Anyone else here interested in PC hardware and building? It's something that I've gotten back into over the last year or two. I'm personally waiting on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake reviews to decide what platform to go with for my new build.
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Anyone else here interested in PC hardware and building? It's something that I've gotten back into over the last year or two. I'm personally waiting on AMD Ryzen and Intel Kaby Lake reviews to decide what platform to go with for my new build.
I was when I built my current rig nearly 7 years ago. I probably will be again in the next couple years... It's the longest I've gone between updates ever.
I still build my own PC(s) and never buy one prebuild. However technology now moves pretty slowly so I rarely really need to do it. The most you end up changing is just maybe a RAM upgrade and graphics card.
My PC lasted me pretty much 6 years with only a graphics card and RAM upgrade along the way - It was still able to play all games at Max and the only real reason why I recently build a new PC, is because I wanted a smaller form factor for living room play.
It's certainly not like the mid 90s or pre-2010 when technology moved so fast that you needed to upgrade at least every couple of years.
Yeah, any Intel i7 4C 8T CPU from the 4790k onwards performs almost identically at the same clocks. Intel have been sitting on their ass for years. I'm really looking forward to Ryzen cause if AMD can truly deliver better than 6900K performance on their 8C 12T CPU that should scale well across the whole range including lower core count higher core clock parts that will be better for gaming.
Used to build my own until I got a Mac Pro in 2008. Still modding this one a bit, ram upgrades, adding USB 3 and non-supporter GPUs but my next machine may be a custo pc with an OSX86 hack in addition...
Oh BTW: here's what my ultimate build (2017 edition) is going to be. https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/dt7Ghq
The CPU and motherboard are purely placeholder, but the rest of it is either currently installed and in use if it's marked as purchased or I'm waiting for a good special on the part.
Hopefully the 7700k's that Intel have given to motherboard manufactures that have ended up in the hands of journalist are pre-production samples or something (tho I doubt it). Intel appear once again to have stuffed up their TIM (Thermal Interface Material) application. Delidding the 7700k and applying your own TIM to the die results in a 30 degree drop in temperature. http://wccftech.com/intel-core-i7-77...ormance-tests/
Well the Geforce GTX 1080 Ti has been leaked via a job posting. I have to wonder how stupid high the Australia Tax will be on that one. http://www.pcworld.com/article/31511...scription.html
As much as the mobile devices had kicked in, it's very annoying that mobile site has some lacked features and I still have to turn on my PC time to time.
I have not bothered to make a new PC like 7 years already though I do feel I need a media pc
So it can be safely assumed that AMD Ryzen's 8C 16T variation AMD is showing off will be a subpar gaming CPU just like the Intel 6900K AMD is aiming it at. I wish AMD would show off something that would compete better against the top gaming CPU the 6700k and it's upcoming replacement the 7700k. Even if AMD gave me a 8C 16T Ryzen for free I wouldn't install it because it be worse at gaming than my 6600k.
Am I the only one that thinks putting 3 super expensive Corsair ML LED fans in the front of a NZXT H440 is a waste of money when you can get non-LED fans that perform similarly for cheaper?
Here's the H440 for reference. https://www.nzxt.com/products/h440-white
Kaby Lake reviews are finally official as of today. Just as the leaked reviews said, there's nothing much to see here except slightly improved power efficiency and temps allowing for a higher clock speed. I'm going to get a 7700k, but I'm going to wait for it to drop a little in price cause you know day one prices are gonna suck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnIIlOF5D6U&t=0s
Z270 boards are also out. Again nothing much to see here but having a second M.2 port on most boards is a nice feature. I'll be getting the Asus ROG Maximus IX Hero. That will be a nice upgrade for me. I'm in the middle of transitioning from mITX to ATX so I'll be going from a tiny board to a full size board.
http://www.asus.com/au/Motherboards/...XIMUS-IX-HERO/
LED fans would be distracting. I am the type who even places black tape on Power LEDs to tone down the light. I can't stand non onscreen lighting.
For proper cooling, go Hydro. I have done so for years now and have a very quiet PC as a result. When I built a second PC with standard fans, that now feels like a vacuum cleaner.
So CES is wrapping up and there wasn't anything released there aside from Intel Kaby Lake CPU's and Z270 boards I have any interest in whatsoever. My interest in AMD Ryzen was killed by the all motherboard manufacturers confirming they are not doing high end motherboards for Ryzen and they will only make low end and mid tier products.
