Nick Evanson, hardware writer
This month I have been benchmarking: Endless benchmarking. Hours after hours, run after run. All to see exactly one game being played on different PCs. And I would do it all again, because I love benchmarking. Yes, I'm a little strange.
It's been a busy month at Chateau Evanson, mainly due to the inordinate amount of time spent testing Dragon's Dogma 2's performance and how the quality settings are affecting things. That all started on my old primary PC, with a Core i7 9700K, but halfway through I did a full system upgrade to an Intel Z790 setup. New CPU, RAM, graphics card, coolers, SSDs, PSU. The whole thing, apart from the housing, which will eventually be replaced at some point because the cooler doesn't fit quite right.
The whole build went very smoothly and the PC booted up absolutely fine with the DDR5 set to the 6400 XMP profile, all SSDs worked exactly as expected and cable management was remarkably stress-free. Heck, it didn't even take that long to install and configure Windows and its array of common applications.
On the other hand, I started to get a headache at the amount of BIOS/UEFI fiddling required to find the right balance between performance, power consumption, temperatures, and fan noise. Use the motherboard's default settings and the CPU sucks just enough power to melt the polar ice caps; drop the limits to Intel's values and you'll get peak performance for a while before slowing down. I think I have it all figured out now, but it was a useful reminder that no matter how experienced you are at doing something, you can still come across something new that trips you up.
I honestly have no idea how many full PCs I've built over the years, but if I had to hazard a guess as to the lowest possible number, it's in the order of five hundred. Some of these were professional workstation builds, many were simple office/school machines, and the rest were all custom setups for individual people. The cheapest would have been around £500, the most expensive twenty times as much.
The story continues
In terms of AMD/Intel split I'd say it's probably a 3:2 ratio, but the last AMD systems I built were about 8 years ago, with the FM2+ connection and the cheap but cheerful Athlon X4 845 , which was ideal for simple home PCs. Nothing about them stood out as problematic and they were easy to set up and configure.
No matter how experienced you are at something, you can still come across something new that trips you up
So while it's been a while since I've fully built an AMD system, I expected no problems this month building two AM5-based PCs, one as a birthday gift for my partner and the other as a benchmarking platform. . For the first, I went with the Ryzen 7 7700X, an MSI B650M Gaming Plus motherboard, 32 GB DDR5-5600, and a GeForce RTX 4070. Lots of nice white and silver colors, with a discreet touch of RGB to make it all shine.
I would like to say that it all went smoothly, but it was anything but plain sailing. Some of the issues were my own fault, like getting a 280mm AIO cooler because the website for the case (a Fractal Design North in white) said it could fit two 140mm fans in the top. Fan, yes. Radiator, no. Face meets palm. But other problems were due to quirks of the hardware itself.
First problem: It would take up to 10 minutes to get to the point where Windows would start loading. The traffic light warning LEDs on the motherboard told me it was a CPU problem. No, wait, it was the memory. No, it was the storage drive.
And all this used the default settings in the UEFI: no overclocking, no adjustments, just the default configuration. I eventually got it all sorted out, through a combination of poking around in the motherboard settings, but then it was time to enable EXPO (AMD's equivalent of XMP).
I didn't like that at all. Not. A. Bit.
Cue second mistake from me. Although I had checked the memory QVL (essentially a list of RAM kits that the motherboard vendor has tested on its products) to make sure the RAM I purchased was fine to use, what I didn't had checked if MSI had released any BIOS updates. I assumed that since the 7700X launched in 2022 and the motherboard model was a lot newer, everything would be fine.
Yes, it was BIOS flash time. That fixed the EXPO problem, but not the excessively long boot time, or a strange problem where the PC wouldn't cold boot if you previously shut down Windows and would only behave when the PSU was turned off and back on. At one point I really felt like I had completely lost the plot, but after completely resetting the BIOS and trying everything again twice it finally behaved.
It looks great, works well and it's a great little PC. But hell's bells, what a journey to get there.
It now works perfectly and boots Windows in less than 20 seconds. It looks great, works well and it's a great little PC. But hell's bells, what a journey to get there. But I was happy to admit that it was my fault and despite spending time researching all the possible pitfalls of AM5, I just felt like if I had prepared myself better, none of this would have happened.
And then it was time to build the other AM5 system, an open-case testbed that would be used to run multiple different AMD CPUs and different graphics cards, for articles, reviews and the like. This time the build went smoothly apart from the open enclosure, but hey, it cost me £25 so I won't complain. It even booted the first time with DDR5-6400 and EXPO and the first test runs showed just how great AMD's hardware is. Fast, powerful and gentle on the power.
That was until it came time to swap the graphics card for another one. Discover endless black screens, shaky resolutions, missing drivers in Device Manager despite having just installed them. And no, it wasn't a "me" thing this time, because I did the same thing on an AM4 test bench, with a Ryzen 5 5600X, and it was rock solid. I can throw cards in and out of it all the time and it just works.
Don't think I'm just criticizing AMD and praising Intel for it. The latter's graphics cards are an exercise in frustration management, and if the one Arc card I've used recently is any indication of what they're all like, Intel has done its best to make them reach the gold standard. from GeForce and Radeon.
Not that either is without flaws. In the case of Nvidia's offering, if it's one of the current RTX 40 series cards that use the 12VHPWR connector, you're going to end up with a horrible mess of cables and adapters unless you have a PSU that comes with a special 12VHPWR cable. And as for Radeon cards, the hardware is beautiful, super powerful and fast, but the software side is somewhat annoying, with drivers playing guessing games as to whether or not they are installed.
With Geforce cards I can install one set of drivers, swap cards, and after one reboot it all works fine. I can't say it's been like that with Radeons, and don't get me started on what it's been like swapping AMD CPUs.
Your next upgrade
Best CPU for Gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right signs.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel pusher is waiting for you.
Best SSD for Gaming: Make sure you're ahead of the rest.
But at least I can put a cheap cooler on a Ryzen 7000 series or 8000 series chip, and never have to worry about the chip bouncing outside its thermal limits, unlike my new 14700KF, which took me hours of experimenting to to get it right. AMD's power efficiency is well known, as is Intel's love of wattage, but I wonder if the advanced manufacturing and chiplet design in Ryzen CPUs isn't helping when it comes to setting up simplicity and component compatibility.
Anyway, I digress. Today's components and software are much better than they were a few decades ago, and building PCs is generally quite easy, until it isn't. Then it's like the 1990s again, having to mess around with BIOS/UEFI settings and drivers.
But if you Are If you're planning on building a new gaming PC in the coming months, don't forget to keep reading everything well before you hand over your money and check for updates before delving into the fun that comes with PC building. Especially the radiator sizes that the PC case can handle!
