RIP Dell XPS710... welcome DIY Ryzen 1600X

[blueznl]

Only for hardware geeks

After 10 (10!) years of service my Dell XPS710 (Win7 x64 Dell XPS710 nForce 5 Intel Q6600 SSD Evo 840 GFX GTS450) started to behave erratic, mostly when (not) starting up. Once up and running, it was fine. Last week I (consistently) had to reboot it 4 to 5 times to get it up and running, so I decided to empty the bank and get something new... This was not exactly planned. I was planning to buy something new next year or so (probably a Zen 2 based CPU, which should not suffer from either Meltdown or Spectre by design) but alas... age cought up with the Dell.

Except for the AMD64 (which was great at its time) I've always been an Intel person, but I decided to try AMD once more, and settled for the following (re-using some parts from the dying Dell machine):

Black case (old one I still had laying around)
Seasonic 550W gold hybrid (even includes a fan-less mode I don't care much about, but every time I look at PSU's I end up with Seasonic)
AMD Ryzen 1600X + Scythe Mugen 5 (the version with one fan, big, ugly, works well )
MB Asrock AB350 Pro4 (all B350 boards are similar IMHO)
MEM Corsair 4x8 GB = 32 GB 2400 (low CAS, and yes, I know faster memory helps but it costs a lot and the gains seem to be quite limited)
SSD (old) Samsung Evo 840
HDD (old) WD Caviar Black)
GFX (old) GeForce GTS450 (will replace this with a GTX1060 or similar if I can find one for a reasonable price)
Fans 3x Arctic Frozen F12PWM (love these, very silent)
OS Windows 10 (even though I hate it, the latest version with some help of Aero Tweaker is acceptable)

The aim isn't overclocking, but a system that's fast enough and not too noisy, runs stable, allows lots of programs running simultenously. It is going to run office stuff half the time, with the remainder spread over audio and graphics and gaming, some emulation, and some VM's.

Normally I would have taken the regular Ryzen 1600 with the boxed cooler, but as I wanted the Scythe anyway I opted one step higher, gain is minimal but I'm going bankrupt anyway

The case is an older model with the PSU on top, but I've got some good experience with a three fan setup: A and B on the front, C on the back, with A and C and the CPU fan itself controlled by the CPU temp, and B on the front controlled by the MB temp... I should add a picture )

As I'm mostly into MMORPG's (Aion, Guild Wars 2) so even a GTX1060 is overkill, but who cares... (And if only all those bitcoin miners would die and go to heaven pricing of GFX cards would return to normal. 450 euro for a GTX1060?!?) And don't even suggest a Vega, for graphics I stick to NVidea.

Why so much memory? Dunno... might scale down to 16 GB. And if it turns out I never need it, I'll move it to another machine. Memory was the one thing my Dell XPS lacked, so I wanted to be absolutely sure I got enough this time.

(A more sensible setup would be Ryzen 1600, GTX1050, 16 GB, I know. I just decided to spend a little more in the hope this Ryzen 5 will last 10 years, just like my previous PC did... It probably won't, but still...)

Anyone who has a last minute suggestion?

[Rings]

Why so much memory? Dunno... might scale down to 16 GB. And if it turns out I never need it, I'll move it to another machine. Memory was the one thing my Dell XPS lacked, so I wanted to be absolutely sure I got enough this time.

if you ever wanna run other OS in a Virtualmachine,
you need memory.
As a coder, you can't get enough for this.

[blueznl]

Lots of memory it is then. I am probably going to add a GTX1060 to replace the ageing GTS450, but that would be about it.

[Zebuddi123]

Hi blueznl I had a similar problem a while back but because I had spent hundreds on individual parts in the past not really warranted for what i was doing and not really doing much programming/computing at the time. (but couldn`t live without one or programming and Solitaire is the only game i play) I decided upon getting an old workstation\sever system which would be good enough for my needs, not knowing a lot about workstaion`s and Xeon`s I did a bit of research and bought a Dell Precision T3500.

Could of gotten better specs but @£159 uk as the old British saying goes "I ripped his hand off" Built like a tank and built to last, wouldnt suprise me if this is still not running in ten years lol. But like you I will give Amd`s Ryzen 2 a go some nice ddr4 ram and pcie nvme ssd`s running as many lanes as I can find lol

Dell Specs @£159
Fully Licenced Win 10 Pro x64
Xeon x5650 6 core\ 12 threads
Seagate Barracuda st2000 sata 3 2TB
Geforce GT 730 1GB SL silent/fanless
12GB DDR 3 1333
PCIE Usb 3 x1 card
Muticard reader (builtin standard)

