Following up on my October 3, 2019 post, I have now purchased most of the computer parts and built the new desktop mid-tower computer, except I am using the old Radeon HD3870 graphics card while waiting for the new RX 5700 graphics card to arrive. Some changes to the initial component list are:
Gigabyte RX 5700 Gaming OC instead of the Sapphire RX 5700 XT reference card. Just reading a lot of reviews against the reference blower design, and save some money with the 5700 instead of the 5700 XT. Plus, there are ways to overclock the 5700 to approach the performance of the 5700 XT.
$359.99 instead of $399.99.
For the case, I bought the Meshify S2 instead of the Vision S2 RGB, thinking that the mesh front and top would be helpful in terms of better airflow, and the Meshify S2 is quite a bit cheaper.
$145.99 instead of $238.99.
For the motherboard I got the Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 7 Wifi-50, the AMD 50 Year Anniversary edition Rev 1.1, and waited for a sale. It's the same board as far as I can tell.
$141.88 instead of $239.99.
For the power supply, I bought the Seasonic Prime Titanium 750W instead of the 850W version.
$189.99 instead of $219.99.
Total cost including tax comes to about $1340.
The mid-tower case sitting next to the mini-ITX In Win H Frame Mini is huge. The installation went without much issue, boots up right away and installed Windows 10 from the blu-ray ROM disc I burned using the blu-ray drive that I borrowed from the H Frame Mini.
Ryzen 2600 says diffused in the USA (Global Foundry 12nm process) and made in Malaysia.
The CPU cooler comes with thermal paste already applied to the heat sink. The heat sink is aluminum. The higher grade ones have a copper base. The XPG SSD is made in Taiwan. The motherboard is made in Taiwan, though the PCB itself is made in China. The G Skill RAM is made in Taiwan.
After installing Windows, and getting all the updates, device drivers, I performed the EC-FW update using the tool from Gigabyte website. It did flash something, but the next time I ran the tool it fails to query the firmware version of the IT8686 chip, so I am not sure if it did it correctly. So far I am not seeing any problems.
I then put the newer BIOS versions on a USB flash drive and used Q-flash to update the BIOS version from F1 to F31. It took several minutes to flash the chip, but no issues. Reconfigure the BIOS settings (only change needed was enable XMP profile for the RAM and set boot order to SSD first) and booted to Windows, no problem. Sound coming out the back panel green port is fine (some Gigabyte forum user reported the EC-FW update messed up the sound port. I should update to at least F40 so the BIOS is compatible with the Ryzen Zen2 3000 series CPU in the future. I also read that AMD has released an update to the CPU microcode (AGESA 1.0.0.4 B), so I expect a new BIOS version to come out in the near future. I read the random number generator in the 3000 series CPU was not working (always outputs 0xFFFFFFFF), but was fixed in AGESA 1.0.0.3 ABB.
So far, one thing I have not figured out is how to set the LEDs to "intelligent" mode where it represents the sensor temperature on the board. It is not an option in the RGB Fusion software; maybe it is not supported on this motherboard?
Gigabyte RX 5700 Gaming OC instead of the Sapphire RX 5700 XT reference card. Just reading a lot of reviews against the reference blower design, and save some money with the 5700 instead of the 5700 XT. Plus, there are ways to overclock the 5700 to approach the performance of the 5700 XT.
For the case, I bought the Meshify S2 instead of the Vision S2 RGB, thinking that the mesh front and top would be helpful in terms of better airflow, and the Meshify S2 is quite a bit cheaper.
For the motherboard I got the Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 7 Wifi-50, the AMD 50 Year Anniversary edition Rev 1.1, and waited for a sale. It's the same board as far as I can tell.
$141.88 instead of $239.99.
For the power supply, I bought the Seasonic Prime Titanium 750W instead of the 850W version.
$189.99 instead of $219.99.
Total cost including tax comes to about $1340.
The mid-tower case sitting next to the mini-ITX In Win H Frame Mini is huge. The installation went without much issue, boots up right away and installed Windows 10 from the blu-ray ROM disc I burned using the blu-ray drive that I borrowed from the H Frame Mini.
 |
| CPU inserted |
Ryzen 2600 says diffused in the USA (Global Foundry 12nm process) and made in Malaysia.
 |
| After RAM, CPU cooler, and M.2 SSD installed |
After installing Windows, and getting all the updates, device drivers, I performed the EC-FW update using the tool from Gigabyte website. It did flash something, but the next time I ran the tool it fails to query the firmware version of the IT8686 chip, so I am not sure if it did it correctly. So far I am not seeing any problems.
I then put the newer BIOS versions on a USB flash drive and used Q-flash to update the BIOS version from F1 to F31. It took several minutes to flash the chip, but no issues. Reconfigure the BIOS settings (only change needed was enable XMP profile for the RAM and set boot order to SSD first) and booted to Windows, no problem. Sound coming out the back panel green port is fine (some Gigabyte forum user reported the EC-FW update messed up the sound port. I should update to at least F40 so the BIOS is compatible with the Ryzen Zen2 3000 series CPU in the future. I also read that AMD has released an update to the CPU microcode (AGESA 1.0.0.4 B), so I expect a new BIOS version to come out in the near future. I read the random number generator in the 3000 series CPU was not working (always outputs 0xFFFFFFFF), but was fixed in AGESA 1.0.0.3 ABB.
So far, one thing I have not figured out is how to set the LEDs to "intelligent" mode where it represents the sensor temperature on the board. It is not an option in the RGB Fusion software; maybe it is not supported on this motherboard?
Posts
