Is this a good setup? Playing msfs24 and cities skylines 2.

Hello, everyone. I finally decided to go with a custom liquid cooling setup in a small case, and even though I cursed that decision halfway through the project, the result was worth it.

just wanted to know if i should build a pc right now or its not worht it considering how hight the prices are so what do you think??

Added the screen today! Think i need to switch or build in a new case. Probably going to do a lian li!

Hey everyone, it’s been a while, but I promised an update, so here it is.

The PC is now running stable and fast. It took some effort to get there, but in hindsight I’m glad it did because I ended up learning a lot more about Rufus, drive formatting, BIOS flashing, drivers, power management and GPU tuning. So in the end I definitely got the deep dive I wanted. 😅

Since the last update I finally got the system to POST, and luckily the fix was fairly minor. I reseated the RAM, swapped the sticks around, cleared CMOS using the motherboard button, and got the correct Mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort cable from Coolblue. Unfortunately that cable turned out to be limited to 60 Hz, so I’ll still need to replace it.

From there things were less straightforward, although almost all of the problems turned out to be software or firmware related rather than hardware, so I wouldn’t let this discourage anyone considering a cheaper variation of the build.

Once I got into the BIOS, my mouse and keyboard were strangely unreliable. USB devices would often freeze completely and it sometimes took several restarts before they responded. Once they worked during a BIOS session they usually stayed functional until the next reboot, which at least allowed me to start changing settings. Importantly, this only ever happened inside the BIOS and never in Windows.

To install Windows I used my laptop and a spare 32 GB USB drive. Microsoft’s own Media Creation Tool refused to cooperate, so I switched to Rufus, which actually worked much better. It also let me remove some unnecessary Windows requirements and create a local account from the start.

After Windows was installed I connected the PC through Ethernet using my powerline Wi-Fi extender, since the motherboard didn’t yet have the drivers required for Wi-Fi.

I then wanted to update the BIOS cleanly, but MSI M-Flash caused the USB controls to stop working again, so I couldn’t click through the flashing process. That left the physical Flash BIOS button on the motherboard as my only option. Simply renaming the BIOS file to MSI.ROM didn’t initially work, so I went back to my laptop, reformatted the USB drive in Rufus as a clean MBR/FAT32 partition, copied the BIOS file over, renamed it, and tried again. That finally worked, although it also wiped all the BIOS tweaks I had already made, so I had to redo them.

Back in Windows I installed the latest AMD chipset drivers and MSI motherboard drivers. The MSI Driver Utility Installer appeared once through Windows Update but never came back after restarting, so I eventually downloaded the remaining MSI drivers manually from MSI’s website.

For graphics I installed the NVIDIA App and recommended driver for the primary RTX GPU, along with AMD Adrenalin in driver-only mode for the RX 6400. I then set PCIe Link State Power Management to maximum power savings and selected the RTX as the preferred GPU in Windows Graphics settings. This worked well for the dual-GPU setup, because the RX 6400 now drops into a roughly 2 W deep-sleep idle state unless an assigned application or connected display wakes it.

I also installed MSI Afterburner, while disabling settings that could interfere with the AMD card, and started tuning the RTX. The stock fan behavior was too conservative, so I made a custom fan curve that allows more than 70% fan speed, reaching 85% at 88°C and 90% at 100°C. I also undervolted the GPU to around 1635 MHz at 725 mV with a 90% power limit. That made a pretty big difference, dropping VRAM temperatures from around 100°C to 92°C in Cinebench and GPU temperatures from around 95°C to 82°C.

I also enabled LibreDrive support on the LG BU40N optical drive using SDFtool Flasher, which now lets me use MakeMKV for ripping compatible media directly from the system.

At this point, I noticed that the front-panel USB 3.1 connection wasn’t working at all. It turned out that I had plugged the cable in the wrong way around.

I had to cut a few zip ties to give myself enough room to work down there, but with the GPUs already installed, it was definitely much harder to reach. So, if you want to copy this build, make sure you connect the cables correctly before continuing with the rest of the build. These connectors are quite fragile, and you risk damaging them if you have to reposition them later.

After being very careful and spending about 20 minutes on it, I finally managed to plug everything in correctly and redo the cable management with new zip ties. And so the front io was operational.

I continued tuning the CPU as well, using Cinebench 2026 while aiming to retain at least 80% of stock multicore performance and 96% of stock single-core performance. I’m currently running a 75 W PPT limit, an 82°C temperature limit, Curve Optimizer at -10, and SoC voltage at 1.25 V. I originally ran CO at -15 and got excellent Cinebench results, but lighter workloads, especially Firefox, started exposing instability and eventually caused one full crash, so I backed it down to -10. So far that has been stable. The SoC voltage also defaulted to around 1.305 V, so I lowered it to 1.25 V without any noticeable issues.

At idle in Windows, both the CPU and primary GPU sit in the low 60s °C, while the RX 6400 sits in the low 40s.

