My PC is turning 80...in computer years!

[tommui987]

28 minutes ago, pierces said:

 

32GB handled way more than I have ever had open in the same session.

I learn something new every day! 😉

 

 

Dave

 

Thanks for the report Dave.

 

I have a 21"  (2017) iMac with only 16GBs but made arrangements a few weeks ago to have work done on it to increase memory to 32GBs when I go on my trip  (don't want to be without my iMac when I am in town!)

 

My Apps weere using a bit of memory and thought this might help - of course if I got rid of the Apps, it might have helped but your report, though it is on a PC, confirmed what I was experiencing.

 

Alas, no room on my desk for the 27" model.

[bobmacliberty]

Dave - Thanks so much for this thread...perfect timing.  I only get over to the photo & camera board once a month (or 2), and I've always missed this thread in the past.  I always built my own computer, going back to the late 80s.  It was a great way to get better parts AND cheaper prices.  I was never a gamer (casual games only) and my strategy was always to buy the top of the second tier, i.e. the best of the previous generation.  That saved me from the large price jump to the latest and greatest. 

 

That was until about 5 years ago.  Tech was changing faster than I could keep up, off the shelf pricing had dropped a lot, and I was interested in the portability of a laptop, or so I thought.  I had grandiose plans of taking my Yoga on planes and cruise ships...editing as I go and using the flipped tablet configuration.  Never quite played out that way (saved the editing for back at home and carried an iPad instead) and I miss the dedicated graphics card.  So now my Yoga is 5 years old and I'm thinking of going back to a desktop.  Still deciding if I want to DIY or buy off the shelf, and trying to understand the latest tech available.  The timing of this thread couldn't be better for me!

 

I'm in no hurry so I will wait for PCIe gen4 to settle in.  The DIY passion is largely gone for me, so I'll see what the big names have to offer and probably only build my own if I can't order what I want.  I'll stay tuned into this thread and take advantage of your research that you are generously sharing with the rest of us!  Thanks!

[pierces]

19 hours ago, bobmacliberty said:

...I'll stay tuned into this thread and take advantage of your research that you are generously sharing with the rest of us!  Thanks!

 

I'm glad the postings are helping. All this is helping me as well. Writing about it makes me research the stuff I write about more thoroughly. I find it is a lot harder to explain what A, B and C do and why you need them than it is to just post a list of parts. I also find I need to understand it twice as well to explain it in terms that make sense to folks who don't know (or care to know) what's under the hood of a piece of tech. I obsess so y'all don't have to. 🙂

 

With new categories of off-the-shelf and build-to-order  machines like HP's Omen series and Dell's purchase of Alienware, DIY isn't the only way to fill the gap between a run of the mill PC and a $5000 workstation. I could just order a hot gaming machine and toss some extra storage at it but back when I built on a budget, I found out I really liked the process of building my own. Even after I could afford to just buy something, the challenge of choosing and tweaking the most bang for the buck out of a mile-long list of available parts made the final product seem just a little shinier. I am also not a serious PC gamer and I'm not a fan of overclocking but like most people, I can be a little impatient when stuff takes a while to load. Hence this current quest to make a PC that won't test my patience for the next few years. 

 

Again, I'm glad that this little diary is proving useful to others.

 

Dave

[pierces]

Mid-August and the supply chain for all the new AMD components is struggling. Fortunately the supply of wood and cabinet hardware is steady, so I still have the kitchen project to keep me busy.

 

Notes from diving deep into what's (going to be) available:

 

For the CPU I have almost decided mostly for sure not to go with the 12 core/24 thread Ryzen 9 3900x, The extra cores do impressive things in the benchmarks, but benchmarks artificially load worst-case scenarios that real-world users are unlikely to encounter. My previous research indicated that above six cores, the benefit of multi-core usage in Photoshop diminishes rapidly. This leaves me looking at the 8 core/16 thread Ryzen 7 3800X and some extra money to throw at a graphics card.

