New build to replace 13 year old i7980x - Help please

sparkyb · 3 Nov 2023 at 20:42

Hi,

I am planning on building a new PC in the next few weeks when Overclockers has some of the parts back in stock. This is to replace the i7 980x, windows 7 PC I built 13 years ago.

Please can you have a look over the list and give me your views. I am happy with list and only wanted to change items if you think there could be a problem.

The build is for CAD, 3D modelling and rendering (Blender and Cinema 4D). I definitely wont overclock, but I might play the odd game. I am not really looking to upgrade in the future, but maxing it out best as I can now, so it will last like my current build.

Apologies in advance for the long post

I have a few concerns, please see the end:

My basket at ocuk:

Plus:

1x SATA SDD (for personal files / backup) - haven't chosen this yet. The NVMe will be for the OS and software.

Already Purchased from OcUK:

1x Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic Razer Edition Mid Tower Case

AIO cooling:

A 360 AIO cooler with an additional 3 case fans (all RGB / Thermaltake). OcUK don't stock these, so I won't break the rules by posting where.

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Concerns / reason for the choices above:

1. Motherboard:
I like the ASUS motherboard, but I am worried about the problem of the CPU burning out (3D version only?). ASUS generally seems to be getting a lot of negativity, but i am wondering if these problems are fixed now? You also helped me in a previous post about this.

My current motherboard is ASUS, i never had any problems with it, hence choosing ASUS

Do you think going with ASUS is a good idea? Otherwise i have this option:

Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite AX (Socket AM5) DDR5 ATX Motherboard

2. RAM:
I wanted to max it out at 128gb over 4 sticks. But there seems to be stability problems and long boot times with 128gb, so i dropped back to 64gb

Do you think it will be likely i will have problems if i go with 128gb?

The CPU supports a max speed of 5200MHz for 2 sticks and 3600MHz for 4 sticks. I choose 5200MHz as i think going higher, especially with 4 sticks causes the stability issue?

I think i have read that EXPO helps with the stability (not sure about this?). There are two versions of the ram i am looking at, one with EXPO and one without? Which would you go for and will either make any difference to the stability, especially when i want to use 4 sticks later on?

3. Operating System:
Windows 10 (if i can get hold of it)
I am pretty sure my version of Cinema 4D (R11) and Drafsight (R4) will install on W10, but i dont know if they will on W11?
Do you think it's a good idea to go with W10? It makes sense to go with W11 on a new build, but i am not sure my software will install or run without problems?
My thinking was i can always upgrade to W11 later

Thank you

Tetras · 3 Nov 2023 at 21:09

sparkyb said:
I wanted to max it out at 128gb over 4 sticks. But there seems to be stability problems and long boot times with 128gb, so i dropped back to 64gb

Do you think it will be likely i will have problems if i go with 128gb?

The max is actually 192 for DDR5:

AMD Ryzen 7000: 48GB DIMMs, Agesa 1.0.0.7 And A Future With 192GB RAM

48gb DIMMs are here, but things aren't quite so simple for Team Red. Wendell lays it out here!Forum thread: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/ddr5-4-dimms-on-a...

www.youtube.com

sparkyb said:
I think i have read that EXPO helps with the stability (not sure about this?). There are two versions of the ram i am looking at, one with EXPO and one without? Which would you go for and will either make any difference to the stability, especially when i want to use 4 sticks later on?

It is unlikely to be with and without EXPO, it is probably EXPO (profiles for AMD) or XMP (profiles for Intel). These are both semi-automated overclocking profiles for your memory, 5200 is the highest stock speed.

With AMD non-X3D CPUs, you don't really want to be running 5200, because it is pretty slow, though since your usage is not gaming, it shouldn't matter so much.

