Potential New PC Build, Thoughts?

[Some newbie driver]

Wow wow wow, they canceled my order ... 3 days later. How is that even possible? If it's because they're out of stock, why did it take this long?

The son of some worker on there wanted a GPU for his computer...

Or still worse... somebody noticed that they are selling near MSRP when they could be scalping them selves the price.

[Reignman]

So by next week, my build misery can start. I'm finally going to find out which parts don't work, and how many RMA's I'm going to have to deal with. I have a feeling Reignman's Law isn't done with me yet xD. Can't wait!! All I know is, a 1650 Super is going to feel like a 3090 compared to what I'm using now. Look back at that very first post, I said I was going to get a 1650 Super bahahahaha. I just didn't know it'd take 8 months.

So yeah, that was the exact moment I cursed myself.

I entered the Newegg shuffle on 4 different 6700xt's this morning at $479. I didn't plan on buying any of them had I won, but I guess I have to now. I really really don't want a 6700 lol. Not at that price. It's only about as good as a 3060ti. I guess I can always sell it later.

I was online for about 15 straight hours yesterday for the 6700xt drop, and I either wasn't quick enough to get anything, or I was camping the ones that weren't dropping. And I didn't win any of them from the shuffle either, so that's only like my 10th or 11th straight shuffle loss, and I hear some people have won multiple times now.

I did talk myself into a 6700xt though ... only if I can get one at $479. They seem to be slightly better than a 3060ti, and I was willing to pay up to $500 for one of those. I mean I'd be losing the ray tracing that I'd never use anyway, but I'd be gaining that sweet sweet smart access memory. The XFX 309 is actually a nice looking card too.

I still haven't found my dream 3000 series GPU, but just a bit ago I found a 1650 Super for $220 on Newegg lol. It was that or a GTX 750 for $100. I figure the 1650s will have better resale value.

So screw it ... couldn't find another 1650 Super, or anything at a reasonable price, not even a 10 series card. So I ordered that $100 GTX 750 from Newegg lol. I can return it in 30 days, or I can always try to sell it for $150. Some people are selling them for $300. I'm tired of playing this GPU hunting game, so I just need something that finally gets me onto my new PC before I go insane. Now lets see if Newegg steals this one from me in 3 days too.

And ohhhhh goody, Newegg only has the $600+ 6700xt's in the shuffle today. Or a $500 3060 ... kill me now.

[Some newbie driver]

I remember to have built decent PC for relatives with the money those cards cost now... and they are just "mid tier". This situation is going to explode eventually. Those price levels are insane and could not be sustained for so long if it wasn't by a perfect storm of reasons all combined together.

[mackintosh]

In other news, Nvidia just doubled the price of GeForce Now

[Some newbie driver]

The "kind" way NVidia has to say they have not forget about people that can't purchase a new graphic card...

[Reignman]

My GTX 750 order wasn't canceled and I haven't heard about the delivery truck getting into a fiery crash yet sooo ... nope I'm not going to jinx it again. I'll finally be building my new PC by tomorrow evening if nothing else goes wrong.

The 3000 series drops are so few and far between now, it almost feels like a complete waste of time to even look. I'm literally only seeing about 5 cards drop a day, and at random times. I can't even remember the last time I've seen a 3060ti or 3080. Probably the last time Best Buy dropped, which is only about once every 2 weeks. The Newegg shuffles have been beyond pathetic lately too. A 3070 for $700 today, and a 3080 bundle pack for $1200, and that's about it. Don't understand why they're making people buy a PSU or MB with the card when most people have those things already. Probably to help deter scalpers, but scalpers can easily just sell the extra items too. Once again they're just screwing over the average consumer with that move. And older gen cards continue to sell for 2-3x what they should cost. 2060's are up to $800 minimum now. 1650 Supers are at $450. People still happily paying 2-3x the price for 3000 series on ebay too. I looked at one 3070, and the starting bid was $600, but 24h later it was up to $1800 already.

