

Thats good to see at least thee Ubuntu community is really starting to mature in terms of incompatibility with the largest platform being Windows apps in particular games. I have long like Ubuntu though I still have to say that Windows is my platform of choice. I know however very well the freedom as well as as security that open source software brings you as apposed to closed source.

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Drat.. looks like my X470 chipset motherboard is not going to be compatible with the new "Zen 3" CPUs after all.  The CPU socket is the same, but there's just too many other hardware changes (chipset and CPU wattage increasing, PCIe 4.0, limited room for CPU-specific configuration in the BIOS firmware, etc.) to make practical supporting anything beyond the 3000-series CPUs on my "old" (ca. 2Q2018) motherboard.  Well, if this one gives me another year or two before I max it out that is all I was really hoping for anyway.  CPU tech is changing so fast.  2 years is a couple centuries in computer years.. who knows where we'll be by then?  Threadripper's 64 cores might be The Thing, or maybe something RISCy like ARM.  Maybe Intel will be desperate enough to counter AMD's Ryzens and Threadrippers with something radical they've had gestating in their labs.  We'll see.

For now I'll just go scope out some X570 and TRX40 motherboards and ponder potential future use cases and price points.  I hear DDR5 is a definite maybe for the X670 chipset mobos coming out at the end of the year too, though that would probably require a new CPU socket as well..... Hard to keep up.  🙀

On 5/8/2020 at 7:32 PM, ArchieKun said:

Oh yah I know right FireWire certainly stuck around for some time. I am glad we have true gigabit LAN as our base standard now though, and soon we'll start tto see 10gb  networking in the home in a few years. 

If price is no limit then motherboards with 10Gb ethernet are already here from places like MSI and Gigabyte, even for the X570/Ryzen (i.e. high-end home) market.  Still in the "if you have to ask you don't want to know" price range, but this being electronics I'm sure that will come down over time.  We've already got 10Gb USB on the most recent motherboards too.

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17 hours ago, Anime loveer said:

I have a touch screen Hp computer and an Asus computer , though its kinda acting up since its a little old , But i don't intend on getting a new one any time soon since i dont need it that much

If you don't mind me asking whats wrong with. I'd be more then happy to see if I can offer any incite. 

On 5/11/2020 at 12:59 AM, efaardvark said:

If price is no limit then motherboards with 10Gb ethernet are already here from places like MSI and Gigabyte, even for the X570/Ryzen (i.e. high-end home) market.  Still in the "if you have to ask you don't want to know" price range, but this being electronics I'm sure that will come down over time.  We've already got 10Gb USB on the most recent motherboards too.

10gigabit Ethernet, and soon in home internet services will be pretty neat though at the end of the day they are just compensation for the fact our fikes are growing all the time, and need ever better transmission systems to handle it.

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9 minutes ago, Geano said:

If you don't mind me asking whats wrong with. I'd be more then happy to see if I can offer any incite. 

Its a little slow and sometimes it just black out on its own , so  can't see anything on the screen , but i can still hear the sounds . For example  like when im watching a video , the screen blacks out tho i an still hear the video .

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3 minutes ago, Anime loveer said:

Its a little slow and sometimes it just black out on its own , so  can't see anything on the screen , but i can still hear the sounds . For example  like when im watching a video , the screen blacks out tho i an still hear the video .

If the screen is flickering, and its a All-In-One touch screen its likely the display cable on the inside is lose, or degraded you did mention its showing some age. The thing with All-In-Ones is they are tricky to repair as they often have very specialized parts, Not to mention the cost for said parts nearly exceeds cost of a new machine. If it dose not bug you then I'd just wait till the day it dose not show a display, and then get a new one money permitting of course. As far as thee slowness can be a host of factors depending on what you do, or have done recently. 

I hope that helped at least clear it up a little.

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On 5/7/2020 at 1:23 PM, Geano said:

So I want to get this topic moving again at least for those who are interested by asking a few questions.

1. Favorite activities that you use your computer for. This can be anything from gaming/research, or even just forums. 

2. What is your favorite software, or apps that you like, and use a lot.

3. Favorite web browser. Yes this is a app, or application but it is so popular, and used so much it gets its own section. :) 

4. Why do you like computers, I realize this one is very subjective. ^^

____________________________________________________________________________

1) I built the PC mainly for gaming, however usual PC web browsing, youtube etc

2) Folding @ Home (if you can call it software), Xbox game pass, Amazon music & probs Musicbee

3) I agree with you, Brave gets my vote at the moment and whenever I try and move away from it I go back because it just works. But I usually split time between Chrome, Firefox and Brave.

