# Final Update: My New Ryzen build .... so far



## pderbidge

I'll try and document my build in this new thread as it progresses for anyone else interested in my experience with this new processor. For this first post I'll try and cut to the chase and answer questions I've seen many have regarding the new Ryzen's vs Intel's 9900k. Although I don't own the 9900k I think given the reviews, benchmarks and my own personal experience so far with the 3700x I think I can still give a fair analysis of where the 9900k falls in comparison to the Ryzen offerings. In succeeding posts I'll outline my build process and discuss my observations but in this post I'm just going to give my take on price/performance value between the new Ryzens and the flagship 9900k. Now let's get to the answer you've all been waiting for

Performance Wise- I would say the landscape looks like this: (with the first being the best performer)

1. Ryzen 7 3900x
2. i9 9900k (or KF variant without igp which is more comparable to Ryzen)
3. Ryzen 7 3700x (don't bother with 3800x, it's not likely to be any better than the 3700x)
4. Probably a tie between i7 8700k and Ryzen 5 3600x with 3600x pulling ahead in multi threading efficiency but less overclocking headroom than i7 8700k

I think the above was fairly obvious from the Dawbench results that have already been published.

Now to the good and bad.

The Bad: Buying a Ryzen is a bit like buying a lottery ticket. some people get silicon that performs at all core speeds up to 4.4GHZ and then there's me where my max stable speeds are between 4.1 and 4.2. I know some earlier Intel architecture was like this but I think by now Intel has this silicon process down and if you buy an i9, the chances of getting an all core 5ghz clock is pretty solid.

The Good: Despite this silicon lottery, the results of my 3700x in early testing seem really solid. I can only imagine how this would perform if they could push this architecture to 5ghz. Also, there are some multi threaded tasks where even this 3700x can outperform the i9 9900k.

The Bad: There definitely seems to be a bug in the bios regarding temps. Mine seems awfully hot, however nothing else in my case seems affected by it which leads me to believe it is a bug. Keep in mind I already have high ambient temps to deal with since I have yet to install central air so during the blistering July and August I'm getting room temps between 25c and 26c. With that being the case I'm experiencing Idle Temps between 37c and 51c and under Aida64 stress temps it gets up to 93c at times with a Noctua NH-u14s and a single fan. The case itself has 5 120mm fans. There is a thermal limit of 95c and as long as the precision boost is doing it's job it will never end up going over that. Aida64 is currently at 3 hours right now and nothing has gone beyond 93c and mostly hovers around 83c. Even at these supposed temps I'm getting all core boosts of between 4Ghz and 4.2Ghz. I'll say it again though, I don't think these temps are accurate. when I touch the VRM's on the motherboard they are barely warm and the case isn't even putting out that much heat when I put my hand in front of the exhaust or inside the case. I wish I had proper tools to measure this definitively but unfortunately I do not. I'll keep my eyes on this to make sure I didn't get a dud in the TDP department.

OK, just to elaborate on temps- the other reason I don't think those temps are accurate or at least comparable to the way we're used to reading temps is because the way AMD reports to the bios. It is very active. It has to do this because of it's precision boost (not precision boost overdrive which is something else but kinda similar) technology. Because it's so actively checking stats with the sensors in order to do it's thing, the bios is getting almost real-time data that fluctuates quite a bit rather than us seeing averages as we would with other CPU architectures.

The Good: There's almost no overclocking room in these chips. Wait, what? that's a good thing? Actually, yes. What AMD has done is try to give the average consumer a chip with a built in technology that pushes max performance out of it's processor and leaves almost nothing else on the table. This means that non-overclockers can be assured they'll get the best possible performance out of their purchase by just plugging it in. You can't complain too much about that can you? Of course, I'd still like to have seen the ability to push it further, and I tried (corrupting my OS in the process and having to reinstall but the performance benefit with the added heat was not enough to justify a small overclock of 4.2GHZ on my chip.

The Bad (and good): If you don't need the features of the x570 platform then you can save a good deal of money on a Ryzen build, however if you need the features of the x570 chipset then I think the 3700x is less enticing than Intel's Z390 chipset. The prices will be similar, especially with an i9 9900kf. With the i9 you get a tried and tested architecture and no early bios growing pains to deal with. I knew this would likely be the case and I went for the 3700x anyways because I just wanted to support AMD's new achievement and it was still going to perform pretty close to the 9900k. Besides, the CPU was never my bottleneck to begin with but rather lack of more memory and SSD's which I can happily say is no longer the case.

So to sum up the price to performance ratio I'd dare say that if you're going to invest in Ryzen then a 3600x or a 3900x are the better choices. One being a more budget friendly option and the other being more of a performance driven purchase. The difference in motherboard prices between x570(expensive) and z390(affordable) makes a 3700x vs 9900k purchase too narrow to justify the 3700x if you're looking for the better DAW performer. If you already own a B450 board or an X470 board or want to purchase one of those because you don't need what X570 or Z390 offer then a 3700x starts to make sense.

Well, that's it for now. I haven't even begun to transfer all my samples and VST's to the new PC yet so I can't offer much more than what I've stated here for now.


----------



## Solarsentinel

First many thanks for your feedback Derbidge, it is very full of usefull informations 

For more deep answers :
Concerning your temps problem, it is possible it comes from a bug. Every new architecture has a lot of bios update, and i saw that AMD was pretty reactive to make them. Actually there are one each week. Try to make every bios update and check the AMD website to see if there is some bugs report.
You can also verify yours temps with a freeware like hardware monitor.








HWMONITOR | Softwares | CPUID


HWMonitor is a hardware monitoring program that reads PC systems main health sensors : voltages, temperatures, powers, currents, fans speed, utilizations, clock speeds ... The program handles : CPU and GPU-level hardware monitoring LPCIO...




www.cpuid.com





Another thing to ckeck is you thermal paste, the best one is thermal grizzly krionaut, you can gain some °C with this one. (the noctua is good too)

You will able to obtain 60 - 68 °C on charge with an ambient room temp of 25 - 26°c.

Overclocking :
It's just a point of view. Somebody else would prefer a chip that he can overclock to gain a boost without spending more money (except on electricity bill , but i agree with you. I don't care of overclocking, i think that for the gain of power we get it's vain! Your processor's getting too hot, and it uses a lot more energy. All the system going to warm up, and it can shutdown if it isn't stable. I let this to specialists. I don't care about that. So i'm like you , i prefer a processor who can give me the full of his power without overclocking it. And it's what you get with AMD.
But again it's a matter of taste.

Concerning the features:

For a newcommer and others DAW users, we can consider that they comes from an Intel architecture for the most of them. So considering a B450 or X470 is not very good in my opinion. If they want to purchase a Ryzen 3000 serie, they must buy a X570 even if they don't want the features. Why because B450 and X470 are compatible with Ryzen 3000, but when you purchase it they will not be updated with the last bios update... And for that you must have an older ryzen processor to do it. Ok if you ask to AMD they can send you a kit for this update but what a waste of time! And Ryzen 3000 were made to work with the last platform X570. Futhermore if you build a new PC it's better to go with the lastest hardware in order to push the lifetime at the limit. That's why i consider that X570 is a must have with a new architecture based on Ryzen 3000.

If you have an older Ryzen, then ok you can go with a Ryzen 3000 it's just an BIOS update and keep your actual motherboard.

In this end:

Your conclusion restart my reflexion of going into Ryzen! In the first hand, i want to reward AMD for all these good things, and to benefit from a new 2019 architecture, but with your feedback i wonder now if the 3700X is the right choice. I'm not very interresting with the pci express 4 feature. Because the SSD Pci E4 are too far expensive for now, and it's going really hot. In the other hand graphic cards PCi E 4 are not there for the moment except RX 5700 and 5700 XT (but i do not gaming with my computer so nevermind).
So reconsidering an i9 9900k for best DAW performance has restart! But i'm still tempting by a 3700X!

Last thing : Have you any noise issue with the motherboard fan? It was one of your fear.
And again many thanks for your valuable feedback


----------



## dasbin

From what I can tell the Z390 and X570 prices are basically equivalent. There are inexpensive-ish X570 boards (like the Gigabyte Aorus Elite) that have the same feature-set as Z390 boards around the same price, and the higher end boards (Aorus Master, etc) also have equivalent Z390 boards at the same price with similar features.

The same-named models are slightly more expensive for the X570 variants, but those variants have beefier VRM's than their same-named Z390 boards... so you kind of have to compare a Z390 vs. one-level-down X570. That is, compare VRM's to find an equivilant motherboard across the two lines, don't just assume the same-named model is the comparable model.

It's strange to me that all the manufacturers decided to bump up their VRM lineup across the board on X570 so much, when an overlocked 9900k actually needs way more power than any of the Zen 2 chips.

My shopping around, at least here in Canada, puts the price of a 9900K system with an equivilant motherboard much more expensive than a 3700X system, and just barely under the price of a 3900x system.

AMD recently came out with new chipset drivers which address high idle temps / voltages when used in conjunction with a Windows 10 update. And it sounds like new BIOS revisions are on the way to address other things.

The one remaining disappointment for many is that boost clocks are not reaching advertised speeds in any case where it actually matters. For some it is as much as 400-500Mhz under. (Though for most it is more like 50-100Mhz under).


----------



## pderbidge

Solarsentinel said:


> You can also verify yours temps with a freeware like hardware monitor.


I've checked temps with Hardware Monitor, Hardware info, Ryzen Master and Asrock's A-Tune Utility and of course, the Bios. They are all pretty much the same. I assume they are are getting their info directly from the bios.



Solarsentinel said:


> Another thing to ckeck is you thermal paste, the best one is thermal grizzly krionaut, you can gain some °C with this one. (the noctua is good too)


I have only used the thermal paste that came with the Noctua, which all reviewers have said is very good paste. I have applied it twice to verify that I somehow didn't get it right the first time. No change in temps. Do you have a new Ryzen? Maybe you can verify better temps. If for some reason my chip is not working to spec then I'll need to exchange it.



Solarsentinel said:


> i prefer a processor who can give me the full of his power without overclocking it


The interesting thing about overclocking the 3rd gen Ryzens is that reviewers have unanimously been pointing out that there seems to be very little gained in trying to overclock this CPU. This is mostly due to way that AMD has implemented Precision Boost. There is more testing and analysis about this here.




Solarsentinel said:


> Why because B450 and X470 are compatible with Ryzen 3000, but when you purchase it they will not be updated with the last bios update... And for that you must have an older ryzen processor to do it. Ok if you ask to AMD they can send you a kit for this update but what a waste of time


This is an important point to note for newcomers, however I can still see this as a value prop for the more adventurous and you could build a very good system by going this route so I don't agree that it is a waste of time for everyone. It's just going to be an individual preference.



Solarsentinel said:


> So reconsidering an i9 9900k for best DAW performance has restart! But i'm still tempting by a 3700X!


It's a tough choice because there are upgrade paths with choosing an X570 platform. You could easily upgrade the CPU in the future and get better than 9900k performance. Many would argue, rightfully, that there is no such thing as future proof anymore since new platforms and architecture tend to end up being cheaper than upgrading older components so by the time you might want to upgrade your CPU there might be more cost advantages to just get a whole new system. This is why I think the 9900k is still possibly a better choice. The price difference between going 3700x and 9900k just isn't that much when you compare the sum of the parts.



