ivanrcks95

Thanks! I forgot to actually include what the 5800X3D swap cost, but the CPU was $300 new, and I sold the 5600X for right around $100, so another $200 on top of the $475, so the final total spent is $675usd for the full upgrade path. 

Obviously its not fair to say I spent $675 to build a 5800X3D, 6900XT specced PC, as I still had to buy the original parts I sold off, but when you wait 3+ years between upgrades, youve pretty much paid off those original parts anyway, and upgrading is always cheaper than starting from new. 

This was just a fun curiosity experiment, that ended up with great results. For the longest time outlets like Gamers Nexus made comments about certain cards blocking a lot of airflow by having the sides of the cooler blocked off. My particular card has the same "issue", there is a small gap between the cooler and the LED bar that goes across, but it does definitely block a majority of it. I decided to see if it 1 - could be removed and 2 - if it will make a difference. Removing it was very simple, 6 small screws and a plug later it all came off, and the difference it made was not insignificant. I wish I recorded all data I had before, but I did this mostly for shits and giggles not thinking it would actually make a difference, so i dont have actual screenshots of the before results, but without changing anything else, fan profiles all being the same, I saw a 4c drop in temps. With both attempts I ran cyberpunk with RT on for 30min, and the edge and hotspot temp both dropped by 4-6c, going down from 71c and 90c to 67c and 84c respectively, those are the max temps. Average temps were more closer to 4c all round. Surprised how much of a difference its made and how easy it is to do it. I also noticed that XFX stopped putting this LED bar on the 7000 series, so maybe they noticed these results too.

This was just a fun curiosity experiment, that ended up with great results. For the longest time outlets like Gamers Nexus made comments about certain cards blocking a lot of airflow by having the sides of the cooler blocked off. My particular card has the same "issue", there is a small gap between the cooler and the LED bar that goes across, but it does definitely block a majority of it. I decided to see if it 1 - could be removed and 2 - if it will make a difference. Removing it was very simple, 6 small screws and a plug later it all came off, and the difference it made was not insignificant. I wish I recorded all data I had before, but I did this mostly for shits and giggles not thinking it would actually make a difference, so i dont have actual screenshots of the before results, but without changing anything else, fan profiles all being the same, I saw a 4c drop in temps. With both attempts I ran cyberpunk with RT on for 30min, and the edge and hotspot temp both dropped by 4-6c, going down from 71c and 90c to 67c and 84c respectively, those are the max temps. Average temps were more closer to 4c all round. Surprised how much of a difference its made and how easy it is to do it. I also noticed that XFX stopped putting this LED bar on the 7000 series, so maybe they noticed these results too.

This was just a fun curiosity experiment, that ended up with great results. For the longest time outlets like Gamers Nexus made comments about certain cards blocking a lot of airflow by having the sides of the cooler blocked off. My particular card has the same "issue", there is a small gap between the cooler and the LED bar that goes across, but it does definitely block a majority of it. I decided to see if it 1 - could be removed and 2 - if it will make a difference. Removing it was very simple, 6 small screws and a plug later it all came off, and the difference it made was not insignificant. I wish I recorded all data I had before, but I did this mostly for shits and giggles not thinking it would actually make a difference, so i dont have actual screenshots of the before results, but without changing anything else, fan profiles all being the same, I saw a 4c drop in temps. With both attempts I ran cyberpunk with RT on for 30min, and the edge and hotspot temp both dropped by 4-6c, going down from 71c and 90c to 67c and 84c respectively, those are the max temps. Average temps were more closer to 4c all round. Surprised how much of a difference its made and how easy it is to do it. I also noticed that XFX stopped putting this LED bar on the 7000 series, so maybe they noticed these results too.

Even though I HATE the term, it could just be a case of the ray tracing accelerator units bottlenecking the stream processors or texture units. BUT this is just idle speculation.

