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*** The Official Alder Lake owners thread ***

Amatsubu said:
*snip*
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Thanks for your input, it's made the budget look far nicer and I've settled towards this:


My basket at OcUK:

Total: £1,409.94 (includes delivery: £11.10)​









​

Current system is 6700k @ 4.5, Maximus Hero VIII, Vengeance LPX 16GB 3200C16, P, HX750 PSU(11 years old), 3080FE.

PSU is for extra headroom with my 3080 as my current is 11 years old, storage becasue current are SATA SSD (OS drive & game drive), AIO becasue current 115i is the OG version and is likely less efficient after 6 years.

Will those drives eat into the PCIE for the GFX card or is that completely independent now?

Will the RAM be plug & play XMP or will I need a degree to get it set up nicely? (not bothered for an OC right out the gate).

Money isn't really a concern, I'm on a ~5 year cycle with hardware as it goes but realise memory and storage will get a boost in the near future. However, maybe now's the time to get the best most refined of todays standard and if I need to upgrade earlier for any reason then there will still be some value in it down the road.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
Bad time to upgrade with raptor Lake and Zen 4 this year.
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I guess I'm already 6 Intel generations out of date but are they really going to bring that much to the table? Is DDR5 going to have some more gain than it does now in say 9-12 months time too? I'm not so sure I'm bothered. Alde Lake with DDR4 seems like a solid bug & fiddle-free upgrade for the same money my current system cost 6 years ago.
 
Dup said:
I guess I'm already 6 Intel generations out of date but are they really going to bring that much to the table? Is DDR5 going to have some more gain than it does now in say 9-12 months time too? I'm not so sure I'm bothered. Alde Lake with DDR4 seems like a solid bug & fiddle-free upgrade for the same money my current system cost 6 years ago.
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Tuf is fine. Strix has SP rating built in. If you want to oc, 12700k are a bit meh compared to 12900k/f. Rest is fine.
 
Dup said:
I guess I'm already 6 Intel generations out of date but are they really going to bring that much to the table? Is DDR5 going to have some more gain than it does now in say 9-12 months time too? I'm not so sure I'm bothered. Alde Lake with DDR4 seems like a solid bug & fiddle-free upgrade for the same money my current system cost 6 years ago.
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Nah, just enjoy your rig and don't sweat it. It'll be long before it becomes outdated, regardless of how soon DDR5 starts to be commonplace and matures. Raptor Lake is a complete skip, more e-cores I'll have no use for and even higher TDP. I don't think anyone will really upgrade for 10-15% IPC gain either.

Moved to a very similar setup from an even older CPU (even the same system drive but LFII 280 ARGB cooling, I think it's the best AIO around for noise-normalised perf), got the 12700KF under retail with a free Dying Light 2 code and managed to sell my old rig for decent money, can't really complain. For all we know, price might go up and WWIII might be just round the corner, at which point we'll have other things to worry about.

I could've waited for eternity but now at least I can enjoy some stuff properly instead of worrying about the best time to upgrade (even if it isn't the best time indeed).

As for your question regarding lanes, I haven't researched that properly myself. The top slot runs off the CPU, I installed my system drive there and I have another drive installed in the 3x4 slot, GPU still shows as running x16, I'll be adding a 980 Pro 1TB soon. The other slots run off the chipset and if you go overboard some the mobo will disable some sata ports.

XMP worked out of the box for me on the MSI Pro, 32gb Ballistix rgb 3200 cl16, will be overclocking them further myself.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
Bad time to upgrade with raptor Lake and Zen 4 this year.
Click to expand...

Not really a bad time, since Z690 motherboards can drop in a Raptor Lake CPU a few months or a few years down the line, if they feel the need. You still get best gaming performance available today, best gaming power consumption, DDR5, PCIEv5 and all the other goodies right now.
 
Hi , Is there any reason in disabling/ or not disabling the IGPU on my 12700k? Or if I`m plugged into my 3070 does it even matter?
Can`t seem to see a definitive answer on Google, Thanks in advance.
 
It's main usefulness is troubleshooting if you 3070 stops working one day. The secondary use is maybe video editing where the video processor can accelerate encoding but only in apps that make use of Intel's igpu like Premier - But then nVidia CUDA acceleration etc is very very fast too and more apps make use of that like Davinci Resole which I find quicker to use/prefer.

Otherwise you can disable it and only have the one video adapter being displayed in Windows/apps to clean things up and not have to bother with installing and Intel GPU drivers as a result too.