Solarsentinel said:


> Have you any noise issue with the motherboard fan? It was one of your fear.


Yes it was one of my biggest fears and now is actually my least. I'm more concerned with temps right now as I don't want to get stuck with a possible lemon so I'm going to discuss with the retailer to see what my options are. It would be nice if someone had a used sample for me to test against my own to ensure I'm not dealing with a poor piece of Silicon. I will repeat however, that nothing other than the monitoring indicates a heat issue. I've dealt with older AMD CPU's that got extremely hot and remember that just by putting my hand in front of the exhaust or in the case you could feel the heat. That is not happening here. The only rotten thing is that the readings from the monitoring system probably throttles my performance a bit which is why I'm seeing 4.1ghz all cores on stress load vs perhaps a 4.4ghz. But yeah, as you can tell, the small fan isn't even a concern anymore. There is no mechanical whine and it's inaudible against the case fans.


----------



## pderbidge

dasbin said:


> From what I can tell the Z390 and X570 prices are basically equivalent. There are inexpensive-ish X570 boards (like the Gigabyte Aorus Elite) that have the same feature-set as Z390 boards around the same price, and the higher end boards (Aorus Master, etc) also have equivalent Z390 boards at the same price with similar features.


Sort of true. The issue is if you want Thunderbolt support and better VRM's you only have Asrock to choose from on X570 which will lead most people to the Taichi mobo and above. With Z390, you are not limited to one brand for this feature and therefore have access to better sales when they happen. If the Gigabyte Aorus Elite supported Thunderbolt then that would have been the best $200 X570 board to choose. As it stands now, there are good sales on z390 boards around $200+ but for X570 to get equivalent you have to jump up to $300+ - That right there makes price gap of about $120 for the 9900kf even smaller since you have to buy a more costly motherboard for Ryzen. And the fact that DAWBENCH still shows the i9 pulling ahead of the 3700x it becomes a hard sell to pay the same for less performance.


----------



## pderbidge

dasbin said:


> My shopping around, at least here in Canada, puts the price of a 9900K system with an equivilant motherboard much more expensive than a 3700X system, and just barely under the price of a 3900x system.


This is a good point. I am talking prices in the US, which is not indicative of anywhere else.


----------



## Solarsentinel

pderbidge said:


> I've checked temps with Hardware Monitor, Hardware info, Ryzen Master and Asrock's A-Tune Utility and of course, the Bios. They are all pretty much the same. I assume they are are getting their info directly from the bios.
> 
> 
> I have only used the thermal paste that came with the Noctua, which all reviewers have said is very good paste. I have applied it twice to verify that I somehow didn't get it right the first time. No change in temps. Do you have a new Ryzen? Maybe you can verify better temps. If for some reason my chip is not working to spec then I'll need to exchange it.



Unfortunatly i have not a Ryzen for the moment, so i can't tell you about the Temps, but i read a lot of reviews and yours temps aren't normal. But there is a "sort of bug". I found this on reddit in order to help you. It's a long thread but you could find a soltution to your problem : 


Hope this will help you 



pderbidge said:


> The interesting thing about overclocking the 3rd gen Ryzens is that reviewers have unanimously been pointing out that there seems to be very little gained in trying to overclock this CPU. This is mostly due to way that AMD has implemented Precision Boost. There is more testing and analysis about this here.




Thanks i'll check that.



pderbidge said:


> It's a tough choice because there are upgrade paths with choosing an X570 platform. You could easily upgrade the CPU in the future and get better than 9900k performance. Many would argue, rightfully, that there is no such thing as future proof anymore since new platforms and architecture tend to end up being cheaper than upgrading older components so by the time you might want to upgrade your CPU there might be more cost advantages to just get a whole new system. This is why I think the 9900k is still possibly a better choice. The price difference between going 3700x and 9900k just isn't that much when you compare the sum of the parts.



Yes it's true, for somebody it will be more future proof, or budget proof to chose a Ryzen because you can just update the processor, but i agree with you that there is a little difference between the cost platform of Ryzen and 9900k to take advantage to one or the other. 
But if you don't need a graphic card, the advantage goes to intel. (i9 9900k has an integrated graphic but not the ryzen). It's a tough choice anyway 



pderbidge said:


> Yes it was one of my biggest fears and now is actually my least. I'm more concerned with temps right now as I don't want to get stuck with a possible lemon so I'm going to discuss with the retailer to see what my options are. It would be nice if someone had a used sample for me to test against my own to ensure I'm not dealing with a poor piece of Silicon. I will repeat however, that nothing other than the monitoring indicates a heat issue. I've dealt with older AMD CPU's that got extremely hot and remember that just by putting my hand in front of the exhaust or in the case you could feel the heat. That is not happening here. The only rotten thing is that the readings from the monitoring system probably throttles my performance a bit which is why I'm seeing 4.1ghz all cores on stress load vs perhaps a 4.4ghz. But yeah, as you can tell, the small fan isn't even a concern anymore. There is no mechanical whine and it's inaudible against the case fans.



Thanks for the info that the noise generating by the motherboard fan is not a problem.

I'll check more info on your temp problem, and if i found something i will tell you.


----------



## pderbidge

dasbin said:


> AMD recently came out with new chipset drivers which address high idle temps / voltages when used in conjunction with a Windows 10 update. And it sounds like new BIOS revisions are on the way to address other things.


I'm keeping an eye on it but so far I'm on the latest bios so I can only assume that I might have some bad silicon. I'm going to call my retailer and see if we can work out an exchange and go from there. I've had a bit of bad luck regarding AMD's Qaulity control. The first CPU I received had bent pins so I exchanged it right away for a new one and now this new one seems to have an issue with temps.


----------



## pderbidge

duplicate post. ignore.


----------



## dasbin

pderbidge said:


> I'm keeping an eye on it but so far I'm on the latest bios so I can only assume that I might have some bad silicon



The update for temp/voltage was for chipset drivers, not a BIOS update.

It's here: https://community.amd.com/community...te-5-let-s-talk-clocks-voltages-and-destiny-2

Note you also need to be running Windows 10 version 1903

One thing that stands out from this is that Ryzen Master was previously reporting the highest core temp sensor as the CPU temperature. After the update, now it will report an average of all the sensors which should be more accurate.


----------



## pderbidge

dasbin said:


> The update for temp/voltage was for chipset drivers, not a BIOS update.
> 
> It's here: https://community.amd.com/community...te-5-let-s-talk-clocks-voltages-and-destiny-2
> 
> Note you also need to be running Windows 10 version 1903
> 
> One thing that stands out from this is that Ryzen Master was previously reporting the highest core temp sensor as the CPU temperature. After the update, now it will report an average of all the sensors which should be more accurate.


Ahh, thanks for the clarification. I did install the latest chipset driver direct from AMD's site and did the latest Windows 10 update so I'm assuming I have both. I'll have to double check. Nevertheless I'm exchanging the CPU and already have approval to do so (I'm within the 15 day time frame) so we'll see how that goes. If it's not the CPU or the bios or the chipset drivers or Windows, then the next thing to troubleshoot will be my cooler. I forgot to try the Wraith Spire cooler it came with to see if that made a difference. For now though, since I already have approval to swap out the CPU I'm just going to do that first. At least that should eliminate one of the scenarios.

Thanks to all you guys for looking out for me. I'll keep you updated.


----------



## chimuelo

FWIW You can use Ryzen 3000s with ASRocks Workstation or Server motherboards.
These boards are X470 until they put out 570s.

But for our audio needs the ASPEED AT2500 Chip has plenty of RAM for Triple Monitors.

You lose the PCI-4 capability, and greedy bastards realize these are great motherboards for Ryzen 3000s so what I’ve usually paid 125-175 for are going for 450-500.
Not ASRocks fault, just the supply chain.

I use the little gem i7 5775C w/ GFX disabled so the AT2500 kicks on and covers even my pseudo 3D project window where hardware, ASIO and DSP work together.

When ASRock releases an X570 Server or Workstation board optimized for 1U Chassis it will be perfect for audio because everything is short traced, no blinking lights, no bells and whistles.


----------



## pderbidge

I think Buildzoid's observations here point to why the idle temps tend to be higher with Ryzen 3000. Still doesn't explain why my load temps are so high though. When I get my replacement CPU this week I'll know if it was the chip or if I'm back to square one troubleshooting. What this does point out though is that you do not want any type of whiny sounding fan on this cpu because due to the boost algorithms it will constantly ramp up and down and just be annoying to listen to. It would be better to have a fan that is quiet at even high loads, like the Noctua and BEQuiet fans, to be set to run at faster speeds to begin with so they aren't constantly ramping. Also, set your case fans profile to only ramp with case temp rise and not CPU rise or you'll have an entire case of fans ramping up and down each time the cpu boosts up and down. I think early 9900k had similar issues? AMD still obviously has some work to do to resolve some of these quirks.

This just confirms my recommendation of the 9900k for most people who will likely have their PC in the same room they mix in. The Ryzen will require a little more effort to make quiet compared to a current Intel solution. It's not that bad for the average person but for musicians who seek an ultra quiet solution I think it will be easier to achieve with Intel for now.


----------



## pderbidge

New update: 

Pete has come up with some new testing regarding the impact that higher frequency memory with decent timings like CL16 has with Ryzen on Daw performance. Although it looks to be slight we are starting to finally see an impact. The key is to get a 1:1 ratio with the Infinity Fabric (the thing that communicates between chiplets on the die). That ideal frequency is 3733MHz. Going above 3600MHz is still expensive but if you are a confident memory overclocker (which is a bit tricky) then with the right type of memory you may be able to get there, however if you can't get the timings tight enough then it's probably best to leave it at 3600MHZ. http://www.scanproaudio.info/2019/07/30/ryzen-memory-testing-for-audio-does-it-make-an-impact/

I, however want to share some thoughts on working with cheaper memory since that's what I have and there are still some benefits to be had there as well. But first, an update to my cpu and cooling issue:

I received my new CPU yesterday and instead of going to bed early, like I should have due to the cold my daughter has graciously shared with the rest of the family, I decided to do some tests. First off, I can't really compare my new temps to the previous ones because of some changes I made to the system. I had originally ordered the Noctua NH-U14s without checking the compatability charts and didn't realize that it would overhang my x16 slot, so I was using my x4 slot for my graphics card. With the exchange of the CPU I had ordered a new Noctua cooler (I'll use the U14s on my old system and give it an overclock) which is now more compatible with my board. I ordered the NH-D15s and now all is well, other than the fact that you have to remove your entire motherboard to get this beast on. 

The good news is, my temps are now 10c lower than they were, except at idle. Idle is still roughly the same. It's hard to say if it was the new cooler or the new Thermal Paste (Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut), or both that made the difference, or if it was actually the CPU. I suspect it was a little of everything. My temps, however, still jump up to 80c under full aida64 stress test load. That's better than 92c but still a bit hot for such a nice air cooling setup. I really don't think you could get any real meaningful overclocks with this cpu without an expensive AIO and even then I think the difference is marginal. I still think these readings are a bug in the either the new chipset or the new Bios. I'll be looking out for updates. As long as I'm below 80c I shouldn't see any throttling which was my main concern.

