My DREAM Setup using AMD?? - LMG Lounge Update
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
3,096 words · ~15 min read
0:00
So here we are, a long, painful seven months
0:04
after we first teased the concept
0:07
of building the first ever Linus Media Group gaming lounge.
0:11
And ironically, pretty much everything else
0:14
about this space is done.
0:17
So we've got our side table here.
0:19
This just arrived.
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It's still got all the protective stuff on it.
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We've got our board games table here.
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This is actually a bit of a placeholder, but whatever.
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We could play board games.
0:30
We've got the media lounge.
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That is like, it's fricking awesome.
0:34
And the one part we haven't actually started on yet
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is the actual LAN gaming center.
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Fortunately, everything's here!
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Those are, oh, yeah!
0:47
Oh my God.
0:48
So it's time for us to finally build the first real system.
0:53
Except that we had a small problem.
0:55
We were having trouble getting the Core i7 processors
0:59
that we had intended to use.
1:00
It was from our prototype system way back when.
1:03
So we figured, you know what?
1:05
Well, we're only running RTX 2070s anyway.
1:08
Would AMD really be that much
1:11
of a performance compromise here?
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Let me hold this.
1:14
Well, there's only one way for us to find out.
1:18
The MOS Grande backpack is the perfect companion
1:20
for laptops of up to 17 inches
1:22
since the bag is water resistant and padded for protection.
1:25
Also, it has an orange interior.
1:27
Check it out at the link below.
1:37
So before we get
1:39
to building our actual final spec rig,
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I guess a bit of a haul video
1:44
is kind of in order here, isn't it?
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Man, this is a lot of hardware.
1:49
Every system is getting a G903?
1:53
No, it's actually worse.
1:55
We went a little further than that.
1:56
We went even further over the top?
1:58
Those are extras.
1:59
Every system is getting one
2:01
of Logitech's Pro Wireless Gaming Mice.
2:04
Okay, as if half the people that are gonna be using it
2:07
are even skilled enough to know
2:09
the difference.
2:10
Everyone's getting a G513 Carbon
2:12
with their Romergy linear switches.
2:15
Everyone's getting a G935 headset.
2:18
And thanks to Logitech's recent acquisition
2:21
of Blue Microphones, a Yeti Nano mic.
2:25
Because, you know, the built-in headset mic.
2:28
I mean, we've got it.
2:29
It's not like it's not a super high-end headset,
2:32
but we're gonna use an off-board mic, you know, whatever.
2:34
Then moving into the systems themselves,
2:37
we're running Ryzen 2700.
2:39
We're gonna be using the Ryzen 2700X processors.
2:43
So yes, we lose a little bit of single-threaded performance
2:46
compared to the 8700Ks we initially spec'd,
2:49
but we can probably overclock them a little.
2:51
And quite frankly, in the e-sports titles
2:53
that we'll be running for the most part,
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I don't expect it to make a difference.
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Although, we will be testing that out today.
2:59
And then cooling them,
3:01
we're gonna be using H100i RGB Platinum Water Coolers
3:04
from Corsair.
3:05
We're gonna be pairing them with 16 gigs each,
3:08
a DDR4 2666 megahertz RGB RAM from also Corsair.
3:14
Every system gets an MP300 480 gig boot drive.
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Do we have hard drives for these?
3:19
Yes, and Optane.
3:20
Oh nice, everyone's getting a Brio 4K Pro webcam.
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So everything's gonna be stream ready.
3:25
And Optane, all the Optane.
3:27
All the Optane.
3:28
Oh wow, okay.
3:29
So that's pretty cool.
3:30
That means our 480 gig SSD is gonna handle OS duties
3:34
and any critical applications.
3:36
And then our hard drives are actually
3:38
gonna have accelerated caching
3:40
so that the games that are played most frequently,
3:42
even if they are on magnetic storage,
3:44
are still gonna load faster
3:46
than if they were just on a hard drive.
3:48
Also pulling cooling duty,
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Corsair sent over a whole bunch of their Lightloop 120 fans.
3:53
First, let's talk about what they're gonna be driving.
3:55
So ASUS sent over 12 of their VG279 gaming monitors.
4:00
So these are 1080p IPS with three millisecond response times
4:05
and they run at 144 hertz.
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So these are basically, you're kind of no frills,
4:11
but still looks really great gaming monitor.
