Mobo upgrade time!
So after five and a bit years of rock-solid reliable service from the ASUS PZ77V-LK board and its resident i5 3470, I decided it was time to get up to speed (ha!).
I was all set to stay with Intel, tbh (been mulling this for a year or so) but then AMD went "oh hay guyz, we've made a cpu that isn't shit and has loads of cores and is not too many $, and even its name isn't dumb as shit this time".
At the same price point (~£150ish for the CPU, which precludes anything newer than Skylake right now) single-core performance is a wash, but multi-core performance is a significant advantage for the AMD part.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-6400-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-1600/3512vs3919
And having built an i5 system for a friend last year, I was definitely in "fuck that shit" mode because Intel's stock cooling system sucks balls, from the mount to the fan to the noise.
I picked up a Ryzen 5 1600, an Asus Prime B350-PLUS board, and 16GB of DDR4 (DDR3 isn't physically compatible, which was annoying because RAM prices are fuckmedead right now).
I prefer the AM4 socket to the LGA1151(? cba looking it up) socket. Simpler, smaller, no array of a thousand tiny upward-facing pins to fuck up. No, installing the Ryzen 5 is like installing an old 486. Pins go in holes in a ZIF socket with a lever, like god intended. Also the supplied Wraith Spire cooler is a doddle to fit, with nice philips screws that have a positive click when they're fully engaged, rather than Intel's shitty plastic solution.
Installation was drama-free; it's an ATX board replacement. Standoffs all in place already, internal cabling mostly where it needed to be also.
The fan is much, much quieter than Intel's cheap-ass (only not cheap, because Intel) effort, both at idle and under load.
Didn't really get the opportunity to give the CPU a workout - the only thing I did was draw a floorplan in Visio 2016 :)
Nice to see AMD back in the CPU game and not just as the bargain-basement option. Choice and competition are good things.
I was all set to stay with Intel, tbh (been mulling this for a year or so) but then AMD went "oh hay guyz, we've made a cpu that isn't shit and has loads of cores and is not too many $, and even its name isn't dumb as shit this time".
At the same price point (~£150ish for the CPU, which precludes anything newer than Skylake right now) single-core performance is a wash, but multi-core performance is a significant advantage for the AMD part.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i5-6400-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-1600/3512vs3919
And having built an i5 system for a friend last year, I was definitely in "fuck that shit" mode because Intel's stock cooling system sucks balls, from the mount to the fan to the noise.
I picked up a Ryzen 5 1600, an Asus Prime B350-PLUS board, and 16GB of DDR4 (DDR3 isn't physically compatible, which was annoying because RAM prices are fuckmedead right now).
I prefer the AM4 socket to the LGA1151(? cba looking it up) socket. Simpler, smaller, no array of a thousand tiny upward-facing pins to fuck up. No, installing the Ryzen 5 is like installing an old 486. Pins go in holes in a ZIF socket with a lever, like god intended. Also the supplied Wraith Spire cooler is a doddle to fit, with nice philips screws that have a positive click when they're fully engaged, rather than Intel's shitty plastic solution.
Installation was drama-free; it's an ATX board replacement. Standoffs all in place already, internal cabling mostly where it needed to be also.
The fan is much, much quieter than Intel's cheap-ass (only not cheap, because Intel) effort, both at idle and under load.
Didn't really get the opportunity to give the CPU a workout - the only thing I did was draw a floorplan in Visio 2016 :)
Nice to see AMD back in the CPU game and not just as the bargain-basement option. Choice and competition are good things.