I built this PC originally at the end of 2019, it was a very budget rig back then rocking a 1660 Super and a R5 2600. I eventually upgraded to a 2070 and a R5 5600X, whilst keeping everything else from the budget build the same, this was around the end of 2020. However, since then, this PC has remained untouched, and with the recent drop in PC prices overall, I decided it was time for a nearly full upgrade. This was the game plan;
 
Motherboard - Changed from the Asrock B450m Pro4-f to a MSI B550 Tomahawk - cost of change - $150usd minus $50usd selling old board - $100usd all up.
Case - Changed from a Cooler Master Q300L to a Lian Li Lancool II Mesh C - cost of change - $100usd minus $20usd selling old case - $80usd all up.
RAM - Changed from XPG 16gb 3000mhz to G.Skill 32gb 3200mhz - cost of change - $70usd minus $20usd selling old RAM kit - $50usd all up.
PSU - Changed from a Corsair TX550M to a Corsair RM850X - cost of change - $55usd minus $30usd selling old PUS - $25usd all up.
GPU - Changed from a Gigabyte RTX 2070 Gaming OC to a XFX Merc RX6900 XT Limited Black - $450usd minus $200 usd selling old GPU - $250usd all up.
I had a AIO on the 2070, that I put on the CPU, so sold the deepcool air cooler i had, and the Kraken G12 bracket for - $30usd total.
 
Total cost of swap - $475usd
 
Everything but the PSU and GPU were bought new, new 6900 XTs arent really sold here, and for $450 for one of, if not the highest specced 6900 XTs there are, I couldnt say no. The 5600X is still a really good chip, and I dont think it will limit me at all for at least another 2 years. Im still waiting on a new set of custom PCIE cables to get there to complete the look, but as of right now, I couldnt be happier with the massive step up in performance. 

Cleaning day, so thought id grab the most up to date pic. Yes custom GPU cables had to go (they were causing power delivery issues) 

Thanks! I forgot to actually include what the 5800X3D swap cost, but the CPU was $300 new, and I sold the 5600X for right around $100, so another $200 on top of the $475, so the final total spent is $675usd for the full upgrade path. 

Obviously its not fair to say I spent $675 to build a 5800X3D, 6900XT specced PC, as I still had to buy the original parts I sold off, but when you wait 3+ years between upgrades, youve pretty much paid off those original parts anyway, and upgrading is always cheaper than starting from new. 

Awesome value upgrade! Looks great as well!

I built this PC originally at the end of 2019, it was a very budget rig back then rocking a 1660 Super and a R5 2600. I eventually upgraded to a 2070 and a R5 5600X, whilst keeping everything else from the budget build the same, this was around the end of 2020. However, since then, this PC has remained untouched, and with the recent drop in PC prices overall, I decided it was time for a nearly full upgrade. This was the game plan;
 
Motherboard - Changed from the Asrock B450m Pro4-f to a MSI B550 Tomahawk - cost of change - $150usd minus $50usd selling old board - $100usd all up.
Case - Changed from a Cooler Master Q300L to a Lian Li Lancool II Mesh C - cost of change - $100usd minus $20usd selling old case - $80usd all up.
RAM - Changed from XPG 16gb 3000mhz to G.Skill 32gb 3200mhz - cost of change - $70usd minus $20usd selling old RAM kit - $50usd all up.
PSU - Changed from a Corsair TX550M to a Corsair RM850X - cost of change - $55usd minus $30usd selling old PUS - $25usd all up.
GPU - Changed from a Gigabyte RTX 2070 Gaming OC to a XFX Merc RX6900 XT Limited Black - $450usd minus $200 usd selling old GPU - $250usd all up.
I had a AIO on the 2070, that I put on the CPU, so sold the deepcool air cooler i had, and the Kraken G12 bracket for - $30usd total.
 
Total cost of swap - $475usd
 
Everything but the PSU and GPU were bought new, new 6900 XTs arent really sold here, and for $450 for one of, if not the highest specced 6900 XTs there are, I couldnt say no. The 5600X is still a really good chip, and I dont think it will limit me at all for at least another 2 years. Im still waiting on a new set of custom PCIE cables to get there to complete the look, but as of right now, I couldnt be happier with the massive step up in performance. 

