Build advice please

Steviepunk

Steviepunk

Steviepunk

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Joined
11 Mar 2008
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469
Looking for a bit of advice on a new build.

So far I am planning on using the following (though with minor tweaks depending on what is actually available) when I order - I want good power, but I do want it to run as quiet as possible

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,502.10 (includes shipping: £13.20)​
​


My main sticking point is whether to go for a water cooling loop - I want to give that a try but I don't really want to have to dismantle a regular GPU cooler in order to install a waterblock - so I guess part of my decision comes down to whether I can manage to get a GPU with a pre-installed waterblock. I'd be looking at the 3080 or 3080ti (though I haven't yet see any ti models with a waterblock). Are the GPUs with a waterblock installed usually good quality?

Obviously I'll probably have to work on the basis that getting such a GPU is not likely - so I'd have to assume that I'd have to go for one with a good cooler on it. In that case, is it worth doing a water loop if it's only covering the CPU? Seems at that point I might as well just stick with a AIO CPU cooler as I've done for my last couple of builds (I'd probably go for something like this https://www.overclockers.co.uk/nzxt-kraken-x73-aio-cpu-water-cooler-360mm-hs-01l-nx.html )

I guess the specifics of the build hinge on the GPU - although I can bring my current GPU over, not knowing the final option means I'm uncertain whether to commit to a proper water cooled system at all.


Also tempted by the 5950x on the daily deal today, but not sure I would ever need all those cores!
 
Solid config, just curious what was your decision to go with the ROG Strix?

I had the same dilemma as you wanting a custom loop - but unable to secure the GPU I need, I've temporarily installed an AIO for now, that temporary solution is starting to become permanent due to the fact it is still impossible to buy *any* GPU at the moment.

If you can't explain / don't have a specific need for the 5950x then just stick to the 5900x and save your wallet.
 
Skip that brand overhype Asus with chipset cooler design straight from rear end of marketroids:
Actual heatsink under marketing excrements is small.
Hence to actually cool well it relies on also tiny fan... constricted by more marketing BS.
With whole crud in the worst place directly under graphics card to be bathed in its heat.​
So in longer gaming sessions that fan is going to take lots of spin.
And should be easy to guess what happens if/when it wears down.

£70 cheaper MSI X570 Tomahawk has far superior design with proper chipset cooler working passively, if you have good case cooling.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-...-am4-ddr4-x570-atx-motherboard-mb-351-ms.html


AMD has lot more honest TDPs than Intel and high end heatpipe coolers do well.
BRocken 3 would be one of the bang per buck models
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/alpenfohn-brocken-3-cpu-cooler-140mm-hs-05a-al.html
If waterpipes are must, Arctic Freezer II has genuinely beefy radiator with lots of surface area for continuous load cooling performance.
 
I was of the impression that the Strix series boards were good, as is their software support. I've used Gigabyte for my last few builds and considered the X570 Aorus Ultra, however one of the PCIe x1 ports sits right under the main GPU slot... so unless I get a single slot GPU, then that slot is pretty much useless - I saw the Strix boards and they have the PCIe x1 and extra space down, so it would at least be usable if I get a 2 slot card (I have a sound card and a USB expansion that I'll be migrating from my current PC). @EsaT I wasn't aware the Asus (of Gigabyte) board had fans, I can't see them on the photos.. or are they hidden under those metal panels and therefore have next to no airflow?
I don't want an MSI board, partly as I don't want one with a fan but also I just don't like MSI as a company (never really did, but they do seem to have been leading the charge when it comes to AIBs taking the p*** on GPU pricing, got to draw a line somewhere and vote with my wallet)

@khull As for the loop, I've been thinking about this today and pretty much came the same conclusion as yourself. Get an AIO just now and then consider a custom loop if/when I get a suitable GPU
 
If it was my build, I'd go for a cheaper MB, maybe the X570 Tomahawk but more likely a B550 board. There's no indication a B550 board wouldn't be absolutely fine and £100 less. Easy to waste a lot of money on the MB. I'd also stick with a good air cooler, they are fine for very efficient AMD CPUs. Water's just an expensive faff IMO!

1000W PSU is also an overkill, a good quality ~7-800W would be fine for a 5900X/3080 system.
 
Steviepunk said:
@EsaT I wasn't aware the Asus (of Gigabyte) board had fans, I can't see them on the photos.. or are they hidden under those metal panels and therefore have next to no airflow?
Click to expand...
As rule every X570 board has chipset fan.
BS department of Asus just hides those under marketing excrements just like VRM heatsinks are also covered to worsen cooling.
https://forum.hardwareinside.de/media/asus-rog-strix-x570-e-gaming-13-jpg.89804/

MSI has the way best X570 chipset coolers with big heatsink and fan.
Though except for Tomahawk MSI X570 boards are bad for the money with copypasta VRM from £100 B450 boards.
In those MSI crushed others and then decided to try riding on that reputation.
Just like Asus brand hype scammed in B450 boards with B450-F Strix having way worser VRM than lowly Asrock B450 Pro4...
Because of crippled circuitry and cooling sabotaged by marketing excrements.

