Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

peanut3141 wrote:

I had been targeting the 5000-series version of the 3700X, which is the 5800X, but I think I'm going to go with the 5900X instead. It's very hard to turn down 50% more cores with a higher boost clock for 20% more cost.

You also get double the L3 cache when going from 5800X (32MB shared across all cores) to 5900X (64MB). Definitely worth it.

merphle wrote:
peanut3141 wrote:

I had been targeting the 5000-series version of the 3700X, which is the 5800X, but I think I'm going to go with the 5900X instead. It's very hard to turn down 50% more cores with a higher boost clock for 20% more cost.

You also get double the L3 cache when going from 5800X (32MB shared across all cores) to 5900X (64MB). Definitely worth it.

I'm already settled on 5900x for my current build out (unless I get silly and jump for a 5950x), but I think it's going to be very interesting to see how the 3900x compares with the 5800x for folks looking for a mid tier option.

Yes, the 5800x will offer marginally higher clock speeds and a few other architectural advances, but the with the 3900x you're going to have that same 50% increase in core count and much larger cache, which could prove valuable in the next few years when it comes to matching or exceeding what's called for by games optimized for the new consoles. It's still hard to say what's going to be the most "bang for your buck" moving forward, but especially given the discounts you might find on the 3900x, it's at least worth thinking about.

That being said, as you folks have just been discussing, I think if you're willing to pay the price for either a 5800x or a 3900x, you probably might want to consider dropping the extra $100 and get the extra future-proofing offered by the 5900x.

Did AMD announce anything about their new GPU yet?

JohnKillo wrote:

Did AMD announce anything about their new GPU yet?

They did a tease showing it putting up some frame per second at 4k close to what the 3080 can do.

JohnKillo wrote:

Did AMD announce anything about their new GPU yet?

That reveal is later this month.

I am in the process of building a new rig and the last two pieces I need are of course a motherboard and the 5900x.

What I want to know is; If I buy a motherboard now, say the Asus PRIME X570-PRO will it ship with compatible Bios for the 5900x?

If not will I be able to at least get into the bios with the 5900x in the motherboard and flash it?

I'm just trying to figure out if it's smart to buy a motherboard now or wait until after Nov 5.

Tough to say.. it will require bios updates that are available right now but you have to figure that many motherboards are sitting around with older bios. I do think that a few motherboards support a bios update from a usb stick without a CPU in the socket so if you get one of them you should be fine either way.

Yeah, that's a pretty common feature on higher-end ASUS boards, so if you get one with that feature you should be fine no matter what.

The board will probably be fairly expensive, though.

TheGameguru wrote:

I do think that a few motherboards support a bios update from a usb stick without a CPU in the socket

Yeah, "BIOS Flashback". Oddly, not nearly enough AM4 boards actually have this.

If this is a concern, look for a board that has this feature. Sadly, one of the ones who best support it is MSI. With other board makers, it seems to often be restricted to the high end boards.

That's about what I expected thanks. I'm not opposed to spending around $200 on a motherboard when I plan to overclock and require at least 1x Gen 4 M.2 slots.

Since this is my first AMD build I'm trying to figure out if B550 is the preferred platform going forward or is it still x570?

I keep reading about new B550 II boards and x570 boards simply getting the BIOS updates.

I found this Strix B550 board that looks good and will go nicely with my storm trooper theme

I was just researching this for my own purchase. Most x570s in that price range (ie, $200+) do have bios flashback support, including most others from Asus (ie, the ROG Strix x570 line, and the just launched TUF Pro but not the older TUF Plus line), but if memory serves, the Prime Pro does not. Not sure why, but I'm sure it has to do with the Prime line being aimed at a different market segment that presumably would care more for some of it's other features over the flashback tool.

EDIT: As for B550 vs x570, since the B550 line launched more recently it's often a bit muddy when trying to compare properly, since the extra time means they are often close to feature parity in some areas than you'd expect, but the big difference that will always be there is more extensive support for PCIe 4 from the x570 chipset. I can't say for certain across the board, but from what I was seeing in my price range it seems like the most notable thing was that B550 rarely offered more than one M.2 slot that would support PCIe 4, so if you intend to eventually have more than one high speed drive that's going to be a solid argument to go with an x570 board.

EDIT 2:
Sorry, just caught this bit:

I found this Strix B550 board that looks good and will go nicely with my storm trooper theme

Heh, now it makes more sense why you were asking about the Prime -- the same reason I was looking at it. For whatever it's worth, the x570 Strix works pretty well in a black and white case, as you can see in this photo of my unfinished buildout:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/WPHzDBi.jpeg)

I was also looking at the MSI Meg Unify x570, which seemed like it would be an even nicer looking all (or mostly) black board, but I ultimately went with Asus due to bad reports about MSI's recent business practices.

