Just Amdother obNoctuas PC Build thread

[Freak]

I am beyond the planning phase and have started buying parts for my all-AMD Future PC. Birthday present to myself!

I found it hard not to get an X570 MoBo, but couldn’t justify the expense (and risk of a tiny noisy fan) for just the extra PCI-E 4.0 lane that I probably wouldn’t use.
I found this RAM set, which is by far the cheapest DDR4 you can get in the Netherlands, and figured I’d buy the MoBo and RAM before everybody and their dog start building Ryzen 5000 systems.

So I just bought:
MB: Gigabyte Aorus Pro B550
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 4000 MHz, 4x8=32GB
And I’m planning to get:
CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X
GPU: RX 6800 (XT or not, depends on prices and availability at launch)
And I’m going to re-use:
PSU: Seasonic 750W Gold (still has 2 / 7 years warranty on it!)
SATA: 2x250GB Samsung EVO SSD, 1x1TB WD HDD

I am going to be replacing a reference MSI GTX 980Ti, and the i5-4690K + Z97-K Mobo + 16GB of DDR3 Corsair Vengeance RAM.
The GPU will probably go to family, and I hope I can sell the CPU+MoBo+RAM as parts, otherwise I’ll just get a cheap PSU and sell it as a full PC with the case and one of the SSDs, then I’ll have an excuse to get a new 1TB NVMe SSD. But I’d rather keep the case, as I broke a tiny part of it, causing the fan-filter to misalign slightly. I don’t care, but it looks bad to a buyer.

I know the general advice is to wait for reviews, and I’ve never been one to get the newest just released parts, but I’m taking some weeks of leave from work soon, and I like AMD as a company much better, so even if the GPUs turn out to be slightly less than Nvidia performance, I’d still prefer my first expensive new-bought GPU to be from them. (Up until now I’ve never paid more than 250 euros for a GPU).

I expect that there will be supply problems and delays on the RX 6800 orders as well, but I do hope that I can get one before I take my holidays.

EDIT:
The final build ended up slightly differently: I ended up passing one my 250GB SATA SSD’s along to my brother, with the Seasonic PSU, MoBo+CPU+RAM and Corsair 450D case. The other one went to my girlfriend’s new build, which is not yet finished due to some setbacks. (That deserves its own thread though)
I got a GTX 1080Ti Xtreme Edition because of limited availability of RX6800 cards and rationality kicking in about buying parts before reviews are out.

Furthermore, I was apparently so fed up with the noisy GTX 980 Ti reference card I have been using for the past years, that I splurged on an all-Noctua cooled build.

So the overall parts list of the new build is:
CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X
Cooler: Noctua NH-A12S (one fan used as case exhaust fan)
MB: Gigabyte Aorus B550 Pro
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws 4x8GB 4000 MHz (downclocked to 3800 MHz to be in sync with 1900 MHz FCLK)
SSD: Samsung Evo 970 M.2 NVMe 1TB
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1080Ti Xtreme Edition (used)
Fans: 2x Noctua NF-A14 intake fans
PSU: Corsair RM850
HDD: my old WD Green 1TB HDD, just for convenience & orthos (may remove it later)
Case: Fractal Design Meshify C White Tempered Glass

[Freak]

Obligatory before pictures:

The SSDs are behind the motherboard in this case.
I installed a white LED strip myself, none of the parts have coloured LEDs! A requirement I have already had to give up on when getting the new MoBo.

And this is the ugly crack. Lesson learned from last build (5.5 years ago now): do not apply even remotely similar force to the case parts as you do to the RAM sticks and the MoBo power plug.

[EAF51_Jimmi]

nice!!!

doing the same!

so far i ordered a
MSI MEG Unify x570 all black dark and NO RGB ( has the chipset fan tough)

new Psu went big with a corsair ax1000 (i have an 850w one but it’s 7 years old and not modular…)

so far i’m thinking of a ryzen 5900
and 6800xt (waiting reviews still considering a 3080)

big doubts on ram…
heard rumors of 4000hz support for ryzen 5000series but not sure. then don’t know if to buy xmp or try overckloging it (not much experience here)
size 90% 32gb.
i’m tempted for 64 but fast kits get super expensive!

[Freak]

Nice! Yes, the fan is on all X570 units, seems unavoidable with the higher power usage of X570 chipset (15W). But hey, you do have an additional PCI-E 4.0 lane. I guess that means you could use an additional NVMe drive, while I would need to sacrifice some SATA connections to use a second M.2 drive.

Yes, RAM amount is always a gamble, especially for us DCS players.

The RAM set I bought is significantly cheaper (220 vs 300) than 2x16GB sticks here. Of course, not as upgradeable, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take for 80 euros less. I’m also not planning on using a huge CPU cooler (just a simple Hyper 212 Evo), otherwise that would be another good reason to not want 4 RAM sticks

[Poneybirds]

You can‘t hear the fan. It‘s not one of those small agressive ones that used to be on older hardware. Not a reason to skip a x570 and all the future goodies it will bring.

[Freak]

Makes sense, about the fan. What future goodies are you speaking of? The ones that use PCI-E 4.0? Or is there something else I am missing (such as more CPU compatibility)?

[Poneybirds]

This ominous direct GPU memory access thing that will work with 5000 series CPU, x570 mobo and 6000 series GPU. It‘s maybe 5% and situational. But imagine the good feeling

[Freak]

I know, but it’s supposed to also work with B550. Otherwise I wouldn’t have ordered the B550. Please do continue talking though, as I can still cancel the order

[Freak]

I just checked again, and this is what it says on the official AMD site:

500 series motherboards

According to some articles, B550 was explicitly mentioned but I can’t find official sources now

[Poneybirds]

Ah nice. Sorry I had bad information from some news site I usually do not read.

