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My third gtx 780 just died. Something fried. Same thing every time, burning plastic smell and then the comp turns off. It's out of warranty now...

I'm a little salty that I've had to return that many of them. Im not sure if it's mobo or could issues. I checked the second pcie slot and it's dead as off the last time one of these fried.

I'm thinking it's probably easier to just build a whole new system. I'll reuse the case and ssds... What would you all build for 1500? I do mostly game development and pubg. I already have a gsync monitor. I'm not against skimping on some things to buy them 6 months down the road.

I'd definitely chuck the power supply. It might be OK and it could just be the graphics card dying repeatedly, but I would not tempt fate.

If you want to overclock at all, a Ryzen 7 1700. If you don't, a Ryzen 7 1700X since it has much higher base clocks. Remember to get some sort of AM4 cooler. The 1700 comes with the Wraith Spire LED which isn't bad, but I am not using it for a sustained 3.9GHz all-core overclock. The 1700X comes with nothing. If you want fewer cores or think 8 cores is overkill, a Ryzen 5 1600X will save you some money.

Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3 motheroard
16 or 32GB of G.Skill Fortis DDR4-3200 memory (remember more DIMMs = lower max memory speed on Ryzen)
GTX 1080 of your favorite flavor
EVGA Supernova G2 550W

That right there will range from 1100-1400 depending on which CPU and 1080, and how much memory you get. Now that the dust has settled and firmware has been upgraded, I'm very happy with my 1700 setup.

The $330 four-core Core i7 7700K is currently the best CPU for most games. I would pair that with a motherboard like the $160 Gigabyte GA-Z270MX-Gaming 5 or the $148 Asus Prime Z270M-Plus.

The $241 AMD Ryzen R5 1600X offers one and half times as many cores as the Intel Core i7 for two thirds as much money when paired with a motherboard like the $92 Gigabyte GA-AB350M-Gaming 3 or the just-released Asus TUF B350M-Plus Gaming. The $430 AMD Ryzen R7 1800X offers twice as many cores as the Intel Core i7 at the same cost for CPU+motherboard.

Yeah, I've had lots of issues with old Geforce cards just melting something and releasing the magic smoke. There was a batch of five GTX 280s at work that all cooked themselves after about two years exactly like you've described. I'm going to chalk it up to a design flaw in the reference board that meant a component was under-specced for the duty cycle of a typical GPU.

We had the same issue with a bunch of Fermi cards (GTX 480/470) and once I spotted the pattern we just stopped buying Nvidia cards for CUDA work and started looking for alternative software that would run on OpenCL so we could use Radeons and their vastly superior compute performance. CUDA's great, but it's bad because it's proprietary and Nvidia are in bed with the key players :\

GTX1080, since you can buy it for close to the MSRP, unlike the GTX1070 or GTX1060. I'd say Vega56 but as I understand it, you guys are really struggling to find them over on your side of the pond, and with a G-Sync monitor investment it seems foolish to switch to AMD.

As for CPU, I've been speccing out builds for friends and although I'd have said that the i7-7700K was the way forward for games, all of these Ryzen and i9 reviews are showing an interesting trend - that quad-core may not be the king of gaming for much longer. There are enough regularly benchmarked games that benefit from more than four cores that an i9 or R7 look like a good long-term investment. The only real problem with that is that the X299 platform is both overpriced and a total mess, whilst the R7 1800X isn't quite up to the performance of a 7700K in today's games.

I dunno, I'm kind of impressed with Ryzen. I'd buy an R5 1600X in place of any Intel quad other than an i7-7700K, and I'm sitting on the fence as to whether a mere quad core is going to be enough next year. Don't forget, even the lowly i3 will be a quad core with CoffeeLake and $400 for a 7700K+Cooler is borderline ridiculous.

As for the rest of the system, I'm currently thinking that a 256GB NVMe 960EVO makes the most sense as an OS drive, with the MX300 doing a great job for everything else where cost/GB matters more than performance. It sounds like a new PSU is in order, so look for sales on 80+ Gold or better and check it's not a dud against Jonnyguru's reviews. Corsair TX and EVGA G3 ranges are amazing if you can find a deal, otherwise the Seasonic Focus range is very highly rated at the cheaper end of the MSRP spectrum.