-

My RAM error has returned it seems. Can RAM errors crop up over time perhaps? I did bump the voltage up to 1.47 and reran Karhu but still got a single error around 186% - Dropped back to 1.46v and then dropped the speed from 3600MHz to 3500MHz. Currently rerunning Karhu and it's at 329% without error.

Previously when I saw no errors it was getting over 5000% coverage so I called it a day then and thought it was stable but seems over time this error stability has shifted even though I've not actually changed anything. The tell tale sign is when a game just randomly quits to desktop, which I take a signal now to run Karhu and lo and behold, an error quiet early into the run.
 
@mrk Sorry about the RAM error turning up for you. A few days ago I had cause to search this thread and found your previous post about your RAM, when you increased the voltage to get it to be stable.
I was having stability issues and it took me a while to remember I had reset my BIOS and forgot to set the VCCSA voltage to 1.3v and then the RAM voltage to 1.4v. Back to stability for me....

RAM-Test-March-2022.png


The indicator of problems for me, not recognised at the time, were similar to yours - my game causing a CTD or even a BSOD. Since changing those two I'm good to go. BUT then again I have also selected AUTO for the Gear mode, hence Gear 2. I know I have mentioned this to you before but with my 4000Mhz DDR4 IIRC anything over 3200Mhz and intel consider this overclocked. If I ran at Gear 1 with 4000Mhz then the memory controller is running at 2000Mhz, just another overclocked parameter that might be fine, if there are no issues.
I haven't noticed any difference in the game I'm playing, then again I lock the FPS as I see no point in having set high and thus save GPU load.
From what I remember you run at Gear 1.
 
Yup it seems for my particular RAM and capacity (2 sticks of 32GB), it's just that bit more finicky that desirable. I know from before that the issue seems to only exist at 3600MHz, and so far at 3500MHz Karhu is still going.

I suspect no matter what DRAM voltage I set, the stability will randomly crop up again if the RAM is at 3600MHz and Gear mode is 1. I'd prefer the bandwidth of Gear 1 though as when I export in Lightroom it's always a large batch so would benefit from the increased bandwidth I guess.
 
It would be interesting if you actually tested what you feel. You might be surprised that the difference is not worth these periods of reoccurring instability. I know the RAM is rated at 1.35v. I'm not sure how "flexible" it is in terms of running with 1.47v. IIRC, a little hazy here, I heard on one video that stability could be an issue with too much RAM voltage.
As you point out using the capacity of sticks that you do could also introduce some stability issues.
The game I note has noted zero difference with Gear 1 to Gear 2, then again I limit the FPS of the GPU.
I no longer use Lightroom and so could not comment about that.
Either way, for me, stability trumps absolute performance.
At one point, from that post I referred to, you were at 3400Mhz for stability. You had noted that you once got an error at around 5300%, hence why I ran to beyond 6400% with that RAM testing utility.
 
Yeah that's true, I saw no real problem with 3200-3400MHz really and for all intents and purposes there was little in the way of noticeable difference in games/apps at these frequencies, it would just have been nice to run at the rated 3600MHz I guess.

DDR4 btw will happily run at 1.5v in oc conditions without affecting stability it seems in general, but as with many things, each module can vary as well tbh. If this 3500MHz hits 6400% in Karhu then I will just leave it at that and see if game CTD returns at a later date, and if so, then drop to 3400MHz. I want stability, but memory bandwidth performance is also a factor given my use case (mostly editing in large batches with some gaming week-round).
 
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I suppose it might be about compromise. Good luck and please post back how things go for you.
When I read a little, and noted in this thread, about Gear 1 then I "wanted" it. I would have been completely blissfully ignorant about what it meant and happy enough with my P an E core overclock. I can't remember if the MSI board I initially had uses Gear 1 when set at Auto but I do know that this Gigabyte uses Gear 2. Maybe it would default to Gear 1 with 3200Mhz RAM.
Good to know about the DDR4 voltages.
 
Yup all about some form of compromise really. So far 3111% and no errors. I have a strong feeling about this as it's pretty clear that 3600MHz with this volume of RAM per module is where the issue seems to lie. There is a sweet spot somewhere between DRAM voltage and System Agent voltage and maybe something else, but it's too much faff to test and trace all combinations given the relative tiny difference between say 3400MHz and 3600MHz I suppose.
 
I forgot to post a photo of the rig, I'll tone down the RGB later:p Sorry for the crappy phone photo, I haven't even taken off the protective wrap from the glass panel, will do so once I move the PC to its proper place.

 
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