Time for an upgrade to Skylake

[vishcompany]

My current build (which was improved thanks to everybody's help here), that's the upgrade plan:

FX-8120 → 6700K

NH-U14S → keep or Dark Rock Advanced (already have it). I don't like the sound signature of the NH-U14S, the bequiet handled the FX-8120 quite well. Problem was it's orientation on AM3+ boards being only down to up. It's fan is working at the moment inside the PSU, as it does not have the annoying bearing squeal of the original PSU-fan. I'd like to try this heatsink once more.

GTX-760 + MK-26 → keep. The GPU is by far the quietest part of the whole build (2x120mm fans, never spinning faster than 500-600 RPM)

bequiet L8-CM 430W → keep or Seasonic 400W FL (already have it). If none of the existing PSU work noise-free (electric squealing and buzzing under load, the SS-400FL2 being much worse than the bequiet) I will get a Straight Power 10-CM 500W.

Samsung EVO 840/250G (OS) + 850/1000G → keep

Solo II → keep or if the 120mm exhaust fan of the SoloII (which I actually really like) still has to work too hard (and audible) to dispose of the heat under load, I will be tempted to replace it with an R5.

Usecase: apart from general internet & office the main software is Lightroom, Sigma Photo Pro (a horrible resource hog), Handbrake, and some gaming at 1920*1080 (mainly Assetto Corsa and Star Citizen). I am not planning on upgrading the resolution anytime soon.

For a start I only want to replace the CPU, mainboard and RAM with 6700K, ASUS Z170-A and some 8GB RAM.
Except for any general comment - which is welcome - I have two questions:

1. I was pretty much settled on getting very fast DDR4 RAM (3200), but only lately read in these forums, that it does not make much difference, if at all. In which situations is fast RAM of benefit, in which it is not?

2. The 6700K is completely sold out around here and it's delivery date is pushed every two weeks for another two weeks. I start wondering, if a regular 6700 might be ok? Or will there be a Skylake equivalent of the Xeon E3-1231v3 anytime soon?

[quest_for_silence]

Or will there be a Skylake equivalent of the Xeon E3-1231v3 anytime soon?

IIRC Z170 boards won't be compatible with Xeons.

[CA_Steve]

There's minimal benefit going beyond 2400 for nearly all consumer apps. If for some strange reason you want to use the integrated graphics to game with your $350 CPU, then faster RAM can help IGP framerates.

Note that Star Citizen's early benchmarks(without any optimization) shows a fairly dismal framerate for the 2GB GTX 760 and even for the 4GB unless you seriously dial down the gfx quality.

[vishcompany]

Thanks for the replies.
So I will look for RAM sticks @2400 (and no, I won't try to play games on the integrated graphics, if ever, then just for fun testing purposes).

When fooling round in Star Citizen the framerates never go beyond 30 and often below 20 (settings medium or low). For some reason, the GPU seems less stressed then the CPU. So I'm curious, how this will change with a different CPU.

[CA_Steve]

Star Citizen is also pretty CPU intensive. The 0.9 build seemed to benefit most from 4 physical cores. Anything beyond that was minimal benefit. Haven't seen anything regarding the newer builds. That said, migration to DX12 should greatly improve CPU efficiency.

Intel runs rings around AMD in terms of performance per thread, add to this the 4GHz base freq of the i7-6700K vs your 3.1GHz CPU, and it should be leaps and bounds faster. Here's the 3.6GHz FX 8150 vs i7-6700K for non-gaming comparisions.

[vishcompany]

Thanks, Steve. I'm aware of those numbers and really looking forward to a substantial push, also some operations in Lightroom will hopefully become snappier (batch and single).

Oh, and before starting Star Citizen, I do OC the 8120 to 4,2 GHz, but, well...

So it's just a question of waiting for the chips to be available again, then I'll see, what the GTX760 can do, when fed properly. (Did not go into OCing the GPU yet).

[vishcompany]

As the CPU keeps being not available since mid September I changed plans and reverted my upgrade path. I am in the middle of the process, so here is an update, if anybody is interested.

