I’ve been an AMD fanboi for as long as I can remember. My first PC that I bought with my own hard earned money was an AMD K7 (Athlon) back in 2001.
So I was super excited with the announcement of AMD’s Zen2 and Navi platforms, both running on a 7nm process. So what was I to do? Here’s my 3800X / 5700XT build.
The system reuses some parts from my Unicorn Orgy build, namely the RAM, the Deepcool all-in-one cooler, the SSDs and a few cable extensions. Other than that we’re talking all new kit.
The motherboard is an MSI X570 Pro board. This was one of the cheapest boards avaialble on the market and skips out on some features offered by more expensive boards such as built in RGB lighting (headers are still present), multiple 16x PCIe4.0 slots and only a couple of NVMe M.2 slots. Its pretty no-frills but still has a clean look which was a great basis for this platform.
The case is a Coolermaster MB511RGB which is a great mid-tower case at a reasonable price. I went with this case because of the included fans (4 of them) and the fact it had a mesh front which would facilitate great airflow.
Originally this project was going to use an NZXT H500 in white, but when it arrived I had serious concerns over the amount of air I could push through the case, which became very important once it became evident how hot the 5700XT would run.
Because of this I ended up using white cable extensions from Linkup, I’m still not sure they go well with the aesthetic and I may swap them out for my red/black Shakmods kit, which I actually prefer in terms of the overall look and flexibility due to the thicker strands.
The Deepcool AIO unit does a great job of cooling the 3800X, though I’m not sure how far I’d want to push it in terms of overclocking. Using Ryzen Master I’m able to claw a few more performance points out on Cinebench, but not without the whole PC sounding like it’s going to take off when the fans kick up in speed.
In terms of gaming I’m getting an excellent performance lift over the Ryzen 2600 / Nvidia 1070 that featured in Unicorn Orgy. Even more modern AAA titles are returning playable (40fps) frame rates when running at 4K on higher settings. Drop the resolution down to 1440p or 1080p and framerates are shooting well above the 75Hz refesh rate of my monitor.
That being said, the 5700XT blower card is exceptionally loud. Thankfully I’ve not experienced any of the driver/software issues that others are reporting, and in theory these should disappear over time anyway, but the hige amount of noise the card generates makes playing a less-immersive experience and you should definitely wait for 3rd party cards with axial fans to hit the market before investing.
Overall I’m very happy with the build, Hopefully I’ll be reviewing some of the individual components in the coming weeks.