Dave Pastern

Anyone?

Hi Guys, So just working out a few things about RGB and fans - I've never bothered with extra fans on any previous system that I've ever built in 20+ years, and RGB is new (my last built system was in 2012). I have bought the Phanteks Eclipse P500A-DRGB case, which comes with 3x 140mm RGB fans as default. I plan to leave them in the front, as intake. I have bought 4x SK DRGB PWN 120mm fans in addition to the stock fans. (these are the ones - http://www.phanteks.com/PH-F120SK-DRGB.html) My plan was to have a single 120mm at the rear as exhaust, and 3 120mm at the top. 2 of the top fans would be intake and the one furthest back would be exhaust. As far as I understand, this will create negative pressure inside the case, and should help hot air move out of the case. I should effectively have 3x 140 and 2x 120 fans in front of the CPU/air cooler as intake. Graphics card is a lowly Radeon 550 2mb - this is not going to be a gaming rig, it's going to be a high end workstation. I plan to use the stock prism cooler for cooling. I think it should be able to adequately cool the system. My intentions are to use the system for my Astronomy image processing software (PixInsight), which will fully utilise each core, memory and any NVME PCIe disk cache that I set up for processing parallelisation. Given that the cores will be pushed hard, will the stock cooler, and above fan setup be enough? I do not intend to overclock the CPU, or infinity fabric. System RAM will be Corsair LPX 3600mhz (2 x 32GB). RAM will eventually be increased to the system maximum 128GB. What do you guys think of this plan? I know very little about fans, and I know very little about effective cooling of a case. I have done reading, but obviously lack experience dealing with fan planning, so hopefully my ideas are good and sound. Now my first potential issue is this is 7 fans. I have the Gigabyte Aorus Master x570 motherboard and as far as I can see, it has 3x system fan headers and 2x system fan/water cooling pump headers. So...2 questions spring to mind so far (I'll work through all my questions logically, in order, so bare with me!). 1. I can use the system fan/water pump combo headers for system fans only if I want. 2. Do I have to use 1 fan per system header? Or, can I daisy chain them? If I can daisy chain them, what are the issues with how many fans per header? Each fan requires voltage to run, and I presume each header has a limited amount of voltage that can run through it. I don't want to overload any particular header. 3. There's no different voltage types for the fans I've chosen - I believe that 12v is the standard? 4. Am I going blind, or is there no sys fan #3 on the motherboard? I haven't opened up any of the fan packaging yet, I have it safely away in a box until all the parts for the PC build arrive. Will I need to buy additional accessories to enable me to daisy chain etc, or should there be some inbuilt functionality for daisy chaining the fans out of the box? Next question - I'll be using a AMD 9 Ryzen 3900x CPU. Do I need to use both 12v CPU power headers on the board, or only One? Older systems I have worked on in the past required only a single one. Another question revolves around RGB. I think I understand addressable vs non-addressable. The former allows the individual LEDS on the LED strip to alternate colours etc independently, whereas the latter doesn't, and the entire strip behaves as programmed. As far as I understand, addressable headers are 5V and non-addressable are 12V and they are not compatible (as per this page - https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?110272-What-do-5v-and-12v-RGB-cables-look-like-you-ask). I believe all of the fans (case included 140mm and the separate 120mm fans are addressable). So, I will need to use a RGB addressable 5v header. The motherboard manual says it has 2 RGB addressable "LED strip" headers - can these be used for the RGB fans that I have purchased? I'll probably need to split the RGB and daisy chain (which I believe I can do) - 4 RGB on one header and 3 on the other. Is that correct? If so, are there any potential issues with power and potential damage to the RGB fans and/or motherboard from overloading too many of them on a single header? I don't now how much power each individual fan requires for RGB and how that matches to a 5V RGB addressable header. Looking at the motherboard manual, I see (on p25) LED_C1 and LED_C2 (I think these are non-addressable 12V) and D_LED1 and D_LED2 - I believe these are the addressable 5V headers. Am I correct in my understanding? I think page 29/30 of the motherboard manual confirms this. Just a bit nervous about all of this and seeking external confirmation that I'm not misreading things etc! Also, if I've understood things correctly and chosen the correct parts, the 120mm fans are PWM. I don't believe the included 3x 140mm fans are PWM (so they should be 3 pin, right)? As far as I can see, all of the fan headers on the motherboard are 4 pin. As I understand, I can connect a non-PWM fan (3 pin) to a 4 pin header, I just need to make sure that I get the plug orientation correct and not to use the 4th (12v pin). Correct? My last question (for now at least) revolves around the included temperature probes. Should I bother with them? Since they are very long (50cm from memory) and would dangle loose, how on Earth do you use them inside the case without them posing a potential problem to the case internals and dangling about, etc? Cheers, Dave

No. It was more to prove that some places are indeed voiding warranty if XMP is used. Very sad imho.

Actually, for some pre-built systems manufacturers, it does...NZXT up until very recently had a policy that XMP voided warranty...due to public pressure and talk of false advertisement (selling a system with 3400mhz RAM that only runs at 2133!), they reversed their decision and now XMP is covered and doesn't void warranty... https://blog.nzxt.com/updating-our-warranty-an-xmp-story/

I thought it was worth asking!

