The 12600K is definitely something I’m considering, but if I can manage on a 12400F then it means I can stick with the Noctua L9i . 12400F has a base/boost TDP of 65W and 117W, which is about all you’d want to have under that cooler. In fact, it’d probably thermal throttle before it gets to 117W, so it would slightly limit the maximum turbo boost of a 12400F. Whether or not that’d make a tangible impact in games however is doubtful.
So…. I had no idea that 13th & 14th gen Intel chips were compatible with LGA1700 boards using 600 or 700 chipsets. I just assumed they were still up to their old tricks with each new CPU generation requiring a new motherboard. Aorus’ compatibility list for the B660I board lists 13th & 14th gen as supported with a BIOS/UEFI upgrade. This opens up a whole new range of options. Whether or not a 13th or 14th gen CPU is worth the extra price over a 12th gen is a different matter, especially when I’d still be using DDR4. More review research required…! At least the 13400F and the 14400F now have 4 efficiency cores as well as the 6 hyperthreaded performance cores. The 12400F can be had for around £125 and the 13th & 14th gen equivalents are about £200. And it would almost certainly mean switching from the L9i cooler.
What’s that? I think he was engaging in some masochism and was using that tiny copper one by TR? It whirred a lot
So far: 13400F seems to be basically a 12600K in terms of performance. But I haven't seen anything about the 14400F yet, that looks like it's not long been released. Yeah that looks like a great little cooler. Can't seem to find it anywhere in stock though!
Yeah, it's really good, I love it, and it was designed with the Dan A4 in mind too, nudge nudge. If you do find one, swap out the fan for a Noctua - and fit a foam gasket between it and the fin stack - better cooling and quieter.
Well I ain't gonna lie the NUC was a ball bag. It arrived earlier today. Much earlier. I didn't realise he had wiped the SSD clean. So it took some head scratching. Intel also disable all of the LEDs by default, so I didn't even know if it was powering on. Stuck my ear next to it and yeah it worked. Unpack and set up. And then the problems began. I tried three times to install Windows 11, but this was happening. OK so I moved it to the desk and plugged in the network cable. Same. Now on Windows 11 if you do not have internet you cannot even install it. Apparently there is a hack left in, but in order to do that you must have a backslash on your keyboard and out of four it seems I do not. FFS. A few hours later I ended up caving and putting 10 on, so I can skip the internet setup part. Very frustrating tbh. In the meantime I thought it didn't even have WIFI in so I took it apart. It does, and that was when the penny dropped. Killer s**t. Killer s**t that doesn't work until you get INTO WINDOWS and install the drivers. I got 10 on, installed everything from the new Asus support page, and quelle surprise Asus are, well, Asus and not all of the drivers are there. So I had to use the dev id (party like it's 2003 !, no network drivers until you install them and unidentified hardware !) and then figured out it was the Tbolt and card reader that were inoperable. Went back to Asus, sure enough ain't there. In the meantime I figured out a workaround that is not possible here. Put in a cheapo USB wifi dongle (all at mum's right now) and that would have done the job. Yet the so called killer NIC? a load of turds in a basket. I shall be removing that and installing a Intel one ASAP. Overall it is very, very impressive. And very, very fast. I have tried several games (the ones I want to play on it, LAN stuff mostly) and it all flies along. Including HL2 etc. It even races trays. Which is hella impressive for one so small. Just do bear in mind if you ever get one they are a bit eccentric.
Arc 770m 16gb. It's funny because I always wanted an Arc, but it was literally like two days before I bought it that they are finally worth having.
Oh and what is hella annoying is that my mate only just told me that if you press ctrl alt and # you get \ ffs I'll put 11 on when I return.
