Upgrade in progress from i7 7700K to R7 5800X

[Tyrchlis]

MAXIMUM excitement ensues! Upgrade parts have been ordered. I am completely rebuilding my PC around the RTX 3090 in such a way that will maximize the performance of this ultra high end video card.

A big part of my excitement is that this is my first AMD CPU based build in 15 years. I abandoned AMD CPUs when Intel surpassed AMD by a significant margin in gaming performance overall, and haven't looked back until now. Zen 3 feels like the modern day K7 in many ways, taking the fight right to Intel's doorstep and taking the crown back with style. I am hardware brand agnostic and will buy whatever brand suits my needs. AMD, Intel, Nvidia, I don't care. Gimme the fastest performance of the features I want, that is all that matters.

AMD Ryzen 5000 series chips have been as scarce as any other new, advanced toys launched at the end of last year and only this week have been showing up in stock for MSRP. And I put the snag on the premium (in my eyes) chip of the bunch. Not the very highest end one, but the most desirable choice in my book, the Ryzen 7 5800X. With it's single CCX of 8 cores not having to talk to another CCX, it's nice and simple yet brutally fast. I did really consider the 5900 and 5950, but didn't feel like they would contribute anything at all to gaming that I couldn't already get from 5800X. While I do some modding content creation, and the extra vram of 3090 helps with texture editing, I don't need that many CPU cores and wouldn't see much benefit from them in what I'm doing.

The list of parts incoming to arrive next Tuesday are as follows:

Ryzen 7 5800X 8 core CPU
Asus TUF X570 Plus (WiFi built in to motherboard version)
Corsair MP600 PCIe 4.0 M.2 500Gb
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4 3200 (4x8Gb)
Corsair H100i Elite Capellix AIO cooler

Essentially this guts my current machine, replacing the 4 year old Core i7 7700K, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance (same speed, worse timings than replacement ram), Asus TUF Z270 Mark 1, Samsung 960 Pro M.2 500Gb PCIe 3.0, and EVGA CLC240 AIO. The PNY RTX 3090 Revel XLR8 will carry over to the new build, as well as the Corsair Carbide 400C, Corsair HX850i Platinum will all be staying. My existing Corsair ML120 RGB fans will also carry over, but be connected to the new controller that comes with the H100i Elite Capellix since it's Corsair's premium controller.

EXCITED!

Another part of the reason I feel now is time to take the plunge is upcoming Resizable BAR support for Nvidia cards. With a vbios flash and driver update, my RTX 3090 should pick up that extra little zing in some games, typically some of which I do play. But Resizable BAR isn't really make or break, but at least with this platform support is already further along towards that goal.

 

[Kshipper]

It all sounds good. I leaped from my Ryzen 7 2700x with a RTX 2080 to a Ryzen 5600x on the X570 chipset with a RTX 3090 and I couldn't be happier. Cyberpunk loads so much faster now and there is zero slow downs in game. The RTX 2080 used to struggle a little, here and there.

 

[Tyrchlis]

It all sounds good. I leaped from my Ryzen 7 2700x with a RTX 2080 to a Ryzen 5600x on the X570 chipset with a RTX 3090 and I couldn't be happier. Cyberpunk loads so much faster now and there is zero slow downs in game. The RTX 2080 used to struggle a little, here and there.

Outstanding! Do you have any system level tweaking tips for AMD? Ryzen Master or something like that is one I was suggested, but am open to all good suggestions that don't include having to get new hardware, lol!

 

[Kshipper]

I have never bothered with overclocking since the benefit vs the risk was never worth it to me and I am far too busy with customer repair work to have any desire to fix my own problems. What I mean by that is that if my computer started to crash and blue screen and I knew it was all overclocked I would for sure have to start with removing all that overclocking each time something happened and I just never wanted to my build to be so fussy. You should find it is plenty fast enough stock. =)

 

[Tyrchlis]

I have never bothered with overclocking since the benefit vs the risk was never worth it to me and I am far too busy with customer repair work to have any desire to fix my own problems. What I mean by that is that if my computer started to crash and blue screen and I knew it was all overclocked I would for sure have to start with removing all that overclocking each time something happened and I just never wanted to my build to be so fussy. You should find it is plenty fast enough stock. =)

Okay, this makes sense in light of how my 7700K machine has turned out. That was the first time I've built a machine in over 20 years that didn't get some kind of overclock on it to run 24/7. I won't lie and say I didn't run a few experiments, I did, but I didn't keep it that way as stock speed with cool enough running to kick in highest turbo modes proved plenty powerful.