4:15
They don't have G-Sync,
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but now that NVIDIA has enabled G-Sync on FreeSync displays,
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we're not expecting that to be a problem
4:24
for our GeForce RTX 2070 graphics cards.
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The whole thing's gonna be hooked into
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ASUS's TUF Series B450M Plus gaming motherboard
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and installed in a Crystal Series 280X case from ASUS.
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And the only thing new,
4:39
is that this is the first time
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Nintendo has launched the QCAM Corsair.
4:43
For power, we've gone way over the top.
4:46
See Sonic sent over
4:47
their Prime Titanium at 1,000 watt modular power supply.
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I told them like 750 plus.
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This is literally three times the power we actually need,
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but cool.
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Thanks, I guess.
5:00
Actually, a couple of things I forgot, minor details.
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Aquantia sent over their 10 gig Nix.
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actual gaming experience, but while installing games
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off our Steam caching server,
5:13
which you can check out the video about up here,
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this will definitely make a difference
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while we're pulling down from all these machines at once.
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So that's gonna be sick.
5:23
And these chairs from Maxnomics.
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So we haven't actually reviewed one of their chairs
5:29
in quite some time, but this is still my daily driver
5:34
in my office, actually not quite this one,
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but a similar model.
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And I'm super excited that when we're here
5:40
for hours after work, we are gonna be sitting
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on something as comfortable as their classic office chair.
5:46
We got the black one, right Jake?
5:47
Yeah, and it's embroidered.
5:49
Oh, that looks awesome.
5:52
As the kids would say.
5:55
I'm not a kid anymore, I'm not saying it.
5:57
I just wanna hear you say it.
5:59
It's lit, it's lit, yeah.
6:00
Lit AF.
6:01
Lit AF, thank you.
6:02
Thank you.
6:03
See, I knew you were gonna say it.
6:03
Damn it, I said it.
6:04
Okay, so while Jake puts together a couple of the chairs,
6:07
which we're gonna need for our head-to-head
6:10
mano-a-mano gaming session,
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I'm gonna put together one of our final AMD-based rigs
6:16
so we can find out when we put it head-to-head
6:19
against our original Intel-based prototype over here,
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how much, if any, performance we're leaving on the table
6:26
with our 2700Xs.
6:28
You know what, I think I'm gonna mix things up
6:30
for this build.
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I'm gonna start by getting everything ready in the case.
6:36
Then I'm gonna put together my core platform
6:38
on my motherboard here.
6:40
I haven't even gotten as far as putting the fans
6:42
into the case, and we've already found a problem.
6:44
Because we changed from an Intel board to an AMD board
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sort of midway through this project,
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we might've overlooked a small compatibility issue.
6:54
Now, it's nothing sort of game-ending here.
7:00
We still have room for our triple-slot graphics card
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and our 10-gigabit NIC, but what we are looking at right now,
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is we're gonna have to figure out how we're gonna do this.
7:06
What we are losing is the ability
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to put in our Optane module,
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because this board only has a single M.2 slot.
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And yeah, there's no additional one on the back
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or anything like that.
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Yeah, that's a little disappointing, actually.
7:20
Hey, so Jake, how are we arranging the fans on these things?
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Because we can either design it for optimal airflow
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and have two in, two out,
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or we can have our light loop rings all visible externally,
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and it can look bad-ass.
7:36
And then it'll be like highly positive pressurized.
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But they're all filtered.
7:43
Two in, two out.
7:44
Two in, two out?
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Yeah, you gotta.
7:48
Better than the system's overheating.
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He's not gonna do it.
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I just wanted to check something real quick with you, though.
7:54
However I build this first one,
7:55
that's how we'll have to build all of them, right?
7:57
Well, I could always just fix it.
7:59
All right, I guess this one is done now, hey?
8:04
Not bad?
8:05
Pretty good, man.
8:06
I mean, I have this exact same chair at my desk, so.
8:08
Oh, yeah.
8:10
Avivo sent over their,
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so they don't actually sell a complete desk.
8:14
They just sell-
8:15
Oh, I think they do.
8:16
Do they?
8:17
Yeah.
8:18
Well, that's not what we got.
8:18
We needed a big one, right?
8:19
That's not the one that I bought the other week either.
8:21
Yeah, they sell just like a standing, sitting,
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like leg assembly.
