BigRom

I hope you mean AX850 and not 860, because the AX860 is ancient (dates from 2013 from what I can gather) If you're on a tight budget, chances are the NZXT C750 is usually the cheapest of the bunch.

Man that NZXT case really isn't airflow friendly, but I guess if Colton isn't a hardcore overclocker he should be just about fine??

4.4GHz only applies to one of the cores, not all of them. 4.1GHz all-cores boost at stock is normal You could try overclocking it to get the all-cores boost clock up, though I wouldn't expect to hit 4.4GHz all cores as that might be a bit difficult

All this RGB bs is why I've completely given up on the aesthetics part of the build, as long as it boots up and performs up to my expectations I could care less whether it lights up or what colour is it lighting up Its just so much faff and nonsense, proprietary connectors, crap software, sometimes needing an entire controller that the case doesn't come with not to mention the extra unnecessary work for cable management. But I guess some people enjoy being tortured trying to get their RGB working, so power to them I suppose.

Pretty dope setup you got there, that triple monitor setup especially

The CMOS battery is dead, when you unplug the motherboard the CMOS is the only thing powering it to maintain the clock/BIOS settings. That is why when you really want to clear every single setting in BIOS, you remove the CMOS battery.

Change the CMOS battery, the coin cell between the 2 PCIe slots

I assume Cinebench R23? Yeah that isn't performing as it should, Ryzen 2700x should be getting near or over 10000 for the multi-core. Do check if you have any background apps running when benching though Is the RAM running at 3600Mhz? XMP/DOCP enabled correctly?

First off, Userbenchmark? Really? I assume you've spent good money on this PC, why are you judging it using some nonsense benchmarking test rather than how it performs in real-world use. Use Cinebench or something, then compare your score with other Ryzen 2700s Secondly, how do you know its under-performing? Have you used HWinfo and checked whether your CPU is boosting properly? Is it overheating (thermal throttling)? The X570 Gigabyte Gaming X while not top of the class in terms of VRM for an X570 board, its still more than capable of handling a Ryzen 2700.

Check your front panel leads, does it match up to what the motherboard says (+ in +, - in -) and is it plugged correctly into HDD LED

Their B450 boards were ok, but their B550 ones are honestly kinda shit save for the VRMs. I was planning to get the B550 Tomahawk because it was good value, then saw my friend's board crap out on him just 2 weeks after he got it. I nope-ed my way out of MSI immediately.

I bet you guys that call Sarah made was transferred over to some cheap outsourced call center in India. Which is kinda BS honestly considering I saw the item line and it said Premium Support (which in another name, ProSupport), she should be getting an CS agent who is American/Canadian or at least in North America. And yeah, they are that bad and its not a surprise at all to me because I have worked in the ProSupport queue and dealt with them before. That incompetence I saw from that queue, I've lost count of how many ****ed cases we had to clean up because they were too incompetent to even check the customer's specs properly. The funniest one was when a customer called in absolutely livid that the field engineer who was sent to his place, only came with 1 stick of RAM. The customer's Alienware system had 2 sticks, and he was told Dell was gonna replace ALL of the RAM. I don't know what the minimum requirement is for their call centers in India, but I'd imagine its pretty low (can you speak English, can you read off a script). I think I would have been fired if my call went the way it did in the video.

2000Mhz is correct, its DDR (double data rate) so 2000x2 is 4000Mhz Also unless you just absolutely love tinkering, just leave it as it is if its working + stable. RAM overclocking and adjusting the latency timings etc is a lot of work for barely any noticeable gains in real-world use.

They do make stuff that isn't unicorn vomit, the Ripjaws/Flare & Sniper X/Fortis were non-RGB RAM Even the original Trident Z were pretty minimalist looking, until they went crazy with the Trident Z RGB/Royal/Neo

There is no ROG Strix board that is m-ATX, and most of their stuff is overpriced to hell except the B550-F

FX chips will be running well beyond that, its a "recommended" temperature that is almost impossible to maintain if you load up the CPU because of the amount of power it consumes. Just for comparison sakes the very popular Ryzen 2600/3600 probably won't exceed 80W if you run it at stock, good luck getting an FX chip to stay below 100W The space heater jokes came about for a reason.

GPU is getting up there in age, think its about 3 years old now. But the rest of the system (CPU, mobo, RAM, SSD, PSU, casing) are all within the past year. Holding out for the RX6000-series, although tbh I don't really need it that badly even considering the GTX1060 is still plenty capable right now.

A PC can be repurposed into something else (HTPC, Plex/NAS server etc) once the performance is no longer able to keep up with the games you want to play, An out-of-date console is kinda like an interesting paperweight, there isn't much you can do with it short of busting out a retro game for nostalgic purposes. Oh and I can get work done on a PC, so

4GB RAM isn't enough for Windows 10 tbh, unless you're really diligent at killing all background tasks and making sure nothing unnecessary is running. There is so much crap running in the background that its almost a joke, maybe Windows Debloater (its on Github) and try to get rid of some of the bloatware that comes with Windows. I would recommend to get an 8GB SODIMM module, throw in an SSD and clean install Windows. That should get the laptop feeling like new. If you can't afford an SSD right now, then get the RAM and re-install Windows.

1st gen Ryzen is much more finnicky than newer Ryzen in terms of RAM, and for your specific motherboard anything above 2666Mhz is classed as OC (for 1st gen Ryzen) so Asrock can't guarantee it will run at those RAM speeds. Scroll to "Memory" section, refer Summit Ridge

Because a lot of people play e-Sports titles, I know these kind of high-end hardware isn't gonna break a sweat running a game that could be run on a potato-tier machine buts its still a useful data point for comparison purposes being as so many people play these games.

I do this too but more for identifying purposes, so if any of them dies on me I'll have an easier time fishing it out. Its not fun at all trying to identify which HDD is the dead one when I have 3 in the casing (not including the SSD) and a whole rat's nest worth of cables to work through.

That would entirely depend on how long did OP power it on without a cooler If only for about quick 2-3 minutes, ah the CPU will be fine. I've powered on way hotter chips (hello FX-8350) without a cooler for quick test boot to see whether its still working and could I get into the BIOS before quickly shutting it off. Now if he powered it on and kept it running for more than 15minutes, yeah maybe he'd have fried it. CPUs are a lot tougher than we think they are, there are so many old CPUs (particularly Ivy/Sandy Bridge) lying around but with ever dwindling amount of motherboards to run them.

Either they increased RAM speed support in a later BIOS, or its running but downclocked to 2400Mhz. Check it in task manager But hey at least you got it working I guess.

People who bought the 7th gen i7 probably felt royally screwed over when Intel came out with the 8700K less than a year into its lifecycle Poof, just like that the 7700K is essentially irrelevant less than 12 months after release, since the 8700K was a much better product for like only $20 more