Help me build my PC 2017 Catch All

Malor wrote:

The reason I bought this 4790K was because it had a really high stock clock (4.4GHz turbo), so I got most of the benefits of overclocking without actually having to do any.

Yeah, I had a 4770K forever which I did have to overclock to get to 4.7 and is basically the same thing if you can get it overclocked. Kinda want to do the same thing with this one and keep it going for 5-10 years. I feel like if I can get it at a solid 5, I'll feel good about it for many years like I did with the overclocked 4770K.

Thanks Wipeout and Eleima for the answers to my questions. It looks like it will be somewhere between as easy as I hoped and as hard as I feared. I'm very pleased that I won't have to buy another license!

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Thin_J wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Well, I'm getting my new build up and running, and I'm not happy with the 8700K's temps at 5 GHz with my giant watercooler. It had a couple cores spike up to the 100C limit when just running 3DMark. Overall, it seems to do okay, it just really likes to spike high quickly. Just seems bad. I would have been fine if it stayed under 90 with the spikes which isn't great but whatever.

You may have just gotten unlucky on the silicon lottery side of things.

There's a fairly sizable number of them that require 1.4V or so to hit 5ghz and at that point you gotta go nuts on cooling (delidding etc) to make up for all the voltage you're cranking into the chip.

Would be curious what voltage you set, or if you used some kind of automatic setting what your motherboard/software decided to throw it at it try and keep it stable.

I just did the auto for now. Not sure if that went too crazy with the voltage to keep it stable yet. It just spiked so hard that I'm not feeling good about the cooling at all. I might try going down to 4.8 or something to see if that makes a huge difference. If that put me at a max of 70, I might be okay, but if THAT still gets in the 80s, I'll probably go forward with the delid option.

For what it's worth, even if the motherboard is just cranking 1.4 or so volts at it, spikes to 100 seem a little rough for a good cooler. I've seen a whole lot of tests showing them hitting ~90C at 5ghz under load pretty routinely though.

Sounds like either you were particularly unlucky, the auto-overclock is overdoing the voltage to begin with, or maybe the cooler isn't quite seated properly?

Unfortunately one has no solution, one is time consuming to test and/or fix if possible, and the latter is a real pain to even test at all.

I can't think of any easy things for you to try

BushPilot wrote:

Thanks Wipeout and Eleima for the answers to my questions. It looks like it will be somewhere between as easy as I hoped and as hard as I feared. I'm very pleased that I won't have to buy another license!

To add to what they mentioned because it's actually way easier now, they actually tied your key/license to your Microsoft account around 6 months ago (it was one of the last major updates).

So, when I did my build, I just created a Windows 10 USB installation drive and installed Windows and signed in with my Microsoft account. Then you just go to activate Windows in the control panel (it'll try and get you to activate a key or buy a copy). There is a small option underneath that mentions something about activating windows on new or upgraded hardware. Just click on that, and it'll set you straight in a couple seconds. I actually had my laptop key tied in there too and it let me select which license to use for the build.

Thin_J wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Thin_J wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Well, I'm getting my new build up and running, and I'm not happy with the 8700K's temps at 5 GHz with my giant watercooler. It had a couple cores spike up to the 100C limit when just running 3DMark. Overall, it seems to do okay, it just really likes to spike high quickly. Just seems bad. I would have been fine if it stayed under 90 with the spikes which isn't great but whatever.

You may have just gotten unlucky on the silicon lottery side of things.

There's a fairly sizable number of them that require 1.4V or so to hit 5ghz and at that point you gotta go nuts on cooling (delidding etc) to make up for all the voltage you're cranking into the chip.

Would be curious what voltage you set, or if you used some kind of automatic setting what your motherboard/software decided to throw it at it try and keep it stable.

I just did the auto for now. Not sure if that went too crazy with the voltage to keep it stable yet. It just spiked so hard that I'm not feeling good about the cooling at all. I might try going down to 4.8 or something to see if that makes a huge difference. If that put me at a max of 70, I might be okay, but if THAT still gets in the 80s, I'll probably go forward with the delid option.

For what it's worth, even if the motherboard is just cranking 1.4 or so volts at it, spikes to 100 seem a little rough for a good cooler. I've seen a whole lot of tests showing them hitting ~90C at 5ghz under load pretty routinely though.

Sounds like either you were particularly unlucky, the auto-overclock is overdoing the voltage to begin with, or maybe the cooler isn't quite seated properly?

Unfortunately one has no solution, one is time consuming to test and/or fix if possible, and the latter is a real pain to even test at all.

