EightyDuce

5700X3D for those who care.

Gaming performance, based on the numbers in the recent GN/HUB reviews of new Intel chips, shows anywhere from 10% to 30% improvement in framerate on a 5700X3D over a 5800X in the games that were tested. Whether that's something that makes sense to you, only you can answer that. Unfortunately they do not bench DCS.

It's definitely interesting how it goes from here. This generation is a pretty significant deviation from their previous design, time will tell; just not sure how long their shareholders are willing to wait.

It's a bit of a process, but early Overclocking is interesting if one has the means and desire... E Cores P Cores (less promising than E)

In my opinion, overclocking to take product and squeeze untapped performance out of it for a meaningful gain in every day use are long over. I can fondly remember taking my Athlon 1700 from 1.4 Ghz to 1.8Ghz on water, using a low production water-block, Chevy chevelle heater core for a radiator, and an Eheim aquarium pump. Or soldering potentiometers to graphics card power delivery to give the power hungry chip what it wanted. These days, manyfacturers' boost algorithms squeeze 90%+ out of the silicon. To squeeze any more out of it requires exotic cooling, an expensive MB with extended controls and a lot of time. Then the end result is hardly meaningful outside of benching. As much as I want to see Intel do better, hoping for overclocking potential to save their new chips is unrealistic at best Just my humble opinion.

Not sure if might have already come across them in your search already or not, but another company that may be worth a look is Starforge Systems. https://starforgesystems.com/ Haven't used them personally as I build my own, but they have had a couple of their builds reviewed by Gamers Nexus in their "Undercover" buys and were overall favorable as far as prebuilt go (check out GN YouTube forbthe vid reviews). Unfortunately I'm not sure if they would customize an order, but they're upfront about components used and have (allegedly) good support. Prices aren't agregious either, according the GN reviews about $400-500 above DIY (at least for the reviwed machines). Might be worth a look and an inquiry.

I suppose anything is possible.

I did not say all 4090's are the same. I said they will all perform within 5-7% (might be off by a couple of %) of each other; limiting factors being cooling ability and power-limit set by the manufacturer in the bios. I do agree that they are not all built the same, as I also mentioned that several manufacturers use higher quality components. I am aware Zotac has had some issues with PCB cracking that were vented out on YouTube by several repair folks, but may be there is more that I am not aware of (I am just a rando on the internet). At the end of the day, each 4090 has to meet an Nvidia spec, simple as that; for everything else, there's the warranty period. Do some manufacturers exceed the minimum spec required? Sure. As far as storage, you want the fastest possible storage for OS, where there are tons of small reads/writes...an Optane drive would be ideal, but alas, Intel killed it. There is very little downside to a single, large partitioned drive. On a board like some of the B650E's that only have 1 Gen 5 PCIe NVme slot, it allows you to run fastest storage possible for both the OS as well as your application drive utilizing a single slot and 4 lanes. One argument I could concede to is data protection and losing both OS and data/application partitions if a drive dies rather than either or with two separate drives. As far as using a PCIe Gen4 drive in a Gen 5 slot, the "point" of it would depend on several factors such as ones needs, desires and available finance. If you can't afford a Gen 5 drive in your capacity or simply don't need gen 5 speeds but your board has a 5.0 slot, why would you not use a Gen 4 drive with the desired capacity that is in your price range? A price between a premium Gen 4 drive and Gen 5 drive can be significant, not to mention the ability to keep it (gen 5 drive) cool as to not degrade the controller and flash. Another consideration for multiple drives is the finite availability of PCIe lanes before you're kicked over to the chipset or before you start taking away lanes from PCIe slots (should you need them). Again, all these decisions are based on several factors and no one solution is best in all cases. One can get into the "what if" weeds really quick to the detriment of the overall discussion and original intent of the thread. For the PSU efficiency, I don't know if there is hard cutoff at lets as you say 50%, from my understanding most reputable PSU's have a plateau in the efficiency curve between 40-80%...thus my statement on "under 80%". But I haven't gone into the PSU efficiency rabbit hole as some may have. You're 100% correct on the "AGESA" spelling...that's my bad.

Everyone will have to do their own calculus based on their own needs for whatever level of support they feel they need. However, while the companies mentioned may not offer 24/7 support, the likelihood of an individual having a life changing event that impacts their ability or desire to continue provinding support vs. an established company is significantly greater. Anyway, this horse feels pretty well dead at this point.

