New Computer | Upgrade Help

[AoRun]

I just bought a Samsung 860 Evo M.2 500gb Sata to be sure. I also upgraded my RAM from 8gb to 32gb 2666mhz DDR4

[Condottiere 40K]

I'm sorta contemplating upgrading my main personal computer to four times thirty two gigabytes random access memory, since current discrete graphic card pricing is currently out of control; I left it running for more than a month and noticed errors creeping in and memory usage creeping up; rebooting it yesterday resolved those issues. Also, a faster gumstick to install the operating system.

It's an interesting question whether upgrading now would be worth it, since it's rumoured that memory would increase in price, and strong indications that Zen Three plus at about a ten percent performance increase is likely to come at the end of this year, rather than Zen Four and a new socket, plus dee dee arr five memory. I had thought to wait about a year to upgrade anyway, to let the bugs get worked out, and see if pee see eye ee five graphic cards become available.

Memory out in Asia does seem more expensive than locally.

Interesting tidbit, Samsung is contemplating sourcing OLED panels from LG, since LCD panel prices look like costing considerably more, at least for the next two years.

[Septentrionalis]

I'm sorta contemplating upgrading my main personal computer to four times thirty two gigabytes random access memory, since current discrete graphic card pricing is currently out of control

Wait a minute there, cowboy. What are you trying to achieve with 128 gb of random-access memory in relation to shortages in graphic cards being in short supply? For gaming purposes, 16 gb is enough for pretty much anything, and nothing in the excess of 32 gb will do anything. It won't help you with any shortcoming with GPUs. Unless you do some heavy-duty 3D modeling or such, I think 128gb is a complete overkill.

[Condottiere 40K]

It's a calculated risk, based on my belief that the price of memory is going to go up, and that Ryzen Four is more likely to be commercially available beginning twenty twenty three, rather than end of twenty twenty two.

I probably will retire them mid twenty three and split them in a pair of Ai Em Four eye tea eckses, which should be a lot cheaper then.

[Condottiere 40K]

Grabbed the last four sticks at I think ten percent clearance; checked the website afterwards, and the restocked units were listed at ten percent higher than the previous retail price.

The sixteen gigabyte sticks used to be the sweet spot, but I think it's moved to thirty two gigabytes, which I think most consumers aren't interested in, feeling two times sixteen may be more than enough.

But manufacturers have been complaining, I think, for the last three years that they are selling at a loss, and the only reason they haven't turned off the factory is because it would cost them more. About a year ago, you could probably find two times sixteen on sale for under a hundred bucks.

Dee dee ar five are likely to be even more dense, but I doubt they will be cheaper than dee dee ar four; I think the minimum size is projected at sixteen gigabyte sticks.

[Ishan]

Price of memory will definitely go up and I also recently ordered an excellent overclockable 32GB quad channel RAM kit. RAM, space wise, don't matter much in gaming beyond 16GB but they do count in performance with tighter timings and overall latency. Your average FPS won't see an increase beyond 1-3 fps with a better RAM kit but your low min fps like the 1% FPS lows and the 0.1% FPS will definitely increase a lot which is the main reason behind micro stuttering. Difference between say 2133 MHz or 2666 MHz to 3200 MHz is pretty evident in low min fps.

Zen 3 has an incredible IMC (Integrated memory controller) as well that uses infinity fabric and it benefits with a better or fast RAM kit although 3200 MHz is still the best sweet spot with latency C14 when it comes to gaming. Anyone using Ryzen system should definitely look into DRAM Calculator.

Another reason behind my purchase was my overclocking needs which would be much more stable with the 32GB Trident kit. Will be using this with TG Conductonaut and my water cooling kit this summer as I have decided to wait for Zen 4 and DDR5. So not going to spend thousands of dollars in this current market, only to see them lag behind after a year. AM4 is EOL, with Warhol being the final release on this socket. Glorious AM4 will be remembered and missed.

