New build to replace 13 year old i7980x - Help please

[Tetras]

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?

The vast majority of gaming memory is designed to work with EXPO (or XMP, for Intel). They're supposed to work fine permanently at whatever JEDEC speed they boot up at, which in most cases they do, but it has happened that even at stock they need adjustments (like to increase the dram voltage).

This is an example of a datasheet that tells you what speed it boots at:

FACTORY TIMING PARAMETERS

• Default (JEDEC): DDR5-4800 CL40-39-39 @1.1V
• XMP Profile #1: DDR5-5600 CL40-40-40 @1.25V
• XMP Profile #2: DDR5-5200 CL40-40-40 @1.25V
• XMP Profile #3: DDR5-4800 CL38-38-38 @1.1V

https://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KF556C40BB-32.pdf

Here's a Corsair one:

(JEDEC)
SPD Latency: 40-40-40-77
SPD Speed: 4800MT/s
SPD Voltage: 1.1V

(EXPO)
Performance Profile: AMD EXPO
Tested Speed: 5600 MT/s
Tested Voltage: 1.25V

VENGEANCE® 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 DRAM 5600MT/s C36 AMD EXPO Memory Kit

Deliver the higher frequencies and greater capacities of DDR5 RAM technology in a high-quality, compact DDR5 memory module that suits your AMD® Ryzen™ AM5 system.

www.corsair.com

If you 100% want to run at stock, I'd be more inclined to buy memory intended for doing it, but it's your call (and if you want RGB, then I think you really have no choice but to buy gaming memory, unless there's some I missed).

The main advantage you'd have of buying gaming memory is that if one day you need to have the extra speed, you potentially just have one click in the BIOS (to enable EXPO) to go from 4800 to 6000 (or whatever it is that you buy).

 

[sparkyb]

The vast majority of gaming memory is designed to work with EXPO (or XMP, for Intel). They're supposed to work fine permanently at whatever JEDEC speed they boot up at, which in most cases they do, but it has happened that even at stock they need adjustments (like to increase the dram voltage).

This is an example of a datasheet that tells you what speed it boots at:

https://www.kingston.com/datasheets/KF556C40BB-32.pdf

Here's a Corsair one:

(JEDEC)
SPD Latency: 40-40-40-77
SPD Speed: 4800MT/s
SPD Voltage: 1.1V

(EXPO)
Performance Profile: AMD EXPO
Tested Speed: 5600 MT/s
Tested Voltage: 1.25V

VENGEANCE® 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 DRAM 5600MT/s C36 AMD EXPO Memory Kit

Deliver the higher frequencies and greater capacities of DDR5 RAM technology in a high-quality, compact DDR5 memory module that suits your AMD® Ryzen™ AM5 system.

www.corsair.com

If you 100% want to run at stock, I'd be more inclined to buy memory intended for doing it, but it's your call (and if you want RGB, then I think you really have no choice but to buy gaming memory, unless there's some I missed).

The main advantage you'd have of buying gaming memory is that if one day you need to have the extra speed, you potentially just have one click in the BIOS (to enable EXPO) to go from 4800 to 6000 (or whatever it is that you buy).

Thank you, that was a really good explanation, I think I understand it it more now

 

[Craig_d1]

Morning,
going back to your original post, have you considered the B650e-e board? The vrm's are still more than capable for running any 7000 series cpu overclocked(which you said you wont do anyway), it can take the same ram(rated same speeds), has 4 m.2 slots, has the led debugger on board..pcie 5 gpu and m.2...list goes on. You loose a few usb 3.2gen 2 ports on back(x670e has 12, b650e has 7 and 4 usb 2.0 ports) but there's still plenty on the b650e. It's just a thought as I loooked at both myself but couldn't justify price difference in the end though prices have changed...still a big difference as the x670ee is £470 vs £270 for the b650ee.

