New Build

I've put together this build as a possible upgrade of my current AMD
Athlon(tm) X4 845 Quad Core Processor 3.50 GHz w/16GB of RAM:

AMD RYZEN 5 3600 6-Core 3.6 GHz (4.2 GHz Max Boost)
https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-3600/p/N82E16819113569?Item=N82E16819113569

GIGABYTE B550M DS3H AM4 AMD B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard with Dual M.2, SATA
6Gb/s, USB 3.2 Gen 1, PCIe 4.0
https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b550m-ds3h/p/N82E16813145210?Item=N82E16813145210

GeIL EVO SPEAR Phantom Gaming Edition (AMD) 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4
SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) (Qty. 2 for 32GB)
https://www.newegg.com/geil-16gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820158823?Item=N82E16820158823

Corsair Carbide Series 200R Black Steel / Plastic Compact ATX Mid Tower Case
https://www.newegg.com/black-corsair-carbide-series-200r-atx-mid-tower/p/N82E16811139018?Item=N82E16811139018

CORSAIR TX-M Series TX650M CP-9020132-NA 650W ATX12V v2.4 / EPS 2.92 80 PLUS
GOLD Certified Semi-Modular Active PFC Power Supply
https://www.newegg.com/corsair-tx-m-series-tx650m-650w/p/N82E16817139207?Item=N82E16817139207

I already own a GeForce GTX1050 video card that I plan on using.
I also plan on keeping my current Win10 Pro x64 on my Seagate 2TB HDD. Maybe
later I'll switch over to SSD once I have it up and stable (and the
Christmas bills are paid, LOL!).

I will be using this as my general all-around home PC, and my current setup
is a little slow in the gaming department. I also do some video editing, and
it sorta drags through that.

I've checked out the manufacturer's sites for CPU/MB/RAM compatibility and
see no problems that I could find. Not saying I might not have missed
something, but it all looks pretty good to me.

And suggestions, pros, or cons would be appreciated. If anyone is running a
similar setup, I'd really like to hear how you like it's performance and
stability.

TIA!
--

SC Tom

SC Tom wrote:
I've put together this build as a possible upgrade of my current AMD
Athlon(tm) X4 845 Quad Core Processor 3.50 GHz w/16GB of RAM:

AMD RYZEN 5 3600 6-Core 3.6 GHz (4.2 GHz Max Boost)
https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-3600/p/N82E16819113569?Item=N82E16819113569


GIGABYTE B550M DS3H AM4 AMD B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard with Dual M.2,
SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.2 Gen 1, PCIe 4.0
https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b550m-ds3h/p/N82E16813145210?Item=N82E16813145210


GeIL EVO SPEAR Phantom Gaming Edition (AMD) 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4
SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) (Qty. 2 for 32GB)
https://www.newegg.com/geil-16gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820158823?Item=N82E16820158823


Corsair Carbide Series 200R Black Steel / Plastic Compact ATX Mid Tower
Case
https://www.newegg.com/black-corsair-carbide-series-200r-atx-mid-tower/p/N82E16811139018?Item=N82E16811139018


CORSAIR TX-M Series TX650M CP-9020132-NA 650W ATX12V v2.4 / EPS 2.92 80
PLUS GOLD Certified Semi-Modular Active PFC Power Supply
https://www.newegg.com/corsair-tx-m-series-tx650m-650w/p/N82E16817139207?Item=N82E16817139207


I already own a GeForce GTX1050 video card that I plan on using.
I also plan on keeping my current Win10 Pro x64 on my Seagate 2TB HDD.
Maybe later I'll switch over to SSD once I have it up and stable (and
the Christmas bills are paid, LOL!).

I will be using this as my general all-around home PC, and my current
setup is a little slow in the gaming department. I also do some video
editing, and it sorta drags through that.

I've checked out the manufacturer's sites for CPU/MB/RAM compatibility
and see no problems that I could find. Not saying I might not have
missed something, but it all looks pretty good to me.

And suggestions, pros, or cons would be appreciated. If anyone is
running a similar setup, I'd really like to hear how you like it's
performance and stability.

TIA!