[Condottiere 40K]

Bad news keeps accumulating.

News from China says they're now mining on storage, whether gumsticks, solid state or hard drives.

I get the impression the algorithm is more a way of providing encrypted cloud storage, which if true, would make me antsy not having an idea what's exactly on my drives.

So next up is whether to pull the trigger on upgrading to a faster gumstick for the operating systems, before prices inflate on these components.

[Ishan]

Yeah lol I heard that as well last night. Chia and Burstcoin work or utilize free disk space rather than GPU power. But I think this will mainly affect the enterprise editions hard drives or 4TB+ drives. Still the snowball effect will do kick in and retailers will take it as an excuse to increase their profit margins.
I bought 2 6TB drives during lockdown when they were on sale and dirt cheap, so I'm covered thankfully. Though Optical fiber has pretty much eliminated the use of storage where you just watch stuff online on NF\Prime and be done with it.

[Condottiere 40K]

My brother tells me he's likely the only one in his region who's doing it, and I just asked him what's the minimum size, which is hundred gigabytes.

I rather suspect that four kay media is going to take a quantum byte out of storage; and five years down the road, eight kay will arrive at warp speed.

[Condottiere 40K]

Some general observations:

1. AM4 mATX motherboards: only one Asrock board has x570 chipset; the rest b550; I wouldn't bother with a320 or a520, since cost saving minimal, against a lot of capability loss.

2. Budget NVME and SSD now reached ten cents per gigabyte.

3. For PCIe3 motherboards, the fastest viable bang for buck gumstick is Samsung 970 evo plus at 3400/3200 five hundred gigabytes, at around eighty bucks.

4. Cheapest viable AM4 PCIe3 motherboard is likely the Gigabyte B450M DS3H, with four memory slots, at around seventy bucks.

However, Intel 10400 is likely the cheapest six core chip that you'll find available, though you could get the four core Ryzen 3400G at around the same price.

[Condottiere 40K]

Some more specific ones:

5. Some Youtuber commented that he was of the opinion that the ITX format will predominate, and the mATX will disappear, not surprising, considering he makes his living building small factor personal computers.

6. I disagree, especially considering I happen to like some extra slots on my toys to stick things in and ITX motherboards cost too much.

7. However, I do have a long term plan to take advantage of it's small factor, if and when the price lines up with my expectations.

8. Considering that PCIe5 will have double the bandwidth of PCIe4, any future a620 chipset should have the capacity to deal with all onboard operations, for which beyond the cheaper price, I'd avoid a320 and a520 ITXes.

9. Outside of the fact I avoid Asrock motherboards in general, the cheapest ITX would be the b450 Gaming, at above a hundred bucks; for that generation, I'd prefer the Gigabyte b450 Aorus Prof Wifi at about one hundred twenty bucks.

10. Nominally, I have my eye on the Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX at short of two hundred bucks, but I'm waiting for it, or any other b550/x570 MSI/Asus ITX to drop closer to about one hundred twenty bucks, whether sale or second hand.

[Leonardo]

Memory out in Asia does seem more expensive than locally.

That has to do with economy and what currency exchange is present e.g US Dollar vs Japanese Jen, which will change from a day to the next day. Sometimes a currency can in value in a couple of hours.

The market prices for almost all hardware is in US Dollar.

[Condottiere 40K]

Currency variations tend to be baked in for international trade, but this is in consideration that the costs are usually adjusted for affordability, not accounting for taxation and tariffs.

So what's left are my thoughts on ATX motherboards:

1. There so many, you can't really comment specifically.

2. The size usually forces the user to install it in a larger case, which is great for cooling and airflow.

3. If you pay more than a hundred and fifty bucks, you may want to include the BIOS clock, which will tell you where the power up went wrong when it doesn't boot.

4. Experience with gumsticks indicates that most users may just want to buy the fastest biggest they can afford, screw it under the heatsink, and forget about it, which basically makes it onboard storage.

