Not sure what I'm doing anymore

[BirdofPrey]

I think my PC has just about had it. It's ancient by tech standards and a bargain basement crap case has fallen apart and exposed the innards to everything, and, I think has help lead to my CPU baking itself (passive cooler, works great with case fans, not so much when airflow is crap and one of the fans has seized). To tell you how long it's been since I upgraded (and actually knew how to choose parts), I am still running a Phenom II X4.

So with that in mind I was hoping you folks could help me revise my parts list and remove any questionable descisions.
So far, I've put this together. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/m7gFFT

While my current CPU has started to become too little than what I need, I still think I am comfortable with getting a mid range CPU as a replacement. As it is, I still don't feel like I am struggling for more CPU power all that much with the exception of when I play Cities Skylines, simulating so many agents does occasionally grind the system to a halt.

As for the GPU, I am still considering upgrade options, but might keep the current one for just a bit longer. As much as I'd like a Fury or Nano (more likely the latter), I am still considering getting something cheaper, and at any rate, am likely to hold off another month or two since I don't like making single, gigantic purchases.

I'm a bit less sure on the storage. I had wanted to get an M.2 SSD (Specifically a Samsung 950), but I had wanted to bide my time and wait for the 1TB stuff to start coming out, but time seems to have run out, and in the mean time my 3.5" HDD won't fit in the smaller cases while the SSD is only 128GB, so I need something. At the very least, I do want the M.2 slot for upgrading later this year.

The rest of it, I don't really know how to look for small cases and small cooling. I want the HTPC form factor which is hard to search for, there's tons of dead ends with cases that have low profile slots instead of full height slots parallel to the motherboard, but the Fractal Design 202 I stuck in there looked decent, though admittedly, I am unsure how I will like the fact it's mostly plastic.


Anyone able to advise?

 

[confusis]

Phenom II x4 is still a solid CPU, my planned server will run one

Anywho;
good choice of cpu cooler and fan - https://smallformfactor.net/reviews/prolimatech-samuel-17-goliaths-david . However It won't fit in the case with even the slimmest of fans (the Scythe Slim, which is 12mm thick). The Node 202 has a 56mm height limit, the Samuel is 45mm by itself. From what I've tested that would fit, the Cryorig C7 may be a good option - https://smallformfactor.net/reviews/cryorig-c7-new-contender-appears

I assume you currently own the HD7950? It's about the same performance as an R9-270x or a GTX960. (just so that you can analyse cost:benefit)

With the Non-K CPU, is there another reason for going for the Z chipset? Buying a board now most likely means that non-Z OC is gone.

 

[BirdofPrey]

The Phenom is a solid CPU, and I am not unhappy with it, but the system as a whole needs a refresh, and I think the CPU might have gotten a little cooked when the main cooling fan seized up. Also, I swear it runs hotter (as in the heatsink is hotter) than when I got it. At the very least, it seems less stable under load.
And, again, Cities: Skylines, CPUs hate it.

I totally missed the height calculation with the CPU cooler, thanks for the catch.
I'd be a bit concerned with not being able to replace the CPU fan, though with the C7. It's pretty dusty here; how long can I expect that fan to last?
I am open to alternative cases. I had also looked at a couple Silverstone cases, though the RVZ02 I think is ugly.

I do own the 7950, and as far as the manufacturer claims the GPU is supposed to be factory overclocked to perform just short of a 7970, so I did figure it was reasonable to keep a bit longer. The only complaint I have is that AMD seems to botch the drivers every couple of updates.

As for the chipset: dunno, don't know much of anything about current chipsets, but at the very least, as far as I can tell, most of the boards with an M keyed M.2 slot seem to be X99 or Z170. Cheaper alternatives would be appreciated of course.