If you go Intel, just get the fastest RAM that falls in the pricing sweet spot and XMP it in the BIOS - Probably DDR4 3200 or 3000. For Ryzen it depends how many DIMMs you want - I've struggled to get four DIMMs running at 2800, but over here the best value are the Corsair Vengeance LPX kits - either 2x8 or 2x16 DDR4 3000 with tighter C15 timings at pretty modest pricing compared to the cheapest 2133 stuff.

Time to pony up that miners tax...

Chrispy_ wrote:

I'm currently thinking that a 256GB NVMe 960EVO makes the most sense as an OS drive.

The half terabyte version is just $100 more than the quarter terabyte drive.

Chrispy_ wrote:

It sounds like a new PSU is in order, so look for sales on 80+ Gold or better and check it's not a dud against Jonnyguru's reviews. Corsair TX and EVGA G3 ranges are amazing if you can find a deal, otherwise the Seasonic Focus range is very highly rated at the cheaper end of the MSRP spectrum.

The $80 SeaSonic Focus Plus 550 Gold and $90 Focus Plus 650 Gold look appealing to me. The Focus Plus line aren't as deep as many ATX power supplies and they include SeaSonic's excellent S³FC hybrid fan speed control, which will operate totally silently under low load.

Yeah, but I wouldn't buy more NVMe storage than I reasonably need at the moment, because it's so expensive. I didn't mean to say a 960EVO or an MX300, it was both!

The 250GB NVMe is the smallest and cheapest option for an OS drive - and 250GB should be overkill for Windows and non-gaming apps. Then, since games needs gobs of space and loading times don't really benefit from NVMe, you grab a cheap SATA SSD instead.

In the UK, 1TB of 960 EVO will set you back £475, whilst you can get 1TB of Sandisk, Crucial, or Western Digital for £265. Decent NVMe performance is coming down in price, but I'd much rather plough that extra cash into a better GPU, better PSU, or simlpy more capacity unless I can justify the premium of NVMe transfer rates. TBH, if you're not a power user, it might be worth forgoing the NVMe storage altogether and just getting a 1TB SATA drive. The NVMe OS drive is a luxury, much like an i7 is a luxury over an i5 that many games just won't care about.

Thank you for a the input.

I'll have to think on it a few days.

I have three ssds.1 TB, 512gb, and and old 240gb samsung 830 that is starting to behave a little funny. I should probably take the opportunity to upgrade that 830, as is my OS drive.

So far, ue4 and the lighting compiler doesn't seem to care much about and or intel, it mostly just wants cores and ram. I was going to build a ghetto render farm when I started working on the levels anyway and use their distributed compiling software. Either way, and or intel seem like a decent option, and sounds a bit cheaper.

I'll probably stick with Nvidia just because of gsync.

Ryzen owners, have you folks had trouble finding a good set of fast ram?

Here's an example memory support list for RyZen:
http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/Me ... ing-k7.pdf
Check out the 16 GiB modules listed on the first two pages that can run at DDR4-3200 or better with 4 DIMM sockets populated. Gigabyte says that the Corsair Vengeance LPX and G.Skill Trident Z kits will run at PC4-25600 (DDR4-3200) with 4x 16 GiB, despite being double-sided rather than single-sided DIMMs.

Even if you start with 2x 16 GiB initially, the DIMMs that Asus or Gigabyte have confirmed to work at DDR4-3200 or faster with 4x 16 GiB installed are the ones to choose.

shaq_mobile wrote:

Ryzen owners, have you folks had trouble finding a good set of fast ram?

That's why I called out the G.Skill FORTIS line - it's been (purportedly) created specifically for Ryzen, because Ryzen and Intel systems seem to have different ideas about what's ideal. I had a lot of problems early on getting my memory to its rated speeds and keeping it there, but as time and AGESA updates have progressed, it's gotten better. Nowadays I have XMP on and it's just working.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Chrispy_ wrote:

I'm currently thinking that a 256GB NVMe 960EVO makes the most sense as an OS drive.

The half terabyte version is just $100 more than the quarter terabyte drive.

Chrispy_ wrote:

It sounds like a new PSU is in order, so look for sales on 80+ Gold or better and check it's not a dud against Jonnyguru's reviews. Corsair TX and EVGA G3 ranges are amazing if you can find a deal, otherwise the Seasonic Focus range is very highly rated at the cheaper end of the MSRP spectrum.

The $80 SeaSonic Focus Plus 550 Gold and $90 Focus Plus 650 Gold look appealing to me. The Focus Plus line aren't as deep as many ATX power supplies and they include SeaSonic's excellent S³FC hybrid fan speed control, which will operate totally silently under low load.

