Tech Gaming Hardware discussion (& Hardware Sales) thread

[jefferz]

1tb SSD for $68!
Team Group CX2 2.5" 1TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) T253X6001T0C101

 

[Madmick]

Okay, I watched that vid @dAfTiE posted. Very informative. Reinforces the soundness of logic in my previous posts. The cost/benefit analysis didn't really change from last gen. It's not worth it to spend a lot of money chasing extreme performance with RAM.

Did some more Googling on the topic. Below are more details on Zen 3 and memory overclocking thanks to a now official AMD slide, and a Q&A with MSI. This is why 4000MHz isn't a guarantee, but even 4000MHz isn't the limit at 1:1. MSI hit 4200MHz (FCLK 2100MHz). It's going to depend on BIOS patches to AGESA by motherboard, and your luck of the draw with your CPU.

So it's still reasonable to assume that the kits with the fastest rated true latency, in particular the b-die kits, will have the best potential to achieve the lowest timings at 36000MHz/3733MHz/3800MHz/4000MHz/4200MHz, whichever is possible on your CPU with your motherboard, and this will determine the fastest kit, practically speaking. UserBenchmark is at least reliable enough to offer insight into Wol's comparative luck, and it would appear he was a winner in the silicon lottery with his 5800X (75% percentile). Meanwhile, he's on a high-end motherboard, so this is also favorable for his chances.

That Patriot b-die kit is still the finest kit for the money, Wol. Its downside is that it will require manual tuning on your end. You can't hit the AMP EZ-button in the BIOS and expect it to stably overclock itself. The safest strategy with be to do as daftie said, and manually drop it to 3600MHz, then tighten the timings. First, that Patriot kit's XMP 2.0 profiles are designed specifically for Intel, and second, it only mentions a secondary 4266MHz profile, so don't count on being able to select a less aggressive AMP profile that automates everything itself at >4000MHz frequencies:
https://viper.patriotmemory.com/pro...nce-memory-ram-viper-gaming-by-patriot-memory
https://assets.website-files.com/5cdb2ee0b102f96c3906500f/5dd6b314aa0dd278b0b6efc6_PVS416G440C9K Sku Sheet_Copyable_062819.pdf

If you want that EZ-button the G. Skill Trident Z b-die kit for $380 I bulleted above is the safest bet. Meanwhile, the cheapest kits I highlighted will achieve nearly the same timings with their top AMP profile, but it isn't necessarily guaranteed they will achieve this AMP stably without QVL confirmation. Unfortunately, $130 AUD seems like a pretty steep cost for peace of mind.

https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-5000...memory-overclocking-500-series-agesa-support/

AMD Ryzen 5000 Memory Support, Memory Overclocking Details
Coming to memory support, AMD has once again assured that DDR4-4000 MHz memory is the sweet-spot for its Ryzen 5000 Zen 3 Desktop CPUs. Users can expect 2000 MHz FCLK support & even 2100 MHz (as showcased by MSI).

What is the fastest possible RAM you can run with 1:1 FCLK?
DDR4-4000. 2000MHz FCLK is to the Ryzen 5000 Series what 1900MHz FCLK was to the Ryzen 3000 Series. Many samples can do it, but not all. In the upcoming AGESAs, we will be implementing additional tuning that will make reaching 2000MHz easier. This is not a guarantee. There is no "safe bet" that your CPU will reach this frequency. But don't be surprised to see a bunch of people bringing that magical 2000MHz FCLK home with DDR4-4000.

Okay, so what's the best price/performance?
DDR4-3600 continues to be a "sweet spot." The kits are inexpensive, widely available, perform well, and have good compatibility. Is it the best in every category? No, but that's not what the sweet spot is. 3600 is a good bet because it's a good value in perf/$ for someone who wants to plug and play. Is it the best possible performance? No. Is it close? Yes, and without tinkering.

What's the best memory, even if I have to overclock?
Probably very tight timing 3600 or 3800, just like the Ryzen 3000 Series. The timings on these
memory bins can be super aggressive versus higher memory speed grades, and that usually
overpowers frequency.

I only bought 3200, did I do bad?
No, DDR4-3200 is typically binned with tight timings that make it very competitive with a weak or average DDR4-3600 kit. You're not missing out on a ton of performance, but there are gains to be had w/ OC if you're interested in it.