I can't think of any easy things for you to try :|

Yeah, I have the H150i which is a giant 3 fan radiator, so hitting 100 has me miffed. Honestly, I expected to maybe hit 90 like you said about some of the tests. That was kind of the low bar I was expecting. I'm going to test it at 4.8 where I have it now just to see if it dramatically helps during a bit of a stress test. Another odd thing is that even though I was really careful with the fan curves, I didn't really hear them kick in during the stress test. They're really quiet, though. I manually bumped them all to max to see how loud it was... not that loud. I don't see any options within Corsair's software that tell me they aren't adjusting RPMs instantly.

Pretty sure I got it seated well, and I did a small amount of thermal paste that should have been about right. I may just end up doing the delid thing for funsies and to get the setup in a spot where I'm happy with it. I don't like doing builds often, and I want the core of this thing to last me over five years without fiddling with it.

Anyways, I have tomorrow off to a degree and am going to work on it all day to get some things sorted. I have to investigate some things.

Edit: Yeah, the auto 4.8 setting doesn't have me above 80 doing a stress test which is where I'd like 5 to be at temp-wise.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

To add to what they mentioned because it's actually way easier now, they actually tied your key/license to your Microsoft account around 6 months ago (it was one of the last major updates).

Ahhh a recent change. This explains why I found so much conflicting information when I tried to Google the answer. Thanks for your help!

Well, I figured out a few things with my build. The first is that the reason the boot time was taking so long is that an old IDE DVD drive I had plugged in via an IDE to SATA adapter was causing huge problems and it was stuck in IDE reading mode forever. So, unplugging that solved that issue. It's not something I'll ever use regularly. I had got the drive to dump Wii discs.

Second thing is that the CPU fans on the cooler were tied to a dumb sensor that had nothing to do with CPU core voltages, so the fans weren't kicking in when they should. I changed the group on the 3 fans to what seems to be an average of the 3 fans (pretty sure it's not actually taking the highest voltage out of the 6 cores which is what I'd rather it do but oh well. So, now the system runs okay at 4.8 GHz. Temps are in the 50s and 60s doing the Intel Stress Test, and the CPU Vcore voltage in auto doesn't go above 1.4 V.

Sadly, going to 5 GHz is "stable" but it gets too hot still. I hit 100 eventually, and CPU Vcore was getting bumped up to 1.584 V. I feel pretty confident that the auto overclock is the way to go. It seems to do a pretty good job with stability, and I like that it will auto adjust everything. I don't think any manual tweaking would get me anywhere.

So, I'll probably watch a delid tutorial now and see if I want to have a go at that or just cap things at 4.8 GHz which would be fine.

Personally I'd rather have a 4.8 GHz chip running at 60 C than a 5.0 GHz chip running at 80 C.

*Legion* wrote:

Personally I'd rather have a 4.8 GHz chip running at 60 C than a 5.0 GHz chip running at 80 C.

Well, I ordered the stuff to delid, so we'll see how that goes. Yeah, I will admit that running in the 50s and 60s at load feels really nice.

One fun thing about this build is my case is now packed. I had to add a SATA expansion card and a USB 3 expansion card. I have 3 hard drives and an extra front slot ready for a big data drive once I run out of room in a few years. I have 3 SSDs. I have a whole card reader thing now in the front that has extra USB ports. I have a Blu-ray drive, a DVD drive (I have it unplugged because it's IDE and the system takes forever to boot with it plugged in. There are 12 total USB 3 ports (and I still have an empty USB 3 header!), 6 USB 2 ports, and 4 USB C ports. So many ports!

Why have both Blu-ray and dvd? Copying discs?

LeapingGnome wrote:

Why have both Blu-ray and dvd? Copying discs?

Yeah, it's an old LG drive that is able to dump Wii discs. My Blu-ray drive has always been a little rough ripping audio CDs, too for some reason. At one point, I was ripping a bunch of audio CDs and ended up switching to a USB DVD drive because it worked better for some reason.

Of course, since it causes the system to take forever to boot, my plan to have that drive in there is sort of dumb. At this point, I'm too lazy to take it out.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Sadly, going to 5 GHz is "stable" but it gets too hot still. I hit 100 eventually, and CPU Vcore was getting bumped up to 1.584 V. I feel pretty confident that the auto overclock is the way to go. It seems to do a pretty good job with stability, and I like that it will auto adjust everything. I don't think any manual tweaking would get me anywhere.

Auto OC features often overkill voltage to varying degrees. They brute force things that really are more often far more efficiently accomplished in smaller steps.

1.58V is your cpu is trash in six months kind of voltage.

Would bet you can go 4.9ghz at 1.4 and some fiddling with the AVX offset if you were so inclined, but I'm more in Legion's camp really. I tend to see how high I can get stable and then cut speed and voltage until the temperatures never go above 75C or so, which kinda where you're at anyway.

Thin_J wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Sadly, going to 5 GHz is "stable" but it gets too hot still. I hit 100 eventually, and CPU Vcore was getting bumped up to 1.584 V. I feel pretty confident that the auto overclock is the way to go. It seems to do a pretty good job with stability, and I like that it will auto adjust everything. I don't think any manual tweaking would get me anywhere.