4) I find them easier to use than most, plus building them for me is like a puzzle, and I just enjoy spending my time watching vids, researching parts etc, seems can learn loads and there still be more. For me cars are the same

On 4/24/2020 at 7:01 PM, efaardvark said:

If you need single-threaded performance then Intel is still the way to go.  If you play games then you should care about single-threaded performance, especially 3D games since most of the game engines are still mainly single-threaded.  I mentioned Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program, and Cities: Skylines.  None of those use anywhere near all 8 of my 2700X's processor cores.  KSP uses one for the game engine (Unity) and one for the game code itself.  That's typical of a lot of games on the market now.  Even in the best of cases that means that while playing that game I'm wasting upwards of 75% of my processor's cycles.  If gaming were my main focus then I'd clearly be better off getting a faster CPU with fewer cores.  Intel has the highest single-core speeds out there.

That comes at a cost however, both in $$ and in other ways.  Heat is one of my major concerns for instance since I basically live in a desert.  Noise is another concern, and related to heat since generally you need more fans spinning faster and generating more noise to "get rid" of the heat.  (Scare quotes since really you're just dumping it out of the case into the room where you have to deal with it via more fans, air conditioning, etc..)  The physics says that heat scales with the cube of the processor clock so a higher clock means much higher heat output.  And of course Intel is infamous for not innovating - they're still on 14nm process while AMD already on 7nm and moving to 5! - and charging customers high prices for marginal performance increases CPU generation to CPU generation.

The situation is changing even for gaming however, especially now with vulkan becoming the cross-platform API for gfx.  Even before vulkan came along the 3D game devs on Unity, Unreal, etc. were working on better multithreaded support.  Vulkan just makes it that much easier to do so.  Non-gfx software libraries are also getting good at making full use of multiple cores.  I expect that within a few years even 3D games will take much better advantage of multi-cored CPUs.  If you already have an intel system then you're fine, especially if it is based on a multi-core processor like an i5 or an i7 from the last couple years.  For any new build however, or any build where the focus is not solely on single-core performance then AMD is likely the better choice.

Given that AMD have finally given us some decent competition, don't you think that Intel's offering of the 10 series chips is a little lack luster? As my understanding is they are again based on the 14nm architechture? I know that Intel's main market is not the consumer market, but I personally do not want to be in a position when the roles have reversed and AMD is all we have, competition breeds serious cool results. I just hope AMD can compete in the high end GPU market, the 5700XT was a good offering for the middle but the 2080ti is a beast

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2 hours ago, Mikeyboy636 said:

Given that AMD have finally given us some decent competition, don't you think that Intel's offering of the 10 series chips is a little lack luster? As my understanding is they are again based on the 14nm architechture? I know that Intel's main market is not the consumer market, but I personally do not want to be in a position when the roles have reversed and AMD is all we have, competition breeds serious cool results. I just hope AMD can compete in the high end GPU market, the 5700XT was a good offering for the middle but the 2080ti is a beast

I’m not too worried about AMD stagnating like Intel.  The market was already looking for alternatives before AMD came roaring back.  There’s already ARM versions of both Windows and Linux for instance, and actually some good reasons to believe that x86 is overcooked as a processor architecture.  (Not least of which is the licensing situation, which is another good argument for something like ARM.)  Also, Intel has oodles of money and some very good scientists and engineers.  You might argue that those people have taken a back seat to the beancounters in recent years, but even the beancounters will have to throw resources at the engineering department(s) with AMD taking away market share even on the server side.  Who knows what that will produce?  There’s plenty of reasons for AMD to keep pushing the limits of both price and performance.

And yes, I’d like to see more competition in the GPU market as well.

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5 hours ago, Mikeyboy636 said:

1) I built the PC mainly for gaming, however usual PC web browsing, youtube etc

2) Folding @ Home (if you can call it software), Xbox game pass, Amazon music & probs Musicbee

3) I agree with you, Brave gets my vote at the moment and whenever I try and move away from it I go back because it just works. But I usually split time between Chrome, Firefox and Brave.

