OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
No special software, just go into the bios and change the fan settings. Enthusiast boards will let you adjust the fan curves, but almost any BIOS will let you select between quiet, normal, and aggressive fan settings.
Make sure you've got everything plugged into the right header; if you've got a pump header and plug a fan into that, it'll just run flat out (that's how mine came installed, grumble).
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
Question - what software should I be using for fan settings?
I’ve got them all plugged into the motherboard, but I just want to make sure they’re not just on max speed all the time.
Also after all my griping about RAM, I just set it to the XMP profile in the BIOS and it’s running at 3600mhz. That was nice and simple.
edit - finally got some games installed.
Control, 2560x1440, all high, RTX medium. Sitting about 80fps. From what I hear, that's normal, Radeons just don't do as well in this game with RTX on as nvidia cards.
Hell Let Loose. Holy shit what a difference. Running 2560x1440 on my laptop, low-medium settings, I was gettinf 30-40fps with constant microstutters. Now, all settings on Epic, 80-100fps. Loading into a server is an absurd ~5 seconds.
Neither game saw the CPU or GPU exceed 65 celcius, most of the time it was high 50's, low 60's.
Basically any modern BIOS should let you control that at the BIOS level to a fairly high degree of precision. E.g., my BIOS lets me set a full on fan curve for each header separately based on CPU temp.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited November 2021
Cool, I did see a fan curve in the bios, just thought there would be a way to play with it in Windows.
Iirc my rear fan is plugged into a pump connector. There were no fan connectors left to use - it’s got 1 cpu connector (I had to use the y-cable the Noctua came with to plug them both in), 4 normal fan connectors (I’ve got 2 140mm top and front) and one fan/pump connector which I used for the rear fan.
I guess at some future point when I crack it open again (I’ve got to put another SATA and M2 SSDs in it) I can revisit that.
Overall I’m pretty happy with the level of cooling the case provides.
Edit
Played around with fan curves in the bios, and I've got the it pretty quiet and the CPU idling at about 42 -45 celcius. From what I've been reading, that's a pretty normal 5800X idling temperature. The motherboard is between 34 and 43 and the GPU idling at 32. Pretty happy with that.
I've got it ramping up pretty quick max fan speed at 85c, so I'll play some games tonight and see how the temps and noise goes.
So I decided to check out what the ultrawide crazy was all about and picked up this monitor. Got it all set up and...the colors look kind of bad? Nothing looks quite right, the colors don't look nearly as vibrant as they did on my old monitor. Everything looks kind of flat/washed out, and I have no idea how to fix it (or if it's just a bad monitor for that). Are there good resources for understanding how to make colors look more...colorful?
As an example, here is the same Excel table on my old monitor and new.
Old:
So I decided to check out what the ultrawide crazy was all about and picked up this monitor. Got it all set up and...the colors look kind of bad? Nothing looks quite right, the colors don't look nearly as vibrant as they did on my old monitor. Everything looks kind of flat/washed out, and I have no idea how to fix it (or if it's just a bad monitor for that). Are there good resources for understanding how to make colors look more...colorful?
Try using the Windows calibration tool that's built in to the OS. Open the Control Panel and search for Calibration and you'll find it.
So I decided to check out what the ultrawide crazy was all about and picked up this monitor. Got it all set up and...the colors look kind of bad? Nothing looks quite right, the colors don't look nearly as vibrant as they did on my old monitor. Everything looks kind of flat/washed out, and I have no idea how to fix it (or if it's just a bad monitor for that). Are there good resources for understanding how to make colors look more...colorful?
Try using the Windows calibration tool that's built in to the OS. Open the Control Panel and search for Calibration and you'll find it.
I've tried it, it doesn't really seem to help me all that much unfortunately.
If your previous monitor was an IPS panel perhaps, and this one is VA, you might notice a difference in colors no matter what you do. VA/TN colors look bad compared to IPS to me, though YMMV. They seem flat and lacking any vibrance, no matter how you calibrate them.
I would first check your monitor's internal settings to see how it is set up and tweak there. Then go to the Windows/video card settings next.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited November 2021
Should I be worried about CPU voltage? Reading about the 5800x, it should be around 1.25 -1.35, but HWMonitor shows it ramping to 1.45+ at times. I don't have PBO or the motherboards 'Game boost' overlocking tool turned on.
edit - so I booter up Control, and it spiked the voltage to 1.475v, then seemed to settle around while playing. 1.3v.