Auto OC features often overkill voltage to varying degrees. They brute force things that really are more often far more efficiently accomplished in smaller steps.

1.58V is your cpu is trash in six months kind of voltage.

Would bet you can go 4.9ghz at 1.4 and some fiddling with the AVX offset if you were so inclined, but I'm more in Legion's camp really. I tend to see how high I can get stable and then cut speed and voltage until the temperatures never go above 75C or so, which kinda where you're at anyway.

Cool! I'll keep that in mind. I still don't mind at all doing the delid thing just for fun (assuming I don't eff it up ;)) so that my temps are even lower at 4.8 GHz and hopefully less spikey. I'll try auto at 5 just to see what happens, but yeah, I'm probably going to make sure it doesn't go above 1.4 V on the Vcore. So, I'll look into some tutorials on things to see if I can manually get it to 4.9 or 5. At least I can get it to 4.8! I can certainly live with that, especially if I can get my temps lower with the delidding. The less the fans kick in the better.

It really sucks that, as much as Intel is charging for those chips, they can't put proper thermal material inside. That's saving them, what, ten cents? On a $200+ chip?

Malor wrote:

It really sucks that, as much as Intel is charging for those chips, they can't put proper thermal material inside. That's saving them, what, ten cents? On a $200+ chip?

Yep! It's super lame.

Parts have been purchased. I managed to get a 1060 3gb for almost retail so I just bought everything. I was a going to go slow and try to maximize deals but I'm impatient. Still managed discounts on the motherboard and RAM. I had ultimately decided that I just didn't want a pre-built system.

Does anybody know of a good build guide (either text or video)? It's probably been six years since I put together a PC.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

Parts have been purchased. I managed to get a 1060 3gb for almost retail so I just bought everything. I was a going to go slow and try to maximize deals but I'm impatient. Still managed discounts on the motherboard and RAM. I had ultimately decided that I just didn't want a pre-built system.

Does anybody know of a good build guide (either text or video)? It's probably been six years since I put together a PC.

/r/buildapc has great resources...

Text/links:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/wi...

Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Was linked to this article from Ars Technica, over on Tom's Hardware, which I don't usually read:

Less Expensive GPUs Are Hiding In External Graphics Docks

Apparently, buying a complete Thunderbolt enclosure plus included graphic card is sometimes cheaper than buying the card.

edit: dropped an apostrophe, oops.

LouZiffer wrote:

/r/buildapc has great resources...

Text/links:
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/wi...

Videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Thanks for the links. Turns out I didn't need them. I remembered a lot more than I thought I would.

The only problem I've encountered is the RAM speed. I'm using 3000 MHz RAM but it was only running at 2166 when I first booted up. I set the frequency to 2933 and it seems to be running fine. Is that going to cause any problems? I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to any kind of BIOS tinkering.

I think as long as the ram and motherboard supports that speed, then you should be fine.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

I'm using 3000 MHz RAM but it was only running at 2166 when I first booted up. I set the frequency to 2933 and it seems to be running fine. Is that going to cause any problems?

Nope, not a problem. My 3200 RAM only reliably runs at 2933. Ryzen is picky about RAM.

Ryzen is indeed picky, and many AM4 motherboards will automatically choose 2166 by default if the RAM you're using isn't in the supported components list (and sometimes even if it is). Having to set the speed manually appears to be pretty common.

Me waiting on my new PC parts:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/jzrpafB.png)

It really sucks that, as much as Intel is charging for those chips, they can't put proper thermal material inside. That's saving them, what, ten cents? On a $200+ chip?

The company I work for is Macbook pro shop and I ran into the same sort of thing. MBP's used to ship with a micro fiber screen wipe. Apparently those increase costs too much as well. A $15 cloth that costs them maybe a dollar is too much cost for a $2500 laptop.

https://m.hardocp.com/article/2018/0...

All the more reason that when you build your next build try and go AMD all the way.

TheGameguru wrote:

https://m.hardocp.com/article/2018/0...

All the more reason that when you build your next build try and go AMD all the way.

I'll have to take your word for it. I can't read that site. Seriously black background white text! It's 2018! Good Grief!

The non-mobile link is easier to read: https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018...

But still, dark themes > light themes.

TheGameguru wrote:

https://m.hardocp.com/article/2018/0...

All the more reason that when you build your next build try and go AMD all the way.

Yikes.

Gaald wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

https://m.hardocp.com/article/2018/0...

All the more reason that when you build your next build try and go AMD all the way.

I'll have to take your word for it. I can't read that site. Seriously black background white text! It's 2018! Good Grief!

I prefer the dark background. That said I read it it, and it is interesting, but it was light on details, heavy on speculation, and the author is a poor writer.