End of Year PC Build

Thank you Yes now is definitely a bad time for upgrading/buying a new build I think in a normal world my build would probably be around £1600 but with the components generally going up in price (GPU in particular) I unfortunately had to pay a decent chunk extra. The prices are getting a little out of hand honestly. I bought a Corsair HX850 PSU from Amazon for around £150, 3 days later due to short supply the same PSU was being sold for over £300...

I was at the point of buying a large amount of the components before the GPU skyrocketed so I couldnt really wait unfortunately. Still im happy with the computer, been playing Disco Elysium and  Elite Dangerous in 4k high/max settings - getting around 60 FPS average and the temps seem good (havent seen higher than 51°C Under load

Thanks   Im not going to lie, I was seriously worried about updating my motherboard bios to support the Ryzen 5000 CPU's (it wasnt supported out the box), I have been on a few forums and heard horror stories of motherboards being bricked. Tried to get the seller to do it for me but it wasnt an option so finally tried doing it myself. It was nerve racking but thankfully for me it ended up being very straight forward and worked first time 

It's funny that you mentioned it. I actually replaced my X570 Crosshair 8 Hero with an X570 Crosshair 8 Dark Hero. I was lucky enough to find it in stock on Newegg. So I used that opportunity to upgrade and returned the regular Hero mobo instead.

The Dark Hero is one of the few X570 mobos that's fanless. The chipset is passively cooled using a large heatsink instead.

However, the main selling point of the Dark Hero is its Dynamic OC Switch. It is a very cool overclocking feature that you can use it to switch between AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive and the traditional all-core overclock depending on the type of workload. For example, if the mobo detects that it needs higher single-threaded performance in a light workload application like when you're playing a game, it switches to the default Precision Boost Overdrive settings and gives you higher core clock boost. If you start a multi-threaded application that requires a heavy workload, it then switches to your pre-configured all-core overclock settings instead. It is probably the only X570 mobo that's capable of switching between these two profiles on the fly. So it really gives you the best of both worlds.

But yeah, if you really want an X570 mobo without a cooling fan, your only choices are the Asus X570 Dark Hero and the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme.

Oddly, I see little difference in temperature between the regular Hero and the Dark Hero. Both reach about 65C under heavy load but the fan on the Hero actually rarely runs and it stays off until the chipset reaches to certain temperature.

If the chipset fan is a deal breaker for you, you should just wait for a cheaper alternative or even the next gen. The Dark Hero is $420 but it is rarely in stock. The Aorus X570 Xtreme is $700. Don't buy that.

Haha, that's a hilarious solution.

Just keep in mind that if you have a longer two-slot or three-slot video card, it will pretty much cover up the entire chipset heatsink/cooler when you install it into the top x16 PCIe slot. The reason why mobo manufacturers use tiny low profile laptop fans to cool the chipset is to give enough clearance for the video card.

Related to previous posts, I really like the idea of a PCIe riser card and would love to build a new rig with a vertical graphics card slot. It would solve a lot of issues with heating and air flow, but I can see it bringing whole new problems as well. Then I read this: There’s a PROBLEM with Riser Cables

And it made me go hmmm... I would like to hear Forumites' opinions about this. Have you built a case with a riser cable? Do you know a reliable Gen4 PCIe riser cable manufacturer? Or am I better off just getting a new, massive case? That would be fine, but I'm kind of strapped for space here; I'm already running four desktop PCs.

I'm really tempted to upgrade to an 11-900K and the Z590 Aorus Master this year....But I highly doubt I would see much performance gain (if any at all) over my current X-99 Phoenix SLI and Intel 6850K. But I just really like the looks of the shiny new tech and it is a nice feeling when you first get that new hardware especially after just installing it and booting it up for the first time.

I have an RTX 2080 Super FTW 3 Ultra Gaming from EVGA that I bought in October of 2020, upgrading from a 1080 FTW 2 because I had gone to 4K at 60 hz

IF I was going to upgrade at this point, I think I would more than likely go with the Aorus Master Z490 and the 10-850K (keeping my reasonably newish RTX 2080 Super FTW 3 Ultra Gaming because I paid 1500.00 for it on Amazon barely six or seven months ago and it was nearly half the cost of the Super TI, but better than the OG 2080), and I typically like to keep my GPUs at least 5 to 7 years before upgrading. And by that time my CPU and MB platform will be 10 years old so it will be high time to upgrade to whatever else is new out at that time in the future.