If you want stock RAM, then you can either run it at whatever speed it boots (4800 @ 1.1v for those sticks, from what I can see on Corsair's website) or you can buy memory intended to run without XMP/EXPO. This kind of memory usually comes without heatsinks or RGB.

sparkyb said:
Windows 10 (if i can get hold of it)
I am pretty sure my version of Cinema 4D (R11) and Drafsight (R4) will install on W10, but i dont know if they will on W11?
Do you think it's a good idea to go with W10? It makes sense to go with W11 on a new build, but i am not sure my software will install or run without problems?
My thinking was i can always upgrade to W11 later

If it works with Windows 10, then it should work with Windows 11, providing the additional security features don't interfere with compatibility (which you can turn off) and there are drivers available for everything you need.

dfour · 3 Nov 2023 at 23:07

You might be better off with a Nvidia gpu as Blender and Cinema 4d both can use cuda for rendering.
I believe AMD use OpenCL but its much slower than cuda.

You might be better off going for 64gb 6000 speed ddr 5 as clock speed can help with rendering but not as much as decent amounts of ram. 6000 speed is the sweet spot for AMD chips atm.
Kingston fury 6000 64bg but OC dont stock it.
Part Number: KF560C36BBEK2-64
about £210.

Windows 10 pro keys are easy and cheap to get hold off.

sparkyb · 4 Nov 2023 at 07:10

Tetras said:
The max is actually 192 for DDR5:

AMD Ryzen 7000: 48GB DIMMs, Agesa 1.0.0.7 And A Future With 192GB RAM

48gb DIMMs are here, but things aren't quite so simple for Team Red. Wendell lays it out here!Forum thread: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/ddr5-4-dimms-on-a...

www.youtube.com

It is unlikely to be with and without EXPO, it is probably EXPO (profiles for AMD) or XMP (profiles for Intel). These are both semi-automated overclocking profiles for your memory, 5200 is the highest stock speed.

With AMD non-X3D CPUs, you don't really want to be running 5200, because it is pretty slow, though since your usage is not gaming, it shouldn't matter so much.

If you want stock RAM, then you can either run it at whatever speed it boots (4800 @ 1.1v for those sticks, from what I can see on Corsair's website) or you can buy memory intended to run without XMP/EXPO. This kind of memory usually comes without heatsinks or RGB.

If it works with Windows 10, then it should work with Windows 11, providing the additional security features don't interfere with compatibility (which you can turn off) and there are drivers available for everything you need.

Thank you,

I just had a look at the motherboard specs again and you are right it is 192gb. Not sure where i got 128gb from? I think it was because i saw videos about stability issues with 128gb and above, particularly when using 4 sticks, so I assumed 128gb was the max? To be on the safe side i dropped down to 64gb and two sticks - could i go up to 128gb without problems? 4 sticks will lower the speeds to 3200 according to the CPU specs

Windows 11 does seem the more sensible option and hopefully my software will install? If it doesn't, i will be left with a very expensive web browser! I use a lot of CAD for model preparation in C4D and i am more familiar with C4D than Blender. To buy a new licence of C4D is far too expensive, so i would have to learn Blender if my old version of C4D gave me issues on Windows 11. As for the CAD, if that didn't install i could always use my works PC which is at home, although this wouldn't be convenient - i'm a CAD technician and work from home

I don't think i understood your reply about the RAM, sorry. Do you mean that i should get faster ram and with EXPO? Looking at the CPU, the max memory speed is 5200 for two sticks. So if i go above that speed, am i going to see any difference? You mentioned 5200 would be slow? My current RAM is 12gb and i think at 1600. Would the new RAM would be far quicker, or is it slow in terms of the AM5 platform and end being worse than my current set up?

sparkyb · 4 Nov 2023 at 07:31

dfour said:
You might be better off with a Nvidia gpu as Blender and Cinema 4d both can use cuda for rendering.
I believe AMD use OpenCL but its much slower than cuda.

You might be better off going for 64gb 6000 speed ddr 5 as clock speed can help with rendering but not as much as decent amounts of ram. 6000 speed is the sweet spot for AMD chips atm.
Kingston fury 6000 64bg but OC dont stock it.
Part Number: KF560C36BBEK2-64
about £210.

