AMD RYZEN Builders Thread

[PG]

Guys don't take this wrong way, we each make do according to what we're capable of; no innuendos, no offense. Just me failing to comprehend and honestly curious.

Why would you buy a 1600, 1700 or 1800 instead of its X variant? With the pricing difference being that tiny (contrary to the potential benefits), what exactly was your thinking?

Edit: i can understand financial constraints; am asking because in all honesty, i cannot possibly believe they are the sole reason, not for the thousands of people that could have afforded better but chose not to; for whatever reason.

Well, first there is no 1800, just 1800X.

Next, all the Ryzen cpus seem to be able to overclock to at least 3.8 Ghz or so, with 4Ghz being around the max unless you really push voltages. My point? You aren't really getting much extra overclocking headroom when you pay extra for the X model cpus.

Also, the 1600 and 1700 come with a free cooler that works pretty well, even for a mild overclock. You can pay extra for the X versions but you get no cooler at all, so there is an extra expense if you go down that path.

So let me summarize this: You can pay extra for the X models, get no extra overclocking headroom, and no free cooler. How does that make any sense?

 

[Aenra]

get no extra overclocking headroom

First you say (and i quote) "you aren't really getting much", then you say the above. Depending on which stands, the conclusion differs

Either way, i'm not here to tell people they did the wrong thing.. or the right one, come to that. As previously mentioned, just curious.
(good points so far though.. mentality can be a blindfold. Would have never ever UCed my CPU nor cared about noise, so Space Tyrant's point, valid as it may be, had never even crossed my mind, lol. And yes, point taken about the added cooler; it does indeed a good enough job for folks to wanna keep it)

 

[PG]

HardOCP tested 4 retail 1700 cpus. For overclocking, the worst they got was 3.8Ghz. Maybe an 1700X will go 4Ghz. Is that 200Mhz really going to be something that most even notice? Is it worth $40 or $50 extra? Does that extra 200Mhz take a game from unplayable to buttery smooth?
So what makes common sense here?
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/03/28/two_more_retail_ryzen_7_1700_overclock_tested

HardOCP also tested 2 retail Ryzen 5 1600 cpus and hit the magic 4Ghz with them.
https://www.hardocp.com/article/2017/04/11/amd_ryzen_5_1600_1400_cpu_review/1
The 1600X costs more and probably won't do much better. Again you may be looking at 200Mhz.

You can split hairs over the words I used, but it doesn't really make sense to pay more when it seems you might only be missing out on 200Mhz at most. The X cpus should have better overclocking abilities to justify their higher prices.

I have a Ryzen 7 1700 and cheap Asus Prime B350-Plus. With the 1 click overclock it would run 3.65Ghz with just 1.1875V. This was with the stock cooler also. In terms of performance it was probably at the level of a stock 1700X or maybe better, all with the cheaper price and no extra expense of a cooler. I'm sure the board would get similar results with a 1600. I look for value and the sweet spot for performance for my money.

 

[richierich1212]

I bought the 1700 over the 1700X because it comes with a decent factory cooler and I would be manually overclocking. I like getting the most for my money when it comes to upgrading pc components.

I rarely have ever bought the top CPU in any platform besides the 4790K (but got that for cheap a year after release). I usually get a CPU from the next tier down and then OC . Ryzen 1600 may be used in my little brother's system if I decide to upgrade it this fall. Or I'll upgrade to Coffee Lake and give him my 4790K.

Overclockable CPUs that I've had in the past decade or so that I can remember: E3300, Q6600, Q8200, Phenom II 920, Phenom II 550 (unlocked to quad-core and OC'd), Phenom II 1055T, Phenom II 960T (unlocked to hex-core and OC'd), Phenom II 820, 2500K, 3570K, G3258, 4790K, 1700).

