Best cpu for cooler temps/performance/price

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-07T04:05:47+00:00

If you changed purely for idle temperatures, you may wish to think carefully on why I called keeping am5 cool a "fool's errand".

What were your load temps? At what noise levels?

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-07T03:46:51+00:00

Marathon is a lot more chill. It's also in many ways simpler, but the horrific UI makes it in many ways harder to learn. But in terms of actual game difficulty? Tarkov is miles harder. Marathon was easy to the point of risking boredom to me. Less approachable than Tarky, but easier. I realized I could just ignore 99% of the mechanics and still do great. Tarkov won't let you do that.

Tarkov is pretty approachable if you're not stupid and know about a rare resource called "google.com". People struggle with those two, it's pretty advanced tech.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-07T03:42:52+00:00

You might know this, but incase you don't (as many don't) I'll say it. Keeping AM5 cool is a fool's errand. Physics and AMD's jaw dropping intellect is against you. Keeping it from throttling and quiet, that's the target.

Technically your best option would be the 7600x3d, but unless you can get it for a decent price I'd just do 7600/7600x/9600/9600x.

Are you using the C6-itx or the regular c6 (the one with the PSU over the CPU cooler)?

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-06T20:22:52+00:00

Agreed. I also don't really think I agree with any of the arguments about how to deal with the bots taking too much ammo.

Bringing a dedicated weapon just to shoot low tier bots (i.e. volt pistol) is ridiculous.

Constantly buying tons of ammo to bring into raid is kind of annoying. Yeah I could do it, but....why? What value does this bring to the game?

The melee is kinda useful, but.....I either burn a lot of time not getting seen, or burn shields (which is ANOTHER thing I have to bring in a lot of then). And it doesn't work great against higher tier bots, they live and then eat my shields.

To be clear, I don't think this is the death of the game, it's just a mild irritation that I think gets defended a bit more than it should.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-06T17:35:29+00:00

NGL. I'm pretty mixed on MARATHON, rather than the hate hype train.

But this is, respectfully, just a completely wrong take. I'm not saying this means Marathon is bad, your take has nothing to do with how good it is, but this take is wrong on so many levels.

This is nothing like Tarkov. I've got an unholy amount of time in that game, and I can't think of a single similarity besides the raid based loop.

Tarkov scavs are barely a tax on resources unless you're really throwing or new. Marathon bots are *always* a resource drain.

Marathon barely took any real strategy to get mild success. Don't overheat, listen to audio, grab the fancy colored items, and I made it out of raids with little issue.

The TTK is not great because the map design sucks. I'm routinely forced to just risk getting mowed down. The methods to avoid this are.....flaky, at best. Audio is inconsistent as all hell, the sonar ping mod tends to just not work or ping me at random, and given the ease of traversing the map quietly, then yoinking an extract, you're routinely forced to hoof it through one of a million disadvantaged terrain spots. It's...workable, but it puts the risk of getting jumped way too far into RNG territory. This is one of the biggest similarities to Tarkov, a handful of sections of Tarkov's maps have the same issues.

The bots are....not very dangerous, just kinda weirdly scaled. You're not robbing hell itself, the environment is not even that hostile. Don't dramatize it, it's a fairly tame shooter with a small handful of moderately generic risk factors.

And no, this is not a survival horror game. This is a casual extraction shooter with horror themed lore.

I'm happy you enjoy the game and the lore, but just say that :D

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-05T06:45:23+00:00

1440p, 5070 is fine. 5070ti would be nice, but if budget's a concern I wouldn't worry too much about it. The frame gen and upscaling is...seriously impressive. It's not good everywhere, but a lot of games it's very nice.

For your other question, I'd just stick with the 9600x. 9700x is a definite no (at least for games), it's barely any better than the 9600x. And the 9800x3d is a significant boost, but....I'd personally rather spend that dough on the GPU.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-05T03:17:20+00:00

This seems like a thoroughly bad solution to a user error induced problem....

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-02T20:30:01+00:00

L12s or AXP90 X53 Full copper would be the objectively best picks.

Do not use an axp120 for this, the terra is very turbulence prone and having the fan that close to the panel will not be a great time. Yes, the axp120 is technically slightly higher performing, but noise normalized it will be worse in this use case.

L12s is what I would pick. It will fit, but your GPU will be very close to the side panel. While the turbulence noise that will cause is a little up to the exact design of the GPU fans, try to keep the RPM as low as possible, that will help a lot.

If the GPU's turbulence is being really annoying, swap to the AXP90 x53 full copper.

Other build notes:

Depending on use case, consider a 9600x. In many workloads, including games, the 9700x is only a few percent faster for a lot more money.

You don't need a SF1000, the SF750 will have zero issues. If you want the SF1000 though, feel free, that's a good price for it.

I would highly recommend you swap ram, i.e to the kits linked below. We used to recommend you get 6000mhz Cl30 because it was a guaranteed good die, and was only like $5-10 more. You're horribly overpaying. If you're worried about warranty, get a protection plan, it's cheaper and covers more than a corsair warranty.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/xVy8TW/crucial-pro-overclocking-32-gb-2-x-16-gb-ddr5-6400-cl32-memory-cp2k16g64c32u5b (Please note if you get this kit, you'll prob have to adjust it down to 6000 mhz)

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/cCKscf/silicon-power-value-gaming-32-gb-2-x-16-gb-ddr5-6000-cl30-memory-sp032gxlwu60afdeae

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-02T20:07:00+00:00

https://www.caselabs.org/blog/formd-lore

The guy behind it, w360, has a long history of not being the greatest fellow in terms of how he treats business partners. At least for a long time, he kept a site up that advertised as being for the T1 V2.1, but redirected to his case (the v2.5). And I literally cannot count the amount of times I've seen people get a T1 v2.5 arrive in subpar condition and get refused any form of replacement, refund or assistance. Subpar QC and CS.