After literal years of getting semi-random bluescreens and weird performance issues sometimes I finally actually just ordered replacement RAM and it seems to have immediately fixed the issues. I gotta remember that I can actually replace parts and not just run chkdsk.
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited November 2021
Turns out Windows was set to 'Best Performance' in power settings. I moved it back to 'Better Performance' (midway option) on the Balanced power setting, and it's now idling at 30c. Much better. Now to test in some games.
edit - what's with Steam using so many resources? After idling at 30c, I set it to download a game, and temps shot up to 50c.
Turns out Windows was set to 'Best Performance' in power settings. I moved it back to 'Better Performance' (midway option) on the Balanced power setting, and it's now idling at 30c. Much better. Now to test in some games.
edit - what's with Steam using so many resources? After idling at 30c, I set it to download a game, and temps shot up to 50c.
Well, it's downloading, writing to the download folder, decompressing and copying the decompressed data to the game folder, and writing to the registry all at once. 50c isn't so bad for a light to medium load like that.
Also, my 2600x that has has the all core max set to 4.25 Ghz with a core voltage offset lowered maxes at 1.456v. Since you haven't touched any of the settings you are completely safe letting the CPU do it's thing. It actually fluctuates up high and low must faster than that monitor software can track because it's making minute changes in milliseconds. At least that's what AMD has been telling us all these years.
I think the Steamstores HTML implementation tends to push 1 core pretty hard, forcing your whole cooling to kick in. You see this a lot, I play an idle game and it taxes 1 core just enough that I can hear my fans slightly ramp even though it's pretty much a static window with some rolling numbers. The Epic store renders on the GPU almost entirely which is an issue for lower powered machines.
Anything at 50C isn't really an issue. Modern chips can hit 80c without much trouble. The question is if you can export that heat fast enough so that there's no thermal throttle, and ideally quietly. This is going to be an issue with the new intel chips, which tend to be at 200W for prolonged times when running at full load (Which most games won't, since the majority are GPU bound, but it can happen on work production easily). Dissipating 200W of energy from a surface roughly 1 square inch takes hardware, and doing it quietly takes more hardware.
Gamers Nexus, despite the rather silly name, takes things real seriously and is willing to stand up to manufacturer bullshit even it may hurt their business (Like them pushing against bad PSUs in the summer)
They do care about things I don't really (Like paying $200 for a case to get a -2C thermal out of it....), but for consistent numbers, they seem really reliable. They can be a bit longwinded though.
Steam: SanderJK Origin: SanderJK
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I think the Steamstores HTML implementation tends to push 1 core pretty hard, forcing your whole cooling to kick in. You see this a lot, I play an idle game and it taxes 1 core just enough that I can hear my fans slightly ramp even though it's pretty much a static window with some rolling numbers. The Epic store renders on the GPU almost entirely which is an issue for lower powered machines.
Anything at 50C isn't really an issue. Modern chips can hit 80c without much trouble. The question is if you can export that heat fast enough so that there's no thermal throttle, and ideally quietly. This is going to be an issue with the new intel chips, which tend to be at 200W for prolonged times when running at full load (Which most games won't, since the majority are GPU bound, but it can happen on work production easily). Dissipating 200W of energy from a surface roughly 1 square inch takes hardware, and doing it quietly takes more hardware.
Gamers Nexus, despite the rather silly name, takes things real seriously and is willing to stand up to manufacturer bullshit even it may hurt their business (Like them pushing against bad PSUs in the summer)
They do care about things I don't really (Like paying $200 for a case to get a -2C thermal out of it....), but for consistent numbers, they seem really reliable. They can be a bit longwinded though.
I really wish they did text, because I rarely have the patience to sit through a 20 minute video when I just want to look at some graphs.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I think the Steamstores HTML implementation tends to push 1 core pretty hard, forcing your whole cooling to kick in. You see this a lot, I play an idle game and it taxes 1 core just enough that I can hear my fans slightly ramp even though it's pretty much a static window with some rolling numbers. The Epic store renders on the GPU almost entirely which is an issue for lower powered machines.