 

[EXCellR8]

i wanted to get a 1500X up and running but I think I'm holding off... if Vega doesn't pan out at the start of next month I might clear some inventory (possible one of the Haswells and the Ivy) and see how I feel about it then

 

[Aenra]

Thanks for the input guys, won't say i agree with you, but that wasn't the point, was it. Much obliged for your time

(being doing this in a vacuum so far, had not really bothered with the hows and whys of other people; does it matter you'll ask; no, not really. But i was curious, sometimes it can be enlightening, seeing how other "customers" tick, or what with more to the point [you fail to see the point in some things, takes another's perspective to come to terms with them])

 

[Reinvented]

i wanted to get a 1500X up and running but I think I'm holding off... if Vega doesn't pan out at the start of next month I might clear some inventory (possible one of the Haswells and the Ivy) and see how I feel about it then

I'm hoping Vega is great too! I do still have an RX 480 that I've been thinking about getting rid of during this mining craze.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Why would you buy a 1600, 1700 or 1800 instead of its X variant? With the pricing difference being that tiny (contrary to the potential benefits), what exactly was your thinking?
.

Same reason why people got the Celeron 300a instead of the Pentium II 450; overclock that thing! Buy cheap and run it fast. The 1700 has the same number of cores as the 1800x and is otherwise physically identical. It has all the same features. Anyone who really wants to OC gets the 1700. The 1800x is just about insurance and/or giving AMD as much of your money as possible.

So the 1700 and 1700x typically top out at lower speeds than the 1800x. Binning at work. There ARE people out there with 4.0 GHz 1700s below 1.4v . It's all about that silicon lottery, baby. Care to play?

 

[Topweasel]

Guys don't take this wrong way, we each make do according to what we're capable of; no innuendos, no offense. Just me failing to comprehend and honestly curious.

Why would you buy a 1600, 1700 or 1800 instead of its X variant? With the pricing difference being that tiny (contrary to the potential benefits), what exactly was your thinking?

Edit: i can understand financial constraints; am asking because in all honesty, i cannot possibly believe they are the sole reason, not for the thousands of people that could have afforded better but chose not to; for whatever reason.

Because I didn't need the extra clock speed but the cores. So the difference between my 1700 and a 1700x was 16GB of ram the difference between it and a 1800x was the second NVME scratch drive. I also go an h80i for a cooler so after my work project was done I could clock it up to 1700x levels. But while I was waiting for a bracket I was still able to run it with the heatsink provided.

There basically wasn't a single good reason for me to get the x variant. Ryzen isn't like the i7 where there are several differences between a k variant and a non k.

 

[Reinvented]

Guys don't take this wrong way, we each make do according to what we're capable of; no innuendos, no offense. Just me failing to comprehend and honestly curious.

Why would you buy a 1600, 1700 or 1800 instead of its X variant? With the pricing difference being that tiny (contrary to the potential benefits), what exactly was your thinking?

Edit: i can understand financial constraints; am asking because in all honesty, i cannot possibly believe they are the sole reason, not for the thousands of people that could have afforded better but chose not to; for whatever reason.

I bought a 1600X because it came at a good price. I've also bought several 1700's and 1700X's due to prices as well. I also realize that the higher binned chips for the 1700X might not have much headroom, unlike the other non X variants when overclocking. This is VERY important, and very easy to understand. If you have a higher binned chip out of the box, it 1) already hits it's marks for what it's rated for, and 2) there may or may not be much left for headroom. As stated above, you may get anther 200 Mhz out of it or so, and you may not. If I have a lower TDP, for a lower binned chip, I have a lot of play with thermals and voltages as well. My latest 1700 that I picked up from Fry's was only capable of doing 3.8 @ 1.3v, and 3.9 @ 1.325v. My 1700X that I picked up from Fry's as well is only capable of 3.8 @ 1.35v. So, it boils down to this...guaranteed clock speeds for X variant, or try the lottery for 50 dollars cheaper for roughly the same performance as higher priced part.

 

[Aenra]

Care to play?

