Armadeadn's n00bish PC Questions

They were supposed to be genuine Apple/Samsung products... I already boxed them up for return but I'll link some of the pics where people investigated.

 

the Chinese knock off stuff are really well done nowadays. you were correct in your assumption that Amazon marketplace sellers are usually selling fake stuff.

 

Lookup Big Clive on YouTube, he has loads of videos of him testing and breaking all of the dodgy chinese crap available on ebay. Some of it is downright lethal.

I can see why people buy the stuff though, I picked up an Official Apple charger 2 weeks ago from a shop for work purposes. £15 for the cable and £15 for the charger so £30 all in. I think I got mugged.

 

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/08/amazons-chinese-counterfeit-problem-is-getting-worse.html

Sounds like Amazon intentionally opened up it's business to Chinese fakes in order to get the sales boost that comes with too-good-to-be-true prices.

 

The thing is, the prices aren't really too good to be true. For example, there is a Oakley sunglasses and LG bluetooth discussion on Slickdeals where people were convinced they got counterfeit. Both were on sale, but not enough of a discount to accept fakes.

 

That sounds like the problem people talk about with "fulfilled by Amazon". They don't actually separate the inventory, so there's a chance you could get a legitimate product OR a counterfeit product.

 

I'm trying to piece together an AMD Ryzen 1700 system. Anything I should be on the lookout for in terms of new tech features on a motherboard? Also, I've never figured out the numbers on memory like 5-5-5-2. WTF?

 

I'm not sure it's that simple with ryzen yet. Do they still have those memory compatibility issues? Or was that more of not being able to use ram at higher speeds?

 

Memory compatibility issues still exist with the motherboards but it's gotten a lot better. I think Samsung memory B-die works with everything now. Everything else is still lacking. My Corsair Vengeance 3200 is still running at 2933. It's close enough but the perfectionist in me wants 3200. Samsung B-die can be OCed beyond 3200 now. It's really hard to know which chips have B-die. You'd have to search hardware forums. You should also only get 2 chips. 4 chips will work but with a penalty. If you need quad channel there will be an 8 core Threadripper coming out soon that supports it.

Latency and speed are almost interchangeable. Lower one and raise the other and the results are the same.

So I have 3200 CL16. You can see the score is 200. I could have gone with CL15 and 3000 or CL14 and 2800 and gotten the same memory score of 200. The prices on the three will be almost identical. If you get low latency CL15 or CL16 you can actually raise the latency and then raise your speed. So you could manually turn CL14 2800 into CL16 3200. In fact in most cases the manufacturer just sells the same memory as two different types. In some cases lower latency will beat memory speed or vice versa but that's really getting into the weeds.

 

I was gonna get 8x4 = 32GB... but maybe I'll do 16x2 and upgrade to 64GB later.

Quad channel means 32 threads? Should I wait for this?

Will gen 2 Ryzen be releasing soon?

 

The only difference between dual channel and quad channel memory is double the memory bandwidth. Thats how much memory can be access at the same time. That sound important but it's mostly not. About 8 out of 10 PC benchmarks will show 0 difference and the ones that do are probably 5%. The biggest advantage might simply be the ability to use 4 stick instead of 2. I think in the past memory chip sizes were a lot smaller. Now you can get 2x16GB (maybe more). Which is fine for home/prosumer. If you still want quad channel the Threadripper 1900x is 8 core 16 thread quad channel for $550. The motherboard also has a lot more PCI-e lanes. It's much more of a server room kind of system.




The rumor was Zen 2 is supposed to come at the end of 2018 and will be die shrink from 14nm to 7nm. The motherboards are supposed to be good for 4 years so they will probably be good until Zen 3 which is also on the road map.

Intel also has a 6 core Kaby Lake coming out soon. aka Coffee Lake. Clocks look similar to the 1600x but IPC will be the same as Kaby Lake. Ice Lake will be the next major jump is speed for Intel.

Intel roadmap

2017 H1: 14 nm +, Kaby Lake client, Skylake-SP/X
2017 H2: 14 nm ++, Coffee Lake client
2017 Q4-2018 Q1: 10 nm, Cannon Lake mobile
2018 H1: 14 nm ++, Coffee Lake-SP/X (Skylake-SP/X optimized)
2018 H2: 10 nm +, Ice Lake client
2019 H1: 10 nm +, Ice Lake-SP/X, and a short time later..
2019 H2: 10 nm ++, Tiger Lake-SP/X
2020 H1: 10 nm ++, Tiger Lake client
2020 H2: 7 nm, data center

 

I'm building a non-gaming small form factor PC. So far I bought:

AMD Ryzen 7 1700
ASRock Fatal1ty Gaming X370 - Mini ITX
1TB Samsung EVO PRO 850
CoolerMaster 130

Looking at bfun's chart, I'm gonna cheap out and get DDR4 2400 memory. At 32GB (2x16GB) the 2400 is $250 vs nearly $400 for 3466. The OCD in me wants to max out the board but it seems like a waste of $$$.

Whats a good non-gaming ATI card to pair with this for less than $200?

Do they make completely modular PSU so I only have the exact wires I need?

Thanks!

 

I can't help you much with the graphics cards. I don't really follow anything under a 470 or 1060 which are both over $200. It seems like the two things people look at in that price range are power usage and noise. The Nvidia 1050 and AMD 550 are probably what you want to look at or you might even want to go cheaper. Of the two the 1050 is the better card. It's faster, uses less power, cost a lot more. Make sure you get all the connection types you want. DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort for 4k.

There are plenty of modular and full modular PSUs to choose from. I think modular might still have the power cable attached which isn't a big deal unless you want to replace it. Figure out how much power you want. If you aren't gaming 400w to 500w will be plenty but 650w leaves the gaming option open. I like SeaSonic for the mid-tier stuff. EVGA and Corsair have great high-end stuff and not so great low-end stuff.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16817151095

 

Went with: ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 560 4GB OC GDDR5

Is there anything wrong with using the AMD factory cooler? It looks like stock is all that will fit in the mini-ITX case. Not sure if I'm ready to dabble with liquid cooling.

 

The Spire does really well for a downward facing cooler. It's quiet and can handle an OC up to 3.7. The tower coolers do better but they are of course bigger. You might get to 3.9 on a tower. The best you can get on water is 4 to 4.1. So investing in better cooling isn't really necessary unless you want to push the system.

 

I have an SSD that I can't boot from. Windows recovery fails and new windows install fails. The error is "the drive is locked". I formatted the drive in Linux, ran automatic repair, chkdsk, bootrec /FixMbr, bootrec /FixBoot. None of that helped. I've formatted it in Windows and I can use it for storage but I haven't tried to boot from it since then.

Any ideas on how I can check or fix the problem?

 

I'm dumping my 17" Dell monitor... it randomly shuts off and turns back on at will. I've waited 2 weeks now for it to come back on but I've had enough. It's had a really good run since college.

I'm gonna build an entire work from home room. Any recommendations on:

Desk
- I tend to like flat desks. I might do corner desk. But still flat. I only want legs and a table top.

Monitors
- I'm thinking 32" curved display? Would have 2 curved displays look weird? I was thinking 1 curved and 2 straight but I wanna be slightly cheap too.

Docking Station
- TB3 / USBC docking station. Anybody use them? Is there a "best" one?

 

One curved monitor and two flats might look weird. How about a 34" Ultrawide IPS?

Ikea is the best option for flat desks. You design it yourself by picking the size, shape, and materials.