New to AMD Builds...

[Astravagrant]

Hi there,

I've spec'd/built a fair few PCs over the years but I'm currently doing one for a mate and I think I'm willing to risk his money on an AMD build (I've been Intel for past decade). Joking aside: from what I can see, they're tearing it up at the moment, so good to know there's no more monopoly! He wants one that will last for a good 5 or 6 years (like his last one, hence the top-end stuff).

Anyway, I was just wondering if there are any issues with this build, or suggestions for improvements/replacements. I got confused with the various AM4 chipsets, but guessing they're all compatible with AM4 CPUs.

Regarding the case, I've just picked one at random, I'm sure he'll have strong opinions on that, so will leave it for last.

Thanks for your help.


My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Asus ROG Strix X570-F Gaming (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 Chipset ATX Motherboard= £249.95
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Twelve Core 4.6GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £449.99
• 1 x Team Group Xtreem "8Pack Edition" 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C16 3600MHz Quad Channel Kit - Black= £239.99
• 1 x Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 Super AMP Edition 8192MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £749.99
• 1 x Aorus 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (GP-ASM2NE6200TTTD)= £419.99
• 1 x Samsung 2TB 860 QVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 64 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-76Q2T0BW)= £188.99
• 1 x WD Ultrastar 4TB Data Center Internal Enterprise Hard Drive (HUS726T4TALA6L4)= £169.99
• 1 x Super Flower Leadex III 850W 80 PLUS Gold Modular Power Supply - Black= £112.99
• 1 x Fractal Design Define R6 Blackout Type-C Midi Tower Case - Black Tempered Glass= £144.95
• 1 x ASUS TUF Gaming VG27AQ 27" 2560x1440 IPS 165Hz 1ms FreeSync/G-Sync Compatible Gaming Monitor= £484.99

Total: £3,232.64 (includes shipping: £20.82)
​

 

[Gray2233]

What exactly will he be using the build for?

There's a lot of painfully over priced items in that list either way.

 

[tamzzy]

£150 cheaper - but with a 2080ti, 2x nvme 2tb ssds, and an aftermarket cpu cooler

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Twelve Core 4.6GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £449.99
• 1 x Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 Chipset ATX Motherboard= £189.95
• 2 x Patriot Viper Steel 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C17 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS416G360C7K)= 2 x £68.99
• 1 x MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Ventus GP 11264MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £949.99
• 1 x Phanteks AMP 750W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply= £106.99
• 1 x Phanteks Eclipse P400 Air Midi Tower DRGB Case - Black= £83.99
• 1 x Scythe SCMG-5PCGH Mugen 5 "PCGH Edition" CPU Cooler= £46.99
• 2 x Corsair Force MP510 series 1920GB NVMe PCIe M.2 Solid State Drive (CSSD-F1920GBMP510)= 2 x £259.99
• 1 x Toshiba 4TB X300 High Performance Hard Drive (HDWE140UZSVA)= £89.99
• 1 x LG 27GL850-B 27" 2560x1440 NANO IPS 144Hz 1ms FreeSync/G-Sync Compatible Widescreen LED Gaming Monit= £469.99

Total: £3,073.86 (includes shipping: £28.02)
​

 

[Minibiker]

What will it be used for? Seems like a few unnecessary bits in there which you could save on if not really needed but all depends what the system is for

 

[EsaT]

He wants one that will last for a good 5 or 6 years (like his last one, hence the top-end stuff).

No graphics card will last even half of that.
Now is basically historically bad time to buy expensive graphics card, because Nvidia has been for soem years focused onto pumping up buyer's butts, err price tags.
Above £500 cards simply have bad and worser performance per price.
And what their marketing "forgets" to tell, is that actual use of that hyped raytracing makes performance crash down 30-50%.
So their real capability to feature of the future is questionable at best.
Wouldn't really wonder if in next fall we'll have better raytracing cards for half the price.

CPUs will hold value better, if you have enough cores to not be bothered by bloating up software.
Though next summer's Zen3 architecture might give upgrade path for current motherboards with decent speed bump.