I don't think your copy of Windows 10 will still be valid if you swap
out all that hardware (i.e. just having it installed on your hdd is not
sufficient). Unless you are not using an OEM version (I have an OEM
version).

Personally, I wouldn't "move forward" without the SSD (I am not sure of
the point)? If you ONLY bought a new SSD, I think that would be a nice
upgrade. Unless you have a good reason for more cores and 32GB RAM?
I have 4 cores and 16GB RAM, as you do now, and that seems like more
than adequate. I guess it depends on the applications you wish to use,
and whether you wish to use them at the same time. Do you feel like your
PC is not powerful enough for what you wish to do?

Perhaps consider buying an SSD, and putting that in your current system
(with the OS on it, of course), and seeing how that works for you?


All this is just my opinion (which is basically what you asked for).
There are a couple of guys here who know alot more than I do... Good
luck with your choices and your new system!

SC Tom wrote:
I've put together this build as a possible upgrade of my current AMD
Athlon(tm) X4 845 Quad Core Processor 3.50 GHz w/16GB of RAM:

AMD RYZEN 5 3600 6-Core 3.6 GHz (4.2 GHz Max Boost)
https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-3600/p/N82E16819113569?Item=N82E16819113569


GIGABYTE B550M DS3H AM4 AMD B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard with Dual M.2,
SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.2 Gen 1, PCIe 4.0
https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b550m-ds3h/p/N82E16813145210?Item=N82E16813145210


GeIL EVO SPEAR Phantom Gaming Edition (AMD) 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4
SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) (Qty. 2 for 32GB)
https://www.newegg.com/geil-16gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820158823?Item=N82E16820158823


Corsair Carbide Series 200R Black Steel / Plastic Compact ATX Mid Tower
Case
https://www.newegg.com/black-corsair-carbide-series-200r-atx-mid-tower/p/N82E16811139018?Item=N82E16811139018


CORSAIR TX-M Series TX650M CP-9020132-NA 650W ATX12V v2.4 / EPS 2.92 80
PLUS GOLD Certified Semi-Modular Active PFC Power Supply
https://www.newegg.com/corsair-tx-m-series-tx650m-650w/p/N82E16817139207?Item=N82E16817139207


I already own a GeForce GTX1050 video card that I plan on using.
I also plan on keeping my current Win10 Pro x64 on my Seagate 2TB HDD.
Maybe later I'll switch over to SSD once I have it up and stable (and
the Christmas bills are paid, LOL!).

I will be using this as my general all-around home PC, and my current
setup is a little slow in the gaming department. I also do some video
editing, and it sorta drags through that.

I've checked out the manufacturer's sites for CPU/MB/RAM compatibility
and see no problems that I could find. Not saying I might not have
missed something, but it all looks pretty good to me.

And suggestions, pros, or cons would be appreciated. If anyone is
running a similar setup, I'd really like to hear how you like it's
performance and stability.

TIA!

There's mention of clock ratios in the memory chain here. The gaming
graphs are mostly crap, because of the labeling (can't easily tell what
conditions are applied). They should have included a chart for
"7ZIP benchmark", as it is pretty sensitive to how well the memory works.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3...-uclock-mclock

Considering processor availability right now, I can't argue with
your CPU choice. The better choice is sold out, and the price might
not have been all that good either on a Zen3.

To move your Windows 10, there was some detail about having an MSA,
and using the MSA (somehow) to authorize the movement and activation
of Windows 10 to a new machine. I don't know any details of this,
whether it refers to moving "new, boxed" Windows 10 to a new machine,
or "free upgrade" Windows 10 to a new machine. Your Windows 10 install
might well run forever, sporting a "needs activation" or whatever
logo on screen, or refusing to let you change settings in the
Personalize screen. It's pretty hard to predict with Windows 10,
what will happen long term. Short term, it should run. There's
no indication of Windows 10 having bad table manners like in the
past, where sometimes the activation issues caused older versions
of Windows to "lock up". The three responses in the past we

instant lock-up at boot
72 hour (3 day) activation window
30 day activation window

I'd check that the PSU wiring is long enough for the route
plan for the major wires.