 

[jtd871]

If it helps, Bird, I'm personally thinking H170 chipset for my new system later this year, as the main benefits from the Z series over the H series are overclocking K CPUs and flexibility with PCIe lanes over multiple slots. With mITX, there's only one slot, so you don't strictly speaking need that allocation flexibility. Of the currently available mITX motherboards with H170, I'm seriously considering the Gigabyte H170 wifi model as it has M.2 with x4, and currently is running about $115 in the US. AsRock have cheaper (sub-$100) SKUs for sale on Newegg (one with and one without an included wifi card, but both otherwise the same), but I'm not sure they support M.2 with x4.

 

[Phuncz]

I'm seeing these boards when I search for Socket 1151 with M.2:

Asus B150I PRO GAMING/AURA
Asus B150I PRO GAMING/WIFI/AURA
Asus H170I-PLUS D3
Asus Z170I Pro Gaming

ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac

Gigabyte GA-Z170N-WIFI
Gigabyte GA-B150N Phoenix-WIFI
Gigabyte GA-B150N-GSM
Gigabyte GA-B150N Phoenix
Gigabyte GA-H170N-WIFI

MSI B150I GAMING PRO
MSI B150I GAMING PRO AC
MSI H170I PRO AC
MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC

I haven't verified these but it would seem there is choice if you want a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 socket.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Do you really need 32GB of memory ? I know mITX only has 2 slots and this way it is gonna be more future proof, but honestly I do no see the need of 32GB, unless you do memory intensive work. Moving to 16GB could save quite a lot.

I do run an i5-4570 with 16GB and never ran into problems. The bottleneck was the GTX770 when I moved to a 1440p panel.

 

[BirdofPrey]

I'm seeing these boards when I search for Socket 1151 with M.2:

Asus B150I PRO GAMING/AURA
Asus B150I PRO GAMING/WIFI/AURA
Asus H170I-PLUS D3
Asus Z170I Pro Gaming

ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac

Gigabyte GA-Z170N-WIFI
Gigabyte GA-B150N Phoenix-WIFI
Gigabyte GA-B150N-GSM
Gigabyte GA-B150N Phoenix
Gigabyte GA-H170N-WIFI

MSI B150I GAMING PRO
MSI B150I GAMING PRO AC
MSI H170I PRO AC
MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC

I haven't verified these but it would seem there is choice if you want a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 socket.

Thanks for the list, I'll check those out.
This is why M.2 as a format annoys me. When I was searching a lot ofturned out to have an E keyed slot for a wifi card, and at least one of the boards I saw that DID have an M keyed slot didn't support 2280, which is the majority of M.2 SSDs.

Do you really need 32GB of memory ? I know mITX only has 2 slots and this way it is gonna be more future proof, but honestly I do no see the need of 32GB, unless you do memory intensive work. Moving to 16GB could save quite a lot.

I do run an i5-4570 with 16GB and never ran into problems. The bottleneck was the GTX770 when I moved to a 1440p panel.

Do I strictly need it? No of course not, but I could also probably get away with nabbing some old H87 parts and a 2.5" SSD.
I am thinking about memory choice; most of the time 16GB isn't a problem but occasionally, when I'm doing something heavy, I do run up against the memory wall.

 

[BirdofPrey]

So I am considering maybe getting a single 16GB memory stick and more closely scrutinizing my memory usage to see how much use a second would be; I still think 32 GB would be nice to have (though TBH if 12GB sticks were a thing, I'd get two of those instead), and it'd be cheaper to add a second 16GB stick than replace two 8GB sticks a month down the road.. How much performance penalty would I suffer from not having a stick in both slots?

At any rate I updated my parts list.
http://pcpartpicker.com/user/GhostBirdofPrey/saved/#view=fChCmG

Swapped the CPU cooler (and dropped the fan since this one comes with one) and motherboard, and decided I am going to get the Samsung 950 Pro right now since I need an SSD now anyways. As much as I do want the 1TB version when it comes out, It is probably going to be rather expensive.
Also since the exterior casing is plastic, I want to try running the wireless antennas internally. $9 isn't a price I'd feel bad about spending on an experiment.