5. You can never have enough rear USB 3.x slots.

6. If you plan to fully utilize the motherboard, you probably should get x570 chipset; if use case is rather narrow, b550; if you're not using five thousand series Ryzen, or PCIe4 paraphenalia, four hundred series chipsets.

[Love Mountain]

"Fully Utilize" is a rather specific term in this instance. There are very few reasons to go with x570 over B550. Even for hardcore enthusiasts.

[Ishan]

"Fully Utilize" is a rather specific term in this instance. There are very few reasons to go with x570 over B550. Even for hardcore enthusiasts.

Yeah, only advantage is PCIe 4.0 which would only attract some workstation\extreme builder but even then it makes little sense because those extra PCI lanes are pretty much useless because of SLI\Xfire being dead these days. Only thing left is NVMe bandwidth. Which also doesn't matter much since gaming, or game loading times, so far doesn't seem to benefit with NVMe 4.0 speeds.

Anyways, PCI-E Gen 4 has a rather short life since with AM5 socket we would have DDR5 and Gen 5. I'm going to burn massive amount of cash on an AM5 build lol. Really excited to go with AMD when it comes out. Have only bought AMD\ATI GPUs. As a company I always admired them more than NVIDIA\Intel.

[Condottiere 40K]

1. When I see an empty slot, I want to stick something in it.

2. Ryzen Three plus appears to have been cancelled, probably because of shortage of materials, and Advanced Micro Devices better usage of them at five nanometres.

3. My estimation is that Ryzen Four will be introduced in about a year's time, but not before there is a good supply of Dee Dee Arr Five on the market.

4. Locally, Ryzen Fifty Nine and Fifty Nine Fifty are available, though at a fifty buck plus premium; to be fair, it appears that the Fifty Six has a fifty buck premium; The Fifty Eight is overpriced to be begin with.

5. I think with the five nanometres it's a case of using it or losing it, so if you have the capacity booked you better figure out what to do with it; I wouldn't give up the reserved seven nanometres, so it's a question of the ratio of servers, consumer, consoles and graphic cards.

6. I think you can forget about a new generation of Athlons for the next two years, though I hear we'll get a 5000G and Zen Three based APUs this year.

7. My Display Port port of my 1060 appears to be dead; have to check if the card falls within the three year warranty.

[Love Mountain]

Yeah, only advantage is PCIe 4.0 which would only attract some workstation\extreme builder but even then it makes little sense because those extra PCI lanes are pretty much useless because of SLI\Xfire being dead these days. Only thing left is NVMe bandwidth. Which also doesn't matter much since gaming, or game loading times, so far doesn't seem to benefit with NVMe 4.0 speeds.

Anyways, PCI-E Gen 4 has a rather short life since with AM5 socket we would have DDR5 and Gen 5. I'm going to burn massive amount of cash on an AM5 build lol. Really excited to go with AMD when it comes out. Have only bought AMD\ATI GPUs. As a company I always admired them more than NVIDIA\Intel.

The workloads that require PCIe 4 lanes, are fairly specific, but they do exist. And in cases where you do need as much bandwidth as you can get, you also want as many lanes as possible. But to be honest, even the kind of workstation workloads that utilize PCIe 4, are not going to pay for an x570 chipset... These are predominantly server workloads or enterprise machines. I.E. not the kind of people who are buying Crosshair motherboards. And even if you are a small studio, small business, etc... you'd be better off getting a Threadripper. Effectively, B550 made X570 obsolete for 99% of use cases.

1. When I see an empty slot, I want to stick something in it.

2. Ryzen Three plus appears to have been cancelled, probably because of shortage of materials, and Advanced Micro Devices better usage of them at five nanometres.

3. My estimation is that Ryzen Four will be introduced in about a year's time, but not before there is a good supply of Dee Dee Arr Five on the market.

