End of Year PC Build

Steam has a really nice backup feature, you should try it.

When you install a game through a backup created by Steam, you usually need to download some files to keep the game updated. So that's normal.



I haven't been buying too many games to be honest. GTA Online keeps me quite busy because Rockstar still update the game quite regularly.

That's 300€ on "sale" in Germany. I checked Prime Day prices against what I paid for my M.2 and of course they list bogus prices and claim a 42% price drop when in reality it's ten bucks, lol. I usually ignore such scam sale days. I guess sometimes there's a good deal. It's rarely the case though.

Still debating whether or not I should buy another M.2 and put everything on SSDs like you and ditch the HDDs, or rather mostly not use them anymore. Because every time I'm backing up my modded games it takes like an hour for each because it's like 80GB. And that's just Fallout and Skyrim. Starfield alone without mods will be huge.

M.2 3.0 and SATA seem to have the same price now! That's awesome. Of course HDDs are half the price still but then again I won't need a lot of space. Two 2 TB M.2 should be sufficient for me for years to come. Only games I don't uninstall right after finishing them are my modded Bethesda games. I've managed with 500GB on the games drive for eight years!!! And I still got those extra 500GB now that everything got wiped. *cough*

So ram chip and not bad ram slot on the motherboard?
Did you try the good one in the other ram slots and make sure of no errors?
Should make sure its not the motherboard.

Whoops I am sorry the Tech guy probably did that. 
Though if he didn't be sure you do that first -it will save you money.
I know that would be a rarity but what good will another RAM chip do if the RAM slot is actually bad.

Which Model was your RAM chips again?
That said Kingston is a good brand. 

It's Corsair Vengeance. I actually had Crucial Ballistix before. The cheapest slowest RAM at the time, lol. The Kingston would be 20€ more expensive for the same speed. Not sure if I should pay extra or assume the Corsair replacement will work fine. Because surely nobody is unlucky twice?!

He said of the 1500 computers he put together over the years with Kingston, just 2 or so were defective. But I guess you can get unlucky with any brand.

I sent him a message asking about the board slot. No reply yet. It's probably standard procedure and it's insulting to ask but well. Better safe than sorry!

He will bring me the PC in the evening with just the one RAM bar. Told me to download a bunch of games again and play some, to make sure everything is working fine. He did not get any more blue screens since running only one RAM bar.

I did ask him before if my RAM being OC on the board and needing adjustment could cause issues? Told him to unlock it in BIOS. Today he said it puts it on OC automatically?? So that shouldn't be the cause of issues. (I'm not sure I'm relaying all info correctlly though, keep that in mind.)

There were other errors in the stress test but they can be ignored probably. Repeated CPU heat errors at 100 degrees. Afaik those temps for stress tests are normal, right? The 13700k runs hot. I hope it doesn't mean my cooler isn't good enough. Gaming usually doesn't reach those temps for long periods of time, right?
Dude told me to adjust the fan curve. I have never done that, lol. I just kept my machine on default for 8 years. I only adjusted the fan speed by that button on the case, 3 speeds. I game on max almost all the time unless it's an indie game. I game with headphones on so I don't hear the otherwise kinda loud fans...

Minor writing errors on the SATA. He does NOT think it's failing. Could be due to the heat. He said they can last twice as long. But I should of course do backups frequently because once SSDs are dead they're dead. Apparently with HDDs it's possible to still access them somehow and save the data?

Well, I plan on putting only unmodded games on the old SATA so if it dies, it's no loss at all. I can just download the games again on a different drive and access savefiles from the cloud.

I asked him about adding another M.2 and he said that would be a bad idea because if I understood correctly the one installed is already causing the card to heat up a bit, so he put the card on the slot a little further away, and even more heat on the GPU would not be a good thing.

All this talk about temps is making me nervous...
I don't know what's normal and what isn't and how it effects the longevity of the components.

Gosh, everything ran butter smooth for all those years on the old machine. Then again I never did any tests so I don't know if some things were not ideal.

"There were other errors in the stress test but they can be ignored probably. Repeated CPU heat errors at 100 degrees. Afaik those temps for stress tests are normal, right?"

Actual answer: depends on the test, but yeah at 100C it'll throttle down GHz's.

