My simple build(s).

[xs2man]

My simple build(s). 4770k + Ryzen R7 1700

So, new here. Thought I'd post my current rig, and let slip some plans for the "near" future.

First off, a picture...



So, my current build is coming up for a couple years old. Very little has changed.

Pioneer 16x BDRW Multilayer 128GB
NZXT Phantom 530 Black Full Tower Case
Intel Core i7 4770K 3.50GHz Socket 1150 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Kingston 8GB 2400MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL11 DIMM (Kit of 2) XMP Predator Series
Corsair AF120 LED White Quiet Edition High Airflow 120mm Fan Twin Pack
Gigabyte GA-H87-HD3 Socket 1150 VGA DVI HDMI ATX Motherboard
Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO - SSD Only
Corsair Hydro Series H60 2013 model High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Corsair RM 650W Fully Modular 80+ Gold Power Supply

A couple things have changed though. I know run 16GB of Crucial RAM (just 1600MHz, basic stuff).
Also, the SDD quickly ran out of space, so was replaced with a 500 GB unit.

Added some fans:

Corsair AF120 LED Blue Quiet Edition High Airflow 120mm Fan Twin Pack
Corsair AF140 LED Blue Quiet Edition High Airflow 140mm Fan
Corsair SP120 120mm Low Noise High Pressure Fan for Radiators Heatsinks Dual Pack.

So, as I'm sure you will have noticed, no GPU, or sound card. Soundcard is on its way, as I decided I would like to upgrade my sounds. But I don't game on this system, preferring my xbox for that.

The rig was built for encoding video. And serving media out to my renderers throughout my property. So running Serviio and Plex. Obviously I have added some HDD's. Currently have 2 6TB WD's and a 2TB for local docs and stuff. I have just lost a 3TB drive though, so will be adding another 6TB shortly.



So, future plans?

Well, I wanted to move to a more NAS-like solution. So I bought a QNAP TS453A. I hated it. I am NOT a fan of Linux, not at all. So returned it. And I planned on building a dedicated NAS, running an OS I could get along with. So I'll be throwing Windows on it. Probably not the best for some of the things I want to do, but the stuff I find most important to me, i.e. proper automation, I can already achieve with my current windows machine.

So, I dug out an old Dell OptiPlex I had sitting around, installed Windows 10, and set it up as a headless system to test. Confirmed I could do what I wanted with it, so then built a "basket" to see what I needed. And started researching components.

During my research, I clocked a video of a guy who has his NAS doing his video transcoding. Excellent idea. Means I'll need a bigger CPU though on the NAS than originally planned. So decided I will re-house my current build into a smaller case, and set that up as the NAS. And build myself a new daily driver. So started looking at i5's for the daily machine.

Then clocked all the hype about the new AMD Zen chips. So that put the build on hold while I await pricing and some benchmarks on the new AMD and intel chips, to see where the market lies. Hopefully I can get something decent quick for around £200 (for the CPU).

In the meantime, there is some gear I am ready to buy. I haven't been able to OC my CPU, as the cooler is absolutely rubbish. It looks nice and all, but the H60 simply isn't man enough for a 4770k. Even on a normal clock, the temp can easily hit the 90's on full load, and low 40's on idle. I never though to under-volt it until a recent video on here comparing 30 coolers or something. So will try that. But, as this CPU will be going in a headless rig, I want to make absolutely sure that it remains cool enough. So a new cooler will be required. Love my AIO's look, but I'm thinking of going back to air to keep costs down a bit.

 

[Kilbane]

First off, welcome to the forum!

If you are looking for something to run as a server for supplying stuff like Plex, you are not going to need anything that powerful to be honest. My server is sat on a Q9500 quad core, and that can transcode 4k to my TV with no issues. So don't worry too much with CPU speed. Obviously the more you are streaming to the more CPU power you will need.

 

[xs2man]

I have, currently, 6-7 renderers. Obviously they are unlikely to all be needed at the same time, but potentially 2 or 3 1080p transcodes, and in the future, potentially at 4K.

However, it's not the on-the-fly transcoding power I'm looking for. It's for proper video encoding. I am on a few sites that have some rather detailed guides on how to get proper transparency when ripping BD's. The last 1080p final encode I done on my 4770k took around 20 hours with a 2-pass encode. and came out at around 16GB. So the i7 is absolutely the sort of CPU power I'll need for it. I can do all the test encodes to finalise the settings on my "daily" rig. But I need proper processing power for the final encodes.

I could justify the upgrade to a 8C/16T CPU for this work, but I'll settle for an i7 doing the hard work, and a lesser CPU for daily duties (although I'm secretly hoping for an AMD CPU with similar performance to my I& for the daily).

 

[Lynx]

Welcome to the forums,

If you're planning to do all your transcoding/encoding on the NAS, why not build a ZEN powered NAS and use the i7 for the daily? An 8c/16t would deff be useful there!

Also it sounds like your cooler isn't mounted properly, you should be getting better Temps at stock than that I'm sure.

 

[xs2man]

Sure, the 8c/16t CPU would be beneficial there, but then cost is a factor. I'd ideally like to keep the build cost below around £500 (I still have the ickle SSD for an OS drive on the NAS). So that only leaves around £200-250 for the CPU, and even that is pushing it, I had planned a 6500 @ around £185. I suspect the new Zen 8core CPU alone will likely cost more than the total budget.