Well, if I have stability issues, I have more of a leg to stand on with Gigabyte should memtest show no issues with the RAM modules. Just covering my bases. Yup, only the best! I want this PC to last at least 5 years, and from my experience, investing in better quality parts generally improves that chance. Plus, it's real perty lol! I will check that out when I've built the new PC. Still waiting on a few parts to arrive. I will try and see if Amazon will agree to a return and get 3600mhz RAM. If they don't, then I'll see what my local Fair Trading says on the matter. Does OC technically render the warranty invalid? Can RAM vendors tell if memory has been OC?

how much is "quite a bit" though? OK, so perhaps to 3200mhz if I'm lucky... Yes, that is what I'm thinking of doing. I actually meant to buy 3600mhz RAM, but was copying/pasting RAM model numbers from Gigabyte's QVL PDF and sometimes Windows doesn't obey ^c very well (i.e. not at all) and I copied the wrong model number into Amazon and didn't read things properly and clicked buy...I've had a real bad time with Amazon the past few months, but this was my fault. In this instance, it's 2133mhz, at least according to Gigabyte's QVL PDF. Thanks, will keep an eye out for it. The last part arrived today (motherboard, yay!), but I'm still waiting on a few accessories to arrive for the build. Will go through the BiOS once I start setting things up. Watching it now, thanks! I had to Google what FCLK is (infinity clock, right?). I believe it's 1.2V, base speed 2133mhz, timings are 16-20-20-38 and the IC is Micron...make of that what you will. I've always used QVLs - rather not get into a fight between the RAM and motherboard manufacturers over who's to blame! I read the 3900x benefits from the x570 chipset. Plus, I wanted NVME PCIe gen 4 support. That was critical for me (will be using a Seagate FireCuda M520 500GB gen 4 SSD and 2 x Samsung evo plus 256GB gen 3's for disk cache drives). Yes, I know the 3rd m2 will disable 2 SATA ports, that's not an issue. PixInsight can make use of disk cache (much like Photoshop's scratch disk). I think it will be easier to simply return the RAM that I purchased and shop for 3600mhz RAM (Corsair LPX).

Hi guys, 2 caveats. 1. I know nothing about overclocking. 2. I know nothing about overclocking RAM. Despite building my own PCs since '97, I never experimented with any form of overclocking. I am now getting the parts together to build a Ryzen 9 3900x system (will be using a Gigabye Aorus Master x570 motherboard). I had settled on and ordered Corsair RAM from Amazon US - CMK64GX4M2D3000C16 - 2 x 32GB modules. The system will be starting with 64GB RAM and will be upgraded to 128GB down the track as funds become available. PC will run Kubuntu GNU/Linux with the sole reasoning to being to run PixInsight (a very specialised piece of software designed to process Astronomy images). Now onto my questions... 1. I believe the base clock speed for the 3900x CPU is 3600mhz and RAM that is slower than this clock speed will slow the CPU's performance? Is this correct? If so, by how much (percent) will I lose out? 2. How far could I push (overclock the 3000 sticks)? Stability is of the utmost importance so as to avoid crashes when processing large .fits files in PixInsight. Note: PixInsight is a beast and will saturate all cores/threads, use all of the RAM and is happy to exploit NVME PCIe gen 4 m2 SSDs as disk caches. 3. Some research tonight has led me to the term "B-die". Reading up on it, it seems to refer to premium Samsung modules. I checked this site (https://benzhaomin.github.io/bdiefinder/), and my RAM isn't B-die, so apparently doesn't lend that well to overclocking. It seems that no manufacturer makes and B-die RAM in the size that I want (32GB module). How much will this impact on the ability to potentially overclock the RAM that I bought? Am I better off returning the RAM (if Amazon will even accept a return on it) and going for 3600mhz RAM (Corsair LPX), or can I boost this 3000mhz RAM to 3600 or close enough so as to minimise any potential performance loss? On a final point - if it is seemingly possible to boost the 3000mhz RAM, is anyone able to hold my hand and assist me with the RAM settings etc in detail? edit: this is Gigabyte's QVL: https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_x570-aorus-master_v1.1.pdf I've heard of XMP but have no idea how to use it, etc. I've simply never touched any RAM settings before, just leaving things at stock settings. Hoping someone can answer my questions. Cheers, Dave

Thanks for confirming. I don't really need more than 1 or 2 USB 3 ports - this machine will not be used for gaming or anything else other than processing astro images with PixInsight. It'll be running Kubuntu Linux too as that gives around a 10% performance increase over running the same app on Windows/OS X/freeBSD O/S environments. USB 3.1 isn't really needed - USB 3 will suffice for my intended purposes. Although I guess I could future proof and look at the Gigabye motherboard that you recommended... I may end up getting this then given what you've confirmed: https://www.umart.com.au/Gigabyte-500GB-M-2-NVMe-Gen4-SSD--GP-ASM2NE6500GTTD_52975G.html that way I can upgrade to a 3700x down the track or an even better CPU than that with more cores (cores make a real difference with PixInsight benchmarking and performance it seems).

HI Guys, I've been out of the hardware game for quite some years, and trying to learn about all the new tech/hardware, etc. Looking at a potential new rig, have decided on a Ryzen 7 2700X (2nd gen) CPU. For future proofing, I'm looking at a x570 chipset based motherboard, in particular an Asus TUF gaming X570-plus (wifi); specs here - https://www.asus.com/au/Motherboards/TUF-GAMING-X570-PLUS-WI-FI/specifications/. It seems to indicate under the storage section that the M.2 Gen 4 SSDs will work with the gen 3 CPUs, but NOT gen 2 CPUs. Is this actually correct? Or, will said NVME SSD work with a gen 2 CPU, but at a slower speed? I did some Googling and found this page: https://community.amd.com/thread/241486 so I suspect that I did interpret it correctly - getting a gen 4 SSD for a gen 2 CPU isn't worth it. Can anyone please take the time to confirm that I am thinking correctly? Cheers, Dave