And the case, you can't rest a beverage on top because of the
grill holes for cooler mounting at the top of the case. The holes
might also encourage dust to collect up there or something, or if
you pile books on top, maybe cracker crumbs could fall down through.
I like to see solid tops on PCs, just because of the human habit
of stacking stuff on top :-)

The door facing drive bay, has zero clearance between drives,
so isn't going to encourage airflow. It looks like placing
one hard drive, in the second bay from the top of the internal
stack, should be the best position. The very lowest position,
you'd need a left-angle versus a right-angle cable, and still have
to deal with it routing vertically upwards in front of the bays.
I never place a drive in the very lowest bay of my internal
because of the cabling issues.

BIOS version F1 is supposed to work with the CPU, so no
BIOS flash problem to get it running.

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
...
snip
There's mention of clock ratios in the memory chain here. The gaming
graphs are mostly crap, because of the labeling (can't easily tell what
conditions are applied). They should have included a chart for
"7ZIP benchmark", as it is pretty sensitive to how well the memory works.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3...-uclock-mclock

Considering processor availability right now, I can't argue with
your CPU choice. The better choice is sold out, and the price might
not have been all that good either on a Zen3.

To move your Windows 10, there was some detail about having an MSA,
and using the MSA (somehow) to authorize the movement and activation
of Windows 10 to a new machine. I don't know any details of this,
whether it refers to moving "new, boxed" Windows 10 to a new machine,
or "free upgrade" Windows 10 to a new machine. Your Windows 10 install
might well run forever, sporting a "needs activation" or whatever
logo on screen, or refusing to let you change settings in the
Personalize screen. It's pretty hard to predict with Windows 10,
what will happen long term. Short term, it should run. There's
no indication of Windows 10 having bad table manners like in the
past, where sometimes the activation issues caused older versions
of Windows to "lock up". The three responses in the past we

instant lock-up at boot
72 hour (3 day) activation window
30 day activation window

I'd check that the PSU wiring is long enough for the route
plan for the major wires.

And the case, you can't rest a beverage on top because of the
grill holes for cooler mounting at the top of the case. The holes
might also encourage dust to collect up there or something, or if
you pile books on top, maybe cracker crumbs could fall down through.
I like to see solid tops on PCs, just because of the human habit
of stacking stuff on top :-)

The door facing drive bay, has zero clearance between drives,
so isn't going to encourage airflow. It looks like placing
one hard drive, in the second bay from the top of the internal
stack, should be the best position. The very lowest position,
you'd need a left-angle versus a right-angle cable, and still have
to deal with it routing vertically upwards in front of the bays.
I never place a drive in the very lowest bay of my internal
because of the cabling issues.

BIOS version F1 is supposed to work with the CPU, so no
BIOS flash problem to get it running.


I've moved my Win10 a couple of times with no problems, or requests for
activation. Maybe I'll be lucky again :-)

You are absolutely right about the case- for some odd reason, I didn't
notice that it has the power supply at the bottom and an "open" top. I don't
mind not placing a drink on top (which I definitely TRY not to do), but I do
have a speaker, my external USB hub, and a small clock there. I think I'll
look for a better case.
Thanks for your input. As usual, you are very informative :-)
--
SCTom

"Bill" wrote in message
...
snip

I don't think your copy of Windows 10 will still be valid if you swap out
all that hardware (i.e. just having it installed on your hdd is not
sufficient). Unless you are not using an OEM version (I have an OEM
version).

Personally, I wouldn't "move forward" without the SSD (I am not sure of
the point)? If you ONLY bought a new SSD, I think that would be a nice
upgrade. Unless you have a good reason for more cores and 32GB RAM?
I have 4 cores and 16GB RAM, as you do now, and that seems like more than
adequate. I guess it depends on the applications you wish to use, and
whether you wish to use them at the same time. Do you feel like your PC is
not powerful enough for what you wish to do?

Perhaps consider buying an SSD, and putting that in your current system
(with the OS on it, of course), and seeing how that works for you?


All this is just my opinion (which is basically what you asked for). There
are a couple of guys here who know alot more than I do... Good luck with
your choices and your new system!

