Sir Beregond

Probably not useful for gaming. You'll take a hit accessing slower VRAM. People like to call the GTX 970 the "3.5GB" card, but it did in fact have 4GB. It's just that the last 0.5GB was super slow compared to the rest.

My spaghetti mess is nicely hidden by a large bar in the back.

Love the charts. Agreed, the presentation is great. Too pricey though. I'll really have to talk to you guys more about how to work with my 13900KS.

OK, cool, then I really wouldn't worry about it as long as you've made sure the plug is in all the way and there is no tension pulling on it, then should be good to go. Hey thanks for that info @Slaughtahouse - was not aware they had that much room to work with. Still seems a lot for one cable with tiny pins, but I m not an electrical engineer.

I guess if you were really nervous about it, are you really gaining much running 670W vs 450W on the 4090? Lack of power was never really the 4090's problem like it was with the 30-series. Hell 350W is basically within 5% of the performance of the card at 450W, so I have to imagine 670W is highly diminished returns. It's not 0, there are gains, but for an extra 220W seems minimal. Now I'm not sure the difference in folding PPD vs gaming FPS, but something to think about if it really makes you worried. All I know is the beefiest 12VHPWR cables are rated up to 600W, so you're probably maxing that out (and then some maybe) plus power draw from the PCIe slot. That's gotta be taxing the hell out of the PSU. If Nvidia sticks with this power connector, they really ought to put two of them on these higher wattage cards like the Kingpin or HOF cards did. EDIT: Wrote this too early, didn't realize the 670W was @J7SC_Orion and peak power. What kind of normal power draw are you getting @neurotix? I thought you ran a 660W BIOS or something, but would be interested to hear.

Banning cooling types for an overclocking effort doesn't make much sense. I think having different categories by cooling types is a feasible workaround.

Yeah, especially with AMD giving up the high end. That just makes Intel primed to take more of AMD's market share if they play their cards right.

Same issue on Safari and a Mac.

Here you go: Build link: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/2Vp9gB

Agreed I mainly was trying to look for a balance. I think it's easier to swap out RAM or a video card down the line than it is to clone drives and fiddles with M.2 storage. But that's just me.

So most of your post is about speeds, and I am talking more the underlying technology, for example the drive having DRAM cache or not, and TLC vs QLC. Personally I'd never install my OS on a QLC drive. The difference between QLC and TLC is quality, longevity, reliability of the drive. As for DRAM cache, you want that if you do any decent amount of workloads that do writes to the drive. Admittedly, strictly gaming, maybe not as important a feature, but again single drive system, rather put in the good drive. But that's just me. Also, timing of this contest. Why would I buy a high end GPU now when next gen is right around the corner. Personally I think my config makes perfect sense for a $1500 1080p/1440p rig that with a single GPU upgrade in 6-12 months can easily be a very good 1440p/4k rig, sell the 7800 XT to offset some of the costs. Anyway, different strokes different folks. That's just my thinking. I was looking for how best I could balance it without having to resort to the cheapest of the cheap for storage, motherboard, RAM, etc.

Slightly different strategy here. Video cards are easily upgraded down the line. With this, have the great gaming CPU/platform, but I think you do it a disservice opting for cheap QLC storage, so this at least has a 2TB TLC with DRAM cache drive. For additional storage drives? Sure go cheap. Just saying if I was actually trying to build a system for $1500, there are certain baselines I want and for a single drive (for now) system, better start with a good drive. Better video card down the line? Easy to do. For now? 7800 XT is only single digit FPS slower than a 7900 GRE. Case comes with 3 fans. EDIT: RAM also not quite as good as some of the other entries here at 48 CAS vs 30, but again, easy to upgrade down the line if really needed. Probably can tune it if inclined. Doubt it really matters all that much for an X3D based platform. Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Rmv8VW EDIT 2: So not for the contest, but just saying if you do have a Micro Center semi-close to you, nice deals....

I totally forgot you had picked up some Saudi Prince Edition ram.

Mainly the combo deals, everything else isn't anything special. But just wanted to check.

That's pretty compelling competition feature wise against AM5.

Not really how Micro Center works, so guess the answer is no.

Does Micro Center count?

Did go ahead and pick up a P55 board for the competition and then found the rest of what I had that would qualify.

Got a deal on a slightly used 42" LG C4 and moved the 48" C1 to the living room. On one hand it feels weird to downsize. On the other hand, for my desk, this size feels much better.

