PC Upgrade (Motherboard & CPU)

[Morbad]

For some of the non-gaming computational loads, they compare to the i9-12900k, and see ~50% better performance using the Ryzen 9 7950X. Me: It does seem unlikely Intel would get that sort of improvement, outside of adding a lot more cores.

Raptor Cove cores should see a decent IPC and clock speed increase and Intel is also adding a lot more Gracemont E-cores. The i9s all have sixteen E-cores and even the slowest i5s will have four.

Edit: E-core only tests show that about 40% of Alder Lake's aggregate performance comes from E-cores, so just doubling those will be a major uplift.

 

[varonica]

The Zen 5 architecture CPU's now also have an official release date of 2024, based on TSMC 3nm tech, so it seems Intel and AMD are releasing new architecture in the middle of the others development cycle, with Intel releasing mid 2023 (assuming they don't have another disastrous release delay) it appears each alternative year will see a new release from one or the other.

 

[Jack Winter]

Another question please!

I received everything ordered except the processor so have time until Monday to ponder!

I was going to use the Noctua NT-H1 TIM that comes with the heatsink, but noticed that the Thermalright "Stress Bending Correction Fixer" comes with a tube of Thermalright TF7. Looking at the net it seems to be a non-conductive carbon based material and has an impressive thermal conductivity of 12.8 W/m.K (as a comparison the NT-H1 has 8.9 W/m.K). It also has a higher density of 2.8 vs 2.49 g/cm3 for the NT-H1.

I'm trying to educate myself, but any advice on pro and cons is gracefully accepted! It's been many years since I used to build PCs for a living and paid attention to hardware, and 10 years since I built my last PC..

 

[Morbad]

I was going to use the Noctua NT-H1 TIM that comes with the heatsink, but noticed that the Thermalright "Stress Bending Correction Fixer" comes with a tube of Thermalright TF7. Looking at the net it seems to be a non-conductive carbon based material and has an impressive thermal conductivity of 12.8 W/m.K (as a comparison the NT-H1 has 8.9 W/m.K). It also has a higher density of 2.8 vs 2.49 g/cm3 for the NT-H1.

Rated thermal conductivity doesn't mean a whole lot as there is no consistent standard as to how it's measured and it ignores other properties that could have an equal or greater relevance to final total thermal resistance. It also says nothing about the longevity of the TIM, which is important if you don't plan on swapping out the CPU frequently.

That said, these are both very good pastes that will last long and perform well. I doubt you'd notice the difference on paste alone, but if I had to pick one, I'd lean toward the TF7 because it might last slightly longer due to the higher viscosity. Then again, I have setups that have had NT-H1 on them for over five years with no issues. Flip a coin.

Also, ignore the application instructions. Almost without fail (barring extremely high viscosity TIMs like Shin-Etsu which is almost like wax) the easiest effective way to apply paste is to put a large dot of it in the geometric center of the IHS and four smaller dabs about half way to each corner then let the mounting pressure spread it for you. You don't need much, but too little is much worse than too much, within reason.

And clean both surfaces before application. New does not equal clean. There is crap on those surfaces even if you can't see it. It probably won't matter, but it's not hard to use a lint free cloth and a dab of isopropanol (or an alcohol prep pad) to be sure.

 

[scarltm564]

Now upgrading, intel 12th gen to RTX series. With DDR5

 

[Riverside]

Now upgrading, intel 12th gen to RTX series. With DDR5

Out of the blue

Specs old/new? What made you choose what you did?

Enquiring minds want to know

 

[Morbad]

New Hynix A-die DDR5 looks pretty impressive -- https://www.igorslab.de/en/second-g...ew-with-overclocking-and-gaming-benchmarks/3/

That said the DDR4 dual-rank Samsung B-die stuff at gear 1 is still hanging in there.

 

[Riverside]

New Hynix A-die DDR5 looks pretty impressive -- https://www.igorslab.de/en/second-g...ew-with-overclocking-and-gaming-benchmarks/3/

That said the DDR4 dual-rank Samsung B-die stuff at gear 1 is still hanging in there.

I don't know much about the current DDR4/DDR5 differences, I just used DDR4 because I already had some.

I checked the price on some of the kits they tested, in particular the GSkill sets because that gave the most direct price comparison. Now that DDR4-4000 stuff isn't cheap, but I was surprised to see that, for high performance sticks at least, the DDR5 was cheaper.

