Swapping to x99 expirience vs Ryzen and Core P3 E-ATX

[joshuawi99]

Hello and welcome to my Build Log of switching from my current Ryzen platform to Intels x99 .

 

 

My journey to this started rather random and a bit complicated but i will explain. 2 Weeks ago, i went to my local hardware dealer and searched for a wifi card. I looked and found one until this one thing caught my attention. There was an MSI x99 Godlike Gaming Carbon for sale at 150 Euros. This is a roughly 550 ish board with everything I could wish in brand new! And it was the last one ofc xD. I thought to myself neeeh switching again is not worth it and I also started a post in the forum about Ryzen 7 vs x99 (I switched for a 6600k to a 1700x on Black Friday last year) . The offer was valid until the end of the day and I went home. I called a good friend of mine on what he thinks cause he has a x99 system himself. And now it becomes interesting xD. He told me that he wants to sell his whole system with a 6950x 10 Core for a better laptop for studying cause he hasn’t really that much time for gaming anymore. His asking price for me was 400 bucks for the 6950x which is definitely a friendly price so I asked him to put it off ebay and he did so. It was 17:30 pm and my local shop closes at 18:00 pm so I rushed the shit of my 80-horsepower car and got in 5 mins before they closed and literally throwed the money in the guy’s face. Close call but I was happy (everybody needs some luck once in a while xD). Also, being back in my car I realized that I paid 110 Euros, tho the first price was 150 Euros. So that was the biggest steal I have ever made xD.

Back to Ryzen now…. I enjoyed switching to it from my 6600k (it made 5 GHz stable btw) to the 1700x because I could do a lot more multi-tasking and it hold up a lot better in rendering and streaming. The biggest flaw tho was the 144hz (oc to 165hz) problem. I bought an ACER Predator Z271T for 350 bucks off amazon in February which was also a great deal considering its MSRP of 800 $. It took my experience to the next level like day and night (guess that’s normal xD). But my fricking PC just can´t get the 165 Hz stable in all games that I play. Most of these games are e-Sports titles that do not even need a fraction of my 1080ti. Best example League of Legends. I know, I know its programmed like shit but that’s so frustrating being at 100 frames average on a 2.5 k machine. A friend of mine with a GTX 970 and an i5 4460 gets 144 Frames constant no problems at all…. I googled my way down a few days and I am not the only person with this problem. There is a general fault with Nvidia AMD combos in this game and some others that are not programmed well enough. I bought a 3200 MHz Ryzen Ram kit for 250 bucks and OCed it to 3466 at CL12 Timings with rather mild performance gains to remove any possible bottleneck. I am at a point now where I just want a system that does not make these kinds of problems. Also I had many issues with my motherboard´s VRMs but that’s not Ryzen´s fault.

Bottom Line: Gaming above 60 Hz please go Intel. I didn’t hear to people that gave me this advice last year and it sucked! 

 

Advantages of x99 over the Ryzen Platform (6950X) :

-more cores

-higher frequency

-more lanes (got a sound card, M.2 drive, legato stream card)

-much more premium feel to me (Mainboard)

-a lot better and easier overclocking

-cost if you can get a good deal (A 120$ board plus for example a 250$ 6850k is cheaper than Ryzen)

 

 

Disadvantages of x99 :

-Upgrade path (tho the 6950X will serve me for like 5 years) and its getting cheaper

-Power consumption (all chips are 140W or above)

-Heat

 

 

Building was actually a breeze tho it took some time to get the water out of my loop because i had no drain port. I also fixed this in progress. The board is E-ATX formfactor. My Case the Thermaltake Core P3 supports up to ATX on paper. I googeld through some posts in other formus but i found close to nothing. I obviously hat to swap my mounting bracket on the EK Supremacy EVO but that was rather easy and i had time to clean it up tho it was rather in factory condition.

The new board is about 3 centemeters wider than my old one so it does hang up the cable cutouts on the right side, but it fits quiét nicely in the end:

So if anybody plans to do the same thing it works with some compromises.

For the finished build i swapped my block LED´s to UV ones because my new fluid is UV reactive but i wished it would glow a little more. Maybe i will get some more UV lights down the line. If you know some good ones feel free to recommend in the comment section .

