Cat's mini(ITX) work in progress Ryzen rebuild! Now with added benchmarks!

[jimborae]

I really like the look of that Louqe case, would be great to house my ageing but still fantastic Hackintosh mini-ITX build which is currently in a Antec ISK 600...........but damn that's expensive. Still it look classy.

[kompukare]

Yes, the Louqe is a nice case.
As is the Dan Case A4 which inspired it.
Plenty of flexible PCI-E risers on eBay after the mining craze, but DIYing a whole case seems like a tall order.
Maybe other manufacturers will eventually offer similar.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have added an X265 test,Fallout 4 testing under different power plans,and pictures of the new Wraith Spire cooler I installed,and the final build(well kind off).

Now I am doing some tests with the Wraith Spire instead of the Wraith Stealth.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Some IN-Spiring testing

So I decided to do some testing with the Wraith Spire plonked on.

The first test was with the same 50 RAW DxO jpeg conversion test.



A whole 8 seconds faster,eh! That gives slightly more time to open the first page!

The core boost didn't seem to change that much - maybe 50MHZ to 100MHZ at most.

However,something did change - the temperature!!

Instead of around a 90C peak,the CPU peaked at just over 70C!!



So was the cooler any noisier - not exactly but there was a bit more noticeable bearing noise IMHO,although YMMV.

Now onto everyone's favourite gamers benchmark....Cinebench.



A 5 point increase in the single threaded score and a 3 point decrease in the multi-threaded score. The OpenGL score slightly increased too.

Now see if there is any "Fallout" from further testing?? Hehe!!

Lets move onto Fallout 4.

The first sequence is Abernathy Farm.



The FPS with the Wraith Stealth was actually slightly higher at 49.2FPS as opposed to the 48.77FPS with the Wraith Spire,but the latter had better minimums.

Now,lets look at frametimes.




Its six of one,and half a dozen of another TBH,but temperatures hovered at worst around the 60C mark,but a slight win for the Wraith Spire though.

Now,lets have a look at the Big City....Diamond City.



Framerates definitely seemed better with the Wraith Spire with regards to minimums but surprisingly enough,but the average was the same in both cases at 50.77FPS!

Lets,look at the frametimes now.




Frametimes,tad worse?? Hard to say overall,but I did have a Windows update before testing the game(still Win10 PRO 1803 though),so that might not be helping. However,Fallout 4 is finicky to test especially due to its sensitivity to storage throughput when modded.

Is the Wraith Spire worth it?? Yep,I think for the better cooling performance it is,and the CPU did seem to hit a slightly higher max clockspeed of around 3.9GHZ instead of the 3.7GHZ~3.8GHZ it did before. However,the Wraith Stealth will suffice but under heavy load you will reach near enough the max temperature the CPU can handle.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Another day.....another Windows update!

It looks like the minions have been hard at work at Microsoft,so another set of Windows updates to get in the way!! Luckily I am still on Win10 PRO 1803.

Now,I decided to try and tweak the RAM. There is a useful utility which helps Ryzen CPU owners with this:

https://www.techpowerup.com/download...am-calculator/

So I selected the SAFE preset to get things started. Now the system booted fine after applying the new RAM timings in the BIOS,but after trying to do a few Fallout 4 test runs the game would rage quit in protest!! So I tried some more tweaking and more of the same - I suspect with some additional tweaking it would have worked and it was some of the more esoteric RAM settings which are the issue here.

However,Gibbo over on OcUK forums suggested that since the RAM was B-die that 14-14-14-31 settings should work,so I decided to try them out and left everything else on auto,ie,the original D.O.C.P. settings,and so far the RAM seems stable.

Now lets look at Cinebench R15. C14 scores are on the left and C16 scores are on the right.



Useful improvements in the OpenGL and multi-threaded score but a regression in the single threaded score,which seemed repeatable.

Now moving onto DxO,I tried the same test sequence as before.



A further 8 seconds knocked off the total time - I better start reading books quicker!! Time to go to the speed reading classes.