I won't go into detail since many reviewers with much more knowledge and proper test equipment have already confirmed what I validated for myself- which is the boost algorithms on this cpu are already aggressive enough that there is really no benefit to overclocking and voiding your warranty. Since these algorithms are the same for all their 3rd gen it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to spend more on a 3800X, even with it's higher stock clock speed, because it will boost about the same despite AMD's marketing on this. The all core boost will be the same and that single core 4.4Ghz high boost that AMD touts on the 3800x tends to only happen when the stars align according to reviews. This is one area where AMD should have been more conservative instead of making a lot of early adopters turned off when they weren't seeing those clock speeds. You're supposed to underpromise and overdeliver, not the other way around. It taints what is otherwise a really good processor.

Now to memory. Everyone knows that higher memory speeds with decent timings will benefit the infinity fabric but few have talked about those of us that already have cheaper DDR4 memory or didn't want to spend more than the cost of a 2400MHz kit. Apparently you can still get good results with low memory if you are willing to tighten the timings a bit. I have 2 corsair/Micron 32GB Vengeance kits (2x16) that are the same timings of 16-16-16-39. I was able to get a stable boost to 2666Mhz with timings of 14-15-15-39 at 1.3V and saw my Cinebench score jump 30 points consistently. I'm sure if I was a more advanced overclock-er I might be able to get much higher boost speeds or at least tighter timings. Probably tighter timings since I believe Micron is not known for its ability to boost very high. Although for DAW use I'm not sure the higher frequency will matter as much as the tighter timings, but then again it's all about getting the Infinity Fabric to communicate faster between chiplets so I guess if higher frequency accomplishes that with looser timings then that's the point.

My next test will be to see if maybe lowering my ram speed with tighter timings and doubling my Infinity fabric speed to have a 2:1 ratio might yield even better results. That means setting my ram frequency at 1050MHz and the infinity fabric at 2100MHz. I'll let you know if that works.

For those still on the fence about Ryzen Vs Intel, I'll leave you with another article by Pete. Although it would be unfair to say that there is definitive proof that Cubase performs better on INtel than AMD at this point it is what I would call a "safer bet". As a new Ryzen owner, it's a good thing I'm on Reaper

http://www.scanproaudio.info/2019/07/22/amd-3-series-further-cubase-reaper-comparison/


----------



## Solarsentinel

Hi!
Glad you have now decent temps with your CPU! You can consider the problem solved because 80°c on heavy load is very good  I think the new thermal paste + the D15 are responsible for downing your temps by ten degres. They are both very good and reliable material.

Concerning RAM, the benchmarks are always showing us that DRAM speed is important, but in real practise you don't notice any difference (slightly perhaps). So just grab the RAM that you can purchase , and save the money for your CPU, it wiil be fine!


----------



## pderbidge

Solarsentinel said:


> You can consider the problem solved because 80°c on heavy load is very good


You're right. I think that for an air cooling solution and given that I'm doing this in the middle of the hot season in a house without central air, the results are acceptable. I still maintain that the readings are due to AMD's aggressive communication with the system and bios. This has been discussed and documented by many others so I won't get into the details of it here.



Solarsentinel said:


> Concerning RAM, the benchmarks are always showing us that DRAM speed is important, but in real practise you don't notice any different


I agree that this is made to seem much more significant that it is in real world practice, however, with Ryzens infinity fabric being dependent on Ram timings and speed to communicate between chiplets there is an argument to be made for getting ram and Infinity Fabric to be at a 1:1 ratio with each other. Even if you have super fast ram but the timings between "IF" and the ram don't match there will also be a performance hit. This is not the case for Intel which is both good and bad. Both technologies have their pros and cons. This is why I'm more fascinated with the idea of getting cheap ram tuned with the right timings to improve the communication of the infinity fabric. Of course, the sweet spot of 3600mhz ram with tight timings dialed in will be ideal, I still think there's a case to be made that doing the same with cheap ram can get close enough to where the difference is even more miniscule and show that the cost vs gains isn't worth spending more than the cost of 3200mhz ram which is the sweet spot in price right now and even saving money on cheaper ram may be worth it if you are willing to learn and tweak your ram.

In the end all this tweaking will make such little difference that it's probably not worth my time but I'm having fun geeking out so there's that😄


----------



## pderbidge

I have done all the proper tests of my memory, SSD's, NVME's etc... and everything is stable.
Today I start transferring my music licenses to my new PC. I'm hoping it goes smooth. I'm not expecting it to go fast. Once I'm done I will be able to report on how everything works on the new Ryzen 7 3700x. I'm excited and a little nervous. So far I am impressed with how Ryzen optimizes workloads. Before transferring licenses I worked on optimizing Windows 10 for Music and with the AMD Ryzen performance profile enabled, most of the optimizations were already set to where they should be. That was great news. Back to work, you may not hear from me for a while.


----------



## BGvanRens

Looking forward to hear your final verdict on this. I really want to get a Ryzen, but the step into the unknown is what holds me back a bit.


----------



## kitekrazy

pderbidge said:


> I have done all the proper tests of my memory, SSD's, NVME's etc... and everything is stable.
> Today I start transferring my music licenses to my new PC. I'm hoping it goes smooth. I'm not expecting it to go fast. Once I'm done I will be able to report on how everything works on the new Ryzen 7 3700x. I'm excited and a little nervous. So far I am impressed with how Ryzen optimizes workloads. Before transferring licenses I worked on optimizing Windows 10 for Music and with the AMD Ryzen performance profile enabled, most of the optimizations were already set to where they should be. That was great news. Back to work, you may not hear from me for a while.



Did you buy a new copy of Windows 10 or did it come from a previous system.


----------



## pderbidge

kitekrazy said:


> Did you buy a new copy of Windows 10 or did it come from a previous system.


I got a new copy because I decided I'm going to update my old system to Win10 when I'm done putting together my new system.


----------



## pderbidge

Another quick update/Rant: 

As I'm reinstalling all my VST and VSTi's and programs on to my new PC I am reminded of how much I loath the whole copyprotection developers insist on using. I'm literally at the point of taking note of the worst offenders just so that the next time I do this I will think twice before trying to install their software. There is absolutely no reason it should take all this time. I love what developers have been able to do for composers, however I think they are gullible and ignorant on how to protect their software. I know this could start a rat hole but I don't care. I am convinced that the amount of development time and energy and money spent implementing these practices actually costs them more money than what they would gain from customers who appreciate the developer who chooses to "trust" their customers. And just think about customers who would likely upgrade but don't because they are tired of the hassle. The number of pirates downloading your software does NOT equate to the number of sales lost. It just doesn't. What does equate to lost sales is annoying your paying customers with cumbersome install practices and, of course, poorly implemented VST/sample libraries. Please take note from companies like Reaper, who continue to grow by having an excellent product and the courage to "trust" their consumer base. OK back to another grueling week of installing more BS.


----------



## José Herring

Following this.

How is the AMD chip performing stability wise? An issues, audio glitches, cpu spikes, ect..


----------



## José Herring

BGvanRens said:


> Looking forward to hear your final verdict on this. I really want to get a Ryzen, but the step into the unknown is what holds me back a bit.


I hear you. Ryzen is tempting, but for my main music machines, I've always done intel. For my slaves I've always used AMD because it was cheaper. Never had a problem with AMD but I've also never done full on music production on an AMD machine either.


----------



## pderbidge

josejherring said:


> Following this.
> 
> How is the AMD chip performing stability wise? An issues, audio glitches, cpu spikes, ect..



I wish I could give you an objective update but I've spent a lot of time doing backups and playing a bit with overclocking memory and cpu, which I'm a bit new to doing so I haven't really spent much time actually producing music with it yet. I will say that the net net so far is that these chips are not easy overclockers which is not actually a bad thing, I'll explain in just a minute but first I'll talk about a couple of challenges I had at first:

I ordered my CPU locally from Best Buy just so that it would be easy to exchange or return in case I had any issues. I'm glad I did because the first cpu sent to me had some bent pins. I was able to take it back to Best Buy and exchange it straight across for a new CPU. The second time I was having some issues keeping things as cool as I would like so rather than wait too long past the exchange/return period trying to troubleshoot I exchanged it one more time. It turns out that my Noctua NH-14US was to blame and is not cooling like it should (tested on my 4770k) so no fault of the AMD there, however I did get a better silicon this last time whereas before I would see all core clocks maxing around 4.0Ghz and now my chip is getting 4.2Ghz on all cores under load. Point is, there is a bit of a silicon lottery with the 3700x, not to dissimilar to Intel. All in all this was the extent of my issues, so not too bad. 

Back to my earlier comment on overclocking. I said it wasn't a bad thing that these chips aren't easy overclockers. I'll explain. AMD has chosen to push as much performance as they can out of the box with their technology called Performance boost. You might think it similar to Intel's SpeedStep but it actually works so much better because they are truly trying to not leave any performance on the table. It actually does a really good job forcing the CPU to utilize as high clocks as needed on as many cores as needed when the task asks for it. So the point is you don't really need to overclock the Ryzen because PB already does a really good job at pushing the highest clocks possible and trying to overclock might get you an additional 200 to 400 Mhz max. For example, to overclock my Intel 4770k it was as simple as boosting the clock speed and voltage and I went from a 3.6Ghz to 4.3Ghz with no problem. With Ryzen it's going to take a bit more tweaking than that to get a stable overclock and for a mere 3 to 5% performance boost just isn't worth the time to me, although I did spend hours trying just because I can't help myself. I did get a 4.2GHZ all core clock that seemed stable but in the end I decided to let AMD do it's thing and settle for better cooling. It should be noted that my 4770k at 4.3Ghz still gets beat handily in cinebench 15 by my 3700x (which maxes at 4.3Ghz) in both single and multicore tests so clock speeds aren't the whole story.

Now regarding your original question around CPU spikes or Audio glitches, the answer so far is no but I also haven't put it to the test with any projects yet. I did have a small audio glitch related to my Scarlett (first gen) the other day so I'm keeping an eye on that one. I used to use 2nd gen drivers under Win7 for lower latency results but I'm not sure if that's necessary on Win10. 

I think the weekend after Labor Day weekend I'll have some time to really put the new system to work and then I'll have a better idea on how I would rate AMD. One thing I can already comment on is that the chipset fan is not an issue when it comes to noise, at least on my Asrock Motherboard. In fact this new build is quieter than my Intel rig, but most of that is due to the fact that I'm using quieter fans to begin with.


----------



## José Herring

Thank you for the detailed report. I really appreciate it.

I'm a little cautious on relying on software overclocking because of Speedstep and also I seem to recall intel had another thing I think it was called Tubo boost or something that was a total nightmare back in the day. But if AMD has figured it out then I'm willing to give it a shot.

Personally, I'd be happy to get a chip and not overclock it. On I7's it was totally easy to overclock but still. I had a system crash and somehow everything got reset then I had to overclock it all over again, turn off CPUstepping ect... I'm fairly computer saavy but I can't say that I like doing any of that. I'm never sure if I got it right because I haven't taken the time to get that good at techy stuff.

Since the crash and subsequent resetting of everything I've experienced random audio glitches no matter what latency setting I have so something went bad. It's an old machine and it's time for something new.

