Retro's PC upgrade

[Retro]

It's high time that I upgraded my PC as it's now really needed and here's why.

I built a 2700K based PC with 16GB RAM back in November 2011 which was so good and fast in games, plus further CPU performance improvements per generation were so marginal, that it just wasn't worth upgrading. So, by late 2023 it was somewhat overdue to say the least, but I still didn't get round to it for various reasons. To be honest, other than a few of the very latest games, performance was still reasonable and with the variable refresh rate monitors that we have now, gaming at the highest frame rates really isn't the priority that it once was since there are no dropped frames with VRR that lead to annoying judder / stutter, so all you see is smooth gameplay. This has to be one of the best innovations in PC gaming of the last decade.

Then, one day in December, with the PC idling on the desktop, the motherboard suddenly died with a literal bang! The screen went black and multiple loud thumps sounded through the speakers, plus a slight telltale burning smell. Unsurprisingly, it didn't respond to the power switch after that. After a bit of basic troubleshooting, I confirmed that my trusty PC of 12 years was dead. It may not seem like it when a PC is new, but all hardware has a certain lifetime which will be reached sooner or later and now mine had finally reached it.

Note that while the CPU and supporting components had remained constant, I'd upgraded the graphics card many times, with the latest being a now aging MSI RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio and a damned fine card that is, too. With fan stop in 2D mode, it's so cool and quiet, even when gaming hard. That will also need replacing, but not until the NVIDIA 50xx series are out, which will be around the middle of next year and the price will also be a big factor in what I get. For now, I just drop the resolution and details down if I have to. Again though, not such a pressing requirement with VRR.

Luckily, I'd bought a used lower end rig off a friend to use for file backups, but hadn't pressed it into service yet, so replaced my 2700K rig with that as a stopgrap measure. It consisted of the following:

• CPU: Intel i5-4590 at 3.30GHz. While two generations newer, this has a lower clock speed than the 2700K, isn't overclockable and has only 4 cores without HT. Yeah, I can notice the difference, even on the desktop. Oh and W11 says No to running on it
• Mobo: Asus mATX
• RAM: 8GB DDR3
• Cooler: Budget Cooler Master

I replaced the RAM with the 16GB from the old rig, which still worked just fine despite the sudden death of the motherboard, which I'm still using to this day and as I write this. Must say it's been rock solid stable and with good CPU temperatures too, so a great workhorse. Gaming performance could be rather better though, it's definitely worse than the 2700K and Windows 11 can't be installed on it without a bodge, so, today, I've finally, finally pulled the trigger and bought the replacement parts! This upgrade has literally been years in the making and I must have skipped a good three upgrades or so over the years which has saved me a lot of money.

So, what to replace it with? It was a choice between the new AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, or the Intel i9-14900K for the heart of my new PC. It took me a while to make up my mind due to various factors, but while the AMD is currently king of the hill for gaming performance by a significant margin (see reviews) it's not widely available yet and isn't necessarily as fast as the Intel in other tasks. Plus, I want to upgrade my PC right now, especially as I've just bought the latest Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 which I'm playing online with friends. Performance in that game with my current rig is poor, with 20-40fps on average, leading to lots of stutters, hitching and unevenness, even with VRR as the framerate is just too low. Heck, I did a quick benchmark at 1080p which showed the CPU to be 100% the bottleneck! It's high time to upgrade, hence, I went with the 14900K.

So, today, 18.11.24, I finally pulled the trigger and bought the components I needed, delivery due tomorrow. I was able to buy all of them from amazon.co.uk, no Marketplace, ie directly off Amazon which has reliably ensured no problems for me over the years, unlike Marketplace. They are:

• £438.99 CPU: Intel i9-14900K
• £249.99 Motherboard: MSI MPG Z790 CARBON WIFI
• £154.99 Crucial Pro DDR5 64GB (2x32GB, CP2K32G56C46U5)
• £127.95 Noctua NH-D15 G2 (standard)

£971.92 grand total. Ouch!