Anything at 50C isn't really an issue. Modern chips can hit 80c without much trouble. The question is if you can export that heat fast enough so that there's no thermal throttle, and ideally quietly. This is going to be an issue with the new intel chips, which tend to be at 200W for prolonged times when running at full load (Which most games won't, since the majority are GPU bound, but it can happen on work production easily). Dissipating 200W of energy from a surface roughly 1 square inch takes hardware, and doing it quietly takes more hardware.
Gamers Nexus, despite the rather silly name, takes things real seriously and is willing to stand up to manufacturer bullshit even it may hurt their business (Like them pushing against bad PSUs in the summer)
They do care about things I don't really (Like paying $200 for a case to get a -2C thermal out of it....), but for consistent numbers, they seem really reliable. They can be a bit longwinded though.
I really wish they did text, because I rarely have the patience to sit through a 20 minute video when I just want to look at some graphs.
I'm p sure they publish the reviews in text on their website.
Edit: Yikes, they've really slacked off on publishing articles lately. Well, at least they delineate their videos by section so you can just skip to it.
I think the Steamstores HTML implementation tends to push 1 core pretty hard, forcing your whole cooling to kick in. You see this a lot, I play an idle game and it taxes 1 core just enough that I can hear my fans slightly ramp even though it's pretty much a static window with some rolling numbers. The Epic store renders on the GPU almost entirely which is an issue for lower powered machines.
Anything at 50C isn't really an issue. Modern chips can hit 80c without much trouble. The question is if you can export that heat fast enough so that there's no thermal throttle, and ideally quietly. This is going to be an issue with the new intel chips, which tend to be at 200W for prolonged times when running at full load (Which most games won't, since the majority are GPU bound, but it can happen on work production easily). Dissipating 200W of energy from a surface roughly 1 square inch takes hardware, and doing it quietly takes more hardware.
Gamers Nexus, despite the rather silly name, takes things real seriously and is willing to stand up to manufacturer bullshit even it may hurt their business (Like them pushing against bad PSUs in the summer)
They do care about things I don't really (Like paying $200 for a case to get a -2C thermal out of it....), but for consistent numbers, they seem really reliable. They can be a bit longwinded though.
I really wish they did text, because I rarely have the patience to sit through a 20 minute video when I just want to look at some graphs.
You could try checking the Transcript (on PC you just click on the "..." next to the area where you can like/dislike/share/save, then Open Transcript. It is the Youtube translation, but at least you can skim and read it.
Hmm. I'm trying to figure out what's using all my system memory. I have 5 out of 8 gigs of RAM being used at the moment with what looks like about 1.5 gigs at most accounted for in processes in the task manager, where's the rest of that coming from? Just invisible OS RAM use?
yeah yeah I built this a decade ago sue me :P I'm due for building a new system soon, will probably aim for 32 gigs then.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited November 2021
The question came up earlier about power cables that didn't come with the power supply, but one thing about my build is irking me.
The SATA III power cable supplied has a connector that goes into the SSD at a 90 degree angle. This is making my mounted SATA SSD connector sit at a weird angle and I'm honestly concerned it's going to break it.
Corsair don't sell flat type 3 SATA cables, so the only option would be a third party cable or an adapter such as this. Should I just leave it? Seems that sitting at that angle is going to eventually break the connector inside the SSD. Or I could just dismount it and have it sitting in the empty space where all the cables go at the bottom of the case.
speaking of RAM, I don't remember if I asked this before but how do you pick out ideal RAM for ryzen processors since it seems like they are more sensitive about timings than intel ones?
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
speaking of RAM, I don't remember if I asked this before but how do you pick out ideal RAM for ryzen processors since it seems like they are more sensitive about timings than intel ones?
Uuuuuuugggghhh. I went down this rabbit hole when I was building my PC.
RAM manufacturers have their own QVL. Motherboard manufacturers have their own QVL. AMD have their own QVL.
If you want to stick with RAM on a QVL, see what's available to you, and go through each of these. IIRC, my RAM was on AMD's and G.Skills QVL, but not on my motherboards QVL. However, when I went into the bios, my motherboard had it's A-XMP profile 1 button with my RAMs speed and timings, and that worked fine.
The question came up earlier about power cables that didn't come with the power supply, but one thing about my build is irking me.
The SATA III power cable supplied has a connector that goes into the SSD at a 90 degree angle. This is making my mounted SATA SSD connector sit at a weird angle and I'm honestly concerned it's going to break it.
