committing to an upgrade for my main rig.

[manikyath]

So.. way too long in the making, i've decided it's time to make a decision, and a purchase. I decided to cut out most 'side-information' to drill down to the essence.

 

Budget: below €1500. it's more a matter of performance per dollar, than a matter of dollars. if you're gonna recommend me a €500 motherboard  for no better reason than "it fits in the budget", i'm going to shout at you. fair warning.

Country: Belgium

Use case:

- Games: everything ranging from minecraft to sea of thieves. Less important for now, since i'm looking to upgrade for the other workloads.

- Programs/other: Autodesk fusion 360, SketchUp, Cura, running virtual machines, some light programming.

Other details:

- i have a pair of 2560x1440 60Hz displays, for gaming i largely run anywhere between windowed 1920x1080, and borderless windowed 2560x1440. At this point in time, and with the current GPU shortage.. my GTX970 is still fine. i'll most likely sit on it for *one* more generation.

- in some of my workloads (as an example, slicing large models in Cura) i'm really starting to crave more single core performance. This is the major reason for upgrading.

- i'm a multitasker, that 32GB RAM on my parts list is a necessity.

- for the sake of habit, i'm ordering everything from alternate.be, luckily since the last time i've done a build they are now included on pcpartpicker.

 

My curent build:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K 4 GHz Quad-Core Processor 
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Advanced C1 50.5 CFM Fluid Dynamic Bearing CPU Cooler 
Motherboard: Asus SABERTOOTH Z97 MARK2 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) DDR3-1600 CL9 Memory 
Storage: SanDisk Ultra II 240 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive 
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4 GB STRIX Video Card 
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 ATX Mid Tower Case 
Power Supply: Corsair RM 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply 
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer 
Total: €0.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-01-23 14:10 CET+0100

 

as hinted at before.. i'm planning on keeping the GTX970 for now. I'm mainly looking towards a platform upgrade, and a super speedy SSD.

i'm probably going to keep my power supply until the next upgrade cycle as well.

 

I've pieced this together so far:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor  (€493.99 @ Alternate Belgium) 
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 50.5 CFM CPU Cooler  (€84.89 @ Alternate Belgium) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory  (€164.89 @ Alternate Belgium) 
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  (€234.89 @ Alternate Belgium) 
Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 970 4 GB STRIX Video Card 
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 ATX Mid Tower Case 
Power Supply: Corsair RM 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply 
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer 
Total: €978.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-01-23 14:49 CET+0100

 

i'm not really set on the cooler just yet, so i'm gonna throw this one here just in case:

https://be.pcpartpicker.com/product/84MTwP/noctua-nh-d15-chromaxblack-8252-cfm-cpu-cooler-nh-d15-chromaxblack

 

and past that.. there's the obvious lack of a motherboard.. i've got no idea what to go for..

i've got some requirements in mind, but so far have not pieced those together into a propper decision.

- ATX formfactor.

- front usb 2.0 header and two front usb 3.0 headers (i have a usb card reader built into my case, in addition to the 4 usb ports on the case itself)

- a competent bios/uefi interface. i've scratched gigabyte off the list of possibilities due to an incredibly long list of disappointments...

- some sort of bios flashing feature like asus' "bios flashback".

- i have A LOT of peripherals, so many rear usb ports is welcomed. i've currently got all 8 ports of my current motherboard in use, although i suppose mounting a USB hub under my desk wont be a bad idea.

- competent fan speed configuration in bios.

- two ethernet ports are a welcome addition. i currently have an add-in ethernet card to have a second port, being able to omit this card would be a welcome addition.

  i should also add, for motherboards that dont have a second ethernet port, i'll be needing an x16 (or really, anything bigger than x1) slot that wires into the chipset, preferably at the very bottom of the board.

 

so yeah.. input overall is welcomed, but i'm really looking for some suggestions for motherboard choices.

