Now that AMD finally has something competitive again, I wanted to go back to an AMD system. I sold some of my old components I had lying around to fund this, and picked up an AMD Ryzen 5 1600, an ASRock X370 Gaming K4 motherboard, and 16GB of G Skill 2x8GB DDR4-3000 (more on this later).
The upgrade went pretty smoothly. I ended up just using the stock Wraith Spire cooler, which is very competent for a stock cooler, and more than enough for the mild overclock I had planned. (stock 3.2Ghz/3.7ghz boost for 1 core). I ended up for now at 3.75Ghz at 1.325V on the core, which is pretty good. This gives me about 75-80c under prime95 stress test, which is in the range I want to see. Down the road I might pick up a closed loop cooler or something, but for now this is more than enough. The only issue I've run into is sort of what I expected. That is to say, Ryzen and Ryzen motherboards don't have completely mature BIOSes yet, and high speed memory support is spotty at best. In the end, for right now with the current BIOS/AGESA 1.0.0.4a I'm only able to POST at 2400mhz. No matter what SoC voltage, timings, DRAM voltage I use I can't get it to POST at 2666 or 2933Mhz. For now 2400Mhz will have to do, but the performance difference with 2933 is near 5-10% in some cases thanks to the core-complex interconnect running at IMC speed. For now though it's running happily enough at DDR4-2400 15-15-15-36 instead of 2933 16-18-18-38.
Nice thing about Windows 10, is I didn't have to re-install Windows. Just throw the new hardware in, it installs basic drivers during boot. I upgrade drivers, and all set. Don't even need to re-activate Windows. It's pretty great so far, there are some software bugs regarding monitoring software that don't work properly (CPU-Z and HWMonitor for example read vCore as something in the neighborhood of 2.7V. World of Warships though actually runs far better on this system than the Intel system, no stuttering or random framerate drops like I used to have. It's nice to be back on an AMD system after so long. Also, the CPU Core is made at the Globalfoundries Fab8 right up the road in Saratoga County, which is nice.
Full specs, for those interested..
AMD Ryzen R5-1600 @ 3.75Ghz w/AMD Wraith Spire Cooler
ASRock X370 Gaming K4
16GB (2x8GB Single Rank) G Skill Aegis DDR4-2933 (Hynix DRAM)
EVGA SSC GTX 970
Samsung 850 Evo 500GB Boot SSD, SKHynix 500GB SSD, 3x 1TB Hard Drives
Fractal Design Define S case w/3x 140mm Fractal Design fans
Windows 10 Home x64
The upgrade went pretty smoothly. I ended up just using the stock Wraith Spire cooler, which is very competent for a stock cooler, and more than enough for the mild overclock I had planned. (stock 3.2Ghz/3.7ghz boost for 1 core). I ended up for now at 3.75Ghz at 1.325V on the core, which is pretty good. This gives me about 75-80c under prime95 stress test, which is in the range I want to see. Down the road I might pick up a closed loop cooler or something, but for now this is more than enough. The only issue I've run into is sort of what I expected. That is to say, Ryzen and Ryzen motherboards don't have completely mature BIOSes yet, and high speed memory support is spotty at best. In the end, for right now with the current BIOS/AGESA 1.0.0.4a I'm only able to POST at 2400mhz. No matter what SoC voltage, timings, DRAM voltage I use I can't get it to POST at 2666 or 2933Mhz. For now 2400Mhz will have to do, but the performance difference with 2933 is near 5-10% in some cases thanks to the core-complex interconnect running at IMC speed. For now though it's running happily enough at DDR4-2400 15-15-15-36 instead of 2933 16-18-18-38.
Nice thing about Windows 10, is I didn't have to re-install Windows. Just throw the new hardware in, it installs basic drivers during boot. I upgrade drivers, and all set. Don't even need to re-activate Windows. It's pretty great so far, there are some software bugs regarding monitoring software that don't work properly (CPU-Z and HWMonitor for example read vCore as something in the neighborhood of 2.7V. World of Warships though actually runs far better on this system than the Intel system, no stuttering or random framerate drops like I used to have. It's nice to be back on an AMD system after so long. Also, the CPU Core is made at the Globalfoundries Fab8 right up the road in Saratoga County, which is nice.
Full specs, for those interested..
AMD Ryzen R5-1600 @ 3.75Ghz w/AMD Wraith Spire Cooler
ASRock X370 Gaming K4
16GB (2x8GB Single Rank) G Skill Aegis DDR4-2933 (Hynix DRAM)
EVGA SSC GTX 970
Samsung 850 Evo 500GB Boot SSD, SKHynix 500GB SSD, 3x 1TB Hard Drives
Fractal Design Define S case w/3x 140mm Fractal Design fans
Windows 10 Home x64