Corsair don't sell flat type 3 SATA cables, so the only option would be a third party cable or an adapter such as this. Should I just leave it? Seems that sitting at that angle is going to eventually break the connector inside the SSD. Or I could just dismount it and have it sitting in the empty space where all the cables go at the bottom of the case.
Could you take a picture? Not sure why it be sitting at an odd angle. But regardless of the angle as long as it's not yanked on it'll be fine. SSD's weigh nothing and don't move so.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
The question came up earlier about power cables that didn't come with the power supply, but one thing about my build is irking me.
The SATA III power cable supplied has a connector that goes into the SSD at a 90 degree angle. This is making my mounted SATA SSD connector sit at a weird angle and I'm honestly concerned it's going to break it.
Corsair don't sell flat type 3 SATA cables, so the only option would be a third party cable or an adapter such as this. Should I just leave it? Seems that sitting at that angle is going to eventually break the connector inside the SSD. Or I could just dismount it and have it sitting in the empty space where all the cables go at the bottom of the case.
Could you take a picture? Not sure why it be sitting at an odd angle. But regardless of the angle as long as it's not yanked on it'll be fine. SSD's weigh nothing and don't move so.
Go go weird rotation phone photo. Hey it didn’t rotate!
Okay that's a more reasonable size. You can see it's being pushed up a lot higher than the other cable due to the wiring connecting below rather than behind the plug.
I wouldn't worry about it, but if you want to be super safe just take it down and toss it anywhere in the case with some velcro/tape or really even nothing at all if your PC just sits there.
Edit: Or just flip the SSD around if that mount will allow it. If it's screwed- tape again!
Xeddicus on
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edited November 2021
Yeah I might dismount it, maybe lay it in the bottom with the cables where the harddrive caddy used to be.
Also, I installed CrystalDiskInfo and it turns out I managed to install Windows to my SATA drive instead of my PCIE4 (when installing, it didn't label either drive, so I had a 50% chance of installing to the wrong drive).
Any good guides on reinstalling windows to another drive without having to redownload a few hundred gigs of games?
yeah there's the QVL stuff but I meant more like what the fuck RAM do I even want, all I can gather is that the 5XXX ryzens like DDR4 3200+
Personally, I just went for DDR 3600 on my QVL and called it a day.
You can go nuts with the timings but AFAIK the raw speed is the single most important thing, then you can start trying to get the other timings as low as possible.
Being on the QVL is nice, but a bunch of people here don't recommend bothering.
YMMV, I've had issues with RAM in builds past that wasn't on the QVL so I was willing to pay more for slower RAM since it was on the QVL.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
Samsung's data migration tool has worked well enough for me twice, it's supposedly specifically for moving data to a samsung SSD but I don't know why it wouldn't work with any drive. Others probably know some good open source freeware program though.
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-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
edit - you know, before I even realized I'd done it, I was fine with my OS speed. I might just leave Windows on my SATA drive.
I’m planning on putting a 2tb PCIE4 SSD in relatively soon. When I do that I’ll clone Windows over, since my games will all move over to the 2tb drive, leaving it empty.
Yeah I might dismount it, maybe lay it in the bottom with the cables where the harddrive caddy used to be.
Also, I installed CrystalDiskInfo and it turns out I managed to install Windows to my SATA drive instead of my PCIE4 (when installing, it didn't label either drive, so I had a 50% chance of installing to the wrong drive).
Any good guides on reinstalling windows to another drive without having to redownload a few hundred gigs of games?
Short of getting a second drive just for your games, partition your existing drives so you have a separate logical drive that you don't have to format every time you want to reinstall Windows.
speaking of RAM, I don't remember if I asked this before but how do you pick out ideal RAM for ryzen processors since it seems like they are more sensitive about timings than intel ones?
Aim for ddr4 3600. Any faster and you risk the system not being stable in 1:1 infintiy fabric to ram speed, any slower and you're leaving cpu performance on the table. QVL is ideal but not necessarily critical. Lower timings are better but they don't improve cpu performance the way that higher memory clock speed does.
So I'm taking a look at various Black... entire November... deals to see about possible upgrades for my new computer, mostly I'm going to grab some extra hard drive space. I then realized I'm not actually certain how many places I can put stuff on the motherboard of the machine I ordered.