Nice! I also just purchased a P500A. I'm just waiting for it to ship.

Tempest wrote:

Nice! I also just purchased a P500A. I'm just waiting for it to ship.

I think you'll be pleased!

Mine is actually the P600s, but the internals are the same, and are quite good -- well designed, easy to work with, and good build quality.

Tempest wrote:

Nice! I also just purchased a P500A. I'm just waiting for it to ship.

Ha, so did I. Mine arrived today.

I've got everything I need for my 5900X 3080 build except a 5900X and a 3080.

*Legion* wrote:
Tempest wrote:

Nice! I also just purchased a P500A. I'm just waiting for it to ship.

Ha, so did I. Mine arrived today.

I've got everything I need for my 5900X 3080 build except a 5900X and a 3080.

Ahahaha. Newegg says mine will be here on Wednesday. I'm tempted to just take the parts I have in this PC and plop it in the P500A until I get the 5900x and whatever mobo. The Corsair case im using now is about 8 years old and has been through 2 PC revisions. It even has a 180mm fan on the side door...Madness! May as well be a dinosaur

Since I'm doing a lot of 3D rendering at home these days, I've decided to splurge on the new PC. Work got me a 2080ti in Jan so I'm good until the 3000 market stabilizes. Who says you can't work and play in the same place?

Finished my build. Working reasonably well but i am having a problem. Ony asus tuf, DOCP sets the ram speed but is not setting the timings properly. It's supposed to have a CAS latency of 16 but it's setting to 26. All of the other timings are way to high and i can't seem to get it to fix it. Anyone dealt with this? The ram i got is on the official supported list.

Try reseating your ram, and making sure you populated the correct ram slots? Usually the furthest ram slot from the cpu first then skip a slot and plug in the second stick of ram into the third ram slot.

Edit: You can also trying clearing the settings in bios, if that doesn't work updating the bios?

The other option would be to try and set your ram timings manually, but I have never done that myself and don't know how difficult that is. Although if you know what the timing is supposed to be and what the voltage should be at, I don't think it would be super difficult?

This TUF board is actually advertising Zen 3 5000 but has no Bios Flashback support. It also has dual gen 4 m2 for only $160. Wonder if I take the chance.

That's the mobo i have, just without wifi. Of cohrse they marked down the wifi version the day after my non wifi shipped.
Aside from the issue with the ram timings I'm very happy with it so far. Build quality seems good, only other issue i had was the board being unwilling to boot from the nvme slot.

It definitely look like a solid motherboard with an amazing price. Having the dual m.2 slots at 4th gen below $200 is crazy. I'm not a fan of the yellow accents but I think most of it will be covered by fans and video card anyway.

Ended up buying it since it's on Amazon and I can return it easily if it ends up not working out of the gate with a 5900x

https://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-9-595...

No reason to buy Intel at these various price points. We will see what sub $300 brings in a few weeks. The 5900 and 5800 look really strong though.

Pretty much ready to purchase these parts through amazon, but I think I'd get a much better deal if I hold off till halloween, black friday or in the worst case, christmas holidays. I may end up getting slightly different parts, as there have been special offers jumping up all over the place while I've been curating my shopping list to min-max risks and rewards (for example, picking items stocked by amazon itself in order to ensure that my delivery gets consolidated, decreasing risk of some of the smaller items going amiss on the way home) I found a company that brings all kinds of stuff from the US / Europe so I'm a bit less worried about that now. So yeah, I'm excited and giddy all over again about doing a proper build after soooo long. Yay!

So, after a weekend of building, testing and high speed wall/head interaction, i finally got new build fully set up.
3700x (no oc, stock cooler)
32gig gskill 3600 ram
Asus tuf mobo (no wifi version)
Samsung 970 nvme (bios wont boot to it but it makes a good game install drive)
Samsung 860 and 850 ssds (os on 860)
Old WD HD for storage
2 random 2 TB drives for me and my wife to back up to.
No hardware issues to speak of. Main issues were getting the ram to OC and time properly and find the right settings so the cpu didn't get too hot for my liking.
Then of course there was the great backup failure which lost about half my stored save games. But that's windows fault not the new build.

Went from loading a map in wasteland 3 in 3-5 minutes to 15-25 seconds. Plus there is now no game i own that can't handle me multitasking.
Thanks everyone for the advice along the way!