 

Why throw the extra money at a graphics card? Lightroom and Adobe Camera RAW just added support for GPU Accelerated Editing. This means that during edits and adjustments, the programs will utilize the much-faster graphics processor on high-end graphics cards. I haven't seen any side-by-side comparisons yet but will keep my eye out. Even if you are not building a new computer, replacing an older card or adding one if you are using the integrated graphics on the motherboard with one of the newer models from Nvidia or AMD could perk Lightroom up quite a bit. Not really hard to do but be aware that cases and graphics cards come in sizes and while the PCIe interface on a newer PC is standard and they will theoretically work, not all are compatible simply because of size. The card I have mostly probably nearly decided on is some flavor of the Nvidia RTX 2070 Super. These were just announced to combat AMD's new 5700 series cards and offer a lot of bang-for-the-buck. 

 

As noted above, I'm still sticking with the AMD option this time. Why? It's the faster PCIe Gen4 bus for faster storage options. Load times are my foes and I will do what I can to defeat them. The PCIe Gen3 drive I picked up on sale will still be used but I will fiddle around to see where it fits best in the storage lineup. The boot drive will be a Gen4 unit for sure. New controllers that will make better use of the Gen4 bus will be out next year but not soon enough to make the wait worth it.

 

Prices are still volatile with MSRP appearing briefly when stock comes in and jumping 25% to 50% when main supply goes dry and the scalpers start reselling. I will order the cooler, traditional hard drive and memory in the next couple of weeks and let the sharks fight over the early shipments of processors,  motherboards and Gen 4 SSD drives.

 

This build has turned into more of a pain that I anticipated but that is mostly because of generational improvements in the tech appearing in the middle of planning. During the wait I have gained some knowledge about what is really needed to do what I want to do and how to save a few dollars by avoiding the bleeding edge and just plain overkill.

 

Dave

[chipmaster]

Most of the limited AMD 7nm ramp is being allocated to server which AMD is pushing hard for MS gain ahead of any intel long delayed 10nm.    TSMC now ramping this years iPhone and Huawei is also a bigtime customer on their 7nm, so AMD capacity is limited and will stay constrained, hopefully they execute well on their follow-up and aggresive on locking in 5nm capacity or they will be third fiddle behind the big guys at TSMC.

 

Like phones/computers/DSLR fast follower and last generation really is far cheaper and easier to secure, and if used really cheap, LOL

Edited August 15, 2019 by chipmaster

[masterdrago]

57 minutes ago, chipmaster said:

Most of the limited AMD 7nm ramp is being allocated to server which AMD is pushing hard for MS gain ahead of any intel long delayed 10nm.    TSMC now ramping this years iPhone and Huawei is also a bigtime customer on their 7nm, so AMD capacity is limited and will stay constrained, hopefully they execute well on their follow-up and aggresive on locking in 5nm capacity or they will be third fiddle behind the big guys at TSMC.

 

Like phones/computers/DSLR fast follower and last generation really is far cheaper and easier to secure, and if used really cheap, LOL

I had to wade through several pages of Samsung gobledigoop to figure out what is being referred to here. So just curious....

https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-manufacturers/samsung-foundry/8157-tsmc-and-samsung-5nm-comparison/

[chipmaster]

2 hours ago, masterdrago said:

I had to wade through several pages of Samsung gobledigoop to figure out what is being referred to here. So just curious....

https://semiwiki.com/semiconductor-manufacturers/samsung-foundry/8157-tsmc-and-samsung-5nm-comparison/

 

Scotty does a good 30K summary, but the devil is in the details; curiosity satisfied?

 

A bit of a hijack of the PC thread, but we will likely never get the same side-side comparison on two different processes like we did a few generations ago tooty fruity used both with interesting and enlightening results, again the details of what DTCO was done only the fruit company knows.      So each foundry as well as Intel publish metrics and even when you compare AMD versus Intel for client or server actual direct is very difficult of what is architecture, compiler or actually silicon technology advantage or tradeoff and for what reason.