This is what it takes for a no-compromise system though. I could have gone with 32GB RAM, but I want 64GB because I can and will also help with running virtual machines, so what's the point of saving a few pounds, but then hankering for the better product from day one? It's a recipe for immediate frustration and it's really not that much extra money in the long run.

I went with the big Noctua cooler since my NH-D14 has performed so flawlessly for 12 years and in fact has not failed, plus the new one has received superlative reviews.

With the latest Intel 0x12b microcode update fixing the overvolting issues that were slowly destroying the CPUs and resulting lower temperatures, I should even be able to overclock it to some extent, although I'm gonna be careful with that and likely return it to stock afterwards. I prefer long life over a slight gain in performance and a reduced life with a rig this expensive.

Other components in my PC remain the same:

• Case: Cooler Master HAF 922
• PSU: Corsair AX1600i
• System drive: Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD
• Data drive: WD Blue 4TB HDD
• Game drive: WD Blue 8TB HDD
• Optical drive: Asus DVD writer
• Sound card: Creative: SoundBlaster Fatal1ty X-Fi (see below)

I have various other drives that I connect to it for backup and testing duties.

I'll be getting an M.2 SSD for it at some point, but not urgent.

I got the seriously overpowered Corsair PSU because I wanted the best quality and most efficient PSU at the time, along with the control software, which is this one and was well worth the £400 asking price. I think other PSUs approach it now, but I'm not sure it's been beaten yet, not even by Seasonic.

Note that the Samsung 256GB drive has worked flawlessly for almost a decade now (how time flies) and has no bad blocks, so perhaps it would be wise to replace it soon before it begins to fail.

I couldn't use the sound card with this mATX board, but I don't think it's going into the new rig either since it's no longer supported by Creative and the outdated W10 drivers have intermittent crackling and distortion problems, plus may not even work on W11. Also, onboard sound is pretty good nowadays, even the one on this old mATX board. Shame, as I really like this card for its fantastic sound quality and its advanced processing features. I'll have to try it and see.


UPDATE 19.11.24

All the parts have arrived, are in perfect condition with all seals intact and I'll be building my new rig soon. Note that I'm going to do some before and after benchmarks, too. I expect the differences to be massive.

 

[Retro]

@Techano you'll be interested in this.

 

[Techano]

I would recommend 2TB NVME 4.0+ for just purely games and application as they do benefit from the read/write speeds and keep your HDD for purely storage files. Hell, maybe make your current PC into a server.

Though I would highly advise against overclocking with the Intel 13th and 14th Gen CPU as they have been evident of being unreliable. Yes, they have the latest microcode, but it's way too early to tell given the whole fiasco. I wouldn't bother until a few years have passed if you purely need the performance bump.

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

 

[Retro]

That SSD looks good, so I'll keep it in mind when looking to buy one. I was thinking of the Samsung 980 Pro, but I want to see reviews first. Basically, I wanted to keep the build under a grand as it's really not that critical a component since I already have an SSD and makes no difference to framerates.

I know what you mean about the microcode, but there doesn't seem to be anything bad come of it as nothing in the news or forums about it and the couple of videos I've seen show the CPU to be running cooler due to the lower voltage, so I reckon it will be ok. Don't forget that there's a warranty on the CPU anyway should it start to play up, plus I'm not running it on a dodgy Asus motherboard. I don't trust that brand anymore after their recent CPU cooking scandal (an AMD literally went up in smoke in a Gamers Nexus video) and general practices. I refuse to give them my money for the foreseeable future over this. They must prove to me that they're worthy of my trust, not the other way round.

I agree about the overclocking, best just run the thing at stock. It's fast enough anyway and if I need more speed down the line, it will make a great excuse to upgrade.

I've fixed your overclocking typo.

 

[Retro]

@Geffers apologies, I'd forgotten that you're into this as well.

 

[Techano]

In today's gaming hardware demands, I would differently go with a NVMe ASAP. It won't help with FPS, but it will definitely help with loading times (unless you like to make a cuppa while you load into a game lol).