 

[Astravagrant]

Sorry, I should have mentioned it's mostly for gaming, but needs to be fairly versatile (hence not specifying anything). Great graphics, great processing, fair amount of storage (maybe home-server duties for entertainment). Remember, the focus is also on future-proofing, so some of them are only over-specified in current context.

Thanks for the input, guys, really appreciate it.

@Gray2233

Interesting you mention overpricing, I thought some of the components were way cheaper than expected (memory, for instance, seems to have halved since I last looked).

@EsaT

hahahah, yeah, I've noticed Nvidia are taking the ****. I've got a 2080 myself, but could justify the extra £300 because I thought I might do some tensorflow stuff (maybe not, but the option is appealing). I've read/watched loads on the RTX performance and understand it's a trade-off, but overall performance is still better than the 10xx line.

Yeah, agreed, it's gen 1 for RTX, but we're the early-adopters

Thanks for note about Zen3, wasn't aware of that. He's hanging on to some pretty old hardware at the moment and is the weak link in pubg (sorry mate), so might not be able to hang on that long


@tamzzy

Thanks for the tips. I want 32GB, though, just it's cheap at the moment and better to have it for those rare occasions you need it.

Why the LG over the Asus?

Oh, yeah, cooling! It won't be over-clocked, but always good to run something better than stock cooler. It's an LTS model, after all...

You know, I didn't notice that MB had multiple M2 ports, that's really handy. I think the gen4 PCI drive is preferable for boot, since it has the higher IO (even though it's largely synth, it will still be faster at some things and not crazy prices right now). Are they seen as overkill or low-value though?

 

[tamzzy]

Thanks for the tips. I want 32GB, though, just it's cheap at the moment and better to have it for those rare occasions you need it.

2 x Patriot Viper Steel 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C17 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS416G360C7K)= 2 x £68.99

Oh, yeah, cooling! It won't be over-clocked, but always good to run something better than stock cooler. It's an LTS model, after all...

1 x Scythe SCMG-5PCGH Mugen 5 "PCGH Edition" CPU Cooler= £46.99

Why the LG over the Asus?

cheaper, just as good

I think the gen4 PCI drive is preferable for boot

lol no. pcie4 ssds are a waste of money except for niche use case scenarios since it's the random i/0 that limits the drive...not the sequential speeds

10:00mins in

 

[EsaT]

Yeah, agreed, it's gen 1 for RTX, but we're the early-adopters

Thanks for note about Zen3, wasn't aware of that. He's hanging on to some pretty old hardware at the moment and is the weak link in pubg (sorry mate), so might not be able to hang on that long


Why the LG over the Asus?

You know, I didn't notice that MB had multiple M2 ports, that's really handy. I think the gen4 PCI drive is preferable for boot, since it has the higher IO

RTX is at most beta test.
With limited raytracing "accuracy" used to try to control performance penalty it can cause also ugly artefacts:
https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/1934/images/F-8.jpg
https://www.techspot.com/article/1934-the-state-of-ray-tracing/

Zen3s should be in nice discount in late 2021-winter 2022 for some update.
Unlike Intel changing sockets many times per same rebranded architecture AMD gives actually improved CPUs for same socket.
And next socket is expected in summer 21 with DDR5 memory, but who knows when ever DDR5 actually comes out:
Originally it was supposed to come out same time with Intel's 10nm node 3+ years ago.


LG 27GL850's response times compete with TNs, while that Asus has more usual IPS response time.
https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/lg/27gl850-b
https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/asus/tuf-vg27aq
Though contrast of LG is mediocre even for IPS, so it won't look good in darker room.
(not sure what's going on with that)


Higher snake oil synthetic numbers don't mean anything.
There's very little real world difference to SATA drives with lot slower speed limit in loading time of Windows/games:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nvme+ssd+hdd
BX300 is cacheless entry level SATA drive:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/seagate-firecuda-510-1-tb-ssd/8.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/seagate-firecuda-510-1-tb-ssd/13.html