Edited August 15, 2019 by chipmaster

[kenevenpar]

15 hours ago, chipmaster said:

 

Scotty does a good 30K summary, but the devil is in the details; curiosity satisfied?

 

A bit of a hijack of the PC thread, but we will likely never get the same side-side comparison on two different processes like we did a few generations ago tooty fruity used both with interesting and enlightening results, again the details of what DTCO was done only the fruit company knows.      So each foundry as well as Intel publish metrics and even when you compare AMD versus Intel for client or server actual direct is very difficult of what is architecture, compiler or actually silicon technology advantage or tradeoff and for what reason.

 

For us not in the business .. can you kindly use words rather than acronyms or initials.

 

Thanks in advance.

[chipmaster]

30 minutes ago, kenevenpar said:

 

For us not in the business .. can you kindly use words rather than acronyms or initials.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

For the internet savy novice i suggest this thing called Google, I've found it even superior to my internal patent search and IP folks.

 

Google DTC0, my top four items all explain it but DTCO stands for Design Technology Co-Optimization

 

happy googling 

 

 

[pierces]

In all honesty, unless you plan to design and build your own chip at home, ambivalence is advised regarding the deep internal structure of the various CPUs on the market. Other than knowing that a 10nm (nanometer) chip uses less power and is potentially faster than a 14nm one and that 7nm is less than 10nm, the end result is what impacts the user of the PC. How many cores is relevant but the thickness of each circuit layer is more or less a trivia question.

 

Tom's Hardware does an annual CPU hierarchy that lists the recent generations of Intel and AMD chips along with results from their gaming and application benchmarks. It provides basic information like number of cores, hyperthreading yes or no (the ability to run two instructions simultaneously per core), rated power usage and clock speed. The test results are from machines with supporting hardware balanced as fairly as possible without overclocking or any fancy performance boosting. 

 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-hierarchy,4312.html

 

I find it handy to get a general overview of how far up the performance ladder I want to go, then go to the review of that processor to find out the pros and cons.

 

Chipmaster made an important point. The incremental increase in total performance from generation to generation is often small and the last generation's prices tend to plummet when the shiny new stuff hits the shelves. If you are coming from a four or five year old machine, the next to newest processor of the same level will be leaps and bounds ahead of your old machine and available at a significant savings over the newest generation. Even if you go with the newest generation, choosing a processor a step or two down from the top can save considerable money without giving up a similar percentage in performance.

 

Dave

[chipmaster]

Another interesting few  plots for you technology hounds specifically related CPUs

[pierces]

Just a quick post to update the off-the shelf crowd about the impact of the new tech. It is going to be a while before the PCIE Gen4 stuff makes an impact, but with the influx of the new processors and graphics cards, pricing on gaming PCs are coming down. A friend recently called for some quick advice and after a bit of research based on his needs, he went to Costco.com and ordered an HP with a last generation i7-8700 processor,  16GB of RAM, a 4 GB Nvidia GTX 1050Ti graphics card and a 1TB drive for $799. That is a lot of computer for the price. If you wanted to go with 32GB, a DIY upgrade is incredibly easy. Even if the motherboard only has two memory slots, you could order a 32GB set of DDR4 2666 memory modules and eBay or desk-drawer the 16GB kit.

 

For $1599 (thinking of you, Justin) , you can get an HP Omen 875 with a current generation i7-9700 8-core processor, 8GB Nvidia GTX 2070 graphics, 512GB boot SSD and a 1TB hard drive. Again, very respectable bang-for-the-buck.

 

Back to school is over and with all the new stuff likely to be a while before it surfaces in the in the mainstream, price drops on good hardware make this a great time to upgrade that 10-year-old box under the desk.

 

Happy post-processing!

 

Dave

[pierces]

All things come to those who wait?

 

Waiting seems to be agreeing with me as the bugs appear and get swatted. Mostly appearing in the new graphics cards but a performance bug appeared in the CPUs last week. They have issued a bios fix very quickly.

 

The new "Super" version of the Nvidia 2060/2070/2080 that were released about the same time as the new AMD cards offer a lot more power for the same money and have shifted the balance towards them.

