expired Posted by rutgersftw • Nov 6, 2023
Nov 6, 2023 2:48 PM
Item 1 of 1
expired Posted by rutgersftw • Nov 6, 2023
Nov 6, 2023 2:48 PM
Combo: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D + MSI B650-P PRO Motherboard + 32GB G.Skill DDR5-6000
+ Free Store Pickup$500
$668
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The 7800x3d, and the 7950x3d, are the fastest gaming chips available. While technically the better binned 7950x3d can slightly beat the 7800x3d when the ccd parking functions properly, that chip is far more expensive and aimed at individuals who are doing both gaming and intensive productivity work. Additionally, in any case where the ccd parking isn't properly functional, the 7950x3d trails behind. The 7800x3d is an exceptionally low power and power efficient chip, when compared to the intel 13700k in gaming at 1080p with a rtx4090 the 7800x3d is 11% faster on average while consuming on average 100 fewer watts of power, which is an absolutely insane difference. The difference is even greater when compared to the 14700k, 13900k, and 14900k, which are even less efficient due to intel targeting clock speeds at the extremes of the v/f efficiency curve. The 7800x3d can be easily cooled with any good air cooler, I personally highly recommend the thermalright phantom spirit 120se (PS120SE) at ~$38. If your use case is only gaming, then the 7800x3d is by far the best upper midrange option on the market as it typically goes on sale for ~$350 (the best price ever was a brief microcenter sale at $330). Eight cores is entirely sufficient for current gen gaming, and while it's theoretically possible that games will gradually start being able to take advantage of additional cores over the next 5 years or so, the 7800x3d should remain highly competitive in gaming for years to come. If your use cases are more varied and cpu intensive than just gaming, then the 7800x3d becomes a significantly less compelling option. The 7800x3d has rather mediocre multithreaded performance, it's essentially a marginally slower 7700x when used for productivity. Intel cpus offer far greater multithreaded performance at the same price compared to any single ccd zen 4 cpu, so if productivity is a priority the 7800x3d isn't a good option.
The msi b650-p pro motherboard included in this bundle is acceptable, but it's a lower midrange board with several compromises. Here's a link to the specs page: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/P...cification
And here's a link to the manual: https://download.msi.co
First off, it entirely lacks pcie gen 5 support, which realistically isn't a big deal currently. However, considering one of the primary benefits of building an am5 system is being able to slot in a new cpu years down the line, 4+ years from now the lack of pcie gen5 might be of much greater concern. Pcie, m.2, and sata configurations should be acceptable for the majority of average users, though once again there's nothing particularly impressive. It has 2 pcie gen4 m.2 slots, though only one comes with a heatsink. The realtek alc897 is a cheap low end audio chip fairly common on low to midrange boards. It also lacks an integrated io shield, but does come with a separate one you can install. The networking is good, with realtek 2.5gb lan and intel wifi6e with bluetooth 5.3. Overall, it's an acceptable lower midrange board that I'd say is worth around $150 considering the prices you can find other comparable boards on sale for.
The ram is probably the biggest disappointment in this bundle. It's ddr5 6000 cl36 36-36-36-96 using samsung b-die memory chips. Zen 4 cpus are rather sensitive to memory timings, the current performance/value sweet spot is ddr5 6000 cl30. While this ram isn't awful, it's still something of a letdown, and will likely cost you a couple percentage points of performance. Samsung memory chips are inferior to hynix memory chips in just about every way, having worse compatibility, reliability, timings, and worse overclocking/tuning potential. If you are willing to manually tune your ram then the performance delta will actually be meaningful compared to manually tuned hynix ram. Ram using samsung memory chips have had compatibility issues with the am5 platform in the past, the latest agesa updates have supposedly fixed those compatibility issues. I highly recommend flashing the latest non-beta bios 7D78v17 which has agesa 1.0.0.7c before installing the cpu and ram. Instructions for flashing the bios without installing the cpu or ram can be found on page 54 of the manual.
Overall, this is a decent deal for a 7800x3d system, though it's not nearly as massive of a discount compared to the other bundles microcenter has listed. The cpu is worth around $350, the motherboard around $150, and the ram around $80 (you can find 32gb 2x16 ddr5 6000 cl30 for $90), so you save around $80 total compared to buying the components separately on acceptable sales. If you compare to the best sales we've seen it's more like a $50 savings. If you're only gaming, play at 1440p or below, and have a high enough end gpu that cpu bottlenecks are an issue, then this is your best option. If you wouldn't actually benefit from the additional gaming performance of this cpu the 7700x bundle is essentially the exact same for $100 cheaper. If you require high multithreaded performance for productivity, instead of only gaming, your best bet is to wait for the 13700k bundle to drop back down to $450, or preferably for the 7900x bundle to drop back down to $550. If you don't urgently need a new system now I'd wait a couple of months to see if this bundle ever drops in price, since microcenter bundles tend to occasionally go on sale for around $50 cheaper.
It's not rocket science, people...
I will say that the 14700K has a better mobo. PCIE 5.0 won't be important to a lot of people. But if it is, then the Intel deal is a damn good one!
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the 7800x3d not only performs better than an i9, but also does so at a much lower TDP. even though the CPU has TDP of 120w, it actually doesn't even reach 90w in testing. Intel will reach 109c temperature easily. With this, plus at least 3 years of life for AM5, AMD wins this round easily, and I'm saying this as an Intel fanboy. Last AMD I had was in the Athlon XP days, where AMD again beat Intel quite easily.
I have zero brand loyalty, i will go back to intel if they reclaim the gaming performance crown. Right now, unless you need to care about productivity, stick with AMD with these X3D cpus
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AM5 is very finicky with Samsung ram kits (which this bundled ram is). So I swapped the ram to a better, Hynix kit (F5-6000J3038F16GX2-FX5) which MS actually used to bundle with these. Thankfully MS allowed me to return the bundled ram kit with zero issues. I was able to enable EXPO at 6000 on the new kit by simply enabling the profile in the BIOS. It was as easy as it gets!
Thank you for writing the number out. I have Hynix crucial on my 5600x and it's been amazing, so this is a pleasant surprise.
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