My AM4 5950X PC rebuild is pushing me toward upgrading to 7950X (or 9950X) AM5 | 285

Listen to my PC rebuilding nightmare that has me thinking of upgrading to AM5.

[e-mail]

Landing page for "HMNS Beyond Bones Podcast"
https://www.hmns.org/podcast/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to geek Therapy Radio. You've got your mental curator,
Johnny Hamburger. What a doozy it has been to try
to upload podcasts to geek Therapy Radio. So obviously, if
you've been paying attention, I haven't. I haven't published an
episode since December third. As of recording right now, it

(00:30):
is late January, so it is almost two months between episodes.
It's been like a month and three weeks since the
last time I uploaded a podcast. That doesn't mean that
I haven't recorded podcasts. I have recorded a half dozen podcasts,
but that never got published. I'm trying to find the rhythm.

(00:51):
I'm trying to find the space in my life currently
to record, not just record podcasts, but publicis them. Like
I said, I've recorded them, but they never got published.
To what happens is that I record them. I've been
recording them before work in my car, so I'll get
to work, I'll park in the parking garage and I'll
just have my Dji Mike on the sun visor and

(01:13):
I will let a rip and record the show. But
usually I don't even get around to editing the show.
I record it before work. Then all of work happens,
and then I pick up my children from school and
life happens, and I by the end of the day.
It's only when I'm in bed that I remember, and
I'm exhausted that I remember, Oh, I never edited that episode.

(01:37):
I recorded it, but I never edited it. Sometimes I
did edit it and then something happens and I got
to put it away or save the session whatever. It
never gets exported, but it never gets published. So there
are four or five episodes in the bank. And also
what happens is once I have enough distance from recording it,

(01:58):
I have time to doubt myself. I have time to
doubt the upload. So, yeah, do I really want to
upload that? After a day or two, what happens to me,
like a week later, I'm like, nah, I don't want
to upload that. Usually it's because I was talking about
something relatively topical. For instance, the DGI flip that came
out two or three weeks ago. I talked about that.

(02:21):
Never uploaded that episode. Stuff happened and I just never
uploaded that episode. So I'm trying to figure it out.
So right now I have less than thirty minutes before
my work meeting. It is Monday morning. It is nine
to thirty five in the morning, and I have a
meeting at ten am, so I'm trying to fit it

(02:42):
in here. But I'm sitting at my desk. I'm sitting
in the geek cave in the studio. I'm recording through
my MXLV sixty seven G, going through my nice signal chain.
By the way, I've got my preamp right now set
to one hundred percent too. I've got the Universal Audio
four seven ten D, so right now I have it
in full tube mode. So what you were listening to

(03:03):
is the sweet vacuum tube of my Universal Audio microphone interface.
And I'm recording into my sixteen inch MacBook Pro with
the M one pro chip in it. Why am I
recording into the MacBook right now? Well, this is the
meat and potatoes of this podcast. I think I wanted
to get into my albatross hanging around my neck for

(03:27):
the past man two or three weeks at least has
been the revival rebuilding of Demon's Whisper. I think that's
what I call my main desk top PC. It currently
has the Rizin fifty nine fifty X that's sixteen cores

(03:50):
thirty two threads. It's the most powerful chip that ever
became available for the AM four platform. The motherboard is
an MSI Gaming Play US whatever, and of course I
have the sixty four gigs of DDR four RAM in
there and the RTX thirty ninety rounding things out. For
the GPU. It's a beast mode computer AM four. AMD

(04:13):
has moved on to obviously to AM five, but this
A four it's no slouch. The problem is that I
have been getting non stop bs ods blue screens of death.
The computer just shuts down, restarts, no warning. It says,

(04:35):
what is the code? I get? It's like on unprocessable,
what is it on non non executable command? Like it's
something It's ridiculous, over and over and over again. I
have swapped SSDs. I thought maybe it's one of the
SSDs is starting to crap out. Nope, I have swapped SSDs.
I have reinstalled Windows. I have done everything once stick