Well, we go from one small yet impressive machine to another small yet impressive machine. Ran a bunch of benchmarks on my "main" PC last night, so I could swap my GPU & RAM into the i3-12100F machine this evening and do the same. Look at that puny little Silverstone RVZ03, it's so weedy and out of place on my desk compared to the Corsair 5000D monster! But in games (that is, games I actually play) that "puny" little i3-based machine keeps up with my "main" PC running a Ryzen 9 5900X . All at 1440p max settings with upscaling off (except where noted) Baldur's Gate 3: 5900X: approx. 75 to 110 FPS, with absolute low of about 40 12100F: approx. 65 to 110 FPS, with absolute low of about 30 FFVII Remake Intergrade: 5900X: maxes out at 120 12100F: maxes out at 120 Horizon Zero Dawn: 5900X: 123 avg, 64/227 min/max 12100F: 111 avg, 65/193 min/max CP2077: 1440p ultra, no upscaling: 5900X: 66 avg, 56/84 min/max 12100F: 67 avg, 54/87 min/max 1440p ultra, DLSS "Quality": 5900X: 83 avg, 72/104 min/max 12100F: 85 avg, 67/110 min/max 1440p, RT Overdrive w/DLSS "Auto": 5900X: 29 avg, 20/38 min/max 12100F: 30 avg, 22/41 min/max I was planning to benchmark Starfield, but I honestly don't think I care enough about it to even waste the disk space on it any more This wasn't exactly a big test bench run conducted under tightly controlled conditions, and I didn't go out of my way to find games that have more of a CPU bottleneck - I just wanted some performance figures that reflect my actual "real world" use case. And I know that the GPU has long been the main bottleneck in gaming. Even taking all that into consideration, my reaction can be summarised as: holy balls I was not expecting that! What I would have previously considered to be a "weedy" little 89W 4C/8T entry-level CPU is keeping up with a 142W 12C/24T CPU that was once one notch down from the highest spec in the range. OK so I got some more stutters/hitching, the lows were a bit lower, and I'm sure that if it were a more controlled test with data logging, multiple runs, etc, then I'd see more of a discernible difference in the data. And the 5900X would utterly annihilate the 12100F in highly-threaded "productivity" workloads. But as a "real world" test of what I actually do with my PC these days? It's more than enough to convince me. Though I still think I'll get an upgrade to a 12400F (or maybe a 14400F, once I've seen some benchmarks from "reliable" sources). Looks like you got a top bargain there, mate! I don't think I've ever heard of an A770M being used anywhere other than laptops, but a NUC seems like the perfect fit for it. The thing that was always going to let Intel down with their GPU efforts was drivers; it was a seriously iffy start, and there are still some major problems here and there, but they've made huge progress since launch. If this trajectory continues then it bodes very well for the upcoming "Battlemage" architecture.
Thanks man. TBH I was pretty grumpy yesterday. I awoke at 3:58 am for a wee and then the anxiety set in. “What if you miss the alarm?” And etc. RM delivery office is literally 80m from my flat. So when they open at 7 I’m fair game. They’ve literally shown up at 7:05 am before. So I wasn’t off to the best start. However I’ve been thinking it over this morning and the ball ache of building another PC, all of the separate deliveries, all of the chances for one thing not working, all of the spec of the hardware and etc? Makes it totally worth it. I still don’t think I could have built an ITX rig with the same spec for under a grand. And it would have been a lot bigger to boot. Off to mums today. Was supposed to fire up the nuc, go “OK it works” and leave yesterday but yeah no OS. I didn’t want to bugger off for two weeks then test it and find a fault. Need to clear the living room for mum as she’s got decorators coming in…… Will play more when I return.
Honestly, actually building the things is the part I really enjoy . It’s a **** when things go wrong or I have to fault-find, but I’ve just about got enough parts here now to do the ol’ “swap each part out individually” dance. 12700, ITX board, capable low-profile cooler, A770, 64GB DDR4, 2TB NVMe, SFX PSU, compact chassis… It could be done for under a grand, and it might just about be achievable for what you paid for the NUC if you got some good second-hand deals. But yes, it would be a lot bigger, no way in hell you’re going to find a chassis to fit all that in a ~2.5L volume. Intel’s A770 card is roughly 1L on its own, and you’ve still got to fit in board & cooler and the PSU. About the smallest GPU-capable production case you’re going to get - that isn’t made-to-order, isn’t from some random dodgy AliExpress/Taobao seller, and doesn’t require expensive DC-DC or uncommon PSUs - is probably the 7.2L Dan A4.
It doesn’t help that GPUs keep getting bigger. I was slightly bemused that the MSI Gaming X ‘slim’ was a full 3-slots thick!
Yeah, it’s daft. First they got longer, meaning cases had to get bigger… then they got wider, taking more PCIe space and forcing motherboard design changes… now they’re also getting taller, extending well beyond the height of the PCIe bracket. At some point the very clever and very well paid people who design high speed/high signal integrity PCIe interconnects are finally going to do something very clever and design a more suitable PCIe bus connector. They have to, there’s got to be a better design that doesn’t force us to use the fragile and decades-old PCB card-edge connector design for the monstrosities that modern GPUs have become.
To be faaaaair, they started off pretty long: (Malvineous, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) IBM CGA, 1981. (Two years before the CGA-compatible IBM 5153 monitor was released, 'cos IBM gotta IBM.) (German, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) IBM MDA, also 1981. A graphics card that, fun fact, can't do graphics - it's character-based, 80x25. Then they got... pretty dinky: (Nixdorf, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0) ATI Hercules ,1986. Then big again: (Swaaye, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain) Diamond Stealth 32 Vesa Local Bus (VLB), 1994. Then we came up with the idea that they should do hardware transform and lighting, and... woof. The cards didn't get much bigger, but the cooling? Fuggedaboutit.