Any additional commentary/suggestions from you guys?

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

I do not recommand running a single DIMM as you will halve your memory bandwidth (dual channel technology). IF you really think you'll need 32GB, then get it . That's the reason why I prefer mATX (4x DIMM slots) over mITX .... more versatile, but hard to find very small mATX chassis with sufficient cooling.

 

[BirdofPrey]

I know it halves the bandwidth. i was wondering just how much of a performance hit that is.
As nice as 4 slots would be, I can't really say that one feature is enough to entice me (though a larger number of options and competitive pricing is something I think is missing from mITX). The form factor I am looking for puts the video card on a riser parallel to the motherboard which is both hard to find in mATX (most HTPC form factors instead have 4-5 low profile expansion slots), and is also problematic where cooling is concerned; not to mention if the slots are being blocked, they are of no use to me anyways. Add to that, I would say that 16GB memory modules have dropped from money no object prices to enthusiast prices.

Is there a good way to determine how much benefit I might see from additional memory?
Under general not doing much workloads I probably see 75-80% physical memory use, but when I start gaming or doing other things, I can see it go into the 90s.
What I DON'T know is how much paging the system is doing; I don't know how many page faults I am getting or how much of a performance impact they are causing, and that is compounded by the fact, the SSD I am planning on getting will cause a much lower penalty on page faults.
It it makes any difference, while I don't know what the average commit charge (any way to find that out?) my max commit charge is around 40GB (and the limit is just under 45GB)


On another note, I haven't got a clue how much of an effect memory speed and CAS latency have on overall performance, so I just picked something that looked to be in the middle, so advice there would also be appreciated.
====
Anyways, how's the rest of it look? Any potentially better picks for various parts?

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Haven't look at frequency vs CAS in ages (last time was CAS 1.5 DDR1 ). If mITX is the limiting factor, I'd say get as much as you can afford.

What will you use your rig for ? It is pretty hard to give advise without knowing that. 32GB for gaming seems pretty useless, but if you are doing scientific simulation or rendering with ultra high res textures this is another story .

 

[BirdofPrey]

Haven't look at frequency vs CAS in ages (last time was CAS 1.5 DDR1 ). If mITX is the limiting factor, I'd say get as much as you can afford.

Quick, where's the memory guy?
I'm the storage guy.

What will you use your rig for ? It is pretty hard to give advise without knowing that. 32GB for gaming seems pretty useless, but if you are doing scientific simulation or rendering with ultra high res textures this is another story .

Well it is mainly gaming (and general use). The main factor is I tend to have other stuff going on while I do that; I tend to leave everything else open and running when I launch a game.

That's why I asked how I can find out how much and in what manner (ie. how much physical vs virtual memory is utilized) memory I am actually using. Like I said, I don't tend to have very much free memory, but am less sure how much of that empty space is just unused and how much has just been compressed or swapped out.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

You'll need a Windows guy. I once tried to sum the memory used by all processes but the sum was below the "reported used memory". At the moment, Windows says I use 3GB out of 8GB, but the sum of all user's processes is below 1GB.

This is easier of Unix / Linux side .

 

[BirdofPrey]

That's likely because task manager hides most background processes, but you're right, memory usage can be confusing at times.
Add to the fact I am running windows 10 and plan to use it in the future and the Win10 memory manager compresses unused pages in physical memory, so it ideally reduces hard page faults (ie. memory was offloaded to swapfile on the disk), but incurs a CPU penalty on soft faults (page is still in main memory, but has been marked as available).

That's why I was mainly concerned with hard page faults since those are the main reason insufficient memory causes system slowdown.
Who knows, maybe I should just stick with 16GB; I just want to find out what really is the better choice, though the lower capacity obviously saves me a bit of money, and the SSD I have chosen is overkill and shouldn't have too big a penalty on page fault (as an added bonus using the swap file is sequential access).