Windows 10 pro keys are easy and cheap to get hold off.

Thank you,

I have had problems with Nvidia gpu's in the past, so tended to avoid them. My current gpu is AMD, rendering seems to be quick enough and i have never had any problems with it. I wouldn't know how quick rendering would be with a Nvidia as i have never tried it. Bear in mind my rendering is hobbyist level!!

ok, i didn't look at faster ram because the CPU max supported speed for two sticks was 5200. I definitely wont be overclocking. So if i go for ram above 5200, does that mean i wont benefit from the faster speed as the cpu will only do 5200?

I have seen very cheap licences for Windows 10, but was told to avoid them for the risk of malware if the seller wasn't reputable. At the minute i am trying to find somewhere legit to buy it, which is proving difficult. For my sons PC, i bought him it on a Microsoft USB stick, from a well know high street retailer. So was trying to do this again.

sparkyb · 4 Nov 2023 at 07:34

Post repeated by me by accident - removed

sx_turbo · 4 Nov 2023 at 08:26

The 5200 is base speed. Most sticks seem to be 4800 with an expo oc profile to 5600 / 6000.

Don't use all 4 ram slots on AMD boards, can't remember the specifics but using all 4 slots slows the speed down substantially so best to go with 2 large sticks, unless quantity is required over speed.

AMD GPU is better value than equivalent Nvidia, however depends on use case. Price wise the equivalent is a 4070 which is £100 dearer and slower than the 7800xt. The 4070ti is obscene in terms of cost / performance

sparkyb · 4 Nov 2023 at 15:15

sx_turbo said:
The 5200 is base speed. Most sticks seem to be 4800 with an expo oc profile to 5600 / 6000.

Don't use all 4 ram slots on AMD boards, can't remember the specifics but using all 4 slots slows the speed down substantially so best to go with 2 large sticks, unless quantity is required over speed.

AMD GPU is better value than equivalent Nvidia, however depends on use case. Price wise the equivalent is a 4070 which is £100 dearer and slower than the 7800xt. The 4070ti is obscene in terms of cost / performance

Thank you. So the 5200 by the sound of things should be ok, there is a 5600 version which I could go for. Yes, I have seen that using all slots seems to cause problems? The CPU I have chosen, has a max supported ram speed of 3600 if you use 4 slots

The 7800xt range is in my budget for a sapphire Radeon GPU, but the 7900 range becomes too expensive for me

Cinema 4D requires a graphics card "with directx 12 and feature level 11". The graphics card has directx 12 ultimate, but there is no mention of "feature 11". I have no idea what this is? Is it just referring to direct 11?

jigger · 4 Nov 2023 at 15:27

sparkyb said:
Thank you. So the 5200 by the sound of things should be ok, there is a 5600 version which I could go for. Yes, I have seen that using all slots seems to cause problems? The CPU I have chosen, has a max supported ram speed of 3600 if you use 4 slots

The 7800xt range is in my budget for a sapphire Radeon GPU, but the 7900 range becomes too expensive for me

Cinema 4D requires a graphics card "with directx 12 and feature level 11". The graphics card has directx 12 ultimate, but there is no mention of "feature 11". I have no idea what this is? Is it just referring to direct 11?

Usually D3D feature sets are OS based.

dfour · 4 Nov 2023 at 15:35

sparkyb said:
ok, i didn't look at faster ram because the CPU max supported speed for two sticks was 5200. I definitely wont be overclocking. So if i go for ram above 5200, does that mean i wont benefit from the faster speed as the cpu will only do 5200?

I have seen very cheap licences for Windows 10, but was told to avoid them for the risk of malware if the seller wasn't reputable. At the minute i am trying to find somewhere legit to buy it, which is proving difficult. For my sons PC, i bought him it on a Microsoft USB stick, from a well know high street retailer. So was trying to do this again.

