Tag: i7

Posted on

In a hurry to waste time.

How did we get here?

It started simple enough, find an older PC online and upgrade it into a budget gaming PC. This can be done a variety of ways, but one of the most effective is buying an older PC and adding a video card. This can also be one of the most difficult. Don’t get in a hurry, I’ll explain.

Older office PCs usually have a processor, memory, power supply, and a case. They will occasionally have storage media and maybe even a video card. Even without a discrete or separate video card, the processor will usually have integrated graphics. Computers for offices and schools didn’t need to have power graphics rendering, but they may need high compute power. These are the PCs most useful for upgrade later.

Here comes the conundrum. There are a lot more mid range or low compute capable machines than powerful ones. If the PC was used on a network, it might not have storage, but those may also be small form factor(SFF). Counter intuitive to more modern machines, it’s cheaper to buy an older SFF than a full size, regardless of the processor. Many will also have weak power supplies. A full size graphics card won’t fit.

What does that have to do with being in a hurry?

I’m getting there, trust me.

The effort to try to find a full size PC with a powerful enough processor led me to not one, but two different PCs. One with an Intel i7 processor, and a small amount of memory. The other sold as non working, but a better case and motherboard. Both for the same price.

The non-working one included one very important piece of information that let me know it was a perfect fit, a picture of the current Basic Input/Output System, or BIOS. This PC worked, but didn’t have a storage drive. If I could combine the best of both, I would be very well off for a relatively small price. All I would need to add would be a graphics card. ( I would also need a better power supply, but that’s a different blog).

Armed with the best parts of the two boxes, I closed up the leftovers and tucked them away. I could always use them later. There was my mistake.

Instead of making sure all parts and pieces were secure, I shoved it off to the side and went about testing my ‘better’ PC. A short time later it occurred to me that I may be able to get parts on the cheap to make a second PC. When I went to pick up the parts machine, I knew my mistake. The heatsink for the processor had been allowed to freely smash the pins on the exposed CPU socket. My haste would now be costly. At the very least it would take hours to fix, at worst it would be ruined.

Can I salvage it?

As it turns out. It was able to be repaired. It took a razor, a staple, jeweler’s screwdriver, flashlight, and several hours of painstaking patience. Having already hurried through part of this project and fouled things up, it was time to be careful. Section by section I used the flashlight and another tool, reading glasses, to very carefully bend the tiny pins back to what I hoped were close enough to the correct positions. Many of the 1151 pins were correct, but a number of them were bent, some severely.

Section by section, row by row, pin by pin, I bent tiny contacts back, then very carefully installed a new CPU, and held my breath. The system posted and correctly identified the new processor, along with it’s specs, showing me that the five or ten minutes at the very beginning of this had been made up for after several hours.

I could have very well, just tossed all of it aside and taken the loss, but there was a lesson to learn. And now, a lesson to share. Sometimes, trying to save a few minutes, or in this case, being paired with carelessness, can be extremely costly. It’s a lesson I won’t soon forget.

The YouTube video for this will be published soon, but feel free to check out the channel, here.

Back to the blog, here

Posted on

CoolBlue Gets a Huge Upgrade – So Much Better!

How did we get here?

It started simple enough with only wanting to build a PC with two brands. CoolBlue was a combination of DeepCool parts and Intel, but it was incomplete. I wasn’t using an available intel NVMe drive and the fans were not all addressable RGB. Sometimes, I don’t leave well enough alone. The link to that blog is here

While looking for said parts, I found a price drop on a 12700KF from intel. It was a good deal, but I was only interested if I found an equally good deal on the motherboard. Damn. I found one. That meant if it turned out better than my editing rig, I had work to do. Swapping platforms is a huge deal.

There was only one way to find out if the combination would be better, so I got to work. The parts came in and this time the build went much quicker than the last effort. With everything installed, including the new NVMe and fans, I started testing. So far, the tests have only included the Arc A750, intel’s graphics card, but the CPU intensive tests told the story.

The testing

On a free benchmark render tool called Cinebench R23, I saw what amounted to a 50% uplift in performance over my current setup. This test renders a complex image using only the Central Processor with no help from the Graphics. One and a half times better performance out of the 12700KF was far more than I could have planned. It was time to run the game benchmarks.