Gigabyte has the second best chipset coolers starting with good design in X570 Aorus Elite also capable to passive cooling in well cooled case.
(lower boards have cheap outdated VRMs)
But after that marketroids start sabotage and first move chipset cooler closer to GPU slot in Aorus Pro and then constrict fan in Aorus Ultra.
Though heatsink is still the size of that visible cooler unlike in Asus boards.

Simply never trust brands and marketing.
(Asus also had very bad Radeon 5700 XT cards)


Also PCIe slot positioning is another thing which can be worser in more hyped boards.
Like that X570 Aorus Elite having all slots usable even with three slot size graphics card.
 
Suggest you have a look at X570 boards based on performance, I/O or 'features' rather than just on brand and perception. E.g. if you went with the X570 Aorus Ultra, you actually get a Thunderbolt header. On th other hand, the X570 Tomahawk has an offset chipset that doesn't get in the way of the GPU. These fans shouldn't run even under gaming

For water-cooling, EK does a chipset block for the x570 Aorus (unnecessary, but if you are going to spend such money, you might as well) along with your GPU block (check for clearance)
 
Undervolting a GPU will enable you to drop temps which in turn means you can drop the fan speed right down while keeping the same performance.

If you're not comfortable with dismantling a GPU then custom water cooling is probably not for you.
 
EsaT said:
As rule every X570 board has chipset fan.
BS department of Asus just hides those under marketing excrements just like VRM heatsinks are also covered to worsen cooling.
Click to expand...

Good info, thanks. Though I did find that the X570s chipsets are immanent - essentially x570 without the fans. MSI and ASRock have announced there models and Gigabyte have their ones list at the EEC, then again for all we know those won't be out until Nov, then I'll be thinking about waiting for AM5!
It's strange, so many of the reviews & recommendations I have been reading online recommend the ROG Strix boards, virtually none of them mention the fans on the chipsets. Did even see one that recommended the Strix-E without mentioning the fan at all, but have the fan on the MSI listed as a negative... it almost sounds like some of these sites are making recommendations off the spec sheet, or in conjunction with their advertisers/sponsor....


khull said:
For water-cooling, EK does a chipset block for the x570 Aorus (unnecessary, but if you are going to spend such money, you might as well) along with your GPU block (check for clearance)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think I'd come to that conclusion by the time I'd finished writing my post! I think sometimes you just need to say/write down your question and the answer becomes obvious. If I can get a GPU with a waterblock pre-installed already then I'll do the loop, otherwise I'll just stick to the air based approach!


nlel1975 said:
EVGA power meter reckons 750W PSU would suffice with a 3080 and 5900x or 5950x...

https://www.evga.com/power-meter/
Click to expand...


Some 3080 models are recommending a 850W PSU, though I think in real world usage the 750 would do the job for them (unless overclocking maybe).
I'm also planning ahead based on the rumours for RDNA3 7800/7900 being 2 chiplets each, with each chiplet being around the same size as the 6800/6900 (essentially making the 7000 series double the compute units of the equivalent 6000 series card) - if that turns out to be true, I'd imagine the power requirements will be rather large as I doubt they will manage a 50% power efficiency gain in the process.

1000w might overkill, was just staying on the cautious side, but a 850w is probably the smallest I'd go for.


thanks for the all the feedback everyone :)
 
Steviepunk said:
1000w might overkill, was just staying on the cautious side, but a 850w is probably the smallest I'd go for.
Click to expand...

An observation for a efficient platinum 1000w is the fans hardly run at even under 40-60% load range - a smaller 600-700w could put it in the 60-70% load range
If you are looking for a quiet build then it may not be a bad idea.
 
khull said:
An observation for a efficient platinum 1000w is the fans hardly run at even under 40-60% load range - a smaller 600-700w could put it in the 60-70% load range
If you are looking for a quiet build then it may not be a bad idea.
Click to expand...

I hadn't even considered that, very good point :)
 
Steviepunk said:
Good info, thanks. Though I did find that the X570s chipsets are immanent - essentially x570 without the fans. MSI and ASRock have announced there models and Gigabyte have their ones list at the EEC, then again for all we know those won't be out until Nov, then I'll be thinking about waiting for AM5!
It's strange, so many of the reviews & recommendations I have been reading online recommend the ROG Strix boards, virtually none of them mention the fans on the chipsets. Did even see one that recommended the Strix-E without mentioning the fan at all, but have the fan on the MSI listed as a negative... it almost sounds like some of these sites are making recommendations off the spec sheet, or in conjunction with their advertisers/sponsor....
Click to expand...
Don't really believe there's new AM4 chipset coming with AMD4 moving toward getting successor.
At least for AMD it wouldn't make much sense to spend money on that.
They even did X570 chipset themselves only because no one else was able to do PCIE v4 chipset.
And with limited future/selling life neither there's sense for mobo makers to really spend money on entirely new board designs.