I dont know where you get this idea from. The description of the 7950x says

- Memory supported: DDR5 5200-6000MHz

AMD even suplied 6000 cas 30 ram to all the reviewers when the chip was released to show what the chip could do from the outset. Only the X3D chips are not bothered by ram speed and timings so much because if the extra cache on board.

I bought a key for windows 11 2 weeks ago from Electronic first and had no issues with activating the OS. You can download windows 10 and 11 directly from microsoft to avoid more spyware being added to it

Buying a licence cant contain malware as its just a 16 digit code.

Tetras · 4 Nov 2023 at 15:39

dfour said:
I dont know where you get this idea from. The description of the 7950x says

- Memory supported: DDR5 5200-6000MHz

It is AMD's official spec, 2 sticks is 5200, 4 sticks is 3600, but this is JEDEC memory anyway, which I don't think the OP has any plan to buy.

Quartz · 4 Nov 2023 at 15:43

sparkyb said:
Please can you have a look over the list and give me your views. I am happy with list and only wanted to change items if you think there could be a problem.

Given your interest in having a large amount of RAM you might look at the Threadripper 7000 series CPUs (up to 1 TB RAM). Intel are also refreshing their Xeon W CPUs.

dfour · 4 Nov 2023 at 15:46

@Tetras So thats the 'safe speeds' that it will work at and not the actual speeds it should work at??

The ram I posted the part number off is 6000 c36 expo so he shouldnt have any issues working with it. I just dont want to see the OP leaving performance on the table especially with rendering.

sparkyb · 4 Nov 2023 at 16:01

Quartz said:
Given your interest in having a large amount of RAM you might look at the Threadripper 7000 series CPUs (up to 1 TB RAM). Intel are also refreshing their Xeon W CPUs.

Just had a look at the cost of them on OcUk, It would be nice but I just can't afford that much unfortunately

sparkyb · 4 Nov 2023 at 16:02

dfour said:
@Tetras So thats the 'safe speeds' that it will work at and not the actual speeds it should work at??

The ram I posted the part number off is 6000 c36 expo so he shouldnt have any issues working with it. I just dont want to see the OP leaving performance on the table especially with rendering.

I'm off out in a bit, but will have another look at the ram. I do like the Corsair dominator, which you recommended please?

sparkyb · 4 Nov 2023 at 16:05

Tetras said:
It is AMD's official spec, 2 sticks is 5200, 4 sticks is 3600, but this is JEDEC memory anyway, which I don't think the OP has any plan to buy.

Yes, that's where I got the ram specs from

But now im confused? What is JEDEC? Apologies for my lack of knowledge on this

Tetras · 4 Nov 2023 at 16:10

dfour said:
@Tetras So thats the 'safe speeds' that it will work at and not the actual speeds it should work at??

Yeah, I guess AMD's "even if the IMC is bad it'll work" or "if you're Dell, buy me" spec.

sparkyb said:
I just had a look at the motherboard specs again and you are right it is 192gb. Not sure where i got 128gb from? I think it was because i saw videos about stability issues with 128gb and above, particularly when using 4 sticks, so I assumed 128gb was the max? To be on the safe side i dropped down to 64gb and two sticks - could i go up to 128gb without problems? 4 sticks will lower the speeds to 3200 according to the CPU specs

128GB was the max, but you can buy 24/48GB sticks now, though boards often need a BIOS update for running stably with them.

sparkyb said:
I don't think i understood your reply about the RAM, sorry. Do you mean that i should get faster ram and with EXPO? Looking at the CPU, the max memory speed is 5200 for two sticks. So if i go above that speed, am i going to see any difference? You mentioned 5200 would be slow? My current RAM is 12gb and i think at 1600. Would the new RAM would be far quicker, or is it slow in terms of the AM5 platform and end being worse than my current set up?