4) I find them easier to use than most, plus building them for me is like a puzzle, and I just enjoy spending my time watching vids, researching parts etc, seems can learn loads and there still be more. For me cars are the same

Pretty awesome ideals I share many of your mindsets there. Building is better hands down in nearly every situation in my mind anyway. I have always had a home built PC ever sense I was like 14 so been building for a while. I love Brave a good friend of mine pushed me to get it instead of chrome. Sense its chromium based it was the last thing from a hard switch not to mention it is very privacy focused unlike chrome. FireFox is too though at least compared to chrome. 

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Since I have the AiO water cooler in my system I've been wanting to run my CPU mildly overclocked.  The base clock is 3.7GHz but I've seen many, many reports of people getting up to 4.1 without having to do anything more radical than having a good heatsink and telling the BIOS to auto-detect the max safe overclocking frequency.  (This board's BIOS has me spoiled.)  My RAM is rated at 2600Mhz but again I've read online that people were getting it to run reliably at up to 3200Mhz.  The problem has been that I've never run the RAM at its (claimed) max speed with the CPU overclocked as well.  After some quick experimentation immediately post-build I found that I could either OC the processor or the RAM, but not both.  I didn't  have the time to fiddle with it so I just let the BIOS run with the stock speeds.

However, I had some time on my hands tonight so I decided to try running the memory at the 3200 speed and see how far I could push the CPU before the system became unstable.  Long story short, after "only" about half a dozen BIOS visits it turns out that I just had to back the CPU off to a bit under 4Ghz! (3.98 to be precise.)  Geekbench says my 2700X's single-core performance did drop slightly (from 1100 to 1088) vs a 4.1Ghz max rate, but the multi-core score jumped from 7543 to 8278 with the extra memory bandwidth enabled.  I probably won't even notice the single-core difference, but I'm sure folding@home will appreciate the ~10% multi-core bump.  I've had F@H running for a couple hours now and it seems stable.  No noticeable increase in fan noise either.  I'll let it run overnight.  If the system is still working, stable, and quiet in the morning then I think I'll be sticking with these settings.

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On 5/15/2020 at 12:42 AM, efaardvark said:

Since I have the AiO water cooler in my system I've been wanting to run my CPU mildly overclocked.  The base clock is 3.7GHz but I've seen many, many reports of people getting up to 4.1 without having to do anything more radical than having a good heatsink and telling the BIOS to auto-detect the max safe overclocking frequency.  (This board's BIOS has me spoiled.)  My RAM is rated at 2600Mhz but again I've read online that people were getting it to run reliably at up to 3200Mhz.  The problem has been that I've never run the RAM at its (claimed) max speed with the CPU overclocked as well.  After some quick experimentation immediately post-build I found that I could either OC the processor or the RAM, but not both.  I didn't  have the time to fiddle with it so I just let the BIOS run with the stock speeds.

However, I had some time on my hands tonight so I decided to try running the memory at the 3200 speed and see how far I could push the CPU before the system became unstable.  Long story short, after "only" about half a dozen BIOS visits it turns out that I just had to back the CPU off to a bit under 4Ghz! (3.98 to be precise.)  Geekbench says my 2700X's single-core performance did drop slightly (from 1100 to 1088) vs a 4.1Ghz max rate, but the multi-core score jumped from 7543 to 8278 with the extra memory bandwidth enabled.  I probably won't even notice the single-core difference, but I'm sure folding@home will appreciate the ~10% multi-core bump.  I've had F@H running for a couple hours now and it seems stable.  No noticeable increase in fan noise either.  I'll let it run overnight.  If the system is still working, stable, and quiet in the morning then I think I'll be sticking with these settings.

See I have known how to assemble, and troubleshoot computer hardware among other things for many years though I have to say you seem to know much about twerking which is something I really have a bit less experience with. I just never had a issue running my CPU, or GPU at stock speeds as I am not a hardcore gamer, and the content creation work I do seems not to suffer with stock speeds. I do trend to buy higher end components though.

If I were to try it on like a play build sometime soon where would you say is good place to start. 