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[Retro]

Yeah, it will help, but my current boot SSD is fast enough. Also, it has enough space left on it for me to move my current game over to it on a separate partition. Gonna wait until I do the hardware upgrade first.

 

[Retro]

Note that my two data drives are both WD Blues as I wanted quietness and a bit cheaper over performance. Noise was by far the deciding factor, since the PC sits right next to me to the right with the side panel permanently off and they deliver in this respect. Games take a while to load, but it's not too bad.

 

[Geffers]

@Geffers apologies, I'd forgotten that you're into this as well.

Used to be. Am not a gamer so not driven by performance so am currently using a 10 year old laptop that was not latest technology when I bought it.

Fascinated though to follow upgrade.

 

[Retro]

Right people, here's a preview of the tests I've chosen to run. Full details about them when I post the results, but you might be wondering why I'm only posting the single threaded 3DMark result rather than the multithreaded one too. This is because the test maxes out at 16 threads, but the 14900K can do 32 threads at once, so it's going to underpeform in this test and hence give an innacurate result. The CPU test was introduced in 2021 so you'd think they'd have updated it by now to reflect modern CPUs, wouldn't you? Cinebench on the other hand will use any number of threads, so I've used that. Full info, with graphs, when I publish the results in this thread soon.

 

[Retro]

I've since realised that the 3DMark CPU test has a "max threads" mode so I've taken a benchmark with that on the old CPU and will see if it uses all 32 threads on my new CPU.

 

[Techano]

Show some build pics and benchmarks scores.

 

[Retro]

Benchies once they're all in. PC not built yet so only have the old one's so far. Pics unlikely.

 

[Astro What]

What exactly are you going to be doing with the PC?
Personally, unless I'm building one for image/video processing or heavy gaming I have never seen the need for a high end (processing power) computer. For watching regular streaming media, BluRay playback and such the little N100 based mini PC's with 32GB RAM do more than adequate.

 

[Retro]

Mostly web browsing and high end gaming, with a smattering of virtual machines. It also runs my local test copy of XenForo, but we know that doesn't take much processing power, more or less at rounding error level, even on this old hardware.

By high end gaming, I mean modern games that take powerful, high end CPUs and GPUs to run them at decent frame rates. Examples are the Call of Duty series and Cyberpunk 2077. The general rule of thumb with these sort of games is that too much power is never enough, because there's always those moments that will drag down the frame rate and also, as new games are released, they require more processing power for the same frame rate, ie they sap the performance of your PC, so you'd better have a lot of it. This is what this old PC is woefully short of which is helping to finally spur me on to upgrade it as it plays the latest Call of Duty like crap. The other is W11, as W10 support starts to drop off more and more, and after next August, won't even get security updates from Microsoft anymore.

I've started to take the odd video with my new iPhone, so video processing might have to be added to that mix, but it won't be a major activity for me.

Finally, there's also the "hotrod" factor, where it just feels good to have a powerful PC sitting on my desk, capable of running anything that I throw at it and built with top quality and reliable components. It's not about bragging rights either, I just feel satisfied having it.

 

[Astro What]

By high end gaming, I mean modern games that take powerful, high end CPUs and GPUs to run them at decent frame rates

I never got real heavy into PC gaming other than Command & Conquer back in the day.
Most of mine is done on consoles.
I got away from the "hot-rod" factor when I got away from water/peltier cooling. I even played with liquid nitrogen at one point.

 

[Retro]

Consoles are a very viable option nowadays. Graphics are great nowadays, not really that much different to a PC, they cost a lot less and are generally much less hassle to set up and maintain. My friends have PS5 and PS5 Pros and are really happy with them. The one big advantage with a PC though is the use of the keyboard and mouse which is greatly superior in first person shooters like Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament etc. In other games, the controller can actually be better.