I'm a cheap ass cheapskate and really don't want to spend more than $1,500. I would use my current rig as my main sample streaming machine along with my current slave and So I won't need to max out my new machine with terrabytes of HD or Max Ram as a lot of my sample streaming will be done with my two slaves.

With the Ryzen chip I think I can do it. Make a rock solid build for around $1500. We'll see. I may build two and use 3 slaves so I can expand on my sample library collections. 

Thanks again.


----------



## pderbidge

josejherring said:


> I'm a little cautious on relying on software overclocking because of Speedstep and also I seem to recall intel had another thing I think it was called Tubo boost or something that was a total nightmare back in the day. But if AMD has figured it out then I'm willing to give it a shot


 I guess you could say that AMD's PB is a bit like speedstep and turbo boost combined except that it actually works well somewhat negating the need to overclock although that won't stop some from trying. It's probably a bit more like Turbo Boost in that it really does boost performance. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Intel fan but I've been impressed enough with what I've seen and read about 3rd gen Ryzen that I wanted to give it a try. I do think that some of these reviews are a bit overblown in trying to say there's no need for Intel anymore but keep in mind they assume we all just game and encode videos with our PC's so it's tough to get a balanced opinion. I do think there is less of an argument to buy most the Intel chips but the 9900k is still, in my opinion, a contender.

I have given up on AMD a long time ago and this is the first time they have been able to sway me to try them again. So far it looks promising.



josejherring said:


> With the Ryzen chip I think I can do it. Make a rock solid build for around $1500. We'll see. I may build two and use 3 slaves so I can expand on my sample library collections.



I'm cheap too. You can easily do this. Even my build was just around that price. I think even with a 9900k this can be done. I wonder if a 3600 wouldn't be a powerful budget slave build. I'll try and post some pc part picker configs that I think are good options.


----------



## pderbidge

While I wait for a chance to put the new system through the rigors, I'll take the time to go over the build components and logic behind them. For this post I'll just focus on the Motherboard since it is one of the more crucial components of a system build and deserves some explanation.

I chose to go with the Asrock X570 Steel Legend. This board is $200 and at first glance compared to the $200 Asus or Gigabyte boards it may not seem as impressive.
Most enthusiasts will overlook the Steel Legend because the VRM's are not equal to those on the similarly priced Asus or Gigabyte boards.
Most enthusiasts will tell you that if you go with Asrock to choose the Taichi at $300.

I'm an enthusiast so why did I go with the Steel Legend?
Answer: It has future Thunderbolt support whereas the similar priced competition does not.
OK, but why not then go with the Taichi and get both support for Thunderbolt and better VRM's?
Answer: Because I was going with a 3700x and I wanted my system build to be less money than that of a 9900k. If I were to spring for the Taichi then I would be getting close enough in price to an Intel 9900k system where it makes more sense to just go with the 9900k given that it performs a little better than a 3700x in Dawbench tests.
The Steel legend keeps the cost down and has a great feature set.
But what about those VRM's? Don't you want better?
Answer: Yes, however I do not "need" better. I could pull a golf cart with my Toyota Rav4 just as easily as I can with a Ford F150. The F150 has more power but isn't really needed when pulling a golf cart.

I have found after a lot of testing that the 8+2 phase (10 total Phase) on the Steel Legend stays very cool even under high load and I'm convinced that this motherboard would handle even a 3900x just fine.

But that's not all (sounds like an infomercial, I know). There are some really great features that a lot of boards in this price range don't have. First off, This motherboard has plenty of onboard pwm fan controllers which is really important for getting that balance of cool and quiet with your pc case and the fan control software works really well. It also has good watercooling features and controls which I don't use. Another cool thing is that it has plenty of RGB lighting connectors and the software to control it works great. Some will not care about this feature but it is a nice feature that gives your build a more polished look when coupled with some RGB fans. Unfortunately, the Noctua Fans on my heatsink can't take advantage of this feature but all my case fans do as well as the lighting built into the motherboard.

But that's still not all. With the Steel legend I can populate every PCIe slot and every SATA port and every M.2 slot. Nothing is shared! You can't even do that on the Taichi since some ports are shared between the M.2 and the SATA.

On the Downside there is no x8 slot, just one x16, an x4 and the rest are x1 slots. The x4 does however fit a physical x16 sized card. No x8 slot basically means limitations for those using dual graphics cards but I'm not an expert in that area and my current graphics card would suck for gaming but works great for everything else. (R5 220) I should point out that putting a graphics card in the x4 slot will not allow you to upgrade to Thunderbolt since the Asrock Thunderbolt card needs that slot.

Next in line are plenty of USB 3.2 ports, even USB 3.2 for the front case ports and a USB-C on the back plate. There is even a USB 2.0 on board connector for cases that only support front USB 2.0 ports. There is no USB 2.0 on the back plate so if you wanted to have some 2.0 on the back then you would need to add a USB 2.0 PCIe card or use the onboard 2.0 connectors with a USB backplate if the front case doesn't have or need them. I think the only reason one would want 2.0 ports is if they had old equipment that didn't play well with 3.0 ports which has been an issue with some older sound cards.

The Steel legend has Intel Gigabit Lan which is solid but nothing special. Internet companies around here still aren't maxing a gig yet, however the boards with 10gig lan are more for internal networks than for external which would be nice for those with NAS systems at home that support 10Gb. Just don't forget the 10Gb switch.

Other missing features would be the ability to do a bios update without the need for a cpu, a bios flashback and a lack of a CMOS reset button. Doing bios updates is still super easy on this board using a USB stick plugged into a USB port on the back and clearing CMOS the traditional way is still easy enough to do so I see these "missing" features as nice to haves but not necessary.

Another thing to note is that although this board will support a Noctua NH-D15, the NH-D15 will cover up the first PCIe slot which is the PCIe x16 slot forcing you to put your graphics card in the X4 slot. The solution to this is to get the Noctua NH-D15s. Same performance, just not as wide leaving just enough room for your graphics card and also has a higher profile to fit memory with heat-sinks. You still won't be fitting any tall RGB memory in there though.

I think that's about it. The exciting part for me is I am now confident that if I ever wanted to upgrade to a 3900x that this motherboard will handle it just fine which will one day give me even better performance than an Intel 9900K and even better than a 9900x. Even now with my 3700x I should get fairly close to a 9900k and in multi-threaded performance the 3700x already beats it, barley, but not noticeable in real world use.

Conclusion of this post (still more to come):
It's hard to go wrong with any of these cpu's (9900k, 3900x, 3700x). They will all do a great job IMHO. If you are concerned about VRM performance on the Asrock Steel Legend don't be. I would not go lower than the Steel Legend though. The advantage to Intel right now is that there are more Motherboard choices with Thunderbolt support. If you don't care about TB then you have a lot of great choices with X570 and get the added benefit of PCIe4 which may not mean much right now but as prices come down on PCIe4 devices it could mean some boost in performance for you in the future.

As an extra, here is a video that mirrors my enthusiasm for the Asrock Steel Legend.


----------



## José Herring

Got it. Must admit you had me googling a lot of terms. 

My only question. Would a higher VRM say 16+2 make it so that you could overclock higher at more stable temps? Could the lower power phase be the reason you couldn't overclock easily?

Just a curiosity. I'm going to be building my machine in the next week or two. I don't plan to overclock, but never say never 

Thank you for all the data. You are being most helpful.


----------



## pderbidge

josejherring said:


> My only question. Would a higher VRM say 16+2 make it so that you could overclock higher at more stable temps? Could the lower power phase be the reason you couldn't overclock easily?



Yes and no. The VRM stands for Voltage Regulator Module. Basically the name says it all. In translation those Voltages handle the power stages of the components on your motherboard. As you know when you want to overclock your CPU you most likely will need to increase some voltages and those voltage increases cause more heat. I'm not the expert on all the technicalities but what I do understand is this- if your VRM overheats it will cause your CPU to clock down to protect your system from overheating, thus degrading performance. They call this VRM throttling. Just like it does when the CPU overheats and protects itself by downclocking to cool down, the VRM will do the same thing when it overheats. So even if you have the best CPU cooler, if your VRM's can't take the heat then you still have an issue. Some Overclockers have been able to take less than ideal motherboards with poorly implimented VRM's and stick a fan over them to keep them cooler and were able to get stable overclocks because of it. Higher quality components can take more heat so sometimes you can have less phases with higher quality components and get good results. All things being equal, more phases is still better but a better VRM alone does not ensure a stable overclock. This article discusses the components that make up a VRM https://www.maketecheasier.com/what-is-vrm/

To answer your question about being able to get a stable overclock with more phases. Well, technically that is the idea, however you are still limited by the silicon lottery. If your CPU isn't capable of higher clocks than it doesn't matter how many phases you have. Also, if you have more phases with subpar VRM components then that might not work well either. The design of your motherboard and your bios settings will make a big difference in overclocking. You may have a great VRM set up but a poorly implemented bios that doesn't give you the settings you need to achieve the overclock you desire. Unless you go with Threadripper or find a Ryzen chip that can clock above 4.6Ghz (doesn't seem to exist) I'm not sure that anything beyond a quality 10 phase VRM is going to help. As long as your VRM's stay cool under the desired overclock settings they will do their job and an unstable overclock will be due to other factors. In my testing, my 8+2 phase VRM never got hot under an all core clock of 4.3Ghz but the overclock wasn't as stable as I wanted and it is all due to the CPU itself. I'm confident that my VRM setup will handle a 3900x due to these tests, even overclocked and my only limiting factor will be the CPU. Of course it's not just about how high you can overclock but how much voltage you need to push to get there. More voltage, more heat. So if your overclock is pushing a lot of high voltage (of course you should stay below 1.4V on Ryzen and I prefer max of 1.35V) then the need for either better heatsinks on the VRM or more phases to disperse the heat is what you're after. Currently, in the $300 price range you can get Motherboards with more than 12 phase VRM's which is plenty and probably overkill for even the most demanding Ryzen. 

If you want a really good breakdown of VRM components you should watch buildzoid's videos like this one. I hope this helps.


----------



## José Herring

So I'm looking at another option for a board. First, do you think that Asrock Steele Legend will be able to handle the upcoming Ryzen 9 chips?

I'm looking at
*ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Hero *
And, the Taichi. 

My reasoning is that if I decide to upgrade the CPU in a year and build another machine around the then older Ryzen 7 I will need to extra VRM to handle the more robust chip.

That's kind of were I'm leaning at atm.

But, I'm also exploring the idea of cheaper motherboards too. Since I won't need HD audio, tripple SLI or really not interested in RGB peromance. Is there a bareboned mobo that delivers a higher VRM at a lower cost point by deleting high end video and audio features?


----------



## oboemaroni

Just chipping in to say I'm pretty happy with a 3900X (upg from a 2600K) on an Asus X470 Rog Strix m/b, researched and it seems like it'll be okay for at least a 3950X and hopefully the 4000 cpus if I want to upgrade in future. Only issue to begin with was controlling temperatures but that's mostly under control now with a custom fan curve.


