Morgan MLGman

Realistically for gaming I would say not at all. Yes, there are some situations where you can induce a CPU bottleneck with that combo, but if you're in one of those situations you've done something else wrong. A 3700X is perfectly capable of handling a 3070 both at 1080p and 1440p in AAA titles. In all other games you wouldn't even care cause they'll definitely run great and well beyond your monitor's refresh rate.

DDU is far from 'sus'. DDU also clears the Windows Registry (if used in Safe Mode), and a normal uninstall does not. It's a better way to use DDU. As for the OP - this seems to be a driver issue that was resolved last month, I suggest you use DDU to reinstall the drivers in Safe Mode and then install the latest driver 22.11.1.

Considering AM5 starts having problems above 6400MHz, Raptor Lake still isn't that bad in memory speeds, but I would give the platform some time to mature - check out new BIOS releases as they come out, they may improve memory compatibility. Technically it's all overclocking, so it's not guaranteed to work.

This is a fairly new platform, so it may need a few BIOS updates to work properly. I wouldn't say that the temps are the issue in your case. It's either the BIOS not being mature enough or you just got a really unlucky IMC in your 13900K.

I meant in terms of build quality, internal design etc. Alienware cases are mostly just cheap, generic metal boxes found in stuff like Dell's Optiplex PCs, but wrapped around with tons of unnecessary plastic. At least the ones that they make now. Example below: Notice how it's just a square made from cheap metal with giant plastic covers all around.

Alienware cases are remarkably bad, so avoid those at all costs. Most OEM ones are, because this is the part where the OEM tries to save as much money as possible on. I'd say that cases improved in quality over the past several years, so it's still pretty much "you get what you pay for" For example I had a Phanteks P400 and it was pretty decent for what it cost, but it was clearly a budget case. I'm on Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic and its quality is better than I've ever seen on a case. It was appropriately more expensive though, so that's probably the reason.

I'm sorry for the questions, but I have to assume that people asking for advice here didn't check basic stuff themselves Regarding 4 DIMM boards - Unless you populate all 4 DIMMs, there should really be no difference between that and a 2 DIMM one. Maybe a slight one, I've found that for highest possible RAM speeds actually 2 DIMM ITX boards work best, but that's a marginal difference. As for temperatures, highest RAM temps should occur when your graphics card pumps out heat into the case as well. OCCT alone doesn't load the GPU, so these aren't even the highest temps you'd probably see, but I don't think those are the issue in your instance - especially that you mentioned crashes sometimes occur after only a few minutes. Did you ever encounter a crash on XMP settings anywhere else than OCCT? Like in games?

Done Regarding your question, the QVL (Qualified Vendor List) for your current Maximus Hero board seems to say that only those two G.Skill kits are tested by ASUS to work at 7200MHz, both are 2x16GB kits: Is your G.Skill kit one of those? The part number is very important here: F5-7200J3445G16GX2-TZ5RK or F5-7200J3445G16GX2-TZ5RS

Actually the NH-D15 may be better than an AIO for good RAM temperatures - with an AIO you have a lot of space, but not as much air moving because there are no fans on the CPU block. What motherboard and RAM kit do you have? Which DIMM slots are occupied in your setup currently?

I would advise against that. Despite both being from Corsair, they're different models from different product lines so they may be (and probably are) very different platforms internally. It's possible it would work, but I wouldn't risk it.

May be an Armory Crate bug. You can force the Nvidia GPU to be off by using Eco Mode if it's a real problem when on battery. Try reinstalling Armory Crate to the latest version.

Warranty doesn't expire, but it's more dangerous for an inexperienced person because unless your specific card has a dual-BIOS feature. Have you tried updating it via the latest version of MSI Dragon Center? There's also a standalone LiveUpdate 6 app, maybe try that one as well.