Exclusively for DCS... CPU: 7800X3D or 9800X3D (when it launches) MB: The X870E chipset for Zen5 is essentially X670E with mandatory USB4 connectivity. Unless you want/need USB4 I would save $$ and get a solid X670E or B650E (ensures you have at least 1 NVME PCI gen5 SSD slot) board with whatever connectivity suits you. Power delivery of most AM5 boards is overbuilt and will run any AMD CPU no issues. RAM: 64Gb 2x32 6000-6200, you can try go for 8000 with Zen5 and new AGESA but its hit and miss and you're getting into 2:1 situation which arguably isn't worth it. If you aren't going to chance tight timings, which it doesn't sound like you are, then shouldn't matter too much as long as it's on your motherboard QVL (validated working memory should be posted on the motherboard manufacturer website for each board). Storage: NVME SSD, money no object, Crucial T700 or T705 4Tb (Partitioned for OS and DCS/Gaming partitions ~1Tb:3Tb). Otherwise a 2Tb variant of the same or a cheaper-ish Gen4 option is SK Hynix P41 2Tb, Samsung 9XX, WD Black.... GPU: RTX 4090 to be honest, in performance they are all going to be within 5-7% of each other as they will boost as much as cooling with allow. GPU bracket is a must if you're keeping the stock cooler as there have been instances of PCBs cracking at the slot area from sagging. Here, better cooler will get better performance. Component-wise, Nvidia FE, Asus and MSI cards have had a better choice of power delivery components. YMMV. PSU: 1000w+ Gold/Platinum rated PSU from Super Flower, Corsair, EVGA, Seasonic is fine. When calculating load, best practice is to be under 80% of max load to maintain efficiency. Just my 2 cents, I'm sure others will chime... PS. One thing to consider as far as support from any builder but especially individual vs. established company, is the longevity of the the person/business responsible for the warranty and support. Health, life, work and family situation can change in a heartbeat and its not hard for that 24/7 "lifetime" support to disappear overnight.

Level1Tech Derbauer

For your viewing pleasure and deliberation....Not great, Intel has their work cut out for them. Hopefully they keep improving as competition is to all of our benefit. GN HUB

If you're getting some performance issues, I would make sure that your ram is infact stable (linpack, ycruncher, superpi, p95, testmem5) . Memory instability presents itself in strange ways. Also, before you go on your venture, just know that benefit from bringing CAS latency 30 will have nearly imperceptible impact on performance unless you are running benchmarks (from where you're at with BZ settings). For example, you probably already went from high 50's GBps read/copy to mid to high 60's GBps and dropped latency from 70's ms to low 60s or high 50 ms. It will also potentially require a voltage increase or drop in frequency. DDR5 greatly benefits from secondary and tertiary timing tuning along with frequency, followed by infinity fabric. Instead of focusing on primary timings, I would see if you can push your kit to 6200 or 6400 mt/s, if you can't get 6400 or 6200, see how much you can push IF. That being said, from reading your post, and this is not meant as as insult, it appears you are very inexperienced when I comes to RAM tuning. Unless you are serious about learning at least some aspects of memory timings and interaction, I would just stick to BZ timings and move on with your life. You can quickly go down a rabbit hole for very little gain beyond what you currently have.

Unless you're looking for something like a Strix or the Liquid Suprim from MSI, all 4090s perform virtually the same. Some will have higher power limits, but the gains aren't really worth the power/heat increase. Buy the one with the best warranty unless you're taking the cooler off to put a waterblock on it.

Didn't even know this was an issue, at least in DCS.... I guess ignorance is bliss.

Its a P3 Kill-A-Watt. Can't remember where I bought it, probably Newegg or Amazon, but it's been close to 15 years. The benchmark is a Cyberpunk built in benchmark that runs same amount of time for each run, couldn't tell you the length right now as I'm at work. Off top of my head its like 1-2 min long.

Just got the UPS hooked up and running the same Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive benchmark it was pretty much locked at 486w output (similar to what the smart plug reported) with one momentary peak to 513W. It appears Kill-o-Watt is the outlier.

Posted for awareness and hasn't been personally tested. I'm on a 4090.

AMD released new drivers that supposed to address VR performance. https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-23-10-01-41-vlk-extn

New drivers released that supposedly addresses VR performance... https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-23-10-01-41-vlk-extn

I thought it was an APC-branded UPS, however, it's actually a "CyberPower 1500VA / 900Watts True Sine Wave Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)". It's just going to have the Synology NAS, Unifi Dream Machine SE and two switches on it. We don't typically lose power for long but recently with the weather, have had frequent quick outages and the NAS hasn't been happy about it.

I have an APS battery backup UPS coming Thursday for my server room but I'll hook it up to my PC and see what it reads. I'm not sure how accurate the sengled plug is, but the Kill-a-watt was, and from a quick Google, still is a popular measuring tool and folks report as accurate but there's no telling if it went off at some point of its 15 years of sitting in a drawer. Unfortunately until the UPS gets here I have no other way to measure, but the readings have been surprising if nothing else... Especially the disparity between the killawatt and the smart plug.

PSU is an MSI MPG A1000G, so I don't think it's the issue. I'd be more inclined to think that the 15 year old kilowatt P3 may be the issue. Unfortunately I don't have another way to measure other then in-windows reporting and napkin math. Edit: so I just thought of something and grabbed one of the smart plugs that records power use/draw I had on my 3D printer. Cyberpunk 2077 RT overdrive benchmark indicates 463-480w draw at the wall. No idea how accurate these are (sengled smart plug), but it's a heck of a spread from the killawat P3.

To be clear, the 880-917w (Cyberpunk 2077 RT Ultra) was from the wall while benching (built in benchmark). Same bench in RT Overdrive was pulling 940-947w. DCS Marianas F18 free-flight in VR was pulling 610-642w. Diablo 4 in-game, pulling 520-560w-ish. If all you're doing is DCS, you have headroom. But some things may be more demanding. I'm actually surprised CyberPunk 2077 RT overdrive pulled that much power....makes me think I should have gone with a 1200w+ PSU instead of a 1000W lol. @some1 Do you by chance have Cyberpunk 2077 and could run the built in benchmark to see if your power-draw spikes?

Just the tower and anything that's plugged into it.