----------



## pderbidge

josejherring said:


> So I'm looking at another option for a board. First, do you think that Asrock Steele Legend will be able to handle the upcoming Ryzen 9 chips?
> 
> I'm looking at
> *ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Hero *
> And, the Taichi.
> 
> My reasoning is that if I decide to upgrade the CPU in a year and build another machine around the then older Ryzen 7 I will need to extra VRM to handle the more robust chip.
> 
> That's kind of were I'm leaning at atm.
> 
> But, I'm also exploring the idea of cheaper motherboards too. Since I won't need HD audio, tripple SLI or really not interested in RGB peromance. Is there a bareboned mobo that delivers a higher VRM at a lower cost point by deleting high end video and audio features?



If you want Thunderbolt support just in case you decide you like a particular TB Audio Interface in the future than go Taichi. Otherwise the Asus is a good board although I think the Gigabyte boards have a better bios and I prefer Gigabyte.
Although I believe my Asrock steel legend will be just fine for a 3900x, if my intention were to start with a 3900x I would have gone with a Taichi. If I didn't care about TB then I'd go Gigabyte but I'd be plenty happy with that Asus as well. The only MSI board I'd consider is the Godlike. I don't trust the cheaper MSI boards because I've had too many go bad. Any of the $300+ x570 boards between Asus, Gigabyte and Asrock and even MSI will be plenty good for the higher end Ryzen's.
For cheaper boards around $200 the Asus and Gigabyte actually have VRM's comparable to the higher end boards. I just have an issue with these manufactures having an opportunity to support TB on the new AMD platform and choosing not to. For this reason I think Asrock should be rewarded so I would encourage you to consider Asrock at any price point. Their $300+ boards will easily handle high end Ryzens


----------



## pderbidge

This weekend I should finally get a chance to put my new build to the test. As promised though, I wanted to continue explaining my build, especially for people who might be new to building their PC. For this next post I'll just go through the Case I chose and explain what makes a good PC case.

There are a few considerations in choosing the right PC Case for your needs. I'm going to assume most people already know the difference between the different standards (ATX vs Micro-ATX vs Mini ITX etc...)

The More important factors to me when choosing a case is a balance between Cool and quiet.

First off, A quiet case would be a case that is completely enclosed without any air holes and uses some type of dampening to keep the noise of internal fans (like the CPU Fan) from being heard. The problem with this type of case is there would not be enough cooling to keep things under control and your PC components would soon heat up to a level that could degrade your performance.

The next type would be a case that has a lot of air holes all over with fans blowing cool air in the case and an exhaust fan to help move hot air out of the case. The problem with this type of case is noise and dust that eventually will clog up components and needs to be cleaned more often or components will heat up due to being clogged by dust bunnies.

Then there are the case fans. A case that handles larger fans has the ability to run quieter due to the fact that a larger fan can produce the same amount of air flow as a smaller fan but at lower RPM's thus lower noise levels. I won't get into the different types of fans but suffice it to say that a PC case that can handle larger fans will help keep the case cooler and quieter.

Price does not always translate to a case that does a good job at cooling and there is always a bit of a trade off between heat and noise. Some of the best cases for silent PC builds are also the worst for Thermals. They assume that you are taking certain precautions such as an aftermarket CPU cooler, like a Water cooling solution and possibly some Waterblocks on hot components to help keep them cool since they won't be getting much air.

Years ago I decided that it made sense for me to locate my PC in the adjacent room to my Studio so that I could focus more on cooling than noise. This way I wouldn't spend a fortune on specialty components and yet still have a quiet studio. Having said that, I still pay for reasonably priced components that give me as quiet of a PC as possible without sacrificing cooling. For example, my Noctua NH-D15s for the CPU and my PWM 120mm case fans that plug into the motherboard PWM fan headers that keep the fans spinning at very low speed until it becomes necessary to speed them up for more airflow.

I like to look for a case that will handle at least 2 front 120mm fans, 1 rear 120mm fan and 1 side 120mm fan. What I ended up with this time around was a case that handled 2 Front 120mm fans, 1 Rear 120mm fan and 2 Ceiling mounted 120mm fans which also could be used for water cooling solutions that use 120mm fans or larger. Actually I believe the front and top fans can be up to 90mm if I chose to buy those, which I didn't but I could have and possibly gotten an even quieter build. But it isn't good enough to have a PC case that handles this many fans but that those front fans get plenty of air since they will be my intake fans. This means that a front with air holes/mesh front vs the type with side vents will work waay better for the task. When you have side vents the air has to bend to enter the case which in turn reduces airflow. Every bend is a reduction in airflow. I know that many expensive cases choose to go for the side vents for looks, which is a shame. Even, well respected brands do this but no matter the brand or the cost, you can't defy physics and a mesh front will always be the best choice if you want better airflow from your intake fans. In my setup I have the two front and the two ceiling mounted fans acting as Intakes and the rear fan as an exhaust. Since hot air rises some might prefer to have the top fans as exhaust, but I actually lay my PC Case on its side on a shelf so it works out well for me to use them as another set of intakes right over the CPU and VRM's.

I am a bit of a cheapskate so I looked for a case that met my criteria but wasn't too expensive. What I ended up with was this for $40 on sale- https://www.aerocool.us/pgs/pgs-a/pgs_a_a1000_bk.html

If I wasn't a cheapskate then I would have bought this case- https://www.coolermaster.com/catalog/cases/mid-tower/mastercase-h500/

Here is a good review of the Cooler Master H500 (the second one I linked to). This video also does a good job of explaining the advantages of a front mesh case.


----------



## José Herring

pderbidge said:


> This weekend I should finally get a chance to put my new build to the test. As promised though, I wanted to continue explaining my build, especially for people who might be new to building their PC. For this next post I'll just go through the Case I chose and explain what makes a good PC case.
> 
> There are a few considerations in choosing the right PC Case for your needs. I'm going to assume most people already know the difference between the different standards (ATX vs Micro-ATX vs Mini ITX etc...)
> 
> The More important factors to me when choosing a case is a balance between Cool and quiet.
> 
> First off, A quiet case would be a case that is completely enclosed without any air holes and uses some type of dampening to keep the noise of internal fans (like the CPU Fan) from being heard. The problem with this type of case is there would not be enough cooling to keep things under control and your PC components would soon heat up to a level that could degrade your performance.
> 
> The next type would be a case that has a lot of air holes all over with fans blowing cool air in the case and an exhaust fan to help move hot air out of the case. The problem with this type of case is noise and dust that eventually will clog up components and needs to be cleaned more often or components will heat up due to being clogged by dust bunnies.
> 
> Then there are the case fans. A case that handles larger fans has the ability to run quieter due to the fact that a larger fan can produce the same amount of air flow as a smaller fan but at lower RPM's thus lower noise levels. I won't get into the different types of fans but suffice it to say that a PC case that can handle larger fans will help keep the case cooler and quieter.
> 
> Price does not always translate to a case that does a good job at cooling and there is always a bit of a trade off between heat and noise. Some of the best cases for silent PC builds are also the worst for Thermals. They assume that you are taking certain precautions such as an aftermarket CPU cooler, like a Water cooling solution and possibly some Waterblocks on hot components to help keep them cool since they won't be getting much air.
> 
> Years ago I decided that it made sense for me to locate my PC in the adjacent room to my Studio so that I could focus more on cooling than noise. This way I wouldn't spend a fortune on specialty components and yet still have a quiet studio. Having said that, I still pay for reasonably priced components that give me as quiet of a PC as possible without sacrificing cooling. For example, my Noctua NH-D15s for the CPU and my PWM 120mm case fans that plug into the motherboard PWM fan headers that keep the fans spinning at very low speed until it becomes necessary to speed them up for more airflow.
> 
> I like to look for a case that will handle at least 2 front 120mm fans, 1 rear 120mm fan and 1 side 120mm fan. What I ended up with this time around was a case that handled 2 Front 120mm fans, 1 Rear 120mm fan and 2 Ceiling mounted 120mm fans which also could be used for water cooling solutions that use 120mm fans or larger. Actually I believe the front and top fans can be up to 90mm if I chose to buy those, which I didn't but I could have and possibly gotten an even quieter build. But it isn't good enough to have a PC case that handles this many fans but that those front fans get plenty of air since they will be my intake fans. This means that a front with air holes/mesh front vs the type with side vents will work waay better for the task. When you have side vents the air has to bend to enter the case which in turn reduces airflow. Every bend is a reduction in airflow. I know that many expensive cases choose to go for the side vents for looks, which is a shame. Even, well respected brands do this but no matter the brand or the cost, you can't defy physics and a mesh front will always be the best choice if you want better airflow from your intake fans. In my setup I have the two front and the two ceiling mounted fans acting as Intakes and the rear fan as an exhaust. Since hot air rises some might prefer to have the top fans as exhaust, but I actually lay my PC Case on its side on a shelf so it works out well for me to use them as another set of intakes right over the CPU and VRM's.
> 
> I am a bit of a cheapskate so I looked for a case that met my criteria but wasn't too expensive. What I ended up with was this for $40 on sale- https://www.aerocool.us/pgs/pgs-a/pgs_a_a1000_bk.html
> 
> If I wasn't a cheapskate then I would have bought this case- https://www.coolermaster.com/catalog/cases/mid-tower/mastercase-h500/
> 
> Here is a good review of the Cooler Master H500 (the second one I linked to). This video also does a good job of explaining the advantages of a front mesh case.



Eagerly awaiting the results. I'm nearing putting togther all the financing for my new build. I'm going to rebuild the entire virtual part of my studio. Should be fun. Will post updates as well. Compare notes.


----------



## vitocorleone123

140mm fans are the way to go (to me). My fractal case has 2 140mm in front and 1 in the back - with space for several more. I also didn’t want a case with lights or a glass window. My overclocked 9900k (5ghz all cores) stays under 90C in Prime95 brutal testing).


----------



## tabulius

I’m just building a PC into Cooler Master SL600M that has 2 x 200mm plus option for additional 2 x 200mm fans. Airflow is from bottom to top. Those big fans are quiet and move a lot of air. The SL600M is a good option as well.


----------



## pderbidge

tabulius said:


> I’m just building a PC into Cooler Master SL600M that has 2 x 200mm plus option for additional 2 x 200mm fans. Airflow is from bottom to top. Those big fans are quiet and move a lot of air. The SL600M is a good option as well.


That's a slick looking case. The only negative thing I've heard is with the bottom up cooling approach the air passes through the GPU before hitting the CPU which means warmer air over the CPU. If you use the integrated graphics or use a basic gpu that isn't that big and doesn't get that hot then you're fine. Also you would want a cpu cooler with fans facing the top vents instead of facing the back of the case.
Still it's a nice looking case and as long as temps are in check even if they are a bit higher than another similarly priced case then it could still be a good choice. There will always be tradeoffs no matter what you choose. My case is nice and cheap with decent cooling but it doesn't support 200mm fans which could make it even better.


----------



## pderbidge

vitocorleone123 said:


> 140mm fans are the way to go (to me). My fractal case has 2 140mm in front and 1 in the back - with space for several more. I also didn’t want a case with lights or a glass window. My overclocked 9900k (5ghz all cores) stays under 90C in Prime95 brutal testing).


