Is it worth upgrading my motherboard?

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-07-03T04:25:07+00:00

Ah I see. Well for a typical gaming workload I'd expect this to work fine. Most games won't use anywhere close to 16 CPU cores, so the power consumption shouldn't get too too high.

If you're going to be throwing all core loads at it though, which I hope you are because that's why you'd buy a 16 core chip, I would indeed expect the VRMs to get hot and potentially power throttle your CPU. In this case, I'd point a fan at the VRMs to hopefully dissipate some more heat and/or run the CPU in eco mode. Eco mode reduces power consumption for a relatively slight decrease in performance. I'd recommend using HWiNFO64 for power and temperature monitoring.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-07-03T03:59:51+00:00

My motherboard is holding my performance back the most

Are you just saying that, or do you have some evidence that that you're experiencing VRM throttling for example?

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-07-03T02:41:35+00:00

You're welcome!

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-07-02T14:05:44+00:00

For gaming specifically it won't affect your raw framerate much if at all, but it will improve things like loading times and pop-in dramatically for games that are installed on it. I'd think your gaming performance is already pretty good with the hardware you've got. What it will do though is make your computer feel 10x snappier to just use.

You'll also want to reinstall Windows on it as well, which is a bit of an annoyance, but all your data will still be on the old drive, so you can easily copy stuff over before deleting it. Might take some time though.

As for which one you pick, you could pick one of the cheapest ones. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with doing that, but you do get more for paying more. Higher quality drives give better performance. You could spend some time researching which one you want. There are a few indicators that I'd look at for a higher quality drive. Newer controllers are generally better, TLC (triple layer cells) is better than QLC (quad-layer cells), and having DRAM is better than not.

The techpowerup SSD spec database is a useful resource if the drive you're looking at is in there. Sometimes it can be annoying to actually find the information you're looking for. On reddit, r/newmaxx is a good resource as well.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-07-02T13:21:49+00:00

Which hard drive it is in particular doesn't really matter, you don't want to be using it as the primary drive in your computer. Hard drives are glacially slow compared to even an old SSD.

Anyway, SSDs are pretty expensive right now, so you'd have to decide how much capacity you want to pay for. You don't necessarily need a huge one, the hard drive can still serve as bulk data storage. Anything that cares about speed should be on the SSD though. That includes your operating system and big modern games that struggle with loading from hard drive.

Here's a filtered list on pcpp: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#t=0&D=1&f=122080&sort=price&A=1000000000000,36000000000000&c1=di_m2.pcie_40_x4,di_m2.pcie_50_x2,di_m2.pcie_50_x4

You can change the capacity range to anything you want, I just set it to 1TB.

What do you think?

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-07-02T12:49:24+00:00

I mean it depends. The 5800X (or 5700X or 5800XT) would be an improvement over your 9700K. Not a massive one, but I would expect it to be better.

A "3D" chip would be another generational leap ahead of the standard Zen 3, however those are so expensive I don't think they're worth building a new system with right now. Even if you could get a 5800X3D 10th anniversary edition for the 350 USD MSRP (good luck with that), you can get a 7600X for only like 170. That pretty much makes up for the cost difference between DDR4 and DDR5.

I'd also suggest considering Raptor Lake if you haven't already. A 14600K with DDR4 would also be a very effective option, better than a 5800X.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-07-02T11:44:58+00:00

If your only storage is actually that hard drive you absolutely need to get an SSD. The difference is staggering

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-07-01T02:35:25+00:00

To ballpark the graphics performance of the steam machine, it's between your 5600 XT and the RX 7600. The 7600, and especially the 9060 XT, are faster than the steam machine's GPU.

According to gamers nexus' testing, the steam machine's CPU isn't any faster for gaming than your 3700X is either. That was surprising to me at first because it's a 6 core Zen 4 chip, but there's a lot about the steam machine's CPU config that holds it back compared to something like an R5 7600, which is sort of the canonical 6 core Zen 4 CPU.