The way Nvidia and AMD have handled this mess, this is a big opportunity for Intel if they can figure out how to get their upcoming GPU's into the hands of gamers. I think they could steal a huge chunk of loyal team red and green people away just by getting them some GPU. It's the perfect time for them to jump in, unless they screw it all up too, or their cards are complete crap. I'm almost convinced Nvidia or it's partners are selling the 3080's directly to crypto farms now. Or they're keeping them for themselves to do some mining lol.

[Reignman]

HEEEEEEE HAWWWW, the 750 has arrived and I'm finally on my new PC. First time driving the Anthem haha. Making my way to Idaho for the first time.

[ external image ]

This 750 (and rig overall) is a huge upgrade over my 13yo pile of crap. Shocking right xD? I mean I'm only getting 30 FPS at 1080p with 200% scaling with most settings on high, but it's like I got laser eye surgery or something lol. I didn't know things could look so clear. I can actually read signs now, and my mirrors are better than 16p resolution. I was only getting 17 FPS at 720p with 100% scaling with medium/low settings before. So yeah wow, what a difference. I can't even imagine how good a 1650 Super or 3060ti would look. I've only been on the rig a few hours so I got a lot more to checkout and test still.

In fact I haven't even flashed the BIOS so I could use the 5600X yet. I'm just relieved Reignman's Law didn't find a way to make the build process a nightmare too. I thought for sure I'd have to RMA something.

@Some newbie driver do you know if it's possible to control the RPM's of a case fan connected to the AIO header? I have 5 case fans, but I only had 3 fan headers, so I'm using the AIO header for one, and a secondary CPU fan header for the other. That one works fine, but the one connected to the AIO header is at 100% all the time, and the BIOS doesn't let me control it.

Now I just gotta keep looking for a real GPU, and spend the next 2 week installing stuff and setting everything up. I hear by the end of summer things might finally improve with GPU stock, but I'm not holding my breath lol.

[Some newbie driver]

Usually the problem is the opposite, water pumps work better (and have longer live-spans) working at a fixed speed but if not properly configured, the header of the mobo will make them work at variable rate. If your mobo doesn't allow to control it, then is that they enforced that behavior for a better AIO usage on regular folks but at the cost of flexibility for those who know what they do.

Anyways, congratulations for that premiere in the game. I hope you will enjoy it for a long time and way more once you had all the final pieces in place.

It has been a looong looong trip... longer than the trucks you drive

[Reignman]

Ahh bummer, I was hoping there was some software somewhere that would let me override the BIOS for that fan. Maybe there is, idk, I haven't spent too much time on it.

Otherwise things are going good so far. No issues, no crashes. Set the XMP (DOCP) to take full advantage of the RAM, then I finally got the courage to flash the BIOS. Nobody told me it would take 30 minutes lol. Longest 30 minutes of my life. My little town here is prone to sudden power outages xD.

Last night I finally installed the 5600X and finally ran into some issues. Whoa boy, that wasn't fun. Should have been super easy, but the new tube of thermal paste that I bought didn't seem right. Arctic Silver 5. It was dark and super sticky, so it was really difficult getting it to spread. Wasn't sure if that was normal. I have an older tube of this stuff that I been using on my old rig and it's lighter, creamier, and easier to work with. After finally getting some good paste coverage, I struggled to get the heat sink back on. Thought maybe I put too much paste on or something, but I finally got it on. After firing it up, I noticed the BIOS reset my RAM settings, but things have ran fine all day today. I got hardware monitor installed, so yeah everything seems fine.

I ran PassMark each step of the way to see what kind of performance boost I was getting.

First here's the 13yo rig. Have you ever seen scores this low xD?

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Total Rating	1260
Percentile       22%
CPU             2751 Intel Core2 Quad Q9300 (Windows 7 Ultimate)
2D Graphics      388 9800 GT
3D Graphics      659 9800 GT
Memory           833 Corsair DDR2 400
Disk             626 Seagate HDD

Up next we got the new rig with the R3 3100 and RAM at 3600. Quite a performance increase already, and with just a GTX 750. Just the SSD performance over a classic HDD is eye popping.

