Customized computer?

[Buffalobiian]

My brother's AMD 5600X CPU from 2021 had been throwing intermittent crashes since we had bought it. The more memory you run on it, or the quicker you clock it, the more frequently it crashes. He decided to RMA it when there weren't any games games coming out that he was interested in playing, and the shop ended up refunding him after AMD found a fault. I presume it's the memory controller on the chip.

So we bought a 5800X3D instead. It still threw the intermittent error when the RAM/infinity fabric was overclocked, with windows event viewer logging it as a CPU/memory channel? thing. So after that, I left the infinity fabric and memory on default.

A few days later, the PC resets and fails to POST. Motherboard diagnostic LED says "DRAM", but apparently that just means the PC encounters a fatal error as it tries to check the DRAM. Swapping out different kits of RAM didn't resolve the problem, and I can't reflash the BIOS without key components being operable.

So now I'm going through the RMA process again. Perhaps I got unlucky with AMD's memory controller lottery. Perhaps his board is frying CPUs (though the old chip didn't exactly get worse with time). We'll see.

I do have my own computer's mobo and CPU on the same platform that we could test, but mine is rock solid and I don't really feel like changing that.

[Kraco]

Why are you trying to overclock them in the first place? CPUs these days aren't mean to be overclocked, except for setting the memory to the specs the memory kit is meant for. Otherwise only overclock them if you want to compete in overclocking for benchmarking. Especially the AMD X3D CPUs are really bad choices for overclocking because the extra cache layer hampers heat transfer, making them run hot even on stock clocks. If you continue on your overclocking journey, you will sooner or later get a negative RMA request, with the explanation being overclocking. You don't even gain that much from it.

[Buffalobiian]

You overclock the infinity fabric commonly to match the XMP speeds on your RAM so their data cycles are in sync. Many chips will reach 1800 fine, though 5000 series chips only actually support up to 1600 I think.

The motherboard automatically does this when you set everything to auto but set your RAM to DOCP (equivalent to XMP)

XMP is technically overclocking since it's not a JEDEC spec.

[Kraco]

Sorry, I must have read your post poorly, since I was basically criticising you for what I suggested myself. I got an impression you were really trying to push the frequency up, beyond merely the manufacturer's stated specs. While using XMP indeed is overclocking (unless it's some terribly cheap memory meant to be used on the CPU default settings), I'm more used to hearing memory overclocking in the context of pushing it further than the XMP.

[Buffalobiian]

My brother's AMD 5600X CPU from 2021 had been throwing intermittent crashes since we had bought it. The more memory you run on it, or the quicker you clock it, the more frequently it crashes. He decided to RMA it when there weren't any games games coming out that he was interested in playing, and the shop ended up refunding him after AMD found a fault. I presume it's the memory controller on the chip.

So we bought a 5800X3D instead. It still threw the intermittent error when the RAM/infinity fabric was overclocked, with windows event viewer logging it as a CPU/memory channel? thing. So after that, I left the infinity fabric and memory on default.

A few days later, the PC resets and fails to POST. Motherboard diagnostic LED says "DRAM", but apparently that just means the PC encounters a fatal error as it tries to check the DRAM. Swapping out different kits of RAM didn't resolve the problem, and I can't reflash the BIOS without key components being operable.

So now I'm going through the RMA process again. Perhaps I got unlucky with AMD's memory controller lottery. Perhaps his board is frying CPUs (though the old chip didn't exactly get worse with time). We'll see.

I do have my own computer's mobo and CPU on the same platform that we could test, but mine is rock solid and I don't really feel like changing that.

Well the good news is the store accepted the CPU return without much scrutiny and offered a refund immediately.

The bad news is that the PC still won't boot after I bought yet another CPU for it. So now it's a hunt for other things.

I should unplug the sound card and other peripherals, then see if I can find a power supply somewhere to test. If all that is done and fruitless then I think I have a pretty good case for swapping out the mobo.

[shinta|hikari]

Just trash the whole thing and start anew.

[Buffalobiian]

I came home after a night shift to find that one of my hard drives just went offline. No prior warning, but now it clicks and won't be recognised by the OS. It's a 12TB Western Digital Gold drive. Mainly just had anime and movies on it, and was the backup drive for holding my main drive SSD's images etc. So not a big deal.

While dealing with this, my other 12TB WD Gold drive dies. I'm presuming this is from the same batch since I bought both from the same store at the same time. Now this one hurt a bit more because it had recent anime as well as music, and I like my lossless music collection.

So that's around 24TB gone now. I'll see how much data recovery costs, mainly for the music, but chances are it'll cost between several hundred to several thousand dollars, and I might as well hunt down all the music again - along with all the annoyances of dealing with Chinese file hosting mirrors.

Even if I had them in RAID1, in this scenario things wouldn't have been saved, unless I had the foresight of backing up the music onto a much smaller 4TB HDD - which I didn't.

Anyway, I'm using some spare HDDs now for storage while my SSDs still chug along and my OS remains untouched. Gonna shop for some HDDs in the next few days. Apparently they go up to the low 20s in TBs now. Maybe I'll do 22TB RAID1 or something next.

[Kraco]

I'd recommend having backups of anything you aren't ready or capable to easily redownload on external HDs that aren't running 24/7. I like to presume not being turned on all the time prolongs their life, seeing how I have a couple of usb2 externals that still work, as much as the usb2 interface can be considered to work in 2024, being as slow as romance in a shounen manga.

Still, lousy luck to lose both like that. Smells like either planned obsolescence or your PC (PSU) sending a power spike the HDDs' way to fry them.

[Buffalobiian]

My intel SSD from the early 2010s has finally reached the end of its endurance lifespan. For the same amount of money that I paid for this 240GB drive then, I could buy a 4TB NVMe drive today.

Installation was fine, though it took more coordination trying to place then screw this drive in place (without removing the CPU tower cooler or graphics card) than most procedures I've needed to do.

Data migration using Samsung's SSD management app and then converting it from MBR to GPT was easy enough. The drive runs anywhere from 56 to 66C right now, which is within spec (<70C operating temp).

Hopefully this drive lasts for a long time as well.

I bought a drive with a heatsink, and I'm intrigued that most heatsinks on SSDs really are heatsinks that increase surface area slightly, but mainly increase thermal mass to soak up spikes in temperature during bursts of operation, despite PCIe4 drives being known to throttle under operation at times. It's only the PCIe5 drives that really offer substantial fins for cooling dissipation (as OEM anyway).

[Kraco]

I used to have a 1TB system drive (PCIe 4) with a heatsink and a 500GB game drive (PCIe 3) without. I later replaced the 500GB drive and got one with a heatsink. My system drive actually came without a heatsink, so I got a third party one for it at the same time. Both are Samsung 980 Pro drives now. So, theoretically I could compare if the aftermarket passive cooler is better than the original Samsung one, but I won't bother. There would be the airflow difference as well, seeing how one is above the video card, one well below.