Computer Build Questions...

[EricKei]

I asked a friend to help me put a build together that was within my budget (I had a PSU and a couple of other things I could carry over) that would last me a good long while (I don't overclock nor do any particularly-heavy gaming; the most processor-intensive thing I play is FFXIV). We went a bit over, but the core system is now an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X cpu on an ASRock B650E PG Riptide board. I've always used intel before, but he and some other techie friends concurred that AMD seems to be the way to go these days.

[mjr]

I asked a friend to help me put a build together that was within my budget (I had a PSU and a couple of other things I could carry over) that would last me a good long while (I don't overclock nor do any particularly-heavy gaming; the most processor-intensive thing I play is FFXIV). We went a bit over, but the core system is now an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X cpu on an ASRock B650E PG Riptide board. I've always used intel before, but he and some other techie friends concurred that AMD seems to be the way to go these days.

I don't know that I want to quite spend that much on a board. Though it might not be a bad idea. I'm really more concerned with getting compatible parts. I might look for a board that supports more RAM (the one I currently have in my list supports up to 128GB), but I dunno.

Mainly I'm going to be using it for programming (visual studio is a pretty big resource hog sometimes), video editing, and graphics stuff. Of course, the usual word processing and web surfing. But I think an AMD Ryzen and 128GB of RAM will do pretty well.

[EricKei]

mjr
Try this site: https://pcpartpicker.com/

You can add the mobo and other parts you're looking at, it'll check for compatibility and link to various sales sites so you can compare.

[mjr]

mjr
Try this site: https://pcpartpicker.com/

You can add the mobo and other parts you're looking at, it'll check for compatibility and link to various sales sites so you can compare.

Yeah, I've used that. On page 1 of this thread I posted a preliminary build.

Here's one that I came up with a little more recently...

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/HXzK6r

Although that tells me that the motherboard I picked might not be compatible because of the BIOS, so I might need to revisit that. It also looks like I'll have to go with a power supply as well.

[EricKei]

Sorry, I missed that >_< I tend to pick up from the last few replies.

As for the BIOS, yeah - The page says it supports ASUS FlachBack, which I think may be a way to directly update the BIOS via flash drive, but I cannot say for sure. I'd recommend writing in to their tech support to ask about it, and ask them if it's possible to flash the BIOS/get into BIOS setup even without a CPU present.

[mjr]

Sorry, I missed that >_< I tend to pick up from the last few replies.

As for the BIOS, yeah - The page says it supports ASUS FlachBack, which I think may be a way to directly update the BIOS via flash drive, but I cannot say for sure. I'd recommend writing in to their tech support to ask about it, and ask them if it's possible to flash the BIOS/get into BIOS setup even without a CPU present.

One thing I did notice, and I'll have to figure out how to get back to it, is it seems like I can click on a processor, and over to the side (or something, I forget exactly where) it actually does list compatible motherboards.

And you're right. There are motherboards that you can update the BIOS on before installing the processor, RAM, etc.

[Arcus]

I would avoid all Ryzen Asus motherboards right now. They have an issue where they can overvolt the CPU and fry it. Last time I checked, they were still having a hard time dealing with it. They pushed out a BIOs update (full of bad PR) that didn't fix the issue.

[mjr]

I would avoid all Ryzen Asus motherboards right now. They have an issue where they can overvolt the CPU and fry it. Last time I checked, they were still having a hard time dealing with it. They pushed out a BIOs update (full of bad PR) that didn't fix the issue.

Thank you for that piece of information. I was considering going with a different brand, but I'll have to look around and see what's compatible with the processor I picked.