New Build 13700F 32GB-DDR5 RTX3080-10GB (Upgrade Complete!)

05032-Mendicant-Bias · February 8, 2023

Budget (including currency): 2000EUR (this week, or next week)

Country: Italy

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

Games: Single Player action/simulation and strategy games like Cyberpunk 2077, Satisfactory and Total Wars. I target 1440p 144Hz when possible, I accept 60FPS in cyberpunk to turn raytraced reflections on.

Programs: Programming, ML.

Results:

Cinebench R15 CPU [cb] 1310 -> 4454 (3.40X)
Cinebench R15 GPU [FPS] 133->321 (2.41X)

Satisfactory FPS [FPS]: 80->141 (1.76X)

Satisfactory Load Time : 89->39 (0.43X)

Internal view

External view

Current Build: (List)

Spoiler

I built my rig in 2018, and upgraded in GPU, Display and Thermals in 2020.

I had been planning for an upgrade for quite a while, and the time is nigh! While my i7-8700 is still competent, the CPUs have made a huge progress in the last 5 years.

My next upgrade will likely be just the GPU in a couple of years. I will likely be using the new CPU for 4/5 years as well. My current rig will go to someone else (without the 3080 and some fans).

New List (work in progress) (List)

Spoiler

CPU: 13700F

I'm set on the CPU. I don't overclock so I'm fine with a non-k part.

I didn't upgrade to 12th gen because DDR5 were still too expensive and because I wanted Intel to iron out the bugs from their take on big little.

The benchmark of the 13th look great, so I waited for Intel's F locked parts to come out for the upgrade.

I would be fine with both with a 13600 and with a 13700. I'm going with the 13700 since I plan to keep this CPU for 4/5 years and I want headroom for when I'll upgrade the GPU next.
I expect quite a hefty FPS gain on CPU heavy games like cyberpunk from this CPU upgrade! I'll benchmark before/after to measure the gains.

For the cooler I'm probably going for a properly sized air cooled noctua, feel free to give me some suggestions.

RAM: DDR5 32GB 6400CL32

I did quite a bit of research, and I want to use DDR5 for the upgrade. Intel F part should have no problem with ram overclocking. I just use the XMP profile, I don't do manual tuning of frequency and timings. DDR5 is always gear 2 so it's even fewer thing to worry about.

I can get a 6400CL32 kit for 230€ or a 6000CL36 kit for 200€. I'm still not set on which one to buy. I could take the slightly slower kit, and upgrade the ram in a year or so when much better kit become available. I'm partial toward the 6400 kit right now.

STORAGE:

For the storage configuration I can use some suggestions.

I bought my drives in 2018. I'm replacing all of the storage. My disks are getting filled up.

120GB SSD for the operating system 120GB SSD to run Cyberpunk 2077 optane accelerated 1TB HDD for my steam library, 1TB HDD for my project external 6TB HDD for bulk storage.

My steam drive is the one that most need the upgrade. I have slow internet, and I want a bigger, faster steam library.

For the new build I am planning:

256GB M.2 for the OS 128/256GB M.2 as cache for something (? I still haven't decided if it makes sense) 2TB M.2 for the steam library 2TB HDD for my projects 2X6TB RAID1 HDD array for storage

I was thinking of having a NAS for the storage, but right now I am partial to placing the 6TB raid array inside my rig.

I have aUSB3 removable 6TB and a removable 1TB disk for when I need to carry data around.

My internet is too slow for remote access to a NAS array anyway.

MOBO: Gigabyte B760 GAMING X

I don't want to take a Z790 chipset for my locked CPU.

At my seller there is currently just one B760 DDR5 motherboard for 160€. Everything else is Z790 250€ and above.

On paper I think it should work, but I can use an advice for the MOBO.

No overclocking of either CPU or GPU. I just need the XMP profile for the memory. I use a lot of USB ports for various peripherals when I build robots. I don't need fast LAN. I need wifi/bluetooth for the the robots but I already have an add on card for that. Dual bios for peace of mind would be great.

PSU: Corsair RM850W

I have a good 650W PSU I bought in 2018. I rolled the die when I upgraded my GPU from a 1070 to a 3080 in 2020, and I had no problem with instability for almost three years!

