Question Which of these X470 boards are the best?

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hellzer

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I'm not sure what you mean by that... there's considerable difference in performance. It most depends on how you measure it and how you use it.

Right. Well for gaming I mean... You pay a considerable amount of extra money but the performance difference between R7 3700x and R5 3600 is unnoticeable. It's about 1-2 FPS increase for 100 euros of investment according to the benchmarks I've seen so far. And I also read that manual overclocking doesn't get you anywhere.

Extra cores for doing other stuff might be a different story.
 

DMAN999

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My 3700x allows me to stream to 2 1080p TV's while I'm playing games like AC Odyssey or Far Cry 5, etc.
I really don't think the 3600 would do that as seamlessly as my 3700x does.
And I do some video encoding about once a week so the 3700x benefits me in that as well.

But as far as strictly gaming goes, I think the difference wouldn't be as noticeable.
On my rig I would expect to see around 5-10 fps increase over the 3600 but since I game at 1080p/60 Hz so they are both pretty much overkill for me for just gaming. :D
 

DMAN999

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Do you think playing any game on 1080p @ 75 Hz (GTX 1080) would I notice a difference between having 3600 and 3700x?

Only if you had an FPS counter running.
On my rig current AAA games run anywhere from 85 to way over 120 fps depending on the game.
Since my Monitor is only 60 Hz all those extra fps are essentially meaningless.

On my rig my 1660 Ti is definitely the limiting factor when it comes to fps.
 
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hellzer

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I'm not sure what you mean by that... there's considerable difference in performance. It most depends on how you measure it and how you use it.

There are no benchmarks that can quantitatively express just how nice it is playing a heavily threaded game (RotTR in my case) with my 8 core /16 thread 3700x vs. when i play the same game with 2 cores disabled. There are absolutely no hesitations when suddenly explosions pop up, for instance, and arrows always track in the air to the target. But I'm sure that, with more threads at it's disposal, those annoying little housekeeping tasks Windows 10 is constantly doing in the background are much less of an issue. On second thought, maybe I'm wrong, maybe that's what the 1% lows value in reviews is all about.

But if you do any video encoding / rendering you'll defo appreciate having the extra threads working to get it done too.

Do you think playing any game on 1080p @ 75 Hz (GTX 1080) would I notice a difference between having 3600 and 3700x?
Or better to save that money for future upgrades and maybe even better performance/1 core AMDs?

I mean there is an option to put in 3700x that has a decent stock cooler instead of 3600 and a 90$ cooler. Same expenses pretty much (well not really lol). However, I found mixed answers about 3700x Wraith Prism cooler and temperatures. There's also 3600x which has the best stock speed out of 3.

What would you do?
 
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...It's about 1-2 FPS ...

You're right. That's where I agree you can't really quantify just how nice it feels...it's just smoother in games. No more hesitation or stutters when a bird flies into the scene, for instance. Or a scene suddenly errupts into action but my character can't move for a half second... and getting shot to pieces for it. I do tend to push the eye candy for my hardware because I like the art of the scenes.

But even just knocking about in the OS is smoother. It may be hard to justify the extra euros for, but there is something to say for smoothness with 20 tabs open in 2 firefox instances on two different Task View desktops and a 6 mb spreadsheet that's auto-calcing every time i enter a new value with emails downloading and all the other things going on. I can't blame it on 'paging' anymore..not with 16Gb of memory!

On one hand it's a tough call to go for a 3700X though. As you say, it's good to save for a later upgrade... but we really don't know what Zen4 is or even for sure if it will work on AM4 as we'd like. Zen5 is especially uncertain.

But one thing I do is try to look at things with common sense: Intel is going to be coming with a lot of cores. When Intel moves that way, the developers will too. We're going to be getting a lot more games that are more like RotTR an SotTR (heavily multi-threaded) than Witcher3 (lightly or single threaded). So having more threads available seems a future-proofing thing to do.
 
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hellzer

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You're right. That's where I agree you can't really quantify just how nice it feels...it's just smoother in games. No more hesitation or stutters when a bird flies into the scene, for instance. Or a scene suddenly errupts into action but my character can't move for a half second... and getting shot to pieces for it. I do tend to push the eye candy for my hardware because I like the art of the scenes.

But even just knocking about in the OS is smoother. It may be hard to justify the extra euros for, but there is something to say for smoothness with 20 tabs open in 2 firefox instances on two different Task View desktops and a 6 mb spreadsheet that's auto-calcing every time i enter a new value with emails downloading and all the other things going on. I can't blame it on 'paging' anymore..not with 16Gb of memory!

On one hand it's a tough call to go for a 3700X though. As you say, it's good to save for a later upgrade... but we really don't know what Zen4 is or even for sure if it will work on AM4 as we'd like. Zen5 is especially uncertain.

But one thing I do is try to look at things with common sense: Intel is going to be coming with a lot of cores. When Intel moves that way, the developers will too. We're going to be getting a lot more games that are more like RotTR an SotTR (heavily multi-threaded) than Witcher3 (lightly or single threaded). So having more threads available seems a future-proofing thing to do.

