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Anyone else built/updated their computer recently?


Craig0320

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I upgraded a few things.
Old system. New system.
AMD FX8350 Core i5-9600k 3.7ghz OVERCLOCKED TO 4.6GHZ. I AM GOING TO PUSH IT TO 5.0GHZ. MY WATER COOLER KEEPS IT AT 49C RIGHT NOW UNDER FULL LOAD.
MSI 970 MB MSI Z390-A PRO MB
16GB DDR3 2166 MHZ RAM 16GB DDR4 3000MHZ RAM OVERCLOCKED TO 3600 mhz
GTX 1060 3GB GRAPHICS CARD GTX 1070 8 GB GRAPHICS CARD
42274
 


Bgunner

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I'm about due to upgrade/rebuild mine but I'm focusing on the Ranger's major maintenance items at he moment. I'm surprised you went with Intel for your CPU considering AMD is getting better performance per clock cycle than Intel, not to mention all of the security issues and patches that have hurt Intel's performance as of late. Intel's motherboards are also more expensive than AMD's so at this point you get a better performer for less cost.

I've run an MSI motherboard back in the AMD's 700 series chipsets and had a bunch of issues getting it stable and wasn't able to overclock it so I have moved over to Asus, gees that decision hurts the wallet though, but my luck was so much better with quality, VRM and overclocking performance. I've had good luck with AsRock motherboards but them you must stay away from the low end boards because you definitely get what you pay for. 2 Christmas's ago I had to rebuild kids hand-me-down PC with an AsRock board in it because the VRM's Mosfets melted due to kid breaking a snow globe over the 200mm top fan and fried the GPU along with the mosfets. Somewhere I have pics of that fiasco.

An FYI basic disclaimer: Be cautious while overclocking because of most Intel's now days don't care for over 66°C and summer temps will make your average temp be higher. Now when you get your CPU overclocked and stable be sure to stress the GPU while stressing the CPU because the GPU will add to the CPU temps and you don't want to push past the CPU's temp threshold by accident.


49°C isn't bad considering my FX 8350 is at 5.0GHz and I hit 52°C full load @ 68°C ambient temp and as you already know they are a power hog which creates lots of wasted energy in the way of heat. It looks as you're using one of Deepcools AIO water solutions, either the Captian or Gamer Storm, which are both rated and reviewed well for heat dissipation so its quite possible you can hit your OC goal from a CPU temperature stand point. The power supply's ability to produce a steady voltage with very little jitter and noise will help extremely when pushing the higher frequency's. I opted for Seasonic's X850 in 2013 when I built my current system because of its ability to produce very stable power with very little noise and it paid off with my overclock.

I wish AMD's memory controllers were as good as Intel's to get a good RAM overclock but this has been one of Intel's strengths since the Intel went with the controller in the chip. You know about Memtest for checking RAM stability right? Unstable ram can present as other issues if the OC isn't stable.
 

Craig0320

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I went with intel because amd pissed me off with the 8350. I got a check in the mail for a lawsuit settlement because amd claimed the fx8350 was and eight core when in fact it was discovered it had 4 dedicated cores and 4 ghost cores. Basically just there for the appearance it was an 8 core. I paid 90 for the deepcool captain 240ex. It is the updated version with the stainless steel pipe and not the glass pipe. I choose them because they listened to their customers and solved the leak issues at the glass pipe on the previous version.

Your right amd has stepped up their game. I have been amd since I started building in 2001. I wanted to give intel a shot. As long as you run the right chipset i've found intel to be really reliable from my buddy's running them. Heat has always been an issue with intel. Which is why I went with 240mm water cooling. I have the case fans forcing air in so everything is exhausting through the radiator at the top. Works really well so far.

