Rebuild considering AMD

H

haste.

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 11, 2011
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Alright AMD fans, I need some feedback. I can get a 7820x and msi pro carbon x299 for just under 700 at microcenter. I'm doing a rebuild and actually want the fans of AMD to fire off reasoning to go with ryzen with the above pricing.

I'm not a prosumser - work in finance so do use many programs at the same time, but core # just speeds up swapping between them and let's me be lazy with my pc.. Also dabble in everything IT. Needs to be solid for gaming and thinking about vr but that leans on gpu. I'm finally feeling that finally there is a shift to multithreading in software, hence why I'm asking with AMDs more cores but slightly less performance per core.

Fire it off! And yes I know for gaming at this time core speed is king, but I'm fairly certain that I could get the 7820x to 4.5 constant fairly easily.
 
I'm coming from a 5820k which started showing signs of its age and I've been running at stock for a few months - sure the ryzen will be much faster. I was considering a 1080ti on top with prices coming closer to msrp so that would save me a little on that. What are the potential pitfalls of the 470 platform vs x299? I know the older ryzen had much fewer pcie lanes...
 
IM in the exact same boat and will be puling the trigger on a rebuild tonight.....mater of fact im debating the same cpus....shit they both seem like good choices. Only difference is i have to order from the egg or amazon. I have heard rumers that x470 boards will get to drop in 7nm cpus next year and that makes mean lean toward the 2700x for better upgrade paths. I also like how the amd have protection from meltdown stuff going around.

I think both platforms gives myself an increase in performance of double in cinibench
 
I've used both the 7820X and 2700X and you can't really tell any difference in day to day performance. I'd save $200 and get the AM4 platform. Unless you have something very specific that needs more than 8 cores/ 16 threads that is.
 
I would ask the both of you what do you want for future upgradeability? Intel has a particularly poor track record of future upgrade planning. Pretty much each time they drop a processor release, they force you to buy another motherboard to socket it. AMD has the track record of thinking ahead enough to design a chipset/motherboard environment that can handle a few processor generations before having to move to another. For example the current AM4 and TR4 sockets should be able to handle Zen, Zen+ and Zen2 and maybe even Zen3. My personal peeve with Intel, even in their HEDT environment is the lack of PCIe 3.0 resources. I currently run a TR4 setup that has a whopping 60 PCIe 3.0 lanes and a stupidly high number of USB3 ports. I could run four M.2 4x PCIe 3.0 speed drives and still have enough PCIe lanes to run 2x crossfire/SLI video cards using a full 32 lanes. I also don't get windows dropping any USB3 ports because of lack of USB resources (I had that problem a lot on my Intel z270 system). No compromises at all. Now the AM4 systgems don't get anywhere near that, but you are gonna pay a lot less in the AMD camp for your builds - and be able to use those longer into the future.
 
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Kirby said:
I've used both the 7820X and 2700X and you can't really tell any difference in day to day performance. I'd save $200 and get the AM4 platform. Unless you have something very specific that needs more than 8 cores/ 16 threads that is.
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Kirby do you fully recommend that asus motherboard your using and that memory as well. (stuff in your sig) also would 32gb of ram do me any good? or just get 16gb?
 
haste. said:
I'm coming from a 5820k which started showing signs of its age and I've been running at stock for a few months - sure the ryzen will be much faster. I was considering a 1080ti on top with prices coming closer to msrp so that would save me a little on that. What are the potential pitfalls of the 470 platform vs x299? I know the older ryzen had much fewer pcie lanes...
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The lack of PCIe lanes is probably my biggest gripe with the platform but realistically it shouldn't be an issue unless you end up running sli with cards powerful enough to be bottlenecked by 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes. If you might want to run sli and 2 nvme drives I would make sure that enabling the second M.2 slot doesn't force you into 8x/4x PCIe configuration like my board(Crosshair 7). In fact if you're planning to use thee second M.2 slot I would pay attention to where it gets its bandwidth and whether it has access to 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes since all the boards seem to handle that differently.

primetime said:
Kirby do you fully recommend that asus motherboard your using and that memory as well. (stuff in your sig) also would 32gb of ram do me any good? or just get 16gb?
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Using 32gb is going to limit memory speed(3000-3200 mhz seems to be a common limit vs 3400-3600 with 16gb) so unless you need it I would stick with 16gb. I've also heard that 2x16gb tends to work a little better with x470/Ryzen+ while 4x8gb tends to work a little better with x370(b350)/Ryzen, that's based off of a small sample size though so I can't guaranty it's accurate.

