Post your setup!

[ScumCoder]

[sirarthurhipoint]

His name is Snort

 

i7 5775c processor

JieShuo RX 580 2048SP graphics card

MSI Z97 Mini ITX board

16GB DDR3 memory

1TB SATA SSD

Thermalright Aqua Elite 120 V3 liquid cooler

Silverstone SG-13P case

Apevia 500W SFX power supply (with 3D printed bracket)

Pig costume parts

Squeaky nose

 

He will soon be going up to an i5 8600T and 32 gigs of DDR4

Edited June 12 by sirarthurhipoint
it wont let me delete the duplicate pic (see edit history)

[sirarthurhipoint]

^^The bowtie was moved up to be a bow, and he (she) now has an Intel CC150 processor with an ASUS H310 ITX board.

[Lu]

Gotta love 8th gen i5s. I used the snot out of a 8400 back when it came out. I'm considering building a HTPC for my projector and I'd love something like that. An ITX case and to have some fun with it. 

[sirarthurhipoint]

Silverstone SG-13P is that case.  They also come in white or black if you don't want it pink.

[Lu]

Hey people. 

I haven't posted here in a while. 

My rig is currently a 5800X on an Asus Prime X570-Pro, a 3070 and 16gb of ram @ 3000mhz. I use an nvme drive as boot drive and a combo of sata ssds and an hdd for massive storage. 

The rig has remained the same since I upgraded to the 5800X and 3070 in 2020. It does play my games mostly fine at 1440p with the exception being maybe Helldivers 2. It gets to 40-50 FPS on the most chaotic scenes. 

The rig also chuggs when I use Adobe Lightroom. 

I'm not really in a position to upgrade most of it right now, so in order to bring performance back a little, I thought I could switch my 16gb of 3000mhz ram for 32 or 64 of 3600mhz ram. This will allow me to use the Infinity Fabric at the highest rated speed 1800 MHZ instead of the current 1500. This should improve my 1% lows in HD2 by a little margin, and help Lightroom run better as it currently maxes out my 16gb. 

Am I crazy for wanting to upgrade my ram for a bit of performance in the 1% lows of CPU intensive games and make 1 photo editing program work well? 

The RAM would cost me about $75. I can get a  32 gb kit of G Skill Trident Z 3600mhz cl18 for $75. I can probably make back 20-35 bucks from selling my current kit too. 

What do you guys think?
 

Edited September 25 by Lu (see edit history)

[BTGBullseye]

@Lu

 

I HIGHLY recommend getting 3600 RAM, since it gives around a 3% FPS increase on most games. (the increased 1% lows are mostly from getting more RAM capacity, and more VRAM capacity) Also, going to 32GB is a really good idea, since that'd be enough for the foreseeable future, but 16GB is right on the edge already right now.

 

As it is right now, I'm getting similar FPS to you in HD2 at 1440p, but I only have an 5700XT GPU with the same CPU, but I also have 32GB of the best 3600 RAM possible for the platform.

 

Here's my current rig:

CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X

Motherboard: ASRock X570M Pro4

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 3600 16-16-16-30 4x8GB

GPU: ASRock RX 5700 XT Reference with Eiswolf GPX-Pro 240 AIO and 2x Arctic P12 PWM fans

Case: Antec P5

Storage: 1TB HP EX950 NVME, 1TB Mushkin Pilot-E NVME, 2x Seagate Constellation ES 2TB in RAID1

PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 12 M 1000W

Display: ASUS ROG Strix XG32VC

CPU Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer II 120mm with push-pull Arctic P12 PWM fans

Keyboard: GMMK with Kailh Pro Purple switches and Black Aura keycaps

Mouse: G502 X Lightspeed + Powerplay mousepad for full wireless operation

Sound: Sound Blaster Play! 3, Soundcore Space Q45 headphones

OS: Windows 10

[Lu]

That's a lovely rig, btw. What made you go with  AIO instead of air cooling? I'm going Micro ATX for my next one and will try to get a smaller case like yours. Full ATX is just too cumbersome if you're not swimming in expansion cards. 

Ok, you definitely convinced me lol. I will be increasing my RAM to 32 GB. I found a CL17 stick for $14 more than the CL18 I was eyeing. Do you think it's worth it to go for CL17? I'm trying to decide between the Ripjaws V CL18, which are 35 bucks each, or the KINGSTON FURY BEAST RGB DDR4 3600MHZ – 16GB, which is CL17 and costs $50 each. The RGB could be sweet to have. I've never had RGB RAM. 