 

The AMD chips are still hard to locate at MSRP as the bleeding-edgers suck them all up.

 

A by-product of the wait popped up a couple of days ago with a $70 off deal on a great cooler that I passed on due to high price. At $70 off, it is less than the compromise unit I had put on the list. Click...click..thank you Amazon. Showed up yesterday. It is a Thermaltake unit that is 100% mounting compatible with my Thermaltake P3 case, so one less worry.

 

Case, power supply, one 1 TB SSD, wall mount and now the cooler. 

 

Back to wait and watch mode.

 

 

Dave

[pierces]

Another month of patience is generating more frustration than results. All the fuss with AMD CPUs and memory fragility (not all memory is compatible) is troublesome but seems to be worth it if you choose correctly. (When I read that I think of the Indiana Jones movie where the bad guy drinks from the wrong chalice and dies horribly while the caretaker knight says, "He chose...poorly".) Indecision, continuing spotty availability with the attendant price gouging and a surprise deposit on a late spring 2020 cruise has me plugging away on my "old" PC for a little while longer as I waffle between springing for computer parts or a good ultra-wide zoom. 

 

I suppose I will make the decision pretty soon and start building the thing. Since memory, CPU and motherboard are all related, I'll pick up Windows 10 Pro on some kind of physical media (probably a USB thumb-drive) and add it to the pile. I use the Pro version because Real Photographers use Windows Pro. Sorry...I just had to say that. Actually, unless you need encryption or Remote Desktop capability, Windows Home is good enough for anyone using less than 128GB of RAM. Not kidding there. That's one of the main differences. Pro supports up to 2TB of memory, which has me wondering who needs that outside of large data servers or people trapped in the Matrix.

 

Another question popped into my head this week. BLU-RAY/DVD reader/writer? I have one on this machine but have used it to read only a few disks over the last four years and haven't burned a storage DVD in forever or so. The volume of storage needed these days has made optical storage a tedious option. Even with 25GB 6X disks at 50¢ each, the time and number of disks needed to back up a couple of terabytes worth of images is prohibitive.  A Blu-Ray "x" is around 36Mbs (notice the little "b" for "bit" not a big "B" for "byte") so a burner can theoretically write to a 6X disk at  27MBs. Theoretically. Even at the theoretical max speed it would take 15 minutes to burn a full 25GB disk (your mileage will vary). On top of that, partitioning and organizing your archives into sub-25GB chunks with a comprehensive index of what is stored where is just way too much work when you can just plop a copy of everything on a $100-ish hard drive and make an easily searchable Lightroom catalog to store with it. Since I don't foresee heavy use but may actually have to burn a slide-show or family video on a disk someday, I am leaning towards a USB 3.0 external unit that I could put on my desk and wouldn't have to go around to the closet to change disks. Another factor in favor of an external unit is that my case isn't really suited to mounting one "internally" (quotes refer to the open case design I chose). I guess I talked my way through that choice. Looks like I'll be using a Pioneer BDR-XD05B or something similar that doesn't need a power adapter when connected via USB 3.0. Maybe if it is easy to load up a disk, I'll drag out a few of the hundreds of DVDs that I have meticulously organized and not touched or watched in years and see how they look on the new humongous monitor.

 

This build is taking so much longer than I expected, but I have a serious mental block against paying over MSRP for a component that will be on the clearance page in 12-18 months when the next big thing hits. Maybe the next post will have me deciding that 8 cores are enough, throwing up my hands and going with a good, solid Intel-based i7-9700 or i9-9900 build. 

 

Just a note on off-the-shelf. It's a great time to shop right now. For around $1500, Costco has gaming (read as strong photo editing) computers with 8-core i7 9700K CPUs, Nvidia RTX graphics cards and SSD/hard drive combo storage. The back-to-school rush is over and extra stock is getting blown out just about everywhere I looked.

 

Thanks again for letting me talk through all this. I hope the occasional nuggets of tech info are useful in some way.