I'm running corsair vengeance rgb 6000C30 (2x16gb) paired with a 7800x3d. Initially I ran at stock as it wouldn't run at 6000 speed, even though i had expo specific ram. So if you don't enable expo in the bios, then it runs at stock 4800 speed. However back in July, AMD release an AGESA update for AM5 which was then incorporated into Asus latest bios. Once the new bios was released and installed, I enabled expo again, and the ram now runs 6000c30 no problem. It's been rock solid ever since, not 1 crash or blue screen. The bios update also reduced the voltage going through the cpu to 1.24V, which also caters for the am5 x3d overheating issue, so that's now also sorted. I don't know if that puts your mind at rest at all. Only thingI can't tell you is how the 64gb ram performs compared to the 32gb ram I use, but as long as you keep to 2 dimm slots, can't see their being a problem really
If 64gb isn't enough, corsair do 48gb ram sticks, so you can get 96gb (2x48), though they run at slower speed . as price comparison
veangeance non rgb/rgb(and only looking at expo)
64 gb 5600C40 £188/219
64 gb 6000C40 £222/238
64 gb 6000C30 £236/252

96 gb 5600C40 £280 (rgb xmp...no expo ram i can see)



I'll put a review below for b650ee..£200 saving enough to maybe bump your gpu to next level up

seperately, trechnotice did a revisit of the 7900xtx vs 4090 gpu's..i know you're not looking at these cards but it was interesting to look at as it showed how the cards performed against each other. nvidia smashes amd in the rendering part...so if that's something you're going to do a lot of, maybe nvidia way to go...but anyway, will put it below also as in some tasks amd card wins, which is pretty impressive as is £600 less..maybe the £200 can bump you up to a 7900XT from a 7800Xt...hopefully black fri will drop the 7900XT back to £700 (as it got down there briefly on the 7800XT launch)

 

[Aegis]

@sparkyb nothing to add here but I just wanted to say that old 980X was a great CPU I'm still running an X58 i7 965 PC (it's currently got an Nvidia 3060 Ti in it) - you did great getting 13-odd years out of it!

 

[sparkyb]

@sparkyb nothing to add here but I just wanted to say that old 980X was a great CPU I'm still running an X58 i7 965 PC (it's currently got an Nvidia 3060 Ti in it) - you did great getting 13-odd years out of it!

That's ok, it has been a really good PC and CPU, never really had any major problems with it, nothing has been removed or upgraded - all as per the day i built it.

I have been wondering over the weekend if its really worth upgrading; for general file management, web browsing it is pretty quick. So i am thinking will i even notice a difference? With 3D and CAD, it doesn't really give me any issues with the viewports as I move around them and that's on a 1gb GPU. The rendering will be the big difference with a new build, that's where i will see the difference i think

 

[Aegis]

That's ok, it has been a really good PC and CPU, never really had any major problems with it, nothing has been removed or upgraded - all as per the day i built it.

I have been wondering over the weekend if its really worth upgrading; for general file management, web browsing it is pretty quick. So i am thinking will i even notice a difference? With 3D and CAD, it doesn't really give me any issues with the viewports as move around them and that's on a 1gb GPU. The rendering will be the big difference with a new build, that's where i will see the difference i think

Oh, you'd be surprised - even as good as these old CPUs were, the improvements in memory bandwidth alone make modern CPUs much snappier - they're also a great deal more efficient power-wise - my 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 5800X3D typically uses half the power my old i7 does. Still - credit where it's due - they were amazing for the time and have held up remarkably well!

 

[sparkyb]

Morning,
going back to your original post, have you considered the B650e-e board? The vrm's are still more than capable for running any 7000 series cpu overclocked(which you said you wont do anyway), it can take the same ram(rated same speeds), has 4 m.2 slots, has the led debugger on board..pcie 5 gpu and m.2...list goes on. You loose a few usb 3.2gen 2 ports on back(x670e has 12, b650e has 7 and 4 usb 2.0 ports) but there's still plenty on the b650e. It's just a thought as I loooked at both myself but couldn't justify price difference in the end though prices have changed...still a big difference as the x670ee is £470 vs £270 for the b650ee.