I paid 200 for the i5 turbo boosted 4.6ghz chip new. 130 for the z390-a pro. 78 for the enermax case. Gave my buddy 150 or gtx 1070. 90 for the water cooler. Then turned around and sold my older build for 600. After all said and done i'm out of pocket 200 dollars.
I looked at the new i9 9900k but wasn't spending close to 600 to get it when comparing benchmarks and hours of research to the i5 oc'd around 4.9-5.0 ghz is literally pulling the same amount of frame rates on my setup for 400 dollars cheaper.
The i5 is made for gaming. I don't stream or video render so I am more than please with the performance so far.
I play ark survival right now. Settings on epic im running 75 fps compared to 48-52 before on high settings. Played for 3 hours last night with custom fan settings and system was 49c as stated.
I overclocked my ram 25%. Working well so far. I haven't run a stress test yet. I want to getting everything fined tuned as possible before hand.
By the way I love MSI's utilities and always have.
 

Bgunner

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Run Memtest before stress testing. It tests the RAM and checks for errors. It he ram is unstable it can run for days and weeks before it gets a hiccup and suddenly a BSOD. Its free so no cost to use but it needs to be installed on to either a CD or thumb drive because you run it from the boot menu from the BIOS. This is always the first test done because everything is dependent of this being stable. You can't just arbitrarily change setting and not test them and test them fully or you will be chasing issues in circles.

https://www.memtest86.com/compare.html

Get V8 free and follow the directions. It has its own UI once it boots up and separate from the OS so as little memory is actually used as possible so it can be tested.

You can not "Fine Tune" any settings without stress testing because you need to test after every change and you can only change one setting at a time or you will not know which setting is not stable causing more testing time to test both individually after. Do not skimp on testing and allow the tests to fully run unless it shows an error. If an error is detected then you can stop the test, adjust settings and restart the test but let them run the full amount of time they are supposed to.

As a first step you should reset the BIOS back to factory and test for stability once stable start dropping the CPU core voltage till it errors/crashes testing each time you drop the voltage. This is called under volting and will give you a good idea of how well the CPU will over clock. The lower the voltage it can run and be stable the higher the frequency it can hit before heat becomes an issue. The point is that once you find your lowest stable voltage then you can start upping the core speed adding voltage only as needed to achieve the lowest voltage at a high stable frequency.

EDIT: I feel I must mention to be sure to check what the maximum voltage for the CPU core voltage is before starting an overclock. IF you go to far you fry the chip.

Once you have your CPU core speed and core voltage write them down and reset back to factory or the stable you found as a starting point ( be sure the RAM timings are set properly and don't let the system read the JDEC and set it by that because it can set the timings looser than you can achieve by setting them to factory stated settings ) and start with RAM overclocking running Memtest every time you change the frequency till it errors back it down till stable and write it down again. JDEC is there as a easy boot setting to allow the easiest possible boot environment to ensure compatibility with different CPU's. This is not the manufactures recommended settings and can be a lot slower than what they can be run at. Timings are different than speed but both play a large role in how fast the memory can perform actions.

Now that you know each max points, you can not just throw the two together because it most likely will just BSOD on you because the memory overclocking can affect CPU core overclocking. Now you mix the two together starting with the CPU near or at max and start with the memory at the middle of the OC and go up from there. This will give you an idea of where you can end up and take a bunch of guess work out of it.

As for fans, be sure the rear fan blows out of the case. You don't want to draw all the hot air through the radiator because that will heat up the CPU more for no reason. The rear fan also removes the warm air from the VRM that will be now producing more heat due to the overclock. Why suck this warm air through the radiator? Cool air in from the front bottom corner and hot air out the rear and top. This is the most efficient air flow path in all cases. Its fine that you have 2 120's on the front because it will help cool the components but the most efficient air flow path is what I just mentioned and a second front fan just helps add more cool air into the mix.


$200 out of pocket cost is a hell of deal for what you have.

I love MSI's Afterburner for OCing GPU's although my son not having my experience fried his AMD RX 580 GPU pushing it to far. This is why testing is so important. Just because it seems to be stable doesn't mean it is and running with bad settings can damage the parts and then your out the money. My son always seen me do an OC so quickly that he figured that it was easy and found that there are limits and going slow is the best option.