Keep in mind I have adjusted such settings as memory timings, and CPU clock speed on a basic level, and I know how to configure UEFI, or BIOS from a technical sense. Though I guess I am asking what advantages do you really get in real world from overclocking. 

I have seen the videos with LTT, BitWit, and others in terms of bench marking though says very little about real world application. 

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40 minutes ago, Geano said:

See I have known how to assemble, and troubleshoot computer hardware among other things for many years though I have to say you seem to know much about twerking which is something I really have a bit less experience with. I just never had a issue running my CPU, or GPU at stock speeds as I am not a hardcore gamer, and the content creation work I do seems not to suffer with stock speeds. I do trend to buy higher end components though.

If I were to try it on like a play build sometime soon where would you say is good place to start. 

Keep in mind I have adjusted such settings as memory timings, and CPU clock speed on a basic level, and I know how to configure UEFI, or BIOS from a technical sense. Though I guess I am asking what advantages do you really get in real world from overclocking. 

I have seen the videos with LTT, BitWit, and others in terms of bench marking though says very little about real world application. 

Honestly?  Unless you enjoy the process of tweaking itself I'd advise against going too far down that path.  The manufacturers of things like memory and CPUs are pretty good at "binning", or testing their parts to see how well they run at certain speeds.  Parts that test higher are sold as higher-performance parts, and of course at higher-performance prices.  The chances that you will buy a lower-spec part that you can get radically higher performance out of are pretty slim.  Also, doing things like pushing the clock rate higher will have negative results even if you manage significant gains.  Heat output will go up for instance, so you will need to have a better - and more expensive - cooling solution.  Heat will also affect the lifetime of the part(s).  And of course if you push things too far you can get into instability and reliability problems.  If you're the kind of person who just wants your computer to be a reliable platform for email, web, games, etc. then it is best to stick with stock settings.

That said, you can often get a 10-20% increase in performance without too much trouble.  Manufacturers do bin their parts, but they also leave good margins so that their parts work reliably no matter what system they find themselves running in.  BIOSs these days often have features and settings that allow the owner to fiddle with things to overclock or otherwise improve performance.  Don't expect to be able to get much out of a cost-conscious build created from low-end parts, but if your motherboard has good power and your BIOS gives you the control then you can often tweak things to get better performance out of your system's particular collection of parts without using up all the margin left by the manufacturers.

For myself I usually spend a little bit more up front to make sure I have as much margin as possible.  Especially for things like power supplies that I can reuse over several builds I think it makes sense to get the one that has higher efficiency, produces more stable power, and gives me more "headroom" to use if I need it.  Even a low-end motherboard + RAM + CPU + stock cooler will work fine at stock speeds, at least if you stick to the well-known brands.  But I'd rather have the one with better VRMs and a BIOS that gives me the option to adjust clock rates, voltages, and RAM timings, even if it is few $$ more.  A button on the motherboard to reset to *your* last known-good settings rather than a jumper to reset to factory-specs is also handy, as is a built-in POST-code display.  I'll also go for the heat sink that's slightly bigger than necessary and maybe an extra case fan or two.  Maybe even a nice water cooler.  Stuff like that.  It'll cost extra, but if you don't go too crazy spending money - or if you can justify the extra expense in terms of enjoying the tweaking process itself - then that's probably fine.  As long as it doesn't break your budget of course.

Even then I often stick with pretty much stock settings to start with.  I do somewhat enjoy the tweaking process, but I also use my computer for a lot of other things as well.  I prefer a stable platform for those things.  It is only after I've had the system for a while that I start messing with pushing the performance envelope.  Usually what pushes me over the edge is hearing about the next generation's performance.  :)  Then I'll get in there and see if I can get an extra 10 or 20% out of what I've got.  At that point I've usually had a couple/few years of reliable computing on the system anyway.  If I'm already starting to think about upgrading parts, or even getting a whole new system, then pushing the limits of the old parts/system can help me avoid that expense for a while longer.  I never get TOO crazy, but even breaking things typically isn't going to cause much of a problem at that point.  There's a lot less stress in breaking something you were kind of thinking of replacing anyway than letting the magic smoke out of that expensive bit of kit you just bought.  ;)

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16 hours ago, efaardvark said:

Honestly?  Unless you enjoy the process of tweaking itself I'd advise against going too far down that path.  The manufacturers of things like memory and CPUs are pretty good at "binning", or testing their parts to see how well they run at certain speeds.  Parts that test higher are sold as higher-performance parts, and of course at higher-performance prices.  The chances that you will buy a lower-spec part that you can get radically higher performance out of are pretty slim.  Also, doing things like pushing the clock rate higher will have negative results even if you manage significant gains.  Heat output will go up for instance, so you will need to have a better - and more expensive - cooling solution.  Heat will also affect the lifetime of the part(s).  And of course if you push things too far you can get into instability and reliability problems.  If you're the kind of person who just wants your computer to be a reliable platform for email, web, games, etc. then it is best to stick with stock settings.