 

[Retro]

ppl, I've already upgraded my new PC even before I've built it! Instead of 64GB RAM, I've now got 128GB, all courtesy of a couple of Amazon discounts. I just got another pack of that Crucial memory - there's no quad channel pack. Total cost is £230 when it normally costs about £350 - £500 for that much RAM. That's a server level amount and will make this enthusiast very happy.

 

[Techano]

ppl, I've already upgraded my new PC even before I've built it! Instead of 64GB RAM, I've now got 128GB, all courtesy of a couple of Amazon discounts. I just got another pack of that Crucial memory - there's no quad channel pack. Total cost is £230 when it normally costs about £350 - £500 for that much RAM. That's a server level amount and will make this enthusiast very happy.

Have you tried the XMP profile with benchmarks stability testing yet?

 

[Retro]

I haven't put it together yet! Today was supposed to be the big day, finally, but things conspired to ruin that opportunity, unfortunately. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see, fingers crossed.

 

[Retro]

For the hordes of members waiting on tenterhooks for an update on the build, I'm sorry for the delay, but I just don't have any time to assemble it at the moment. Hopefully over the weekend.

 

[Retro]

Right I've got an update, but not one I was wanting to give.

I've finally put the hardware together and it's working nicely with all 128GB RAM, good temps etc, but isn't in its final configuration yet as the graphics card isn't installed yet, only one fan on the cooler and the front panel connectors are unconnected. All this will be finalised when I fix the following problem.

Problem is that I can't boot my existing W10 installation like I'd planned. The mobo doesn't recognise that there's an OS installed and just goes into the bios. Also does this with the clone copy that I made just before I shut down the old PC.

I've checked every bios setting that I can think of such as secure boot, AHCI and more, adjusting some of them, all with no results.

I remember seeing the same thing recently with another MSI Z790 based PC that I built which had remained an open issue, but had forgotten about it or would have resolved this first before starting the build.

The boot drive still booted on the old 4590 based PC at the time, so it's very likely to do so here.

I'll have to get that old PC up and running again, or I don't have a working PC in the meantime. What a pita.

Note that installing Windows fresh on that other PC worked just fine, so it's probably just a bios setting somewhere that needs adjustment, but is proving pretty elusive.

I think the best strategy now is to have another look after watching the football and if I get nowhere, to put the old PC into a spare case, which I have and use that with its IGP until this issue is resolved.

I've had to type out this post laboriously on my iPhone and would really like the next one to be from my new PC.

 

[Retro]

Quick update: I solved the booting issue which required installing a graphics card. Left field, I know. Full update later.

 

[Retro]

Ok, so here's that update and a lot has happened since the last one, so it's a biggie. This is actually the second post using this new PC, the above being the first one.


Building the PC: Noctua strikes

After so many things holding me up, I finally bit the bullet and started the build two days ago, Sunday 8th at 01:15 in the morning since I was "enjoying" yet more insomnia and felt bright eyed and bushy tailed.

First thing I did was to clone the Windows 10 256GB system SSD onto another 256GB SSD, test it booted, then disconnected everything from the old mobo. I then removed it and slowly and carefully installed the new hardware, being very careful to dodge gotchas like mobo-shorting standoffs, bent CPU socket pins, thermal paste and dodgy cooler mounting, all of which could damage the hardware and hence wreck the build. Yes, I looked at all manuals too: accuracy and a working PC at the end were paramount, not speed. PCs are modular and generally straightforward to assemble, but this is the area where things can go badly wrong, so don't rush it.

Strangely, the Noctua manual downloaded from their site had two glaring omissions in it, something unusual for a company known for its quality and attention to detail and they must know of these issues by now. The cooler is otherwise as flawless and fantastic as I'd expected.

