BitMaster

There is actually an easy answer, measure it. If your GPU is often or always below 100% usage you are bottlenecked somewhere else. Lowest fps for sure get a lot better the more power your CPU has, regardless of ST or MT, but also RAM can play a role. Reading you have 2 sets of RAM mixed together I dare to believe they are at SPD values, likely 2133 or 2600. If that's the case then this is indeed somewhat of a hurdle. Also 24GB is on the lower end and many new modules and anything but an empty mission will fill 24GB in 3 seconds. Use MSI Afterburner, configure the OSD and read your rig while you fly, that will tell you a lot about hardware usage.

Some kind of off topic but also fits the general thread. M2 NVMe are a curse, they suck 100% when it comes to easy handling. Forget to open the lid, pull 2 plugs and get the drive with it's bay out. No...likely get the GPU out first, take a smaller screwdriver, likely PH1, to take the cooling lid off your mobo, maybe need to take another screw driver, PH0, to release the M2 drive, then do it all backwards. LoL No wonder there is U2, this, is a horror if you need to access a drive NOW.

The issue was the 990 Pro only first off to be clear. From my own experience I know that I can rely on them and that Samsung supports their drives over many years. I run many 840, 850 and 860, 970, mostly Pros, some Evo but no QVOs. I haven't had any bad experience but 1 in my old Apple MacBook Pro, it's original 830Evo failed in it's 3rd year, any other Samsung SSD drive I ever put in any PC still runs, period. That's why I recently bought my 4th 980Pro 1TB for my own work and gaming rig, about a month ago. I could have picked anyone but I mistrust those who aren't among the top tier SSD vendors and it was on sale for 103€ 1TB, I bought my 1st one for 163€ back then then 140 and 130. From what I read I think WD and Sk Hynix are a good choice too but I have no personal experience. The Sk Hynix is likely the fastest one out there you can obtain, it wouldn't be a bad pick I guess. Any drive can fail anytime, regardless of what I, you or anybody says, that's why you need a BACKUP. I don't want to finish a wall of text about drives and how much I like this or that drive without saying that, THEY WILL "ALL" FAIL, one day..I just can't tell you on which one!! That I can sign.

The encryption you mention is not relevant for home desktop use or gaming, in fact it often is useless anyway and I would not trust it if I really had to secure confidential data. Just disregard the "Opal" or whatever encryption it might have or not. From those 3, I would pick the Sk-Hynix P41, unless it's way more than the SN850X. I personally would pick a 2TB 980 Pro, maybe not as fast as the 2 above but still among the quickest there are for Gen4. I just like Samsung's support for all the drives they make. I have over 2 dozen Samsung SSD in use that I either own or service and none ever failed but a 830Evo back in 2015 in my Apple Notebook. Otherwise, excellent performance and reliable too in my world.

I think the Asus board has a lesser RAM Topology, aka lesser quality in routed traces and maybe even the "wrong" layout for what you want to do. One reason why I took the GB Master was it's good 4-Module layout compatibility. Tbh, I am still astound it runs 4 Dual-Rank DIMMs at 3600 CL14, ok..it needed some hefty up-volting, set it to 1,45 but the board makes almost 1,48 out of it but it's stable as far as I can say. If you want B-Die "AND" 64GB there is no other way but 4x Dual-Rank. I think, your Asus mobo is the culprit, not your CPU. Didn't you have them at desired speed with the same CPU in another board ? Might be wrong here. Try with more Volts, B-Die don't die till way north of 1.5ish Volts. Trying 1.475 ain't a bad idea to see if it fixes your stability or booting issue. I also had a mishap few days ago, long story short..too little coffee too early in the day and working the registry is a big No-No ! I deleted the wrong keys along with the correct ones, rebooted and BANG..BSOD... luckily I have Acronis on USB and Cloud so it only took 3 hours to fix my C drive ( another reason to split OS and Apps on different drives ). It haunts us all, sooner or later your ticket is called, either by mistake or just bad luck but basically, you can't totally avoid IT trouble. A backup helps, if it restores

Ahh, ok Take your time so you dont regret what you go for.