 

 

Dave

[masterdrago]

Dave, I get such great entertainment reading this thread and every time you make a new post, I gobble it up. It makes me chuckle in a good way reading your humor - super wide zoom, computer parts, deposit on new cruise - decision, decisions🤔

Edited September 28, 2019 by masterdrago

[pierces]

On 9/28/2019 at 8:53 AM, masterdrago said:

Dave, I get such great entertainment reading this thread and every time you make a new post, I gobble it up. It makes me chuckle in a good way reading your humor - super wide zoom, computer parts, deposit on new cruise - decision, decisions🤔

 

Glad to hear!

 

As I said before, putting it down in words forces me to do better research but it also makes me think about the why of my personal hardware choices. Tech-talk therapy!

 

Dave 

[framer]

Dave,

 

Go i7-9700 w/32gb  1TB m2's and a Nvidia 2080.  Add a new top of the line 4K touchscreen monitor. 

 

4 years ago I got an Asus workstation Z-97 deluxe w/ i7-4790K  32gb DDR3-2400 took out my original 250gbSSD and replaced it with a 1TB m2 Samsung 9700.  I've also upgraded the graphics 18months ago to the Nvidia 1080.  This system still screams through my photoshop stuff.  I do huge panos 20+ images from a D810 never an issue.  I use cheap 3&4tb HD for archiving and storage of images. 

 

My 4yo old system still has life and a couple more years of use. 

 

Got to run...

 

framer

[pierces]

12 hours ago, framer said:

 

Dave,

 

Go i7-9700 w/32gb  1TB m2's and a Nvidia 2080.  Add a new top of the line 4K touchscreen monitor. 

 

4 years ago I got an Asus workstation Z-97 deluxe w/ i7-4790K  32gb DDR3-2400 took out my original 250gbSSD and replaced it with a 1TB m2 Samsung 9700.  I've also upgraded the graphics 18months ago to the Nvidia 1080.  This system still screams through my photoshop stuff.  I do huge panos 20+ images from a D810 never an issue.  I use cheap 3&4tb HD for archiving and storage of images. 

 

My 4yo old system still has life and a couple more years of use. 

 

Got to run...

 

framer

 

My current machine is a six-core i7-5820K with 32GB of quad-channel RAM, Nvidia GTX960, 512GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe boot drive and a mishmash of storage from SATA SSDs to a couple of 4TB traditional spinning units. As I said in the beginning, the thing works fine. Better than fine as it is actually quite fast. It would probably keep up with new software and my demands on it for quite a while longer. I am simply doing a statistical 3-4 year end-of-life replacement to upgrade to some newer tech and reduce the chance of an in-use failure (too many years in corporate IT). 

 

Though I am reluctant to give up the shiny prospects of PCIE Gen 4 storage speed, recent issue reports about the new Ryzen systems are causing me to lean back towards the Intel platform. Most of the issues reported are pretty specific and unrelated to my general usage but with any new thing in the computer world, the sheer volume of code and teensy little electronic bits that have to work flawlessly make the appearance of even minor functional errors worrisome. My semi-unreasonable lack of faith in AMD has me researching how much difference the extra $100 for the i9-9900K buys in performance with the 8 cores + 8 threads over the i7-9700 with 8 cores but no hyperthreading. Prior research shows that the additional benefits from Photoshop's usage of multiple cores diminishes above 6-8 cores so maybe two more cores than I than I have now would be enough. This vast variety of options in computer hardware can be frustrating and illustrates why I love In-N-Out with their limited menu and no bad choice possible. 

 

I had considered going with an RTX 2080 but the new Radeon 5700 cards were so much cheaper that I focused on them. Then came the introduction of the RTX 2070 Super that has me aiming at that  card class instead. The minor difference in performance between the original 2080 and 2070 Super with the Super priced the same as the old non-super units makes it a comparative bargain even with the 2080 prices dropping due to the 2080 Super cards starting to appear.