Did you change the memory controller?
No. Everything you know about memory from the Ryzen 3000 Series still applies. Everything. In full. Except the ceiling is now +100MHz higher @ DDR4-4000 for good samples.

 

[jefferz]

You want to run your fclk at 1:1:1 if at all possible, so 4k ram is gonna be rough. There's also less mobo support for those kits, and they're expensive. I'd just go for 3600 with as tight timings as you can find.
Best I could do was a set of ballistix 3600 at cl 18, literally the only 2 dimm 64gb kit over 2400 I could find in this entire gods-forsaken country.
Optimumtech did a video testing memory speeds the other day, it's pretty good.

These are cinebench numbers from that video:

Hardware Unboxed went even deeper with ram. Wendell is supposed to be on a GN video next week explaining things more thoroughly.

 

[Slobodan]

Thanks @jefferz @Madmick @Woldog @My Spot for the case suggestions.

Ultimately I went with the be quiet Pure Base 500DX and also decided to get a be quiet Dark Rock 4 CPU cooler

I love how silent the case and fans are, it's a night and day difference compared to my old one that had less fans lol

Also got an Aorus X570 Ultra for the new motherboard

 

[Woldog]

Thanks @jefferz @Madmick @Woldog @My Spot for the case suggestions.

Ultimately I went with the be quiet Pure Base 500DX and also decided to get a be quiet Dark Rock 4 CPU cooler

I love how silent the case and fans are, it's a night and day difference compared to my old one that had less fans lol

Also got an Aorus X570 Ultra for the new motherboard

With gigabyte boards be careful updating the bios. They're in my view the shittest boards to work with in terms of bios updates.
Unless something has changed in the last year

 

[Madmick]

Well, I was already way off with my prediction concerning turbos with the Zen 3 CPUs, and now early leaks are indicating my apprehension about the RX 6000 series being aggressively pre-overclocked references is going to be even further off the mark:
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Reportedly Overclocks Beyond 2.5 GHz, Performance Matches The RTX 3090

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Reportedly An 'Overclockers Dream', Overclocked Beyond 2.5 GHz & Matches RTX 3090's Performance
The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is the Big Navi GPU based graphics card that many are going to go after considering it is placed perfectly between the RX 6800 and RX 6900 XT while offering decent price to performance value. In the GPU-z screenshots shared, the card can be seen running at a clock speed of around 2.55 GHz which is very impressive considering that the max power draw at these clock speeds is reported under 300W whereas the card itself has a TBP of 300W at the stock clocks.

The tweeted GPU-Z image already disappeared, but not before WCCFTech capped it:

AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT & RX 6800 OpenCL Benchmarks Leaked Too
In addition to the GPU-z screenshots, the OpenCL benchmarks of the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 also leaked out through Geekbench by TUM_APISAK. There are several results for both cards which have been listed at Geekbench and Videocardz managed to compile them in a singular chart which shows that the Radeon RX 6800 is about as fast as the RTX 3070 while the RX 6800 XT is up to 20% faster than the RTX 3070 on average and some results are even on par with the GeForce RTX 3080.

Perhaps the biggest news, here, though, is a sudden change to the CPU-agnostic performance of GPUs. It wasn't just marketing hype:

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 series graphics cards seemed to offer much better performance when paired with an AMD Ryzen system than the Intel Core-based systems which is not a surprise since Radeon RX 6000 series cards have more feature support on the Ryzen 5000 platform such as the SAM (Smart Access Memory) technology which can help in certain workloads and games. The GPU clocks were reported at a stock of 1.81 GHz for the Radeon RX 6800 and 2.02 GHz for the Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card.

The review embargo expiring a mere day before the RX 6000 series releases was a big red flag for me, but apparently AMD's radical reshuffling of the pipeline ratios may have a profoundly positive impact on the potential to increase clocks without crashes or unmanageable heat. I can only speculate the massive reduction in shaders per controller permits this. Perhaps it isn't a coincidence these ratios are much closer to the NVIDIA GTX 600 series of GPUs than recent GPU lines from either company-- that generation had remarkable overclocking potential even on the reference design.

