Any PC Builders Out There?

I have a Yoga 2 11.6". Think I paid a little under $400 for it as a back to school special. It's an ok machine, but not very powerful. Only has a Intel N3520 and 4gb of ram. (CPU doesn't have AES instructions, and RAM can't be upgraded ) Upgraded the HDD to SSD though.

 

Mine has a Haswell i5, I can't remember which one. Actually it could be a 14" lol. I wasn't paying much attention. All I cared about was that it had a decent amount if ram, a SSD, and the metal casing.

 

I'm pretty sure if you work for Intel, you took a day off to go for a walk today. The 3950X is just as much of a beast as promised especially when overclocked. Oh, and it draws less power and is cooler than a 9900ks. Yikes. I mean sure if you need three more frames per second in certain games at 1080p the 9900ks makes sense. If you want an overall killer CPU though that easily trades blows with Intel, especially at 1440p, the 3950X is the way to go it seems. I can't wait to see Intel's answer. Price cuts would be great for all!

 

it is quite amazing to see AMD just absolutely destroy intel this generation. Like its not just the normal marginal gains but all around beat downs. Performance, price, everything.



In other news...my unraid server is getting an upgrade. Migrating from my htpc running a bunch of stuff (like emby server) to the unraid server doing it all. The i3-540 (yeah its an old girl....) and the 4gb of ram were getting maxed out so a quick look to ebay and now ive got a Xeon quad core cpu and 16gb of ddr3 on the way.

 

Which Xeon and/or are you doing the 771 to 775 conversion? I have an old Core2 system with that conversion done lying around somewhere.

 

Nothing special..its a 3470 i think it was. Not 100% sure itll work with my mobo but the guy only wanted 5 bucks shipped for it

 

Dont you love when something as simple as changing RAM turns out to be a huge ordeal?

Unraid server RAM upgrade....apparently mobo only supports DDR3-1333 (or a weird 2133 OC thing?) 16gb. Didnt even check the speed RAM i bought....turned out to be 2x8gb of DDR3-1600. Wouldnt even load BIOS with one stick in. Upgraded bios...no boot. And to top it off upgraded bios now gives a CPU FAN ERROR on loading (even though bios and unraid show the fan speed for CPU....) So had a 2x4gb kit of DDR3-1600 RAM. Tried it and everything boots....ahhhh technology. 8gb is fine for my current needs though.


Im scared for the cpu trail though. The Xeon isnt technically supported soooooo we will see

 

Definitely should have doubled checked the speed. But its one of those "in theory" things too. I'd changed out the RAM with some i had laying around that was the exact same brand and specs as the kit i bought. Just a 2x4gb pair instead. Worked just fine in the server. Tried the 2x8gb pair....no go.

o well its got 8gb in it now which should be plenty unless I start running VM's. Which if i go down that route a motherboard change is probably in order (assuming the Xeon solved the cpu bottleneck)

 

That sux man, unless you breakdown and rebuild PC's for fun on a regular basis dealing with those kind of compatibility issues are a real PITA.

Not sure what you're use case is but if you're using unraid your beyond the average user and I would suggest checking out their forums under hardware to ensure you're picking up parts that meet your current and future needs. Once you start getting interested in building high performance VM's you're quickly going to realized that you will want a feature packed motherboard that is supported directly from the manufacture and not a big box retailer.

I've been running a strong unraid server for years for all of my tech needs and I couldn't imagine running my 'home lab' any other way....good luck to ya

 

Im not new to Unraid. Had (sort of) the same server for 9 years now. Hardware has changed though! Hell some of the HDD's are still the original ones. Its just a media storage server primarily though so pretty low usage on disk wear and tear. Plus "backups" of files. Started out with an old AMD Sempron 140 (single core!). Ran that thing till this year when i swapped in a i3-540.

The i3-540 really does a decent job but i went and moved most of my media stuff off the htpc in the living room to dockers on the server. Especially Emby would max out the 540 and also use all the ram (all 4gb of it) so hence deciding to upgrade. The htpc in the living room and the raspberry pi3 dont like 4k media (just old tech predating 4k hardware support) and thats an eventual thing (no 4k tv's right now)

"High performance" VM's arent anything Im interested in. I set up a Windows 10 VM but mostly for running a PVR as I couldnt find one i liked (that was free) for unraid. But i only got as far as setting up the VM and then tried to access the two HDhomerun's but for whatever reason the VM wouldnt find them. Mind you i could directly connect to them via ip addresses.


The only real upgrades (assuming the xeon cpu works) in the near future will be replacing a few hard drives. All mine are either 2tb or 3tb drive with the 2TB ones nearing 10 years in age. So picking up at least 2 8tb drives wouldnt be a bad idea (1 parity and 1 to replace all the 2tb drives). Which would then actually let me go back to the Sempron 140 and run a super basic, second location, important file setup to back up to weekly or monthly.

 

I used to have a ton of spare parts around to diagnose issues back when everything was sub GHz single core CPUs. Need ram for a 286? I probably still have it lol. These days, I don't have the patience.

 

Too be fair anything DDR4 isn't really that hard to maintain compatibility especially since all boards default boot DDR4 to the default speed/timing of the standard. It's only the older stuff where I find I run into crazy compatibility issues. Now it's mostly things like figuring out which PCI-E slots will kill the Sata connection that I run into when playing with servers.

 

Well the Xeon CPU came in. Installed and booted up just fine!

Decided to try the 2x8gb kit of RAM again...and it works with the Xeon!

And in another note....i needed to add a gpu for testing (so i wasnt just loading the unraid server over and over) so pulled out the old nvidia 8600gt (circa 2007) and it still worked so semi happy about that! Just saved me having to find the modular cable for PCI-E connectors to use anything more modern lol.

Old tech is fun >.<

 

Yeah they released it the day after my D15 arrived... Oh well, I already chromax swapped fans anyways. Brown fans will get put to use somewhere. I'll also go with white covers for the sink.

 

What’s up with this?

 

Its a Gen 1 AMD threadripper CPU. They are on the Gen 3 ones now. Gen 1 and Gen 2 share the same socket. BUT Gen 3 does not.

Its just older but still decent. But compared to the new Ryzen CPU's.....not worth it IMO. Especially since your upgrade path is dead (and extremely limited to begin with being the threadripper socket)

 

Built this rig a couple of years ago in while in college. Had to cutout the sheet metal and waterjet a mounting plate for the reservoir. Might consider doing a new case within the next year and upgrade some things.

I7-7700k
EVGA GTX-980TI

Too lazy to post the rest of specs..

 

Ah, makes sense, I just saw it was a hell of a discount. I have no need for a TR system, I actually still need to get a MoBo for my Ryzen 5 build.

 

Is this a decent M.2 drive and a decent price? I would like to go with a M.2 boot drive for my Ryzen build.

 

I don’t *need* the X570 chipset but I like the options and it seems like a good deal, any reason not to get it.