I'm not Kirby but I have the C7H as well and it's been a nice board to work with but it's probably more than I need. One of the main reasons I bought it was for the extra overclocking options in the BIOS but I don't think I've used the extra settings except to experiment with some, I guess it's still nice to have the option though.
 
primetime said:
Kirby do you fully recommend that asus motherboard your using and that memory as well. (stuff in your sig) also would 32gb of ram do me any good? or just get 16gb?
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I haven't had any problems with it. No issues with stability and my memory works perfectly at rated speeds when I use the XMP profile. I just happen to have 32GB memory because I had a quad Channel x299 board.

I also used the x370 prime Pro board which was a POS compared to this board. But the strix b350-f board was also great to work with. I also have a ASRock x370 board here and while the BIOS is less featured it seems to work pretty well.
 
Latest personal PCIe lane rabbit-hole: try 10Gbit-anything.

I believe TR/Epyc is the only way to do this with an AIC without either limiting GPU lanes or limiting the NIC if you don't go built in. And if you go built in, you get 10Gbase-T/RJ-45- now look at the price of switches and/or SFP+ transceivers :D.
 
Not counting my various laptops (which are all intel based), my last 3 desktop builds have all been AMD builds. From a 5930K I've had a 1700, a 2400G and my last a 2700x and they all went smoothly without issue.

While part of that AMD decision was due to the core count, the other part has been the fact that Intel based chips will be more vulnerable in the short term to various chip design flaws (spectre, meltdown, etc.) while AMD chips are also but less so.

I've asked numerous places / times and haven't gotten a single good reply on how or when Intel will address these flaws, or for how long - if the patches themselves should be cracked / broken down the road. New flaw variants are also being found still and all seem to be on the Intel side.

While Intel continues to win on all benchmarks I've seen, outside of the core heavy ones which favor AMD, those all seem to be benchmark racing and not something a user will feel or notice in day to day use. IMO security issues are very real especially if you do work on confidential / critical / secure or financial transactions related work on that PC.
 
dvsman said:
While Intel continues to win on all benchmarks I've seen, outside of the core heavy ones which favor AMD, those all seem to be benchmark racing and not something a user will feel or notice in day to day use. IMO security issues are very real especially if you do work on confidential / critical / secure or financial transactions related work on that PC.
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...shouldn't this stuff be airgapped?
 
cyberguyz said:
I would ask the both of you what do you want for future upgradeability? Intel has a particularly poor track record of future upgrade planning. Pretty much each time they drop a processor release, they force you to buy another motherboard to socket it. AND has the track record of thinking ahead enough to design a chipset/motherboard environment that can handle a few processor generations before having to move to another. For example the current AM4 and TR4 sockets should be able to handle Zen, Zen+ and Zen2 and maybe even Zen3. My personal peeve with Intel, even in their HEDT environment is the lack of PCIe 3.0 resources. I currently run a TR4 setup that has a whopping 60 PCIe 3.0 lanes and a stupidly high number of USB3 ports. I could run four M.2 4x PCIe 3.0 speed drives and still have enough PCIe lanes to run 2x crossfire/SLI video cards using a full 32 lanes. I also don't get windows dropping any USB3 ports because of lack of USB resources (I had that problem a lot on my Intel z270 system). No compromises at all. Now the AM4 systgems don't get anywhere near that, but you are gonna pay a lot less in the AMD camp for your builds - and be able to use those longer into the future.
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Recently Intel has had that track record, AMD was never as bad but was changing sockets early on when they were king... If I'm dropping $400+ on a CPU I expect it to last until the next socket either way so I'm not totally concerned. The 5820k has given me at least 3 years and still holds up to basically anything I throw at it.