Thanks! And yeah, its came with the card. As far as I know, only the 6900XT Limited Black had it, no other XFX 6000 card. 

The new custom cables for the GPU came today, really completes the look!

I decided to look into X63s online, and seems like its the crap pump part.
 
Pretty much every video or post I come across is people complaining about them being noisy above 60%, same exact noise mine makes. So seems like its just a noisy pump in general. Its lasted 3 years, so no reason to switch it, and if its completely silent at 50% with the temperatures under control, seems like theres no reason to leave it running faster anyway, or set up pump curves for it to ramp up/ramp down. 

Yeah ive heard about the Arctic hum, maybe I got lucky, but my sets of P12/P14s and F14s dont do it, or I cant hear the frequency they do it at lol
 
Also see the comment just above about the pump, after a quick research session, seems like its just a X63 thing, no reason to suspect its faulty if its been 3 years, I think theyre just noisy pumps in general. 

NZXT Kraken X63. Ive had it for 3 years now, and the noise it makes above 50% has been the same since day 1, so I know for sure its not a recent issue.
 
I run Arctic P/F fans all the way through, the case is a Lancool II Mesh Performance, so the fans, even under load, dont need to go above 50% fan speed, which is around 1040rpm based on my fan software, and at those speeds theyre dead silent. The pump makes like a humming noise above 50%, and yeah it is louder than the fans. 

NZXT Kraken X63. Ive had it for 3 years now, and the noise it makes above 50% has been the same since day 1, so I know for sure its not a recent issue.
 
I run Arctic P/F fans all the way through, the case is a Lancool II Mesh Performance, so the fans, even under load, dont need to go above 50% fan speed, which is around 1040rpm based on my fan software, and at those speeds theyre dead silent. The pump makes like a humming noise above 50%, and yeah it is louder than the fans. 

Today was the day, finally made the plunge to commit to a 5800X3D. it was always in the plans for this PCs "ultimate" version, just didnt expect to be switching to it this year, but an epic black friday deal was too hard to refuse. 
 
I do a lot of PS3 emulation on top of my normal gaming, so this change has been extremely rewarding in both aspects, pretty much a 25-30% uplift in both scenarios over my 5600X, do not regret it one bit. GT6 emulation has pretty much gained 10-15fps on average, which keeps it in the high 30s now at its lowest point, whilst staying locked at 60 most of the time. 5600X couldnt stop the game from dropping into the 20s, and on average it would stick in the 40s, never locked at 60.
 
It responded very well to a PBO curve optimized undervolt, managed to do -25 all core (i never tried -30, as -25 got me what I wanted, so who knows might even be stable at -30, will try at some point), which has stabilized clocks at 4450mhz, dropped the temps by 7-8c, and improved scores and performance all round.
 
Cinebench R23 went from 14,406 on stock settings to 15,150 with the -25
TimeSpy CPU score improved from 11,433 to 11,662, not as big of a jump, but the jump did still happen while having much lower temps. 
First untouched results the chip would hit 84c, now it maxes at 76/77c, doesnt even hit 70c when gaming.
 
Overall extremely happy with my purchase, and im hoping this rig will serve me well for at least 2-3 years, before needing to swap to AM5 or whatever other platform will be available by them.
 

Today was the day, finally made the plunge to commit to a 5800X3D. it was always in the plans for this PCs "ultimate" version, just didnt expect to be switching to it this year, but an epic black friday deal was too hard to refuse. 
 
I do a lot of PS3 emulation on top of my normal gaming, so this change has been extremely rewarding in both aspects, pretty much a 25-30% uplift in both scenarios over my 5600X, do not regret it one bit. GT6 emulation has pretty much gained 10-15fps on average, which keeps it in the high 30s now at its lowest point, whilst staying locked at 60 most of the time. 5600X couldnt stop the game from dropping into the 20s, and on average it would stick in the 40s, never locked at 60.
 
It responded very well to a PBO curve optimized undervolt, managed to do -25 all core (i never tried -30, as -25 got me what I wanted, so who knows might even be stable at -30, will try at some point), which has stabilized clocks at 4450mhz, dropped the temps by 7-8c, and improved scores and performance all round.
 