 

I recently upgraded to a 43" 4K monitor which is working out very well. I'm not sure a touchscreen would be viable at a 32" - 36" viewing distance. Besides, I work from home and generally eat breakfast and lunch at my workstation , which makes the Windex and paper towel requirements to maintain a touchscreen just too costly. 😉

 

I'll reach a tipping point pretty soon since the holidays are coming up and results from AMD's base microcode update for the 3000 series chips will be available in a few weeks and it may fix enough of the reported glitches to sway me back. In the end, computers are much like cameras these days. It's hard to make a truly bad choice since same-level hardware from reputable manufacturers performs pretty much within a few percentage points.

 

Dave

[framer]

The only thing I see you need is a newer graphics card.  If you get the 2080 today it could still be used with a newer system a couple of years from now.  The m2 are also dropping in price and 1-2TB are affordable and could also be used with a new MB later. 

 

Every year you wait for a new MB and processor the better it will get.  I'm looking for the next gen MB and processor before a major upgrade.  FYI I  used AMD stuff for years and lived with minor issues that would crop up from time to time.  After I stepped up to the pump and went with Intel things smooth out.  I've been tempted by new offering from AMD but will wait for Intel stuff next year. 

 

framer

[masterdrago]

I'm wanting Dave to hang in there until he can give us the inside scoop on the NVIDIA "Super-Duper". I am thoroughly enjoying this learning experience. Thanks Dave. I'm still feeling that my recently purchased fully loaded Dell 9570 (i7-8750 with 32Gig and the GTX 1050Ti) isn't cutting it with HVEC video shot at 240fps. Thanks to this thread, I did pump up my desktop W7Pro64 Dell with a 1T 970 Samsung & 16Gig of RAM. Huge difference!

Edited October 6, 2019 by masterdrago

[pierces]

It seems that things are starting to pick up. The Ryzen 3900x CPU is appearing in stock a less that $100 over MSRP, which is an improvement. Still sort of sucks. It has also been loosely confirmed that it will be available soon without the bundled cooler.

 

Intel made a move that while good, makes you wonder if their marketing department once worked for defense contractors. The new "F" and "KF" versions of the Gen 9 CPUs have the integrated graphics (GPU) disabled. This makes them unusable for computers without a separate graphics card but allows Intel to get better yield from manufacturing since CPUs with perfectly good computational hardware that fail testing on the graphics portion can still be sold as CPU-only versions. If you don't need integrated graphics, this can actually be a plus since the GPU section of the CPU remains "dark" and can reduce the heat output by a bit. Here's the weird part. When the "F" and "KF" versions were announced, they were priced identically to the units with integrated graphics. Retailers offered a (very) slight discount since it must have seemed to them, as it did for customers, that nothing-for-something was an odd marketing choice. Intel must have hired somebody new because they just announced price reductions of $25 across the board. This works out to 5% at the top end with the i9-9900KF and as much as 20% on the i3-9100F. Not night and day but the new pricing at least makes a little more sense. 

 

This move puts the i9-9900KF about $45 below it main Ryzen competitor, the 3900X. For me, this tips the balance a bit more to the Intel side. I am currently evaluating the ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING motherboard since I've had very good experiences with Asus hardware in the past. Asus boards typically don't have more than 2 M.2 drive slots but they offer a ($57) card that supports up to 4 PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives at full speed when plugged into a PCI3 3.0 16x slot. Most of their boards have two of these so unless you are a dedicated gamer with a need for dual high-end graphics cards, this works out very well for SSD storage needs. I could also opt for slower, less expensive memory since the Z390 chipset's memory base is 2666mhz where the base for the AMD X570 is 3200mhz. Though I have that option, if I go with Intel I will probably go ahead and get faster memory anyway since the ASUS board supports simple, stable overclocking and is way less touchy about memory than the AMD setup. I'm not a real fan of extreme overclocking but If I can add 10% performance on an ongoing basis with no stability or thermal issues, I'm willing to give it a try. Especially if it's a button push and I don't need a doctorate or liquid nitrogen cooling to get it.