So I think I delimited this properly: MSI PRO Z690-A | DDR4 | ATX | ARGB | 2.5GbE LAN | 3 PCIE X16, 1PCIE X1 | 6 SATA3 | 3X M.2 SATA/PCIE
I have one hard drive included in the build that I plan to use for just the System/non-game-related stuff, which is NVMe. How many more can I mount? I know NVMe drives are PCIE but I don't know what the varieties of PCIE mean here.
And speaking of that, any strong opinions about good SSDs? I was going to go with the Samsung Evo 970 Plus because it's $230 right now for 2TB, which seems like a lot of space for a reasonable price.
So I think I delimited this properly: MSI PRO Z690-A | DDR4 | ATX | ARGB | 2.5GbE LAN | 3 PCIE X16, 1PCIE X1 | 6 SATA3 | 3X M.2 SATA/PCIE
I have one hard drive included in the build that I plan to use for just the System/non-game-related stuff, which is NVMe. How many more can I mount? I know NVMe drives are PCIE but I don't know what the varieties of PCIE mean here.
You can mount 3 of them. I don't recall exactly how this works, but I want to say the first one gets its connections directly to the CPU, the next two will have to share the motherboard's PCIe lanes, which may result in reducing the PCIe lanes available to your GPU, depending on how much other crap you have plugged in (e.g. 10 gig network cards or whatever).
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Make sure you've got everything plugged into the right header; if you've got a pump header and plug a fan into that, it'll just run flat out (that's how mine came installed, grumble).
Basically any modern BIOS should let you control that at the BIOS level to a fairly high degree of precision. E.g., my BIOS lets me set a full on fan curve for each header separately based on CPU temp.
Iirc my rear fan is plugged into a pump connector. There were no fan connectors left to use - it’s got 1 cpu connector (I had to use the y-cable the Noctua came with to plug them both in), 4 normal fan connectors (I’ve got 2 140mm top and front) and one fan/pump connector which I used for the rear fan.
I guess at some future point when I crack it open again (I’ve got to put another SATA and M2 SSDs in it) I can revisit that.
Overall I’m pretty happy with the level of cooling the case provides.
Edit
Played around with fan curves in the bios, and I've got the it pretty quiet and the CPU idling at about 42 -45 celcius. From what I've been reading, that's a pretty normal 5800X idling temperature. The motherboard is between 34 and 43 and the GPU idling at 32. Pretty happy with that.
I've got it ramping up pretty quick max fan speed at 85c, so I'll play some games tonight and see how the temps and noise goes.
As an example, here is the same Excel table on my old monitor and new.
Old:
New:
Try using the Windows calibration tool that's built in to the OS. Open the Control Panel and search for Calibration and you'll find it.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
I've tried it, it doesn't really seem to help me all that much unfortunately.
edit - so I booter up Control, and it spiked the voltage to 1.475v, then seemed to settle around while playing. 1.3v.
edit - what's with Steam using so many resources? After idling at 30c, I set it to download a game, and temps shot up to 50c.
Well, it's downloading, writing to the download folder, decompressing and copying the decompressed data to the game folder, and writing to the registry all at once. 50c isn't so bad for a light to medium load like that.
Also, my 2600x that has has the all core max set to 4.25 Ghz with a core voltage offset lowered maxes at 1.456v. Since you haven't touched any of the settings you are completely safe letting the CPU do it's thing. It actually fluctuates up high and low must faster than that monitor software can track because it's making minute changes in milliseconds. At least that's what AMD has been telling us all these years.
Anything at 50C isn't really an issue. Modern chips can hit 80c without much trouble. The question is if you can export that heat fast enough so that there's no thermal throttle, and ideally quietly. This is going to be an issue with the new intel chips, which tend to be at 200W for prolonged times when running at full load (Which most games won't, since the majority are GPU bound, but it can happen on work production easily). Dissipating 200W of energy from a surface roughly 1 square inch takes hardware, and doing it quietly takes more hardware.
Gamers Nexus, despite the rather silly name, takes things real seriously and is willing to stand up to manufacturer bullshit even it may hurt their business (Like them pushing against bad PSUs in the summer)
They do care about things I don't really (Like paying $200 for a case to get a -2C thermal out of it....), but for consistent numbers, they seem really reliable. They can be a bit longwinded though.