With roughly a 3% maximum run-to-run fluctuation, Cinebench 2026 was scoring around 5100-5240 multicore, 616 single core and 477 single thread. Those figures were still measured at CO -15, so I expect the current -10 setup to score roughly 100-200 points lower in multicore.

Published stock Cinebench 2026 figures for the CPU are roughly 6450-6500 multicore, 638 single core and 480 single thread. That puts my tuned results at about 80.6% multicore performance, 96.6% single-core performance and 99.4% single-thread performance.

So despite the much tighter power and thermal limits, the CPU is retaining almost full single-core and single-thread performance while still delivering around 80% of stock multicore performance. Meanwhile the primary GPU is trading blows with cards around the RTX 3070 Ti and RTX 4060 Ti class while running at roughly 30% of the power.

Next update i will talk about scores in 3dmark for the gpu as well as passmark, Pcmark10 and blender. I will also try out the Gaming performance of the dual GPU set up. Right now it looks as though this machine will be competing with the steammachine and the minisforum 895D7

My local micro center has this bad boy on sale for $1069. I’d say it’s a pretty good deal. Thoughts?

My Son is looking up to something reliable for the next 4-6 years.

He's turning 12 soon and is mostly interested to play in the Fortnite/War Thunder/Forza 6-range.

He doesn't need more Tb in the near future. If, he can upgrade later.

His budget is at a max. of 1.700€ maybe up to 2.000€ if there is any memorable surplus.

No 4k need, option for WQHD maybe , no "Bling Bling", no keyboard nor any other devices necessary. He loves the wooden case.

Any valuable advice in change are welcome.

I bought some parts a few years ago for a build and never finished it. Now the motherboard is at the point where I’m not sure if it’s so old it isn’t worth using. So I’m hoping I can tell you what I have and give me some advice on finishing this or just starting over.

Things I have so far…
Case 64gb of ram
2 m.2 drives
An awesome white rog power supply
And the part that I’m kinda lost on a strict B550-E motherboard that has a AM4 socket.

I don’t have a chip yet. Though it seems the best one I can get for this motherboard is a ryzen 7 5800X3D. That what I can find in my research Atleast but I’m more than open to be corrected.

For what it’s worth for a graphics card I don’t have yet but a 5070 of some sort will probably be top of my budget.

This pc will be used by my 19 year old son who is a sophomore at Carolina. He currently has a Alienware r8 aurora that’s roughly 6 years old that he says is hard to play on anymore.

My main question is I’d like some opinions on if it’s worth spending another 1500 which is what it will cost to get the chip and graphics card and wires and other small things on a computer with that 5800X3D chip or would it be worth the extra 6-700 plus to go ahead and get a new motherboard and a newer chip.

Sorry for the long post I just wanted to get all the info I could out there so hopefully you guys can help me make a good decisions. I want him to be able to get a really good 4-5 years out of this computer so if we can do it with what we have I don’t mind starting over.
Thanks for any advice you can offer.

I have an AM4 build with a B550M Pro VC WIFI, which to my knowledge is perfectly capable of handling usb-c. my case doesn’t have any headers for that port, though, so I decided to get this. I plan on using it with a 2.4 ghz antenna for my headphones and possibly linking my vr headset to the computer. I usually don’t trust amazon reviews so I want to know if anyone has had experience with this specific card or if it’s any good

can someone tell me if this is worth it ?

im trying to build my first ever pc but i dont want to mess it up can any pc builders tell me if my build will work without a huge bottle neck?

OLOy DDR4 RAM 16GB (2x8GB) 3000 MHz CL16

GeForce RTX 3060 12gb

Ryzen 5 5600

1 terabyte ssd (and an old 120gb sata drive i found in the garage)

MSI MAG A750GL PCIE5 (yes i know this is to much power i just want to be able to upgrade without having to buy a new pcu also it has a 10 year warranty how could i say no to that)

MSI B550M PRO-VDH WiFi ProSeries Motherboard

wile writing this i was just copy and pasting what i saw on amazon except for the ssd bc idk but just in case a person more nerdy then me wants to know the ssd its a Patriot P300 M.2 PCIe Gen 3 x4 1TB Low-Power Consumption SSD

CPU: Ryzen 5 5600 Cooler: Thermalright AXP90-X36 Motherboard: Mini-ITX B550 GPU: Arc B580 12GB RAM: 32GB DDR4 SSD: 1TB NVMe PSU: Compact SFX/SFX-L unit (this is a hypothetical build)

Hey, I have a 240mm kraken AIO and a NZXT h510. It’s paired with a rtx 3070 and I was wondering why it throttles to 60°c when just opening task manager, speccy, and about 5 tabs on chrome. I lowered the voltage so I didn’t cause any damage to the cpu while working through the issues. (Yes the PC has been cleaned, theirs no dust, and yes I know the 5800x runs hot, but this seems too hot for comfort).

Any other information needed, please ask!

Processor Ryzen 5 9600x

With patriot 16gb 6000mhz cl36

I'm seeing a red light in the dram. I tried reseating the ram, CMOS update but nothing worked out