In the old days with Athlon classic 500mhz, peeling off the cartridge to get at the gold fingers and attach an GFD to dial up an extra 200mhz made a massive difference to game performance and could mean the difference between medium or high distance settings in games. That stayed true all the way into Core 2 Duo where I nailed my first 50% OC going from 2.4Ghz to 3.6Ghz, and repeated again on Core 2 Quad Q6600 (G0 stepping), 2.4Ghz to 3.6Ghz, a 50% OC. Those giant OC's made a MASSIVE gaming performance difference.

Nehalem let me overclock it, but it didn't really show a marked improvement that made much difference in games, Core i7 920 OC'd to 3.6Ghz felt about the same as running stock. Sandy Bridge had a massive overclock to 5Ghz on the 2600K I was running, and even that seemed to not really make a big gaming difference.

By 7700K, I decided to try just letting Turbo do it's thing and ran the CPU and GPU (factory overclocked model anyway) at out of box speeds and never once have regretted it for gaming.

So you're saying I can expect a similar experience with Ryzen 5800X with minimal system level tweaking. Set XMP, check PCIe is set to 4.0, boot order is good, and let 'er rip? I can do that... And hearing it runs as easy to setup as my Intel machine is reassuring as well.

Lastly, I expect to experience some issue with the ongoing USB thing going on as I have an RTX 3090 and a PCIe 4.0 M.2 drive going in, and a fair number of USB devices. Knowing AMD's pushing out a fix soon is also reassuring, but if you have any suggestions or experience with that bug, I am all ears.

 

[Kshipper]

Oh yeah those early days of overclocking a Celeron was mainly discovered that Intel was de-clocking better CPUs just to fill in the lower end because CPU yields were getting too good. I think there is less of that with chiplet-style designs and manufacturing yields are more consistent.

I think you will be disappointed to find out that the 3090 won't perform better in a PCIe 4..0 slot. Even the NVMe m..2 drive will bench test faster but you will see no benefit in games. This will be good info to know because you could save some $ on PCIe 4.0 SSD drive cost. The USB problem has you putting the machine back to PCIe 3.0.

AMD Suggests Possible Fixes for Ryzen USB Connectivity Issues

Here, give this a shot

www.tomshardware.com

 

[Kshipper]

Oh than this article popped up on this forum..looks like a fix is coming in April:

AMD identifies and solves cross-platform USB connectivity problem with an AGESA update

Reports of sudden USB disconnections and poor signal quality on AMD X570 and B550 motherboards starting becoming commonplace on Reddit at the end of last year. Three...

www.techspot.com

 

[Tyrchlis]

Oh yeah those early days of overclocking a Celeron was mainly discovered that Intel was de-clocking better CPUs just to fill in the lower end because CPU yields were getting too good. I think there is less of that with chiplet-style designs and manufacturing yields are more consistent.

I think you will be disappointed to find out that the 3090 won't perform better in a PCIe 4..0 slot. Even the NVMe m..2 drive will bench test faster but you will see no benefit in games. This will be good info to know because you could save some $ on PCIe 4.0 SSD drive cost. The USB problem has you putting the machine back to PCIe 3.0.

AMD Suggests Possible Fixes for Ryzen USB Connectivity Issues

Here, give this a shot

www.tomshardware.com

Oh no, I won't be disappointed at all, hehehe. My expectations are not gaining more than 10-15% total apparent system uplift... in the short term. And even that is ONLY me filling in the gap of CPU bottlenecking the 3090 directly, everything else around that is mostly noise, I get it... However, the strategic view here is longer term, and based on previous build ethos I have followed to achieve typical 4-6 year life spans out of each machine.

Right now, the upper end gains are not really an issue at all as lets face it 7700K + 3090 eats games for breakfast even now, it's those minimums I'm hunting. I know the weakness of i7 7700K making it another 2 years will be those minimum frame rates are going to tank over the course of this year and into early next. First hints are already here. Could I stretch that 7700K another 2 years and play every game coming out? Yes, absolutely so when paired with a 3090. Will it be pleasant? No, I don't think so, lol.

