Help me build my PC 2017 Catch All

That sucks :(. I am sure very disappointing. The B450 Tomahawk I bought was ready to go out of the box but that was with a 2xxx CPU.

I don’t understand why AMD keeps having partner problems like this, it just drives people away.

Because if they didn't screw things up so frequently, they'd be Intel.

They've lost a lot of expertise over the last decade, and they were fouling things up pretty badly even before the big talent bleed there.

There are always early adopter issues with older chipsets and new cpu's. This isn't unique to AMD. I'm always wary of trying to marry old and new. Safest is to stick with the latest chipset and motherboard when going with new CPU technology or at least sitting it out for a few months until motherboard manufactures iron out all the bugs.

Yeah it's cool how people are dumping on AMD for bugs with allowing new CPU's on old chipsets when Intel's stance for years has been "f*ck you, you'll buy a new board every single time and you'll like it"

I probably sound a little too bitter, but AMD chipset bugs have cost me a lot of money, hundreds of dollars to replace hardware that was just fine.

So I've been contemplating what to do now that I've sent me motherboard and case back (though not the ram or cpu at this time). Been looking at some comparisons of this cpu vs that and came upon this one that compares 2700k through 9700K - note the timestamp goes directly to where he starts talking about it. One of the points he made was with the new consoles coming out you shouldn't buy anything less than an 8 core cpu as the consoles will have 8 core cpus.

Is that something I should be concerned about? Would it be better to send everything back and wait a year (I've already sent back most of the system). Return the 3600 ($40 restocking/shipping fee, btw) and get a 3700X?

I think it is way overstated. Games typically just don't take advantage of multicores as other apps like code compiling, 3d rendering for CG or video and audio encoding.

Besides, you will alienate a whole host of your gamer audience if games start making 8 core CPU demands. And there is the other factor that games at moderate resolutions are still majorly GPU limited. Part of the reason you need multicore cpus for consoles is they are actually APUs and you need some of them for your GPUs. Plus shared ram and all that...

Funny thing is I just realized my GPU has as much ram as my system ;P

fangblackbone wrote:

I think it is way overstated.

I agree. Even if the next generation of consoles come out with 8 CPU cores, it does not mean that games will be able to effectively use all of those cores simultaneously. Parallelizing game code is hard. We've had multi-core systems for years now, and single thread performance is still the biggest performance indicator.

I probably wouldn't go down to 4 cores for a midrange system in 2019, but 6 cores is perfectly fine for the foreseeable future.

Yeah. I would not upgrade to 4 cores but having 4 cores now is not a deal breaker. Upgrading to 6+ cores makes so much more sense since the extra $100 will be much more valuable as future proofing. But it is another $100 to upgrade to an 8 core so while it is not a bad way to go, in many situations you'd be better advised to put that $100 towards going to the next tier of GPU upgrade. (if you are upgrading the GPU too)

I think consoles are using those cores for non game rendery things like streaming.

tl;dr: 6 cores is probably enough for the moment. 8 won't hurt if the difference doesn't faze you, but 6 is adequate.

Historically, it's been very much the case that games were mostly about single-threaded performance, that multi-threading their algorithms tends to be quite hard. This is one of the biggest reasons Intel was so much stronger at gaming than AMD in the Bulldozer era, and one of the biggest reasons why Ryzen is making people sit up and take notice; it's almost as fast, now, per core, which wasn't true in the last gen. That was really killing them, once, but it's not much of an issue anymore.

The CPUs being used in the PS4 and XB1 are actually quite weak on a per-core basis; in some areas, they're not even as strong as the PS3 and 360! This is the first console generation where CPUs have gone backward in any areas at all. (the PS3 in particular was a monster at matrix math.) So if devs want to keep pushing the envelope and compete with other devs, inventing multithreaded ways to run their game code is a powerful advantage. What they were given is weak CPUs but lots of cores, so using that architecture well will be rewarded.

Where the PC can't match the consoles is in the unified memory. So far, it's managed to keep up well by just throwing muscle at the problem instead. I think that will probably continue to be true for at least most of the next generation, but near the end of the PS5/XB2 cycle, we might start to see some issues, because the high end isn't improving much, while cheap CPUs are getting much better. The PC won't have the same kind of performance margin to substitute for clever tricks with UMA.