(04:59):
a RAM. I have rear range the RAM slots. I
have redone thermal paste on the CPU. I have done
everything to this PC to try to get it to
run properly. So as I was recording this podcast, I
got five minutes into recording the podcast blue Screen of Death,

(05:21):
and I said, oh no, what a bummer. Because I
had edited on the rig a few days ago. It
was running for seven or eight hours, no problem at all,
And I even told my wife, Hey, I was using
my computer yesterday and it ran for seven or eight hours.
It did not shut down, no airs. I was able

(05:44):
to edit a couple of videos on a couple of
short videos and it worked out just fine. So hopefully
double fingers crossed, I'm out of the woods with this computer.
Because we had discussed earl. I was told my wife earlier,
I said, if I can't get this, you're not going
to like my answer. If I can't get this computer
running properly. Because the remedy to having a full fledged

(06:09):
desktop PC a beast mode PC for me editing rig
is that I'm gonna have to go ahead and upgrade
to the AM five platform. Everything inside of me, the
every geek fiber of my being, is like, yes, I
want to do that. Of course I want to upgrade.
I built this AM four PC originally with the thirty

(06:30):
nine hundred X the twelve core, twenty four thread processor.
I did' even have my RTX thirty ninety. I was
still rocking a GTX nine eighty in it. So I
built this thing twenty seven, twenty eighteen, something like that.
Along the line, I got the fifty nine to fifty
X because it was on sale. It was like three
hundred bucks is when I got the fifty nine to

(06:51):
fifty X in here. But recently it's been nothing but
blue screens of death. I cannot, for the life of
me figure it out. And what I told Sarah was
is if I can't figure this out, you're not gonna
like the answer, because it means I have to upgrade
to basically build a new PC, which in my mind
I can justify since I, like I mentioned, I had

(07:14):
built this around twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, so it is
twenty twenty five. Now. I have used this computer for
at least five or six, maybe seven years. And if
you've been listening to geek Therapy Radio, you know that
for kind of high end or flagship devices in my life,
I usually I like to go at least two to

(07:35):
three years before upgrading for a number of reasons, the
TikTok nature of new hardware, and by the time we upgrade,
I wanted to be a sizeable, noticeable improvement, not just
a kind of iterative generational improvement. So every geek bone
in my body wants to upgrade AM five. Financially be

(08:00):
okay to do that, but I don't. The fifty nine
to fifty X is still a super powerful chip. I
don't want to. I don't want to upgrade if I
don't need to upgrade. But I'm at the point now
why I'm leaning towards eventually upgrading. I'm not going to
be hurt for doing work because obviously I'm recording this

(08:21):
podcast now on my sixteen inch MacBook Pro. I've got
my seventeen point three inch Windows PC over here, the
Aorus seventeen h with the what's the end here or
the I seventh thirteen eight hundred K. I forget what
it is. It's like twenty two threads, twenty threads. It's

(08:43):
it's a Beast RTX forty eighty laptop RTX forty eighty
in here, sixty four gigs of DDR for I RAM.
I am not hurting for computers to do the job,
but I always like to have my no compromises full
on b smow desktop PC for what I want. I
need to do real work, and I don't want to

(09:05):
compromise anything. That is where I usually have in my
life in my stable A A just a demonically powered piece.
It's just so super powerful. But right now that PC
for me is not acting up, and I'm at the
point now where here's is because you might be mentioned

(09:25):
saying this to yourself, Well, Johnny, it sounds like your
motherboard or your power supply or something like that's going out.
I think it's the mother board. I don't think it's
the power supply because I've used the power supply. It's
just not the power supply. It's something else. So you
might be thinking, well, maybe the fifty nine to fifty
X is just a bump chip. Maybe get another TIF
two nine fifty X, Maybe get another motherboard. It's probably