First step was to change the case: I got a PCGH Edition of the R5. I like the extra fan and closed top and side panel of this version. When it arrived, I transferred the FX-8120 setup into this case and what shall I say. Wow... As much as I really really like the Solo 2, it's compactness, and look, the R5 just wipes the floor with the Solo 2, as soon as you run hot equipment (the 8120 is a beast to cool). The Solo 2 has problems to get high amounts of heat out. Furthermore, the intake fans can't be operated silently. As soon as they spin, you hear them. The front lid just does not provide proper isolation. The R5 manages to keep the temps lower under load while producing less noise at the same time.
Another big plus is the PSU position. The opening for the PSU fan in the top of the Solo2 helps a lot to keep the temps in check, but it also reduces the idea of a sound damped case to absurdity. The somewhat rough and droning sound signature of the NH-U14 inside the case? check. Electrical buzzing and squealing noises of the GPU? check. The GPU fan spinning? check. You can hear it all.

So when the case fans, GPU and CPUs fan had a chance to relax, the remaining fan being a source of noise was the PSU fan. Under load it was the most audible fan. Out goes the bequiet L8-430W, enter the straight power 500W with it's 135mm fan. It's amazing. I never heard anything of this PSU. Really nice.

After that I kept on waiting for the CPU (mainboard and RAM already purchased long ago). And waited. And waited. And waited. Delivery date got pushed to next year.
I saw, that a G4400 is just a bit over € 60,- around here. Guess what. I can pass it on or sell it at minimal loss later. Curiosity got the better of me.
So now I have the Z170 Skylake setup up and running and started experimenting with BIOS fan control and SpeedFan.
The BIOS thingy is very nice. I still have to go the SpeedFan route, as I have to control the GPU fans (sitting on the MK-26) via the mainboard. Having 5 controlable fan ports helps a lot.
The G4400 is a stunning CPU. It actually is faster and snappier in most situations than the FX-8120, except for some heavy duty multi-core apps like handbrake. HWInfo claims, that it only uses 20W at full load (so much for the 54W TDP power envelope), I never hear the CPU fan, it simply idles at 250RPM.
When benchmarking the system with furmark (no need for additional Prime95 with this CPU, it is stressed 100%), it stays responsive, the GPU temp goes up to 73°C, it's fans spin up to about 600RPM, so does the exhaust and one intake fan. It's a gentle whoosh. The CPU goes up to 41°C with the fan spinning at 500RPM.
Assetto corsa runs very well, just tweaked the fan curves a bit more, so now the GPU runs at 63°C and I barely hear the system at all.

Looking forward to the 6700K. Thanks for reading.

[CA_Steve]

Glad the build worked out even with the Pentium

[vishcompany]

Thanks, Steve. Yes, the Pentium really surprised me. Compared to the FX-8120 it is snappy as hell (the FX felt sluggish even doing normal things like opening an email client or web browser. With the Pentium it is just there. Admittedly, the comparison is not entirely fair, as the Pentium is running on a clean, new install, while the AMD setup has been running for three years now, so maybe this also contributed to its being slow.

Talking ablut installs: For fun I gave it a shot and booted the G4400 on the AMD OS installation. I read mixed opinions about this, whether it would work at all. After a little hickup and the installation of the drivers from the CD, it worked flawlessly, so I could have kept it. You only would need to enter a valid new registration code.

The whole system sips power (to cite the famous GTX-750 thread). Idling it draws around 38W from the wall. This is with 6 fans spinning slowly (3 case, 2 GPU, 1 CPU), GPU (~10W idle), 3xSSD (one will be taken out eventually). That's about half of the AMD idle (80W).

I meanwhile got used to the sheer size of the R5, working inside it is a pleasure anyway. Cable management is easy, the SSDs sit behind the mobo, all HDD cages are taken out. Even with very slow spinning front fans there is some airflow (the Solo 2 somehow put very high resistance to the front fans).

Until the 6700K arrives, I am a happy camper. When it's here I will try both CPU coolers and then give those fan curves some more twaeking.

[CA_Steve]

I went from the original Solo to the R4 and had similar feelings Yeah, the R5 is a big case, but it sure is easy to work in. I opted to put the SSDs in a cage rather than behind the mobo. You might want to check the SMART temp readings just to see how they are faring back there.