OH after thought: Overclock through the BIOS not MSI's programs. All overclocking programs no matter who made them add the potential for instability so it is best to just do it in the BIOS. Besides some settings like the north bridge, hyper transport or what ever Intel calls it now can not be adjusted without a full restart so you are already at the BIOS.
 
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Craig0320

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Thank you for all the great info. I am no expert and don't claim to be. I will definitely put all this to good use.
 

Craig0320

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I forgot to mention the processor is 3.7ghz stock but came with turbo boost at 4.6ghz. I am going to work on it stress testing it when I get home. I am going to set everything through the bios. Makes sense doing that way. I'll post up some more info later tonight.
 

Bgunner

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Check out Tomshardware.com for more info and overclocking reading material. They are owned by the same company as Anandtech and have many in the know people that can help you through your OC process better than I can because I havent OCed an Intel since the Core 2 Duo days but i have kept up o the reading. Some things are basics but what you need to know to properly overclock is way more that I can teach over the forums. Read... lots of reading will help and Tom's has the material in there forums.
 

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Good advice from Bgunner above.

in October of 2016 I decided to retire my old system Dvader 2.2 and build an entirely new system Dvader 3.0. decided to start from the ground up on this one, as most of the old computer was at least 7 years old and the case was 12 years old.

Here are the specs:

Dvader 2.2 is starting to show its age, it does not play well with windows 10, and is starting to act flakey. It is almost 8 years old, so time to build a new system.

I am really happy with the case. it is all steel, the only plastic on the case is the plexiglass windows and the switches. everything else is metal, even the front clip and drive bay blanks. very well built

Windows 10 Pro on it for an o/s, and I already have Office 2013.

Keyboard batteries last over 2 months with daily use before needing recharged. the mouse has been upgraded with a Logitech M705, the batteries are supposed to last 3 years.



Here are the specs:

Case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139015

Power Supply: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817152047

Mother Board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132412

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117369

Graphics: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487261

SSD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147372

RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231628

Keyboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16823126194

Glow Tube: http://www.frys.com/product/8057964?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG the glow tube has been changed to a blue LED within the first week after I built the pc... the neon one from Frys was a piece of junk lol

For monitors, I have an Acer 24" and an hp 22" the Acer was about 120 bucks, the hp was free.

The thing I am kicking myself over is that I did not go with an M2 PCIe SSD. the cost at the time drove my already over run budget for the build by over $100 bucks. what is realy interesting now is that I can get a PCIe M2 drive that is 1 TB for less than I paid for my 250GB SATA III SSD 3.5 years ago... may have to upgrade.

I also have a 3TB Western Digital SATA III spin drive for data. so far that has held up pretty well. As I get some money free, I want to get 2 more 3TB drives and a Raspberry Pi and make a network storage drive that any device on my network can access. this will be great for my digital movies, pictures, and music.
 

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Craig0320

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My credo
Break it right the first time. Fix it better the next time.
I love my new build. Got the fan control set where I want and it hasn't gotten above 51c. Looks great on your end 97.
 

adsm08

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I built my desktop about two years ago.

Generic case, ROG Stryx board, AMD Ryzen5, close to 1TB of total storage split between two solid state drives, and 8 gig RAM, with two slots still open.
 

Blmpkn

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Craig0320

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It's amazing how much faster ssd's are than regular disk drives.
 

Bgunner

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I've run an SSD since Feb. 2012 when I purchased an OCZ Vertex 3 and never looked back for an OS drive. I have bought a few more after that but I will never have my operating system on magnetic storage again.

What is amazing is how much cheaper the technology has become since that point where I paid $1.10 per Gigabyte.

I still have 3TB of storage consisting of magnetic storage split between 3 drives but keep 2 SSDs for programs that can really make use of the extra speed.
 

Craig0320

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I'm running windows on my 512gb ssd and storing all my games on the ssd 1tb
 

97RangerXLT

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I'm running windows on my 512gb ssd and storing all my games on the ssd 1tb
I did similar, Windows on the 256gb SSD and the data on the 3 TB spin drive.

Need to upgrade my ssd lol
 

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