Not having run benchmarks on the Ryzen 7 5800X combination with the Arc A750, I had to rely on uplift from the intel 11400 tested previously. The change was not only noticeable, but I was getting results from the A750 that before had been failed tests. It just ran better with the new CPU. The A750 wasn’t good enough to be my daily driver, but it was obvious, the new CPU was.

I used a DeepCool AG400 tower cooler, which will handle most activity well. And, with four PC120 fans, temperatures were very stable during most testing. It throttled during CPU stress tests. Yes, the same R23 test that measured a 22000 score did so with a red CPU light on. It was impressive.

This is a great processor, and better than what I’m using. I now had a conundrum.

Is CoolBlue my new everyday rig?

My set up with I Am Number Four is very solid and stable. It’s been my workhorse for the channel, and my growing social media effort. Changing, would require me to swap a lot of drives, and programs over. I was hesitant. I’m still hesitant.

I will need to find which drives to move, and what to do with I Am Number Four, but CoolBlue, will indeed become my editing, streaming and gaming rig. You don’t realize how comfortable you are with something until you go to change it. I still don’t use the gaming setup in the other room, so I will be breaking that PC down as well. I didn’t see that coming, but I guess I’m crossing a threshold of sorts.

This is a very capable PC and will be a great next step in handling everything I need to throw at it. And, for the first time in a very, very long time, my ‘Go To’ rig will be an Intel. I will, of course change out the graphics card and the power supply, but it will be a Cooler Master, so the name will stay the same. Paired with an RTX 3060Ti, there won’t be much it can’t handle. Welcome to the family CoolBlue.

The YouTube video can be found here.

Back to the Blog page

Posted on

Intel’s new GPU and CPU, match made in heaven?

How did we get here?

It started when I thought it would be a good idea to buy the Intel Arc GPU to test. I picked up the A750 for a reasonable price, (which is about to drop), and went to work. Testing did have it’s issues and there were some bumps in the road, but I got results that were helpful. I then turned my attention to building and testing a rig with both Intel CPU and GPU in it, and that wasn’t so easy.

There were issues recognizing the GPU and an NVMe drive, but the primary problem was acting like something altogether different. After realizing a BIOS update was necessary, I was back on track, but nowhere near as excited. Links to the BLOG and VIDEO, in case you are interested. It was some work, but it did work.

I wasn’t able to complete benchmarks because of issues with time, but I needed to post the video. So, I went back to work on the same rig after posting, and ran into more issues. I was already aware that some games were not going to run properly, so I left them off the list. I was also aware that one game just takes forever to benchmark, so I left it off as well. Bad choice. Benchmarking on that is going on as I write this.

Issues

One of my biggest issues was that the game with the Vulkan graphics API won’t select that protocol, forcing me to stick with DX11, a known shortcoming. In fact I had problems with another title that has DX 11, Borderlands 3. It’s a game I have thought about dropping, but now I may actually have to.

I was testing on DX11 and DX12, and it just quit. Period. Won’t run. It shows the splash screen then shuts down completely and won’t start up. I have a similar problem trying to run this game on my editing rig, but Borderlands3 now defaults to DX12 and I have several games with that setting. It’s great to benchmark, but it may be time to retire it.

Other issues included World War Z where it caps the framerate and I get horrible artifacting, and Horizon Zero Dawn has the same framerates no matter the actual resolution. The latter of the two was confusing during my tests with the Ryzen CPU, so I was expecting it, but it shows Intel still has some work to do on their drivers.

What’s next for the Arc GPU?

I’m not done with this one yet, though I decided that CoolBlue (intel test rig) needs some changes. Instead of just changing a fan and getting an Intel NVMe to bring this closer to a true DeepCool/Intel build, I ordered a new platform. For the first time in over ten years, I am probably going to make my main rig an Intel.

I will be changing the GPU, mind you, but I will test this A750 with a 12700KF in a brand new B760 motherboard. The choice wasn’t made lightly. I was going to go with AM5, but recent problems with motherboards overvolting these CPUs had me turn to something already proven for my new build. But that’s another story…..