4. Locally, Ryzen Fifty Nine and Fifty Nine Fifty are available, though at a fifty buck plus premium; to be fair, it appears that the Fifty Six has a fifty buck premium; The Fifty Eight is overpriced to be begin with.

5. I think with the five nanometres it's a case of using it or losing it, so if you have the capacity booked you better figure out what to do with it; I wouldn't give up the reserved seven nanometres, so it's a question of the ratio of servers, consumer, consoles and graphic cards.

6. I think you can forget about a new generation of Athlons for the next two years, though I hear we'll get a 5000G and Zen Three based APUs this year.

7. My Display Port port of my 1060 appears to be dead; have to check if the card falls within the three year warranty.

The latest rumor is that Zen 4 is slated for 2H of 2022. Which makes a lot of sense, as it coincides with approximately when DDR5 is going to be readily available. In terms of what AMD is going to do with its excess 7nm supply once they're on 5nm, it's pretty simply imo. There's a huge demand for EPYC and AMD's server cycle is typically 6 months behind its consumer products cycle. That's before we get into the time lag of deliveries. I.E. a thousand EPYC chips ordered in January of 2021, aren't going to be delivered until July 2021. Or for huge orders like the Singapore supercomputer, the bidding, design, and planning is done months, if not years in advance. By the time this machine is delivered in early 2022, the first Zen 4 "Genoa" cores should be starting production. So AMD will still likely want a ton of 7nm production, even when their latest products will be on 5nm.

[Ishan]

Yeah want an AM4 build so bad right now but price is just ridiculous here in India. Distributors and retailers are really milking it since GPU mining is not a thing in India but it's being used as an excuse to ramp prices for everything.

My current gaming scenario needs are just in 2 games.
1) RDR2, which is effectively handled by my current rig@60 FPS and
2) Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord.

My 1080 Ti is more than enough for Bannerlord but it is notorious for CPU AI Calculations and require a 8 core CPU for 1000 unit battles. 6 core can handle up to 700 as per my tests. My 6core 5820K@4.5 GHz isn't good enough anymore. So instead of spending 3000+ USD I just bought a 5960X J-Batch on eBay for 140$ which is a great overclocker for a 8 core CPU and can perform close to R7 3700X with proper water cooling which I already have. So, I'll be in a comfortable position once I put this processor in. Only thing left would be a GPU upgrade which I will only buy once 3000 series are dumped on eBay by miners.

After that it's all about AM5 and DDR5 complete overhaul.

[Condottiere 40K]

Interesting cautionary tale about PCIe4 lanes.

So I bought a new micro motherboard and a couple of gumsticks, and wanted to test them first if they worked, before I ripped out one of the secondaries and installed it.

Since I'm not too keen with unnecessary mucking around with the cooler and chip, I placed in a 3000G and booted it; didn't detect one of the gumsticks, so it was either dead, of that M2 socket didn't work.

Switched the gumsticks, and for a second thought the M2 socket was at fault because the other one was now detected, until I recalled that Athlons are castrated.

[Condottiere 40K]

Looks like the prices for discrete graphic cards are getting cheaper; personally, I predicted mining would bust this October, considering how many financial institutions were starting to support bitcoinery, but it looks like the Chinese Communist Party is undertaking some kind of purge which somehow included suppressing mining.

Expectations are that prices won't descend anywhere near recommended retail, but reports are that the Chinese are "dumping" (in relative terms) their used up cards, so buyers beware. One commentator cautioned if suddenly some new start up starts offering some unknown brand.

If (and when) I get to travel, I'll assess if it's worthwhile picking up a mining card; if not, old Ten Eighty will have to labour along until Ar Dee En Ay Three comes out, since I'll assume that might be worth the premium, and supply should have caught up with demand.

Interesting titbit is that manufacturers feel fifty five inch televisions (seems to be implied OLED) are not profitable enough (possibly in current supply conditions), so the next generation starts at sixty five.