I would either get a 7800X3D or a 7950X3D. The bigger one has twice the core count and maybe fits your 4-5 year plan better. For gaming I think both will be equal. Get 64GB 6000MT RAM, the lower the latency the better. Gskill would be my pick. Personally, I used Asus for 2 decades solely but have steered away 2 years ago, since then I am very happy with Gigabyte builds. I would pick the Aorus Master board. Since it will be a DIY loop build, you will likely not have to cool that much CPU with an AMD chip, that's a good thing. If you haven't picked a tower and rad yet, I highly recommend looking into a MoRa3 radiator, external, more cooling power, less tubes inside, no pump and res inside and it looks very clean and nice too, looking at it right now. Invest in a couple of Quick Disconnectors and your DIY Loop is very service friendly. I like to watch builds with hard tubing and what not else, BUT ..I would not like to fix one ! Flexible tubes, Quickconns and an external rad make it very simple..and hey, it looks damn cool.

lmaa

I don't own or run one myself but there are members in this forum that I do know run or have run 6800XT and XTX with success. The bigger VRAM and wider memory bus come into play when you use 1440p and mostly at 4k resolution or VR. For 1080p and 1440p the 3070 is still plenty wide in memory but it has too little VRAM for my taste of GPU, personally. A 1440p monitor and a 6800XT are a perfect match, maybe too much GPU power even.

The RAM you want to have or need to have might not run with your 13th gen Intel. Those CPU's do have a terrible and unpredictable IMC according to Buildzoid and he says, many of them can hardly go over 6000. So getting a 6600 kit might work, or not. Imho, a reason more to hop to AMD. Easier to cool, less RAM trouble and not as dependent on fast RAM this time round. It's Intel now that needs fast RAM to flex it's muscles and AMD does get by with slower speeds this time and not take the performance hit ( all according to Buildzoid btw ). How things can change ! I like Gigabyte but I would also not buy one of their 4090 for simple reasons, they skipped parts ( power delivery section ) to save money ( KrisFix is very clear on this in his repair videos, MSI is the better choice here ), as also some others do. I would pick the Aorus Master over the Extreme any day, the block diagram shows you why. Too many things onboard that have an either-or sign attached to them. The Master has the better layout, almost always. Take a 2TB 980Pro, they come cheap meanwhile, I have 4x 1TB of them and they really do work great under pressure, 5-8 VM's opening same time, all run from 1 drive, updating etc... very nice permanent throughput. Take 2 drives, 1x OS, 1x DCS, it pays back when your OS goes south.

At this point in time, I'd stay away from the 990Pro, there have been issues with it's firmware. Make very sure that has been solved before you buy one. Some , J2C and others, have mentioned that the board you picked has a higher than normal RMA rate, think about that. That's what comes to my mind reading your shopping list.

Sometimes boards really suck, I mean really Sometimes it‘s only your particular board, sometimes it’s a whole batch and worst if the SKU is flawed until a newer version is released, if ever. Be assured, that curse haunts us all from time to time and it’s a real PITA cause it takes a lot of time and patience. we all favor one or the other brand because we think they are best, reliable, whatever. In the end it remains rolling the dice and maybe a nasty RMA. Good Luck

Whatever it is, it should under no circumstances find it's way into your eyes while you wear them.

Upgrade the GPU as far as your wallet allows BUT do not forget to buy more RAM as well, those 2 are mandatory. Then, with the new GPU, minimum of 32GB RAM and MT in testing you can check how far your Ryzen carries you. If you end up being highly CPU bottlenecked, which you might not be that much after all now, you can think about the 5600X or even 5800X3D if your board supports it. Before you buy RAM and possibly a CPU, check your motherboard's manual and QVL to see if you get a Bios to support the X3D chip and what RAM will likely work out of the box. For Ryzen, best is to get 3600MHz if possible, CL16 or lower. That will yield the best results. Check for RAM that is based on Samsung B-Die, those are ideal for your Ryzen. Thinder is the guy to ask for investigating Ryzen and the depth of RAM § latency, he may chime in if you ask him. But it might be that you can just get away with your CPU and not throttle the 3060ti too much. A Ryzen 1300X is a 1st gen Ryzen, likely on a X370 chipset. There is reasonable doubt that your board supports a 5600X or even 5800X3D. Check that first before buying one ! Having the same AM4 across all those generations doesn't per se say it all works criss-cross, it doesn't. *you should list mor of your hardware, so we can see if it may work or rather not. Motherboard, Powersupply, desired resolution for gaming/monitor, are the main ones missing

Afaik, only the first batches of the throttles PCB had that issue. Running mine for 8 years by now directly from the 5 different PC's I used it on since then. Maybe you can track board serials which were affected and see if yours is among them.

That's why we are a bunch of guys and not only one guy that has to know it all. The strength is in the "together"

AMD will release it's 7800X3D chip afaik.