Peak power consumption was at 176W. The max temperature peaked at 74C although it might be slightly warmer today.

Not Fallout 76

Now moving onto some games testing with more Fallout 4.

First lets trouble more settlers at Abernathy Farm!



There is definitely an improvement to the minimums. The average FPS increased from 48.77FPS to 49.44FPS,which is not too bad for a few quick tweaks in the BIOS.

Now lets look at some frametimes.




Possibly slightly better with C14 timings,but hard to say IMHO although YMMV.

Now lets make a trip back to Diamond City.



Again minimums seem better. The average FPS went up from 50.77FPS to 51.51FPS,which is not too bad of an improvement.

Now lets look at the frametimes(again).




I would say with the C14 timings it does seem slightly better IMHO although YMMV.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It's the Final Countdown??

Perhaps for the time-being,once I CBA to tweak the RAM some more!!




The biggest improvements have been in the minimums which has been very noticeable!

[Millennium]

Nice report >cat !

I will perhaps give 14x-31 a go. I am using Command Rate 1T which I feel should still be helping (though I'm not sure!). My ram is GSKILL B die designed for Ryzen so it should be great, I think it's dual rank though iirc.
You should clock that 2600 up a bit! I understand the ATX enclosure is small. Still, perhaps 3.5 ghz?
I hope that with Ryzen 7nm we get the possibility of BCLK overclocking back again. It worked well... .. . I will probably keep this memory I can't afford to better

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks! The CPU seems to stay at between 3.5GHZ to 3.9GHZ anyway due to Precision Boost.

[jimborae]

This is most likely what I will get now:

http://www.louqe.com/

Any other case is not worth it for me unless its something not too far off in size,but it is clever. The Dan Case A4-SFX is the other one.

Its why I have quietly gone for an SFX form factor PSU,a motherboard with dual M.2 slots,and a 65W TDP CPU. It should be quite easy to get two SSDs(M2),and a few HDDs into each of them now,especially as 2.5" drives are more common now.



..............

That Louqe case is back for sale today Cat, for a Jan delivery date. But it really is ouch on the pocket. €219 + €39 for a top hat + €50 delivery. I know that quality costs and it's unique but that's really pushing it and I'm finding it hard to justify that kind of expenditure.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

That Louqe case is back for sale today Cat, for a Jan delivery date. But it really is ouch on the pocket. €219 + €39 for a top hat + €50 delivery. I know that quality costs and it's unique but that's really pushing it and I'm finding it hard to justify that kind of expenditure.

Well,I haven't saved up that much money for a purchase of the case,but I suppose again the issue,is I even spend upto £150 I am not gaining much over what I have. The cheapest case,I thought off getting is the Kolink Rocket for £160:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/kolin...ca-035-kk.html

However,the Ghost S1 just seems far more flexible and supports taller CPU coolers. TBH,this is why I have stuck with my current case. If I want something much better and much smaller I need to spend decent money!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I tried Planetside 2 and in the large battles with 150~300 people,I used to go as low as 20FPS~25FPS with the Xeon E3 1230 V2,but with the Ryzen 5 2600 it is between 35FPS~40FPS at worse,and there is much less stuttering.

[pp05]

I'm putting a similar setup together over the weekend.

I just need clarification re: AMD power balance drivers, did it automatically become default or did you have to point to it or uninstall something within windows..

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm putting a similar setup together over the weekend.

I just need clarification re: AMD power balance drivers, did it automatically become default or did you have to point to it or uninstall something within windows..

When you install the AMD chipset drivers it installs the Ryzen Balanced power plan.

[jimborae]

Hi Cat, what software did you use to identify the RAM modules?

[Ozaron]

Hi Cat, what software did you use to identify the RAM modules?

+1, would also like to know. (Thanks for sharing btw)

[Bagnaj97]

Hi Cat, what software did you use to identify the RAM modules?

+1, would also like to know. (Thanks for sharing btw)

Thaiphoon Burner probably.