[vishcompany]

I did with the FX, I do now and I will with the i7. Right now it's cool of course, if the i7 heats them up too much, I'd rather put (stick) them on the floor. I really like the arrangement with no HDD cages between the fans and the GPU/CPU.

[vishcompany]

A few more numbers with the G4400 setup, all power readings from the wall plug:

Idle: 40W (there are a few more background apps running now)
Idle + all fans 100%: 45W
P95 large FFTs: 65W
Furmark: 273W (no GPU OC)
Furmark + P95 blend: 285W

The SSD sitting behind the MB tray go up to 29° and 31°C

I wonder about the CPU temp readings in SpeedFan: There is a "CPU" reading and there is also "Core 0" and "Core 1", which are consistently 6-8° higher then "CPU".
Is "CPU" some kind of socket temp, while the others are obviously core temps?
Which of the numbers are critical (thinking about a later i7 setup) and should be regarded as threshold? (and consequently be used for fancurves)

[lodestar]

It might be worth trying Intel's Xtreme Tuning Utility (XTU) which apart from its obvious use has some very good CPU monitoring capabilities, including a continuous graphic display. XTU displays CPU Package Temperature which might be what you are seeing as CPU temperature as well as individual core temps.

These are my numbers at idle

Package 29C
Core 1 28C
Core 2 25C
Core 3 24C
Core 4 23C

with a core frequency of 0.83Ghz and 0.713V core voltage.

XTU can be download direct from Intel.

[CA_Steve]

It's the Core temps that you want.

[vishcompany]

After a looong waiting period, I picked up the 6700K today. Slapped it in quickly and, well, how shall I put it? This is one fast chip.
But not only this. Compared to the FX it is pretty easy to cool. Or the other way around: I was not aware how hot and hard to cool the FX is. I kept the NH-U14S for the moment and it takes it easy, even under full load. It also helps, that you can be a bit more lenient about temps. The AMD wants to be kept under 60°. When gaming I let it go up to 62-63, then the fans would start to get serious.
I did not fine tune the curves in SpeedFan yet, but already everything is much more relaxed, even when the GPU produces its heat.

A few numbers:
idle: 40W
P95: 138W
Furmark: 286W
Furmark and P95: 325-366 (depending on the number of stressed cores)

When the case is open, there is quite some electrical buzzing coming from the GPU, but altogether its much better than in the AMD setup. As soon as the case is closed, it is pretty quiet, exept for a gentle whoosh from the fans.

Typical load when gaming is about 200W and the whole system is pretty inaudible, even at night. Did not check out StarCitizen, but Assetto Corsa works great now, all video settings maxed out. The GTX-760 is not such a bad card after all. I guess I will wait for Pascal for an upgrade. Got used to waiting by now

Just for fun a few more numbers in the end: When I started DVD encoding some ten years ago on an AMD Athlon, it managed 23FPS transcoding.
The FX-8120 was a huge step forward with 180FPS in Handbrake.
Today I did a test run and the 6700K put out 440FPS. Pretty impressive, thought I, then checked the cores and saw, they were still hungry. Turns out, the USB interface of the external drive is a bottleneck now. So I copied the whole source folder onto an SSD and did the whole thing again (destination another SATA SSD). Well... it took this chip 2min 55sec to transcode a whole movie at 750FPS. To me, this is amazing.

[Abula]

Or will there be a Skylake equivalent of the Xeon E3-1231v3 anytime soon?

IIRC Z170 boards won't be compatible with Xeons.

You are correct, but two days ago Asus announced a gaming board that supports Xeons =P, ASUS E3 Pro Gaming V5 is a Xeon motherboard aimed at gamers. This board probably wont overclock, but seems nice to have multithreaded cpu without going into $500, and you can chose without iGPU, probably will run cooler =)

[CA_Steve]

Yeah, it's always amazing when you get to big generational leaps like this. Probably your last one for a while

[vishcompany]

You are correct, but two days ago Asus announced a gaming board that supports Xeons =P, ASUS E3 Pro Gaming V5 is a Xeon motherboard aimed at gamers. This board probably wont overclock, but seems nice to have multithreaded cpu without going into $500, and you can chose without iGPU, probably will run cooler =)

That was my initial idea some time ago, but you have to make a move at some point. So i7 it is.