8:27
So that's what we're gonna be putting
8:28
these custom dbrand skinned MDF tabletops on top of.
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I'm actually super stoked for how good that's gonna look.
8:35
Those things are really heavy.
8:37
Please be careful.
8:38
So this is a pretty cool little piece
8:40
of kit.
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This is a Corsair Commander Pro,
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and it plugs in using SATA for power and then USB for data.
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And then it's got all your LED ports here.
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You've got up to six fans that you can plug in directly.
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It's got temp sensors right here,
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and then two USB internal headers
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in case you have a motherboard that only has one,
9:00
and then you're taking it up with this thing.
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Well, this way you can plug your front panel USB 2
9:04
into this or any other accessories like, say for example,
9:07
one of Corsair's own CPU coolers,
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which we are probably gonna need to do in this case.
9:13
So we're gonna replace our existing fan hub with this guy.
9:19
Yeah.
9:21
Cable management.
9:22
Man, I tell you the adhesive that they used
9:24
to hold the original LED and fan controllers in,
9:28
it's ridiculous.
9:30
I should barely get that thing off.
9:32
Sounds like something a beta male would say.
9:35
Ah, holy crap.
9:38
Ow.
9:39
Like look at my fingers.
9:40
What are you gonna cry to?
9:43
You know what?
9:44
You take it off.
9:46
Show me how it's done, alpha guy.
9:48
Oh man, that's pretty on there.
9:50
Holy .
9:55
It was really loosened a lot.
9:56
Uh-huh.
9:57
Why did they put that much adhesive on?
9:59
Look, I love you guys at Corsair.
10:00
Great, great people sent us a lot of hardware
10:03
for this project.
10:05
Okay.
10:06
Yeah, we're going full RGB ringness here.
10:10
It's taking me as long to do the RGB wiring
10:12
as it would to build a normal computer.
10:14
Of course, it'll be all worth it.
10:16
But like, we've got the two, we've got the Commander Pro,
10:20
we've got the RGB hub,
10:22
we've got the leads for all the strips and all the fans,
10:26
two power leads for the whole thing.
10:29
I think we're finally ready to put a motherboard in it.
10:31
Look at the chairs though.
10:32
But the chairs are done.
10:34
God damn it.
10:35
You know, the funny thing is
10:36
I've always just kind of used whatever.
10:38
Like, brand loyalty is not a thing for me.
10:42
But because the community's perception of me as some kind of,
10:45
brand loyalty is not a thing for me. But because the community's perception of me as some kind of,
10:46
But because the community's perception of me as some kind of,
10:47
fanboy one way or the other is so strong.
10:51
It feels a little bit naughty building an AMD system.
10:55
See, check this out.
10:55
This is what I love about this case.
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This side, like, look at that.
10:59
It's not look clean or what?
11:01
And then this side, in typical Linus fashion.
11:06
I'm like getting pretty close here, actually.
11:08
I just got to pop the power supply in, wire that up.
11:13
And then I need my graphics card, network card,
11:15
and then I'm good to go.
11:17
I don't know who would use this
11:19
but maybe if you're like an NBA player or something.
11:25
Well, I wasn't sure if I could do it,
11:27
but after giving it my best effort,
11:30
I think I've succeeded in making the contrast
11:33
between my cable managed side
11:35
and my non cable managed side, even more stark.
11:40
Good job, Linus.
11:42
It's a real shame about that video card saggage.
11:45
That's actually not that bad.
11:48
It's not great.
11:49
I was expecting it to be a lot worse.
11:50
It's a lot worse than that.
11:51
I'm also a little upset about the one yellow accent.
11:57
Can you just get the T out of there?
11:59
Finish the T off.
11:59
So it's just off gaming.
12:01
Gaming.
12:02
It's the gamers.
12:04
You have to do this, like this.
12:06
Yeah.
12:07
Like this.
12:07
Otherwise it's not, you don't get the white out.
12:10
Look, look how beta his writing game is here.
12:15
Look at that.
12:16
It's gorgeous.
12:17
Thanks to Aki for sending these mouse pads.
12:20
Excel.
12:20
Mouse pads.
12:21
Very nice.
12:22
With the braided edge.
12:23
This is the moment we've all been waiting for.
12:31
Nice.
12:32
Okay.
12:32
So my NIC is showing up.
