Connor Price

To be honest with Ryzen and especially Ryzen 3000, it's not worth overclocking. Letting PBO and the algorithms built in to the chip / BIOS do their thing is the best option. However there are tools like Clock Tuner by 1usmus that aims to get the best overclock out of your chip. I've read reports that it tends to lean on the more unstable overclock in favour of higher clock speed though so that's something to look out for.

As mentioned before, boost is usually only single core and is more often than not the MAX you'll see. 4.5GHz boost is still pretty good for a 3800xt.

Let's go for 4. Using Noctua Redux fans for my gaming rig. @Saltnado In terms of RGB fans, the Corsair LL series are very popular. Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with them. If you have a Phanteks case, you could get some good quality white fans and use their Halos RGB fan frames. I'm using one with a Fractal 120mm fan for my exhaust and looks fantastic when set to a single colour, in my case purple.

Not in the UK. The used market for GPU's in the UK is still pretty expensive.

It is actually possible. Whether it works on every AIB card or not I have no idea. https://new.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/czhux1/psa_you_can_take_the_bios_from_a_5700_xt_and/

I would also go with a 5700 for that price. I'm pretty sure you can flash the 5700XT bios on it as well.

I've read this before but the behaviour seems a little different for me. The voltage ramps up when it's not boosting. I've seen it at 1.4v just going to 1.6GHz. Unless of course going from idle to 1.6GHz is classed as boosting, then I guess it's fine. Just the load voltage that seems a little high.

It seems I have fallen victim to the weird over voltage problem that some B450 boards are having with the Zen 2 chips, which is odd considering the 3400g is just Zen+. I'm building this system for my dad and the stock voltage in the BIOS is 1.38v. I set a voltage offset of -0.0800v and Ryzen Master was reporting voltages of over 1.5v when running CPU-Z's stress test and testing out cities skylines. However, as far as I'm aware this is because Ryzen Master doesn't report correctly with a voltage offset in the BIOS. HWInfo64 and HWMonitor both report around 1.38V - 1.4v in cities skylines and around 1.36v during the CPU-z stress test. Idle voltage is great at around 0.700v and temps are well in check under load (55c). It seems that the offset isn't working and I'm kind of worried about these voltages. The fact Ryzen Master was reporting quite high voltage even before I set the voltage offset is also kind of worrying. Are those load voltages safe? I'd definitely prefer them lower but if it's not going to be an issue I guess I'll just keep it as is and hold out for a BIOS update or something. The most intensive thing my dad will be doing with the PC is playing cities skylines anyway. Would setting LLC to something aggressive help drop the voltage on load? Or should I just set the voltage to a set value and give up having a low idle voltage?

It's a sidegrade in terms of gaming performance, for sure. Always wanted to go the Ryzen route but since all I do is gaming I chose the 8600k a few years back over the 1600. Now that Ryzen is very close to Intel in gaming, I'm looking to change. My 8600k is getting a little bottlenecked in some games but it's still performing very strongly. Won't be getting a 3700x straight away anyway since all of the decent B450 boards are out of stock and I'm not looking to spend a ton on an X570 board. EDIT: Also, cheers for all of the responses and info everyone.

I'm looking to upgrade my 8600k to a 3700x and since my buddy is stuck on an Skylake i3, I was thinking he could have my 8600k. However, I'm seeing 8600k's selling used for the same price I bought it new almost 2 years ago... I was originally thinking something around 200 for the two of them, but that seems WAY off. Not too bothered about the money aspect, but obviously I want to get something back on what I bought without ripping off my friend. The board is a Z370 Prime-A, which I can see going for around $80-100 which is around £70, what I was expecting. The CPU however is throwing me off. Would something like £250 be reasonable?

The only workload I'd suggest staying away from AMD for is Premiere Pro since Adobe products are heavily optimised for Intel and in Premiere Pro's case, quicksync. And that's only for heavy Premiere Pro workloads. For occasional use, the 3700x will do you just fine, albeit rendering will be slower than a 9700k. For pretty much any other workload, AMD is the go to at this point. I'd even recommend the 3700x over the 9700k for gaming as well. It's cheaper and performs the same if not better in the majority of games.

You say you're running a 650w PSU, what kind is it? A 650w PSU should be plenty for a 1600 and a 2060 however if it's not a good unit I highly doubt you'll be getting the advertised 650w, which could cause issues.

I would suggest a 5700 or a 5700XT unless you can get a Vega card on a good deal. Buying a new one at near MSRP is just not worth it after the release of the new Navi cards. Vega is a 2 year old architecture at this point and Navi is brand new, meaning Navi has a long way to go in terms of driver improvements and optimisations. AMD always tend to botch initial drivers (although Navi drivers don't seem as bad as initial Vega drivers) so performance tends to improve after a few months and the Navi cards are already very competitive against the 2060 Super and the 2070 Super.

For that budget your only real NEW options for 1440p 144hz would be a 2060 or the new 5700 from AMD which will be releasing next month. They won't be getting you 144fps in every title though. For that you'd need to be stepping up to a 2070 or a 5700 XT at the least. If you don't mind going the used route, a used 1080 or Vega 64 would do the job at 1440p as well but for a little less money. Personally, I'd go for a new option myself.

987 FPS down to 12 FPS. Jesus. Considering this is only a 1060, that's actually not too bad when you compare it to the 90 fps a 2080 Ti gets at 1080p, a $1200 card and is designed from the ground up for ray tracing support. Still shows how we have a decent way to go before we can implement ray tracing fully.