(09:47):
a motherboard issue. If you've been swapping out hard drives
and you've reinstalled windows and nothing's where, and you've reseeded
RAM and checked each ramstick, maybe it's just the motherboards
is finally starting to crap out. I don't the troubleshooting
at this point now costs money. So if I were
to buy another motherboard, that's an easy two hundred bucks

(10:09):
right there. If I was to buy another fifty nine
to fifty X. If I was chasing this, going down
this rabbit trail of trying to keep this desktop PC alive,
I would wind up spending hundreds of dollars. Anyways, That
is one reason why I'm leaning towards well, if I'm
gonna be spending money on this procedure, if I'm gonna
be spending money on this hardware, I might as well

(10:31):
jump to the new platform, Jump to AM five socket,
jump to DDR five RAM, and jump to If I
was gonna rebuild a PC right now, it's gonna be
the I have in my shopping cart, Amazon cart, say
ERT's in a wish list or whatever. The seventy nine
to fifty X, which is also sixteen cores thirty two threads.

(10:53):
There's the ninety nine fifty X that is the more
powerful vert, the latest version of their sixteen core thirty
two thread processor. It costs like one hundred dollars more
than the seventy nine to fifty X. But the improvement,
the power improvement, the performance improvement is not enough to

(11:13):
justify the cost increase. In fact, the seventy nine to
fifty X is faster in some cases, it's got a
higher I think it's a higher core speed. Does it
have a higher boot speed? It doesn't. It's iterative like
the gen. The jump between seventy nine fifty X and
ninety nine to fifty X is so minisculant in any

(11:35):
real world use Versus a fifty nine fifty X to
the seventy nine fifty X, that's like a forty percent
gain in performance. It's probably a little bit even more
than that. It's at least thirty percent gain overall. Seventy
nine fifty X versus the older fifty nine fifty X
on the older platform. It's I think, what is it.
Seventy nine fifty X is now on Zen four or

(11:57):
Zen five, Zen, fifty nine DX was Zen three. It's
the architecture of AMD's processors. Seventy nine FIFTYX is I
want to say, it's around five hundred bucks right now
versus the ninety nine fifty X is around six or
seven hundred. And the prices fluctuate, so it doesn't matter
what I say here on this podcast. By the time

(12:17):
you go look at how much it is in US
dollars whatever, it will fluctuated. But it's around that ballpark.
So in my cart right now I have not obviously
pulled the trigger on it. This is the build that
I'm looking at. And remember, one of the appeals of
for me and for a lot of other PC enthusiasts,

(12:39):
is that you get to reuse a whole lot of
components in a PC build, so you're not building completely
from scratch. Really, I just need three components to build
a brand new PC. One of the benefits of this
is really cool for anybody who doesn't know this already.
One of the perks of going from AM four, if

(12:59):
you're talking about AMD sockets, one of the perks of
going from AM four to AM five is that all
your air cooling, all your liquid cooling, all this the
socket coolers from AM four are still compatible with AM five.
You don't have to buy new hardware, you don't have
to buy new brackets, you don't have to buy any
adapters or anything to put your For instance, I've got

(13:20):
a giant noct NH fourteen, Like what, it's a giant
air cooler that is on my AM four platform right
now cooling the fifty nine to fifty X cooling it wonderfully,
by the way. But I can take that cooler which
was not the cheapest cooler is over one hundred dollars,
and I can use that now on the seventy nine
to fifty X on the AM five sockets. So I

(13:40):
can pull my air cooler over no problem. Obviously, I
can reuse my rack mount PC case that I like
to keep my desktopping that RTX thirty ninety. I don't
have to buy a new graphics card. I can just
use bring my RTX thirty ninety over to the new
so in even the power supply, I've still got a
Coursair seven hundred and fifty watt modular power supply. It's