This is probably not a thing to worry about sizing your next build around, and in fact may never be a factor in PC purchase decisions, because there may be no good answer to this problem. I strongly suspect that trying to retrofit unified memory into Windows would be challenging as heck, and it would probably alter how to spec and build PCs almost completely. The market might not accept a change that dramatic.

For the moment, a good solid 6-core CPU should let you do almost anything a console would; it's likely to be clocked substantially higher, so it should be able to match a slower-clocked console with more cores, even into the next generation. I'm guessing that the consoles will be nowhere near as strong as a high-end Ryzen.

Having 8 cores certainly won't hurt, but if you're trading between 8 cores or a stronger GPU, you probably want the GPU.

Didn’t Unified Memory Architecture come into Windows via the CUDA world a while back? Which means it’s already in use with capable graphics cards in the Windows world? I find it hard to see how CUDA would even work without access to system RAM, and it’s been around since 2007...

Since there’s an API for UMA in Windows, and has been for more than a decade, isn’t it already present?

Thanks, Malor, et al. That's a nicely detailed response which explains things well for me. Ideally, I'd love to get a CPU that lasts 6 years for me and a few more for one of my kids (my 3570k has lasted me 7 years and will be replacing an i5 2400 in my sons pc). And, yes, video card vs cpu figures in.

Robear wrote:

Didn’t Unified Memory Architecture come into Windows via the CUDA world a while back? Which means it’s already in use with capable graphics cards in the Windows world? I find it hard to see how CUDA would even work without access to system RAM, and it’s been around since 2007...

Since there’s an API for UMA in Windows, and has been for more than a decade, isn’t it already present?

I don't think that's the same thing. CUDA is a thing for compute, and while the video card maps into the CPU address space, they're not on the same bus.... the CPU has to go out over a PCIe link to do anything with that RAM, which is vastly slower than the already-slow main RAM. It can't easily be cached, because the GPU could be doing anything with that data independently.

True UMA means both the CPU and GPU are on the same bus and sharing the same caches, so they can keep themselves coherent. And as far as I know, none of the gaming models for the PC even vaguely approximates anything of the sort, where you have the ability to literally interleave CPU and GPU access to get a job done on a specific memory target.

CUDA, to my limited knowledge (I haven't worked with it myself) is pretty much sending the data to the graphic card along with a program, telling it to get busy, waiting for a signal that the result is ready, and then pulling it back over the PCIe bus. If the CPU is working on anything, it will usually be an independent part of the overall problem, or it may just be mostly idling, synchronizing multiple video cards that are doing the heavy lifting.

Ah, I get you. I think, with respect, you're mistaking "integrated" for "more powerful". Unified Memory Access refers to graphics chips on the mobo or circuitry built into the CPU, both of which don't have local RAM to work with, and so connect directly to the system RAM. This is compared to a regular graphics board, which has it's own internal bus connecting it's CPU and RAM (and this bus is faster than the system RAM bus). The problem with UMA is twofold; first, system RAM is slower than dedicated graphics RAM (GDDR, for example); and second, removing RAM from access by the system reduces usable memory for the OS and apps.

So for example, an nVidia 1080 has a 10.6Gb/s memory bus, while the PS4 (even with UMA) tops out at 6.8Gb/sec. An Intel i9 has a memory bus speed of about 6.5Gb/s, I think (80% of 8GT/s). So the video card is faster in all these scenarios (which is why even fast systems offload HPC workloads to graphics cards).

I suspect cost is a factor in all these design decisions. Console designers can't afford to sink the equivalent cost of fancy graphics cards into their designs; they'd have to add hundreds of dollars just for the GPU, RAM and upgraded busses to push the bits out to the display. And GP computers don't have a need for *integrated* high end graphics, since the cards on the market do the job just fine. And likewise, in a regular computer, GDDR is a relatively useless additional enhancement, unless one is doing very high end computations, in which case, they'd be designing the high end graphics into the system... But why, when there are modular devices that do all that and don't have to be built into the mobo to perform?

