Space Engine

Yeah I did. I recall I also did repairs, burned resistors and bad caps.

Anyway I got my LG 31.5" VA panel today and wow I am impressed. night and day difference from my old 20" AOC that's almost a decade old.  Fired up SE and I saw way more detail and lens flare effects that I didn't even know was there on my old monitor.  The contrast of VA is awesome.

I noticed my PC runs way hotter and louder now, turns out at 1440p my GPU is 100% bound now and it's really pushing the GPU hard where it was only on and off utilization on 900p before. And its failing to completely load the terrain. At this res and setting I no longer have enough vram it seems.  PC upgrade is in order I think.

Are you running at highest settings?  I have those settings and running without any issues at 720p

Sort of, custom settings a bit higher than ultra. though I only can run a LOD of 0.6, lack of vram makes it load forever if I go above that.  I may have to lower that again as now with the higher res it gets stuck loading terrain forever as well.

There is a lot of stuttering too, that is my CPU struggling.   I want to get a 3900X and maybe a 5700XT around xmas.  Once I get those I can run max at the native res hopefully.  Currently during loading my max fps is about 20 lol once sitting still and its loaded on a surface of a planet I get about 40-50 fps.  Pretty poor considering I have now a 144Hz monitor, feels like a slide show on this monitor now compared to my old one.

vlad01 wrote:

Sort of, custom settings a bit higher than ultra. though I only can run a LOD of 0.6, lack of vram makes it load forever if I go above that.  I may have to lower that again as now with the higher res it gets stuck loading terrain forever as well.

There is a lot of stuttering too, that is my CPU struggling.   I want to get a 3900X and maybe a 5700XT around xmas.  Once I get those I can run max at the native res hopefully.  Currently during loading my max fps is about 20 lol once sitting still and its loaded on a surface of a planet I get about 40-50 fps.  Pretty poor considering I have now a 144Hz monitor, feels like a slide show on this monitor now compared to my old one.

Do you think a 3900X/3950X can be run on air cooling or is water cooling needed?  By Christmas you can get a 3950X which will have 16 cores / 32 threads!

just stock air cooled will be fine, AMD coolers are actually quite good and more than adequate.

I plan to water cool though as I like the cooler temps and low noise that water cooling can offer.  I have been water cooling since 04 and for me its hard to go back to air cooling.

yeah 12 core will be more than enough for me, I don't see the extra cash for a 16 core really being worth it for what I do.

vlad01 wrote:

just stock air cooled will be fine, AMD coolers are actually quite good and more than adequate.

I plan to water cool though as I like the cooler temps and low noise that water cooling can offer.  I have been water cooling since 04 and for me its hard to go back to air cooling.

yeah 12 core will be more than enough for me, I don't see the extra cash for a 16 core really being worth it for what I do.

I'm interested in switching over, what kind of maintenance do I need to do?  My water here is hard (high mineral content), so how frequently do I need to change the water and should that be distilled water?  What are the risks with water cooling?

I have only changed my coolant 3 times since 2004 and the last time was in 2012 or so. I still currently run a Zalman reserator 1, an external passive res/heatsink/pump combo.  I have replaced the pump once and changed GPU blocks with upgrades but still use the original AMD CPU block as AMD have had the same mounting mechanism since early 00s.

I use distilled water and type B automotive corrosion inhibitor.   I have had absolutely no issues apart from the origianl pump wearing out and getting noisy. I changed the pump to an external one back in 2010. Oh and btw I use silicone hoses. They are extremely tough and due to the elasticity they seal perfectly on the compression fittings, unlike the common leaky PVC hoses sold for PC water cooling.  I get them usually from brewery supply shops or food/medical grade suppliers on ebay. 

This time I plan to completely replace everything for internal (inside the PC case) setup using actual active radiators, mainly to improve performance and make it neat, external cooling is rather messy and ugly.  I will still keep my old PC with that setup though. Starting from scratch on my new one.  I plan to use hardware labs radiators and heat killer blocks and pump. They are the highest quality on the market as far as I can find. Oh and good old poo brown Noctua fans

vlad01 wrote:

I have only changed my coolant 3 times since 2004 and the last time was in 2012 or so. I still currently run a Zalman reserator 1, an external passive res/heatsink/pump combo.  I have replaced the pump once and changed GPU blocks with upgrades but still use the original AMD CPU block as AMD have had the same mounting mechanism since early 00s.

I use distilled water and type B automotive corrosion inhibitor.   I have had absolutely no issues apart from the origianl pump wearing out and getting noisy. I changed the pump to an external one back in 2010. Oh and btw I use silicone hoses. They are extremely tough and due to the elasticity they seal perfectly on the compression fittings, unlike the common leaky PVC hoses sold for PC water cooling.  I get them usually from brewery supply shops or food/medical grade suppliers on ebay. 

This time I plan to completely replace everything for internal (inside the PC case) setup using actual active radiators, mainly to improve performance and make it neat, external cooling is rather messy and ugly.  I will still keep my old PC with that setup though. Starting from scratch on my new one.  I plan to use hardware labs radiators and heat killer blocks and pump. They are the highest quality on the market as far as I can find. Oh and good old poo brown Noctua fans

You should make some instructional videos on youtube!  I may need it when I upgrade to a 16 core cpu!

yeah I may consider it. My experience mainly comes from my car modding/restro hobby. I have quite a bit of experience with cooling systems, I even designed and had custom radiators manufactured for my cars becasue the ones on the market were poor quality and were thinner than the original factory units. I improved on quality, fitment and performance over the OEM units.