140mm fans sound great. I do wonder once you go beyond 120mm how much quieter the fans get vs airflow. That would be a cool comparison to see. 
Regarding the case and fan lights I used to feel the same way but I've grown fond of the look once I saw some builds that didn't look like a Vegas light show. I used some RGB case fans on my build because they were the same cost as the non RGB fans and it's the one thing that makes my son think I built a high end PC, lol. Perception goes a long way. I set the RGB lighting to fade slowly from one color to the next just so that I had some nice Ambiance. It looks clean and professional. It's a shame it's not in my studio but it looks cool on the shelf I now wish Noctua would release a version of their cpu heat-sink to have an RGB logo and RGB fans to match. I agree that it's the least important aspect of building a good music PC.


----------



## pderbidge

Tomorrow I hope to put the whole system through the paces starting with some of my more taxing projects to see how it handles them. Here are some things I'm going to do to get an idea of performance.

1. I'm going to unfreeze as many tracks as I can that were necessary to freeze with my older system and see how far I can get beyond what my 4770k system could handle.
2. I will use the Reaper System monitoring utility to see how everything seems to be performing.
3. Maybe I will even create a dummy project and load up as many plugins and tracks to see what this system is capable of before crapping out.

One thing I do not expect to see is a major performance increase in the CPU. Although I understand this is what most people are excited to see with this build, however the reality is the old I7 was doing it's job pretty well and I would submit that the majority of any hiccups I experienced were due to lack of SSD as my sample drive and limited memory of 32GB vs my now 64GB. In fact when I monitored my old system, the CPU was hardly being taxed at all. This tells me that I wasn't really experiences any bottlenecks from the CPU but rather from other components that was causing me to have to freeze tracks. Of course, I will still need to freeze tracks for large future projects but I'm hoping it will be less than what I previously had to deal with, which wasn't all that bad but ultimately I am aiming for a fully real time capable system. Til that happens I think this will be a decent upgrade. The only real driving force behind this build was to get more than 32GB of ram which of course turned into something a bit bigger. 

Next post before I do my testing will be to give my final build specs, for those interested. I already talked about the Case and the Motherboard and ranted about the inconvenience of copy protection schemes that I don't agree so in my next post I will condense the rest of the build to some short sentences and feel free to ask my opinion or even challenge my reasoning for some of the components. It's by far not a perfect build but a decent one nonetheless.


----------



## pderbidge

Now for the rest of the components....

Here is a list of what my build consists of.

1. Motherboard- Asrock x570 Steel Legend - Already discussed in length in an early post.
2. CPU- AMD Ryzen 7 3700x- I will go into more detail on this after I put my system through some tests with real life projects tomorrow.
3. PC Case- DEEPCOOL RF120M - Already Discussed in earlier thread.
4. PSU- Corsair RM850x - I was going to go with Gigabyte or Seasonic but after looking at how much quieter the Corsair RM and RMX series were than any of the top respected PSU's I decided that it was the better choice. I will admit, however that I believe that for the same price that Seasonic does use higher grade components, not that the Corsair components are bad by any stretch. As I always say there is almost always a trade off.
5- Memory - Corsair Vengeance LX (4x 16GB) DDR4 2400 - I was in a crunch and wanted memory fast and this was all that was available locally. I should have been patient and waited another week because for not much more I could have gotten 3200mhz memory for not much more. I was, however able to overclock the memory to 2666 and tighten the timings pretty easily. Also, if I wanted 32GB sticks in order to get 128GB of memory the only available sticks right now from Samsung are 2666mhz, so I didn't want to spoil myself right now just to go backwards when I upgrade to 128GB of ram - Another thing to note is that my CPU would have benefited from faster memory being that it is Ryzen, but truthfully we are only talking about maybe a 5% increase in performance for music and maybe 10% for gaming which I don't do.
6. Main OS drive- Corsair Force MP510. What? Not Samsung? Nope. Every review and test I've read shows these to be on par but for less money and just as reliable. Did I mention I was a cheapskate?
7. Case Fans - DEEPCOOL FR120M- Matching RGB fans to populate my case and add a little ambiance in conjunction with the Asrock RGB lighting software. 
8. CPU Cooler - Noctua NH-D15S - Basically same as the NH-D15 but designed to fit in boards that can't handle the NH-D15 size. It's still a monster though. Unfortunately there is not a version that comes with 2 fans so I purchased an extra Noctua Fan (NF-A15) to have a push pull fan configuration.
9. Video Card- XFX- AMD Radeon R5 220- Great card if you're not a gamer. It's passively cooled which I like and has great color and no audio latency issues since it's not Nvidia. Although I wouldn't notice for my use, this card is, I'm told, a step down from the latest Intel Integrated graphics just to give you an idea of how it stands up to other video cards.
10. SSD as my Render to drive - Crucial MX500 1TB SSD
11. Sample Drive for my non Kontakt VSTi's and East West (mostly Hollywood Strings and Brass Gold) Samples - SanDisk- ultra 1 TB SSD
12. Sample Drive for all my Kontakt samples - Sandisk Ultra 2TB SSD
13. Internal DVD Optical Drive- Asus SATA- I'm oldskool and still like to have a disk drive in my system. It took me years to finally do away with the floppy drive. You just never know when you might still need a drive like this.
14. Corsair Dual Sata Drive Enclosure. This allowed me to install 2 SSD's in one 3.5 inch HD slot. This also made it possible for me to remove the extra drive cage from my Case to allow more airflow from the front to the back without blocking the fan.

I think that's everything.


----------



## vitocorleone123

Having 2 fans on the D15S makes maybe 2c difference. Unless you're trying to milk every last drop of performance, you can send the fan back and have a system "just" as cool and more quiet (1 less fan)


----------



## pderbidge

vitocorleone123 said:


> Having 2 fans on the D15S makes maybe 2c difference. Unless you're trying to milk every last drop of performance, you can send the fan back and have a system "just" as cool and more quiet (1 less fan)


Actually the two fans allow me to run them both at lower speed thus less quiet. I doubt that if I were to measure 1 vs 2 that the difference in noise of 1 fan vs 2 would be that noticeable and I could save the $20 but I have been playing with manual overclocking and got into the 90c even with this fan with Prime 95. More on that later though.


----------



## vitocorleone123

As with the temp, it does seem to lower noise by 1-2db vs 1 fan under max load. Hmm. I'll only add a second fan to my D15S if I find myself running at the ragged edge on a regular basis in the future. I have to run prime 95 with the smallest FFT for a good while to start hitting 90C. In my DAW or gaming I'm not seeing that.









Noctua NH-D15S versus NH-D15 CPU Cooler Review - Page 4 of 5 - Legit Reviews


- Page 4 of 5




www.legitreviews.com





So - adding a second fan is legit, but makes only a small difference. But still a difference.


----------



## chimuelo

Anxious to see the chip in action.
ScanAudio seems to be the only people who received good chips.
4.4 on 3700s, 4.3 on the big 3900...
That’s far better than guys @ the OC Forum and HWBot site are getting.
Some of them are using LN2, not water and air.

Makes me wish I would have kept my pre order of a high binned 3700.

I plan on running stock @ 256 anyways.
A nice cool powerful little 1U.

Hope you OC just to see the highest clocks on all core’s.

There’s a chance the cats over on these forums are pro Intel guys, but one is an Asus engineer. Famous for getting results and he’s having mixed results on a few various 3000s.

Fingers Crossed.


----------



## dasbin

I'm in the process of building a system around a 3700x and Gigabyte Aorus Elite x570. I got one of the new PCIe-4 drives, the Corsair MP600.
Still waiting for a few parts to arrive but excited about it coming from a 2600k.


----------



## pderbidge

chimuelo said:


> Anxious to see the chip in action.


Still testing. Ran into some troubles with a buggy plugin in my project that I had to troubleshoot and then decided to change some DAW settings (nothing related to the CPU) that I had that was good for old HDD's but decided to tinker to better optimize for my system with more ram and SSD's. Just to reiterate not to expect any graphs or in depth comparisons since I don't have the equipment or time to do that kind of analysis so it will be mainly a "subjective" (although I try to be as objective as possible) commentary of how I think it performs.



chimuelo said:


> ScanAudio seems to be the only people who received good chips.
> 4.4 on 3700s, 4.3


Very true. I can say that after trying out 3 different 3700x's that their chip is not the norm. I can hit 4.3 on all cores but it's not stable. I am not an experienced overclocker though so I do believe it is possible but it's not as simple as just boosting voltage and CPU clock speeds like it was on my 4770k. My first 3700x I couldn't go above 4.1GZ All C's. The problem is that AMD did not need to sour the waters with this false expectation because even at the boost speeds of 4.1 to 4.2ghz it performs really well. Clock for Clock it is better than the 9900k and the only thing that puts the 9900k ahead is that it can overclock easily to 5Ghz. Performance Boost Overdrive works well though as long as you set the limits to max. With PBO I see it consistently hits all cores at 4.250Ghz and 4.3 at times.



chimuelo said:


> Makes me wish I would have kept my pre order of a high binned 3700


If you're willing to spend the extra money that's exactly what the 3800X is. Just a higher binned 3700x.



chimuelo said:


> There’s a chance the cats over on these forums are pro Intel guys, but one is an Asus engineer. Famous for getting results and he’s having mixed results on a few various 3000s


Perhaps, but I don't think so. I think they're assessments are accurate. If anything, I think a lot of the reviewers are a bit biased towards AMD just because we all love to see the underdog get ahead but to pretend that Intel has no relevance since the Ryzen 3rd gen launch is a bit short sighted because there are still many valid reasons for choosing Intel. I will concede that anything below a 9900k is a harder sell unless Intel starts lowering prices, which they seem to not care about doing. I've seen small reductions but not nearly discounted as much as I think they need to be.


----------



## pderbidge

vitocorleone123 said:


> I have to run prime 95 with the smallest FFT for a good while to start hitting 90C. In my DAW or gaming I'm not seeing that.


I was hitting 90C+ on my first Noctua Fan- NH-U14S, but believe it to be a faulty product because I noticed some deep scratches in the bottom plate. I replaced it with the NH-D15s and only got into the 90C territory trying to manually overclock. With the PBO turned on (AMD's auto overclock solution) I hover in the 70's but sometimes the low 80's with Prime95. There are some things PBO is doing that I can't seem to mimick with a manual overclock, at least not yet. Aida64 never seems to push nearly as hard as Prime95 and probably more of a real world stress test so I think Prime95 is a bit overkill but at the same time if you can pass the Prime95 test then you know your system is stable.


----------



## pderbidge

dasbin said:


> I'm in the process of building a system around a 3700x and Gigabyte Aorus Elite x570


I'm a fan of Gigabyte boards. If they had support for Thunderbolt I would have gone with the Gigabyte board. I'm new to Asrock but so far I'm becoming a fan of Asrock as well even if the VRM's are technically inferior to the equivalent Gigabyte board. So far I think Gigabyte, Asus and Asrock all seem to be pretty respectable motherboard makers. The only company I haven't had good luck with is MSI


----------



## chimuelo

You know I’m surprised how Chinsey AMD has become on their VRMs on certain AMD boards.
It’s not the number of phases I look to but quality and number of MOSFETs per phase.
I never need massive VRMs because I like their workstation/server boards and they don’t OC, but ASRock really has had awesome VRMs for Intel boards.

