1. The road to switching

I bought my new PC back in October 2016 during my stay in Poland. The foundation of the build was an ASRock Z170 PRO4S and an i5-6600K.

I’ve been playing around with virtual machines for AD, networking and other purposes for a while now, and unfortunately it really ate up the CPU, not to mention that in games the i5-6600K was already bleeding sometimes if I was running anything else alongside it (it was at 100% utilization alongside a GTX 1060 6G), and with certain games I managed to hit a CPU bottleneck (despite it being overclocked to 4.4 GHz).

2. The first attempt

I listed the motherboard + CPU combo back in early January, and by the end of January it was sold – one of the PCI-E x16 slots on the motherboard had a small crack, but it didn’t affect functionality. The very next day I managed to get the new CPU and motherboard, which were the following:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 1600

Motherboard: Asrock AB350M Pro4

RAM: Crucial Ballistics Sport 2400 MHz 2×8 GB (this was carried over from the old system, and Ryzen systems are quite picky when it comes to RAM, which is why I’m mentioning it) – fortunately I was able to buy it at a normal price, since then the price has more than doubled…

I assembled the PC nervously, hoping everything would work, and it worked perfectly for about a week and a half… After a week and a half, Windows 10 started freezing up so that the screen would freeze (showing the same image) and the machine would no longer respond to anything, but it also wouldn’t shut down. A cold reboot solved the problem, but from then on, this issue would appear completely randomly (ranging from 5 minutes to 5 hours).

I tried everything (different RAM, different GPU, PSU, etc…), but nothing helped. As a last resort, I tried flashing the BIOS, but the motherboard refused to accept it no matter what, so I had to rely on the store warranty.

I ordered the motherboard from Aqua.hu online. Browsing the website, I came to the conclusion that I was still within the 14-day cancellation period, but I called their central number to double-check, since I ordered online but picked up and paid in person.

The phone customer service was very nice, asked for an order number and reassured me that I was still eligible for cancellation under the circumstances, so the next day I took the board to the Karinthy út store after work. The salesperson was friendly and knowledgeable, checked the package to make sure everything was included, but I had managed to leave the IO shield at home, so I went back the next day with the full packaging (this was on Saturday). The salesperson filled out the paperwork and gave me a service slip confirming they had received the hardware. There was a slight bend on the corner of the motherboard (I have no idea how I managed that). They said they would send it to the service center on Monday, where they would inspect it and determine whether I had returned it in undamaged condition, hadn’t broken anything off, etc. I was a bit nervous about the bent corner, but fortunately they accepted it (I got an email about this on Wednesday of the following week) – the store said the turnaround time is two weeks, but depending on the service center’s workload, the decision could come sooner.

Once I got the green light, I ordered the new motherboard, which arrived the following Monday, and I only had to pay the difference.

3. The second attempt

The second motherboard I bought was an MSI B350 Gaming Plus due to its functionality and reliability (its reviews online are much more positive than the Asrock board’s).

Fortunately it fit in the case, everything went in easily, the connector placements are also perfect, and what I particularly like is that the SATA connectors have both upward and side-facing orientations (on the ASRock they were only side-facing, which was a complete struggle to plug cables into and the GPU barely fit because of it).

The CPU was chosen based on the following:

  • It’s priced almost the same as the i5-6600K
  • 6 cores 12 threads, which will be more than enough for years to come, perfect for virtual machines and rendering
  • The 1600 version over the 1600X, since it has a lower TDP (65 watts vs. 90 watts), and you can overclock it almost as far manually (3.9 GHz, although I overclocked mine to 3.75 GHz so as not to stress it too much, and this meets my needs)
  • I also considered the Ryzen 1700, but it gives +33% performance and costs 33% more, and I don’t need the extra performance
  • It comes with a stock cooler, which I heard good things about (and based on experience, it really is good)

4. Experiences

My experiences so far have been very positive, the system runs fantastically (excluding the ASRock fiasco). I was afraid that gaming performance would drop significantly, but I haven’t noticed that so far (although I haven’t really benchmarked against the old system). What’s certain is that modern games no longer have a CPU bottleneck (if one core isn’t constantly breakdancing while the rest just watch) – in the case of GTA V, the situation improved surprisingly.

I can now easily run virtual machines while gaming, watch Twitch in full HD on the second monitor, and run many other programs in the background without any stuttering.

I also tried streaming, 1080p 60 FPS with a 6000 bitrate using CPU encoding works perfectly, although the FPS is about 10% lower (I’ve only tried it with WoT so far, where instead of 119 FPS I only get 100).

The CPU temperature under AIDA64 CPU stress test doesn’t really go above 84 degrees, which I think is pretty good for a stock cooler with an overclock. The CPU cooler is audible at 100% load, but not annoyingly so. I’d like to improve on this, because the thermal paste I used with the new motherboard was already two years old and had started to degrade. It didn’t seem to be in good condition, but unfortunately I had to use it because I forgot to buy new one, and the stock cooler already had paste on it, but that was lost during the motherboard swap.

5. Synthetic tests

Fire Strike score – 11387 (with the current system)

Fire Strike score – 11295 (with the ASRock motherboard)

Fire Strike score – 10752 (with the i5-6600K system)