 

The decision between the 3900X and i9-9900KF boils down to what amounts to a coin toss at this point. The AMD chip beats the Intel chip by some small percentages in some benchmarks that don't really relate to my usage and Intel still takes the cake on single-core processes (of which there are a lot). 

 

Getting close...

 

 

Dave

 

 

Edited October 8, 2019 by pierces

[chipmaster]

4 hours ago, pierces said:

It seems that things are starting to pick up. The Ryzen 3900x CPU is appearing in stock a less that $100 over MSRP, which is an improvement. Still sort of sucks. It has also been loosely confirmed that it will be available soon without the bundled cooler.

 

Intel made a move that while good, makes you wonder if their marketing department once worked for defense contractors. The new "F" and "KF" versions of the Gen 9 CPUs have the integrated graphics (GPU) disabled. This makes them unusable for computers without a separate graphics card but allows Intel to get better yield from manufacturing since CPUs with perfectly good computational hardware that fail testing on the graphics portion can still be sold as CPU-only versions. If you don't need integrated graphics, this can actually be a plus since the GPU section of the CPU remains "dark" and can reduce the heat output by a bit. Here's the weird part. When the "F" and "KF" versions were announced, they were priced identically to the units with integrated graphics. Retailers offered a (very) slight discount since it must have seemed to them, as it did for customers, that nothing-for-something was an odd marketing choice. Intel must have hired somebody new because they just announced price reductions of $25 across the board. This works out to 5% at the top end with the i9-9900KF and as much as 20% on the i3-9100F. Not night and day but the new pricing at least makes a little more sense. 

 

This move puts the i9-9900KF about $45 below it main Ryzen competitor, the 3900X. For me, this tips the balance a bit more to the Intel side. I am currently evaluating the ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING motherboard since I've had very good experiences with Asus hardware in the past. Asus boards typically don't have more than 2 M.2 drive slots but they offer a ($57) card that supports up to 4 PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives at full speed when plugged into a PCI3 3.0 16x slot. Most of their boards have two of these so unless you are a dedicated gamer with a need for dual high-end graphics cards, this works out very well for SSD storage needs. I could also opt for slower, less expensive memory since the Z390 chipset's memory base is 2666mhz where the base for the AMD X570 is 3200mhz. Though I have that option, if I go with Intel I will probably go ahead and get faster memory anyway since the ASUS board supports simple, stable overclocking and is way less touchy about memory than the AMD setup. I'm not a real fan of extreme overclocking but If I can add 10% performance on an ongoing basis with no stability or thermal issues, I'm willing to give it a try. Especially if it's a button push and I don't need a doctorate or liquid nitrogen cooling to get it.

 

The decision between the 3900X and i9-9900KF boils down to what amounts to a coin toss at this point. The AMD chip beats the Intel chip by some small percentages in some benchmarks that don't really relate to my usage and Intel still takes the cake on single-core processes (of which there are a lot). 

 

Getting close...

 

 

Dave

 

 

 

Ah if I only could share the details behind integrated fuse out, CPU fusing and some of your errors in extrapolations.   But TSMC and AMD are also struggling with similar big-die issues on their 7nm process.    

 

BTW nothing from Intel is 10nm yet, but coming soon.....

[pierces]

8 hours ago, chipmaster said:

 

Ah if I only could share the details behind integrated fuse out, CPU fusing and some of your errors in extrapolations.   But TSMC and AMD are also struggling with similar big-die issues on their 7nm process.    

 

BTW nothing from Intel is 10nm yet, but coming soon.....