I don't think I can get away with staying at 650W with this upgrade, so I am planning to invest in a 850W PSU. Same brand as the one I have because it performed flawlessly.

I want this PSU to be good for my next GPU upgrade in two/three years.

CASE: NZXT 510 Flow (?)

I cheaped out on the case last time and I regret it. I can use some suggestions.

When I upgraded the GPU for my 2018 built, i heavily modified the case, adding holes and fans to get a decent amount of airflow for my 3080, but with no properly placed dust filter it's a mess.

I don't care about RGB, nor having a window to see the components, I want the case to have great airflow and be quiet.

I watched Gamer Nexus case reviews, and the NZXT 510 Flow looks ok. I was planning to apply a skin to the panel case

I still have to take measurements to see if my GPU will fit. I have a Asus TUF 3080 10GB non OC.

I'm going to pull an Alex and add an exhaust pipe to the case to pipe (no tent) the heat away from my PC and out of my room during the summer. I was planning on having a positive pressure setup with about 150/200m3/h of flow. I'll DIY a fitting from the single exhaust fan to a pipe, with likely an additional fan at the outlet of the pipe. I'll plan the exact fan sizes once I choose the case for good.

Displays (no change)

I'm happy with my display setup. The main screen is a LG27 850 27 inch 1440p 144Hz gsync display, the reviews from hardware unboxed were on point with the suggestion.

I have two bad TN side screen that I use for vertical scrolling when I read websites/datasheet, watch LTT videos, etc...

Maybe in the future I'll move to a four monitor setup to get two landscape screens and two vertical screens, but it's not going to be for this upgrade.

Conclusions:

I look forward to your suggestions and a sanity check of the build. I'll buy the parts this weekend or the next weekend.

Building!

Spoiler

MOBO+DDR5+CPU+OS NVME

I had a troubles making the new computer post the first time.

This MOBO is great, it has four debug LEDs for CPU, DDR, GPU and BOOT, that tells you exactly where the BOOT hangs.

First hitch was CPU. I removed, cleaned paste, reseeded it and worked.

Second hitch was GPU. I have no GPU inside the CPU, and none of my old GPUs work. I placed the RTX3080 and it posted with one stick.

Third hitch was the DDR. It didn't post with both stick, bouncing between CPU and DDR. I cleaned and reseeded the second stick, and it posted.

I applied the XMP profile to get the full 6400CL32 speed out of my sticks.

PROBLEM: there is an high frequency coil whine coming from the PSU! It is subtle and high frequency, but it's making me mad. I'll see when it's inside the case if it's still a problem.

OS INSTALL

I was split between installing WIN10 or WIN11.

I created a boot drive for WIN11, and it was painless. It recognized my WIN10 pro key without trouble installing WIN11 Pro.

WIN11 Needs an internet connection. BOOOO!!!!

Even worse, WIN11 needs a microsoft account...Or does it? use no@thanks.com with random characters as password and you can install without a microsoft account!

Installing drivers took a while. I had to manually install lots of them from gigabyte website to get device manager to show everything.

I avoided Gigabyte control panel, and asus armory crate for the GPU RGB.

Steam and Data drives

It was painless installing the NVME for games and data. Only trouble, neither the NVME nor the MOBO box had additional heat spreaders for the NVME. In the future I wants to buy and add heatspreaders.

Transfer Data and Games

The case is the NZXT H7 Flow. Thermals with closed panel went to about 65° for both CPU and GPU with some application open.

Cable Management

I ordered some custom vinyls, with cool pictures. Expance Rocinante for the left panel, Eightysix wallpaper for the right panel, and an image I made in stable diffusion in which I wanted to make a tower of babel combined with the hanging gardens of babylon over a couple of days. I still need to make clean holes for the airflow, it's time consuming. I love how the build look!

I still need to attach an exhaust pipe to move the heat outside the room during summer.

Benchmark

Spoiler

I'm mighty impressed by the improvement in game!

Load time seems to be halved from my Optane accelerated HDD to my NVME.

