5150 III - Time for a new computer

50% load is usually the sweet spot for efficiency on power supplies, so you will be closer to the efficiency rating during non-peak usage.

Steve must have read you comment -

 
One of the reasons I refuse to use RGB is because while they're not a massive power draw individually, that shit can add up in a big god damn hurry.

Something I didn't talk about was a bit of panic I had after I ordered my power supply. As I said I was looking at 650 and 750w units, several weeks ago at about 2AM I noticed Amazon got an allotment of the Corsair 650's and for less than anywhere else but they were going FAST. Literally in a 3 minute span their stock went from 20 down to 7, so I pounced on it. PCPartPicker said my total estimated power draw would be just a hair under 400w not counting a few other things like the fans, so I figured having 250w of headroom over that would be more than enough.

Funny that I bought the same cpu, but everthing else is different.

Was going to buy 750w PSU but amazon didn't have what I wanted, but bought a 650w BeQuiet when I could have bought a 750 :-?

Ended up with Corsair RGB ram as that was the only 32Gb kit available when buying ?

CPU cooler is a Dark Rock 4, which is also a tight squeeze.
 
I may have hit the silicon lottery with my chip, I've now seen it boost up to the 4.4ghz limit on its own. I don't know how long it can sustain that speed but I've seen stories from people where their chips could barely reach 4.0 or 4.1 no matter how much they tried to push it.

Even with the impending release of the nvidia 30 series along with the 4000 series CPU's and big Navi, I have zero regret about buying what I did when I did. A newer GPU would have meant trying to find an even bigger power supply to feed it and the new AMD hardware is at best probably going to launch at the same price mine did last year. I feel I got a pretty damn good performance to dollar value out of this build.
 
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Yeah it's XMP/DOCP compatible, this is the kit I bought, https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-16gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820232880?Item=N82E16820232880

After I had W10 installed and everything updated I went into the BIOS and set it to auto and it's been running at the rated 3600mhz with zero issues. As I understand it the infinity fabric runs best at a 1:1 ratio, so half of whatever your RAM is rated at and it maxes out at 1800. I know people have uncoupled the IF and managed to push their RAM into the 5000mhz range by playing with things but I can't see that being stable or safe enough for day to day use.

The current thinking is if you have 3rd gen Ryzen and want the best performance with the least hassle, just grab 3600 with the lowest CL you can afford, enable DOCP, and call it good. They've done benchmarks where they've played around with things not only is there next to zero benefit beyond 3600, but you can actually lose performance.

 
Another thing with Ram which I never really paid attention to is some are compatible but not optimized.
 
Just ran my first official in game benchmark using GTA 5, and with everything set to max it ran at 60fps the whole time. I had vsync turned on and the refresh rate locked to 60mhz because that's as high as my monitor goes. If I unlocked it it would probably go double that given the benchmarks I've seen for similar builds. On GSX I could play game at a pretty solid fps but only at low settings. it still looked better than my PS3 version if only because it ran at 1080p vs 720p.

I've been playing a lot of Fallout 4 lately, previously I had to run a mod called Vivid Fallout that came in a few different flavors, I used the one that reduced the file size of the vanilla textures by half but had almost no quality loss. Because I have 4x the vRam now I decided to try the high res version that made everything look extra pretty and... it just kept crashing my game. But just look at dem godrays.

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I remember when Fallout 3 came out and when I tried to play it on 5150, I had to set it to 800x600 and set everything to the lowest possible setting and it was still a slideshow. I know I had a screenshot saved on Phyerfile/armedcats but that's gone now.

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A few updates.

Apparently I have a gremlin who hates it when I build a new computer, because every time I've done it, it will start making an odd noise that's really hard to track down and fix. It can be a small buzz like a fan isn't quite happy or a rattle because a side panel doesn't fit quite right, normally a few turns of a screwdriver or some bluetack will take care of it.

This time it was my desk that was the cause of the noise. It's over 30 years old and is made of cheap thin particleboard, well past its retirement age. So the whole thing doesn't sit very flat or level these days, I had to make cardboard shims and place them under 5 of the 6 feet to get it to stop.

I'm going to have to buy a new HDD. I always run with at least two drives, one primary and a secondary for movies and tv shows, but my current one is the 500 gig drive I bought for GSX 11 years ago. It's still working fine but I don't know if I want to push my luck for much longer. I was going to take my old 2tb backup drive and use that as the replacement, but if I'm not mistaken it was actually refurbished unit when I bought it 4 or 5 years ago, and now it sometimes makes little tapping sounds when it's reading data.

Dust. I've seen a normal amount of dust accumulate on the front and front bottom filters when cleaning, but there's not a god damn spec of it showing up on the PSU filter. I'm not sure if the rear of the desk is just that dust free, if the fan might be kaput, or if it just has a zero RPM mode for light loads. It was just shocking to see it totally clean.

I saw my first BSOD in literally over a decade a few days ago. In all the years I used Windows 7 I never saw it crop up once. But a couple days ago I was playing a game, something went wrong, and I wound up having to reselect the right boot drive in BIOS after the restart.
 
Weird, I would have to assume it was a driver issue relating to the SATA portion or BIOS/Chipset?
 
I've no idea, I'm just glad I was able to get it working again.
 