(14:02):
a tank. It's friggin' awesome. Like I've got a lot
of awesome hardware that I can reuse. I don't have
to spend one thousand more dollars on getting all the
other components you need, not a thout. Maybe that's being
a little wishful, but one hundreds of dollars easy on
kind of all the extra components needed for a PC build.
So all I need to upgrade, and granted these are

(14:22):
the meat and potatoes of any PC. First, I need
an AM five motherboard. I think it's on the X
eight seventy is what I'm looking for. I think eight
seventy is the chipset, the top current top of the
line chip set for AMD platform. So that's going to

(14:42):
be around two hundred, two hundred and fifty dollars for
that motherboard and five motherboard. The other part of this
trifecta that you need is RAM. DDR four RAM is
not compatible in a DDR five slot, so I would
need to get new RAM, and I would need to
get a new process. They're so motherboard, RAM, and processor.

(15:03):
I've got everything else that I need for this build.
I just need those three main components, that x eight
seventy motherboard, the Rizin nine seventy nine fifty x sixty
four to thirty two thread processor, and then I'm probably
gonna go all out on the RAM, probably one hundred

(15:26):
and ninety two gigabyte kit of DDR five. I may
save a couple bucks and just do and just quote
unquote Eric quotes, do like one hundred twenty eight gigs
or just keep it as sixty four gigs a RAM.
But part of me is like, dude, you don't build
a new desktop but once every five to seven years,
why not just do it once instead of continuing to upgrade.

(15:50):
Just make the baller PC you want right now. Use
it as an excuse to go carte blanche and build
the friggin' rig that you need. I will draw the
line at graphics card RTX thirty ninety with twenty four
gigs of VRAM is still a monster. And here's a

(16:10):
slight little tangent on that, because the RTX five thousand
series is it's all the rage right now, and there's
a little bit of controversy surrounding the five thousand series
with's how with how you know in Vidia all the
frame gen and everything. Look, you can run Cyberpunk at
two hundred and forty frames per second or whatever it

(16:30):
is at four K because we're using AI to generate
like three or four frames between each frame. So WOWI
ZOUI look at these performance increases, Look at the frame
rate increases versus four thousand series to five thousand series. Well,
that's that's a whole that's firmware, that's software. You can
You could in Vidia could release DLSS four I think

(16:52):
we're on right now. DLSS four, which allows that frame
gen around, allows the AI to introduce these frame between
real frame whatever. You could easily release that in a
driver update for the three thousand series cards. A thirty
ninety could run DLSS four, the four thousand and forty
ninety could run DLSS four like a forty eighty, forty

(17:13):
seventy forty sixty, thirty ninety, thirty eighty, thirty sixty, all
of that, All the previous generations, not all the previous generations,
but the last two at least generations of in video
Graphics cards could run DLSS four. All they have to
do is release it in a firm more update, in
the next driver update that comes down the pipe. They could.

(17:36):
It's just a it's just a driver issue, that's all
it is. But they want you to buy, obviously the
new five thousand series of cards and say you can't.
You can only get DLSS four on the five thousand series. Well,
that's just because you're not releasing it for the four
thousand series. That's just because you're not including in the
driver updates for the thirty three thousand series. So I

(17:57):
am not completely convinced personally. Now, if I had infinite money,
if someone said here, Johnny, here's two thousand dollars or whatever,
and you have to spend it on a graphics card.
Of course, I'm going to do a fifty ninety. I
think it's got thirty two gigs of v RAMP. Not
that I'm not that what I do wouldever come close
to saturating thirty two gigs of DDR seven whatever v RAM.