Surprisingly, I got almost double FPS in satisfactory, the settings are still the same!

How much of it is WIN11 and clean install I don't know, but for sure it's an amazing upgrade, much better than I hoped! 3X in synthetic and almost 2X in game!

Cinebench R15

Cinebench R15 CPU 1310 [cb] -> 4454 (3.4X)
Cinebench R15 GPU [FPS] 133->321 (2.41X)

Satisfactory

Load Time: 89s -> 39s (0.43X)
FPS: 80FPS -> 141FPS (1.76X)

RONOTHAN## · February 8, 2023

15 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

CPU: 13700F

I'm set on the CPU. I don't overclock so I'm fine with a non-k part.

I didn't upgrade to 12th gen because DDR5 were still too expensive and because I wanted Intel to iron out the bugs from their take on big little.

The benchmark of the 13th look great, so I waited for Intel's F locked parts to come out for the upgrade.

I would be fine with both with a 13600 and with a 13700. I'm going with the 13700 since I plan to keep this CPU for 4/5 years and I want headroom for when I'll upgrade the GPU next.
I expect quite a hefty FPS gain on CPU heavy games like cyberpunk from this CPU upgrade! I'll benchmark before/after to measure the gains.

For the cooler I'm probably going for a properly sized air cooled noctua, feel free to give me some suggestions.

Decent logic for the CPU, but look at the price differences between the SKUs, the difference in price between the 13700KF and the 13700F is (at least on Amazon.fr) 3 euros, so practically nothing, and you might as well get the -KF SKU so you get advantage of the better memory controller, higher clock speeds, and higher resale value in the future. There might be somewhere you you can get the -F SKU for something like 50 euros less, in which case it does make sense, but less than 10 you really should spend the little extra for the -KF.

For a cooler, look at the Deepcool AK620. It's performance is slightly better than the Noctua NH-D15 but for half the price.

19 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

RAM: DDR5 32GB 6400CL32

I did quite a bit of research, and I want to use DDR5 for the upgrade. Intel F part should have no problem with ram overclocking. I just use the XMP profile, I don't do manual tuning of frequency and timings. DDR5 is always gear 2 so it's even fewer thing to worry about.

I can get a 6400CL32 kit for 230€ or a 6000CL36 kit for 200€. I'm still not set on which one to buy. I could take the slightly slower kit, and upgrade the ram in a year or so when much better kit become available. I'm partial toward the 6400 kit right now.

So the -F part having no problem with RAM overclocking is a bit of a mixed bag. Yes it can theoretically overclock RAM, though because the system agent voltage on those chips is locked the max frequency of those chips is a lot lower. Most people from what I've seen tend to top out somewhere around 6800-7000MT/s with them on a really good board. I'm fine with recommending a 6400 CL32 kit, they are very solid performance per dollar kits and they should work just fine, though I wouldn't really recommend going much above that.

25 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

For the new build I am planning:

256GB M.2 for the OS

128/256GB M.2 as cache for something (? I still haven't decided if it makes sense)

2TB M.2 for the steam library

2TB HDD for my projects

2X6TB RAID1 HDD array for storage

Not really a big fan of this storage config. First, 256GB drives haven't made sense to make for a couple years now, 1TB drives can be had for dirt cheap. Second, why not instead of getting a 2TB super high end drive, you get a 4TB mid range drive and drop the 2TB HDD for projects? It would get you the same amount of storage, the storage overall would be faster (telling the difference between Gen 3 and Gen 4 SSDs is next to impossible outside of a few workloads), and there would be one less spinning drive, which finding a case that comfortably fits 3 spinning drives is pretty difficult nowadays, plus less points of failure.

30 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

MOBO: Gigabyte B760 GAMING X

I don't want to take a Z790 chipset for my locked CPU.

At my seller there is currently just one B760 DDR5 motherboard for 160€. Everything else is Z790 250€ and above.

On paper I think it should work, but I can use an advice for the MOBO.

No overclocking of either CPU or GPU. I just need the XMP profile for the memory. I use a lot of USB ports for various peripherals when I build robots. I don't need fast LAN. I need wifi/bluetooth for the the robots but I already have an add on card for that. Dual bios for peace of mind would be great.