Hi Craig_d1,

Thank you for your post, i really appreciate the reply and help (and everyone). I have been thinking about not bothering to upgrade over the weekend, but you have definitely put my mind at rest. Your experience with your build addresses the concerns i had, sounds like you had a good experience?

I didn't know about the B650e-e motherboard, so watched the video you linked, i have seen a few of his before and he is good. The B650 looks really good, i don't need half of the connections and storage slots as the X670e-e, it also £200 cheaper. I am going to have a look further into this as its definitely worth considering

I think using two sticks is the way to go as you said and from what i have been seeing on the internet, so as not to have problems. 64gb will be more than enough i think. I only really initially considered 128gb so as not to worry years later in trying to source the same type of looking ram, especially as it RGB. My thinking was to max it out now and forget about it.

How did you get your RAM to run at 4800, when its 6000 and the CPU only supports 5200? I am no expert, but it thought it would have dropped to the CPU support speed of 5200?

I haven't had chance to watch the GPU video you posted, but will do. £700 for the 7900xt might be still a bit too expensive for me, but i will keep an eye on it.

Are you using windows 11 and what do you think of it?

Thanks

 

[sparkyb]

Oh, you'd be surprised - even as good as these old CPUs were, the improvements in memory bandwidth alone make modern CPUs much snappier - they're also a great deal more efficient power-wise - my 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 5800X3D typically uses half the power my old i7 does. Still - credit where it's due - they were amazing for the time and have held up remarkably well!

Ok, that sounds encouraging.

I became a bit despondent over the weekend with my planned AM5 build, i have seen so much negativity about it and i was thinking is it really worth the hassle? But i suppose there have been many good experiences with it as well? I think generally people post to have a good old moan about things rather than praise them. So i got caught in a loop of just seeing bad reviews which made things worse. You guys have been great though and put things into perspective.

I did actually price up a AM4 build over the weekend because of this, based on a Ryzen 9 5950x and 128gb RAM. There was only a couple of hundred quid between that and AM5 with 64gb. Seemed pointless really especially as it seemed difficult to source a X chipset motherboard.

Unfortunately, because of my dithering some more of the AM5 build parts i was looking at are now out of stock! I'm not in a hurry though, think i will be doing this closer to December to be honest with being busy over the weekends doing stuff

 

[Aegis]

Ok, that sounds encouraging.

I became a bit despondent over the weekend with my planned AM5 build, i have seen so much negativity about it and i was thinking is it really worth the hassle? But i suppose there have been many good experiences with it as well? I think generally people post to have a good old moan about things rather than praise them. So i got caught in a loop of just seeing bad reviews which made things worse. You guys have been great though and put things into perspective.

I did actually price up a AM4 build over the weekend because of this, based on a Ryzen 9 5950x and 128gb RAM. There was only a couple of hundred quid between that and AM5 with 64gb. Seemed pointless really especially as it seemed difficult to source a X chipset motherboard.

Unfortunately, because of my dithering some more of the AM5 build parts i was looking at are now out of stock! I'm not in a hurry though, think i will be doing this closer to December to be honest with being busy over the weekends doing stuff

As much as I like AM4 (I have a B550 and the aforementioned 5800X3D), were I building a new system from scratch I wouldn't hesitate to build an AM5 setup - the platform has a good few years of upgrade options ahead of it and everything from the 7800X3D upwards is a decent improvement over AM4. AMD can't use the fastest RAM at the moment but DD5 6000 with a good CAS latency is still plenty fast.

