End of Year PC Build

Installing OS and drivers? Its easy.
Installing audio software and bit under 100 plugins? Took two days...

Got everything to work.



So far, so good. The default Expo profile works perfectly.

The only downside is that whenever I make any changes in the BIOS, it takes forever to reboot because it keeps re-training the memory.

Upgrading from a 5950X, there's actually a very noticeable difference. I'm genuinely surprised.

For a game as old as GTA Online (not GTA V Story Mode), I used to get a lot of framerate drops even without other players present. At worst, it could drop to as low as 50 FPS in certain areas. Now it's between 90-100 FPS.

It's the same thing with Cyberpunk 2077. In the busy areas like the markets, my framerate would drop even with Frame Generation on the 5950X. Now with Frame Generation, the game basically pegs at the framerate limit (138 FPS on a 144hz display with Nvidia Reflex and G-Sync) without any dips. I can even enable Path Tracing and still be able to play the game above 100 FPS most of the time.

The improvements on these 1% lows in games are the biggest difference that you can see right away with the 9800X3D. I still can't believe how good this CPU is for gaming. It's definitely worth the $479 MSRP if you've already got a fast GPU, but don't give in to the scalpers.

And if you really want to get your point across, throw in the R.....F   R  O 

I paid 629€ for R7950X year ago, so thats not a bad price I think..

I didn't, but it's currently my son's gaming rig with the Gigabyte 4070 Gaming OC. Seems fast enough @1440p, for Fortnite and Goat simulator 3. Doubles as a space heater too!

I got those for my ITX build. Only 33mm tall, they fit snugly under the Noctua NH-L12S. Good sticks.

PC built/upgraded- minus putting on the side panels and tidying up. Lord what a palaver!

The new Noctua fans I bought for the old case didn't fit! I did work out that they could go inside the fan mount, but even then the srcrews to fit them don't match the holes on the bracket. Reverted to the old case fans plus a slim bequiet fan I had lying around. Had to clean everything obviously.

Then there was awkwardness with my dark rock pro cooler, although I eventually got that sorted out - needed a mini allen key as well as screwdrivers, but luckily I had a whole set of keys from an earlier life rusting in a storage box.

And once everything was together I realised the new m/b doesn't have a PS2 port for my old keyboard. I'm using a really cheap and crappy Dell thing I had spare to type this, but it looks like I'll be trawling sales tomorrow for something better.

Still, BIOS is updated, new RAM is at EXPO speeds and everything appears to be working. I'll test speeds tomorrow.