To get cheap on AMD boards is kind of unusual. Time will tell.
I’ll get their workstation 470 board if I go with a 3700X.
Already have a Custom Modular PSU and 1U chassis waiting in the wings.
250 bucks for a custom made 1U PSU is pricey but they design every detail you’ll need.
18AWG Cables, sleeved, custom lengths to maximize air flow, etc.
I pay 18 extra bucks to use Noctua fans inside the PSU.
40 x 40 x 28 is pretty big for a PSU. 
80PLUS Platinum 600watt is as good as it gets.

Plan on spoiling whatever chip I end up getting.

Cheerz


----------



## pderbidge

Update: I was hoping to have a good run through of my system by now but when it rains it pours. I loaded up a project and my DAW would hang 3 or 4 times an hour to where I'd have to end the process go to my auto backup folder and start where I left off. Everything else on my system was working fine so I doubt it had anything to do with the CPU. I even made sure I memory was not overclocked to make sure it wasn't an issue there (so far memory passed with memtest86 so shouldn't be an issue there) - What I "think" is the culprit is my Waves Tune V9 plugin. Usually Reaper has a crash log but since this wasn't a crash but just a neverending hang of the program there was no log. I checked Windows 10 Event Viewer and I'm no expert reading those logs but all it seems to say is "Unknown Application Hang" or something like that. I loaded up my project again and deleted the Waves Tune track and no problems at all for an hour until I needed to use Waves Tune again and about 20 minutes later- System Hang! So I'm pretty sure it was that plugin. I wonder if it's because it's V9 and I'm now on Windows 10. I went ahead and did WUP on that plugin ($18 with tax) so I can test V10 to see if that solves the issue with the plugin.

Another issue I was concerned about was some random shut downs. It never happened when I used the PC but at times I left it idle and came back it was shut down and yes I had everything tuned to performance mode and sleep settings off, etc.. etc... It would not do this often but it was a bit concerning. I tested every component in my system for stability, including the PSU so I was wondering if this issue was Bios or Motherboard related but then..... I came in the studio one day and my UPS LED was flashing on and off like crazy. I looked up the issue and found that it was related to a bad battery. I then realized that I had not replaced the battery in 5 years (I'm supposed to change it every 2 years) so now I've got 2 new batteries on order to get my UPS back online and all should be good. That explains the few random shutdowns that I had.

So like I said, when it rains it pours. It's nice to know that the issues where nothing more than your typical annoyances and luckily nothing related to this new build or the Ryzen platform. I don't like to use this PC without a UPS during this time of year with rain and lightning storms going on so as soon as I get my new batteries (should arrive today) I should be up and running again for more testing.


----------



## Mornats

I have the Corsair RM850x PSU on my hobbyist producer/gaming PC. I'm running an overclocked i7 4790k (4.5ghz) with a GTX 970 GPU and haven't heard the PSU fans kick in once in the 3-4 years I've had that PSU.

Thanks for the detailed run down of your system. I was very interested to hear about the Steel Legend motherboard and how it doesn't eat up a SATA III port when using the M.2 drives. I also noticed it has 8 SATA III ports instead of the usual 6. I tend to keep my older drives when I upgrade and have drives in all six on my build. Good to know that there are mobos out there that will give me more when I eventually upgrade.


----------



## pderbidge

Mornats said:


> I was very interested to hear about the Steel Legend motherboard and how it doesn't eat up a SATA III port when using the M.2 drives. I also noticed it has 8 SATA III ports instead of the usual 6



I think the x570 Steel Legend is underappreciated due to the fact that Asus and Gigabyte have admittedly better VRM's but the Steel Legend VRM's still do the job quite admirably even when overclocked. The good news for you is I foresee Asrock will likely drop the price on The x570 Steel legend in the near future to compete against the Asus and Gigabyte boards in the same price range that are outselling it. Another thing I've noticed is that it's bigger brother Taichi seems to have had a few complaints on fan noise whereas the one on the Steel Legend is pretty quiet.


----------



## oboemaroni

pderbidge said:


> I was hitting 90C+ on my first Noctua Fan- NH-U14S, but believe it to be a faulty product because I noticed some deep scratches in the bottom plate. I replaced it with the NH-D15s and only got into the 90C territory trying to manually overclock. With the PBO turned on (AMD's auto overclock solution) I hover in the 70's but sometimes the low 80's with Prime95. There are some things PBO is doing that I can't seem to mimick with a manual overclock, at least not yet. Aida64 never seems to push nearly as hard as Prime95 and probably more of a real world stress test so I think Prime95 is a bit overkill but at the same time if you can pass the Prime95 test then you know your system is stable.



How are you getting on with the NH-D15S in terms of silently cooling the 3900X? I accidentally ordered a non-pro Dark Rock cooler, it's doing okay with a fan curve but still the CPU sits around 60 degrees doing not very much, and under moderate load there's a battle between the fans spinning up and the chip getting too hot which is annoying as it's constantly spinning up and down. I'm about to return the cooler for either the Dark Rock Pro or the NH-D15S but have read conflicting things about which is quieter/more efficient, would be great to hear reports from someone who's using one of them...


----------



## pderbidge

oboemaroni said:


> How are you getting on with the NH-D15S in terms of silently cooling the 3900X?


I'm cooling a 3700x and I believe the 3900x will run a little hotter.



oboemaroni said:


> it's doing okay with a fan curve but still the CPU sits around 60 degrees doing not very much, and under moderate load there's a battle between the fans spinning up and the chip getting too hot which is annoying as it's constantly spinning up and down


Have you updated your BIOS? Earlier BIOS versions were reading the temps to be higher than they actually were due to the way AMD's Performance Boost works and causing it so that fan's would rev more than they needed to. When I first installed the D15s I saw idle temps around 45 to 60c but with the latest BIOS it shows around 35c to 45c idle. I'm less concerned, however, about idle temps and more concerned about temps under high load. With Prime95 I get into the low 80s sometimes but mostly high 70s. With every other Stress Test the CPU temps stay in the 70's (high 70's). Another mistake I made early on was to set my case fan profile to increase speed based on CPU temp. That was causing unnecessary ramp up ramp down fan noise so I changed those fans to only ramp based on Case temps. The Noctua Fan is very quiet and all reviews I've seen have shown the Noctua's to be some of the quietest fans on the market. 

I can say that this build has been quieter than my previous Intel build but I wouldn't say it is super silent. I think the only way to do that would be to look at some cases that focus on "Silent" as part of their niche whereas my case is more of an open air setup to maximize cooling which comes with the trade off of hearing a bit more fan noise. A silent build usually means that things will run a little hotter because there is always a trade off between silent and cool but there are some good Silent focused options out there. Since I keep my PC in the adjacent room it's not a big deal for me. If I didn't do that I would probably have used the Noctua fans for all the fans in my case instead of the pretty RGB fans I have now that still are fairly quiet. If I were real serious about a quiet build I would spend more money on a special Silent build which depending how far you go can get pretty pricey.

To answer your question though - yes the NH-D15s does a good job. Is it worlds different from what you have? I don't think so. I think you should first make sure you're using the best Thermal paste and applying it correctly and then make sure your Bios is up to date. Also make sure your case is doing a good job at cooling your system. Make sure you max out your case fans and have them oriented in a way that your maximizing best airflow. More fans and bigger fans at lower speed can keep a system cooler and quieter than a few fans ramping up. In my case I have 2 fans in front and 2 fans in top pushing air into the case and one in back pushing air out of the case as well as an air vent at the bottom for the PSU to pull air in when the fan kicks on which it rarely does. Temps are very acceptable and I don't have Central air so temps in my house can get close to 80F yet I still manage to keep the systme cool enough as to not throttle under load.


----------



## oboemaroni

pderbidge said:


> I'm cooling a 3700x and I believe the 3900x will run a little hotter.
> 
> 
> Have you updated your BIOS? Earlier BIOS versions were reading the temps to be higher than they actually were due to the way AMD's Performance Boost works and causing it so that fan's would rev more than they needed to. When I first installed the D15s I saw idle temps around 45 to 60c but with the latest BIOS it shows around 35c to 45c idle. I'm less concerned, however, about idle temps and more concerned about temps under high load. With Prime95 I get into the low 80s sometimes but mostly high 70s. With every other Stress Test the CPU temps stay in the 70's (high 70's). Another mistake I made early on was to set my case fan profile to increase speed based on CPU temp. That was causing unnecessary ramp up ramp down fan noise so I changed those fans to only ramp based on Case temps. The Noctua Fan is very quiet and all reviews I've seen have shown the Noctua's to be some of the quietest fans on the market.
> 
> I can say that this build has been quieter than my previous Intel build but I wouldn't say it is super silent. I think the only way to do that would be to look at some cases that focus on "Silent" as part of their niche whereas my case is more of an open air setup to maximize cooling which comes with the trade off of hearing a bit more fan noise. A silent build usually means that things will run a little hotter because there is always a trade off between silent and cool but there are some good Silent focused options out there. Since I keep my PC in the adjacent room it's not a big deal for me. If I didn't do that I would probably have used the Noctua fans for all the fans in my case instead of the pretty RGB fans I have now that still are fairly quiet. If I were real serious about a quiet build I would spend more money on a special Silent build which depending how far you go can get pretty pricey.
> 
> To answer your question though - yes the NH-D15s does a good job. Is it worlds different from what you have? I don't think so. I think you should first make sure you're using the best Thermal paste and applying it correctly and then make sure your Bios is up to date. Also make sure your case is doing a good job at cooling your system. Make sure you max out your case fans and have them oriented in a way that your maximizing best airflow. More fans and bigger fans at lower speed can keep a system cooler and quieter than a few fans ramping up. In my case I have 2 fans in front and 2 fans in top pushing air into the case and one in back pushing air out of the case as well as an air vent at the bottom for the PSU to pull air in when the fan kicks on which it rarely does. Temps are very acceptable and I don't have Central air so temps in my house can get close to 80F yet I still manage to keep the systme cool enough as to not throttle under load.



Thanks for the detailed response - I'm not sure about the BIOS as I'm on an x470 board, and I bought it as a bundle with the CPU and memory from Scan, so they did the setup (although I have done DIY installs myself in the past). As I'm sending it back to get the cooler changed though I will ask them to check that it's the latest version, hopefully between that and switching to the Noctua I'll be in a better position with it soon, in a worst case scenario I worked out that I can run on the power saver profile when I want absolute silence (e.g. for recording), accepting that there'll be a trade-off in terms of performance.


----------



## pderbidge

oboemaroni said:


> in a worst case scenario I worked out that I can run on the power saver profile when I want absolute silence (e.g. for recording), accepting that there'll be a trade-off in terms of performance.


Perhaps that could work to keep things more quiet if your running high buffers but I'm not sure because once your system calls for the extra processing power to do the recording fans will still ramp up. I think setting your profile to power saver will cause more issues than what it would solve. If you have fan control option software for your MOBO you could control at what point you want the fan to ramp up so that it only goes high when it really needs to. The CPU should handle up to 95c before throttling down so if your max temps are under 90c with a low fan speed then you should be fine. I know that sounds hot and it is but even long term your cpu won't degrade enough at those temps before your likely to upgrade again.