I've moved Win10 before with no problems (it's not an OEM). Fingers crossed
for this time, too.

I haven't bought the parts yet, just have them in the NewEgg "My Build"
list. Who knows, the price might drop on one or two components before I
commit :-) Hopefully on a different case (see Paul's reply).

The only reason I haven't gone to an SSD yet is that I'm still a little
leery of the technology :-) Old habits die hard . . .
I may just do that, though- buy an SSD and move my C: drive to it on my
current system. A 1TB one would be adequate as I have most of my "stuff" on
a second HDD.

Thanks for your input!
--
SCTom

On Wed, 16 Dec 2020 23:31:26 -0500, "SC Tom" wrote:

| I've put together this build as a possible upgrade of my current AMD
| Athlon(tm) X4 845 Quad Core Processor 3.50 GHz w/16GB of RAM:
|
| AMD RYZEN 5 3600 6-Core 3.6 GHz (4.2 GHz Max Boost)
| https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-3600/p/N82E16819113569?Item=N82E16819113569
|
| GIGABYTE B550M DS3H AM4 AMD B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard with Dual M.2, SATA
| 6Gb/s, USB 3.2 Gen 1, PCIe 4.0
| https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b550m-ds3h/p/N82E16813145210?Item=N82E16813145210
|
| GeIL EVO SPEAR Phantom Gaming Edition (AMD) 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4
| SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) (Qty. 2 for 32GB)
| https://www.newegg.com/geil-16gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820158823?Item=N82E16820158823
|
| Corsair Carbide Series 200R Black Steel / Plastic Compact ATX Mid Tower Case
| https://www.newegg.com/black-corsair-carbide-series-200r-atx-mid-tower/p/N82E16811139018?Item=N82E16811139018
|
| CORSAIR TX-M Series TX650M CP-9020132-NA 650W ATX12V v2.4 / EPS 2.92 80 PLUS
| GOLD Certified Semi-Modular Active PFC Power Supply
| https://www.newegg.com/corsair-tx-m-series-tx650m-650w/p/N82E16817139207?Item=N82E16817139207
|
| I already own a GeForce GTX1050 video card that I plan on using.
| I also plan on keeping my current Win10 Pro x64 on my Seagate 2TB HDD. Maybe
| later I'll switch over to SSD once I have it up and stable (and the
| Christmas bills are paid, LOL!).
|
| I will be using this as my general all-around home PC, and my current setup
| is a little slow in the gaming department. I also do some video editing, and
| it sorta drags through that.
|
| I've checked out the manufacturer's sites for CPU/MB/RAM compatibility and
| see no problems that I could find. Not saying I might not have missed
| something, but it all looks pretty good to me.
|
| And suggestions, pros, or cons would be appreciated. If anyone is running a
| similar setup, I'd really like to hear how you like it's performance and
| stability.

Sounds generally good. I've moved existing Windows installations to new motherboards
many times and have never had problems that couldn't be easily overcome. If you have
a retail key for Windows 10, 8.1, 8 or 7, it will work to activate your Windows 10.
Of course, you'll need to install new board specific drivers.

Your new motherboard has M.2 slots that support NVMe SSD drives. I suggest getting
one of those at some point to use as your system drive while keeping your HDD for
data (Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB is about $70 at Amazon). You'll be amazed at the
difference in speed between the SSD and much slower HDD. You will need to clone your
current system drive (probably C to the NVMe SSD. I've found that both Macrium
Reflect and MiniTool Partition Wizard free versions can handle that job well.

Larc

SC Tom wrote:


The only reason I haven't gone to an SSD yet is that I'm still a little
leery of the technology :-) Old habits die hard . . .
I may just do that, though- buy an SSD and move my C: drive to it on my
current system. A 1TB one would be adequate as I have most of my "stuff"
on a second HDD.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. As advised by Paul, you might
as well get the NVMe... I have been using my Intel-730, 500GB SSD for
6 years with no issues, though I still run backups regularly. Of
course, somehow MS made changes to Windows 10 which prevented me from
using the (nice) "trim" application that came with the Intel drive, but
I don't blame Intel for that.