What my probably out of date eyes see is faster RAM with higher CAS latency & not much performance benefit in general use. Could be wrong of course, and DDR5 is the future so the prices will come down further & performance is likely to improve too.

I'd still be using DDR3 if my motherboard accepted it

 

[Morbad]

I checked the price on some of the kits they tested, in particular the GSkill sets because that gave the most direct price comparison. Now that DDR4-4000 stuff isn't cheap, but I was surprised to see that, for high performance sticks at least, the DDR5 was cheaper.

These OEM SK Hynix sticks will currently beat almost all current DDR5, even stuff that is double the price, simply by virtue of having better ICs. Of course, they don't even have an XMP profile, so getting the most out them requires one know what they're doing.

DDR4 is much the same at the high-end. Most people looking to get the most out of a DDR4 setup are looking for decently binned Samsung B-die or Micron E-die. The higher cost kits tend to be better binned, but that is not a universal truth and it's possible to spend a lot and not get much more. The 32GiB kit of Team stuff (3600 CL 14 Samung B-die) I purchased for ~230USD ish is at the upper-end of what I could justify for DDR4. Spending twice as much might have gotten me a single cycle lower on CAS and tRCDRD, but that's about it.

What my probably out of date eyes see is faster RAM with higher CAS latency & not much performance benefit in general use. Could be wrong of course, and DDR5 is the future so the prices will come down further & performance is likely to improve too.

Until now I've generally considered DDR5 too expensive while not offering quite enough of an edge to be worthwhile, but that is rapidly changing.

DDR5 has a lot of changes that increase bandwidth and effectively mask latency. They doubled the prefetch and increased the number of bank groups to mitigate the latency penalty for doing so. Each DIMM is also two independent 32-bit channels, rather than a single 64-bit one, which allows for more granular access and better interleaving.

Pure latency did not change much between top DDR4 and DDR5, but DDR5 can do more simultaneously and will finish any transfers that much faster.

For anything that really cares about memory performance, DDR5 does tend to pull ahead of even the best DDR4 once you get into the 5600-6000MT/s range and the new DDR5 ICs are scaling to 8000MT/s+ when binned for performance.

DDR4 underwent a similar shift. I have a pile of first gen DDR4 that tops out between 2667 and 3000MT/s...even my budget bin newer stuff can do 4000MT/s+ (though having mostly Matisse and Vermeer parts means I target ~3800MT/s with as tight timings as I can manage).

 

[varonica]

I don't know much about the current DDR4/DDR5 differences, I just used DDR4 because I already had some.

I checked the price on some of the kits they tested, in particular the GSkill sets because that gave the most direct price comparison. Now that DDR4-4000 stuff isn't cheap, but I was surprised to see that, for high performance sticks at least, the DDR5 was cheaper.

What my probably out of date eyes see is faster RAM with higher CAS latency & not much performance benefit in general use. Could be wrong of course, and DDR5 is the future so the prices will come down further & performance is likely to improve too.

I'd still be using DDR3 if my motherboard accepted it

The difference between DDR4 and DDR5 isn't just the ram speed and latency, DDR5 has onboard voltage controllers and requires less power and can be much higher capacity, up to 256gb per module whereas DDR4 is usually limited to 128gb total across ram slots, it can also transfer data a lot faster due to the improvements both in the ram and motherboards that support it, lots of improvements. But in the end it really comes down to budget and time. You could set up a really good DDR4 based system now and it will last you 4 or 5 years, and by that time DDR5 and the motherboards and CPU's that support it will be a lot cheaper and you've had 4 or 5 good years out of a cheaper setup and can then purchase a much cheaper and faster system with DDR5.

I would currently if I was setting up a new PC go for a DDR4 system, but DDR5 is certainly something I would consider in a year or two down the track if I was setting up a system then, in fact it may be the only option. The advantages of a new setup with DDR5 are really much more than just the ram itself. Now I'm sounding like an advertisement, sorry, budget wise DDR4 is the way to go at the moment though, I agree!

 

[Morbad]

Increased capacity is a bit of a double-edged sword. For best performance you want two ranks per channel, but the smallest DDR5 ICs are 16Gb so to get those two ranks per channel on a dual-channel (well, technically quad with DDR5's 32-bit channels) platform, you need 64GiB of RAM, minimum. That's more than most people need.

It'll be nice to be able to put 384GiB of UDIMMs in a board with only four DIMM slots at the end of next year when my wife's workstation is due for an upgrade though.