Build Advice Pete J's massive system overhaul discussion

P.S. Am saving this for future reference...

 

Same.
Most of my current build came from Scan & Overclockers.
The exceptions were RAM (direct from Kingston), and mobo (Had to get from Newegg USA because no-one listed it here!)

 

It's too late now, but Silverstone have finally released their FLP01 "retro" HTPC case

https://www.techpowerup.com/331433/silverstone-intros-the-flp01-retro-inspired-htpc-chassis

 

Might be worth looking at the Overclockers UK forum, there are some long threads there about pre-ordering the 5### series, and the staff sometimes leave special links there rather than on the main web page

 

There we go, 128 gigglebytes of RAM installed:



Since I want to leave this PC well alone for the next decade, plenty of filters:




Cables all tidied away and ready for more components to be installed:



Did a bit of research into TIM, and found something perfect for what I have in mind:



Here's the TIM in place (note that covering the annoying little "sticky outty bits" is not necessary):



And on goes the bigboi air cooler:



Here's the rest of the storage:




Was a bit fiddly getting the heat spreader back on, and had to squidge one screw back into alignment.

And now...

 

Actually, this PC is proving to be one of my more painful experiences in computer building.

First off, when turned on for the first time, the PC refused to show anything through the 9800X3D's inbuilt GPU. Fortunately, using the ASUS BIOS flashing ability allowed me to update the BIOS without needing to power on things, and this allowed me to carry on with things. Although there was another BIOS update released just a couple of days ago, so went through that again. Always nail biting...

I was worried about the TIM, but the CPU was staying nice and cool right off the bat, so that was a nice start. Onto the next phase.

I spent most of yesterday carefully going through the BIOS manual. I put a manual fan profile on (saved here for future reference):

1. 25% fan up to 45C
2. 40% fan up to 50C
3. 60% fan up to 70C
4. 80% fan up to 75C

The idea with the fan profiles is to maximise quietness, with an emergency ramp if the CPU gets really hot (though I could've done with a fifth point to allow 100% if it hits 77C). The idea is to keep the CPU quite warm as IIRC, the TIM phase changes at ~45C, so will be at its most efficient there. Hopefully this will be the temperature the CPU is typically at when I'm just watching films and browsing t'internets. 25% is effectively silent, though will increase to 30% if needed, though this is crossing the threshold to hearing fan noise (still quieter than my ticking clock in the room though!).

I turned off all the LEDs: one nice tough was that the motherboard also can deactivate the power on LED, so I don't need to disconnect those wires.

Now, the memory....What a pain in the bum.

The RAM I've bought is sold as 6600MHz, with 32-39-39-76 timings. No, I have no idea what any of those numbers mean, other than more MHz is good, as are low timings. I let the motherboard automatically load all the XMP settings (though it wasn't simply stated as XMP) and rebooted.

And waited...

And waited...

And cleared the CMOS to have another go.

I spent a few hours trying different things, trying different combinations of speeds and timings. Unfortunately, each change required the system to sit and think for several minutes between attempts. Fortunately, if the settings were stable, the next boot was quick, as expected. I thought I found something stable, but then tried to install Windows (will cover that in another post...) and ran into stability problems immediately. So, I played a little more and ended up with the memory being at:

• 5000MHz, 32-39-39-76 timings

Going to 5200MHz resulted in instability, and relaxing the timings made no difference (in the ranges I tried, anyway). I'm confused as to why the RAM can't go to 6600MHz. Maybe the fact I have two sets rather than one means stability is lower. As far as I can see, everything's correct (voltage etc.), but at the end of the day, it's still plenty fast enough for gaming, and certainly overkill for watching films and browsing. All I know is that this is the first time I've ever had problems with loading up the default memory profile

Having said all that, I need to do further memory stability testing once I have Windows up and running. Let's cover that in the next post...

 

Installing Windows 11....



Ugh...

To be fair, some things may have not been Microsh!t's fault. Where to start...

Well, first, I ran into the memory instability issue, so had to tweak that further as already mentioned. Then the USB stick that my kind colleague at work provided (he's an ex IT admin who got fed up with the job) with a streamlined version of Windows on refused to read. So I had to transfer that across to another stick, which for some reason took 20 minutes to copy to my laptop, then another 20 minutes to copy back - at least it's backed up on my OneDrive now.

During install, I decided to say I didn't have Internet connection as I like to install as much stuff as I can before going online. This may have caused an issue later. The installer also initially refused to acknowledge my OEM key I bought off Kinguin, but fortunately this got sorted later on when I did finally go online.

Anyway, I installed the chipset drivers. Then tried to install other drivers. And the f*&king things wouldn't install for whatever f&^king reason. I did a little Google, and found that the motherboard can have issues installing drivers.

So, I can't get Wifi to work. F$%king brilliant.

Fortunately, the intention of the PC is to end up with a wired connection to my router, which luckily lives right next to my lounge setup. I plugged it in, and even though the ASUS LAN drivers didn't register as installing, the Windows default drivers (probably) kicked in and I could carry on downloading stuff. So, if future Pete needs Wifi on the PC, well he'll have to fix it. Anyway on to getting things up and running.