Sure, regarding gaming you are right. Just that the IT industry has more customers than just us gamers. What matters for them is volume and I could imagine that DC's buy way more DIMMs per year than Gamers do, so the focus is on the enterprise side of things.With 100, 200, 400 and soon 800Gbit/sec networks you need systems that can fetch and store that much data on the fly and current DDR4 systems have come to their limit. It's not only about Ryzen, VR and DCS.

Imho, DDR5 as of now mainly serves the enterprise needs where i.e. multiple NVMe's do overwhelm the RAM bandwidth meanwhile. If your RAM is slower than your PCIe lanes can pump data into it you have a new bottleneck, RAM bandwidth. With DDR5, 8 (Intel) or 12 (AMD) channels, Bandwidth is not a concern as of now. That's where DDR5 really shines, already today. Bandwidth Bandwidth BANDWIDTH.... like developers developers DEVELOPERS back in the days...LoL.

My experience is a bit different and I wouldn't call the 5000 series a hot chip, it's way easier to cool than most others currently available, from either party. My tip, use CURVE OPTIMIZER to under-volt your chip, it will run cooler and thus clock higher and it can hold the high clocks for longer. There are many YT videos about that topic. Basically you can do "per core" or "all cores". The difference is, "all cores" will use 1 value for all cores and "per core" will have separate values for each core. Per core can yield a better result but it takes longer to dial them all in, after you have found them values. I meanwhile prefer a negative 25 offset on all cores and the machine stays stable. I tried 27 and 28 on all but on of the cores doesn't like it, so I went back to 25 negative. When I initially did it per core, like 9 of 12 cores used negative 30 ( max value ) and the other two or three cores where 28 and 27 iirc, so 25 is a safe bet and it has showed to be working under high stress loads for months. What pays is a goood cooler, either a monster air cooler or an AIO 240 or bigger. That's the best you can do to let the chip do it's thing.

You are aware of the force from a 2.5 foot long lever where you put in all that you can to dodge those bullets ? If there is such a stick it must have a very large base, greater than the lever, and best if somehow bolted/clamped/glued to something even bigger and more massiv. I know what you mean but it is very unique and the forces you want to engage just make it somewhat "complicated" unless you proivide a clever & secure mounting method ( like in a steel mockup cockpit ). Good luck

All personal preferences aside, if you own a 4090...why bother 1440p and not go 4k 144Hz right away ? For 32" I would always go 4k and I would avoid a 21:9 unless you play other games too where this is real nice, like racing.

Got a brand new Acer Intel Desktop for 1700€ on my bench to fix heat issues, it hits 95°C when playing some games. Think twice before you buy Intel's Nuclear Reactor Die. I now gotta find a cooler that fits into this tiny case and still cools better than Intel's standard cooler.... I dislike AMD's standard coolers as well but they dont get that hot with those. 95°C is THAT far from shutting off...LoL Intel.

No, I don't. First time I noticed that I am affected by 3D graphics causing nausea was way back with the original Wolfenstein. I just watched a friend playing it and got sooo sick, for hours. I then realized, 3D Ego Shooters are not for me..until BF1942 came out. That I played for years with no problems. I guess better graphics and fluent gameplay make it acceptable. After BF1942 I forgot about it, that's already over a decade ago, until I got that Rift thing and couldnt use it. In the end I gave it to my buddy for his kids...they loved it. Maybe when those things have fully matured I try it again. It was awesome, no doubt. It's a totally different sim in VR. I may add: I don't have any problems flying, 3D-Acrobatics ( did that when I was younger on the passenger seat ), can live on a boat ( half swedish, that's my genes there ), have a very good feeling for balance and timing, maybe that's why my brains thinks I get fooled. The reason why this happens is a little different to Eugel's explanation to what I got told, maybe both are valid..I am no doctor by the end of the day. It says that your brain's fault tolerance "App" can only take so much garbage ( the wrong signals from your eyes saying " we are spinning downwards !!!" and your ears saying "No, you sit still you fool, you ain't moving at all!!" After a too high dose of that bad input you would eventually fall into an epileptic seizure, that's when your brain goes tilt, shuts off, and the spinal cord takes over your vital functions. So the trip wire is the brain not tolerating too much bad input. Acting ( likely ) first with nausea..and if you don't stop that bad influence you would finally end in an epileptic seizure. BTW, Page #1 in every Game booklet and Readme.pdf by law iirc. It's said that you could possibly force anybody into such a seizure if you force them audio-visual input that overloads the brain. Think that was also tested by some of the 3 letter agencies.

Tbh, I suffered the same sickness and it got worse over time, not better. i finally gave up VR for now.