And Helldivers 2 is my most played game and will continue to be for a long time, so to me it makes sense to want to optimize my system to get the most in it. 

There's also this wild card kit that isn't bad at all, the Patriot Viper 4 Steel DDR4 4000MHz – 16GB (2 x 8GB) 19-19-19-39 for $40. I could get two and have 32gb of 4000MHz memory lol. Howeve,r I read online it's hard to get going with my CPU/Mobo combo and would probably have to dial down the speed a bit and adjust timings manually, and I don't really want to tinker that much right now. 
 

Here's my current rig, fully listed:

CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X

Motherboard: Asus Prime X570-Pro

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 3000 CL16-18-18-38 2 x 8gb

GPU: ASUS STRIX 3070 

Storage:
480GB Adata SU650 SATA for boot
3TB Toshiba DT01ACA HDD for mass storage 

2 TB Kingston Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD for my games/most used files 

PSU: Seasonic Focus GM-850 

Display: Asrock PG32QF2B 1440p/165hz VA Plus an HP Z24i G2 1080p IPS panel from work lol

CPU Cooler: BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 4

Keyboard: Red Dragon Dragonborn K360RGB

Mouse: Logitech G305. Was using a G600 but I grew tired of the cable. I do miss the extra palm rest. 

Sound: Oppo HA-2 Headphone dac/amp + Audio Technica MSR7 or 7hz Timeless II 

OS: Windows 10. 
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox MB511 RGB. It has an extra pair of BeQuiet PureWings 2 fans providing extra exhaust. 

 

 

[BTGBullseye]

I went for AIO because at the time I had a Hyper 212-like on it that couldn't handle the heatload, and nothing else that could was in my price range at the time. (Thermalright stuff wasn't available anywhere for less than the AIO back then) That's the main reason. I also am a fan of Arctic's fans.  Nowadays, I recommend Thermalright to anyone without hesitation as they are inexpensive, available, and performant. (and most look pretty neat too)

 

There are full ATX motherboard capable cases in the mATX desktop size. They just shift the layout a bit, and are generally a little harder to find, but usually around the same price. It's almost always cheaper to get one of those and an ATX board than go full mATX with everything if you want/need the desk space. (I got an incredible deal on both my motherboard and case, or I would've gone full ATX for both)

 

Now, about the RAM...

 

Honestly, if you can get G.Skill RAM, it's going to be more stable at better timings than any other RAM that will work in your system, especially if you can get 3600 with 16-16-16 timings. (if it's available, it shouldn't be more than $20 more than the 18's, though it's been a few years so prices may have changed) When it comes to RAM, stability is infinitely more important than speed. Also, the 5800X's memory controller won't do over 3600 on the RAM unless you have a golden sample chip, and you'd've had to gotten really unlucky for it to not be able to do 3600. (basically, always look exclusively for 3600 with the tightest timings possible for the 3000 and 5000 series AM4 chips) In addition, don't think that you can take higher speed RAM and turn it down to the 3600 sweet spot, unless you're willing to sit there and manually tune it for several weeks. (not exaggerating, that's what it took to find a slightly better tune to the timings of my RAM that's already at 3600)

 

If you're not aware, the timings and the MT/S speed determine the latency, which is the actual speed you need to make as low as possible. Going to a higher MT/S can look impressive, but generally the timings are significantly worse, and result in significantly worse RAM latency, which means worse performance. A good source for learning more details about this is here: https://hardwaresecrets.com/understanding-ram-timings

 

Don't mix RAM kits if at all possible. I got incredibly lucky that my two 2x8GB kits were stable after tweaking a few timings, and that's with identical kits that ended up being from the same production lot despite buying them over a year apart. Your best bet is to get a 2x16GB kit, as that'll save you a LOT of headache in the upgrade if you're not a silicon lottery winner.

 

As for the RGBness of the RAM, I've personally never seen the appeal. I mean, sure it looks interesting for the 10-15 seconds you're looking at it instead of your monitor, but is that really worth the extra money you're spending on it? It's not adding any performance, and frequently increases the heat generated. (which can in some cases either reduce the lifespan or performance of the RAM modules) How much time overall are you going to spend looking at the inside of your case VS how much time you're going to spend using the system for doing things... Only you can decide those.