 

Last but not least the finished build after adjusting some tube length around the CPU block:

My overclocking results for the 6950X are more than i thought i would get (12 Phases and extra Pins help i guess ). Stable end results are 4.6 GHz at 1.35V Core Voltage with 1.9V inline Voltage and Cache at 3.5 GHz at 1.115V. But it runs quiet hot at close to under 80 degrees in Aida64. I think that a 360 40mm rad is not enough in the long run especially during hot summer days. But man this board is a dream. The Bios is clean AF and the settings are very well thought (quiet like Asus). Sodtware is mostly not needed but optional and the Audio System works great.

So if you followed this Build Log until right here i am interested in your opinoin and experience with gaming on ryzen at high refresh rates.

 

Thanks for reading my post, peace out

 

Josh

 

[AlTech]

Wait why though. Ryzen is great and X99 is old and very dead at this point.

[joshuawi99]

16 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Wait why though. Ryzen is great and X99 is old and very dead at this point.

Cause high refreshrate gaming at stable 144hz was a nightmahre with ryzen.

 

For anybody thats interested in the board cause i forgot to make photos pre install my bad :

[AlTech]

3 minutes ago, joshuawi99 said:

Cause high refreshrate gaming at stable 144hz was a nightmahre with ryzen.

I'm not gonna lie, if you're expecting X99 CPUs to handle 144Hz then you're gonna be sorely disappointed because they're gonna have the same problems as Ryzen.

 

What you should have done is bought an 8700K if 144Hz gaming is actually what you wanted.

[joshuawi99]

5 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

I'm not gonna lie, if you're expecting X99 CPUs to handle 144Hz then you're gonna disappointed because they're gonna have the same problems as Ryzen.

 

What you should have done is bought an 8700K if 144Hz gaming is actually what you wanted.

In general i totaly agree with you but if you got the chance to get a luxurios board like this and a 6950x for 400 bucks with four cores more nah that would be a pretty stupid me to not do it. I mean i got an 75% higher score in firestikes combined score and i played all of my current games this weekend to test it. Results were no game under 165 frames at any time. So i am happy with it. Im not gonna talk about quality, features etc etc that x99 has over z370 now

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, joshuawi99 said:

In general i totaly agree with you but if you got the chance to get a luxurios board like this and a 6950x for 400 bucks with four cores more nah that would be a pretty stupid me to not do it.

You mean 2 more cores? 10 - 8 = 2

[joshuawi99]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

You mean 2 more cores? 10 - 8 = 2

Over Ryzen yes. 8700k with 6 Cores i mean. Z370 is more or less also a dead platform cause intel will rip your money off again for the new lineup that logically will have 8 cores or more (z470). With 10 Cores i mean it will play for a pretty long time

[Lathlaer]

As a X99 owner myself I fully support this thread.

 

A 4.6Ghz i7 6950X will last you a long time from now, at least until Intel's next HEDT premiere.

 

Dead platform != irrelevant platform.

[joshuawi99]

4 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

As a X99 owner myself I fully support this thread.

 

A 4.6Ghz i7 6950X will last you a long time from now, at least until Intel's next HEDT premiere.

 

Dead platform != irrelevant platform.

Thank you! Also x299 is too expensive for my use case. Do you got a build Log? Because your case is very sexy

[Lathlaer]

4 minutes ago, joshuawi99 said:

Thank you! Also x299 is too expensive for my use case

At $400 I'd choose that i7 6950X over i9 7900 any time of the day ;-)

 

4 minutes ago, joshuawi99 said:

Do you got a build Log? Because your case is very sexy

 

 

It's not your typical build log because I did not take many pictures during building but I did provide some lengthy description of the building process and the challenges and I did update with some recent pictures ;-)

[joshuawi99]

Thanks looks great! @Lathlaer

[Lathlaer]

1 hour ago, joshuawi99 said:

Thanks looks great!

Thanks and good luck with your X99. Also, prepare that you will trigger quite a few people here

[joshuawi99]

5 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Thanks and good luck with your X99. Also, prepare that you will trigger quite a few people here

Yeah i noticed that quickly xD. Funny fact ist that most of these people are the mainstream 8700k or ryzen boys. The have to know what performance looks like kappa . Nobody cared about my tight fit of a E-ATX motherboard in a rather small ATX case

[Lathlaer]

5 minutes ago, joshuawi99 said:

Yeah i noticed that quickly xD. Funny fact ist that most of these people are the mainstream 8700k or ryzen boys. The have to know what performance looks like kappa .

To be fair, nothing wrong with the 8700k, it's a very strong gaming CPU which I would recommend to anyone and even to you had you asked under different circumstances  

 

But getting HEDT x99 for the amount you did, I would not think twice.