[WoW Classic]PC Upgrades for new 8-man team

[Boxen]

Hi All,

Sorry for the slow response; I hadn't noticed there had been any updates.

@Ughmahedhurtz Thanks for the link to that video. Love me some buildzoid Fortunately, I do not need PCIe 4.0 and that seems to be the only benefit to X570 over X470. My graphics card doesn't support it, my storage devices don't support it. Even if they did, I'm not pumping enough data over the PCIe interface to warrant it. Having said all that, the Aorus Extreme looks amazing! Other than a new case to improve airflow, I think my cooling solution is adequate for now. I don't intend to overclock the 3900X at all. Stock performance will be more than sufficient. This upgrade was all about cores, not MHz.

@Mordikai You know I use GPU-Z all the time and I never open that tab so I had no idea it could do that so thanks for the tip. Graphics card-wise, I ordered myself a 2080ti. Yes, I know it's being replaced in six months time but it's way more graphics card than I need anyway and there's always something bigger and better coming down the pike. This way, I'll get six months extra usage out of the card and it's probably going to last me as long as my GTX 970 did.

Next upgrades will be a more free-flowing case and a doubling of system RAM.

Edit: Oh, and I need a second monitor as well. Wifey has been using my only spare while she's been working from home. Curse you Covid-19!

Edit 2: GPU-Z! Doh! I read that as CPU-Z. That's why I never saw the tab; I was using the wrong app.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I don't intend to overclock the 3900X at all. Stock performance will be more than sufficient. This upgrade was all about cores, not MHz.

That's exactly why I chose to go with the 4.2GHz all-core OC and 1.25v undervolt. What I was seeing in initial testing was relatively poor cinebench R20 scores, likely as a result of a really high 4-6 core 4.5GHz auto-boost at something like 1.475v, followed by a rapid temperature spike, followed by thermal throttling. I played with voltage a bit on mine and really wasn't able to go past about 4.2GHz with any consistency at any voltage, so I just left it at 4.2/1.25V. The scores are up where they should be, the system runs cool, and I don't have any more bizarre "surges" in individual cores as it tries (and struggles) to allocate boost clocks. I went through about a solid week of futzing with configs to find what kept things down below 70C under stress loads while still yielding good benchmarks in the tools I use regularly (games, 7-zip, ffmpeg) and it's been superb since I just left it where it's at. It feels like having two PCs worth of power in one versus my i7-6700K.

The one thing I did do a little different this build was pick up a license for http://www.argusmonitor.com/ and use it to micro-manage fans/pumps rather than trusting the janky NZXT fan software or the somewhat limited BIOS fan controls. I was able to tune down the EVGA water pump (with a fan-header conversion cable) so the pump whine is now gone. I also set the chipset fan to start spinning at 40C and slowly ramp up, which keeps chipset temps down around 45C at idle and ~60C max, versus the stock setting which had it sitting at 65C+ at idle and 75-80C under load. I'm sure it would have been fine as I'm not really stressing the board in my use cases, but I prefer my equipment to run as cool as possible which greatly extends component life.

Anywho, happy hunting!