So that leaves my buying a Z270 board and 7700k CPU. The prices locally for the 7700k are about the same as you would expect to pay if you imported one from the US. But the Motherboards are being gouged by the local retailers. When I get paid this week I'm ordering a Maximus IX Hero from Amazon. The US price is $219 USD the AU price is $439 AUD before any shipping is added on, even with the fastest shipping from Amazon it's $50 - $70 cheaper converted to AUD.
Actually CPU's are heating up. AMD Ryzen is coming "by the end of Q1". So far we have seen benchmarks where it outperforms a Intel 6900k which is a $1100USD CPU and knowing AMD they will price Ryzen cheaper than Intel's equivalent. That said people are expecting it to come in at $350USD (same price as the Intel 6700k) which I think is just dreaming.
That said it's one thing to have a CPU that can beat the 8 Core 16 Thread 6900k which is clocked low because of heat and power concerns at media rendering like they have shown. It's another thing to beat the Intel 7700k which is a 4C 8T higher clocked CPU at what it's best at, gaming. For me why would I buy the AMD Ryzen which is best as a media rendering CPU when I can buy a 7700k which is the current best gaming CPU on the market.
So it turns out that just by changing my motherboard and going with 3400mhz memory instead of 2400mhz I have gone from being bottlenecked by my 6600k in GTA V to putting the bottleneck back on my GPU. Faster memory really does help performance, don't believe to old line that "RAM speed doesn't matter".
Bleeping Expletive!!! Just had to do a full format and reinstall because the last Windows 10 update broke some stuff preventing me from updating Nvidia drivers.:mad:
That happened to me when I first updated to Win10 early on the 'free update' program. I uninstalled it because of that.
Recently though, I upgraded again on my main PC and it seems to be behaving. Previously I had noticeable performance decrease from Win7 but now seems fine.
PSA: DO NOT BUY A GTX 1070 or 1080 NOW!
They both got price drops today and the various Aussie retailers have not passed on the savings yet. The reason for the price drop was the introduction of the GTX 1080 ti at the old price of the standard GTX 1080.
I bought a 970 not too long ago, It performs at Ultra exceptionally on anything I throw at it so happy enough with it. Chances are I will probably skip this generation of graphics cards as I only upgrade when my present card can no longer handle games at Max settings. I project my 970 will do fine for at least a couple of years more, perhaps more.
My poor 660 couldn't quite handle the newer games anymore, so I figured it was about time to upgrade :p
Hey Hi Delta!
You should really check this video out :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylvdSnEbL50
basically looks at un-optimised performances of the old cpus (due to intel monopoly share) and how performance of the same old chips (crappy bulldozer) has increased in FPS vs the same intel chips that were leading.
Goes on to clarify about new architecture, and AMD manufacturing for all consoles will ensure AMD Ryzen architecture will be optimised.
^
Oh I hate that guy, not watching his videos. Nothing against you Voodoo, just don't like that YouTuber.
Anyway as we have seen from benchmarks the 1800X trails way behind the 7700K at 1080p with a Titan XP, which is the only valid resolution to test a CPU at because higher resolutions introduce a GPU bottleneck. Where Ryzen shines is in task like media encoding. Also AMD seem to have pushed Ryzen out before all the stability bugs have been ironed out.
As someone that wants to push every last frame I can Ryzen in it's current state is a poor choice. When the Ryzen 5 CPU's hit the market it will be interesting to see if the 1500X the 4C 8T part will have higher clocks allowing it to compete with the 7700k, but I'm already committed to the Z270 platform so it will be purely academic interest from me.
So, if you're buying a Ryzen CPU and thinking "WTF why is my AIO cooler not AM4 compatible?" it looks like you can blame AMD as they didn't bother to inform the company Asetek, that makes almost every AIO on the planet, the specifications for AM4 and don't even have an official spec for water coolers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=705YHr1DyMw
/facepalm
So I got two Seagate 4tb hard drives from Umart. One of them is DOA and now I have to sent it back at my expense. Would it kill Aussie retailers to pay for return shipping when the user is not at fault? That's one thing I'm looking forward too with Amazon launching here, free returns.
Legally you should be able to get reimbursement from the retailer for your costs there
You may want to check up on that
DELTAprime: check this website: http://consumerlaw.gov.au/
The 'Mandatory text' is:
"Our goods come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. You are entitled to a replacement or refund for a major failure and compensation for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage. You are also entitled to have the goods repaired or replaced if the goods fail to be of acceptable quality and the failure does not amount to a major failure."
Perhaps you can receive "compensation for any other reasonably foreseeable loss or damage", the loss being the shipping cost.