1. The instructions didn't take into account a new build, ie made no mention of installing the CPU. This meant that following the instructions exactly, I installed the custom Noctua mounting hardware before the CPU, leaving the protective plastic cover over the socket. I then discovered that I couldn't lift the lever to install the CPU since it was trapped under the curved mounting bars. A really silly oversight by Noctua. However, removing them was simple enough and only took a minute. I then installed the CPU, took another minute to reinstall the bars, put the thermal paste on and mounted the cooler without further issues. Note that it's not quite as simple and easy to do as made out, partly due to the weight and bulkiness of the cooler along with its delicate fins, so take care with it.
2. Noctua includes a washer mod to reduce the pressure on the CPU to prevent the heatspreader from becoming concave (it's slightly convex out of the box). This wasn't mentioned at all in the main instructions and once the cooler is installed, it's too late as the CPU will have been slightly deformed. However, I was aware of the mod before I started assembling the cooler as part of my product research. There are separate instructions for the washer mod, so should have been referred to as an option. I chose not to do it, since the cooler will never be removed and performing the mod looked a little dicey with the CPU having to sit in the socket unclamped and loose while one faffs with the mod. Too easy to damage the hardware for little gain. I'm going to keep this CPU, mobo and RAM until it comes to upgrading in a few years' time to a new generation CPU, so no reason at all to do the mod.

I installed only one stick of RAM, only one fan on the cooler and no drives, the minimum to check that it booted ok. Thankfully, it worked first time and actually took quite a long time to display that first picture from the IGP, plus the CPU temperature hit around 37-40C and remained there, nice and cool. The one thing I dread is pressing that power switch and nothing happens, or just a fan twitch and nothing more. You really don't want that or you're in for a whole lotta pain.

So, the hardware works just fine, no issues at all, and is of excellent quality, but the software was another matter. I'd hoped to do this big PC build without a baptism of fire. Fat chance!

I then booted into the BIOS and checked that it was the latest version that I'd installed with the 0x12B microcode update. This MSI mobo has a great feature where the BIOS can be flashed without a CPU or memory installed. It's quite something to see! It meant that my CPU will have never been cooked by those excessive voltages that caused damage to so many CPUs, even for a minute.


Attempting to boot off the clone SSD

I then connected the clone SSD and expected to boot into Windows. It booted into the BIOS instead. Nothing I did would make it boot from that SSD. Heck, I even connected it to the old PC (now just a mobo on the table with things attached to it) to make sure it still worked, so it was a mystery to me why this was happening. I mean, if a drive is bootable, the PC should make some attempt at booting off it, even if that means an immediate blue screen, right? Nope, this just treated the drive as unbootable, even though the BIOS could clearly see it. It even behaved the same way with the original SSD.

After spending hours trying to figure it out, Googling and asking friends via WhatsApp, one came back to me with some AI troubleshooting tips where it mentioned about booting compatibility of a UEFI BIOS and a drive using the old master boot record (MBR) format versus the new GPT format. A little light went off in my head at this point and that was the solution to this problem.

I'd not installed the graphics card at this point since I still wanted to test with minimum hardware, but couldn't switch the BIOS to legacy CSM mode since it reported that the IGP wasn't compatible with it and reverted to UEFI when I tried it, but, I'd had an inkling about it, but it wasn't high up on the list of things to try. However, after reading that AI info from my friend, trying out that CSM mode went right to the top of the list, so I grabbed my 10 year old GTX 780 Ti (yes, I've got two for SLI goodness at the time. Glitchy, but it really worked) that's got a legacy video BIOS and... it booted right up into Windows! I didn't even have to switch the mobo BIOS first and it didn't blue screen either. I removed the card and once more it booted into the BIOS. Talk about a leftfield solution!! This is the first time in all my 25+ years of building and troubleshooting PCs that I'd ever seen the need to install a graphics card to enable the PC to boot off a drive.

Thing is, the W10 installation had been done on a 2014 era Asus mobo with a UEFI BIOS in UEFI mode, so I'd expected that and the new one to be the same in this respect, but nope, they weren't. This fancy new MSI one doesn't understand MBR drives when in UEFI mode, unlike the old Asus one. I wasted so many hours trying to track this annoyance down. I'll know for next time and thanks again to my friend.