 

Your technobabble is impressive but it doesn't clarify or correct the mentioned errors. If I passed along incorrect information from published sources, please enlighten!I

 

🙂

 

Dave

[zackiedawg]

Dave,  I think I'm starting to feel a bit more comfortable looking at an Intel - and thinking of getting a pre-built unit - I was comparing HP and Dell, and both price pretty close to each other.  When I price out a build with my specific wants at both sites, I end up right around $1850...that doesn't include speakers, Office (which I'll probably need to add), or monitor.  So I hunted around on Amazon for any Dell builds that were close to my specs, but maybe a touch cheaper, and came across this one with the following specs:

 

Dell XPS - 9th Generation Intel i7-9700K 8-Core 3.60 GHz Processor (12MB SmartCache, Turbo Boost up to 4.90 GHz)
32GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory, 512GB SSD + 2TB 7200 RPM Hard Drive, DVD-RW Drive, Windows 10 Professional
Intel UHD Graphics 630, 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2, 2 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 6 x USB 3.1 Gen 1, 2 x USB 2.0, HDMI, Display Port
Dell Wireless 802.11a/c + Bluetooth v4.2, Gigabit Ethernet, Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio, Waves MaxxAudio Pro.  $1,719.

 

Only real difference from how I was building one was that I was looking to add BluRay RE drive rather than DVD...but honestly I rarely burn either, so I don't think that's a decision maker.  It shaves about $130 off the price of my Dell-site built version, and that's about the only real difference I can see.  It includes 2 years of Amazon tech support (not sure how much that's actually worth).  I'd probably still need to add Office at some point down the road, and may need to buy new speakers as my current Dell powered units are starting to short out a bit.  I can live with my current 24" monitor for now too.

 

What do you think?

[pierces]

3 hours ago, zackiedawg said:

Dave,  I think I'm starting to feel a bit more comfortable looking at an Intel - and thinking of getting a pre-built unit - I was comparing HP and Dell, and both price pretty close to each other.  When I price out a build with my specific wants at both sites, I end up right around $1850...that doesn't include speakers, Office (which I'll probably need to add), or monitor.  So I hunted around on Amazon for any Dell builds that were close to my specs, but maybe a touch cheaper, and came across this one with the following specs:

 

Dell XPS - 9th Generation Intel i7-9700K 8-Core 3.60 GHz Processor (12MB SmartCache, Turbo Boost up to 4.90 GHz)
32GB DDR4 2666MHz Memory, 512GB SSD + 2TB 7200 RPM Hard Drive, DVD-RW Drive, Windows 10 Professional
Intel UHD Graphics 630, 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2, 2 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 6 x USB 3.1 Gen 1, 2 x USB 2.0, HDMI, Display Port
Dell Wireless 802.11a/c + Bluetooth v4.2, Gigabit Ethernet, Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio, Waves MaxxAudio Pro.  $1,719.

 

Only real difference from how I was building one was that I was looking to add BluRay RE drive rather than DVD...but honestly I rarely burn either, so I don't think that's a decision maker.  It shaves about $130 off the price of my Dell-site built version, and that's about the only real difference I can see.  It includes 2 years of Amazon tech support (not sure how much that's actually worth).  I'd probably still need to add Office at some point down the road, and may need to buy new speakers as my current Dell powered units are starting to short out a bit.  I can live with my current 24" monitor for now too.

 

What do you think?

 

It's a good build except for the integrated graphics. The graphics portion of the CPU uses shared system RAM for processing graphics. System RAM is faster than it used to be but doesn't hold a candle to the VRAM on a discreet card. Having a discreet card with its own memory gives a big bump in graphics processing. I have used both and the difference is pretty significant.

 

If adding the card outright is a budget breaker, consider dropping your RAM to 16GB which is plenty for most non-video editing operations with a plan to upgrade later (they overcharge for RAM by 2x-3x anyway and it's easy to upgrade) and add something like an Nvidia RTX2060 graphics card. Unless you play movies or music on the PC, you may want to ditch the DVD and get an external Blu-Ray player/burner like I described earlier when you find you need one. Ignore all the whooptie-do audio specs. Almost all motherboards in PCs of this class have great audio systems.

 

Office 365 Personal at $70/yr or  $7/mo. is a screaming bargain since it includes a terabyte of online storage along with access to all the mobile editions. I know you hate subscriptions but compared to the old $495 box price, it's hard to beat.

 

Feel free to post any specific questions that arise.

 

Dave

 

 

 

Edited October 9, 2019 by pierces