As you're in Queensland, you can contact the Office of Fair Trading for more information: https://www.qld.gov.au/law/laws-regu...on/contact-us/
So teraflops are not a great metric for graphics performance, but I am encouraged by AMD Vega being a 13 TFLOP card at the top end and Nvidia's Volta accelerator card the V100 being 15 SP TFLOP part which will get cut down to lower performing consumer part. We might just have a bit of competition in the GPU market to bring down prices. I never want to have to pay $1299 for a GPU again.
So now that AMD is back with avengeance and hopefully taking some market share from Intel, Intel have revealed some actual good (but expensive) CPU's. The biggest of which is a 18 core, 36 thread, $2000 USD monster Core i9 that will turbo boost up to 4.5ghz.
This just goes to prove that Intel will coast along not improving their products until there is some competition.
http://www.techspot.com/news/69504-i...ding-2000.html
Anyone ever tried to do an RMA through Kogan or their new Dick Smith site? I'm thinking of buying a 7700k from them since it's about $20 cheaper than anywhere else, but since they are grey market imports I want to make sure Kogan / Dick Smith will help me if the CPU is a dud and the reviews on product feedback don't encourage me.
Personally I'd rather spend the extra $20 for peace of mind, especially if it means buying from my local store down the road who can instantly help me with any issues.
If I bought from the local store I bet I'd pay something like $1000 or more for a $450 to $480 CPU. The local guy is a ripoff merchant. I needed a specific motherboard model a few years back to rebuild an Intel raid that the backup had failed on and I didn't know till it was too late and the motherboard failed also. This was in the days of bad leaking capacitors coming out of China and what started the trend of solid state Japanese caps. The exact model motherboard cost about $300, it was just a stand consumer grade Intel motherboard. He wanted over $1000 for that exact board. Needless to say I bought online.
I think the time is approaching that I should be replacing my old 2008 model Mac Pro.
It's lasted a long time, handles almost anything I throw at it, including games, but it's showing it's age (due to it's early EFI support, SSD support in Windows is basically non-existant)
As I've been slowly moving away from OS X and Mac only programs I've come to the realisation that I don't actually need a Mac any more, so it's time to build my first PC in probably a decade. I still may want the option of running OS X, so for compatibility reasons Intel is the way to go here.
This machine will be a dual purpose system - for gaming and photo editing - on the Mac I'd use Windows for gaming, and OS X for photos (and music in the past) but with Apple killing off the program I was using and forcing me to migrate across to the cross platform Lightroom, I no longer need to worry about that.
I've been researching a fair bit, and I've decided on the following specs to aim for:
I've had a look at the different options from Intel, X270/X299 etc, and based on my budget and needs,
Intel i7 7700K (four cores/8 threads will be a close match to my current dual quad system, and I've barely ever maxed them out)
MSI X270 Gaming M7 - has enough I/O for most of what I want to do, with the option of Intel's Optane if it's worth it.
Corsair 2x 8Gb DDR 4 3ghz Ram - enough headroom to have a play if I need to, with the option of doubling the Ram later if I feel the need
Corsair 280mm AiO watercooler for the CPU.
Corsair Carbide 600Q case - Inverse ATX matches my Mac's board orientation (access from the right, not the left) so I won't need to swap my desk around, enough room for decent airflow and the water cooler, and it's nice and quiet (not looking to show off the contents)
Keeping my current GTX 960 card as it's decent enough for now, and I can always upgrade later when I can afford to.
Storage wise, thinking of getting 2, maybe 3 M.2 SSDs (hence the mobo choice) - 1Gb SSD solely for games, a 256, maybe 512gb one for the Windows install, and either a small one for OS X/Intel's Optane option. Might use a SATA drive for OS X if I go down that path.
I'll still have one or two HDDs installed, one 4tb unit for my photo storage pulled straight from the Mac and possible one of the 1tb drives for backup purposes. Tempted to get a small SSD (~128gb for "scratch" purposes - use it for any current photo projects for quick I/O, then "archive" them once a month, or whenever it fills up to the 4tb HDD)
I will miss the cable management from the Mac Pro I think, but I can deal. Any thoughts/suggestions at all?
Ok. So I suggest you look up in Google your photo editing software's Ryzen benchmarks. ie: Photoshop Ryzen Benchmark. A Ryzen 1700 is cheaper than a 7700k, it can be overclocked normally to around 3.9ghz to 4ghz depending on the silicon lottery and includes a fairly good air cooler so you might not need to buy an AIO. No need to pay for a Ryzen 1700X or Ryzen 1800X as they all overclock very similarly. A Ryzen B350 motherboard which is all you need for Ryzen is cheaper than a Ryzen X370 motherboard which again is cheaper than a Intel Z270 motherboard. So if your workload looks good in Ryzen benchmarks I really suggest getting Ryzen not Intel for the cost savings and potential similar to better performance depending on use case.