12:33
My 16 gigs of RAM's all showing up.
12:35
My hard drive is not showing up.
12:39
Oh, it might be a SAS drive.
12:41
I just grabbed something off the shelf
12:43
cause our drives didn't actually arrive.
12:46
Okay.
12:46
I will figure that out later.
12:48
But we still have a couple of things to do here.
12:50
So I'm going to set our DOCP.
12:52
So that's AMD's XMP equivalent,
12:56
which should configure our RAM to its optimized settings
13:00
and then install Windows.
13:03
So this is it.
13:05
Ish.
13:06
Finished AMD system versus the old concept Intel system.
13:11
On a test bench.
13:12
I mean, really the point of all of this is to find out
13:14
how much we compromised by going AMD.
13:18
So I think we're two and two right now.
13:20
Aren't we Jake?
13:21
Does that, does that sound right?
13:22
Okay.
13:23
Also.
13:24
I'm pretty sure that while I was pretty far behind before
13:27
you're dead again.
13:28
And my kill count is pretty close.
13:31
Oh, oh, would you look at that?
13:33
Am I out ahead now?
13:34
Huh?
13:35
Cause I remember you talking some smack
13:36
about how you're like a young, hip gamer or some .
13:40
Ah.
13:42
Oh, nice.
13:43
Haha.
13:44
Spawned right behind you.
13:45
You like that?
13:46
Performance wise.
13:48
Oh, it's, it's not making a difference.
13:50
It literally doesn't matter.
13:52
Uh, what are you at in terms of FPS?
13:53
Oh, like around 300, 250.
13:55
250.
13:56
It really depends on where you are on the map.
13:58
Yep.
13:59
I'm anywhere from like 150 to 250.
14:08
Okay. We're here.
14:09
This is me.
14:10
It's me.
14:11
It's me. It's me.
14:12
Okay. So let's just look down the, look down the thing.
14:12
I just want to know what the FPS difference is like.
14:14
Okay.
14:15
Mine's higher.
14:16
What?
14:17
Yeah. Yours is quite a bit higher actually.
14:18
Do you have anything in the background?
14:19
No.
14:20
I mean, remember CSGO is a notoriously Intel favoring game.
14:25
Right.
14:26
So yes, there's a difference, but like, I didn't feel,
14:29
I didn't feel for a second.
14:31
Like I was affected by the difference.
14:34
And you know, when we're talking 150 versus 240 FPS,
14:38
I'm, I'm all right with it.
14:39
Okay. Well, I'm gonna try a different game.
14:41
GG.
14:42
You can't alt tab out of this game.
14:43
Yeah. I won.
14:45
Okay.
14:46
Man, I haven't played on 1080P in a hot minute.
14:49
It's a little different than 1440P ultra wide.
14:52
Yeah. Like it's, it's like a 10 FPS difference.
14:54
Well, remember CSGO was behind.
14:56
So I was thinking about it for a second,
14:58
but like CSGO was behind in the context of like,
15:01
160 versus 240 FPS.
15:04
Like it's not.
15:05
I don't even, it wasn't that much.
15:06
I feel like it was like 30.
15:08
No, it was a little bit more.
15:10
Oh, there's two.
15:11
Crap.
15:12
Okay. Well, sorry.
15:13
Oh, we got wrecked.
15:16
Oh.
15:18
That wasn't bad.
15:19
No, the frame rates are good.
15:20
I mean.
15:21
Yeah. Dang it.
15:23
You did more damage.
15:24
All right. All right.
15:25
So you're better at the game that only you play
15:28
and that I don't play.
15:29
So, okay. That's good.
15:31
That's good.
15:31
Well then that's our takeaway.
15:33
Jake isn't actually that great at video games
15:35
in spite of being one of the young kids.
15:37
Actually, depending on, you know,
15:38
what game you're playing,
15:39
you might even get a better gaming experience
15:42
with the 2700X,
15:43
which did surprise me in Apex Legends anyway.
15:46
And that's like a hundred bucks cheaper.
15:48
No regrets then.
15:49
Now we just have to build 11 more.
15:51
That's my regret.
15:52
That's my only regret is doing it 11 times.
15:58
Having this idea.
16:00
All right.
16:02
So I guess all that's left now,
16:05
other than preparing ourselves to do this 11 more times
16:09
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16:50
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16:51
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16:53
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16:54
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