Yeah my current PSU is an rm850... Is there a way to check if it's the cause?

I found these on that compatiblity PDF... Just double checking that I'm reading the document correctly

CMR16GX4M2C3466C16

That set should work at 3466? Or is that a pipedream?

Is there any funky initial setup I need to do to get that to work at 3466 with ryzen?

shaq_mobile wrote:

... and and old 240gb samsung 830 that is starting to behave a little funny. I should probably take the opportunity to upgrade that 830, as is my OS drive.

Funny you should mention that, just these past few months, I had a 128Gb Samsung 830 basically die on me too. It takes numerous power cycles to get it to work, and even then it's not reliable. I don't know what happened to it, it's barely been used over the past few years.

shaq_mobile wrote:

Ryzen owners, have you folks had trouble finding a good set of fast ram?

I'm not a Ryzen owner yet, but checking your motherboard's memory QVL should yield good results for choosing some fast RAM. I'm personally looking at an ASRock X370 Taichi, and was going to get some G.Skill Flare X 3200 stuff, but have actually decided to go this instead: http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/x370-taichi/CT9993215 (which I believe is actually this: http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct2k8g4wfd8266 )

I read a few reviews, watched a few YouTube reviews, and it seems past 2666 the gains aren't *that* big .. but fast ECC? I've always wanted to have a rig with ECC.

Yeah if there is a sweet spot for ram on ryzen, I'm fine with that. I would rather have a dimms that were low maintenance and at the sweet spot than have to tinker often for an extra 2% gain. Is there any situation that ECC would even be useful for desktop use?

My 830 just acts like it's seeking... It's the weirdest thing. Sometimes it just sits for about 5 seconds after I browse some folders and loads. To be fair, it's been with me through two full systems and 6 years or something. I feel like a heavily used HDD didn't usually make it that far.

shaq_mobile wrote:

I found these on that compatiblity PDF... Just double checking that I'm reading the document correctly

CMR16GX4M2C3466C16

That set should work at 3466? Or is that a pipedream?

Is there any funky initial setup I need to do to get that to work at 3466 with ryzen?

Yeah nevermind. I looked at the gaming 3 Mobo list and it wasn't on it. The flare x seems to have the lowest timing and 3200. It doesn't support 4 dimms but 2x8gb is enough. I couldn't find 3200 Fortis, funk.

shaq_mobile wrote:

Yeah if there is a sweet spot for ram on ryzen, I'm fine with that. I would rather have a dimms that were low maintenance and at the sweet spot than have to tinker often for an extra 2% gain. Is there any situation that ECC would even be useful for desktop use?

That was my thought too .. I don't want to overclock or have to tinker much. The G.Skill Flare X should be good for that. As for ECC, I guess the general opinion is that it doesn't matter much for desktop use. In fact I've been using non-ECC DDR3-1600 for the past 5 years or so on my AM3 system (initially an FX-4170, now an FX-8350), and non-ECC in every system before that. But, occasionally I see people talking about silent memory errors and ECC both reporting and usually correcting them, and I'm curious to see how often it happens in my own systems. So, I'm going to do it for my Ryzen build.

shaq_mobile wrote:

My 830 just acts like it's seeking... It's the weirdest thing. Sometimes it just sits for about 5 seconds after I browse some folders and loads. To be fair, it's been with me through two full systems and 6 years or something. I feel like a heavily used HDD didn't usually make it that far.

Maybe I didn't use mine enough I think mine is behaving similarly. I've had it stall during desktop use, then it came back after maybe 10 seconds or so. Odd. Needless to say I'm not using it any more. I've still got an OCZ Vertex 4 128Gb from the same time and it's still going well in my primary desktop.

Update on the GPU: Blown caps. looks like two, maybe three are toast. These are the same ones that blow on other folks GTX 780s, so I'm guessing it's a card issue.

Either way, I'll buy a new PSU for the next rig.

Edit: I just noticed this card has a manufacture date of november 2014, which puts it inside the 3 year warranty. I'm going to see if I can RMA it and maybe stretch a little more life out of this desktop. If not, here's my wishlist, let me know what you think:

https://puu.sh/xqP3H/dedde7e5c1.png

It's a little more than i wanted to pay, but I feel like its worth it to keep my old desktop in the case since i'll be using it.

shaq_mobile wrote:

CMR16GX4M2C3466C16

That set should work at 3466? Or is that a pipedream?