If the stress test was using cpu 100% for long time, many of the lesser aircoolers will not keep up with it and the CPU throttles, meaning drops frequency down to keep it running. There are only few of aircoolers keeping up with the high end intel CPU's and one of them is the top end Noctua. Even those cannot keep up if the enviroment where machine is, is hot. 360 or 420 aio liquid coolers work the best but are not the most silent usually if this is something one wants (I do).

Anyway, usually during gaming you dont see this happen, or at least I at work when profiling around hundred games a year, dont see this much in actual gaming situation. It is usually just a short time fex. after loading a level it needs to be decompressed - this is the time usually CPU is at 100%. Some games might use a lot of CPU but I have not seen constant 100% usage much outside bugs happening.

On audio side, the 100% load is almost never - well I could say never - achieved. Now on 3D rendering, not modeling, 100% can be achieved. A good and used test is the Cinebench R23 Single and Multicore render tests. Also Blender is used for these sometimes.

I am going with the trusty Noctua with i7-13700K

I bought the Peerless Assassin 120 recommended here. Less then half the price of the N15 but runs only like 2 degrees hotter supposedly. I hope that wasn't a mistake.

Haha, I also use my 4090 on a 1440p monitor. I think it's overkill especially with my current CPU.

Honestly, I'd get a 4080 instead if the 4080 weren't so overpriced. When I bought my 4090 for $1600, the 4080 were being sold for $1200. The 4090 offers up to 40% better performance for just $400 more. So naturally I went with the 4090 instead.

Hi Kappa. Corsairs are good sticks. 

 Yes that is a good idea to use only a single module of RAM for a time (maybe a week or 10 days) then introduce a second (and run that for another week or so) and so on....(and a 3rd and 4th if you have them and so on).  That way if you limit the modules in a given period of time you will be able to tell which one is defective or causing other problems, and if that is the case, you can send even a single RAM module back to the manufacturer and if it is under warranty, they will replace it.

Also, if you're running Windows 10 Pro (and I'm sure Windows 11 has this as well) go to the Search bar (wherever it is in Windows 11....the middle-right side of the Task Bar, is it?) and type in "Windows Memory Diagnostic"  (this is a smiliar tool to MemTest86/MemTest64 but not as intensive) but it will tell you in any way if a RAM Module is causing any problems.   And if you want a more intensive test....there's Memtest64 or Memtest86 (64 or 32 biy versions).

On my old system, the X99 Phoenix SLI/Intel 6850K set-up...I was using GSKILL Ripjaws4 and I had a slew of RAM problems so I took all my RAM out and replaced it a stick at a time, first trying each of them singlely, then in different combinations with each other as pairs, then three, then all four.....and it didn't take my long to find the one module that was defective so I sent it back to GSKILL and within three days they sent me a brand new stick and it worked great after that.

And I think that is the policy of most RAM companies these days, so if you should happen to find that it is a RAM module that is causing all your issues, they are pretty easy to replace without worry.


As your your Fans....I can't speak to the Thermals of the 13 series CPU as I don't own one, but they can't be any worse than the 10 series which I have, and I've been told the 10 series runs quite hot (upwards of 90 in some instances)....But unless I am running a FULL System Scan with my AV suite and I see the temps bounce near 70C for just a split second (64,62,68, 70, 61, 58, 69,70, 52 etc etc) and then it cools right down to idle at 28 to 30 C when finished.   Even under intense gaming sessions in Summer heat, I barely hit 45C.

Having said that, what Cooler are you using?   I've always had amazing XP with Corsair but there are several on the market that give exceptional cooling performance.   Are you a Liquid-Cool person or of the Air Cooled crowd?    Either is fine, I suppose, but I tend to lean towards AIOs/CLCs (All In One/Closed Loop Coolers) as I think they give over all better performance.

Either way, you can try as your guy suggested and adjust the fan curve in your software suite.  All that will do is raise or lower then output of the fans based on the temperature inside your case.  For exmaple, they may be set by default to spin up if the temperature of the CPU or case reaches 45C.   But you can adjust that either way +/- if you want them to be active at a different rate of temperature.


HOW that is done exactly depends on the software you are using, but you just manually adjust the curve +/-.

Yes I try to keep my systems for minimum 5 years...push 10 if I can. The longer I can get out of any system or part without problems or needing replacements the better. And if the games I play arent showing any degredation in how they perform...all the better.

I only rebuild if absolutely necessary.