So UMA is a "poor man's" graphics solution, suitable and efficient when looking to keep the price low and squeeze every last drop of performance from components. But that efficiency doesn't mean that it's more powerful than dedicated GPU cards (as, indeed, the market has shown in multiple ways).

Make sense?

Can anyone recommend a gaming HDD. I plan on making my current drive the everything drive and have the 2nd one for just my games.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

Can anyone recommend a gaming HDD. I plan on making my current drive the everything drive and have the 2nd one for just my games.

To not answer your question, SSD's are surprisingly cheap now. Why not one of those?

Delbin wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

Can anyone recommend a gaming HDD. I plan on making my current drive the everything drive and have the 2nd one for just my games.

To not answer your question, SSD's are surprisingly cheap now. Why not one of those?

Because I'm new to the whole build a PC thing, and my case lets your slide two internal HDDs in without opening the case.

I'm guessing you believe you need a 3.5" drive to utilize that functionality. You can convert a 2.5" SSD to a 3.5" bracket with an adapter like this one. Normally only costs a few dollars.

So, an SSD has the same port as a HDD then?

Where the drives slide into my case:
IMAGE(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/717m8Ayc3jL._SL1500_.jpg)

Yep! They'll have the same connectors on the back.

Very little reason to go with HDDs at this point. Some, but not many.

So are all SSD's the same? Is there one better for gaming?

In my not so experienced perspective, anything with SATA connectors and 6gb/s transfer rates should be plenty.

Something like this, I think.

Dakuna wrote:

In my not so experienced perspective, anything with SATA connectors and 6gb/s transfer rates should be plenty.

Something like this, I think.

There's very little reason to go with QLC when high-quality TLC drives are the same price. MX500s have been at performance parity with Samsung TLC EVOs for a couple generations now while being significantly cheaper. Samsung appears to have fully transitioned into trading on their past performance advantage to reap a price premium.

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX500...

I have one of these as my application (read games) install drive and an older 500GB 860 EVO as my OS drive. It's worked out quite well so far.

I was hoping to get 2 TB for that price, but 1TB should be enough for a while and I guess it's worth it for a more secure and fast drive.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

I was hoping to get 2 TB for that price, but 1TB should be enough for a while and I guess it's worth it for a more secure and fast drive.

If you don't have an SSD yet, I highly recommend taking the time to either reinstall or transfer Windows to it. It will make your computer feel new again.

On the downside, it'll feel like extreme Chinese water torture if you ever need to use an SSD-less computer again.

peanut3141 wrote:
Dakuna wrote:

In my not so experienced perspective, anything with SATA connectors and 6gb/s transfer rates should be plenty.

Something like this, I think.

There's very little reason to go with QLC when high-quality TLC drives are the same price. MX500s have been at performance parity with Samsung TLC EVOs for a couple generations now while being significantly cheaper. Samsung appears to have fully transitioned into trading on their past performance advantage to reap a price premium.

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX500...

I have one of these as my application (read games) install drive and an older 500GB 860 EVO as my OS drive. It's worked out quite well so far.

Well.. I don't know the difference between QLC and TLC, but $2 is $2, so .. I guess the Crucial drive is a better deal?

peanut3141 wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

I was hoping to get 2 TB for that price, but 1TB should be enough for a while and I guess it's worth it for a more secure and fast drive.

If you don't have an SSD yet, I highly recommend taking the time to either reinstall or transfer Windows to it. It will make your computer feel new again.

On the downside, it'll feel like extreme Chinese water torture if you ever need to use an SSD-less computer again.

+1 to this. SSD is only way to go now.

Don't worry much about speed on an SSD. Having any SSD at all is a huge win. From there, a "fast" SSD will be only marginally different than a slow one, because the CPU can only handle data so fast. Particularly with games (typically the most challenging thing that most computers ever do), they tend to be very heavily compressed on disk. It doesn't matter how fast the SSD delivers the data, the CPU can only unpack it so fast. As long as the SSD doesn't have any pathologic performance modes (some early models had real trouble), it'll be fine.

I'd focus primarily on reliability, and then trade off capacity vs. price on whatever brand or technology I selected. I've had very good luck with Intel drives, although I'm not sure they're still doing their own chipsets, so they may not have the quality they once did.