[YoMz]

if you've taken out Gigabyte from the list, then you're really just left with Asus and MSI for the mainstream brands that have really good UEFI (AsRock kinda has bad UEFI imho)

with your specific needs from the board, you should stick to the upper tier X570 boards to pair with your 5800x... Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero comes to my mind for Asus, MEG and Lightning boards for MSI (there should be cheaper boards in their lineup that share similar features, these are just ones that pop in my head with your particular needs)
 

[Archer42]

980pro is nice and all, but if you are speaking of performance per price it is a terrible buy IMO. As well as any pci-e 4 ssd right now. They all barely exceed pci-e 3 speeds in any relevant performance metrics (not ideal linear read for benchmarks) while charging a premium for "pci-e 4". On top of that 980pro i weird... it is TLC with large buffer and is not really better than any other high-end ssd out there, while still including samsung tax and "pro" tax.

 

IMO - look at how much the stuff you do is limited by storage performance on hardware you have currently and then decide how much performance you really need. I am about 99% sure you can either save half of the price and get good mid-range pci-e 3 ssd, or you can get 2x bigger one for the same money and never notice any practical performance difference.

[manikyath]

37 minutes ago, YoMz said:

if you've taken out Gigabyte from the list, then you're really just left with Asus and MSI for the mainstream brands that have really good UEFI (AsRock kinda has bad UEFI imho)

with your specific needs from the board, you should stick to the upper tier X570 boards to pair with your 5800x... Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero comes to my mind for Asus, MEG and Lightning boards for MSI (there should be cheaper boards in their lineup that share similar features, these are just ones that pop in my head with your particular needs)
 

i've had good experiences with asrock's bottom of the barrel cheap motherboards. they're notably basic, but surprisingly feature-complete. i've never had an 'actually decent' motherboard from them, so i cant say how well it improves towards the top of the stack. Wendell from level1techs seems to be as excited as ever with his new asrock taichi motherboard, although there seems to be a long-standing pattern around Wendell liking taichi boards...

 

as for gigabyte.. it's really unfortunate to say, but every product from them i've used, has been a disappointment. and every time i decide 'that they've probably improved' and try something gigabyte.. it turns out another disappointment on the list.

 

past that, the crosshair hero has crossed the table a few times for me, it's just the price that really puts it on the "maybe" list, together with a rather "mehh" pcie lane layout.

for €400 it just becomes really hard to ignore that it's an ATX motherboard with the expandability of a micro-ATX board... with my current board i've got plenty of experience into asus' way of thinking, and buying a very "GAMURRRR" optimized board from them, may not be the best course of action for me. either way it's still on the list, because one thing it *does* do very well, is mark checkboxes.

 

as for the MSI side, the 'MEG' boards (also.. what the hell is this naming scheme on MSI boards..) arent really available here it seems, and the rest of the range is what i'd call "decent but unexceptional". i seem to have missed their entire range of motherboards, purely by organising options by I/O layout. i suppose their thing seems to still be "if it aint broke, dont fix it." -- i suppose that at least means less chance for unfortunate surprises.

 

1 hour ago, Archer42 said:

980pro is nice and all, but if you are speaking of performance per price it is a terrible buy IMO. As well as any pci-e 4 ssd right now. They all barely exceed pci-e 3 speeds in any relevant performance metrics (not ideal linear read for benchmarks) while charging a premium for "pci-e 4". On top of that 980pro i weird... it is TLC with large buffer and is not really better than any other high-end ssd out there, while still including samsung tax and "pro" tax.

