System Building

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

I am making this new system for my Dad as he is using OLD hardware. He is running on an old Intel i3 2100. You gotta admit that is old.

I considered getting him a mini-pc, but then I thought, that he deserves something better.

This is my NewEgg wishlist that I drew up. Any issues?

https://newegg.io/ada2d49

Also he is running on VERY old monitors, and old DELL and weird-named one. Both only have DVI/VGA. So no HDMI or DP. You guys have a suggestion for very cheap, but good set of 2 monitors?

I would like a new keyboard, too. I knew of a few, but only few are "Linux Ready" He is currently running Linux Mint 21.1.

I am getting this for his birthday, in December. So I have a good 6 months to plan this out.

(I have an SSD for him here, so that's why it's omitted out)

[Max Veteran]

Depends what he does with it. I presume he’s a gamer hence the graphics card? I know many people with a similar processor and 8GB RAM w/SSD and that does them fine for web browsing and basic tasks.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

I am less familiar with AMD processors and chipsets than Intel ones, but my first thought is that it is very nice of you to build this system for your father.

My second thought is that although this is a relatively lower-power system (energy consumption, not performance) and not likely to create too much waste heat, building the system in a larger mATX case means that (1) the components will have to run longer/hotter to dump waste heat into a greater volume of space; and (2) you will possibly be able to install more cooling fans, allowing more waste heat to be removed and/or removed more quietly.  There would also be the added bonus of additional storage options if the mATX case chosen has additional drive bays.

For this reason, unless the space in which the computer is going to be located is going to be at a premium, I'd suggest going with a mATX chassis.

As far as monitors go, I do not have any specific recommendations there, but I have been very happy with Dell, Lenovo, and Samsung monitors that I have purchased in the past.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky
 

[hellowalkman Reporter]

750w PSU for that rig is extreme overkill. Even 500w is plenty.

Also, perhaps you should go with the 5600G, the iGP is always handy to have just in case the dGPU goes down and it makes it easy to troubleshoot too.

[tsupersonic]

On 30/06/2023 at 01:48, hellowalkman said:

750w PSU for that rig is extreme overkill. Even 500w is plenty.

Also, perhaps you should go with the 5600G, the iGP is always handy to have just in case the dGPU goes down and it makes it easy to troubleshoot too.

Agree, but I would just omit the dGPU altogether, and use the iGPU from the 5600G. If going iGPU helps with the budget, get a more powerful CPU

[sikhwarrior]

What is your budget? You mentioned Linux, what games does your dad play? 

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Overkill, the 2 of you say?

The Radeon 6600 requires 450W..

I think 500W is cutting it kinda short..

[hellowalkman Reporter]

On 01/07/2023 at 03:15, Mindovermaster said:

The Radeon 6600 requires 450W

Those recommendations are meant to account for low quality cheap PSUs.

I'm running an OCed 6800 XT on a 750w unit. The PC goes up to 500w and that's when heavily stress testing it.

Your system should have enough power with a 500-550w PSU. Coz it would rarely exceed 320w (full system).

So I'd rather save some money on the PSU and get a 5600G and ddr4-3600 cl16 ram instead.

The G-series AMD APUs have less cache and so lower latency DRAM helps a lot.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

What will the lower cache and lower latancy do?

[hellowalkman Reporter]

the lower cache on the G-series APUs (16MB on the 5600G vs 32MB on the 5600) means the former is more reliant on the system RAM. So faster and lower latency memory is going to be really useful. A ddr4-3600 cl16 kit isn't much more expensive than a cl18 kit TBH. You can also grab a ddr4-4000 one like I found here.

This looks like a solid deal, its a ddr4-4000 cl18 so its better than the one you have currently listed (ddr4-3600 cl18) and also a bit better than ddr4-3600 cl16 I was recommending.: https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820374106

I'd grab one immediately if I were you.

[hellowalkman Reporter]

ohhh another important info, if you do get that GSKILL ddr4-4000 cl18 kit, you should run it at 3733 instead of its XMP spec of 4000. Should be fairly easy to do by going into the BIOS and manually setting the DRAM clock to 3733MT/s (or 1866/1867 MHz), and then leaving the rest of the things like timings and voltage to auto.

This is because AMD Ryzen has a 1:1 ratio of infinity fabric (IF) clock (FCLK) and DRAM clock. This means at ddr4-3733, both the IF and the DRAM are running at 1866.

Anything higher than 3733 becomes 1:2. So the IF clock becomes half which means DDR4-4000 is actually 2000MHz dram clock but only 1000Mhz FCLK; while up to 3733, both are the same speed.

[xMorpheousx416]

I love how all of us are like: "You gotta juice that thing up, baby, yeah!"

 

But... considering the target audience... does he need a powerhouse? Or something that will last a while without needing upgrades to keep up? Will Dad need or care about bus speeds and CPU cycles?

Just food for thought.