Feeank wrote:

Pretty much ready to purchase these parts through amazon, but I think I'd get a much better deal if I hold off till halloween, black friday or in the worst case, christmas holidays. I may end up getting slightly different parts, as there have been special offers jumping up all over the place while I've been curating my shopping list to min-max risks and rewards (for example, picking items stocked by amazon itself in order to ensure that my delivery gets consolidated, decreasing risk of some of the smaller items going amiss on the way home) I found a company that brings all kinds of stuff from the US / Europe so I'm a bit less worried about that now. So yeah, I'm excited and giddy all over again about doing a proper build after soooo long. Yay!

Looks like you're making some solid choices for an APU system. I know how it feels tracking that moving target when trying to get the most for your money. Typically I'll put together a "best guess" and research potential alternatives, then set that aside entirely until it's about time to buy everything. When that time rolls around, it's a repeat of the same process. Who knows what the results are going to be though. It changes by the day!

LouZiffer wrote:

Typically I'll put together a "best guess" and research potential alternatives, then set that aside entirely until it's about time to buy everything. When that time rolls around, it's a repeat of the same process. Who knows what the results are going to be though. It changes by the day!

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm doing, there are possible scenarios where I can potentially end up getting an ATX case with 3-4 fans preinstalled for a fraction of the full price that are quite attractive. My thermaltake dream-case seems to be having a rough time competing while it remains full price, it also has the con of having an reportedly noisy front intake 200mm fan that's impossible to repurpose, I would have to end up selling it and I'm trying to make use of what case I get as is + whatever additional fans I consider necessary to achieve positive air pressure. I have 2 great Coolermaster options eyed as well with similar pricing and easier to manage airflow-wise. Still, what you say is spot on, maybe tomorrow I end up going for those sexy nucs again.

Edit. Sp, punctuation

So my in-progress build looks like:

- CPU: Ryzen 5900X (hurry up and release)
- AIO: NZXT Kraken X63 280mm
- GPU: Asus TUF RTX 3080 (hurry up and sell me one)
- MB: Asus TUF X570-Plus WIFI
- RAM: 32 GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4 3600 CL16 (2x16 GB)
- SSD: (2x) 512 GB ADATA SX8200 Pro M.2 NVMe Gen3 SSDs (Windows OS and Linux OS drives)
- SSD: 2 TB ADATA SX8200 Pro M.2 NVMe Gen3 SSD (apps/games drive)
- HDD: 4 TB 7200rpm (bulk storage drive)
- PCIe expansion card: MHQJRH M.2 NVME to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter
- Case: Phanteks P500A
- Case fans: (3x) Noctua NF-A14 PWM Chromax

Wasn't willing to spend the premium for Gen4 NVMe drives, but with some sales, those Gen3 SX8200 Pros will give me pretty great performance per dollar.

Kind of a pain right now to find DDR4 3600 CL16 that's not Hynix chips. Still traumatized from trying to make Hynix chips run at their XMP speeds on gen 1 Ryzen. Even if Ryzen isn't so damn picky anymore, I wanted something above the Hynix options, so the Crucial Ballistix and its Micron E-Die chips fit the bill.

I might not get to be very picky about what 3080 I buy, but I want the ASUS if possible. GN's reviews show it as having better noise-adjusted cooler performance than the other options they've reviewed so far, and I'm kinda going ASUS heavy in general right now, but pretty much any non-Founders 3080 is a possibility here.

The top panel of the Phanteks P500A case comes completely off. I will never buy another case that is missing this feature.

I get the feeling that 3080 buyers will be regretting it by next month...

I'd just go with the 3200 RAM chips... You probably won't notice the difference, ever, between that and 3600... Unless you're doing some really memory sensitive stuff.

fangblackbone wrote:

I get the feeling that 3080 buyers will be regretting it by next month...

Would love to know why I keep seeing stuff like this everywhere.

AMD hasn't made even remotely significant strides towards top end GPU performance in years.

They still haven't been able to meaningfully compete with the now over 2 year old 2080 Ti. Why on earth is anyone assuming "Big Navi" is going to be some landmark improvement when Navi was just another stab at mid/upper-midrange competition?

Legion, with respect to the RAM, did you look at the G.Skil?

G.SKILL Trident Z Neo (For AMD Ryzen) Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin RGB DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Desktop Memory Model F4-3600C16D-32GTZN

Newegg has it for $20 off (usually $239) for the next ~48 hours.

It is the RAM I went with for my new build which is VERY close to what you've laid out above.