My strategy is a stable and fast build with good longevity and strong endurance for the longer haul. This is not "futureproofing" as that is a myth, this is just to ensure that in 2 years minimum frame isn't tanked out and provide a refresh out to 4 again. I will be ready for looking at building anew at that point. Apparently this is my cycle of builds now. And it works, it's certainly less expensive than the old days when we all bought new CPUs and video cards practically annually (sometimes even sooner!). This is WAY more sustainable

Edit : Point of reference, no worries on expectations of the storage system performance either. Raw numbers wise, I'm actually going down, not up. The bus IS faster, but the Corsair MP600 non-Pro is actually slower than my existing Samsung 960 Pro M.2 which has a solid write speed lead over the Corsair, PCI bus version not withstanding (960 Pro is 3.0 device, while MP600 is a 4.0). I actually kinda have hopes that getting the non-Pro proves a "happy mistake" as it's slower write speed may help mitigate the AMD USB bug a little. I can always get a Pro version of the MP600 later and just kick the non-pro to Steam drive duty, lol.

 

[Kshipper]

I think it was Linus Tech Tips that tested various rigs with various drive configurations and not a single staffer could pick out the increased performance of a NVMe drive over regular SATA 6.0 SSD. The benchmarks tests of Crystaldiskmark definitely show it but the real world just doesn't seem to matter. If you were moving large video files around for a living I think the extra drive speed would be useful but not for gaming.

You are going to notice a huge leap in performance going from the 7700k to a 5800x.

 

[Kshipper]

I by the way...this guy will be right up your alley:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrwObTfqv8u1KO7Fgk-FXHQ

 

[Tyrchlis]

Oh, new question after further research! I have a huge concern that cropped up that I hadn't considered, which is there is around a 50/50 chance the Asus TUF X570 board will not have a bios supporting 5000 series chips and will need to be flashed up.

I know that the AMD Short Term Processor Loan Boot Kit is one option, but just from looking around it appears to be a weeks long procedure to go through just to get the kit in hand. This bodes poorly for my choice in AMD at all this time and I'm already having second thoughts.

Are there ANY tricks to be able to get the board into bios to run a update with an unsupported CPU? Or am I just stuck waiting on AMD to even read the email request for a boot kit, then sit on it while they pick their noses and decide to qualify me or not (they should, but doesn't mean they will move fast on it). I'm really kinda bummed that I totally missed this major detail.

 

[Kshipper]

My customers are <throat clear> thrifty ...so I all I get to play with is bottom of the line motherboards and IF they go for an upgrade that would be B450 chipset so I am so used to the fact that I need to keep a few older CPUs around like the Ryzen 3 2200G just to flash boards. In the case of the upper boards there is a way to flash them without a CPU...so I think you are in luck. Although I have not had to do it that way as I understand the procedure it will involve putting the BIOS file --unzipped..on a flash drive formatted FAT32 and putting that into a particular USB slot. You will for sure have to consult the owner's manual for the proper way to do it. I think you will be OK tho'....that's the good news =)

 

[Tyrchlis]

My customers are <throat clear> thrifty ...so I all I get to play with is bottom of the line motherboards and IF they go for an upgrade that would be B450 chipset so I am so used to the fact that I need to keep a few older CPUs around like the Ryzen 3 2200G just to flash boards. In the case of the upper boards there is a way to flash them without a CPU...so I think you are in luck. Although I have not had to do it that way as I understand the procedure it will involve putting the BIOS file --unzipped..on a flash drive formatted FAT32 and putting that into a particular USB slot. You will for sure have to consult the owner's manual for the proper way to do it. I think you will be OK tho'....that's the good news =)

Just wanted to let ya know, all went splendidly, at least at the bench testing stage. Windows 10 Pro setup and updating as I type this.

Knowing the potential pitfalls, I lucked out on the first (bios was up to date enough to recognize 5800X), and knew ahead to disable onboard WiFi until after Windows install as it has known BSOD if attempted to leave enabled during setup.

This went together as easily as my i7 7700K + Z270 setup did. I am impressed. I also maintained continuity in moving from Asus TUF Z270 Mark 1 to Asus TUF X570-Plus. TUF boards really make me happy.

 

[Kshipper]

Nice! =)