I have a little concern about the PCIe lanes because I was thinking of replacing all my damn smaller Sata SSD's with a couple M2s. Since it looks like AMD has reserved 4 lanes for those would two M2's eat into my x16 lane for the GPU?

Luckily I followed a gentleman's advice here on [H] and was able to get this rig up and running again after a bit of doing things I never thought I would do to a motherboard, but I have the damn upgrade bug now lol!
 
Ebernanut said:
The lack of PCIe lanes is probably my biggest gripe with the platform but realistically it shouldn't be an issue unless you end up running sli with cards powerful enough to be bottlenecked by 8 PCIe 3.0 lanes. If you might want to run sli and 2 nvme drives I would make sure that enabling the second M.2 slot doesn't force you into 8x/4x PCIe configuration like my board(Crosshair 7). In fact if you're planning to use thee second M.2 slot I would pay attention to where it gets its bandwidth and whether it has access to 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes since all the boards seem to handle that differently.
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Thanks man. That literally answers my response to another post before you. I'd probably throw a 1080ti in it, which I know wouldn't juice the 16x (not sure how close they are getting to the 8x) but if I'm holding on to the CPU and platform for a number of years I'll certainly upgrade to a newer generation of flagship consumer card within that time... so there is some concern. And I'm almost certain I would get 2 x 500gb m2.
 
kirbyrj said:
I also have a ASRock x370 board here and while the BIOS is less featured it seems to work pretty well.
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What's up with ASRock? After they disbanded from Asus they were putting out some really impressive boards at great prices, but the x99 extreme7 (of something similar) I tried from them a number of years ago had a broken bios that was extremely limited.
 
haste. said:
AMD was never as bad but was changing sockets early on when they were king
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They weren't bad when they weren't innovating ;)

And they're still dealing with issues; many/most 300-series boards were built poorly/halfassedly to the point that newer, higher-end processors that are otherwise compatible simply won't run well. Some 400-series boards also suffer from this it seems.

With Intel lately, it seems that they're iterating chipsets quite a bit because they're having to improvise their product line in the face of their 10nm issues; the imminent high-TDP 14nm++(+?) octo-core consumer CPU seems to be the ultimate expression of that. The current socket was never meant to approach the sustained TDPs they're at now, and chipset/board revisions have reflected that.

On the AMD side, it's more just 'buyer beware', except that documentation that you're looking for so you can make a good decision is buried to the point that you largely don't even know to look for it.
 
dvsman said:
While Intel continues to win on all benchmarks I've seen, outside of the core heavy ones which favor AMD, those all seem to be benchmark racing and not something a user will feel or notice in day to day use. IMO security issues are very real especially if you do work on confidential / critical / secure or financial transactions related work on that PC.
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Working with my IT security team we have it pretty locked down. It's still my understanding that the Intel flaws would require physical access to the PC to implement (I apologize if I'm wrong and honestly I should know that). I have a pretty nice camera system on my house that would alert me if there was any intrusion and if the criminal wants to go to the levels that they would be able to bypass that and encryption, well they would have gotten to it somehow. I also never work with individuals accounts from home, it's the organizations and usually just getting on the core to accessing the accounting platform.
 
haste. said:
What's up with ASRock? After they disbanded from Asus they were putting out some really impressive boards at great prices, but the x99 extreme7 (of something similar) I tried from them a number of years ago had a broken bios that was extremely limited.
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Seem to work great for me- I prefer ASUS, but ASUS just isn't always on the ball with features or even initial quality/stability.
 
IdiotInCharge - How do you like your z370 platform? I also just talked crap about ASRock, but haven't had experience with them in a long time - everything all good?