Here was my first build list:

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler "RR-212E-16PK-R1, 4 Heatpipe, 1x 120mm PWM Fan, Intel / AMD" by Cooler Master

Corsair CC-9011075-WW Carbide Series 100R Windowed Mid-Tower ATX Computer Case - Black

Kingston KVR21R15D8/8 RAM 8 GB 2133 MHz DDR4 ECC Reg CL15 DIMM 288-Pin

Corsair CP-9020101-UK CX Series CX450M ATX/EPS Semi-Modular 80 Plus Bronze 450 W Power Supply Unit

Gigabyte GA-Z170M-D3H Motherboard

Intel Core Skylake Processor i5-6500/3.2 GHz Processor CPU

That build comes in at £481, so right on budget. Any coin left over would possibly be best spent on extra RAM, or extra CPU power, but there is not really enough left there to jump to 8c/16t.

I have been planning on re-mounting the H60 for a while now, just never had the time to do it.

 

[xs2man]

So, this morning I decided to give re-mounting the H60 a bash. I had some Gelid GC-Extreme kicking about that I had bought to do this a long time ago with.

So hunted that out, took off the block, cleaned the block and CPU, re-applied, put back together (also installed a Soundblaster Z and 6TB WD drive while I was in there).

So, when I booted it back up, it looked pretty good. Idle seemed to hover around high 20's - low 30's according to CPUID HWMonitor. So I loaded up Handbrake and started a quick encode of a movie, to get load temps.

I'ts just turned 12 mins into the transcode, and core temps are 71, 71, 70, 65. So the last core is still a good bit cooler than the rest, but it always has been. The first 3 cores are a lot tighter together though, the used to have a good 5-8 degree seperation. And I'm no longer in the 90's on all cores while on load. There "may" be potential for a small OC there as it's still on auto volts. But that sort of fun can wait until after Christmas.

 

[xs2man]

Bit more messing about, and I noticed that the 2 fans on the radiator (push / pull configuration) weren't getting up to speed. Quick check of things with Gigabytes monitors, and I had the fans up to full speeds.

Temps dropped dramatically. Now have the cores maxing out at 49-57 degrees with a handbrake decode (the most cpu intesive thing I do). Think there is headroom to finally stick on an overclock.

What sort of max temps should I be looking at here? 70? 75? 80?

 

[Lynx]

What sort of max temps should I be looking at here? 70? 75? 80?

I would take anything below 85 for cpu as there's no dynamic thermal throttling. You should be able to get a nice little overclock within that window.

 

[xs2man]

So, a little update.

I decided against overclocking the i7. I did upgrade the motherboard to a MSI Z97 Gaming 5, with a view to overclocking it. But didn't bother. Instead, I re-cased it, changed the RAM to 16GB of 1600 MHz Crucial, changed the PSU to a Superflower 450w Platinum+ and reduced a lot of the fans. In fact, I hacked the fan profiles (as all the fans are 3 pin), so that they dont even come on until the CPU temp goes over 40 deg. Even with zero fans running (just the H60 pump), the machine idles around mid-20's. This PC has been moved to the cinema, so silence is appreciated here. It is now silent. Much quieter than my projector. Which is nice.

So now it sits in a Corsair Carbide Spec-Alpha case. It runs a 120GB SSD I had kicking about, and one red and one blue WD 6TB drives.




So that's the update for that rig.

In other news. And there are potentially some hints towards this other news in the pictures. The release of Ryzen got me all excited. Unfortunately I blew my original budget. Massively.

So, the cost of the 1700, and the fact it OC's close to what an 1800X OC's to was just too tempting. So my new daily, rather than being an i5, is, in fact, a AMD Ryzen R7 1700. Oops.

Spec:

Phanteks P400S case with Tempered Glass side panel.
Gigabyte AB-350 Gaming 3 Mobo
AMD Ryzen 1700 (8 core / 16 thread processor)
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 2400 MHz RAM
Sapphire AMD RX480 Nitro+ (4GB) GPU
Corsair RM650 PSU
Stock cooler and fans just now.
480GB Cruicial SSD
2TB Hitachi Deskstar HDD

I am currently awaiting my AM4 bracket for an H115i I managed to pick up. So I'm running a small 3.7 GHz OC just now. Hopefully manage to push it to 3.9-4.0 with reasonable temps once the bracket comes.

Now, some of the kit has obviously come from the old system. SSD, HDD, PSU. I then managed to pick up a couple things second hand. And was basically buying bits and pieces off my weekly "pocket money" that I asign myself, rather than out of the PC budget, which was pretty much blown on the CPU, Mobo + case.





My NZXT case has been stripped and cleaned, and is now for sale. It's still, surprisingly, immaculate, so thats good. Think I have a family member buying it next week, so that's good too.

Thats about it for just now. Further update when I get my bracket, and put on a decent OC.

 

[Excalabur50]

Nice neat builds dude very nice

 

[xs2man]

Thanks. Pics are terrible for the revamped i7 build, lol. I'll see if I can do better. It's almost as neat (I think neater because no GPU).

But for the life of me, I couldn't get the H60 rad running a push / pull on the exhaust fan location. The side panel just wouldn't fit nice, and there was some rattling going on. So in the end, I had to mount it to the front. I did consider upgrading to a 240mm radiator here, but blew the budget on the Ryzen build anyway, so it'll stay as is.

 

[Lynx]

Like the new rig man. I see you got a GPU this time, does that mean you will be dabbling in some PC gaming?

 

[xs2man]

Not necessarily. I have a GPU because the Ryzen isn't an APU. That said, it is an RX480, so a little overkill for browsing the interweb and "playing" facebook. So might give some games a go.

 

[xs2man]

New gaming surface, so the room is almost finished.



Almost. I'm still sorting out the space for one of my other hobbies...