Haha, no, not really to be honest! When possible, sometimes i'm late and they're all gone, i just order from siliconlottery and know i can call it a day, nice and easy. Was never a 'lucky' person ^^

And since it appears i'm in a minority, perhaps it should be me doing the explaining?

- I said goodbye to 'traditional' coolers years ago. I stand by that decision still. Even if i don't benefit from lower temps (and usually if not always, i do), i still have reduced noise; if due to some exceedingly odd circumstances/combination i gain in neither temps nor DBs, i still gain in space management. I will never ever, worry, or hassle with RAM fitting again. Perdiod, guarantee, to the bank. That wraith cooler, straight to the bin for me. I'd get me an AIO straight away, no thinking.
So that's out of the picture, might as well not have been offered at all far as i'm concerned.

- Now as to headroom, that's even more subjective, but..
One, i don't replace rigs every odd month. I had (and still do) always viewed them as an investment; buy now, ergo spend now, keep it for 'x' amount of time, wherein 'x' is defined not by compatibility, but by actual potential within said passage of time. This means i -will- overclock the CPU, no matter what, where or why. Exact same cost either way, but more bang for my buck, so goes without saying.
Two, at said amount of a couple (more than a couple usually) grand, a measly $40, $60 or $100 extra (1600X, 1700X or 1800X respectively) really is peanuts. Do i go cheapskate, save me said measly $70 on average..? When i'm already spending $3000ish? Or do i spend said extra $70 and get me a tiny performance improvement? Question is of course rhetorical. Again, far as i'm concerned.
Three, even the flagship comes at less than half the price of the competitor's (6900K). I don't look a gift horse in the mouth, try and see if maaaybe, maybe i could do with the same horse, but with fewer of its teeth. I mean hell, it can still eat with a few less right? No. Not.. me.. just i don't know, wouldn't go there.
Four, they have once again shown (to me needless to say) that they've earned my money. Got just one way of showing that; by paying. And i do.
Five, for yet again said measly $70 on average.. why would i want play the roulette? And if i lose? Is that worth a measly $70 less?
(there may probably be a 'Six' here, regarding RAM freqs and the 'X' vs the non 'X' variants, but i leave empirical observations of others out of this just to be safe and fair; although frankly, i'm seeing way too many occurences to feel safe in discounting them all as coincidences)

*needless to say, the above assumes no financial constraints. Should there have been any, as i said in my first post, nothing to explain; my question was only directed to those that could, but chose not to.

Anyway, now you know why this weirdo was wondering, lol

And once again thanks to everyone for replying, i feared we were bound to have a couple of offended individuals, turns out i was mistaken. That's very nice.
My apologies for the wall of text by the way ^^

 

[DrMrLordX]

Haha, no, not really to be honest! When possible, sometimes i'm late and they're all gone, i just order from siliconlottery and know i can call it a day, nice and easy. Was never a 'lucky' person ^^

I've found that it has a lot to do with cooling and power delivery. Lower binned chips can max out early sometimes - depends on the uarch and process really - but I've tinkered with a lot of low-rent chips over the years, and in my experience overcooling the things and obsessing over clean power delivery (quality PSU + good VRMs) makes a difference. I'm not a champ OCer, but I got my Sempron 2800+ (Palermo) from 1.6 to . . . 2.35 GHz? I think some folks got them as high as 2.7 but that took a LANParty. All I had was the Chaintech vnf3-250

Got my x2-3600+ from 1.8 GHz to 3.2 GHz. On an mATX board at that!

Got my x4 635 all the way up to about 3.8 GHz. The same system got a lousy Sempron 140 that wouldn't unlock all the way to 3.9 GHz or so, and then later took an x2 220 - unlocked to 3 cores + L3 cache - all the way to 3.9 GHz. That was using a 790FX GD70. Coulda done better with an AM3+ board, I'm sure.

