PC Building V4 - "ok SSDs got cheap, now do RAM next" - Hardware & Software

What CL am I looking for? Is 15 too high, for instance?

CL15 is perfectly fine around ~3000MHz. CL is measured in clock cycles, so it has a relationship with frequency.

Awesome, thank you!

On Intel, 3200 CL16 (or basically anything that isn't trash) works fine. On Ryzen, you're still better off getting 3200 CL14. There's also something I heard about staying with 2-divisible CLs (12,14,16,18) but that's a bit out of my depth.

CL14 is significantly more expensive than CL16, and IIRC Infinity Fabric doesn't care about CL, only clock speed. But I could easily be wrong.

Don't forget another option available to you is display overclocking. I was able to get my LG Ultrawide to 75hz (And probably higher if I pushed it, but the added 15FPS is fine for me).

Sure, but I'd never, ever buy a monitor with the thought "I'm buying this 60Hz monitor with the intention of using it at >60Hz" because display overclocking is just not guaranteed to work at all. Display overclocking should be a fun bonus on top of a refresh rate you're already happy and comfortable with.

I think the general rule of thumb is if your display supports 75hz at a lower resolution, it'll overclock without issue to support it at a higher resolution. Most of the time the panels will do way, way higher than 75 and the bottleneck is the scaler hardware.

that's the problem, there's no guarantee that whatever chip is actually driving your display wasn't designed by a housecat chained to a cubicle and is running at a fixed speed or some crap.

I linked the tool to triple check in my above post, but as long as you're sure they're B-Dies: https://www.overclock.net/forum/11-amd-motherboards/1624603-rog-crosshair-vi-overclocking-thread-2067.html#post26178558

The SPD tab in CPU-Z says my DIMMs are single-rank so I should be okay with this. Thank you for the info!

Man, I don't know what yall are smokin. Freesync is incredible. So many games are just super prone to tearing and it fixes it entirely. It's fine if you only play new games and you're running a high refresh rate without freesync since you probably won't be getting over 144fps, but for a lot of older titles, freesync is a godsend. That and HDR is incredible too. True 10bit colour with the brightness to match is great. It's just that unfortunately most monitors don't stand up to the proper spec of HDR and the brightness falls way short.

That's what I was thinking

Hopefully the 1050ti and/or the 1070 go cheap so I can have GPUs for both machines in the house V:v:V

what is you dont have amd though? does fastsync work well in a situation where you have a nvidia gpu but a freesync monitor?

i don't know, i assume you just get the benefit of high refresh rate. i wouldn't know i haven't let nvidia rip me off in a while

R9 270... Should I upgrade? Heck even some older games are running difficult on max, though I don't game that much

Speaking from experience, if you want to stick with AMD, the RX570 performs surprisingly well at 1080p. Was able to play DOOM on Vulkan, with everything either high or maxed, at a comfortable 75fps.

Any recommendations on manufacturers? There's like 50 same cards for different prices

AMD: Sapphire, XFX Nvidia: EVGA, Asus

I actually prefer XFX over Sapphire by quite a bit, but their Vega designs are truly fugly.

Their customer support and QC went to shit. ASUS / Sapphire for AMD ASUS / EVGA / Gainward for Nvidia

I'm sorry, I didn't know about that. I haven't been in the market for an AMD GPU since the R 300 generation.

Since when? Asus has consistently had mediocre-at-best RMA/Support. XFX certainly isn't as big as it used to be, but I've always had positive experiences when dealing with them.

As someone who works in that sector, different customers have different experiences

ASUS support is aids, never again.

Well, 250 euros minimum is a little much at the moment tbh, gotta get myself some shoes too so I'll wait

Thanks for reminding me those fuckers still owe me a rebate 5 months later.

I've had quite a bit of luck with my MSI AMD cards as well

Most of the Asia-based companies have terrible RMA/Support ASUS, Gigabyte, etc ASUS on the other hand actually has good QC / quality products so you're less likely to need to RMA them.