But by proper design not lead by marketroids it would be possible to make versions of many boards with passively cooled chipset.
MSI X570 Tomahawk has such big cooler, that if you had fan's location filled with ribbed surface that would definitely do the job.
As another candidate for that treatment Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite has fan hardly ever running in properly cooled case, at least unless there's setting forcing that in BIOS.


Whole lots of "reviews" are barely even previews and many are just plain ads playing parrot with all marketing BS.
Also all those plastic marketing excrements sabotaging VRM cooling are never called as what they are.
Vcore VRM heatsink being mostly covered by such BS was part of the reason why Strix B450-F sucked donkey balls and was good only for 65W TDP CPUs:
In testing done by The Stilt stock Ryzen 2700X doing x264 video compression overheated VRM in 12 minutes and with PBO enabled even 2600X was too much.

And especially Asus is advertised everywhere no doubt spending more money into legalized lying called marketing than actual product development.
Their Radeon 5700 XT cards must have had zero testing done to get out of the door:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hardware+unboxed+asus+5700+xt
And their X570 chipset cooler designs aren't much better.
In Finnish PC forum one user had chipset of even higher up Asus X570 board reaching 80+C temps in longer gaming sessions under Asus Strix 2080 Ti graphics card.




Steviepunk said:
Some 3080 models are recommending a 850W PSU, though I think in real world usage the 750 would do the job for them (unless overclocking maybe).
I'm also planning ahead based on the rumours for RDNA3 7800/7900 being 2 chiplets each, with each chiplet being around the same size as the 6800/6900 (essentially making the 7000 series double the compute units of the equivalent 6000 series card) - if that turns out to be true, I'd imagine the power requirements will be rather large as I doubt they will manage a 50% power efficiency gain in the process.
Click to expand...
RTX 3080s have 500W spikes in gaming power draw:
https://www.igorslab.de/en/kfa2-geforce-rtx-3080-sg-10-gb-in-test-not-so-quiet-but-true-cool/4/
So high quality 750W PSU is sensible starting point at least without undervolting/power limit lowering.


If AMD manages to materialize chiplet design to GPUs actually that likely rises performance per power draw:
Making more powerfull GPUs by increasing size of silicon chip makes cost increase exponentially per size increase.
That applies especially when using leading edge manufacturing nodes.
Hence makers try to get away with smaller chips (with less compute units) by pushing clocks as high as possible.
And that means pushing past best efficiency of the silicon.

For example here decreasing power limit by 20% lowers performance by only 5%.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/k2lqzk/rx_6800_power_scaling_from_50_to_0/
So last ~5% of performance came at cost of increasing power draw by quarter.
And no doubt almost every GPU would give similar curve.

So if maker can put more compute units into GPU at certain manufacturing cost by using MCM design that gives more freedom in setting clocks closer to optimal power efficiency.
Also even if cooling wasn't challenge PCIe SIG specifies 300W as max power draw and makers try to stay around at least nominally:
https://us.v-cdn.net/5021640/uploads/editor/yr/f1z842765sj9.pdf
 
EsaT said:
Don't really believe there's new AM4 chipset coming with AMD4 moving toward getting successor.
At least for AMD it wouldn't make much sense to spend money on that.
They even did X570 chipset themselves only because no one else was able to do PCIE v4 chipset.
And with limited future/selling life neither there's sense for mobo makers to really spend money on entirely new board designs.
Click to expand...
It was this that I was referring to - from what I'd read it sounds like it's an optimised version of the x570 to use a bit less power. Seems MSI have announced x570s boards as well.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1672...ls-new-x570s-and-b550-pg-riptide-motherboards

Other than not having the fan, does seem to be anything else new with them.
 
khull said:
An observation for a efficient platinum 1000w is the fans hardly run at even under 40-60% load range - a smaller 600-700w could put it in the 60-70% load range
If you are looking for a quiet build then it may not be a bad idea.
Click to expand...

A bigger psu doesn't always mean less noise. There is more to it than that. You have to consider things like fan quality, how long it stays in fanless mode and also the fan speed.
 
Steviepunk said:
It was this that I was referring to - from what I'd read it sounds like it's an optimised version of the x570 to use a bit less power. Seems MSI have announced x570s boards as well.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/1672...ls-new-x570s-and-b550-pg-riptide-motherboards

Other than not having the fan, does seem to be anything else new with them.
Click to expand...
X570 die is actually based on IO-die introduced in Zen2 Ryzens with just some things disabled.
Allowing also use for partially faulty chips: Faulty memory controller? Just turn it into chipset.
So not very likely that there's new chip just for use as X570 chipset.

And it is certainly possible to cool current X570 passively.
Der8auer actually did it with quite small heatsink:
https://hexus.net/tech/news/mainboard/132515-der8auer-examines-amd-x570-chipset-power-consumption/
But of course marketing would never admit original cooler designs being bad and could see them claiming it as new chip.
 
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