The difference: it really depends, you have to look at benchmarks for what you do. This is a workstation oriented article by Puget:

Impact of DDR5 Speed on Content Creation Performance (2023 update)

DDR5 memory has kits rated for up to 8400 Mbps, while desktop CPUs only officially support up to 5600 Mbps. How much does running at official specifications actually impact performance in common content creation applications?

www.pugetsystems.com

You need to decide: as Puget say at the bottom of the article: do I want to run entirely at stock and use slow(er) JEDEC memory, or do I want to get higher performance at the potential risk of stability and having to mess with the settings.

In our experience, attempting to push higher frequencies and lower timings can result in a higher likelihood of Windows BSODs and applications crashing. A great example is what we saw when using the DDR5-6400 RAM on AMD. Although we have seen others use that fast of memory – you can even buy AMD EXPO kits for it – we couldn’t get it to work while running any content creation applications. While this is acceptable for many enthusiasts, as they are more willing to tinker with timings and voltages to get to a point of sufficient stability, as workstation manufacturers, it is not something we can endorse right now if you need your system to be a reliable part of your workflow.

What this testing has solidified for us is that if you are looking for the best mix of performance and stability, using RAM that matches the CPU manufacturer’s specifications is probably the right way to go. And to be clear, we are talking about the officially supported RAM speeds, not any of their “optimized for best performance” recommendations.

sparkyb said:
But now im confused? What is JEDEC? Apologies for my lack of knowledge on this

JEDEC is the standard timings / voltage for DDR5. AMD and Intel support this memory at stock settings and practically all gaming memory will boot like this, but you won't have high speeds with this stuff, you have to buy RAM with EXPO/XMP.

I'm only aware of Crucial and Kingston (valueram) that sell JEDEC memory and from what I've seen it isn't cheap either, even though it is slow.

dfour · 4 Nov 2023 at 16:32

sparkyb said:
I'm off out in a bit, but will have another look at the ram. I do like the Corsair dominator, which you recommended please?

Post #3. I dont want to post a link just incase OC class its as a compititer. Just google the parts number I posted.

I dont see the point in running ram above 6000 on AMD as reviews i have seen say it makes almost no difference and even though some boards support it it can bring instability and extra cost to the table.

sparkyb · 5 Nov 2023 at 09:17

dfour said:
Post #3. I dont want to post a link just incase OC class its as a compititer. Just google the parts number I posted.

I dont see the point in running ram above 6000 on AMD as reviews i have seen say it makes almost no difference and even though some boards support it it can bring instability and extra cost to the table.

No problem, i understand - i had a look at the RAM and it looks like it could be an option for me.

sparkyb · 5 Nov 2023 at 09:28

Tetras said:
In our experience, attempting to push higher frequencies and lower timings can result in a higher likelihood of Windows BSODs and applications crashing. A great example is what we saw when using the DDR5-6400 RAM on AMD. Although we have seen others use that fast of memory – you can even buy AMD EXPO kits for it – we couldn’t get it to work while running any content creation applications. While this is acceptable for many enthusiasts, as they are more willing to tinker with timings and voltages to get to a point of sufficient stability, as workstation manufacturers, it is not something we can endorse right now if you need your system to be a reliable part of your workflow

JEDEC is the standard timings / voltage for DDR5. AMD and Intel support this memory at stock settings and practically all gaming memory will boot like this, but you won't have high speeds with this stuff, you have to buy RAM with EXPO/XMP.

I'm only aware of Crucial and Kingston (valueram) that sell JEDEC memory and from what I've seen it isn't cheap either, even though it is slow.

Thank you for the links to the videos.

I think for me, stability is the most important, i just want to turn the PC on and use it without any hassle - I don't have the technical knowledge to fix something easily even with online help. I definitely wont overclock and don't think i will tinker with it, unless i have to because of any issues.

Some of the RAM i have looked at is already EXPO, still not sure about this? If i use EXPO ram, can i run it without it or do i have to change settings in the bios to access EXPO?