efaardvark Posted January 7 Share Posted January 7 22 hours ago, Animedragon said: Upgrading computers is always great fun, my experiences usually go like this: I like that new powerful CPU, ah, but I'll need a new motherboard to support it, oh and I'll need to replace the RAM because the RAM I've got isn't comparable with the new board, hang on I'll need a new graphics card because the new motherboard has a different slot and the old card won't fit.... And so it goes on and the price starts mounting up! I try to keep it to what I immediately need, plus a bit more for room for growth. I also try to stick to modular parts and industry standards: PCI is great. Intel's CPU socket-of-the-month is.. not so great. A path to the future is better than having the best of what's available today. That way there's less chance of finding myself in a dead-end and when I finally reach the point where I actually need the performance of today's latest-and-greatest bit of kit I can pay a cheaper price for it and just slot it in to my existing rig. I have to admit that I do occasionally get on pcpartpicker and play the "what if I won the lottery" thing however. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nebulous Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 One of my cooling fans went out on my computer. Guess I should open it up and figure out how to fix it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Animedragon Posted January 15 Share Posted January 15 It should be a fairly easy fix if it's a standard case fan, which will probably just need replacing with a new one. If it's the PSU fan you can't fix it 'cos the PSU is riveted together and opening the PSU is not a good idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
efaardvark Posted January 17 Share Posted January 17 Taking another look at the AM5 motherboards now that they're actually shipping and there's enough selection to start comparison shopping. They're still way expensive though. The AM5 version of my current PC's "crosshair hero" motherboard - barebones - is $1000US. Ouch. (And no, I didn't pay anywhere near that for my current MB. I don't know what happened between then and now. COVID pricing might explain some of it, but over 3x the price in only 3 years? Whatever. I'm not paying that kind of price unless it also washes and folds the laundry for me.) My favorite so far is the ASUS TUF gaming X670E-plus wifi 6E. The "TUF" line is 2 product stacks down from my "Hero" mobo and at ~$350 it isn't exactly what I would call cheap either but it does have some features that I consider extremely desirable such as a dual BIOS ("flashback") capability. It also does NOT have some other things that I'd like however such as a built-in POST-code readout, a feature that I've found handy several times while messing around with my ROG mobo doing things like overclocking and mucking with memory timings. The other option would be their Strix X670E-E Gaming WiFi product. It is closer in features-set than the TUF version to my Hero, but at $500 it is even worse price-wise. Still shopping.. and with one hand firmly on my wallet! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Animedragon Posted January 17 Share Posted January 17 Ouch! $1000 for a motherboard does sound expensive, and the sort of price tag that would have my wallet running away to hide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
efaardvark Posted January 28 Share Posted January 28 (edited) Hardware Unboxed has a decent roundup of early AM5 /X670 motherboards. Looks like Gigabyte is currently the leader in terms of features & price. My preferred ASUS also has some nice offerings but has pretty much priced themselves out of my budget. Not interested in $500+ motherboards. To paraphrase Dirksen.. $500 for a motherboard, $300 for RAM, $800 for a GPU... next thing you know you're talking real money. Edited January 28 by efaardvark 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Animedragon Posted January 30 Share Posted January 30 I've always liked Gigabyte motherboards, my current board and the previous one were Gigabyte, although I have had ASUS and Supermicro boards in the past. But ultimately the choice comes down to which board offers the features I want at a price I can afford. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
efaardvark Posted February 5 Share Posted February 5 (edited) AMD just announced X3D versions of some of their high-end Ryzen CPUs Ryzen 9 7950X3D - $699 Ryzen 9 7900X3D - $599 Ryzen 7 7800X3D - $449 These should be out by the end of this month for the Ryzen 9s and by mid April for the 7800X3D. It also looks like they've dropped the price of the 7600 by ~$100 when I wasn't looking, based on a quick window-shopping spree. It is now $230 on Amazon vs $320-ish last time I checked. The 7600 is currently my leading contender for CPU when/if I get around to building a new AM5-socket build sometime later this year so price drops there are appreciated. (Now if they could just do something about those GPU prices.) I'm also interested in these "X3D" versions of their Socket AM5 series CPUs however. Perhaps not so much at these prices but maybe they'll drop a bit by the time I start actually buying / building my rig. Edited February 5 by efaardvark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clayton Posted February 17 Share Posted February 17 The computers became self aware in 1968. They just don't feel the need to tell us. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Animedragon Posted February 18 Share Posted February 18 10 hours ago, Clayton said: The computers became self aware in 1968. They just don't feel the need to tell us. I'll agree with that. I've known for a long time that photocopiers are a sentient species. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clayton Posted February 18 Share Posted February 18 And your phone really is screwing with you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
efaardvark Posted February 18 Share Posted February 18 Hardware Unboxed had an interesting report on DDR5 memory and AMD's Memory Scaling on Zen 4/infinity fabric. It seems the memory timings are much more important than the memory clock rates. [email protected] memory can handily beat (>15%) [email protected] That much is not exactly news. Memory latency has been a big performance variable all along but it seems especially relevant to DDR5 and AMD's Zen 4 architecture. The surprising takeaway for me was that there's often significant gains to be had if you manually tweak the settings to dial it in for your particular hardware. For instance, out of the box there is often only ~5% difference in performance between CL40 and CL30 memory at a given clock rate! This is good news for those that like to mess with this stuff but also indicates that the DDR5 market is still in early days and buyer beware is definitely in play. Given the information available to the system (BIOS) from DDR5 memory this should not be an issue. BIOSs should be able to tune themselves optimally for any given stick of DDR5 memory, and there should not be much difference in performance from system to system or from vendor to vendor, all else being equal. At the very least buyers should make sure that they buy motherboards from companies with a track record of good support in terms of things like BIOS updates, especially if they're going for higher-end memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
efaardvark Posted March 5 Share Posted March 5 (edited) Thought I'd update my pcpartpicker list for my - theoretical - DDR5 system. Still not real serious about it given pricing so this is definitely a WIP, but the prices do seem to be coming down so I revisit the topic from time to time. Note that I don't have a power supply or a case in this list since I intend to recycle my current (soundproofed) case which still suits me just fine. My PSU is still going strong as well, and PSUs like almost everything else PC these days are ridiculously expensive. (This exact PSU is currently over 2x what I paid for the one in the box next to my desk box.) Edited March 5 by efaardvark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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