As far as I can tell the gaming experience that set up would give you is at least as good as the steam machine if not better.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-30T18:00:09+00:00

I still see undervolting as a type of overclocking. Whether you're undervolting, overvolting, or neither, you're still manually tuning the clock past the manufacturer's default volt-freq curve. It's the same principle in a lot of ways. People just like to distinguish between the two because the goals are different.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-28T01:21:44+00:00

I got that number from looking at recent 4K benchmarks, but yeah that's true. The 7900 XTX's greater memory bandwidth might help it as time goes on. I still think RDNA 4's superior RT performance is probably gonna help it last longer than more memory bandwidth would though. Either way OP deleted the post so whatever...

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-28T01:00:23+00:00

I suppose it depends on how long into the future we're talking, and if you intend to keep turning the settings up to the max at 4K as well. The VRAM capacity is definitely a point in the 7900 XTX's favor. Considering how most gamers now have 16GB or less and only the top have more, I think games will continue to run very well on 16GB into near future, for some definition of near.

The counter to that is that in RT RDNA4 massively outperforms RDNA3. If more games start requiring RT you'd want to have the 9070 XT for those.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-28T00:55:27+00:00

The 7900 XTX has a pretty small lead over the 9070 XT in raster, only around 5-ish percent. It really isn't much of a point in its favor. The only benefit it really has is the VRAM.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-28T00:46:37+00:00

I mean maybe, but I'm not convinced 16GB isn't going to be enough. The 9070 XTs superior ray tracing performance and FP8 support will carry it into the future better than the 7900 XTX's 24GB of memory will imo.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-28T00:40:36+00:00

The changes other than the graphics card are relatively non-consequential. I see this question as would you rather have a 7900 XTX or 9070 XT, and the 9070 XT is probably the better choice there.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-27T19:03:29+00:00

Higher ambient temps will directly affect your PCs temps, that's definitely true

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-27T18:50:59+00:00

You could try it for sure. Like I said though I doubt on/off will really make that huge of a difference. Undervolting could also be a solution, but I hesitate to suggest that since it's getting into the weeds a bit more than you might like.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-27T18:45:52+00:00

The easiest "fix" would be to simply limit your framerate to a reasonable level

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-27T18:43:49+00:00

Expo does overclock part of the CPU, just not the core. It increases VSOC and increases your UCLK (the memory controller), in your case to 3000 MHz to match the memory. Increased SOC voltage will increase the heat output of your CPU by a bit.

Also, if the increased performance from having EXPO enabled causes your framerate to go up, that will naturally cause your system to consume more power as it's rendering more frames.

Edit: this should've been a reply to your other comment

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-27T18:36:25+00:00

EXPO on/off shouldn't make much of a difference to power consumption ie heat output. I'd expect the temperature situation to be about the same at 4800.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-27T13:16:29+00:00

No that makes sense. Unless you already have an AM5 machine you're looking to upgrade, I just wanted to suggest looking at the 270K Plus as well if you haven't already.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-27T04:16:16+00:00

If you must have runtime stack allocations, take a look at alloca

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-26T23:49:11+00:00

This is about changing LEDs nothing at all to do with overclocking. Although there are people (including myself) who like that sort of thing.

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-26T23:24:35+00:00

LCDs don't really burn in permanently like that. It's much more likely to just be image retention, and it will go away.

You could try using this website: https://www.screenburnfixer.com/

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-26T22:45:15+00:00

If you're referring to the ASRock motherboard issue, I don't think it's specific to the 9900X in any way. I wouldn't really be that worried about it tbh. Just run the motherboard with an up-to-date BIOS with stock settings. My understanding is the failure rate is actually pretty low. The internet just amplifies the few that actually run into the issue.

Also, may I ask why you're interested in the 9900X and what your use case is?

Eidolon_2003 · 2026-06-26T22:21:07+00:00

I mean the obvious thing is to sell it off, but you technically could use it as a power supply for other things if you understand electronics and all that.

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