AMD Gaming PC Build
AMDTo paraphrase the television show A-Team - I love it when a PC build comes together. For our hands-on evaluation of the AMD Ryzen 5000 series and Radeon 6800XT, I built a desktop PC system from the ground up and everything went better than I expected. I chose components that pretty much guaranteed initial success by using those that AMD used in the test system builds. And now that AMD component availability is starting to improve, I wanted to circle back on how to build an AMD gaming PC.
The AMD System Components
A successful build starts with the right components. I was limited to AMD approved motherboards prior to the Ryzen 5000 series launch, as those had the prerelease BIOS. For the other components I chose to mimic the AMD benchmarking build. If there are components you already have you can substitute.
All the major components for the AMD desktop PC
TIRIAS ResearchAMD Gaming PC Component breakdown:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5000 series
- Graphics: Radeon RX Vega and Radeon 5800XT
- Operating System: Windows 10 Pro
- Motherboard: ASRock X570 Taichi
- DRAM: G.Skill TridentZ neo DDR4 DIMM
- SSD: Samsung 970Pro NVMe M.2
- CPU heatsink: Cooler Master Hyper 212
- Desktop Case: Fractal Design Define series
- Additional cooling: Silent Wings 3 140mm
After the Ryzen launch, I had an extra AMD Ryzen 5000 CPU that I used in a second build for a remote working desktop PC. That second build used several left-over components from an older AMD Ryzen PC and it was also a success. The second PC is part of my remote work setup.
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The Gaming AMD Build
I started with an ASRock motherboard supported by AMD at the Ryzen 5000 launch. One key advantage of the ASRock X570 Taichi motherboard (aside from a lower price than the other X570 supported by AMD pre-launch) is that allowed BIOS updates without the AMD CPU installed. This made the bring up extremely easy as I updated the BIOS before installing the Ryzen 5000 CPU. The BIOS was provided by AMD prior to the Ryzen 5000 launch.
The gaming PC build included 16GB G.Skill TridentZ neo DDR4 DRAM 3600 DIMM modules that matched AMD’s test systems. I also chose a Samsung M.2 flash memory module that matched AMD's test system. The CPU heat sink I chose is from Cooler Master and it was easier to use when swapping CPUs. The ASUS Republic of Gamers 850-Watt power supply had more than sufficient power, but I wanted headroom for additional graphic cards testing in the future. I reused an older Fractal Design Define series desktop ATX case, which had plenty of space for the largest components, but every other component in the system build was new.
The first CPU I chose to install was the Ryzen 5 5600X, the entry level part in the new family. With only six cores and 12 threads, it is still quite a powerful processor. I started with the 5600X in case things went poorly, I would be risking the least expensive of the Ryzen 5000 family. But things went so well on bring up, I almost didn't want to remove the CPU because the system was stable and I hate to break down something that's already working. I eventually relented and installed the real target CPU – the Ryzen 9 5950X.
Preliminary AMD Ryzen 5000 gaming PC (with Radeon Vega graphics installed)
TIRIAS ResearchI started the build with an older Radeon RX Vega graphics card as I awaited the new Radeon 5800XT. When the Radeon 5800XT arrived (seen below in its box), I upgraded the system to final configuration.
In the second build I used a less expensive ASUS Prime B550M-A mATX motherboard from ASUS where I had to first install an older AMD Ryzen 3000 series CPU, update the BIOS, and then I could install a Ryzen 5000 processor. A new edition of the ASUS motherboard now supports their BIOS FlashBack technology which allows BIOS updates without the CPU.
I reused some of the original components that were in that Define case in the second build with a Fractal Design Focus G micro-ATX case (in Petrol Blue) with the aforementioned ASUS Prime series microATX motherboard and the recovered DRAM, M.2 SSD, CPU cooler, and Radeon Vega graphics.
The AMD Ryzen 5000 Series with Zen 3 Cores
The Ryzen 5000 series is AMD's second-generation 7 nanometer processor design and the third generation of “Zen” CPU cores. New processor offers up to 19% higher instructions per cycle (IPC) compared with its predecessor, mostly due to on several microarchitecture changes made to the processor design. Those changes include a unified last level cache, lots of different design architecture tweaks, etc.
Despite these improvements, AMD maintained backwards compatibility with the existing AM4 CPU socket, simplifying rolling out the new CPU with just BIOS upgrades for recent AMD motherboards. As I mentioned earlier, I performed a BIOS update without ever having to boot the processor with the ASRock motherboard. New motherboards will be available with Ryzen 5000 series support built in.
There are plenty of benchmarks available and many tech sites have benchmarked the systems extensively since the launch. I ran a few of my own tests. While my testing was not about reaching the top score, I looked at some relative scoring. The bottom line is this new AMD Ryzen 5000 series delivers a lot of performance and does so quietly and reliably.
AMD Radeon 6800XT
AMD Radeon 6800XT unboxing
TIRIAS ResearchThe Radeon 6800XT has 26.8 billion transistors and is AMD’s second generation of 7nm GPU. The GPU architecture is called RDNA2 and has up to 1.54x the performance per watt over the original RDNA architecture. The RDNA2 is also design for up to 30% higher clock frequency (up to 2.3GHz boost clock).
In addition to high clock speeds, the RDNA2 GPU changed the memory architecture to give it up to 2TB/s of cache bandwidth. AMD uses 128MB of Infinity Cache to give it the extra bandwidth while using more cost effect 256-bit interface to GDDR6 DRAM memory (16GB of graphics memory is standard for the cards).
The RDNA2 architecture also adds advanced graphics features such as ray tracing and variable rate shading. The DirectX 12 Ray tracing support is particularly important feature to compete with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX family. While today’s games are still primarily raster-based rendering, hybrid ray tracing can be used to overlay visual effects. AMD also has other visual effects under the umbrella term of FidelityFX that improve colors and visual acuity.
The 6800XT evaluation card has a TDP of 300W and wider than most graphics cards at 2.5 slots but has reasonable length at 267mm. The benchmarks below show that even challenging games are playable in 4K, but with exceptional performance in 1440p resolution (which I didn’t have for testing).
Once you enable ray tracing, there’s a significant performance impact, even with acceleration (see below) in Watch Dogs Legion . In this case, I ran the display resolution at 1920x1080 (1080p) with Ultra settings with Ray Tracing on and got similar frame rates as 4K at Very high settings with ray tracing off. Both were at playable framerates over 60 average frames per second.
Benchmark comparison on Watch Dogs Legion with ray tracing on at 1080P and off at 4K.
TIRIAS ResearchThe ray tracing performance impact is comparable to Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics. Nvidia runs the frame buffer at a quarter the display resolution and uses its deep learning super sampling (DLSS) technology to upscale the frame buffer to full display resolution with high visual quality.
Summary
Both AMD gaming desktop PC builds went extremely well. The primary build was a clean sheet build with a part selection taken from AMD’s own benchmark system build designed for high performance 4k and 1440P gaming. This build represents a top tier gaming PC. The second build had a much more modest goal of being an excellent 1080p gaming rig utilizing several components recycled from a previous system.
With these new CPUs and GPUs, AMD has created a gaming platform that can compete with Intel and Nvidia at the highest levels. As AMD components availability improves, I can highly recommend PCs with both the Ryzen 5000 series CPUs and the Radeon 6800XT graphics cards.
Tirias Research tracks and consults for companies throughout the electronics ecosystem from semiconductors to systems and sensors to the cloud. Members of the Tirias Research team have consulted for AMD, Intel, Nvidia, and other companies throughout the PC and server ecosystems.
The Link LonkFebruary 03, 2021 at 04:27AM
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