Cinebench R23 went from 14,406 on stock settings to 15,150 with the -25
TimeSpy CPU score improved from 11,433 to 11,662, not as big of a jump, but the jump did still happen while having much lower temps. 
First untouched results the chip would hit 84c, now it maxes at 76/77c, doesnt even hit 70c when gaming.
 
Overall extremely happy with my purchase, and im hoping this rig will serve me well for at least 2-3 years, before needing to swap to AM5 or whatever other platform will be available by them.
 

Well, its been over a week now since switching back to just using the PSU cables without the custom extensions and the problem has not happened again, so I think its safe to say that it was most likely the issue. 

If anything changes ill report back!

The new custom cables for the GPU came today, really completes the look!

It's possible. When you add length and extensions it adds more resistance for the current. Some psu's will use 16awg cabling on higher end psus and most extensions are 18awg which increases resistance even more. You're already doing the right thing by testing directly into your PSU bypassing the extensions to test this. If it does resolve, then don't use the extensions and order full replacement cables for your PSU from a reputable manufacture. 

Honestly spikes are so extremely low i dont think its an issue, it looks like normal and tbh very stable. If youre getting a max of 4C jumps in temp when it peaks, youre very okay, GPUs can run quite a bit hotter and still be fine so youre well within tolerance

After turning the display down to 60hz, and then back up to 144hz in windows display settings, it seems to be smooth again with no jitters or choppy animations. Seems like the settings didnt save after a restart or something? Will monitor it over the next few days to see if it happens again.

Hmm thats interesting. I have some issues with Twitch being pretty choppy. After I've disabled hardware acceleration in chrome, everything runs smooth. Haven't tried Zoom on my home machine, but if you go to settings -> video -> advanced, then you can disable hardware acceleration:

I had acquired this card just over a week ago. Despite being on AMD CPUs since 2018, with my first Ryzen, the Ryzen 5 2600, and sticking to Ryzen CPUs only since then, my entire GPU collection up to this point has always been nvidia. From my first card in 2007, the GeForce 8500 GT, up to my last card, a Gigabyte RTX 2070. 
 
However, since 2021 ive been more and more tempted by the red team. The 5000 series was a good first attempt to be back in contention on the mainstream GPU market, but I feel like they made the biggest dent with the 6000 series cards, and 7000 series is looking to continue that trend. Therefore when I was looking to finally upgrade my 2070, which I had used since 2020, AMD cards were on the top of my list. The 40-series and 7000 series cards were a bit out of my budget, even in the used market. I couldnt quite get myself to swing $700 for a card, those were the minimum prices of 7000 series and 40 series cards that had at least a 50% uplift in performance over my 2070. A 50% uplift in performance was always the limit I set myself to consider upgrading, otherwise I personally dont see it being worth it. This left me with the 30 series and the 6000 series cards.
 
With my 50% uplift target, I was left with RTX 3080s and above, and RX 6800XTs and above. To my surprise, 3080s here are still at least $600 for a good used one, whereas 3080tis and 3090s were all $700 and above. I honestly didnt expect them to hold value so well, and that basically decided my fate. On top of the somewhat shady business practices nvidia had done over the past 3 years, it looks like the market made the decision for me. After a few more weeks of digging, my card popped up, a XFX Merc 6900 XT Limited Black, for $450usd used. The seller had 1000s of positive reviews, and from all the photos and videos the card looked in very good shape, so I decided to commit.
 
 
As I was waiting for the card to ship, I did more research into it. Turns out, the Limited Black card is actually a pretty significant upgrade even over the stock 6900 XT. Firstly, its an XTXH chipped 6900, for those who arent aware, 6900s came in 2 variants, the XTX and the XTXH, with the XTXH chips being better "binned" and "unlocked" for overclocking. They had higher clock limits on the core and memory, and were usually seen in the water cooled cards, very few air cooled 6900s had them. Secondly, its 2495mhz advertised boost clock also puts it pretty high on the list of highest boosting 6900 XTs overall, air or watercooled. Safe to say I was very exited to play around with it, as overclocking is something ive always enjoyed. With my previous 2070, and a AIO strapped onto it, I even managed to break into the top 3 of 3dmark scores with it for my hardware. However, I did have my doubts, especially given the driver history and overall instability of AMD cards that was reported online.
 