It looks like your VBIOS is not up-to-date, as Nvidia added support for Resizable Bar later to be on par with AMD. Your version is 94.04.25.40.41 from GPU-Z, and that is a version released at launch, and I think the latest one is 94.04.3A.40.63 that was released in March 2021. But you'd need to check specifically for your model to be sure, I believe you have a MSI Ventus RTX 3070 3X OC, but you need to verify that. According to MSI, VBIOS can be updated in two ways:

That is true. Anything above a 3080 or a 3080Ti will be bottlenecked by your CPU in CPU-demanding titles, unless you game at 4K. A 5800X3D is a worthy upgrade for gaming, but only if you have a significantly faster GPU than what you have now.

Coil whine affects any card that draws upwards of 200W realistically, doesn't matter if it's Nvidia or AMD. RX 6900 XT has 300W TDP so some coil whine is generally expected. My unit mainly does it in very high-FPS situations like a 500FPS game menu, but besides that during normal gaming it's not a problem on my reference AMD model. Some units have it better, some have it worse, some are just quirky combinations - for instance for some people the solution to their coil whine problem was changing the PSU to a different model or the motherboard. So it's a combination of more than just GPU alone. Nothing you can really do to prevent it, getting a more expensive AIB model doesn't affect coil whine. Keep in mind that the 3900X may slightly bottleneck the 6900 XT in some games, unless you're running a 4K monitor. I tried a 3700X with it and at 1440p games like AC Odyssey or Shadow of the Tomb Raider showed a noticeable improvement when I switched to the 5800X. Still, it's a difference between like 120 or 140FPS, so without an FPS counter you'd barely be able to tell. But the 3900X should generally be more than enough for majority of titles.

I run a 6900 XT reference model and its been nothing but great. It's quite a bit faster than a 3080, besides ray tracing it's on par with the 3090.

Drivers are fine, I'd say just as good as Nvidia's unless you play some very specific games or do content creation (I run both "teams" daily). The 6700 XT is a decent card that outperforms a 3060Ti in general and has more VRAM. It's noticeably worse in ray tracing though, but I personally still don't consider cards of that tier RT-capable so it's not an issue to me... With the BIOS, I believe that there should be no issues. 12400 has been on the market for long-enough that motherboards sold now should be manufactured later than its release. As for the drive bay warning - it's not a problem unless you plan on having a lot of 3.5" HDDs. And even for that, you'd have to buy the drive brackets separately if you intend on using more than two 3.5" drives, so this case would've been a bad choice from the start for that. Yes, but keep in mind that when someone comes to the forum for help, he might not even be aware that there is a good alternative to the 12400. Especially that Ryzen as a whole has not been around for that long relatively to the Intel Core series. I believe it's worth mentioning that there's another option that may even be cheaper OP's country.

Yeah, pretty much this. Unless you need entire OS image backup for some reason. Although I would personally use robocopy, as it's better for large copies with a lot of files and has tons of useful features to keep the backup up-to-date. You use it via windows command line: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/robocopy

Weird issue, I would first try reinstalling GPU drivers, preferably using the DDU software. 22.10.1 is the latest version.

I see - well, I'd say that no drivers are perfect because of the virtually inifite amount of hardware & software combinations you can have. I've owned a 660, 970, 980Ti, 1080, 1080Ti and RTX 3060 (mobile) and all of those had some problems with the drivers at some point, I've also owned an R9 290X, R9 Fury, RX 560X (mobile) and the RX 6900 XT now and there were certain problems with each of them as well. AMD has come a really long way since the Catalyst Control Center times and its software nowadays has way better & more modern GUI than Nvidia, doesn't have two separate components (Control Panel & Experience) and doesn't require a mandatory login (like Experience). Their drivers are also unified now for Mobile & Desktop, unlike Nvidia which has separate mobile releases on different dates. Still - I'm not saying they're better, I'm saying it's just not so cut-and-dried anymore. Now imagine that Intel has yet to go through all those issues and refinements.