Then I punched an A10-7700k to 4.7 GHz (post delid). My 7870k achieved the same speed, no delid required. That was on an A88x-Pro I got for $55 or so on eBay. Asus really did a great job with that board.

The only "premium" chip I've purchased to date has been this 1800x, and it won't go past 4 GHz on any kind of reasonable voltage setting.

- I said goodbye to 'traditional' coolers years ago.

AiO/water is becoming the standard. Which is kind of sad in a way, since many of those AiO coolers aren't that good . . . some are great though.

 

[Aenra]

Agreed on all three parts (cooling, VRM, AIOs)

If only more "reviewers" focused on actually comparing products, ie doing proper reviews, rather than simply "presenting" them.. but yeah, different topic i guess ^^

 

[IRobot23]

Hello to everyone,

Since I have been banned from OCN (well, "made up" reason), I hope moderators are more friendly here. ( Since they let me know that I am unwelcome there.)
Anyway,
I ordered C6H,R7 1700 and DDR4 3466MHz 2x4GB CL16 Gskill.

To be more accurate about ram:
https://www.gskill.com/en/product/f4-3466c16d-8gvk

Will get X370 gaming 5 and R7 1700X (he really wanted X) for a try.
Probably getting components next week, maybe this friday.

Have a nice day.

 

[Grep_Linux]

Hello to everyone,

Since I have been banned from OCN (well, "made up" reason), I hope moderators are more friendly here. ( Since they let me know that I am unwelcome there.)
Anyway,
I ordered C6H,R7 1700 and DDR4 3466MHz 2x4GB CL16 Gskill.

To be more accurate about ram:
https://www.gskill.com/en/product/f4-3466c16d-8gvk

Will get X370 gaming 5 and R7 1700X (he really wanted X) for a try.
Probably getting components next week, maybe this friday.

Have a nice day.

I have the gaming 7, the bios are getting better and my 3000 ram is running xmp....

Just to make sure you don't jump in deep with this board I'd read this
http://forum.gigabyte.us/thread/886/am4-beta-bios-thread

Honestly I got it based on my love for the gigabyte heavy duty board I had before but I wish I went xhair or waited for a taichi sometimes. Even though it's pretty decent and it's been a mostly stable experience save one scary hiccup.

 

[Despoiler]

I ordered one of the new Swiftech Apogee SKF Heirloom Series water blocks. Now the wait. 2-4 weeks to build and ship them because they are a semi-custom product. I went with a black chrome block with black accent parts. Judging by the presssure/flow rate chart it should be a big upgrade from my Apogee XL which is very restrictive.

https://www.swiftech.com/apogee-skf-heirloom-series.aspx

 

[Reinvented]

I ordered one of the new Swiftech Apogee SKF Heirloom Series water blocks. Now the wait. 2-4 weeks to build and ship them because they are a semi-custom product. I went with a black chrome block with black accent parts. Judging by the presssure/flow rate chart it should be a big upgrade from the Apogee XL which is very restrictive.

https://www.swiftech.com/apogee-skf-heirloom-series.aspx

How do you like your Swiftech kit? I haven't used Swiftech in quite a few years, because maintaining a custom loop can be difficult. I used to run an old PA 120.3 with an Apogee block/Storm G5, etc. The custom block thing looks pretty neat. Do you get pretty good temps so far?

 

[Despoiler]

How do you like your Swiftech kit? I haven't used Swiftech in quite a few years, because maintaining a custom loop can be difficult. I used to run an old PA 120.3 with an Apogee block/Storm G5, etc. The custom block thing looks pretty neat. Do you get pretty good temps so far?

I've had zero issues with the unit so far. The only issue I've had is one of the AM4 brackets has a quality issue. It doesn't fit in the block flush on both sides. Their support keeps making me take different pictures to show them the issue. Anyone that knows anything about quality assurance would have RMA'd the bracket immediately and gotten me to ship the faulty bracket back for analysis. I got fed up with the multiple changing requirements and just filed down the bracket to fit. It was only off by a little more than the paint's thickness.