 

[Slobodan]

With gigabyte boards be careful updating the bios. They're in my view the shittest boards to work with in terms of bios updates.
Unless something has changed in the last year

I've actually only had Gigabyte boards for my custom PCs, overall I only had 1 issue with BIOS updates and one fault that was fixed via RMA.

I'm familiar with them so I figured why not, it was a good price too compared to the Asrock.

 

[Woldog]

I've actually only had Gigabyte boards for my custom PCs, overall I only had 1 issue with BIOS updates and one fault that was fixed via RMA.

I'm familiar with them so I figured why not, it was a good price too compared to the Asrock.

Last time I tried to update the bios on an Aorus board the bios chip literally burnt out lmao

 

[Slobodan]

Last time I tried to update the bios on an Aorus board the bios chip literally burnt out lmao

 

[Woldog]

Took it back to the techs at Umart and was like "Bios chip burnt out. It even has a white plastic burn on it" dudes like "that's impossible, Techs will look at it and you'll know next week if you get a refund after they do some tests"
Next morning 20 mins after Umart opened "Money refunded"

Like you could smell that something had burnt....

 

[My Spot]

Asus seems to make the best mobos but they have potato customer service. I’ve been using Gigabyte for 13 years now (both AMD and Intel) and never had any issues.
My first built PC in 2000 had a Biostar mobo.

 

[My Spot]

So there’s an unopened 3080 on Craigslist and it’s only $100 above MSRP.

 

[Woldog]

Asus seems to make the best mobos but they have potato customer service. I’ve been using Gigabyte for 13 years now (both AMD and Intel) and never had any issues.
My first built PC in 2000 had a Biostar mobo.

I've been strictly Asus since 2014. My GF went with Gigabyte on my recommendation for a budget board and it was a flop.

 

[Madmick]

I've been strictly Asus since 2014. My GF went with Gigabyte on my recommendation for a budget board and it was a flop.

What happened? Was this the board that shit itself on the BIOS update?

So there’s an unopened 3080 on Craigslist and it’s only $100 above MSRP.

Don't agree to a meet in a parking lot. You're gun get shot.

 

[Woldog]

What happened? Was this the board that shit itself on the BIOS update?

Don't agree to a meet in a parking lot. You're gun get shot.

Yeah the one that had the bios chip literally burn out.

 

[KidBaize]

Can I use an i9-9900K on a TUF Z270 MARK 2 motherboard?

That CPU is designed for the LGA1151 socket (which the Z270 has) but I believe it's intended for 300-series chipsets (I'm not looking to upgrade the motherboard at this time). ASUS only mentions support for 6th and 7th generation Intel CPU's but other websites suggest 8th and 9th models should work as well, so I'm confused.

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/TUF-Z270-MARK-2/
TUF Z270 Mark 2 supports 7th Generation and 6th Generation Intel® Core i7/i5/i3/Pentium®/Celeron® processors in the LGA1151 package...

 

[Madmick]

Can I use an i9-9900K on a TUF Z270 MARK 2 motherboard?

That CPU is designed for the LGA1151 socket (which the Z270 has) but I believe it's intended for 300-series chipsets (I'm not looking to upgrade the motherboard at this time). ASUS only mentions support for 6th and 7th generation Intel CPU's but other websites suggest 8th and 9th models should work as well, so I'm confused.

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/TUF-Z270-MARK-2/
TUF Z270 Mark 2 supports 7th Generation and 6th Generation Intel® Core i7/i5/i3/Pentium®/Celeron® processors in the LGA1151 package...

No. You can see there is no support for the 9900K on Asus's own CPU support page for the MoBo:
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/TUF-Z270-MARK-2/HelpDesk_CPU/

 

[KidBaize]

No. You can see there is no support for the 9900K on Asus's own CPU support page for the MoBo:
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/TUF-Z270-MARK-2/HelpDesk_CPU/

Thanks. I saw that page and assumed no but other sites got my hopes up again.

So the i7 7700K is the best I can do? I already have an i5 7600K which is pretty similar performance-wise so I guess I've already maxed out my current mobo.

 

[Madmick]

Thanks. I saw that page and assumed no but other sites got my hopes up again.

So the i7 7700K is the best I can do? I already have an i5 7600K which is pretty similar performance-wise so I guess I've already maxed out my current mobo.

Yeah, 7700K is the best.

 

[KidBaize]

Thanks Mick. Appreciate it.