Miscellaneous PC questions

[fissilecore]

Hi guys. Not so long ago I’ve built my first PC (used only laptops before) but there are stuff I couldn’t find answers to. It’s kind of a long list but I would appreciate any help.

1. There are a lot of offerings for the RAM with odd clock speeds. What’s the reason behind the 3466 MHz and the similar? Why not the round numbers only like 3400 MHz? Performance increase is quite insignificant for it to make sense.
2. Micron E-Die really doesn’t like tight tRCDRD timings. How important this value in broad terms? How it compares to similarly clocked Samsung B-Die for example 16-16-16-16-36 to 16-16-18-16-36?
3. There’s a chart for Zen 2 showing that max RAM speed that will run with Infinity Fabric at 1:1 ratio is 3733 Mhz. Is it the same for Zen 1 and Zen+ or lower?
4. I’ve recently noticed that my CPU temps have weird constant spikes – 40°C when idle then after 10-20 seconds goes straight to 50°C, slowly returns to normal and the cycle repeats.  Is it normal for it to fluctuate this much?
5. My tray version of CPU had signs of use. Is it supposed to?
6. Why does it take around 20 second for BIOS to load when restarting a PC but almost instantly when shutting down and then starting up?
7. When overclocking GPU memory to the max Metro Exodus rarely but does suffer from minor visual artifacts (like red spots or flickering smoke) but it doesn’t affect other demanding games. What does that indicate and should I keep the overclock?
8. Will buying a voltage stabilizer guarantee removing any coil whine?
9. When driving sound through display output there’s noticeable degrade in audio quality with very quiet background noise and sometimes high-pitched whine that are not present if connecting directly to MB. Is it due to lack of screening and can it be fixed?
10. AMD FreeSync eliminates tearing when FPS is lower than monitor refresh rates but FPS drops from say 80 to 50 are quite noticeable even without it. Does it mean that FreeSync is only useful when playing at constant FPS below monitor rated?
11. Is it safe to assume that every monitor below 200$ will have at least some degree of clouding (for VA) or backlight glow (for IPS) or are there some exceptions?
12. Many sources say that IPS has better color accuracy than VA but looking at the specifications even the cheapest VA have the same sRGB coverage. Is it only on paper or their statement is actually true?
13. On my parent’s LCD TV backlight LEDs began burning out after 5 years. Does it happen to monitors too?
14. Sometimes after closing any game, fans start constantly ramping up and down (by around 100 RPM, C-State and AMD Cool’n’Quiet disabled). The temperature source for my case fans is CPU so at least it could be somewhat improved with a different one but I don’t know what source I should set. CPU is the hottest so it works well when GPU is at 100%. What else scales well with GPU utilization?
15. Is it true that all cheap PWM fans (less than 50$ with tower) have this low-pitched buzz/hum? There’s literally no extraneous noise from non-PWM case fans of the same brand even on higher RPMs.
16. Why is it not possible for case RGB to show darker colors (like 0,100,0)? Is it because brightness can be either 0 or 255 or because medium is usually white or transparent?

[IntMD]

I'll answer a couple.

 

1. It's a higher number, higher numbers are better for marketing purposes.

3. Zen and Zen+ infinity fabric is a 2:1 ratio if I remember correctly, so 3600 speed ram would be 1800 infinity fabric.

5. Not on any one I've ever bought. It might be the company you have bought off have been binning the chips for their own systems or something, or just not handled them nicely.

11. No, it would entirely depend on the panel & manufacturer. It probably is more likely, but this is just a guess.

13. I can, sure just like anything electrical can die. Will it happen within 5 years? Who knows.

15. No, I have some super cheap aRGB fans in my case (<$50 for 5 of them with a fan hub and rgb controller). They do not buzz any more audibly than any other fan I have used, although they don't have the best static pressure or airflow characteristics by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[GDRRiley]

I'll give short answers or reference to go read more

1. cus marketing and ram only runs at weird intervals

2. go watch this guy https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrwObTfqv8u1KO7Fgk-FXHQ

3. No

4. likely yeah

5. tray usually means it didn't have a cooler

6. contex?

7. Tune it back some or you may have corrupted game files due a scan and repair check

8. no most are BS

9. no just crappy audio parts in many monitors.

10. yeah you kinda need to be running below the max refresh rate for it work. the monitor will have a range

11. any monitor that is IPS will have some amount

12. SRGB is a very small range

13. can matters on usage but I've got monitors that are 10-15 years old still going.

14. Yeah you hitting change temps pretty normal. There is no way to control based on GPU load with some fun splicing

15 They shouldn't

16. RGB lights actually suck in most ways. really what you want is RGBAA or RGBW but those don't really exist for PCs

[Yebi]

1 hour ago, fissilecore said:

1. There are a lot of offerings for the RAM with odd clock speeds. What’s the reason behind the 3466 MHz and the similar? Why not the round numbers only like 3400 MHz? Performance increase is quite insignificant for it to make sense.

Similarly to how a megabyte is 1024 kilobytes rather than 1000, you round to what is easy to design (or rather not round, because that would make it harder to design with no real benefit), not to prettier looking numbers

 

1 hour ago, fissilecore said:

3. There’s a chart for Zen 2 showing that max RAM speed that will run with Infinity Fabric at 1:1 ratio is 3733 Mhz. Is it the same for Zen 1 and Zen+ or lower?

I don't remember the exact numbers, but earlier generation had slower maximum IF speeds. Note that DDR stands for "double data rate", and the effective speed is double the actual frequancy. That's why we say that, for example, 3600Mhz ram and 1800Mhz IF are 1:1. That's also why some software reports ram speeds as half of what you'd expect.

 

1 hour ago, fissilecore said:

4. I’ve recently noticed that my CPU temps have weird constant spikes – 40°C when idle then after 10-20 seconds goes straight to 50°C, slowly returns to normal and the cycle repeats.  Is it normal for it to fluctuate this much?

Yes, that's normal on idle.

 

1 hour ago, fissilecore said:

6. Why does it take around 20 second for BIOS to load when restarting a PC but almost instantly when shutting down and then starting up?

Could be fast boot enabled? I only vaguely understand it myself, but in essence some machines leave some stuff cached and/or skip some diagnostic steps on regular shut downs/start ups. Restarting is usually done for troubleshooting purposes or because of changes to the machine, so they don't skip anything then.

1 hour ago, fissilecore said:

13. On my parent’s LCD TV backlight LEDs began burning out after 5 years. Does it happen to monitors too?

Not really, I own several LED-backlit screens (both TVs and monitors) that are over a decade old, and they all work fine.

[LogicalDrm]

*** Thread cleaned ***

 

If you don't want to help, don't post. Easy as that.

[Letgomyleghoe]

11 hours ago, fissilecore said:

I’ve recently noticed that my CPU temps have weird constant spikes – 40°C when idle then after 10-20 seconds goes straight to 50°C, slowly returns to normal and the cycle repeats.  Is it normal for it to fluctuate this much?

Yes some processes start/ stop voltage fluctuates, all normal 

11 hours ago, fissilecore said:

Is it safe to assume that every monitor below 200$ will have at least some degree of clouding (for VA) or backlight glow (for IPS) or are there some exceptions?

No, it all depends on the monitor itself.

 

11 hours ago, fissilecore said:

•  
• Is it true that all cheap PWM fans (less than 50$ with tower) have this low-pitched buzz/hum? There’s literally no extraneous noise from non-PWM case fans of the same brand even on higher RPMs.

No, using a “cheap” fan on my cpu cooler rn running full blast, no noise at all.