Swiftech are just pre-assembled and filled custom loop kits that are parts chosen to fit the price point. Much better than the Asetek based AIOs that everyone else rebrands. You can expand or change parts as needed as the fittings are all standard G1/4. They also have fill ports so you can do easy fluid maintenance after a few years. I think they make them to be maintenance free for 3 years. I topped off my unit after a year though.

As far as temps on my Ryzen @ 4GHz. I idle high 30C to low 40c. Average gaming is 55C-65C. All out stress testing can get to 80c to 90c. That's part of the reason I wanted a newer less restrictive block. It should bring everything in check all the time.

 

[Eric1987]

So is siwftech worth it if I want to do a custom water cooling for my GPU and CPU next round?

 

[Reinvented]

So is siwftech worth it if I want to do a custom water cooling for my GPU and CPU next round?

In my opinion, they make some great blocks. Back when AMD Opteron's were used in desktop/enthusiast boards, and E6600/Q6600 CPU's needed something pretty hefty they were amazing. For Ryzen, they should do very well as long as you have good fans, and a good radiator as well. A lot of watercooling companies aren't around anymore, and Swiftech has had some nice stuff over the years. There used to be a company called Thermochill, which produced a radiator known as the PA 120.3 (earlier model was called HE 120.3). These were some amazing radiators, and would pair extremely well with Swiftech blocks to get you the best cooling possible. Usually fans like the Yate Loon DSL-120's or something like were the popular choice.

But to answer your question, start doing research. EKWB seems to be doing some good stuff right now, and they do have full kits for both CPU and GPU and perform equal if not better than some of Swiftech stuff.

 

[Despoiler]

Swiftech, EKWB, XSPC, Alphacool, Bitspower, Koolance. There are quite a few companies making water cooling gear. Many of them sell custom loop kits. Takes the guessing out of what components you need. It only matters how much you want to spend. With about the only thing you have to consider is your drain. That's just a few more parts and not expensive. I was actually looking at this kit before I saw Swiftech had a new block. Nothing wrong with my AIO except the block is pretty restrictive. The new SKF block should be around .5 psi back pressure @ 1 GPM flowrate. That is really competitive vs other blocks and is a huge upgrade from the XL block I have now.

A decent review resource. http://www.xtremerigs.net OCN also has a water cooling sub forum.

 

[Aenra]

I have the gaming 7
...
I wish I went xhair or waited for a taichi

How come?
Have only the best experiences from this board, built two 1800X rigs with it. First one was before any of the AGESAs rolled out and again, had zero issues. As it is now? 3600 RAM with gen3 enabled, 4 and 4.1 GHz respectively? If you think you could get better, let me inform you, you could (and frankly, you would) only do worse
That Crosshair in particular is nothing but a disappointment. Even after the update that bricked the board.. The Taichi has cooler VRMs and is reputed to be more stable, but frankly, with about 284745651287 more buttons to click inside the UEFI, that depends on a number of things.. and it won't run your RAM as high as the K7 will. It is however more expensive despite that.

(Am assuming you meant the K7 btw)

 

[Grep_Linux]

I've had a good experience with it too except after one powerdown it wouldn't powerup at all which had me worried. However it's XMP with f4d is working great with my gskill 3000 16GBx2 oc 3.9 1800x. It's bios is clean and fast. It's just sometimes I think I may of had a better experience is all (then again with my luck I would of bricked a xhair hero6), not trying to knock the board too much it works heavy loads constantly and has proven 99% reliable. Just trying to make sure all information is available.

Pretty fun to OC....

https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/3312159

 

[EXCellR8]

+1 on swiftech quality... I don't like the design of their newer AIOs though.

 

[DrMrLordX]

3600 RAM with gen3 enabled,

Are you doing this through bclk OC or by using the 3600 strap?