[Freak]

I noticed there is some contradictory info about this on the web, no need to apologize, glad I double checked now!

[Freak]

Trying to POST, I messed up the BIOS flashing (FAT instead FAT32 formatting on the USB drive). Got DRAM and VGA leds.
Had to remove the (on old BIOS still unsupported) CPU to be able to flash the BIOS again. I also removed all 4 RAM sticks.
Then after that, I put the CPU back (which was a mess because of insane amounts of thermal paste on the standard cooler) and put a single RAM stick in the wrong socket.

After I fixed that, I am still not getting to the BIOS screen and seeing the VGA led come up, even though my GTX 980 Ti and all the power cables are connected.

Going to try to reset CMOS then remove and insert the battery in the MoBo tomorrow. Wish me luck!

[Freak]

Yes I got the specific BIOS version that is meant for Ryzen 5000, thanks for thinking along though!

Best of luck with the 5950x wait. Will be a beast when you get it though, I read it set a number of world records: 6.35 GHz among other things (on LN2 of course, but still)

[Freak]

So I promised to keep you POSTed

No luck, even after a CMOS reset and trying the other PCI-E slot. Still no display, still the red VGA LED.

Called the store where I bought the parts just now (azerty), and the guy I talked to was impressed at all of the troubleshooting I did. Told me to ship them the assembled MoBo + CPU + stock cooler so they can test which part is broken and/or fix the BIOS if that’s the issue.

I’m expecting this will be part of standard warranty and hoping to get a replacement before the new AMD GPU’s launch. But if I’m really unlucky some of the thermal paste may have broken the cpu and it’ll be my fault.

Still, at this point I’m just glad it’s out of my hands and I can stop worrying.

[Freak]

With all the tech launches and the high demand situation, the store’s tech support is slower than normal. Can’t really blame them, and they warned me beforehand.

Last week they told me they ordered a replacement motherboard, which arrived at the end of the week. They think they will wrap it up this coming week, which would be just in time for my vacation in the first week of december.

But I’m not in too much of a hurry, since I already upgraded my GPU from an old and very noisy GTX 980 Ti reference model (blower fan) to a slightly less old, buut much less noisy Gigabyte GTX 1080 Ti Aorus Xtreme Edition. It was offered second hand literally 2 blocks from me.

Ideally I wanted a new AMD card, but chances of getting one before my vacation were getting slimmer, so now I have a card that is much better already. The middle of the 3 fans spins in the other direction than the others, for minimal turbulence where the blades overlap, and it has a ton of copper. It really works well. I think I’ll keep it until after I’ve seen tests of the RX 6800XT in DCS VR.

90 fps in DCS in low intensity situations or low settings, 45 fps easily with SHADOWS ON in VR. And it’s so quiet! I am very much enjoying myself with this new GPU.

It’s mostly my girlfriend who is getting impatient, because once my motherboard and CPU are back, I have all the parts and will pass my old pc to my brother, and his parts will pass to her with which she will build her first desktop pc to replace a very old laptop (GT750M). Then she will finally be able to enjoy her 27" 1440p FreeSync screen in full glory. We already got her the GPU for it: an RX580, which has been tested in my system as well. So now my pc has had 3 different GPUs in the span of a week. I’ve run a lot of Display Driver Uninstaller.

[Freak]

Good news finally!
I received the MoBo CPU combo back last night, apparently they replaced the motherboard.
Mounted the RAM, M.2 SSD and Noctua cooler and I got into the BIOS!

Weirdly I had to mount the CPU cooler on the AM2/3 spacers, as the AM4 ones were too low.

Today I will assemble the rest, install Windows and move my stuff over

[Cib]

Good luck. Hope it goes smoothly

[Freak]

It’s working and it’s glorious!
I just spent the past 2 days tinkering with RAM timings and mild overclocking. Ended up simply setting boost clock to +200 MHz, power limits to motherboard, and notching the Infinity Fabric clock to 1900 MHz, then downtuning RAM to 3800 MHz from the XMP profile of 4000. Maybe I’ll play with the timings to make it even better, but for now, this is just a bit better than the default XMP profile. Also the Noctua cooler (and case fans) run very quietly and I love that the case fan curve can be controlled (in BIOS) by the temperature of the air AROUND the GPU. That is just what they’re meant to cool, and it’s not as jumpy as CPU or GPU temperature: it changes much slower, preventing that annoying sudden burst of case fans ramping up while gaming.

Pictures:

The case is a lot smaller than my previous one. I can wrap my head around the rear top corner to see which USB ports are where when I change cables, which is nice.
My GPU temperature seems unaffected by the smaller case, probably because of the much better fans and their positioning right in front of the GPU intake at the front and right above the card at the exhaust.

Closer up:

The ugly HDD in the bottom breaks the style a bit, but I had to take that front part of the shroud off: this way the front intake fan blows the air right where the GPU cooler needs it. I heard from a friend with the same case that it changed his GPU temperatures by 7 degrees Celsius!
I still have a bunch of flashy (but also black) stickers that came with the Motherboard, maybe I’ll camouflage the HDD with those.

I’m not sure if I should have the RGB LED lighting on the GPU and motherboard (the line near the exhaust) set to the ‘Noctua yellow’ that it is in these pictures or off. And if I set them to Noctua yellow, do I set them to pulse or static?

[Freak]

To RGB or not to RGB?

• Pulsing, Noctua-yellow
• Static, Noctua-yellow
• Off, no RGB suits this build better
• Rainbow cycle
• Other, please specify color in comment

[Rhinosaurus]

Duuude you should’ve chromax’d the Noctua fans. That beige and brown kills me every time lol.