Is there any funky initial setup I need to do to get that to work at 3466 with ryzen?

shaq_mobile wrote:

Yeah if there is a sweet spot for ram on ryzen, I'm fine with that. I would rather have a dimms that were low maintenance and at the sweet spot than have to tinker often for an extra 2% gain. Is there any situation that ECC would even be useful for desktop use?

If you want 3000+ RAM without tweaking, you want a kit using Samsung B-die. Despite great improvements lately, nothing else seems to 100% load-XMP-and-just-works past 2666. For maximum load-XMP-and-just-works at high speeds, I'd try for the intersection of B-die, the mobo's QVL, and 3200 rather than 3466. Here's a list of B-die (and other) stuff. On the downside, B-die is pricey.

I would've gone for the Crucial ECC 2666 myself if it weren't even pricier than B-die. As is, I've got a cheaper G.Skill 3000C15 kit, and it's fine with manual tweaking but won't train above 2133 without those tweaks.

shaq_mobile wrote:

I just noticed this card has a manufacture date of november 2014, which puts it inside the 3 year warranty. I'm going to see if I can RMA it and maybe stretch a little more life out of this desktop.

Good luck! This is a terrific option compared to dropping $800 on a new GeForce GTX1080Ti.

shaq_mobile wrote:

https://puu.sh/xqP3H/dedde7e5c1.png

Are you re-using an existing Fractal Design Define S? If not, consider the Define Mini C to go with your micro-ATX motherboard.

If I read that list right, the memory I already have on that wishlist (F4-3200C14D-16GFX) is Samsung b die. Newegg reviews say it runs at 3200 with some minor adjustments.

I'm crossing my fingers for an RMA though.

That 1080ti is expensive but it seems far and away better than the 1080. I could probably put off a system buy another year with how much better it is... Assuming it also doesn't melt itself.

Bummer...

Turns out that they track the original warranty of the first card I sent in and the warranty only applied to that (the warranty ended, according to them, on Nov '16 which corresponds to my original card).

I guess I understand, i wasn't sure if the warranty applied to the purchase or the manufacture date of the card. It's still a bummer though. This card only lasted a year. I should have known better than to buy MSI. I've had soooooo many problems with their mobos and cards in the past. :/

I ordered the new system, though the wishlist i posted had the wrong RAM, so i switched it to G skill flare per recommendations.

Anyway, thank you for the help everyone. I'm excited to be using a competitive AMD product again! It takes me back to 2003

http://techreport.com/review/5683/amd-a ... rocessor/9

I remember sitting in my high school library drooling over these ut2k3 benches.

Hold the phone. You've already got DDR4 RAM? What are your current system specs?

Sorry, no. I posted a wishlist earlier but it had the ram i thought I would want, but after some advice, I added different ram to the cart but NOT the wishlist. So the wishlist SS shows soem corsair 3466 ram but i went for the g skill flare x 3200 instead. Does that make sense?

No problem. I thought you meant you already owned DDR4, which would suggest you have a newer system already, making it more cost-efficient to simply replace the mobo and GPU. At the very least saving the cost of a new CPU. Carry on!

Yeah i was hoping to milk my 3570k and gtx 780 longer... but with how many cards it burned out, the dead PCIE port, and my wonky main SSD, i figured itd be safer to just buy a new setup. I'm just going to dedicate my old, gpu-less machine to be my secondary monitor (i'll just use synergy to streamline it) and the first node in my UE4 render farm.

It's a good strategy mate since I've encountered such problems before. Back then I was struggling with replacing one part at a time and, it keeps failing me. For a good reason, maybe the old ones kinda 'degrade' the new comers.

RAM however got no affects on the others whatsoever. DDR4 is impressive and there's no reason to ditch them out.

I've seen the Seasonic Focus & EVGA G2/G3 compared similarly. I built a new system with the G2 550 in January and have been very impressed so far.

Given the system I built, the fan on the PSU rarely spins up while I'm 'working'; average load 'working' is about 160W as measured by the UPS. I'm not sure I've checked during gaming (~260W), but I've only seen it spun up once or twice. They probably have a chart that shows when & where it spins the fan up, but I don't have it in front of me.

Something that I noticed when building the system; they provide a 6+2 GPU plug and a completely separate one with 6+2 & 6+2. Since I have a (lower) powered 1060, I was able to get away with just the 6+2 and have a little less extra wire hanging around inside the case.