If that PC will be only for games without some media storage use, you can easily go for all SSD by not paying from useless numbers.
Though actually old spinning rust would be faster at writing that 2TB at once than that Samsung QVO, which uses crap called QLC Flash.
That's pretty much analog storage needing to distinguish between ludicrous 16 charge/voltage levels and has native write speed of 80MB/s.
(marketroids and bean counters are already looking into PLC, which likely writes as fast as floppy drive)

Adata SX8200 Pro is another well priced SSD.
And besides Corsair MP510 ther are plenty of other Phison E12 based drives at good prices.
https://ssd.borecraft.com/SSD_Buying_Guide_List.pdf
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B27_j9NDPU3cNlj2HKcrfpJKHkOf-Oi1DbuuQva2gT4/edit#gid=0

 

[Astravagrant]

@tamzzy Ok, thanks, I knew random was a factor, but I usually just look at IO OPS (750k in this case, compared to 550k for samsung's latest). I've mentioned it's an optional luxury to my mate, but that video is interesting. I've passed it on. Interestingly, the PCI4 drives have 3x the write lifetime under warranty. That's not bad.

@EsaT Hmm, interesting. I've got a 2080 myself I do like the effects, but you're right it's clearly not picking up momentum as quickly as we'd been led to believe.
Thanks for the links on the monitors and the heads-up on the contrast.
Woah! That's amazing info on the QVO, I wondered why it was so cheap, but the numbers didn't look bad. Thanks for the warning!

Cheers, guys. Great advice, especially on the storage. It's not my call, but it all makes sense and I'm easily swayed by the *shiny*.

Thanks very much, really appreciate it.

 

[EsaT]

Ok, thanks, I knew random was a factor, but I usually just look at IO OPS (750k in this case, compared to 550k for samsung's latest).

Hmm, interesting. I've got a 2080 myself I do like the effects, but you're right it's clearly not picking up momentum as quickly as we'd been led to believe.
Thanks for the links on the monitors and the heads-up on the contrast.
Woah! That's amazing info on the QVO, I wondered why it was so cheap, but the numbers didn't look bad. Thanks for the warning!

For home user those marketed IOPS numbers are as useless as lawnmover in moon rocket.
They're really only usefull in some very heavy server use.
Normal home user has mostly queue depth 1, thread count 1 situation for random accesses and in those situations even SATA's bandwidth is more than five times enough.
And without constantly gigabytes to read neither that sequential transfer rate of NVMe over SATA makes much difference.

With at the moment heavy performance penalty plus those potential problems, only developers which have either gotten payolas, or those without constricting budget/resources and schedule (like Remedy) put effort into using raytracing.
Only next-gen consoles and new GPUs with less performance loss (/more performance to waste) will bring it into more usable state starting more widespread adoption.

Development of monitors isn't really going anywhere at the moment.
With marketroids and bean counters just repolishing same old turd and selling less as more.
There's hardly any real advance even in CES announcements, most of which can be considered as pure paper releases.
With OLED haunted by weaknesses of that organic part, only microLEDs and (electroluminescent) quantum dot active matrix LEDs will bring true mature flat displays without contrast/black value, response time and viewing angle problems.
But at this rate we'll never get there.
Someone should put marketroids and bean counters into one room and give them R. Lee Ermey style speech.


860 QVO isn't cheap.
Even with discounted price it costs same as TLC drives of others which can always maintain faster than HDDs write speed.
And better level TLC drives (like Crucial MX500/WD Blue 3D) really don't cost much more.

In NVMe drives Intel 660p and Crucial P1 use QLC.
But at least Intel is actually cheaper than TLC drives...
(some Intel bean counter must have been on sick leave to allow engineer decide realistic pricing)

 

[Astravagrant]

@EsaT Sorry, I only just saw this. Very interesting and you've confirmed a few suspicions I had on the whole.

I see your point on the IOPS. I figured it had some real-world relevance, even for me.

Yeah, RTX is overkill right now, but OOOhhh, pretty! I've been waiting for it for soooo ******* long (literally >20 years). I just pulled the trigger. Not ashamed. Playing through Metro 1 and 2 just to get to 3... hahaha.