----------



## pderbidge

Closer to a verdict.... It looks like it's going to be a long haul before I make my own consensus due to the fact that I need to try more than one project to give a fair assessment. Therefore I will update you with what I have observed so far and try and keep away from emotional and subjective language like "this system is awesome" or "this system sucks". I will just tell the facts and let you be the judge.

1. As expected on my current project which is mostly synths and plugins and not that many samples with roughly 100 tracks including vocals the CPU usage is under 30%. This means that any CPU less powerful than a 3700x should be plenty powerful for this project.
2. Now that I have 64GB of ram I'm seeing around 40GB being utilized. If had only 32GB I'm sure my CPU usage would go up.
3. I really should count the amount of plugins running but lets just say there are a ton and I get no pops or clicks. I am running a Scarlett 2i2 first Gen with the standard drivers on Windows 10 running at a 256 buffer, 48kHz and no noticeable lag or issues with one exception which may or may not be hardware related. I'll explain in a minute.
4. My system is running Corsair Memory(Hynix Memory Bdie) with XMP profile of 2400Mhz. I'm running the standard XMP setting. The best memory speed for Ryzen 3700x would be anywhere from 3600Mhz to 3800Mhz so I'm far from that right now but I doubt in real world scenarios I would notice that much. I do, however, wonder how much better things would be run if my memory chips were Samsung Bdie instead of Hynix since Ryzen has traditional favored that type of memory.

Now to my issue.

1. Only one issue so far and it's likely not even Ryzen or hardware related but I won't know until I get someone with the expertise to read my dump file to see why I'm getting a fairly consistent DAW hang in Reaper.
2. I was getting a hang about once an hour. When I installed Reaper I immediately imported my settings from my last setup. Due to the hanging issue I reset the Reaper settings to it's factory default and went through each setting one by one and made tweaks manually from scratch. Since doing that I have been able to run Reaper without those constant hangs, however there was still a hang on Friday and another the next day after about a 3 hour session so the problem is not yet completely resolved.
3. The issue seems to be completely DAW related because I have not had any issues with any other app but then again the only other things I've done on this new PC is surf the web and backup a few blu ray discs (that I own).

I should note that I have not tried a new project yet so I might find that starting a project from scratch will work without a hitch and my problem may be an elusive setting or plugin in my existing project that was created on my old system.

To conclude, I would be ecstatic if I I wasn't having this very frustrating issue with Reaper right now. Until I can resolve this issue it will be hard to make any conclusions regarding this build.

Just to share the bad luck I've had with this build here are the issue's I've had to resolve, none of which have been the fault of Ryzen.

1. First CPU cooler wasn't doing its job cooling properly and was covering my PCIe x16 slot. 2nd CPU cooler worked great.
2. Random shutdowns were eluding me and turned out to be that my 5 year old UPS batteries finally died and needed to be replaced. Replacing the batteries fixed the issue.

One thing I'll give Kudos to AMD for is their responsiveness to Bios updates. There were some early issues with the way the BIOS reported temps as well as chips not hitting their advertised max boost speeds. Within 1 month and a half AMD had Bios updates out that fixed these problems.

There's lots more for me to try and do so I'll keep you updated, especially if my more serious issues turn out to be hardware related.

Edit: I should also mention that I have also run the system at a buffer of 512 and the system hang is still an issue so buffer size does not seem to have any effect on the issue.


----------



## chimuelo

This is great news. Intels revenge with more 14nm wont be enough.
They need larger cache and die shrink to 10nm to convince people they're being competitive.
Not knocking 14nm, but how many more new numbers with extra cores will these guys try and use as an answer to the 3000’s?











AMD Outselling Intel By More Than Double - Analyzing 5-Year Historical Sales At Mindfactory.de


The tech enthusiasts have had their eyes on AMD ever since the first leaks about its upcoming Zen architecture began to leak out - but this is one of the first times that a large online retailer has given us a breakdown of historical sales figures by architectures - proving a conjecture many of...




wccftech.com


----------



## pderbidge

chimuelo said:


> This is great news. Intels revenge with more 14nm wont be enough.
> They need larger cache and die shrink to 10nm to convince people they're being competitive.
> Not knocking 14nm, but how many more new numbers with extra cores will these guys try and use as an answer to the 3000’s?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> AMD Outselling Intel By More Than Double - Analyzing 5-Year Historical Sales At Mindfactory.de
> 
> 
> The tech enthusiasts have had their eyes on AMD ever since the first leaks about its upcoming Zen architecture began to leak out - but this is one of the first times that a large online retailer has given us a breakdown of historical sales figures by architectures - proving a conjecture many of...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> wccftech.com


And things could be worse for Intel if it wasn't for AMD's shortage on 7nm production with TSMC. That's about the only thing helping Intel right now. More good news for AMD from me: As I expected my biggest issue with the DAW hang was driver related. I'm not going to give the green light just yet as I do some more testing but as of now updating my Focusrite drivers to 2nd gen drivers seemed to have corrected the issue. I'm just glad the 1rst gen 2i2 will actually work with the 2nd gen drivers on Windows 10 because as I understand it the 1rst gen 6i6's and above will not.

I was hoping to be done giving an update on this build and have this thread done by now but as luck would have it I had to troubleshoot just about every problem one could possibly have with a new PC build and ironically none of them due to the AMD hardware (CPU or Motherboard) so I think it's safe to say that an AMD Ryzen build should be a solid choice and you shouldn't have any issues. I'll give a final update (hopefully) this week. As of right now I'm finally enjoying getting back to working on projects on my incredibly fast new system.


----------



## pderbidge

Final Update-

Oh the joy of building a new PC. I have had numerous annoyances that had nothing to do with this build being a Ryzen system. I've had a PSU go bad that caused random crashes, A bad first CPU cooler, a bad driver for my audio interface, a new chipset driver update where I forgot to reconfigure my power plan settings after installing that would cause my computer to sleep and then crash when waking up because my audio driver didn't play well with sleep mode and finally a default setting in my graphics card software that caused changing from Piano Roll to the timeline interface to wig out in my DAW. So the majority of issues have been software and driver related which could easily been issues on an Intel build depending on how lucky or unlucky you are- guess which one I am

Now for the good news. I've resolved the DAW Hang issues with a new Audio Interface driver. I'd like to actually swap out my Focusrite for my Behringer in the future to see how it performs because right now my lowest performing piece of hardware is definitely my Audio Interface and it would be interesting to see if the Latency on my Behringer is better than my Focusrite. Still, it's wonderful how many plugins I can run at 256 sample rate without having to freeze tracks.

My Conclusion: There's not much to say other than this; My CPU is overkill for the task. The majority of my performance boost is coming from SSD's and extra RAM. The main advantage relating to the CPU actually seems to be the extra cores so based on that observation I can see where a 3900x or 3950x makes sense. Otherwise, the clock speed on these chips are plenty fast for DAW use. Also, if you are going with a Ryzen chip I currently see no reason to overclock based on how AMD's performance boost works. Also, any Bios issues that were not boosting performance to the advertised speeds during launch have been mostly resolved so I think it's safe to say the new Bios has matured to a very acceptable level within just a couple of months. The only annoyance left for building an AMD Ryzen system based on the X570 chip-set is the chip-set fan. While the noise issue has become a non issue for me since it actually runs quieter than the rest of the system, I'm still not thrilled that there is one more piece of hardware that is susceptible to failure. It may never be an issue as proven by the millions of fans on graphics cards that never fail I'm still thinking of modding the motherboard in the future to replace the fan with a heat sink. Regarding the NVME drive I have installed as my OS drive I can say I have not noticed a performance boost over an SSD drive. Perhaps if I went with an X4 PCIE NVME drive I might notice but so far I'm not seeing any reason to go NVME unless the price is the same as an SSD.

I have well over 150 tracks loaded with plugins and no lag. I did have one crash due to one of my waves plugin. I was pushing things quite hard when it happened by trying to load a new waves plugin in the 150 track project (all loaded with multiple existing plugins) at the same time I was editing and letting the project play simultaneously, not to mention multiple browsers open and anti virus running in the background. 9 times out of 10 the system would chug along just fine while doing this but there was that 1 time where it didn't like me multitasking so heavily and it finally yelled back with a crash. I'm willing to bet that an RME interface with lower latency would resolve that issue. I also think there are some more settings I can tweak in Reaper that might offload more power to the CPU that I'm still not taking advantage of yet. Otherwise I'll just have to remember to either raise my buffer or just push stop on the transport before loading a new plugin. Like I said, 9 times out of 10 this isn't an issue and isn't a limitation of the CPU but rather the audio interface. Of course this would not be an issue with 50 plugins or so but with well over 150 plugins already loaded into the project, loading one more while editing and playing the project simultaneously was asking a bit too much.

The end result is you could opt for a less powerful CPU and put the extra money into a better audio interface (meaning a lower latency audio interface) and have an even more efficient DAW system than one with a higher end CPU.

Sorry if all this was a bit anti-climatic but the important take away is that the new Ryzen chips are very good choices for any DAW build and brings to the market some much needed competition against Intel. They are both great companies that make great products and it's hard to go wrong with any of these new CPU's from either company.

My work is done here Feel free to ask me any questions if I haven't answered what you were looking for and I'd be happy to answer.


----------



## The Sarge!

@pderbidge 
thanks for let us taking part to all the things you made through setting up an AMD as new DAW-PC (sorry for my bad english, I´m german)

but you bring back my brain to thinking again about 3700X:
first I thought about 2700X, due to saving money and just by numbers the difference seems small (for me). Than I heard 3700X would be better, so I thought: that it´ll be
Months later now and due to Corona I start thinking "better buy now, before prices are more rising" and I´ve found a big review of the new 3800X which isn´t necessary for me hobby-Cubase-musician, good
but now you say here as final view that 3700X also is too much not needed power 
hmm, I´m yousing much u-he, NI, Arturia and UVI-Falcon2, so i thought power is necessary...i7-3770K (not overclocked) at da moment here

so ist "overpowered" still your opinion?


----------



## pderbidge

The Sarge! said:


> @pderbidge
> thanks for let us taking part to all the things you made through setting up an AMD as new DAW-PC (sorry for my bad english, I´m german)
> 
> but you bring back my brain to thinking again about 3700X:
> first I thought about 2700X, due to saving money and just by numbers the difference seems small (for me). Than I heard 3700X would be better, so I thought: that it´ll be
> Months later now and due to Corona I start thinking "better buy now, before prices are more rising" and I´ve found a big review of the new 3800X which isn´t necessary for me hobby-Cubase-musician, good
> but now you say here as final view that 3700X also is too much not needed power
> hmm, I´m yousing much u-he, NI, Arturia and UVI-Falcon2, so i thought power is necessary...i7-3770K (not overclocked) at da moment here
> 
> so ist "overpowered" still your opinion?



Soft synths will use more CPU while sample libraries tend to use more RAM and hard drive read speeds. I would suggest you pull up your most demanding project in your daw and then open the performance meter for your daw. Push play and observe what resources are being taxed the most. If it's your CPU being worked the most then you'll know that a more powerful CPU will help.


----------



## The Sarge!

thank you
good advice, sometimes I didn´t come to the easy answer although it´s directly in sight


----------