But for now at this point in time my system can play game slike Fallen Order, ANTHEM, Andromeda and DA:I all in 4K at 60hz with all settings completely maxed out on ULTRA.....so what more do I need?

Unless games like DA 4 and the next ME or the rumoured sequel of Fallen Order state that the 11900K and a RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra are the Minimum Requirements for 1440p at 30hz upon their release (whenever that comes) then I won't be upgrading anytime soon. But that is such a stretch...I honestly can't even see game devs doing that because it would isolate the target market and alienate the vast majority of players who buy their stuff. Even from a technology standpoint, computer tech has not advanced that much (nor will it in the next 3 to 5 years) that would cause what is now currently top-end technology to suddenly because bottom of the barrel.

So this morning I checked out this website pc-builds.com/calculator to see where my system configuration was bottlenecked and as it turns out there is a very minimal bottleneck maximum of 3.3% but the average bottle neck is .22% of CPU at max load of the base clock frequency even at 4K/60hz. The "recommended Upgrade" of a 3070 is only 2% faster at 4K....so for the money I would spend to overhaul my system with new tech I think I will stick with the components I have.

There was a small side note that said "The 2080 Super requires at least 64 Ghb of RAM to work efficiently, so you may consider making the upgrade from 32 to 64 GB" But even 32 GB of DDR4 is overkill for gaming, so O think I'm good. I would only upgrade to the max amount of 64 GB DDR4 if I was going to do an overhaul because my current Rip Jaws 4 modules wouldn't be compatible with the Z 4 or Z 590 series motherboard. Not to mention that most new boards only support dual channel RAM and my current system is configured for quad channel running an XMP of 1.

In comparison, my dad's system is an 8700K with 32GB DDR4 RGB 3000 (running at 2666) with an RTX 2080  XC (gen 1) on a Z390 ASUS Maximus Hero X Wifi....and apparently his bottle neck is only .03% of the GPU.

I know my GPU is a step up from his, and technically there's not much difference between my CPU and his....But as his system configuration overall is newer, I think the results lend themselves to the fact that his system is newer and therefore slightly more efficient even though the individual components aren't much different.

Seee full explanation below:


Average bottleneck percentage: 3.07% (GPU bottleneck)

*This result is based on average CPU and GPU usage from different programs and games. It changes based on operating system, background processes activity and targeted applications. This result is not universal and changes based on differences in hardware and software environments. Please do not use this calculator primary as decision maker than as helping tool to understand performance correlations between different components.



Graphic card and processor will work great together on 2160p/4K resolution.

Intel Core i7-8700K (Clock speed at 100%) with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 (Clock speed at 100%) x1 will produce only 0.03% of GPU bottleneck on 2160p/4K resolution.



(retrieved from pc-builds.com/calculator/Core_i7-8700K/GeForce_RTX_2080/0NY12llu/32/100, March 28th 2021)

EDIT:  Just for giggles and curiosity, I decided to do a balls tot he wall comparison of the newest, hottest, most expensive setup.....and found out that a 10-900K with a 3090 and 64 GB RAM would produce an average bottleneck of 1.3 to 4.72% of max GPU load at 4K/60hz.......which appears to be even higher than my current setup, which is confusing.  But if the numbers aren't lying, I will still choose to tick with my current system because apparently my bottleneck is lower than the most expensive stuff on the shelves right now.

Glad you actually got a card from Microcenter. A lot of people have to wait multiple days in line just for a video card.

It's crazy how the MSRP for the 3070 was supposed to be $500, but the MSRP for the AIB cards are now about $700 to $800. Still you shouldn't have any buyer's remorse.

The GPU shortage is so bad that as long as you didn't pay more than the MSRP, you've got a great deal. People are now willing to fork over $1300 for a 3070 on eBay. It's pure madness.