I really wish they did text, because I rarely have the patience to sit through a 20 minute video when I just want to look at some graphs.
I'm p sure they publish the reviews in text on their website.
Edit: Yikes, they've really slacked off on publishing articles lately. Well, at least they delineate their videos by section so you can just skip to it.
You could try checking the Transcript (on PC you just click on the "..." next to the area where you can like/dislike/share/save, then Open Transcript. It is the Youtube translation, but at least you can skim and read it.
Steam: betsuni7
It's 2021, 8 gigs is for phones.
The SATA III power cable supplied has a connector that goes into the SSD at a 90 degree angle. This is making my mounted SATA SSD connector sit at a weird angle and I'm honestly concerned it's going to break it.
Corsair don't sell flat type 3 SATA cables, so the only option would be a third party cable or an adapter such as this. Should I just leave it? Seems that sitting at that angle is going to eventually break the connector inside the SSD. Or I could just dismount it and have it sitting in the empty space where all the cables go at the bottom of the case.
Uuuuuuugggghhh. I went down this rabbit hole when I was building my PC.
RAM manufacturers have their own QVL. Motherboard manufacturers have their own QVL. AMD have their own QVL.
If you want to stick with RAM on a QVL, see what's available to you, and go through each of these. IIRC, my RAM was on AMD's and G.Skills QVL, but not on my motherboards QVL. However, when I went into the bios, my motherboard had it's A-XMP profile 1 button with my RAMs speed and timings, and that worked fine.
Could you take a picture? Not sure why it be sitting at an odd angle. But regardless of the angle as long as it's not yanked on it'll be fine. SSD's weigh nothing and don't move so.
Go go weird rotation phone photo. Hey it didn’t rotate!
Okay that's a more reasonable size. You can see it's being pushed up a lot higher than the other cable due to the wiring connecting below rather than behind the plug.
Edit: Or just flip the SSD around if that mount will allow it. If it's screwed- tape again!
Also, I installed CrystalDiskInfo and it turns out I managed to install Windows to my SATA drive instead of my PCIE4 (when installing, it didn't label either drive, so I had a 50% chance of installing to the wrong drive).
Any good guides on reinstalling windows to another drive without having to redownload a few hundred gigs of games?
Personally, I just went for DDR 3600 on my QVL and called it a day.
You can go nuts with the timings but AFAIK the raw speed is the single most important thing, then you can start trying to get the other timings as low as possible.
Being on the QVL is nice, but a bunch of people here don't recommend bothering.
YMMV, I've had issues with RAM in builds past that wasn't on the QVL so I was willing to pay more for slower RAM since it was on the QVL.
Any decent free cloning tools around?
I've used Reflect with good results
Steam ID: Good Life
Excellent, I'll give it a go later tonight.
edit - you know, before I even realized I'd done it, I was fine with my OS speed. I might just leave Windows on my SATA drive.
I’m planning on putting a 2tb PCIE4 SSD in relatively soon. When I do that I’ll clone Windows over, since my games will all move over to the 2tb drive, leaving it empty.
Short of getting a second drive just for your games, partition your existing drives so you have a separate logical drive that you don't have to format every time you want to reinstall Windows.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Aim for ddr4 3600. Any faster and you risk the system not being stable in 1:1 infintiy fabric to ram speed, any slower and you're leaving cpu performance on the table. QVL is ideal but not necessarily critical. Lower timings are better but they don't improve cpu performance the way that higher memory clock speed does.
So I think I delimited this properly: MSI PRO Z690-A | DDR4 | ATX | ARGB | 2.5GbE LAN | 3 PCIE X16, 1PCIE X1 | 6 SATA3 | 3X M.2 SATA/PCIE
I have one hard drive included in the build that I plan to use for just the System/non-game-related stuff, which is NVMe. How many more can I mount? I know NVMe drives are PCIE but I don't know what the varieties of PCIE mean here.
And speaking of that, any strong opinions about good SSDs? I was going to go with the Samsung Evo 970 Plus because it's $230 right now for 2TB, which seems like a lot of space for a reasonable price.
You can mount 3 of them. I don't recall exactly how this works, but I want to say the first one gets its connections directly to the CPU, the next two will have to share the motherboard's PCIe lanes, which may result in reducing the PCIe lanes available to your GPU, depending on how much other crap you have plugged in (e.g. 10 gig network cards or whatever).