Well my chrome is always open with about 20 tabs. ^^ A thing to consider then... Hmmm...
Any personal thoughts on the X stock coolers?
 
Do you think playing any game on 1080p @ 75 Hz (GTX 1080) would I notice a difference between having 3600 and 3700x?
...

I had that choice, and I had a 3600 for a few days and took it back to exchange for a 3700X when the store got stock....

But then, you have to remember I also really want to finish video encodes faster. Nothing beats threads for encoding h265.

The Wraithe that comes with the 3700X will be adequate if you don't OC it. It's really that good. It may get a bit loud in heavy use scenarios but in most games it doesn't. You'll probably have to adjust fan curves though, the most common and biggest gripe is it pulses, but that is because they're trying to track temperature too closely.
 
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hellzer

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I had that choice, and I had a 3600 for a few days and took it back to exchange for a 3700X when the store got stock....

But then, you have to remember I also really want to finish video encodes faster. Nothing beats threads for encoding h265.

The Wraithe that comes with the 3700X will be adequate if you don't OC it. It's really that good. It may get a bit loud in heavy use scenarios but in most games it doesn't. You'll probably have to adjust fan curves though, the most common and biggest gripe is it pulses, but that is because they're trying to track temperature too closely.

https://www.1a.lt/p/be-quiet-dark-rock-pro-4-cpu-cooler-135mm/hdl
Is this a great cooler for an overclocked 3700X? And how much improvement that would be over Wraith Prism overall?
I have never considered liquid cooling simply because I never had any experience dealing with them. In the current setup I would have to look for the case where I could install a radiator in the front as installing it at the top is not a good idea. And I am not sure I am willing to go through that hassle.

So TL;DR. Are there really good options in Air Coolers that could keep my overclocked CPU like 3700X practically chill and is a cooler like Dark Rock Pro 4 one of those?

Both DRP4 and Noctua NH-D15 weigh in at 1300 grams. I hope that's not a problem?
I think I could install any of those.
 
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https://www.1a.lt/p/be-quiet-dark-rock-pro-4-cpu-cooler-135mm/hdl
Is this a great cooler for an overclocked 3700X? And how much improvement that would be over Wraith Prism overall?
I have never considered liquid cooling simply because I never had any experience dealing with them. In the current setup I would have to look for the case where I could install a radiator in the front as installing it at the top is not a good idea. And I am not sure I am willing to go through that hassle.

So TL;DR. Are there really good options in Air Coolers that could keep my overclocked CPU like 3700X practically chill and is a cooler like Dark Rock Pro 4 one of those?

First thing is to understand what your overclocking goals and expectations are for a Zen2 CPU. Because I hope you've been watching the tech reviews: all-core overclocking offers limited clock-lift potential, generates massive amounts of heat, and gets extremely minor performance gains (especially gaming FPS) vs. just letting using the Zen boosting algorithms to let it boost as it needs to.

Take for instance my 3700X: I have a 240mm AIO it sits under. I can get a 4.3 Ghz all-core OC and the graphics score difference in 3DMark is no different. I don't notice games any difference. In CB20 multi-thread benchmark score goes up but single thread goes DOWN; both by less than 1% but still. 4.3G is a major OC for a 3700X; so for all that I have to watch my processor laboring under fixed high volts 24/7 and AIO is vital to keep cool in a 30 min. encoding.

By contrast, I turn on a feature called PBO and open up the boost limits (power, peak current, total current) to mother board limits (what the VRM is rated to handle). Then I get frequent single core boosting to 4.4Ghz on light loaded threads, and even moderately heavy loaded threads run at 4.3-4.35Ghz constantly. My multi-thread scores in CB20 go down less than 1%, ST scores up about 1% and I can't tell the difference in anything. For that my AIO fans are running at 10% almost constantly even in games.

OC'g ryzen 3000 is generally considered pointless. AMD has wrung all the goodness out of the silicon with their boosting algorithm so that's just the way it is.

I think that heatsink might work beautifully on a 3700X, but I think it might be overkill too. I'd STRONGLY suggest using the wraithe prism that comes with a 3700X, being sure to customize fan curves to keep it quiet, and see how you like it. When you get the bug to start trying to OC, make a decision whether to buy one then.

Also, you can't exactly keep a Ryzen 3000 chill. It's an inevitable side effect of the aggressive boosting behaviour coupled with 7nm geometry and how it reports temperatures. When one core boosts to 4.4Ghz for a few ms it will heat up a tiny area of the die to 50 C or so, then the boost will dial back volts to keep temp in check, the boost will drop back and temperature will ramp back down over several MS. That happens over and over, you see it as little pulses of temperature in the temp charts (that's also why you can't track temp too closely with fan curves or they pulse).

There are temp sensors all over the CCX's...in each core. And the Tdie temp reported is the HOTTEST at the moment so in that moment you see 50 C it's really a tiny little area of the chip that for one instant gets to dissipate the entire TDP rating of the CPU. Trying to keep that 'chill' with a cooler is like turning up the AC to try and put out a lit match in the room.

Unless you chill it with LN2, which is how they get 5Ghz on Ry3K.

Check out this vid, it's fascinating if you can handle his lack of a script:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORHYffg5ipM&t=1781s
 
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