Upgrade advice please

I wonder how much diff there is between the 9900x and the 7900x?
good thing there's a website for that innit? :P

 
Whoops, my bad, maybe swap with the B650M Aorus Elite AX.

The B650M-A Prime is cheaper, just £130, but based on the Prime boards previous poor performance in thermal tests I'm not sure I'd want to fit a 9900X in one.
You could if you just made sure that there’s enough airflow over the VRMs.

You could just make sure that there’s a fan pointed at the VRM heatsink or enough airflow going across the motherboard but not everyone’s a fan (intentional) of a random fan strapped to their motherboard.
 
don't cheap out on the motherboard. if you're doing hardcore content work, you'd be hammering the cpu for max power draw for hours on end.
the last thing you need is the VRMs overheating and throttling (and therefore lowering the CPU clockspeeds) and slowing down your workflow
 
I've used all brands of motherboards (asrock, asus, msi, gigabyte) they're all much of a muchness at the end of the day...
 
Here’s an example where you don’t buy a brand, you buy a model within the brands lineup.

Asrock mislead customers as per this video over at Hardware unboxed


Write up here https://www.techspot.com/review/2424-asrock-motherboard-fail/

Asrock, IIRC, then put Hardware Unboxed on a blacklist of media outlets that wouldn’t receive review samples of new products but there was an outcry and they reversed that devision.

Nvidia also put Hardware Unboxed on a blacklist for review samples when they tested a new model of GPU by Nvidia and found it to be poor value for money and criticised the product. Nvidia have reversed the decision and still sends them review samples.

Gigabyte did something similar when Gamers Nexus tested their very dangerous PSUs models that kept catching on fire and blamed GN for testing using unrealistic test conditions, conditions that were found to be basic tests that any PSU should pass and Gigabyte have changed the config for those PSU models after many reviews found the same issue and made that model of PSU less likely to catch fire.

The most egregious example is probably the Gigabyte one because a fan pointed at the VRMS can and does solve the overheating issue (even if it’s an ugly solution and shouldn’t be required in the first place and your whole computer catching fire is more pressing matter if you really think about it).

See here for more information https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/17/...ies-psus-gp-p850gm-gp-p750gm-exchange-returns

I like MSI products because I only buy their good models (X570 Tomahawk, B450 Tomahawk Max) and a lot of people have pointed out that MSI does make really bad product models at times which I avoid by doing my homework before I buy anything.

I have an Asus B550i Strix at the moment and can’t fault it other than I think that the BIOS layout is stupid.
 
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I can get either the Asrock B650M Pro Rs WIFI, or spend a bit more and get the Asus TUF Gaming B650M-E WIFI

I am also going for the Ryzen 9 7900x

Thankls for all your help
Go watch that AM5 roundup by Buildzoid, he will give you advice on which motherboard to buy at your budget.

He doesn’t just suggest the most expensive overclocking motherboards, he takes into account all users from normies to high end overclockers.
 
I wastch that video, the guy sounds like Kermit the Frog :)

He reccomended the Asroc, a different model which I cant find in the uk. Also techspot reccomended the Asrock I refered to as well
Then go with the Techspot one.

He does sound a bit like Kermit the frog lol.

You can spend more money on a better model if it’s what you want so don’t worry too much.

What I value in a motherboard is having 2 by 8 times pci-e in ATX and 2 DIMM slots in ITX / higher end motherboards that focus on overclocking.

One nice to have feature is BIOS recovery after a bad setting but that doesn’t really work that well with AMD boards because AMD messed up the implementation and Gigabytes implementation is to have two BIOS chips which is great in theory but useless in real life.

You don’t need pci-e 5.0 if you’re looking at that feature - it won’t do much at all except push the price up.

Edit; I looked at both and go with the Asrock, it has optional Thunderbolt connectivity which is useful. The Asus has pci-e 5.0 which is useless, as I said above.
 
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Another thing. Corsair Memory. Just looking around for the best price and its seems a minefield

CORSAIR VENGEANCE DDR5 RAM 64GB (2x32GB) 5600MHz CL40 Intel XMP iCUE Compatible Computer Memory - Black (CMK64GX5M2B5600C40)​

CORSAIR VENGEANCE DDR5 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 5600MHz CL40 AMD EXPO Intel XMP iCUE Compatible Computer Memory – Grey (CMK64GX5M2B5600Z40)​


Can one buy the wrong stuff?
 
Another thing. Corsair Memory. Just looking around for the best price and its seems a minefield

CORSAIR VENGEANCE DDR5 RAM 64GB (2x32GB) 5600MHz CL40 Intel XMP iCUE Compatible Computer Memory - Black (CMK64GX5M2B5600C40)​

CORSAIR VENGEANCE DDR5 64GB (2x32GB) DDR5 5600MHz CL40 AMD EXPO Intel XMP iCUE Compatible Computer Memory – Grey (CMK64GX5M2B5600Z40)​


Can one buy the wrong stuff?
One of this kits works better with Intel (XMP) and AMD (EXPO) since it has memory overclocking profiles for both and the other works only with one.

Confusing, I know. Get the one with both profiles as it’ll make selling it easier down the road or if you even move to the opposite brand, you should be fine.

But even then, it’s splitting hairs that you probably won’t notice.

Maybe buy a kit of RAM that’s on your motherboards QVL list tho? Just to be safe.
 
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