OneDrive. F"£king OneDrive.

I searched "installing OneDrive" and was informed that Windows 11 has it by default. Well, that was a load of b*ll*cks as I couldn't see it on any drives. So, I downloaded the installer...and the bloody thing just starts automatically downloading everything. WHOA! HOLD ON THERE! I want to choose where it goes, like I did when I set it up on my last PC!

After faffing around in the utterly rubbish and unclear settings, I found out I had to unlink it, then choose a new location. The instructions online said that you're supposed to drag the old folder to where you want it to be: I found this to be untrue.

Anyway, after a lot of swearing and shouting, OneDrive is now on the intended storage drive. I've also got Office up and running : again, that was more painful than it should have been, but it's there now.

The PC is now sat in the corner downloading OneDrive and having all my other stuff copied across from my backup USB drive. That'll take a few hours. After that, I'm going to test the memory, as well as do a few CPU stress tests to burn in the TIM and see if the fan profiles perform as intended. Then, it's a case of waiting for the 5090.

All I'll say is that I miss the simplicity of installing Windows 7. Painless, and I never had issues with installing the first round of drivers.

 

Hmm, that's something worth following up on. Currently I've put kit 1 in a1 and a2 (and kit 2 in b1 and b2).

This does remind me of my LGA1366 days, where I had to unplug and then put back in one of two RAM sets if I had a stability crash.

 

Yeah you'll want to put the sets in A/B not 1/2 to try and improve your chances.
Was the memory xmp or expo? My understanding is whilst amd tends to be able to run xmp it's less certain vs expo.

I myself got my new build up and running yesterday and went through some similar pains as you

 

In the BIOS, there were no options for XMP (this is the first time I've gone AMD), so went for "EXPO", which automatically came up with the expected settings.

It's another couple of hours before things finish copying across, so I'm going to do some Lego while I wait, then reseat the RAM. Annoyingly, I'll have to remove the CPU cooler front fan to access it.

 

Yeah same I've never used a ryzen setup before either, but my understanding is just some kits will be both xmp and expo, but some are only xmp etc, so even though a good board will run xmp it hasn't been officially confirmed/teaked potentially to improve the chances, I think my set has slightly different timings etc between the xmp/expo options.

Also my first time using W11 for a home install, work laptop updated a while ago and after some initial resistance realised it's been totally fine for me, install was more annoying though the number of things I had to say no to, including subscriptions etc!

 

Whelp, I've issued a refund request for the Corsair memory as it only has XMP support. This has been a lesson for me, learning that XMP is Intel specific.

To replace it, I shall be purchasing:

Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 6400MHz CL32 2x32GB (2 sets)



The above has not one, but two EXPO profiles, one at 6000MHz, so if i run into issues with running two sets, that should help.

Also, somehow, the wifi is now working. I'm not sure how, and I'm not going to ask questions.

 

Yes - worth looking out for the AMD specific EXPO profiles (and the variants of RAM that specifically advertise this).

My recent DDR4 purchases have all been for EXPO RAM, which all works as advertised speed (even with 4 sticks).

Looks like an awesome build so far - thanks for sharing.

 

I plugged in all the RAM last night, and unfortunately the EXPO settings didn't even boot, let alone allow me to do stability testing. Currently, looks like JEDEC timings are the only cross compatible settings (again).

I've taken the day off work to recover from a weekend with old uni friends, and will be spending it playing around with things. First thing to do is individually test the two sets. I've been reading up on RAM a bit more, and didn't realise how naïve I was being when I assumed I would just be able to get two sets of RAM running together nicely (as @The_Crapman has already said!). I looked up costs for matched 128GB kits, and the prices get a bit mental, to say the least. I'm a little downhearted as I've not really had this problem in the past with Intel XMP profiles, but there again, the last time I built a PC was back in 2016, so I imagine RAM has got more twitchy with increases in performance.

At this point, I'm wondering about either returning one of the sets, or buying a 96GB set. I fully acknowledge 128GB RAM is utterly unnecessary in today's world, but I want to reiterate that the idea is to run this PC for the next decade, and when I did the same thing with my last PC, what was an outlandish amount of RAM at the time is now quite standard and needed by a few games. Plus, I just like having all four slots occupied as it looks neat and tidy!

Anyway, a couple of handy links for me to work through today and see if I can get something half decent:

Thread about someone struggling to get 128GB to work

Some timings that may get it running at 5600MHZ

 

I'd probably just look to just buy a 64/96 set, and then in a couple of years sell and get a 128/164/who knows set which should be cheaper by then no?

 

Nice Techpowerup article on DDR4/5 RAM performance on applications and games

That would be the smart thing to do. But I've never been accused of being smart!

 

I can understand wanting a long term overkill pc, but memory is probably one of the easiest to change later without impacting other things etc so think it might make sense.