AMD Ryzen CPUs

Now that prices have reached a somewhat decent level, I'm thinking about jumping on board as well.
Not yet sure if 6 cores or 8 cores, but the 1600X or 1700X are the preferred options, paired with 32GB of RAM.
GPU will follow once the Vega GPUs have reached a decent level as well and maybe there are some custom designs available with improved PCB.

 

You can save a little money and get the R7 1700 and OC it yourself, the cooler is pretty decent. X models don't have a heatsink. Unless you don't care for money very much and can safely buy 1700X without regrets.

 

I'd go with an X model now if you intend to OC.
They are better binned, so they achieve higher clock speeds or the same clock speeds as non-X models at lower voltage.

 

I agree with @Schnipp. In my country, the 1700x is only 20 or so more euros than the 1700 now.

I went with a 1700 when Ryzen was released because the price difference with a 1700x was much higher.

My 1700 won't go higher than 3.75 Ghz, which I find a bit low. If I made the choice today, I'd go with a 1700x because of the price difference. You can expect to get to 3.9Ghz+ with most of them, which is not the case with the 1700s. To me, the additional clockspeed is definitely worth 20€.

Can't go wrong with either of course: Ryzen 5 and 7 are great CPUs which will only get better with time as software uses more cores.

 

Here it's 45 euros difference so it's not negligible. If it's only 20 for you, then great.

 

I don't even considered using the boxed cooler, even if it was provided with one, so I don't care about that part.
Not yet sure which cooler I'm going to get, but most likely a Scythe Katana 4.
Might even reuse the current cooler from the FX4350, but need to check if it fits.
(It's a Scythe as well, but not sure which model, from the top of my head.)

Actually the Ryzen 7 + Scythe Katana 4 is a combo I'm going to test this weekend during a PC build.
Very curious how that works out.
But in that case it's indeed the non-X version, since for a "pure" desktop PC the clock frequency isn't that important.
(And actually the 8-core is only because of the use of VMs as well.)

 

Always been a big fan of Noctua coolers. Don't think anything can beat a ND15 as long as it fits

 

You should go with whichever cooler is the most silent in my opinion.

I read that you reach the limit of the chip long before temperature becomes an issue in most cases and it's certainly been true for me with a noctua nhu12s. I chose it because I was not sure the D15 would fit.

At 1.30V and 100 pct CPU load during 6 hours, the hottest core reached 52 degrees only. The cooling would most likely be fine up to 1.40V if more Vcore helped reach higher clockspeed, which is not the case with my chip.

 

Noctua air coolers are very highly rated. In fact, they are so good that they can match a few water coolers. I will be getting a Noctua air cooler whenever I decide to upgrade to a new PC.

 

Vega's reference PCB is already overkill and one of the best amd has ever made. The only actual limit with Vega with the stock cooling are temps and noise with high RPMs.

That doesn't mean that the card sucks but if you want to get resonable noise levels and safe temps, you can't push the card too much with overclocking, leaving free performance in the table.

 

I run a Noctua NH-U12S since I got my i7-920 7-8 years ago and got a free mounting kit from Noctua for the AM4 board. (only needed invoices of the new cpu/board and my Noctua invoice)
I would have just bought it with the new parts since it was only 5-6€, but it wasn't in stock anywhere else than Noctua themself.

The quality of the Noctua cooler is about the best I've seen in PC-gear overall since I'm building my own PC's.
I only removed the dual Noctua fans with a PWM NB e-Loop fan though, but that was mainly due to wanting to run a PWM fan.

 

The bigger thing right now isn't the PCB but rather that the prices are a bit too high IMO. I'd rather wait a bit more and then see what the market provides.

 

I'm running Scythe coolers since about 10 years now.

But yeah, the Noctua coolers are very good, too. I've actually looked at a few tests and in the end it didn't really matter that much which one you pick.
Also many of the cooler manufacturers provided free upgrade kits. Both Noctua and Scythe did, but also others.

 

Till a couple of weeks ago, you had the change to grab one of these gpus for MRSP like i did. No idea now if there is still any shop selling them for a fair price and i wouldn't expect custom models anytime soon since there is radio silence from partners except for asus that said "mid october" but we are here and still no news.

 

Maybe, but I think I'll just wait until next year.

 

I set up a Ryzen 1700 with a Scythe Katana cooler during the weekend and temperature-wise that works very well.
However, IMO the 92.5mm fan is a bit too noisy, 120mm is definitely the way to go for.

On the other hand I had a look at the Scythe website and saw that the Yasya I'm running currently is already compatible with AM4 without changes, so I think I'll just keep that one or buy a Mugen, but I wouldn't expect a big difference between the two.

Very nice CPU though, looking forward to having that in my own PC.

 

Note the minor difference between Noctua ND H15 and 15S. S is for small and means be default the cooler has just one fan. Another one can later be added however. The towers also a re bit smaller, which can be critical regarding the placement of the RAM bars in some towers/on some mainboards. The smaller Noctua looses less than 2 degrees to its bigger brother, so the disadvantage is minimal.

Also, the tests I have seen show the Noctua 15 is not just equal to "some" watercoolers, but is as good and mostly even better than most AIO coolers. It matches their temps or is even cooler - and in most cases it is more silent.

I am planning with the S-model myself.

The size and weight of the Noctua (1.2 kg) is frightening, however, but there are even higher constructions, like the Black Rock Pro 3 by BeQuite! .

Some of the Alpenföhn models should be checked out as well, their top models are said to be top indeed.

 

everything above 1kg is a bit scary.

Even with the 900g of my Scythe coolers, I'm a bit sceptical, but ok, so far every motherboard withstood that weight.

 

I have the NH D15 model the heavy one that's at 980g and it's fine. I've been running the heavy ones for the last two PC's I've had. Great fans ultra quite and very efficient. They usually run around 500 rpm but sometimes can go down to even 200 rpm. Normally I gotta readjust the motherboard to allow it to drop the fan rpm that low.

Atm it's attached to a ASUS tuf z270 mark 2 and I find everything runs smooth at 4.8ghz on an i7 7700k using air.

 

Regarding the mounting of such a cooler, is it a construction that just sits on the mainboard, or is it at the contct point in any way connected to the twoer frame as well for added stability? My concern always was that 1 kg mounted just to the mainboard sooner or later must and will start to bend it, maybe even causing microfractions then in powerlines.

Or should one use a bar that you put between the underside of the hanging cooler and on the outer box of the PSU at the bottom, just to relieve some of the weight this way?

I admit this weight attached to such a small area of the mainboard, scares me a bit.

P.S.Forget the bar thing, the gfx card likely would be in the way...