(18:19):
But like if I just had infinite money, someone say, here,
take this fifty ninety. Hey kid, you want a fifty ninety, Sure,
I'll take a fifty ninety. But the reality is, to
get back to the original point of this, of this
tangent is if you're after four K ultra settings sixty

(18:40):
frames a second, gate gaming four K sixty without frame gen,
without any any any sort of artificial frame generation going on,
if you just want the actual graphics card to pump
out four K sixty frames a second of at ultra settings,
The RTA thirty ninety does that. So I don't game

(19:05):
all the time on my computer, but every once in
a while I'll fire up Doom and I'll crank everything
to absolute nightmare ultra settings four K sixty frame I'll
cap it at sixty frames a second. It looks gorgeous,
the graphics cards not breaking a The thirty ninety is
not breaking a sweat to run sixty frames of four
k per second without any AI assistance. So a lot

(19:29):
of us if you're sitting on a thirty on a
three thousand series card and you are gaming at four
K sixty, it's like, well, why would I spend two
thousand dollars on a fifty ninety to game at four
K sixty? Maybe you could do four K one twenty
on some games. You absolutely do that if you dial
down in settings. If that's what you're after, fine, but

(19:50):
I think most people are after that. The Goldilock zone
right now in twenty twenty five, in my opinion, just
my opinion as host of geek Therapy Radio, the Goldilocks
zone for gaming right now is four K sixty. It's
still four K sixty. Is that perfect Goldilocks point of gaming?
And the thirty ninety does that, the thirty eighty does

(20:10):
that to a large extent, even the thirty seventy. If
you tweak settings, you can be gaming four K sixty.
There's a lot of car if you go down that
rabbit trail, you can dial back settings in a lot
of games and get four K sixty with a lot
of lower end cards. Like you can do four K
sixty in E sports easily with probably a two thousand
series in video card in the equivalent AMD. But from

(20:34):
where I'm sitting, twenty four days of v RAM for
my video editing, and then I can play games at
four K sixty just without frame gen with the thirty ninety,
I personally have no incentive to shell out two thousand
dollars or whatever close to that for an RTX fifty ninety.
So that's RAM. So if I build a new PC,

(20:56):
new motherboard, new RAM kit for DDS five and then
the AM five socket seventy nine to fifty X, that's
kind of where I'm leaning, although at the last second
I might pull the trigger in the ninety nine fifty
X just because you know I'm billing. I might as well,
but it's such a Here's why I'm sitting on the
seventy nine to fifty X as the processor of choice

(21:18):
right now, because you know the next generation of AM
five chip. You know, AMD might have a twenty core,
forty thread processor. I don't know. Somewhere I've not heard
any I've not seen the roadmap on what CPUs AMD
is is set to release over the coming years. But

(21:39):
I don't want to buy the absolute like latest offering
from AMD now only to have like the ten series,
you know, like the ten, five, fifty whatever come out
and be fifty percent faster, fifty percent better more performance
than the ninety nine to fifty I'm going to save.
My theory is save a buck now in the seventy
nine to fifty, which is no slouch at all, the

(22:01):
seventy nine to fifty X, and then maybe a few
more generations of AM five come out, where I say, okay, now,
maybe now seven hundred bucks for a new CPU makes
sense if it's this generational increase over the last gen
or whatever. So new motherboard, new RAM, new CPU. That's
where I'm at. I have not pulled the trigger on

(22:22):
anything yet. I'm My heart sank when I began to
record this episode of Geek Therapy Radio on my fifty
nine to fifty X build, having been teased a few
days before with seven to eight hour editing session with
no hiccups, no problems, only to get five minutes into
this recording and have the PC crap blue BSoD on

(22:45):
me again. When you think that's the worst, when you
get hopeful that you think you're out of the woods
for some problem, like some some bane of your existence
computer issue in this case, and then all of a
sudden it happens again, and you're like, dang it, why
did you tease me the other day? So that's where
I'm at right now. I maybe I'll spare this. I

(23:08):
got a couple of minutes left my home theater PC downstairs.
I've got the The graphics card is the rtx A
two thousand, which is a dual is it? What is it?
Low profile? It's bus powered six gigabytes a RAM. There's
a twelve gigabyte variant that costs way too much money

(23:30):
for what it for what I was gonna use it for.
But the rtx A two thousand with a single slot
half hype, double two slot, half height. It's in my
Silverstone HTPC case downstairs, plugged into our sixty five inch
o LED TV. The processor in there is my old
thirty nine twelve twelve core twenty four thread and it's
got thirty two gigs of dual channel DDR four RAM.

