I live in Greece & I am building a new machine (it’s been 6 years from my previous one) for both work and gaming:
These is the pcpartpicker list (prices here are similar to that of Germany):
de.pcpartpicker.com/list/N3gVb2
The case and the storage (except for the Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB) will be inherited from my old PC. I will be buying a new GPU when/if prices become less surreal. I also have already acquired the 9950x3d CPU. Any input is welcome but I am mostly interested for your input in the following parts:
PSU (Corsair RM1200x SHIFT): I am going for 1200W as a bit of an overkill. The PSU format is a bit of a novelty but is supported by my case.
Mobo (MSI MAG X870 TOMAHAWK): again a bit of an overkill but I want numerous USB ports and M.2 slots.
RAM (G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 2 x 32 GB): Here, I am a bit confused. The RAM is compatible according to the mobo’s website but is, according to G.Skill, XMP, not EXPO. Does this mean, that It will work but not at the declared speed? Will I have to input the timings manually (which I find somehow anxiety inducing). I am also thinking of the G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 96GB DDR5 but it has the same problem.
Cooler (ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 360): I chose it because it seems OK & relatively cheap. I don’t mind air coolers but in warm environments like here AIO coolers seem to work better. Also, if anyone has this mobo, will I have a clearance problem?
I have a ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 360 for my 9900x, which I built a month ago. Although it is quiet and looks good, I had a really bad experience with actually screwing in block to the board. There are two screws. 9 times out of 10 (maybe I got a somehow bent unit) while I was feeling that I screwed in both of the screws, one was actually loose, resulting in a situation, where the block was applying pressure from an angle to the cpu (at some point I thought that I would cause actual damage), followed by a “oah-shirt!” with fast unscrewing.
So I would at least keep that in mind. I have a NZXT Kraken AiO in my old system, and I have never had to deal with this kind of problem.
I have a 1600w beQuiet, which I bought, assuming that I would update to a 4090+(hoping that 5090 would not be a disappointment). It doesn’t hurt.
Mobo is always the thing, to which you usually connect everything else. And here going for the “cheap option” is never a good idea (if it doesn’t kick you in the soft spot today, it will eventually).
People seem to like G.Skill. I remember them as being a “cheaper option”, aimed at “gamers”. But since it has survived this long, I think they do make fine memory.
As far as I am aware, there isn’t much stopping a motherboard vendor from qualifying a RAM kit that doesn’t explicitly have an EXPO profile. Back in the AM4 days, EXPO didn’t exist so we just imported the XMP profile.
The reason(s) this doesn’t always work generally tend to be sub-timing and termination resistance related, but if the motherboard vendor has qualified it, you should be fine as they’ll have done the background work to get the BIOS to go “oh, hey, I know this one!” instead of having to guess at literally everything and come up wrong.
One thing I will note, is not quite every AM5 CPU is able to run the 2133 FCLK necessary for 6400mt/s to not get hit with a latency penalty that can outrun the gains from the extra ~6% speed vs 2000/6000. I’ve also heard of the 32x2 kits sometimes being difficult to stabilize even at 6000, but a ton of this depends on how lucky you were in the silicon lottery. Course, you can get a really “terrible” chip in every regard except the IMC, or a great one with a terrible IMC, and everything in between.