Yeah, it's always amazing when you get to big generational leaps like this. Probably your last one for a while

Absolutely, yes! Looking at how small the steps in the intel lineup are (I could have gone with haswell without much loss), I am positive to keep this CPU for a number of years.
Let's see, what Pascal will bring and then I guess, I'll be set. For a while.

[vishcompany]

Finally I got around to trying the bequiet Dark Rock Advanced cooler. Leaving the fan curves in SpeedFan as they are, running Furmark + P95 (6 cores).

Bequiet Dark Rock Advanced: CPU~80°C, Fan@75%=1350RPM
Noctua NH-U14S: CPU~60-65°C, Fan@35-42%=600-700RPM

So the Noctua is back in and the bequiet cooler will have to go.

To be fair, I did not use the same TIM, but even the worst TIM won't account for 15-20°C diffference.
I did not hear the BQ cooler, because the case fans are also linked to CPU and GPU temps, so they were the fans, I actually heard. This is also, why the whole rig is much quieter with the Noctua cooler.

In the first post I wrote, that I did not like the sound signature of the Noctua. And as soon as you can hear it, there is a certain droning quality, which is unpleasant, while the BQ mostly produces a whooshing sound, even spinning fast.
But it's also a fact, that the cooler itself seems to be so much better, that the fan never needs to spin up that fast, so I never hear it.

I did hear it in the AMD setup. While gaming it got so hot inside the Solo2, it would go beyond 1000RPM.

TL;DR
In my completely unscientific test the Noctua NH-U14S wins hands down against the Bequiet Dark Rock Advanced, a discontinued cooler, which looks nice and sounds good, but has less cooling power than the Noctua.

Tomorrow I will check out StarCitizen

[vishcompany]

After fooling round in StarCitizen for a while (Hangar and Free Flight mostly) some observations:

This game is heavy on the CPU. While the overall load of the CPU stays around 20%, it does max out one core most of the time. Looking at the big difference in single core performace between those two chips, it's no wonder, that the frame rate kept bogging down to <20 FPS, even with the graphic settings turned to low.

It uses 4-7 GB of RAM.

The 2 GB VRAM of my GPU are almost always used up 100%. So a 4GB card does make sense with this game. Still the GPU does well. The game seems to be capped at 30FPS, which the GPU can keep even with high settings. Only att "very high" the frame rates start to go down.
To me this is good enough for the moment, I definitely will wait for Pascal.

Looking at the temps: Total system load is ~185W, the CPU drawing ~25W (the AMD took 80-116W).
GPU 59°C, fans @ 320 RPM (I keep being impressed by the MK-26)
CPU core max 59°C, fan @ 360 RPM
case fans between 440-660 RPM (that's the fans I actually can hear)

Load times also have improved a lot. It now takes a bit under 1 minute to be in the hangar, while the AMD setup took up to 2:30 to get there.

[CA_Steve]

While the overall load of the CPU stays around 20%, it does max out one core most of the time.

Hopefully improved with DX12.

It uses 4-7 GB of RAM.

The game itself or total usage while playing?

The 2 GB VRAM of my GPU are almost always used up 100%.

Might want to try dialing back settings to keep it below 100%....because 100% implies it's doing memory swap and this will bring fps to it's knees.

[vishcompany]

Thanks, Steve.

The game itself or total usage while playing?

My bad, of course it's the whole system. Checking right now, the idling system shows 2GB of RAM usage.

Might want to try dialing back settings to keep it below 100%....because 100% implies it's doing memory swap and this will bring fps to it's knees.

I have to be more precise: It never exceeds 98,9%, no matter which settings. Just tried out some more. It does not make any noticeable difference, except if I go to very high settings (fps come down a bit). All others behave pretty identical. Reflections and especially semi-transparent surfaces will bring the fps down to 20, even in low settings. It's not entirely clear to me which factors are actually influenced by those settings. The typical indicators for AA (zig-zag of diagonal lines, for instance) look just the same in all settings.

Well, it's still alpha.

[CA_Steve]

Yep.