Upgrade advice - help keep me sensible!

Colin MacDougall · 24 Feb 2020 at 16:05

Cool. Is it worth spending £5 more to get the overclocked 2600x with the Spire cooler?

Colin MacDougall · 24 Feb 2020 at 23:45

It seems like a no-brainer for an extra £5 for the 'X' on the face of it...but it is rated at 95W instead of 65W which isn't great...plus I'm not sure if it will be noisy trying to keep the temperature under control...can you 'un-clock' it if you want? I guess you can...

Gray2233 · 24 Feb 2020 at 23:49

If it's only a fivers difference you might as well get the 2600X to be honest.

Colin MacDougall · 26 Feb 2020 at 12:07

So annoyingly, although the spec of the system says there is a single stick of 8GB 2400MHz RAM in there, it is actually 2666MHz. I only discovered this after buying and installing a second stick of 2400MHz. Does it matter that the 2 sticks have different ratings?

Gray2233 · 26 Feb 2020 at 15:25

It'll be fine, the higher clocked stick will just down-clock to match the slower one.

faceman123 · 26 Feb 2020 at 15:29

Quartz said:
You've done the right thing by checking where the performance problem lies. Don't bother with the 3200G as you already have a GPU. The bang-for-the-buck CPU is the Ryzen 3600.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £154.99

1 x MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £98.99

Total: £264.48 (includes shipping: £10.50)

Substitute the MSI Mortar Max if you need a mATX motherboard.

RAM prices seem to have jumped recently.

this

Colin MacDougall · 26 Feb 2020 at 15:41

Thanks! For future reference - the CPU says it supports up to 2933MHz RAM but the motherboard can support up to 3200Mhz...is there any point in installing RAM quicker than 2933MHz? The 2600x processor is overclocked so I'm wondering if it would actually enable the RAM to run at a faster clock speed than 2933MHz?

Gray2233 · 26 Feb 2020 at 15:58

There's a chance you could run memory over the specified ratings, setting XMP should do it, although 3600mhz + RAM might not run stable.

Colin MacDougall · 26 Feb 2020 at 15:59

Cool - and installing RAM with a clock speed greater than the CPU specified value won't do any harm, will it?

Gray2233 · 26 Feb 2020 at 16:01

No, it shouldn't do any harm. At worst you'd just need to lower/set the clocks to something that works.

Colin MacDougall · 26 Feb 2020 at 23:45

Sorry to bombard you guys with questions but...

...I've discovered that my motherboard doesn't support overclocking. The CPU ratio isn't a tweakable parameter in the bios. I had kind of thought I might as well go for the 2600x because I could always under-clock it if I was having temperature issues or whatever. It seems to be running fine at the moment but if I did want to dial it back a bit, could I use the offset voltage? Or I guess I could disable the boost function?

What would be a good tool for monitoring performance, temperatures etc?

Gray2233 · 27 Feb 2020 at 10:05

MSI Afterburner OSD.

Here's a guide for you: https://linustechtips.com/main/topi...msi-afterburner-on-screen-display-using-rtss/

I wouldn't worry about overclocking Ryzen, most of the performance you get from tweaking comes from messing with RAM speeds/timings anyway. You shouldn't have any problems with the 2600X, the chips don't run all that hot to begin with and the supplied cooler is decent.

Colin MacDougall · 27 Feb 2020 at 14:28

Cool - I was also a bit worried I might be reaching the limits of my 500W PSU. Not sure how to tell how much power the whole system is drawing...

Gray2233 · 27 Feb 2020 at 14:38

I expect you'll be fine.

I doubt the PSU in question is the best in the world, but your components don't use a lot of power. At most you'll be using 250W or so off the top of my head, honestly your rig would run just fine on a decent 300-400W PSU.

Colin MacDougall · 27 Feb 2020 at 16:28

Yeah, I put all my components into a website that works out your power needs and it recommended something in the 300W range, so should be ok.

...I'm sorely tempted to buy a 'set' of 2x8gb RAM...it irks me that I have mismatched sticks (both in terms of clock speeds and aesthetics...I mean, it's in a box so aesthetics shouldn't matter but I know they are there :rolleyes:

). I know my cpu only supports up to 2933Mhz but weirdly a set of 3200Mhz is cheaper.

Gray2233 · 27 Feb 2020 at 17:02

Most online PSU calculators overestimate requirements, it's worth taking them with a pinch of salt.

The choice is yours as to what you do, but unless you can get a decent return by selling your existing RAM you'd be better off putting the money into an SSD if you really must spend more.

Colin MacDougall · 10 May 2020 at 17:29

So - bit of an issue...my son came down today and said his PC won't switch on. I had a look and it was very dead...lights and fans on inside but no beep on startup and nothing on the monitor. Panic. A quick google suggested pulling the RAM and listening out for a series of beeps to indicate motherboard health. So I tried that and no beeps - further panic. More googling suggested a CPU failure. I still had the old one (kept meaning to ebay it) so I swapped it back in and life was restored. All seems ok. So, looks like the brand new Ryzen 5 2600X died...is that outlandishly unlikely? I was a bit worried that it drew quite a bit of power (95W) and that maybe my 500W PSU might be a bit underpowered...could that have caused the failure?

Or - could it be the action of swapping the CPUs did something to fix the issue? Maybe the 2600X is ok? I haven't tried putting it back yet. Reckon it's worth a shot?

Assuming I need a new CPU - I was thinking of going for the not-overclocked 65W 2600 this time...just to be safe. Or are there better options now for about that price point?

Gray2233 · 10 May 2020 at 17:34

The CPU should still be under warranty, I'd contact whoever you bought it from and ask about RMA'ing it.

It's pretty rare for CPU's to just die by themselves, was your son trying to overclock or anything, maybe he put too much voltage through it?

Even if the PSU was under powered (I don't believe that would be the case) it wouldn't damage your CPU, you'd just get periodic shutdowns when performing power intensive tasks.

Colin MacDougall · 10 May 2020 at 17:44

You can't overclock on the motherboard he has (ASUS A320M-K), I don't think so I don't think he has done anything silly.

I can return the CPU so shouldn't end up out of pocket...I guess the question is what to replace it with...maybe I should go for a 65W 3600 this time? Given he can't overclock, might be worth getting something a bit better than the 2600.

Colin MacDougall · 10 May 2020 at 18:18

Oh - any recommendations for which thermal paste to use? Are they all the same?

And a related question - I had cleaned all the paste off the old CPU in preparation for ebay but there is a bit left on the heat sink...will he be ok to use the PC for non-gaming stuff for a day or two until I can get some new paste, or the new CPU arrives? Or should we leave it off?