That's fine. The only thing I will say is that I've seen B760 give some weird issues when trying to do CPU undervolting if you wanted to try to do that, but if you just want to enable XMP and do no further tuning that's a very solid board for that.

Also, dual BIOS is not really a thing on anything but the XOC motherboards at this point since board manufacturers think that BIOS flashback is good enough for that. I'd argue they serve different purposes and should still be implemented since it's not that expensive to do, but it's not like that would make a difference.

33 minutes ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

CASE: NZXT 510 Flow (?)

I cheaped out on the case last time and I regret it. I can use some suggestions.

When I upgraded the GPU for my 2018 built, i heavily modified the case, adding holes and fans to get a decent amount of airflow for my 3080, but with no properly placed dust filter it's a mess.

I don't care about RGB, nor having a window to see the components, I want the case to have great airflow and be quiet.

I watched Gamer Nexus case reviews, and the NZXT 510 Flow looks ok. I was planning to apply a skin to the panel case

I still have to take measurements to see if my GPU will fit. I have a Asus TUF 3080 10GB non OC.

The case I've been recommending a lot more as of recent is the Phanteks G360A. It does have RGB and a clear side panel, but the main reason I do is it comes with 3 very solid fans in the front and has a mesh side panel, so its overall performance is actually really good for its price. It's easy to build in, and works really well. The Lian Li Lancool 215 is also good and about the same price, it performs a little better IIRC, but having built in both the G360A feels a bit nicer and is a little easier to build in so I'd still lean that way, but both are great options.

Anyway, here's the list with the changes I made to it.

https://fr.pcpartpicker.com/list/ktTs4s

05032-Mendicant-Bias · February 9, 2023

12 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

the difference in price between the 13700KF and the 13700F is (at least on Amazon.fr) 3 euros

I'm buying as much as I can on my trusted store (it's were I got my MSRP 3080 in 2020 at the height of ETH mining), it gives me piece of mind buying all the expensive parts there for the RMA, like when my 6TB HDD was faulty. I don't like buying on amazon.

Surprisingly the F skew is the same price on amazon IT. The KF part is cheaper on amazon, for 25€ it's a compelling argument to buy KF on amazon over the F.

13700F 430€
13700KF 490€
13700K 550€
(Amazon IT) 13700F 430€
(Amazon IT) 13700KF 455€

I'm going for the 13700F for a 60€ price difference on my trusted shop

12 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

First, 256GB drives haven't made sense to make for a couple years now, 1TB drives can be had for dirt cheap. Second, why not instead of getting a 2TB super high end drive, you get a 4TB mid range drive and drop the 2TB HDD for projects?

I'm not giving the OS a bigger SSD. I really dislike that badly developed programs like Chrome install themselves in the OS User folder. What I do is to manually move all folders like user and programs to another drive, so when I need to wipe the OS drive and reinstall, I retain all the data and application settings if I so choose.

It's a good idea to consolidate both the steam drive and my programs on a slightly slower 4TB SSD.

One fewer drive bay used. I'll look at alternative to amazon for GEN3 drives, it's a really good tip.

12 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Deepcool AK620
...
The case I've been recommending a lot more as of recent is the Phanteks G360A.

...

Lian Li Lancool 215

My store has a poor selection of cooler and cases, I have to look elsewhere anyway for those.

This weekend I'll look for a reputable store from which I can get a good GEN3 ssd, the CPU cooler, the case, and some additional fans. I want 200mm quiet fans for this build. I'll cross reference with gamer nexus case reviews.

This weekend I'll also look for the small details for the build, like dimensions, IO, etc... I'll update when I settled on the list.

Overall, solid advices! Thanks!

05032-Mendicant-Bias · March 25, 2023

The upgrade is mostly complete!

I got a stupendous increase in performance:
Cinebench R15 CPU 1310 [cb] -> 4454 (3.4X)
Cinebench R15 GPU [FPS] 133->321 (2.41X)
Load Time: 89s -> 39s (0.43X)
FPS: 80FPS -> 141FPS (1.76X)

The build is a lot cleaner