Edit: Beat me too it.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Seem to work great for me- I prefer ASUS, but ASUS just isn't always on the ball with features or even initial quality/stability.
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For me in the TR world the Asrock board I am using now has every feature I could want and more than the Asus boards at the same price offer. While I have usually lived in the Asus world I am pleasantly surprised with the quality of motherboard I have from Asrock.
 
haste. said:
IdiotInCharge - How do you like your z370 platform? I also just talked crap about ASRock, but haven't had experience with them in a long time - everything all good?

Edit: Beat me too it.
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This one works great- also wound up grabbing a Z270-ITX board for a different build, which is also working great. My last Asus is a Z170-AR, which is about to be put back to use, and it worked great... even had above-average integrated audio that handled my Sennheiser HD600 well enough, and those are sensitive 300Ω cans.

Generally speaking, it's the fan stuff that ASRock lacks over ASUS, that I notice. But that's also not been a problem on my current system; the Corsair H115i has its own controller setup that works well enough and the board seems to keep everything else in line. This build is silent at idle, and only distantly audible under load.

Oh! And I just picked up a replacement for this board, also ASRock, because it's the only Z370 with integrated 10GBase-T, for some reason.

It was that or pay for the NIC separately at the same price as the delta between the boards, and then still lose half of the PCIe lanes going to the GPU.
 
cyberguyz said:
For me in the TR world the Asrock board I am using now has every feature I could want and more than the Asus boards at the same price offer. While I have usually lived in the Asus world I am pleasantly surprised with the quality of motherboard I have from Asrock.
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I've had some issues with the Z68/Z77 generation- stuff that just outright stopped working. Corrupt BIOS etc. But the current stuff seems to run quite well.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
This one works great- also wound up grabbing a Z270-ITX board for a different build, which is also working great. My last Asus is a Z170-AR, which is about to be put back to use, and it worked great... even had above-average integrated audio that handled my Sennheiser HD600 well enough, and those are sensitive 300Ω cans.

Generally speaking, it's the fan stuff that ASRock lacks over ASUS, that I notice. But that's also not been a problem on my current system; the Corsair H115i has its own controller setup that works well enough and the board seems to keep everything else in line. This build is silent at idle, and only distantly audible under load.

Oh! And I just picked up a replacement for this board, also ASRock, because it's the only Z370 with integrated 10GBase-T, for some reason.

It was that or pay for the NIC separately at the same price as the delta between the boards, and then still lose half of the PCIe lanes going to the GPU.
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I have HD650's, which have a similar sensitivity as the 600s but are a little more forgiving, and the last Asus board I had all the way back to the 4770k had well above average integrated audio. Now I didn't use it for long as I was just making sure everything was working and had a x-fi titanium which is now replaced with an x7. Although I will say sometimes driving power is a little over exaggerated - the x7 is running deftech 7000 series towers at the base rated output of around 20w per channel and it's alright. I once had the x7 going to a 150w stereo amp and a desktop headphone amp and after pulling both the difference is negligible - and I'm a bit of a sound nerd.

To get this guy up and running I did a primenow of the H100i Pro rbg and because of a heat shield over the I/O panel wasn't able to get the USB installed for the Corsair controller. Had a H110i previously and never really used the corsair control software - just cranked up the pump in the bios and went on with life. And also had to install into a PWR slot instead of one of the CPU_fan slots so it's basically uncontrolled with max PWR on the pump. Got the Thermaltake Riing radiator fans that have their own controller, so not too worried about that (but now that I think of that they are going to the hub then into the waterblock so hopefully are running at their stated speeds). I did a quick and dirty OC on the 5820k yesterday and managed 4.2 @ 1.15cpu with Aida stress test maxing at right around 58-59c, although their CPU package diode registered in at around 64c.

Two questions - in your opinion is the Corsair software worth remounting the block to get access with the above mentioned temps? I would like to clean it off because I attempted to use the standoffs from the H110i which were a little short and slaughtered the dow corning they pre-apply... was just trying to see if this guy would fire up. And what are you putting in that Z170 ;)?