On a side note, I changed my PSU selection.
I realized the one I chose wasn't modular, and with a case this small I am NOT going to deal with unused cables.
With a memory capacity downgrade and speed upgrade, price remains about the same, though now that I am thinking about it, I should measure the length of my video card to make sure it fits. Since I was planning on replacing that later, if it doesn't fit, that's a problem. (looks like it SHOULD fit)

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

If you use one 16GB stick in lieu of two 8GB sticks, yes, your bandwidth will theoretically be halved, but it would take some very specific workloads constantly maxxing out that memory in order for you to notice it. The bandwidth of a single channel of DDR4 ranges (based on the frequency) anywhere from 12.8-25.6GBps, meaning the entirety of your memory could be written over in under two seconds.

Seriously, you'd have to be doing some strange simulations or stress tests to be hitting that sort of throughput. Bandwidth is a non-issue for you, as with DDR4, bandwidth ranges between insane and ludicrous.

...Consequently, I'd strongly recommend getting one 16GB stick, rather than getting two 8GB ones, since you can easily upgrade in the future with the remaining open slot. That assumes that you only need that much, though, which brings me to this...

Under general not doing much workloads I probably see 75-80% physical memory use, but when I start gaming or doing other things, I can see it go into the 90s.

How much memory are you using now? If you aren't reliably hitting full utilization at 16GB presently, you have no reason to upgrade until you do. The performance penalty is very easy to avoid in the short term (close a few browser tabs) and memory is only getting cheaper, so paying more for it now when you don't benefit is just wasting money.

On another note, I haven't got a clue how much of an effect memory speed and CAS latency have on overall performance, so I just picked something that looked to be in the middle, so advice there would also be appreciated.

The effect is negligible. The strongest consistent performance penalty I can recall seeing, in tests done to explore this, is a ~5 second slowdown in rendering tests that normally take 10-15 minutes. For you and your use case, just make sure that the memory is compatible with your board.

Is there a good way to determine how much benefit I might see from additional memory?

It's important to think of memory upgrades in a different way than CPU or GPU upgrades. When you replace your processor with a faster version, everything you do enjoys a speedup, even the stuff that's already fast. Comparatively, since faster memory (all other things held equal) so negligibly affects performance, you only really notice memory when you've run out of it.

If you're currently not hitting 16GB utilization, your OS isn't going to be paging files to disk in a destructive or performance-crippling manner, and your memory won't act as a bottleneck to performance. So to maintain that, you just need to keep that the same in your new build. Unlike doubling the power of your CPU, doubling your memory will have literally no effect on performance, unless you were constantly needing more than what you had beforehand.

 

[BirdofPrey]

How much memory are you using now? If you aren't reliably hitting full utilization at 16GB presently, you have no reason to upgrade until you do. The performance penalty is very easy to avoid in the short term (close a few browser tabs) and memory is only getting cheaper, so paying more for it now when you don't benefit is just wasting money.

Right this second?
I'm not doing much of anything at the moment and have about 12GB used, but the total system commit is 27GB and about 4GB is on the standby list (If I read the MSDN blog right, that should be compressed)

The effect is negligible. The strongest consistent performance penalty I can recall seeing, in tests done to explore this, is a ~5 second slowdown in rendering tests that normally take 10-15 minutes. For you and your use case, just make sure that the memory is compatible with your board.

So, I won't really see much of any difference if I go for the cheapest memory I can?

It's important to think of memory upgrades in a different way than CPU or GPU upgrades. When you replace your processor with a faster version, everything you do enjoys a speedup, even the stuff that's already fast. Comparatively, since faster memory (all other things held equal) so negligibly affects performance, you only really notice memory when you've run out of it.

If you're currently not hitting 16GB utilization, your OS isn't going to be paging files to disk in a destructive or performance-crippling manner, and your memory won't act as a bottleneck to performance. So to maintain that, you just need to keep that the same in your new build. Unlike doubling the power of your CPU, doubling your memory will have literally no effect on performance, unless you were constantly needing more than what you had beforehand.