 

[sparkyb]

As much as I like AM4 (I have a B550 and the aforementioned 5800X3D), were I building a new system from scratch I wouldn't hesitate to build an AM5 setup - the platform has a good few years of upgrade options ahead of it and everything from the 7800X3D upwards is a decent improvement over AM4. AMD can't use the fastest RAM at the moment but DD5 6000 with a good CAS latency is still plenty fast.

You are right, it would be crazy to spend the same amount on AM4 rather than a AM5. Especially as this will be new build rather than upgrade. Both seemed equally good over my i7 though

 

[sx_turbo]

Ok, that sounds encouraging.

I became a bit despondent over the weekend with my planned AM5 build, i have seen so much negativity about it and i was thinking is it really worth the hassle? But i suppose there have been many good experiences with it as well? I think generally people post to have a good old moan about things rather than praise them. So i got caught in a loop of just seeing bad reviews which made things worse. You guys have been great though and put things into perspective.

I did actually price up a AM4 build over the weekend because of this, based on a Ryzen 9 5950x and 128gb RAM. There was only a couple of hundred quid between that and AM5 with 64gb. Seemed pointless really especially as it seemed difficult to source a X chipset motherboard.

Unfortunately, because of my dithering some more of the AM5 build parts i was looking at are now out of stock! I'm not in a hurry though, think i will be doing this closer to December to be honest with being busy over the weekends doing stuff

To give a bit of positivity, I went am5 at the start of the year, it was still in its infancy, but the build was smooth going. I've an 7700x with Asus b650 tuf gaming WiFi board, Kingston fury 6000 ram.

I've no stability issues in terms of doing standard workloads web browsing, ms office work, image processing etc, but when gaming instability came in.

Put it down to amd drivers as I've a 6800xt graphic card.

Then around may time someone mentioned about updating bios might help, updating this turned into a mare (though think I forgot to reset the bios prior to updating), and the stability improved greatly.

At this time there were a couple of issues with CPU burnouts but this wasn't widespread and seemed to only be a few cases, it was certainly sensationalised into a bigger deal than it was.

I skipped this bios update as I was enjoying stability, so I undervolted a bit to avoid hitting the bad CPU voltage.

Then 6 months later pc started becoming unstable in games again, so I updated to the latest bios ( there have been around 4-5 revisions since) and bingo fully stable with no undervolting.

The Asus bios puts a thermal limit of 80 degrees on the CPU out the box, so you can increase this to the 95 that and say your allowed to, but I've never bothered it's plenty fast enough

I was same as you, reticent at making the shift, I had a 13 year old i5 and work was still on similar aged equipment and didn't really seem to be a problem. Work then upgraded to a 2 year old i3 and tbh it wasn't much different over what I had, which added to my reticence.

Anyway obviously I took the plunge and wow well worth it, as aegis said the programs become so much more snappy when opening, and the work I donon it is so much faster and more comfortable, it's so much faster than my new work desktop.

I find myself When I work from home downloading my work spreadsheets and stuff into my home pc as it's that much faster and easier.

Ultimately I've found the upgrade worth it, and now the am5 platform has matured the stability is now there.

 

[Craig_d1]

Hi Craig_d1,

Thank you for your post, i really appreciate the reply and help (and everyone). I have been thinking about not bothering to upgrade over the weekend, but you have definitely put my mind at rest. Your experience with your build addresses the concerns i had, sounds like you had a good experience?

I didn't know about the B650e-e motherboard, so watched the video you linked, i have seen a few of his before and he is good. The B650 looks really good, i don't need half of the connections and storage slots as the X670e-e, it also £200 cheaper. I am going to have a look further into this as its definitely worth considering

I think using two sticks is the way to go as you said and from what i have been seeing on the internet, so as not to have problems. 64gb will be more than enough i think. I only really initially considered 128gb so as not to worry years later in trying to source the same type of looking ram, especially as it RGB. My thinking was to max it out now and forget about it.

How did you get your RAM to run at 4800, when its 6000 and the CPU only supports 5200? I am no expert, but it thought it would have dropped to the CPU support speed of 5200?