 

IMO - look at how much the stuff you do is limited by storage performance on hardware you have currently and then decide how much performance you really need. I am about 99% sure you can either save half of the price and get good mid-range pci-e 3 ssd, or you can get 2x bigger one for the same money and never notice any practical performance difference.

i sort of picked the samsung 980 pro because i just sorted by IOPS. past that, i've 'experienced' a lot of different brands of SSD over the years, and while samsung tends to be pricy, they're also generally the fastest SSD's in their category, and have exceptional 'total TBW' ratings. Past that the choice is also sort of in mind of 'what if DirectStorage actually happens..."

i've considered getting a 2TB samsung 970 evo now, and waiting a bit longer for pcie 4.0 SSD technology to mature before i make the dive. I suppose that'll come down to calculating how much SSD space i'll end up wanting. (a lot of my 'slower' storage has moved to a home server, so it's a matter of figuring out how much of what remains on the HDD can move along)

[manikyath]

3 hours ago, YoMz said:

if you've taken out Gigabyte from the list, then you're really just left with Asus and MSI for the mainstream brands that have really good UEFI (AsRock kinda has bad UEFI imho)

with your specific needs from the board, you should stick to the upper tier X570 boards to pair with your 5800x... Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero comes to my mind for Asus, MEG and Lightning boards for MSI (there should be cheaper boards in their lineup that share similar features, these are just ones that pop in my head with your particular needs)
 

i ran trough things again, and bumped into this super specific detail on the crosshair hero... maybe ASUS really does know what they are doing:

if this picture is accurate... that's an "open ended" 1x slot.. it'll take any odd add-in card i may want to shove in there.

 

and i'm running trough alle the silly details the manual has to say about the pcie lane layout.. and it appears they are just hilareously miscommunicating that bottom 4x slot... it's sort of implied it shares lanes with the other 16x physical slots, but the math really doesnt make sense, so it can be assumed this slot is on dedicated lanes...

[Archer42]

1 hour ago, manikyath said:

and have exceptional 'total TBW' ratings

Interesting fact is - since "pro" line is no longer MLC and uses TLC, the same as evo, 980pro has the same TBW as 970evo for the same size. And the same as wd sn850, for example. So it is no longer great in terms of endurance...

 

 

Also on topic of motherboards - one I've been looking at for some time now is ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE.

Kind of expensive, but connectivity is great, probably the best for AM4. And since it is technically a workstation board - no "gaming" junk included, no gun-shaped heatsinks, no rainbows... i'll probably buy it sooner or later just for this reason.

 

[manikyath]

2 minutes ago, Archer42 said:

Interesting fact is - since "pro" line is no longer MLC and uses TLC, the same as evo, 980pro has the same TBW as 970evo for the same size. And the same as wd sn850, for example. So it is no longer great in terms of endurance...

 

 

Also on topic of motherboards - one I've been looking at for some time now is ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE.

Kind of expensive, but connectivity is great, probably the best for AM4. And since it is technically a workstation board - no "gaming" junk included, no gun-shaped heatsinks, no rainbows... i'll probably buy it sooner or later just for this reason.

 

the pro / evo thing: sure, but at almost double the IOPS and sequential read/write speeds. yes, they're theoretical values, but generally if they're double across the board, real-world tends to be better too...

as for the wd sn850... not available at alternate, and the €20 difference doesnt warrant ordering from somewhere else.

 

on the topic of the asus pro WS... it's asus being asus.. the "gaming junk" removed, and price increased.. for all the shout-y gaming features it doesnt include... there's not actually much to replace it, or to warrant costing 1.5x the cost of feature-comparable boards. the only "unique" feature it has is a U.2 port, beyond that it's pretty much bone stock ryzen platform features.

[Archer42]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

on the topic of the asus pro WS... it's asus being asus.. the "gaming junk" removed, and price increased.. for all the shout-y gaming features it doesnt include... there's not actually much to replace it, or to warrant costing 1.5x the cost of feature-comparable boards. the only "unique" feature it has is a U.2 port, beyond that it's pretty much bone stock ryzen platform features.

Well, apart from u.2 there is also x8 pci-e from chipset, meaning that x8 card can be used without stealing those lanes from GPU. Also official ecc support and management functionality. That's what caught my eye personally (apart from no led-s and such). Along with decent layout and lack of obviously stupid stuff like m.2 right under top x16 slot which a lot of boards have.

Annoyingly expensive - that I agree with, but that's asus so no surprise here. Sadly with literally hundreds of boards available there are very few actually nice ones...