That said, you can often get a 10-20% increase in performance without too much trouble.  Manufacturers do bin their parts, but they also leave good margins so that their parts work reliably no matter what system they find themselves running in.  BIOSs these days often have features and settings that allow the owner to fiddle with things to overclock or otherwise improve performance.  Don't expect to be able to get much out of a cost-conscious build created from low-end parts, but if your motherboard has good power and your BIOS gives you the control then you can often tweak things to get better performance out of your system's particular collection of parts without using up all the margin left by the manufacturers.

For myself I usually spend a little bit more up front to make sure I have as much margin as possible.  Especially for things like power supplies that I can reuse over several builds I think it makes sense to get the one that has higher efficiency, produces more stable power, and gives me more "headroom" to use if I need it.  Even a low-end motherboard + RAM + CPU + stock cooler will work fine at stock speeds, at least if you stick to the well-known brands.  But I'd rather have the one with better VRMs and a BIOS that gives me the option to adjust clock rates, voltages, and RAM timings, even if it is few $$ more.  A button on the motherboard to reset to *your* last known-good settings rather than a jumper to reset to factory-specs is also handy, as is a built-in POST-code display.  I'll also go for the heat sink that's slightly bigger than necessary and maybe an extra case fan or two.  Maybe even a nice water cooler.  Stuff like that.  It'll cost extra, but if you don't go too crazy spending money - or if you can justify the extra expense in terms of enjoying the tweaking process itself - then that's probably fine.  As long as it doesn't break your budget of course.

Even then I often stick with pretty much stock settings to start with.  I do somewhat enjoy the tweaking process, but I also use my computer for a lot of other things as well.  I prefer a stable platform for those things.  It is only after I've had the system for a while that I start messing with pushing the performance envelope.  Usually what pushes me over the edge is hearing about the next generation's performance.  :)  Then I'll get in there and see if I can get an extra 10 or 20% out of what I've got.  At that point I've usually had a couple/few years of reliable computing on the system anyway.  If I'm already starting to think about upgrading parts, or even getting a whole new system, then pushing the limits of the old parts/system can help me avoid that expense for a while longer.  I never get TOO crazy, but even breaking things typically isn't going to cause much of a problem at that point.  There's a lot less stress in breaking something you were kind of thinking of replacing anyway than letting the magic smoke out of that expensive bit of kit you just bought.  ;)

I see yes thats what I have read to regarding what you've mentioned here. I often watch a lot of videos on YouTube about overclocking for gaming, or content creation performance improvements. Though based on that, and what your saying it seems to be quite a hobbyist type things. I love building computers, and working with hardware. I do hhowever enjoy coding as well as software modding quite a bit as well as web programming. Though I have always enjoyed the logical side of computing. 

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1 hour ago, Geano said:

I see yes thats what I have read to regarding what you've mentioned here. I often watch a lot of videos on YouTube about overclocking for gaming, or content creation performance improvements. Though based on that, and what your saying it seems to be quite a hobbyist type things. I love building computers, and working with hardware. I do hhowever enjoy coding as well as software modding quite a bit as well as web programming. Though I have always enjoyed the logical side of computing. 

Yes, in terms of tweaking I'm definitely at the hobbyist level.  Professionally I'm a systems engineer with an EE background so I'm perfectly comfortable with messing with this stuff, but it isn't something I really get into.  My last system was an AMD FX-based system so it was similar, but the one before that was an Intel i7 system that was totally locked down.  I was ok with that too.  In fact, even for my current system I got the (at the time) more expensive 2700X processor vs the 2700 because the "X" version ran at 3.7Ghz vs the 3.2 of the non-x and I was looking for the performance without having to fiddle with things.  Even though the 2700 crowd was reporting that with good RAM/motherboard/cooler combos they could overclock their 2700 CPUs to 2700X speeds I'd rather have the pre-binned version certified from the manufacturer.