The only reason I recommend Intel these days is if your goals fall into very specific categories, for instance I want the absolute maximum FPS I can get so I went with a 7700k. If you can sacrifice a few frames, like 5 to 10 frames but still keeping the total framerate above 60fps then I don't think the 7700k is the best choice because of price of the CPU, motherboard and cooling plus the fact the 7700k is super hot.:eek:
After you have done the research as to i7 vs Ryzen for your use case goto https://au.pcpartpicker.com/ and make a build and post the link in this thread so I can give you better advise.
As for what you posted so far, M.2 drives are great in theory, but in reality you don't get a huge increase in access speeds over SATA because 99% of what users do is at low queue depths and you only get the benefit of M.2 NVMe SSDs at high queue depths so I really suggest a single M.2 SSD for your Windows install at most and the rest of your drives as cheaper SATA SSDs. Also Optane slows down SSD's so forget about it until the Optane PCIe SSD comes out next year (that will require an Intel system not Ryzen), but that drive will be something like $1000 for 256gb so very bad bang for the buck. Also if you do get that MSI Z270 motherboard or any other motherboard with a "heat shield" for the SSD remove the heat shield because it actually increases to temperature of the SSD and can lead to thermal throttling.
Thanks for the advice. I have looked into the Ryzen series, the only thing holding me back is poor compatibility if I want to run OS X on the system, something I'm still not 100% sure about, but if I ever want to be able to access my old music projects will be a must. So far hackintoshes using Ryzen aren't the most stable, using modified kernels (as Appl have written for the Intel architecture.) Still open to the idea though, as I've still got an old MacBook Air I can boot up if needed...
What are the noticeable differences between the B350/X350 platforms?
Thanks for the info on Optane, it wasn't part of my initial look, just "would be cool if it works" type of thing, but considering I'm upgrading from 7.2k rpm HDDs any SSD will be a huge performance boost, I just like the M.2 option as there's no cabling to worry about, but I can deal with it if SATA is the way to go
Yeah I don't know anything about hackintoshes and we probably shouldn't discuss them here so as not to get Griff in trouble with Apple's attack lawyers. So Ryzen's B350 and X370 boards are very similar in features except B350 can't do SLI and Crossfire. The current state of SLI and Crossfire is that most game devs don't care about users with more than one GPU in a system.
Right now is actually a really bad time to buy SSDs or RAM. The chips inside them come off the exact same production lines and there are not enough lines to keep up with global demand for SSDs and RAM, plus a factory that makes them got flooded with Nitrogen gas the other day shutting it down for who knows how long. You will pay a premium for any SSD's and RAM.
The best performing SSDs are made by Samsung, the 850 EVO is the best one to get in SATA format and 960 EVO in M.2, don't buy a 850 PRO or 960 PRO as you are paying extra for the extended guaranteed life of the drive and getting slightly lower performance. Intel also make great SSDs but they cost more per GB normally, there are some models of Intel SSD that review very badly but they are fine for day to day use, just not a review torture test. Overall Samsung and Intel have an extremely low failure rate compared to the smaller SSD brands like Corsair, Patriot, Kingston, etc.
Also really good idea to not buy a graphics card now. There is a global shortage of them because Bitcoin miners are buying dozens of them at a time right now so unless you are buying a GTX 1080 or GTX 1080 Ti you can't get one for a good price. (1080 and 1080 Ti don't work well for mining)
Just to follow up on Optane. The modules on the market right now are made to only accelerate the HDD that your OS is installed on. If you OS is installed on a SSD instead of a HDD you will find things go slower because the Optane that is out right now is slower than a good SSD.
Goto PC Part Picker, make a i7 build and then make a Ryzen build and post the permalink for each, they don't have to be complete. That's the best way to scope out your build and then I can really find any issues with the build.
EDIT: Here's my systems permalink https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/BYLfBP
Thanks again for the advice.
Here's my Intel build
and here's the AMD build
If I go the AMD build I'd definitely have to forego using OS X, as the nV card isn't supported until drivers are installed, meaning I'd have to use a second GPU (as I currently do on my Mac Pro) to boot, install drivers, reboot each time I run a version updated. Don't really want to do that. The integrated GPU in the Intel build would be able to handle that, but as you can see, the price is quite different...
EDIT:hmmm, after checking this review for Lightroom performance, looks like saving for the 7700K might still be the way to go.