I definitely understand that memory only has a significant performance impact when there isn't enough. one point, though, that is somewhat bothersome is that I can't specifically tell if/when lack of memory is an issue since I tend to hit a CPU limit at the same time, granted, I do spend some time at 90+% CPU utilization yet don't always notice any performance problems; when I notice the most slowdown I have high load on CPU and memory.

===
On a side note: I bought the case today; it has a longer lead time than any of the components, so even if I wait a day of two to buy the components, they should still arrive first.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

I'm not doing much of anything at the moment and have about 12GB used, but the total system commit is 27GB and about 4GB is on the standby list (If I read the MSDN blog right, that should be compressed)

12GB used not doing much ? That is one hell of a huge amount of RAM used doing nothing.

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

Right this second?
I'm not doing much of anything at the moment and have about 12GB used, but the total system commit is 27GB and about 4GB is on the standby list (If I read the MSDN blog right, that should be compressed)

If you're using 12GB with an idling system, something seriously wrong is going on, and you might have a runaway background process that's leaking memory or something. I'd look at memory utilization for individual processes and try to see what's going on there.

Also, to clarify my previous question: In your current system, how much physical memory do you have? And are you finding yourself ever needing more than that, in your day-to-day use? Is Windows ever indicating that you have no available memory at all?

So, I won't really see much of any difference if I go for the cheapest memory I can?

I'd take whatever money you'd throw at faster speeds and invest it in a reliable brand with a good warranty. That will matter a lot more. And, of course, if you want a particular look, or need the memory to be low profile or some such thing, look into that as well. (A few people, including some on this forum, advocate for always getting low profile memory FWIW, in case future builds need the room. I don't strictly subscribe to that viewpoint but it is worth thinking about)

I definitely understand that memory only has a significant performance impact when there isn't enough. one point, though, that is somewhat bothersome is that I can't specifically tell if/when lack of memory is an issue since I tend to hit a CPU limit at the same time, granted, I do spend some time at 90+% CPU utilization yet don't always notice any performance problems; when I notice the most slowdown I have high load on CPU and memory.

If you're maxxing out CPU utilization, you're going to introduce delays in processing tasks. So the CPU will have to queue up work and delay processing some things. Spikes in estimated time-to-completion for encoding/rendering, for instance.

If you're maxxing out memory utilization, you're going to introduce delays in data transfer. The computer will have to engage in memory swapping (moving data between actual memory and virtual memory on-disk), which will slow down the movement of data, usually for the sake of processing it later on. Taking forever to load an image-rich document, for instance, or to resume a movie that's in "memory".

It's always going to be hard to discern which is delaying things if you're pushing both to the limit, so I'd play around and artificially max out one or the other to get a sense of what the performance penalty is. For the CPU, use a stress test and then try to do some of your usual tasks; for memory, load up a bunch of media files and browser tabs, or - if you're a programmer - write a simple script that generates a growing multi-dimensional matrix of large size.

...In any case, I think all of this is overcomplicating what should be a pretty simple decision. Figure out how much memory you need at the very most, and buy just enough to cover that, no less and no more. If you're getting by with what you have now, replicate that (unless you could get by with half as much). Otherwise, increase capacity incrementally until you do have enough.

 

[BirdofPrey]

I didn't say the system was idle. I'm using it at the moment. A backup is running in the background, and I am browsing the web listening to music. I have yet to meet a browser that isn't a resource hog in some form or another, and probably should clean up a few (hundred) old tabs (seriously tvtropes, why must you entice me to read all the things?). Wasting time, I consider doing not much of anything.

Anyways current installed memory is 16GB, but windows tells me there's about 15 available. I haven't gotten any "out of memory" errors.

 

[PlayfulPhoenix]

Well, if you have a few hundred tabs open, that would explain it haha

But yes, if you're not restricted with 16GB, you should just get a single 16GB stick and call it a day. You'll have no performance penalty and it will be easy and cheap to upgrade down the line, if and when it's needed!