The monitor tech is a strange one. Been stagnant for a while now. I know the burn-in issues with OLED, one of the reasons I avoided it, but thought Samsung's QLED was a step forward? Haven't seen one in real life, but not in the market after I bought a Sony *just* before QLED hit. Happy with it. Could do with more 'zones' (it's got 12, I think), but it's still phenomenal compared to my old one.

Hahah, love RLE. 3D NAND?! I didn't know they stacked **** that high!

 

[EsaT]

I see your point on the IOPS. I figured it had some real-world relevance, even for me.

but thought Samsung's QLED was a step forward?

Games have actually long aimed for minimizing IOPS load, because of slow seeks (and hence IOPS performance) of HDDs:
Typically at least all assets of single game object are packed into one file (which is read as single operation) instead of being dozens or even hundreds of separate files.
Sometimes even whole game levels are packed into single file, or all sound effects/music assets.
(those big PAK files...)


"QLED" is really just another marketing scam of Samsung, just like their "x-bit" MLC names are purposely misleading terms for TLC and QLC Flash.
It's no different than their earlier "LED" TVs.
LCD stays as LCD with its contrast/black value/response time/viewing angle problems no matter if it has glow worm, flash light or campfire as backlight.
Only active matrix quantum-dot LEDs are going to be genuinely different tech from LCDs.
Hopefully in few years replacing that Organic part of OLED displays, which is their weakness...

At least if they used quantum dot colour filter positioned in front of LCD layer that would help some:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_dot_display#Quantum_dot_color_filters
But all current ones just tweak that backlight behind LCD layer with no real advance in anything.
Wide gamut LCDs have existed for over decade, so even that talk about improving size of colour space is BS.
And many latest monitors actually cover standard in photography AdobeRGB worser than older ones, because of DCI-P3 not reaching that deep into greens.

 

[Astravagrant]

@EsaT Ah, yeah, that makes sense. Just stream it all into RAM and be done.

Very interesting about renaming tech. I knew that kind of thing went on, but the QLED thing was a serious push by them. I think I was lead into believing they *were* the quantum-dot LEDs, which they clearly aren't. I'll keep my eyes open for the real thing. Sounds like a genuine improvement.

Haha, that's funny about the gamut issues. I always buy IPS because reasons and side by side with my lcds it's really not obvious except in certain circumstances.

Thanks for the info, dude.

 

[EsaT]

Just stream it all into RAM and be done.

Actually lots of that game data is compressed and needs decompressing.
There's also processing of various data, including initializing game world state, or loading save game state.
Windows loading is quite similar process.

Hence "fast" 3GB/s NVMes make very little difference over "slow" ~500MB/s SATA SSDs:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=nvme+ssd+hdd
These grahps are about 50-50 NVMe and SATA drives:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/seagate-firecuda-510-1-tb-ssd/13.html


IPS is one type of liquid crystal.
Basically liquid crystals are in different alignment in IPS, TN and VA.
https://www.techspot.com/article/1788-display-tech-compared/
https://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/panel_technologies.htm
And would be hard time to get rid all of them, because they all have their own drawbacks.

While being fastest in transitions, TN doesn't have any vertical viewing angle from which colours would be stable from bottom to top of the image when viewed straight on.
VA trashes others contrast and hence black value...
But its mid level in viewing angles with dark shade gamma shift called "black crush" (because change of dark shades gamma curve depending on horizontal angle) and overall slowest in response times with some very slow transitions causing either ghosting/smearing, or inverse ghosting from crazy level of overdrive:
https://www.tftcentral.co.uk/reviews/acer_nitro_xv273x.htm#gaming_comparisons
IPS has best colour stability, more consistent response times than VA, but contrast and black value is at usual LCD level and early used A-TW filter was dropped, because why not when any viewing angleless garbage sells.

Display maker bean counters and marketroids should be grabbed from ties and given R. Lee Ermey style addressing[/rl].