I apply some of this knowledge to PC cooling, hence why I use auto coolant as cars use mixed metals and have way way more harsh operating environment than a PC does yet there is no corrosion occurring even after many years as long as the coolant is good quality and changed on time.  Typically 5-7 years with modern coolants.  In a PC the service life is even more as the environment is very light duty.

Speaking of using auto stuff in PCs, you can actually now get EPDM rubber hoses for PC water cooling, they are the standard material used in cars and has good sealing and elasticity, not quite as good as silicone but close enough to be far superior to PVC used commonly in PCs

That said now days hard acrylic tubing is preferred in water cooling PCs over the older stye soft tubing.  I personally hate the way hard tubing looks and it can be hard for beginners as it requires heating and tools to make the bends.  I like soft tubing as its easy, forgiving and has that industrial look to it, even more so with EPDM as its solid black in colour.

I am tossing up between EPDM and silicone. Silicone normally comes as a colourless translucent hose which can look odd in modern PCs with all the black and all, EPDM would give it that all black industrial look I am after. I guess I can buy both and see which I like better.


Here is my carts so far for the bits I want to get latter in the year.

I have to get the RAM, board, mechanical HDD and radiators individually from ebay and few other stores.

Black ice LX360 rads 2x
non RGB  Trident Z CL16 3733 16GB dual chanel kit. (original red/silver design)
MSI x470 Gaming M7 AC (one of the best x470 boards and it allows win 7 with 3rd gen ryzen with some driver mods)
HGST 4TB drive

and all this stuff in my carts already.

I already have a Xonar Phoebus PCIe sound card in my current rig, will transfer that over.

Thanks, I am curious about something.  In your list I see that it states you have 16 GB memory.  Is 32 GB necessary for anything?  The newer motherboards now support up to 128 GB but that is only for four slots, do you think dual channel 64 GB would be useful for anything or would so much memory cause speed/compatibility issues?

Also, would a 16 core cpu be overkill or would that be good if I was running multiple 3D apps on different screens (same question for the extra memory)?

I would love 32gb, but the problem is the way the memory ranks work and the topology of every AM4 board. becasue the boards use daisy chain topology the memory stability is greatly reduced when using 4 dimms or dual rank modules. 

currently the biggest single rank module in these speed modules is 8GB so 16GB for a dual channel kit.

The important thing is by using single ranks in dual channel you can get much better stability and thus push the ram timing and speed right up.   Getting ideal timing on ryzen can boost performance up to around 20% and more typically 15% on average. Its a huge boost just by having the right ram config and timings. All of which go out the window when using dual rank 32GB and larger kits.

The uplift going to 32 or 64GB is way smaller than the uplift possible with 16GB kits with timings adjusted.  I know a few people who stuggled to even get to 3200Mhz on dual rank, on single rank over 4000Mhz is possible but 3600-3800 is best for the way IF clock is linked to ram clocks.

I think some of the newer boards dont use daisy chain?  I'm not sure but look up specs on Crosshair Hero boards.

You're right about memory speeds - 16 GB RAM seems to be the "sweet spot" like 500 GB is for SSD storage lol.

Originally, people told me this limit to dual rank was only for first generation Ryzen but have you found these rules also apply to Ryzen + and Ryzen second generation?

yeah the as far as I found not many of the main brand/model boards use T topology, most seem to be daisy chain. This limit applies to all ryzen, its a board thing rather than the CPU itself though 2nd and 3rd gen can get higher speeds due to the better IMC.  I think the reason T is not used much is becasue it needs all dimms populated to work best and most people only ever install 2 dimms so daisy chain makes more sense from the consumer point to be optimized for that.  Basically 2 dimms is most common so they make it suit that.   I am pretty sure daisy chain can achieve the highest overall speeds but is limited to 2 single rank dimms to do so, T needs dual rank or 4 dimms for max speed but overall I recall isn't as fast but faster than installing dual rank/4 dimm in a daisy chain.


here is a chart telling you all the AM4 board specs including T or daisy.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 2112472504

vlad01 wrote:

yeah the as far as I found not many of the main brand/model boards use T topology, most seem to be daisy chain. This limit applies to all ryzen, its a board thing rather than the CPU itself though 2nd and 3rd gen can get higher speeds due to the better IMC.  I think the reason T is not used much is becasue it needs all dimms populated to work best and most people only ever install 2 dimms so daisy chain makes more sense from the consumer point to be optimized for that.  Basically 2 dimms is most common so they make it suit that.   I am pretty sure daisy chain can achieve the highest overall speeds but is limited to 2 single rank dimms to do so, T needs dual rank or 4 dimms for max speed but overall I recall isn't as fast but faster than installing dual rank/4 dimm in a daisy chain.


here is a chart telling you all the AM4 board specs including T or daisy.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 2112472504

Wow thanks for the chart- I am a bit confused though.  I have the x470 ROG STRIX F GAMING.  Does that say it is T Topology?  On that chart it says that but I see people in the ASUS forums saying it is not?  Also what does the difference in caps mean? 5K MIL caps on my board vs 5K APAQ caps on the Pro vs 10K FP caps on the Crosshair and 10K Black Metallic caps on the newer x570 Crosshairs?

5k vs 10k is the amount of hours they are rated for at 105ºc  The letters would be the type of cap, construction/material I am not sure what they are though.