Lockdown Upgrade Ideas

[Yuanster202]

Budget (including currency): sub-£50, but can go up to £100

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Only gaming

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

• Mobo: MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC 
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 3600
• CPU Cooler: Stock Wraith Stealth
• GPU: Powercolor 5700XT
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4 3000 MHz C16 
• Storage:
  • PNY CS900, 
  • Crucial P1 1 TB CT1000P1SSD8 Internal Solid State Drive-up to 2000 MB/s (3D NAND, NVMe, PCIe, M.2)
• Case: DeepCool Mattrex 55
• Case fans: 
  • Noctua NF-P12 120mm fan (top exhaust)
  • DeepCool CF120 120mm fan x4 (3 front intake, 1 rear exhaust)
• PSU: Riotoro Enigma G2 - PSU 850W +80 Gold UK Version Fully Modular
• Monitor: AOC Q27G2U 27" QHD VA 144Hz 
• Keyboard: Corsair K70 RGB 
• Mouse: Corsair Harpoon

Looking to upgrade my gaming set-up, partly to fulfil the need for a COVID-lockdown project. I have not yet tried overclocking

 

Hoping to either to:

• Reduce noise
• Increase overclocking capacity

Any ideas? I was thinking about upgrading the CPU cooler for a Gelid Phantom Black or second-hand BeQuiet! Dark Rock 4. Otherwise thinking about throwing in a 2TB HDD for extra storage for the future.

 

UPDATE: bought a GeLid Phantom cooler, installed, much quieter with lower temps!  Now I'm thinking about swapping the cooler on the GPU - any ideas?

 

[lgcas]

I have the Nhu14s for my 5600x and is pretty quiet. Alternatively you can get a 3TB Toshiba P300 7200rpm for around £60 from scan.co.uk

Edit: fairly sure the nhu14s is similarly priced to the P300, also from scan

[jaslion]

I assume this isn't the matrex mesh right? If not then best course of action would probably be hyper 212 evo + mesh front case. If you stil have budget left a sycthe fuma 2 is an amazing budget cooler a lot better than the hyper 212 and basically amongst the best aircoolers for around 50 pounds.

 

You could also remove the front or the glass from the front to basically get mesh case performance.

[Yuanster202]

8 hours ago, jaslion said:

I assume this isn't the matrex mesh right? If not then best course of action would probably be hyper 212 evo + mesh front case. If you stil have budget left a sycthe fuma 2 is an amazing budget cooler a lot better than the hyper 212 and basically amongst the best aircoolers for around 50 pounds.

 

You could also remove the front or the glass from the front to basically get mesh case performance.

Good shout on the mesh. I'd rather not buy a whole new case, but I am looking into removing the tempered glass from the front panel (think it's glued on). Just now need to source some decent mesh. Does anyone have any recommendations for UK shops selling metal mesh?

[jaslion]

10 minutes ago, Yuanster202 said:

Good shout on the mesh. I'd rather not buy a whole new case, but I am looking into removing the tempered glass from the front panel (think it's glued on). Just now need to source some decent mesh. Does anyone have any recommendations for UK shops selling metal mesh?

You can just go to a local hardware store and get stuff from there

[Dedayog]

More storage.  Either a 1TB SSD or a 3-4TB HDD.

 

Do you need more RAM?  What's your usage?

[Yuanster202]

Really grateful for all the input. 

 

I'm gonna get my hands on a 3-4TB HDD for extra storage space and have purchased a cheap cooler on a whim.

 

Ended up getting a Gelid Phantom CPU Cooler - but managed to drop it on opening  

I managed to re-straighten the fins out, but one heat pipe looks a bit flattened slightly - is this a cause for concern? 

See images below - the picture with the red ring is the damaged side, the one without the circle is the undamaged side for comparison.

 

[Dedayog]

You can't ben a heat pipe by dropping it like that, it's either built that way or damaged prior to you.  That is too flat of a surface, you would have bent the entire pipe if you dropped it enough to cave in the pipe like that.

 

May want to look into an RMA if you can't verify that's how the thing is supposed to be.

[Yuanster202]

Thanks for the advice guys! I ended up hedging my bets and running the cooler as I didn't think it damaged the heatpipe too much - temps dropped by 15 degrees and it is just so much quieter!

 

Now I'm thinking about getting an aftermarket cooler my GPU (PowerColor 5700XT, not factory-overclocked) - not sure what the opinion is on this? I gather GPU coolers like Arctic Xtreme III and Raijintek Morpheus tend to focus on the GPU die and not the VRMs mosfets and memory, hence don't really increase the OC capacity but do improve from a noise standpoint. Does anyone have any additional input?