Anymore, anyone who wants to do high speed DDR5 overclocking with tweaking specifically wants 2 DIMM boards which as far as I know only exist at the enthusiast high end tier of motherboards.

Yeah this is absolutely part of it...going back to @Fluxmaven talking about aesthetics. It's also why us custom watercoolers are frustrated at a lot of the newbies entering the space because go to r/watercooling and its all about how cool it looks, meanwhile its the most hot boxed, bad performing loop you've ever seen. But that's ok...it "looks cool".

This was touched on, but I don't think the person putting a system together with a $300-$600 motherboard is also going to be putting in a GTX 1050 and some low end CPU. If they did, then yes, of course they would be better served buying a new CPU and GPU, and they shouldn't have bought an expensive board in the first place. But again this is also the premise of the gamer / casual overclocker. There are definitely different demographics here and how the motherboard plays into their needs is going to vary as a result. Gamer - Just wants to turn it on and play a game. Likely comes from consoles. Doesn't know anything about hardware, has never messed with a BIOS, and has no desire to. Absolutely this gamer should not bother overspending on a motherboard. Gamer / casual overclocker - This is the gamer who also knows enough to tweak the system for decent enough performance gains in gaming and probably will want a board to support what they want to do, but being casual, still probably doesn't need a super expensive board. May want RGB, etc. Gamer / enthusiast - This is the type who knows what they are doing with PC hardware, builds a system that makes sense in its config - i.e. a high end system with high end CPU, GPU, etc., mid-range system with good mid-range config, etc. They will want the convenience features, the easy diagnostic features, they want a board that will support memory overclocking and tweaking, they can play with voltages, boosting, etc. They probably want to bench their system in addition to gaming, but they aren't looking to build a test bench. It's still a daily use system, but also might be a system that has multi-use purposes for professional uses in addition to gaming so they might want the better I/O, networking, etc. Here you probably do want a better than average board. Enthusiast - Building a system for benching only and wants all the high end features to support that. Wants to be able to easily swap parts, is probably putting it on a bench. Wants support for things like LN2 cooling, etc. They want the super high end boards with the features to support this, 2 DIMM, etc. I mean this would be really what the more expensive motherboards are for. So I guess that goes back to which demographic is the premise of this thread referring to when asking the question. In my opinion there's tons of nuance here. If all you want to do is enable PBO and XMP/EXPO, then sure don't overspend on a board. If you want to actually get into water-cooling and tweaking your CPU, memory, etc. then perhaps a better board is warranted. Want to do more enthusiast grade benching and other things like that? Then yeah go all out. Even if not doing benching but want certain I/O and networking features that the motherboard manufacturers have segmented arbitrarily into higher priced segments? Then yeah gotta pony up. Sadly I think the motherboard makers are all in cahoots for how they segment even convenience features like a post code display and push button clear CMOS into $300+ motherboards when 10 years ago I could easily get that at the $150 tier. Just another way we are all getting screwed in the PC hardware space in addition to rising GPU pricing, and other shenanigans.

To be fair, a lot of features I used to be able to get on a $150 motherboard no longer exist on $150 motherboards which is part of the problem. And you are approaching the overclocking discussion from the position of a gamer. Absolutely for a plug and play gamer, there's zero reason to be overspending on parts like a motherboard. Enthusiast boards on the other hand are absolutely built for...well, enthusiasts. That is the person whose game is to bench hardware, do LN2 cooling, try to break records, etc. which is its own hobby. These are the people who will delid a CPU, or try some janky mods all for the pursuit of better performance. While there could be overlap with gamers, we're not exactly talking the same demographic. Your Joe Average gamer isn't doing that, and they would be completely wasting their money on ASUS Apex and EVGA Kingpin boards. Now onto the topic of overclocking, are we actually in a "post overclocking era"? Maybe in the traditional sense, but we aren't really passed the era where tweaking other things matters whether its undervolting, power management, tweaking boost behaviors, memory overclocking and tweaking timing. You maybe can't do much to traditionally OC a Zen 3 non-X3D chip, but it sure loves and gains not an insignificant amount of performance from memory secondary and tertiary timing tweaking for example. There's a reason people went nuts for B-die DDR4...including gamers. To circle back to your original premise, no, there is no reason for the plug and play, hasn't ever messed with a BIOS and doesn't want to gamer to buy an expensive motherboard. Are you a gamer who does actually want features that enable faster memory, you want to do more exotic cooling and do some benching? Then yeah maybe spending more to get a 2 DIMM board and other features enthusiasts like for benching is warranted. It just all depends on who you are and what you actually want to do with the hardware.