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Total Rating	5066
Percentile       88%
CPU            13987 Ryzen 3 3100 (Windows 10 Pro)
2D Graphics      659 GTX 750
3D Graphics     3956 GTX 750
Memory          2892 Crucial DDR4 3600
Disk           18434 WD M.2 SSD NVMe

Then we got the 5600X installed, but before I OC'd the RAM. Huge jump in CPU performance as expected, but the SSD slipped a little bit. I'm wondering if it's RAM related?

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Total Rating	5794
Percentile       94%
CPU            22473 Ryzen 5 5600X (Windows 10 Pro)
2D Graphics      864 GTX 750
3D Graphics     3962 GTX 750
Memory          2246 Crucial DDR4 2666
Disk           17901 WD M.2 SSD NVMe

And now the 5600X with the RAM at 3600. Yeah the RAM is definitely affecting the SSD performance. I didn't know that.

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Total Rating	6236
Percentile       96%
CPU            22617 Ryzen 5 5600X (Windows 10 Pro)
2D Graphics      885 GTX 750
3D Graphics     3960 GTX 750
Memory          2777 Crucial DDR4 2666
Disk           20017 WD M.2 SSD NVMe

Can't wait to see what that jumps up to when I get a real GPU. Oddly enough, I got poor marks on all these tests when it came to RAM latency, so not sure what's going on there. Everything is fine in the BIOS. The rest of my memory scores are all in the upper 90 percentile, but latency was down at 27%.

In my own little personal test. I compared my old core2 quad to the 3100 and 5600X to see how they'd handle some of my more demanding spreadsheets.

Seconds to run each task:

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                    Q9300    3100   5600X  increase
open large file     38.35   15.84   12.10     316%
save large file     31.69   12.61    9.59     330%
run formula       2:29.34   23.73   14.57    1025%

An SSD compared to a HDD, I was expecting much faster opening/saving times, but that's still good, and running formulas 10x times faster is fantastic. I'll have to find some more comparisons to do.

And as far as ATS goes. The 31 FPS I was getting the other day was on version 1.38. I upgraded to 1.40 yesterday and it dropped back down to 21, but maybe it was because I was on a laggy part of the map in Idaho or something idk. That was also before I installed the 5600X. Today I tweaked the graphic settings a bit more, dropped scaling down to 150% and now I'm getting a comfortable 35 FPS. I can live with that. That's way better than 17 FPS at 720p haha.

Oh and speaking of shocking, I used my Windows 7 Ultimate key to activate Windows 10 Pro, and it WORKED!!! A pleasant surprise. I heard rumors that it might, but I was having my doubts. But yeah, confirmed, it does in fact work.

[Some newbie driver]

Everything you need to read/write to disk have to go through RAM. So, yes, RAM performance affects your disk I/O performance if you have not reached the point where your disk can't perform any better.

Going to extremes, that's what happened to Linus Tech Tips when they tested the massive 40 M.2 high performance discs server. They had to put around 1TB (yes, 1 TB) of RAM and had to make it work hard to deal with the huge I/O workload caused by those disks.

And yes, legit keys of Win 7 will activate Win 10 with no problem. And you could format in the future that rig, install again and wouldn't need to activate it again, because it will auto-detect its the same hardware for what you already have a key. Of course, that will work only for your hardware, mostly motherboard. Any change on that and you will lose the free Win10 key.

And about the RAM latency doesn't focus too much on it. Those tests take the values all people sent to them and create an ad-hoc scale to measure them. Even activating the XMP profile, you have chosen a RAM modules that are "normal". They are way way far away from the most extreme RAM timings they could be done combining best memory modules and aggressive O.C.

Remember too that the best performance of RAM timings on AMD platform is when you have a 1:1:1 ratio between the different clocks of the CPU, Infinity bus and RAM bus. So, it's not enough to activate the XMP profile, you have to tune also the CPU. if you have done it (I suppose so, due your explanations); you could still probably jump to around 40% on that scale.

Regards