I haven't had chance to watch the GPU video you posted, but will do. £700 for the 7900xt might be still a bit too expensive for me, but i will keep an eye on it.

Are you using windows 11 and what do you think of it?

Thanks

AS far as I can remember all original DDR5 ram had a base clock speed of 4800C40. So if you did nothing and just stuck the ram in, then the motherboard should read that and run at that speed. When you buy, or when I bought the 6000C30 ram kit, I am in effect buying 4800 Ram, that is then overclocked up to 6000C30 using the Expo settings. This is in effect a factory overclock, and has been tested(lets say by Corsair, as my ram is corsair, to work at 6000C30 without problems. If I get decent ram, I could then try and push this faster by inputting my own timings into the bios, and ignoring the expo factory timings..this may or may not work, depending how good the ram sticks are...I don't konw if I've explained that very well, and I don't mess around with the sticks. I'm happy with 6000C30, that's what my ram is rated for, so I just turned on expo, used the settings that are programmed into the ram sticks and off I go. But if I don't set expo, then it'll just run at it's base setting which is 4800C40...not sure where you're getting 5200 for cpu..the b650e-e board supports ram speeds up to 6400(though sweet spot is meant to be 6000c30, so that's what I plumbed for)..below is the memory section on the b650e-e..notice how it says (OC) after 6400...it's just telling you that the ram is all overclocked to run at that speed

Memory

4 x DIMM, Max. 128GB, DDR5 5200MHz upto 6400MHz (OC) Supports AMD EXTended Profiles for Overclocking (EXPO)

Same was true for DDR4, so my 3600C18 ram i had in my am4 rig was a factory overclock so to speak, as I think without expo enabled, it ran at 2400 odd speed(though can't quite remember exactly).
Oh, and yes, only 2 sticks of ram. AM5 and ddr5 doesn't play will with 4 sticks

Yes, am using windows 11. I personally prefer it to Win10, but that's just me. It's similar to Win10, or at least to me, so not much of a learning curve, and I prefer the icons in the middle of the taskbar..nearly said 'dock', as pretty sure they're just trying to replicate the look of apple with that one

 

[Tetras]

How did you get your RAM to run at 4800, when its 6000 and the CPU only supports 5200? I am no expert, but it thought it would have dropped to the CPU support speed of 5200?

The whole point of EXPO and XMP is that they allow you to quickly bypass the CPU's officially supported speeds with a profile set by the memory manufacturer, rather than having to do all the testing/tweaking yourself manually.

Intel previously didn't allow this unless you buy a high-end motherboard, but since AMD made memory overclocking available for every board, Intel followed.

As someone that spends a lot of time helping out on forums, I'm not a fan of EXPO or XMP because it doesn't work consistently enough (DDR4 has got to a good point, DDR5... just no), meaning forums get clogged up with "why doesn't my ram work at 10,000 Mhz?!"

 

[Craig_d1]

The whole point of EXPO and XMP is that they allow you to quickly bypass the CPU's officially supported speeds with a profile set by the memory manufacturer, rather than having to do all the testing/tweaking yourself manually.

Intel previously didn't allow this unless you buy a high-end motherboard, but since AMD made memory overclocking available for every board, Intel followed.

As someone that spends a lot of time helping out on forums, I'm not a fan of EXPO or XMP because it doesn't work consistently enough (DDR4 has got to a good point, DDR5... just no), meaning forums get clogged up with "why doesn't my ram work at 10,000 Mhz?!"

up to a point with ddr4. Again, the sweet spot was 3600mhz. above that and it can becomeu nstable..remember watching a few HU vids where they gave up on some ram trying to run in over 4000mhz.
Anyway, it's why I stuck to 6000 speed (it was after all the best speed amd recommended)...6400 ram wasn't that much more expensive, but seen enough vids where that can be hard to run, so 6000 it was...guessing now with the new updates and reading that am5 platform has been shown to run ram at 7200 and above now, it's becoming more stable so higher speeds s/b more achievable, but more than happy sticking at 6000

 

[sparkyb]

Then around may time someone mentioned about updating bios might help, updating this turned into a mare (though think I forgot to reset the bios prior to updating), and the stability improved greatly.