Of course I'm happy that AMD has unlocked their chips to enable things like overclocking too because now I have a good part that trounces the competition at the same price AND allows me to tweak things even more to get the most out of my particular setup.  It is good to have options.  :)  If I were really into it the overclocking crowd seems able to get this processor up to 4.2Ghz pretty reliably with this mobo and water cooling like I have.  I'd have to get in there and really tweak the voltages and timings though and that's a tedious process that I'm really not interested in spending the time on.  There's too many demands on my time as it is.

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1 hour ago, efaardvark said:

Yes, in terms of tweaking I'm definitely at the hobbyist level.  Professionally I'm a systems engineer with an EE background so I'm perfectly comfortable with messing with this stuff, but it isn't something I really get into.  My last system was an AMD FX-based system so it was similar, but the one before that was an Intel i7 system that was totally locked down.  I was ok with that too.  In fact, even for my current system I got the (at the time) more expensive 2700X processor vs the 2700 because the "X" version ran at 3.7Ghz vs the 3.2 of the non-x and I was looking for the performance without having to fiddle with things.  Even though the 2700 crowd was reporting that with good RAM/motherboard/cooler combos they could overclock their 2700 CPUs to 2700X speeds I'd rather have the pre-binned version certified from the manufacturer.

Of course I'm happy that AMD has unlocked their chips to enable things like overclocking too because now I have a good part that trounces the competition at the same price AND allows me to tweak things even more to get the most out of my particular setup.  It is good to have options.  :)  If I were really into it the overclocking crowd seems able to get this processor up to 4.2Ghz pretty reliably with this mobo and water cooling like I have.  I'd have to get in there and really tweak the voltages and timings though and that's a tedious process that I'm really not interested in spending the time on.  There's too many demands on my time as it is.

I see yah in my case comfortably with settings isn't an issue either I am aware of what most do, and of courses everyone knows no one is above a mobo manual. :) The thing for me is I am just fine putting a computer together getting everything configured, and running with it. Doing maintenance when needed as well as regularly like normal. Thanks much though that was quite a bit of incite. 

I agree as well that AMD has most certainly stepped up their game enough to convince many non believers to rethink myself included. I have historically been a Intel guy my last system before my mobo failed had a Intel i7 9700X series chip. I never once did overclock it I even had a corsair H100i AIO so I could too. At the time I wanted to try it, or at least have the option open to me. In that systems case either the mobo failed as it did once before once shortly after I bought though then it was under return policy so was a easy swap at the time. I know from my background which is in a lot of computing topics among them repair is that mobos don't often fail, or if they do its hard to really tell, and even if you can figure out the exact issue not really worth it sense parts are rarely replaceable. Unless it is a very special case which very few consumer mobos meet that circumstance. 

I have since done a lot of research on air vs water cooling in particular air vs AIO water cooling as I am nnot at all interested in setting up a custom loop in my system for myself. The other thing that likely failed on that system was the pump for the AIO. Air coolers fail far less often, and far less hard on other parts. So for the foreseeable future I am a member of the air cooler camp aftermarket of coerce not running one of those coasters they include. 

 

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Been looking at the rumor sites regarding AMD "zen3" CPUs and "RDNA2" GPUs.  I'm not one to freak out over rumors but I'm getting cautiously excited about the GPU side of things now as well.  Things may be about to get as huge a boost on the GPU side as the CPUs market has had recently.  RDNA2 hasn't been released in a PCI card yet by AMD.  I think that may be because it is used in the new playstation and Xbox consoles coming out and there's probably some agreements there to not rain on the console parade by pre-releasing better-performing options for the PC crowd before the consoles get released.  The "RDNA" (RDNA1) on the 5000-series GPUs (5600, 5700XT, etc.) has been better than GCN (Graphics Core Next) on the old RX 400- and 500-series, but not terribly exciting in the greater scheme of things.  I'm kind of wondering now if that/those GPU solutions aren't actually ultimately destined for the /mobile/ market - after fine-tuning and a process upgrade - and RDNA2 (featured in the recent Unreal V PS5 demo) on a 7nm(+) process is the main attraction on the desktop.