(23:55):
It's it's an absolute baller. It's not going to game
four k sixty frames a second, you know, And like
Microsoft Light simulator or Doom. I haven't actually tested Doom.
Maybe it can do four K sixty with Doom, especially
if you dial back some settings. But it is an
awesome little gamy, small form factor gaming PC that I
have hooked up to the living room and I can

(24:16):
sit there on the couch, even with the wireless mouse
and keyboard, and actually do some video editing work on it.
It is no slot thirty two gigs ARAM like I said,
thirty two gigs ARAM twelve core twenty fourth red processor
and then that RTX a two thousand graphics card. Seventy
five watts I think is the max from the bus.
There's no power supply going to it. It is completely bus powered.

(24:38):
It's a little energy efficient gaming rig that I have
downstairs that I messed that up myself. I was trying
to put a fifty nine hundred, not a fifty nine
hundred X, just a fifty nine hundred processor in there,
and boy howdy to the TPM and fTPM and all
this in bitlock and all that stuff just threw me fits.

(25:00):
And I was going through bios update after biosplash, which
bios is gonna just be compatible with this, I erase
the NVMe is on. There's like, I'm just gonna reinstall Windows.
It wouldn't let me do it, so I pulled out
the fifty nine hundred and put in my old thirty
nine one hundred X. But that's a that's the most
first world problem I have ever mentioned on Geek Therapy Radio.

(25:22):
But right now it's running smooth thirty nine hundred X
Mini IX motherboard, thirty two gigs around that RTX, a
two thousand and sixty gabyte graphics card bus powered graphics card.
I have no problems with that computer. That problem that
computer is just no problems at all right now. And
that's that's it. I just wanted to tell you my
kind of computer woes in the Albatross, and maybe probably

(25:47):
not the next by the next episode, not gonna have
a new desktop build, but there may be progress on
that front. I don't know. Kids are expensive. So every
time I I know that, every time I think of
and the trigger on this, I'm gonna be like, uh,
I have to get my wisdom teeth out. I've got
three more wisdom teeth into my head. One of them
is causing me problems that kept me up last night

(26:08):
three in the morning. I was looking around for advil.
So you got some money coming down the pipe, actually
money going out of the pipe. And so when am
I going to pull the trigger on this is it's
going to be over a thousand bucks easy just to
build this new desktop PC. I got to reprice it obviously.
That so five hundred, two hundred to seven hundred, and

(26:29):
the it's probably like two hundred, no, actually one hundred
and ninety two. Get gram kit that's like four hundred bucks.
So whatever, it's some money. All it's not a priority.
Like I said, I've got other obviously machines to keep
me working. But anyways, that's what's going on in my life.
If you want to hear me more often, I I
at least once a month, once a month minimum, I

(26:52):
release a new episode of the Beyond Bones podcast. I
host the Beyond Bones podcast for the Houston Museum of
Natural Science. So if you want to hear me at
least once a month on a regular schedule, I pepper
in more podcast over there between the monthly releases. But
I have a monthly schedule, I release one every month.

(27:13):
I try for the first of the month every month
to release a new podcast on the HMNS Beyond Bones Podcast.
I'll include the link in this description, but if you
just want to search for the HMNS Beyond Bones podcast
in whatever you're listening to this podcast on, just look
for the purple color scheme. And that's the most modern
version of the Beyond Bones podcast. And that's how you

(27:33):
can hear me a lot more often. I got to
go to my meeting right now, So thank you so
much for listening to Gee Therapy Radio. You are worthy
of love, you're worthy of giving love, you're worthy of
receiving love, and you're worthy of your own self respect.
Thank you so much for listening. Take care,