I've no idea, I'm just glad I was able to get it working again.

These days, it's mostly down to a shit driver. @larswey recently built a new machine and he's had so many BSOD's that it's like he's under a rain cloud like cartoon. I'm confident it's that.
 
These days, it's mostly down to a shit driver. @larswey recently built a new machine and he's had so many BSOD's that it's like he's under a rain cloud like cartoon. I'm confident it's that.
This is one reason why I used the same computer for 11 years, "I fear change, I will keep my bushes".


I probably should update my BIOS but I'm terrified of something going wrong and my system gets bricked.
 
This is one reason why I used the same computer for 11 years, "I fear change, I will keep my bushes".


I probably should update my BIOS but I'm terrified of something going wrong and my system gets bricked.

Possibly, I see this as a new challenge and a way to further my knowledge. Most likely a problem such as this will come up in the future and I will know stuff to try. It may work, it may not, at least you'll have tried to fix the issue and hopefully be closer to a solution.
 
This is one reason why I used the same computer for 11 years, "I fear change, I will keep my bushes".


I probably should update my BIOS but I'm terrified of something going wrong and my system gets bricked.


Bios updates are really smooth and simple these days.
 
Says it doesn't support W10. Quiky linked to me some sort of monitoring software a few months ago but I never got around to installing it.

I got around to running the Far Cry 5 benchmark the other day and just like with everything else, it runs maxed out at 1080p and 60fps. Honestly I don't think I'd be able to tell a difference if they were running at double that. I'm happy with what I have, and I'm glad I didn't wait for the 6000 series GPU's, not when they're going to be over $500, that's just too rich for my blood.
 
I reran the Far Cry 5 benchmark uncorked (no v-sync or frame limiter) last night and averaged around 130fps with a minimum of 110 and max of 150. The only difference I noticed is that I could clearly hear the fans on the GPU ramp waaaaay the hell up while it was running.

I also installed the chipset drivers for my mobo a few days ago when JayzTwoCents made a video about them. Apparently it's something a lot of Ryzen users don't know about, and I'm too proud to admit I was one of them. I didn't run any benchmarks before or after so I can't make an A B comparison with the hardware scheduling, mainly because I'm not interested in the 3dmark pissing contest. So long as my shit works and works well I'm happy.

Still haven't updated the BIOS though.

My 500gig media drive has been replaced with a new 2tb one, but not everything is perfectly rosy. I'm not sure if it's from the old drive or the new one or if it's just because I have the side panel off, but I swear I'm hearing a little bit of squeaking when one of them spins down. Maybe it's just from the rubber mounting bracket? This is a higher RPM drive than the old one, I don't know.
 
Sorry to bump a thread that hasn't been touched in well over a year, but there's a reason for it.

I've recently decided to try my hand at some video editing, nothing heavy duty, just dashcam footage and capturing old family VHS tapes, so I figured a RAM upgrade would be a smart idea. That plus the fact that DDR5 is out now and I've seen the prices on DDR4 steadily rising, seemed like now would be as good a time as any to just add more. I picked up another 16 gigs of G Skill Ripjaws V with the exact same CL timings, so there won't be any comparability issues.

I haven't installed it yet because to get to the RAM slots I'll have to remove the Noctua cooler. I wanted to check the paste job on it anyway, along with turning it 180 degrees so the logo isn't upside down, give it a good cleaning inside and out, and try to clean up the cable routing. But that's all way more of a hassle than I want to deal with right now, my back has been bad since Thanksgiving and unhooking and hauling this beast around for all that isn't going to be fun.

I'm still running on the original BIOS because I'm even more terrified of bricking the mobo after seeing Jayztwocents do it to his own equipment some months ago.
 
I know I'm bumping a 2+ year old thread here, but I actually have something noteworthy to add!

In August I went on a pseudo vacation down to Tennessee and because doing my job is possible from a smart phone it's akin to trying to tie your shoelaces while looking through your asshole, so 5150 III made the trek with me. And since there's no kill like overkill, I brought pretty much every tool and item you'd need to build a computer from scratch, which is good because I wound up needing it.

I had everything short of a spare GPU, I even brought extra screws and coffee filters with me.

I packed it away in its original box but 10 hours in an RV with clapped out suspension was enough to knock something out of whack, because once I had it unpacked and setup it started BSODing and then I couldn't even get into the BIOS to see wtf was going on. But as I said I came prepared.

Everything save for the power supply and motherboard was yanked out, the case and all components were cleaned, all screws were checked and tightened, then it was all reseated including the 3700X. I had also brought that extra 16 gigs of RAM with me and since installation required removing the Noctua, I killed two birds with one stone.

I've seen some horror stories from people who tried to remove their Ryzen chips and wound up yanking the the whole god damn thing out of the socket with the cooler, but I just gave mine a little twist back and forth and it came off just fine. It also looks like I had a pretty good spread on the thermal compound, I had used a pea sized dab in the middle previously but this time I opted to try an X. Since everything went back together it hasn't just been rock solid but I've seen around a 10c drop in my idle temps. Previously it was around 40c and is now around 30c.

And yes I went into the BIOS later on and reenabled DOCP so all 32 gigs of RAM are running at the full 3600mhz, the Noctua logo now points the correct way as well.
 

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