In A grade condition

added a asmedia 1061 pcie x1 to (x2 (esata/internal) sata connectors) sata 3 controller card for the OS
crucial mx300 275gb sata 3 ssd for the OS
@£88 for both

added a fan to the stock cpu heatsink

temps @ idle

[tj1010]

lol my Excavator>Carrizo-L based A8-7410(2015) vs the Zen>Ryzen based 2300U(2018)
http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/288/AMD_A8-Series_for_Notebooks_A8-7410_(FT3b)_vs_AMD_Ryzen_3_Mobile_2300U.html

SMEP, SMAP, and SEM are cool for security but I'm missing nothing else(like AVC and HEVC encode/decode and the PSP for TCM API). The real-market averages out too close for Kabby Lake and Ryzen, so if you're getting a CPU for real-world IPC(not engineering core-test IPC) you're probably going to be buying a I5-7440HQ(Mobile $660(new laptop)) or i7-7700T(Desktop $285.00).

P.S. 4GB 1050 TI($183) and 4GB RX 560($143) are good balanced GPUs. It jumps up at least a couple hundred dollars or euros immedietly after those..

[blueznl]

Zebuddi, at 159 that's a pretty sweet deal. I couldn't get such a config over here in NL. I actually have been eyeing such a machine, but would have to buy RAM seperately, and the machines available had a lower class Xeon. Though, I admit, they would probably last for ages. I think one of the older XPS machines was based on the same platform, but I could be wrong. Probably am

TJ, the full package for similar performance was just more expensive with an equivalent Intel CPU, so I settled for the Ryzen. There were also some sweet deals on AB350 mainboards.

Anyway, I finished my build. Went for the config I described in my first post, except I decided last minute to throw in a GTX1060 as a compromise.

Again, sensible people would have opted for a regular Ryzen 1600 paired with a GTX1050(Ti) but I'm not that sensible

Some notes on memory: a friend build a 1700X with 32 GB of 3200 memory and a X370 chipset. Real world performance his machine was perhaps 10% faster, at most, both machines in default config, no OC'ing. We tried his memory in my machine. Plugging in 16 GB worked fine (though not at full speed it was roughly the same speed as his machine), plugging in 32 GB caused further slow down. Reading up a little shows that B350's have some issue with four RAM sticks. We played a bit with real life applications, games, and synthetic benchmarks, and didn't notice any huge impact from the additional cores. A little perhaps, but not worth it unless you are into video encoding. (Which actually is his thing.) He was using an AMD card (forgot which one, but it sported 4 GB) but I wasn't impressed. Much hotter, much louder, not faster. AMD still has some space left for improvements there, especially power consumption.

The takeaway: 2x 2666 (?) 8 GB 2 sticks (total 16) in a Ryzen 1500X or 1600, and you've hit the sweet spot.

So, to wrap it up: I got a new PC So I can fail even better at Solitaire

[blueznl]

TJ, your PC runs quite cool. My idle temps (actually, my always temps with some office package and several browser taps open, things only change when playing a game)

Room temperature - 19.5
CPU - (on MB) 30
MB - 30
GPU - 43 (fans stopped)
Drives - 24..28 (the SSD reports most heat, but it's least cooled, so that makes sense, the rest has stopped)
CPU fan - 400
Chassis fan 1 / 2 / 3 - 776 / 858 / 708 (i keep fan 2 running a little faster to compensate for GPU fans at total stop)

[Mistrel]

Recently built a new workstation on Ryzen. Here are my specs:

Ryzen 1800X
64GB of Hynix ECC memory
Asus STRIX GeForce 970 (fans turn off on low load)

Storage:
8-drive array of 512GB Samsung EVO SSDs in RAID10 for data partition
1 128GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD for boot drive
1 256GB Samsung NVMe SSD for swap disk

Upgraded from an 16-core Opteron with 64GB of memory (8 sticks) that was getting very long in the tooth.

I also run 6 monitors for plenty of virtual real estate.

[tj1010]

TJ, your PC runs quite cool. My idle temps (actually, my always temps with some office package and several browser taps open, things only change when playing a game)

Room temperature - 19.5
CPU - (on MB) 30
MB - 30
GPU - 43 (fans stopped)
Drives - 24..28 (the SSD reports most heat, but it's least cooled, so that makes sense, the rest has stopped)
CPU fan - 400
Chassis fan 1 / 2 / 3 - 776 / 858 / 708 (i keep fan 2 running a little faster to compensate for GPU fans at total stop)

I do CUDA based 4k 20Mbps AVC to 4k 4Mbps HEVC transcoding using FFMPEG with my laptop sitting on the bed and it never gets close to thermal shutdown temperature.. The only thermal programs I have are Speccy and WMIC so I can't get precision readings, though.