Bill wrote:
SC Tom wrote:


The only reason I haven't gone to an SSD yet is that I'm still a
little leery of the technology :-) Old habits die hard . . .
I may just do that, though- buy an SSD and move my C: drive to it on
my current system. A 1TB one would be adequate as I have most of my
"stuff" on a second HDD.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. As advised by Paul, you might
as well get the NVMe... I have been using my Intel-730, 500GB SSD for
6 years with no issues, though I still run backups regularly. Of
course, somehow MS made changes to Windows 10 which prevented me from
using the (nice) "trim" application that came with the Intel drive, but
I don't blame Intel for that.

Are you referring to the inability of the Optimize (defragment)
panel to tell an SSD is an SSD ? If it knows an SSD is present,
it puts up TRIM for the item. If it knows an HDD is present,
it labels the item as Defragment ("Needs optimization", "Never run" maybe).

That has wobbled around a lot, from release to release.

And I don't think WinSat has anything to do with this.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article...m-performance/

Without re-running WinSat, you're supposed to be able to dump info.
I think this is a Powershell script.

get-wmiobject -class win32_winsat

There should also be commands coming from that subsystem,
to identify characteristics of storage devices. Output looks
marginally better in Notepad. There's no difference in there
between a SATA SSD and a SATA HDD. That leaves either benchmarks
(unlikely) or SMART table content, as the means by which Optimize
figures it out.

wmic diskdrive diskdetail.txt
notepad diskdetail.txt

Currently Optimize categorizes my RAMDisk as a "Hard disk drive", and
it gets the SSD right as a "Solid state drive". But on multiple
occasions the status in Optimize is wrong. Sometimes all drives
were SSDs. Sometimes all drives were HDD. The code seemed to
be "having a bad day", most of the time. And I couldn't figure
out a way to fix it, other than check back some other day and
see if it was fixed up.

Paul

"Larc" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 16 Dec 2020 23:31:26 -0500, "SC Tom" wrote:

snip

Sounds generally good. I've moved existing Windows installations to new
motherboards
many times and have never had problems that couldn't be easily overcome.
If you have
a retail key for Windows 10, 8.1, 8 or 7, it will work to activate your
Windows 10.
Of course, you'll need to install new board specific drivers.

Your new motherboard has M.2 slots that support NVMe SSD drives. I
suggest getting
one of those at some point to use as your system drive while keeping your
HDD for
data (Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB is about $70 at Amazon). You'll be
amazed at the
difference in speed between the SSD and much slower HDD. You will need to
clone your
current system drive (probably C to the NVMe SSD. I've found that both
Macrium
Reflect and MiniTool Partition Wizard free versions can handle that job
well.

Larc

Thanks for the feedback!
I decided to give an SSD a chance on my current PC (I haven't bought the
components yet for my "wish" PC). I can't get an NVMe since my current MB
doesn't have an M.2 slot for it. I ordered a 1GB Samsung 860 EVO. Has good
reviews, and is plenty big enough to hold everything that's on my HDD.
I own Acronis True Image- I should be able to clone from one to the other
with that. Worse comes to worst, I'll just create an image of my HDD, remove
it, put the SSD in, and restore that image to it. Been there, done that with
HDD's; can't imagine it being too different with SSD's.
I also have older free versions of Macrium Reflect and MTPW; I guess I could
download the newest and make bootable CD/DVD from them (that's how I used my
old versions, and my newer ATI).
Thanks again for your input!
--
SCTom

"Bill" wrote in message
...
SC Tom wrote:


The only reason I haven't gone to an SSD yet is that I'm still a little
leery of the technology :-) Old habits die hard . . .
I may just do that, though- buy an SSD and move my C: drive to it on my
current system. A 1TB one would be adequate as I have most of my "stuff"
on a second HDD.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. As advised by Paul, you might as
well get the NVMe... I have been using my Intel-730, 500GB SSD for 6
years with no issues, though I still run backups regularly. Of course,
somehow MS made changes to Windows 10 which prevented me from using the
(nice) "trim" application that came with the Intel drive, but I don't
blame Intel for that.

Thanks! Please see my reply to Larc about the NVMe.