Next, I reinstalled my RTX 2080 and as expected, the mobo booted right into the BIOS. It was expected as I knew this card has a more modern BIOS designed for UEFI mobo BIOSes and the mobo BIOS had reverted to UEFI mode. However, I was then able to manually set the BIOS to CSM mode and boot off the drive.

Now, to install the network driver that I'd downloaded and put on the desktop before doing the upgrade. Nope, I'd mistakenly downloaded the W11 one which refused to work on W10, so I was stuck, but not for long. I'd had the network driver for the other MSI Z790 mobo I'd used to build a new PC for a family member, so I tried that and it installed in under a second. Internet access restored. I'll use the proper one for this mobo on the original drive.


Converting the drive format

So, how to convert this MBR drive to GPT? This is also required in order for W11 to install. The BIOS must also be in UEFI mode to pass the W11 requirements. I found a handy conversion guide below direct from Microsoft which worked nicely. Note that it can't be reversed, so always make a copy of the system drive before doing this.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ion-from/aa8c2de3-460b-4a8c-b30b-641405f800d7

The process has various requirements of which only the limit of 3 partitions was breached with 4 partitions. Since I'm still working with the clone drive that will eventually be wiped, I simply deleted the two spare partitions and the process worked just fine. I could then set the BIOS back to UEFI and boot off the drive, which is how I'm writing this post now.


Now Windows is no longer activated, part 1

But, we're still not finished! Since the mobo has changed, W10 decided that it's no longer activated, so how to activate without spending money? I don't have a definitive answer yet, but I have an idea.

I'd originally installed W7 onto a HDD years ago, activated with a Microsoft TechNet key (remember glorious TechNet?!) and upgraded it for free to W10. Turns out that it was activated on the old mobo with a "digital license" as Microsoft likes to call it, which isn't linked to my Microsoft account. This means that I couldn't activate it by logging in with my MS account when I tried.

I then tried using a W7 TechNet key which previously did work on W10, but no longer, so I'm stuck with an unactivated W10. Note that the free upgrade to W11 only happens on an activated W10, as you'd expect. I could buy one of those dodgy Windows keys for a tenner that will do the job, but I think I have one more shot at this. If I boot the drive on the old PC, it should reactivate. I can then associate the digital license with my Microsoft account. After that, I'll connect the SSD to the new PC and see if that finally activates it. If not, then perhaps I'll just have to bite the bullet and buy that key. Note that I did look at the Microsoft Store as the activation wizard suggested: £219. No thanks. Buying it from somewhere like Scan was still a painful £185 and don't bother with Amazon for this as they're all from Marketplace sellers peddling pirate software with potentially blocked keys. I had this happen to a client of mine once. Never again.

It was now evening after work and I had better things to do with my time than try and work around Microsoft's beloved DRM, like watching football and chilling out, so this one's for another day, perhaps tomorrow evening (11th) for part 2, we'll see.

This is where things stand now, with me still running off the temporary clone drive, but my data drives connected and the video and network drivers installed, but no sound yet. Oh, I've installed the whole 128GB now - check it out in the screenshot below! I still have to do a full memtest on it for full confidence in it, but it's running fine now. The PC feels noticeably snappier on the desktop and I can't wait to try out my games on it.


Epilogue, finally!

Once I'm on the original drive with all drivers installed, I'll run the W10 benchmarks, install W11, run more benchmarks and then publish them in this thread for all to see.

Here's a couple of Task Manager screenshots on W10 to show the main differences between the old and new PCs.

My old PC with 4 cores, 4 threads and 16GB RAM. A good, stable workhorse bought used off a friend that worked solidly for the whole time that I had it, about 11 months. It's showing its limitations in today's environment though, even just on the desktop and can bottleneck quite noticeably at times.




My new PC with 8 Performance cores and 16 Efficiency cores, 32 threads and 128GB RAM. Quite the upgrade, huh?

 

[i1stadam]

Brilliant Morning read, super informative and detailed. Also had a good laugh.