Octopus Overlords

AMD seems to have a real winner with the new Zen 4 architecture. Improvements on performance, efficiency, and very cost competitive against Intel. I am still rocking an i7-6700K which is still serving me ok. I hope it lasts until DDR5 pricing settles out.

Anandtech is a shell of what it was, but this will do. Plenty of more articles and videos out there. I see this a much bigger deal when AMD had the brief lead with the 1 GHz Athlon and the first Pentium 4s were running very hot and a bit short of clock for clock performance.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/17585/am ... e-high-end

This is where I pour out a 40 for the lost days of trusted PC hobbyists and their amazing research/knowledge (that they freely shared).

Zen 4 looks like a pretty significant upgrade. I've got to replace a PC this fall and for the first time ever I'm considering AMD. Of course, Raptor Lake releases in a month, so Intel may strike back.

Yeah, Anandtech lost so much information and credibility once Anand left to work for Apple

Back in the day I used to use Anandtech for info when it was time to build a new system or upgrade. Its where I got all my info on the Celeron 300A $ 450mhz. I still have that cpu and used it at 450 for the life of it. I think my posts are still on the forum there. That was back in the days of me being so in love with pc hardware and dreaming all the time. Now I know very little on the hardware front and about the same on pc game releases and upcoming anything. But back then I was also reading 5 or more magazines a month on it all. I dont read much on the web these days.

I had some hardware fail over the last couple of days and decided it was an opportunity to upgrade. One factor pulling me that way was that Microcenter has a great deal going. If you buy a AMD CPU and pair it with a motherboard they throw in 32GB of G.Skill DDR5 memory in. Fantastic. I ran into one snag while assembling it - the CPU cooler they recommended to me doesn't fit in my case. Even though my case is huge. I just ran out and got another cooler. Hopefully I'll have this up and running in a couple of hours and can put it through some tests.

malchior wrote: ↑Sat Oct 01, 2022 2:35 pm I had some hardware fail over the last couple of days and decided it was an opportunity to upgrade. One factor pulling me that way was that Microcenter has a great deal going. If you buy a AMD CPU and pair it with a motherboard they throw in 32GB of G.Skill DDR5 memory in. Fantastic. I ran into one snag while assembling it - the CPU cooler they recommended to me doesn't fit in my case. Even though my case is huge. I just ran out and got another cooler. Hopefully I'll have this up and running in a couple of hours and can put it through some tests.

I'd love to know your parts list if you are willing to share!

Here is a rough approximation

It is a bit of a frankenstein right now. I kept my same case, power supply, lighting (Razer hub), etc. Notable is that I had to emergency buy RAM on Saturday night and the liquid cooler was whatever I could get at a local computer store. The free RAM was giving me issues and it isn't on the compatibility list. I'm hoping BIOS updates fix it and I'll just end up with 64 GB eventually. I left out a couple of misc M.2 drives.

I think this is what I'm going with. It's going to be my major work and gaming machine. Information is still scarce right now for a lot of things, so I'm hoping this is going to be solid. The video card is a place holder - I'm still waiting to hear what AMD is going to launch before I make a decision. I am ending up building my own and not doing water cooling with the exception of an AIO for the CPU. I really need 64gb of memory, but the compatibility lists are slim and info about EXPO memory configuration is scarce. I'm taking a shot on the gskill and will get a couple more sticks if it works.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 4.5 GHz 16-Core Processor ($699.00 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 420 A-RGB 68.9 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus ROG CROSSHAIR X670E HERO ATX AM5 Motherboard ($699.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory ($219.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital Black SN850X 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($134.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Red Pro 16 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive ($299.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA FTW3 ULTRA GAMING GeForce RTX 3090 Ti 24 GB Video Card ($1759.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master HAF 700 ATX Full Tower Case ($317.05 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Cooler Master V1200 1200 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Case Fan: Cooler Master SickleFlow 120 ARGB 3 In 1 62 CFM 120 mm Fans 3-Pack ($49.99 @ B&H)
Total: $4180.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-10-04 15:06 EDT-0400

Alefroth wrote: ↑Wed Oct 05, 2022 12:40 am

It's pretty top of the line for sure. I'm going a bit overkill as this is also my work machine, I do photo and video work, and between me, my wife and my child individual systems are used for 6-8 years.