IF - big if - that's the case then a Zen3 CPU and a RDNA2 GPU might be the combo to angle for.  With AMD's recent backtracking about not supporting Zen3 on 300 and 400 series chipset motherboards I have at least a chance of using Zen3 on my current system.  Even if there's issues with Zen3, I've checked and the mb's bios already supports up to a 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X.  That plus a nice GPU upgrade would keep me happy.. for a few minutes anyway.  :)

The other thing I've been hearing about GPUs is kind of a persistent background noise about the idea of the upcoming cards having huge amounts of persistent storage on them.  The idea would be have a few GB of GDDR6 as usual, but then additionally have a few -hundred- GB of highly parallel flash storage as well backing that on the GFX card itself.  An (essentially) 16x PCI SSD on a GPU card would have insane bandwidth to the rest of the system.  And even faster speeds locally within the GFX card.  Basically within the card it would be like having 4 or more SSDs arranged as a striped array with the GDDR6 acting like a multi-gigabyte quad-channel memory cache for the SSD.  Load times would be measured in seconds at startup, and while playing the game would be almost instantaneous.  Probably not cheap, but I can see how it would work.  I'd really like to see something like that in action on a board with a GPU that can run a demo like that in the PS5/Unreal V demo.

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On 5/23/2020 at 2:19 PM, efaardvark said:

Been looking at the rumor sites regarding AMD "zen3" CPUs and "RDNA2" GPUs.  I'm not one to freak out over rumors but I'm getting cautiously excited about the GPU side of things now as well.  Things may be about to get as huge a boost on the GPU side as the CPUs market has had recently.  RDNA2 hasn't been released in a PCI card yet by AMD.  I think that may be because it is used in the new playstation and Xbox consoles coming out and there's probably some agreements there to not rain on the console parade by pre-releasing better-performing options for the PC crowd before the consoles get released.  The "RDNA" (RDNA1) on the 5000-series GPUs (5600, 5700XT, etc.) has been better than GCN (Graphics Core Next) on the old RX 400- and 500-series, but not terribly exciting in the greater scheme of things.  I'm kind of wondering now if that/those GPU solutions aren't actually ultimately destined for the /mobile/ market - after fine-tuning and a process upgrade - and RDNA2 (featured in the recent Unreal V PS5 demo) on a 7nm(+) process is the main attraction on the desktop.

IF - big if - that's the case then a Zen3 CPU and a RDNA2 GPU might be the combo to angle for.  With AMD's recent backtracking about not supporting Zen3 on 300 and 400 series chipset motherboards I have at least a chance of using Zen3 on my current system.  Even if there's issues with Zen3, I've checked and the mb's bios already supports up to a 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X.  That plus a nice GPU upgrade would keep me happy.. for a few minutes anyway.  :)

The other thing I've been hearing about GPUs is kind of a persistent background noise about the idea of the upcoming cards having huge amounts of persistent storage on them.  The idea would be have a few GB of GDDR6 as usual, but then additionally have a few -hundred- GB of highly parallel flash storage as well backing that on the GFX card itself.  An (essentially) 16x PCI SSD on a GPU card would have insane bandwidth to the rest of the system.  And even faster speeds locally within the GFX card.  Basically within the card it would be like having 4 or more SSDs arranged as a striped array with the GDDR6 acting like a multi-gigabyte quad-channel memory cache for the SSD.  Load times would be measured in seconds at startup, and while playing the game would be almost instantaneous.  Probably not cheap, but I can see how it would work.  I'd really like to see something like that in action on a board with a GPU that can run a demo like that in the PS5/Unreal V demo.

I agree completely on the delay to not step on the toes of the consoles seeing as AMD has had these prior console based chips in the works for some time now, and releasing a full on video card for PC would more, or less cannibalize the market as even the slightly technically inclined user would realize what they are buying. I also think the idea of a onboard SSD for thees video cards would be pretty awesome though it would be more, or less a stoppable installation type situation. The sizes for these SSDs would likely only be large enough to hold one maybe 2 games, and for the AAA titles which readily exceed 100GB these those forget putting more then one of those on there. lol  I do think though as flash storage becomes cheaper this will be a much more viable option. 

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