The card does live up to the expectations I had for it. On completely stock settings the card gets a 22,274 graphics score in TimeSpy, this is a 54% boost in performance over the 2070s MAXIMUM overclocked graphics score of 10,421. If we compare the stock 2070 graphics score, then its a 62% boost. The story continues in FireStrike, with the 6900 XT setting a graphics score of 62,929, completely stock, which is a 59% uplift over, again, the MAXIMUM overclocked graphics score the 2070 ever got of 26,108. Stock for stock, this difference goes up to 62% again.
 
Great, the card meets my 50% uplift requirement, and it manages to do so whilst running the fans at a maximum of 35%, which is barely audible, and the core doesnt see anything above 67c, with the hotspot staying around 80-84c, something the 2070 struggled with, as the stock gigabyte cooler wasnt very good. *Take this with a bit of a grain of salt, as the seller did say he repasted the card with MX4, and this could be why it runs so cool. In any case, this means this card is going to be completely insane when overclocking right? Not quite. This is where I came upon my first hurdle with this card. I have to give credit to XFX, they have absolutely squeezed every single bit of performance out of this card on its stock settings, with the card hitting and holding 2600mhz constantly, even when gaming, well above the advertised clocks. But it does mean that there is hardly any room to go above the stock settings. With a maxed power limit, overclocked memory and core, the absolute best score I managed to get whilst being stable was a 22,782 in TimeSpy and a 64,911 in FireStrike. Only a 3% and 4% uplift respectfully, so much for that "binned" and "unlocked" XTXH chip. Turns out, after spending some time on this forum and other AMD subreddits and forums, the card is power limited. Despite drawing over 360w with the 15% power slider, it is not enough for it to do anything more, and most people have to resort to MPT to get more out of it, something I wasnt willing to do.
 

 
Fine, so the overclocking card is so heavily overclocked from the factory that anything I do on top doesnt result in any more significant performance gained. This does mean I should have some room for undervolting, and maybe I can get the card to run even quieter and even cooler at the same settings right? Once again, the cards clocks are so high from the get go, that anything below 1200mv is not stable, and would require a drop to the factory clocks. Something I was not willing to do. So im stuck with an overclocking card that I cant overclock without messing with BIOS limits, and a overclocking card I cant undervolt without sacrificing performance, great! Not quite what I was expecting, but its not the end of the world. The card performs so well out of the box that frankly the lack of any overclocking performance gain isnt a deal breaker. As even on stock settings the card is setting numbers that are 6% higher than the average 6900 XT and 4% higher than a 6950 XT. Its actually performing closer to a 4070ti, and outperforming the daddy of 30 series, the 3090ti, if the 3dMarks own results are to be trusted. So I cant really be sad about its performance.
 
How about those infamous AMD drivers then? And the constant game crashes and shitty optimization? Well, I havent experienced any of that at all, everything has been rock solid, every game I play, and all my work related tasks have been flawless, fingers crossed it stays this way. In a weird turn, the card being as good as it is, has actually revealed bottlenecks in my system that I did not have with the 2070, take that as you will but it has forced me to look into the 5800X3D a lot sooner than I wanted to. 
 
In conclusion I am still happy with what I got for the price I got it at. The card is extremely well built, the Limited Black actually comes with a cool and very solid brace/sag bracket that bolts right into the card and really makes it look like a serious weapon inside of my case. It runs super quiet and super cool (once again, this might not be the case for stock cards as it has been repasted), and its performance is above the expectations I had for it, despite the limited overclocking potential. But those limited overclocking potentials do need to be highlighted to anyone considering this card for that purpose. As they might have seen it has the XTXH chip and rushed out to get one thinking it will be an overclocking weapon, but the card ends up being the exact opposite. Just something to take note of.