(sorry we have gotten off topic)
 
haste. said:
Two questions - in your opinion is the Corsair software worth remounting the block to get access with the above mentioned temps? I would like to clean it off because I attempted to use the standoffs from the H110i which were a little short and slaughtered the dow corning they pre-apply... was just trying to see if this guy would fire up. And what are you putting in that Z170 ;)?
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Not really; I use it because I have other Corsair stuff that uses it as a controller, to include a keyboard and memory (for lighting control), so it works. It's been buggy in the recent past though, with the main issue being that the fan speed will get 'stuck' on a higher profile and simply be too loud. Haven't had that issue lately.

But if your acoustics are under control, I'd skip it.

And the Z170 has a 7600k, which will run Server 2016 with AD/DS (hopefully!), serve as a NAS, and probably do firewalling/routing/IDS/IPS with Sophos whenever I get up the guts to try it, or potentially pfsense, along with a pihole VM. Might also have it run the Ubiquiti stuff, but that's not as necessary.

Note: using onboard video here and a 10Gbit (used) NIC in the x16 that will 'trunk' to a 10Gbit switch, and probably using the onboard NIC to connect to WAN.
 
IdiotInCharge said:
Not really; I use it because I have other Corsair stuff that uses it as a controller, to include a keyboard and memory (for lighting control), so it works. It's been buggy in the recent past though, with the main issue being that the fan speed will get 'stuck' on a higher profile and simply be too loud. Haven't had that issue lately.

But if your acoustics are under control, I'd skip it.

And the Z170 has a 7600k, which will run Server 2016 with AD/DS (hopefully!), serve as a NAS, and probably do firewalling/routing/IDS/IPS with Sophos whenever I get up the guts to try it, or potentially pfsense, along with a pihole VM. Might also have it run the Ubiquiti stuff, but that's not as necessary.

Note: using onboard video here and a 10Gbit (used) NIC in the x16 that will 'trunk' to a 10Gbit switch, and probably using the onboard NIC to connect to WAN.
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I have a floor fan in my home office that I run quite often so not terribly concerned about fan noise - and if going to game usually use my headphones which are open but block out most of the fan noise. I don't think that these riing fans spin up much more than 1500rpm either so should be pretty quiet maxed out and claim 2mm static pressure. All the rest are 200mm or cougars which are near silent.

I fired up the Corsair software once on the h110 cause I have other corsair stuff as well - it's neat and communicated well with my motherboard so the monitors were fine, but never found a ton of value to it. I guess I can mess with the rbg LEDs if I get it up and running, but again, oh well. Thanks for the input man and good luck on your 170 build - seems like a fairly big project! Always been tempted when reading about the Ubiquiti stuff.
 
haste. said:
Thanks for the input man and good luck on your 170 build - seems like a fairly big project! Always been tempted when reading about the Ubiquiti stuff.
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You're welcome, and thanks- and the Ubiquiti stuff has been the easy part ;). Knowing how to do stuff is usually just GIYF (their documentation is non-existent, but the community is there), but knowing what to do has been the challenge- and the fun part, for me. Also, stuff works great!
 
IdiotInCharge said:
You're welcome, and thanks- and the Ubiquiti stuff has been the easy part ;). Knowing how to do stuff is usually just GIYF (their documentation is non-existent, but the community is there), but knowing what to do has been the challenge- and the fun part, for me. Also, stuff works great!
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I'm trying to learn a bit of "electrician" right now. Want to put a few outlets in my office closet to move the modem, router, firewall, etc. off my desk and redo/relocate my working station. My buddy is IBEW but has done so much for me throughout the years I feel bad as he always does work for a few beers. I have been just asking for bits and pieces of what I need to do. So I understand part of the fun is the challenge!! I just need my wife's father to help with fixing the walls once I finish :)
 
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CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7GHz 8-Core Processor ($319.79 @ SuperBiiz)
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