I was same as you, reticent at making the shift, I had a 13 year old i5 and work was still on similar aged equipment and didn't really seem to be a problem. Work then upgraded to a 2 year old i3 and tbh it wasn't much different over what I had, which added to my reticence.

Ultimately I've found the upgrade worth it, and now the am5 platform has matured the stability is now there.

Thank you,

It's a strange feeling not wanting to let go of an old PC, i suppose its because you are used to it and still think its quick until you get something new. I think i went through a same feeling just before i built this pc, I was using a Packard Bell shop bought pc. I thought that was quick until i started using the new one!

Do you have to reset the bios every time before updating?

 

[sx_turbo]

Thank you,

It's a strange feeling not wanting to let go of an old PC, i suppose its because you are used to it and still think its quick until you get something new. I think i went through a same feeling just before i built this pc, I was using a Packard Bell shop bought pc. I thought that was quick until i started using the new one!

Do you have to reset the bios every time before updating?

Yeah if you do a firmware update the bios has to be reset each time.

 

[sparkyb]

AS far as I can remember all original DDR5 ram had a base clock speed of 4800C40. So if you did nothing and just stuck the ram in, then the motherboard should read that and run at that speed. When you buy, or when I bought the 6000C30 ram kit, I am in effect buying 4800 Ram, that is then overclocked up to 6000C30 using the Expo settings.

...not sure where you're getting 5200 for cpu..the b650e-e board supports ram speeds up to 6400

Yes, am using windows 11. I personally prefer it to Win10, but that's just me. It's similar to Win10, or at least to me, so not much of a learning curve, and I prefer the icons in the middle of the taskbar..nearly said 'dock', as pretty sure they're just trying to replicate the look of apple with that one

That's a really good explanation and i think i understand. So, AM5 ram base speed is 4800, if you buy 5200 or 5600 as i have seen for my build. Effectively it can safely be oveclocked up to 5200 or 5600 but will run at 4800 minimum if i don't change anything. Then the motherboard and CPU both have their ram supported speeds, in my case the supported speed for the cpu is less than the motherboard.

The cpu ram supported speed for my build is 5200 for two sticks. I am not going to overclock, so is it better i just get the 5200 rather than the 5600? I think there is only £30 between the ram speeds on OcUK

As for the cpu 5200 ram supported speed, i got that from the specs on the AMD website

I not sure about windows 10 or 11 yet, haven't made my mind up.

 

[sparkyb]

Yeah if you do a firmware update the bios has to be reset each time.

ok, thank you

 

[sparkyb]

The whole point of EXPO and XMP is that they allow you to quickly bypass the CPU's officially supported speeds with a profile set by the memory manufacturer, rather than having to do all the testing/tweaking yourself manually.

Intel previously didn't allow this unless you buy a high-end motherboard, but since AMD made memory overclocking available for every board, Intel followed.

As someone that spends a lot of time helping out on forums, I'm not a fan of EXPO or XMP because it doesn't work consistently enough (DDR4 has got to a good point, DDR5... just no), meaning forums get clogged up with "why doesn't my ram work at 10,000 Mhz?!"

Thank you,

The ram i am looking to buy has expo, i assume this a setting i can leave untouched and the ram will run as normal?

 

[Tetras]

The ram i am looking to buy has expo, i assume this a setting i can leave untouched and the ram will run as normal?

You can, but you'll need to look @ the RAM specs, as I did for you in a few posts back, to find out what speed it will run without EXPO. Most likely it will be 4800 as Craig_d1 said, but I've seen a few that are 5200 or 5600.