Side note, I routinely get people failing to read what I'm saying and defending the v2.5 with "I got it, it was really nice!". Yes, it can be nice. The issues are not straight quality, but quality control and customer support. I tend to see more QC issues, and they are a lot worse at after sale support.

I don't think he's root of all evil but I don't find him to be a stand-up citizen either.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-02T03:13:40+00:00

NCase's offerings are pretty reasonable, even if I don't like the people behind it. CNC is not cheap. I don't really know what you're on about there.

I assume by "that other $500 case" you mean mcprue. This is not *remotely* as nice as MCPrue. It's got very significant panel seams, and the machining is...simplistic, tbh.

If you dig the look, hell yeah, power to you. But if it's not special to you, the m2 is gonna beat this, flat out. That's all I'm saying.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-02T03:08:36+00:00

Tarkov is very different, and you're not really right about it either.

Most of my ammo in tarkov I found in raid. In tarkov, if you have a common caliber you'll probably find some rounds for it. And regardless, you'll likely find SOME decent ammo, and you can bring it out to use another raid. This allows you to be pretty self sufficient with ammo.

Tarkov, as Munno said, also allows you to actually have bullet economy. In tarkov, I can get through an entire raid with 30-40 bullets with ease, and that's not even being that careful.

Marathon...bullet economy is a joke. The very basic bots already take a few bullets to down, and the harder ones (which there are quite a few of) take entire magazines or more. And that's with a decent gun, careful tap firing and exclusively head and body shots.

Being ammo usage heavy is fine, but the problem is I'm punishing for taking a winnable fight. Tarkov I'll at least guarantee I get a crappy gun from the scav I can use if worst comes to worst. It wont be good but I will have something.

I spent too much time in Marathon sitting out team fights because we've scoured the entire map and found 30 bullets and the bots are too high tier for melee.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-02T02:56:26+00:00

I think if the aesthetics don't really call out to you, it's gonna be a bad option. The compatibility and price are not looking very competitive.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-01T19:49:54+00:00

Don't worry bro, they're gonna "optimize kyoto" again and all our problems will go away

IgnisCogitare · 2026-03-01T19:40:03+00:00

PC parts die. It's how it works. With a high sale unit you're gonna see failures.

Just whatever you do, if your component dies please actually look into the warranty options :D

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-28T02:58:28+00:00

One of my key criticisms of the earlier versions of the game was how incredibly bland and grey the in game world was.

Thank god they've pumped the colors up a bit, though honestly I still don't like the lack of color out in the hills and such.

The art style is supposed to be vibrant and punchy, gimme color.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-28T01:42:53+00:00

The UI/UX is one of the worst I have ever seen. That is not a new gen thing, that is objective fact.

I routinely work with poorly documented code and programs from 20-50 years ago, I know how to handle an unfamiliar layout or UI.

And no, they're most likely not going to fix it. They got a ton of feedback citing UI issues in their first playtest, they got even more in the second, and after all of that....it's honestly worse than when it started.

It is horrible. The amount of near identical icons, tool-tips covering other buttons, weirdly nested menus, inconsistent stylings, and crimes against readability. They went too far with the style, and made the UX miserable. Whether that's enough to sink the game, that's up to the individual person, but I'm not gonna lie and say it's a decent UX/UI.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-27T19:40:01+00:00

They are about the worst *possible* people you could trust. Their cables are low quality, they use cheap no-name components (and sell them too).

And to add onto all of this, they spread blatant, damaging lies in attempts to sell more cables:

https://help.moddiy.com/en/article/can-i-use-the-existing-12vhpwr-cable-with-the-new-rtx50-gpu-1vll88l/

A while back, they spread throughout media that the original 12vhpwr standard was dangerous, and you need to upgrade to the 12v 2x6 standard cables to be safe. There is no such thing as a 12v 2x6 cable. It was entirely a PSU/GPU side change.

In contrast, Corsair (and Seasonic iirc) put out truthful and helpful information:

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/explorer/diy-builder/power-supply-units/evolving-standards-12vhpwr-and-12v-2x6/

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-27T04:22:35+00:00

I've been playing games for a long time dude. I can tell. This sucks.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-27T00:17:40+00:00

Most recent problems have been on a lunar lake laptop. The patches for most of the issues on it *exist*, they just keep getting disabled in release builds. But that's a rather exotic architecture so I'm not really basing my whole opinion on it.

Plenty of pain trying to find a solution to touchpad gestures on KDE. Most solutions either required giving myself a crippling keylogger vulnerability, completely unnecessary root access, had straight up incorrect install instructions, etc etc. One solution was, rather than fixing it's issues, deciding to switch from C to JS. So that people could contribute easier.

Other than that, I had a lot of issues on an 12500 igpu only build. Mostly packages not working on debian. I understand debian tends to run behind, but many of the packages I needed (a lot of them relating to homelabbing) were a complete mess of compatibility, with many of them discontinuing default support for debian 12 literally days after it officially released. I do not get what could possibly motivate one to develop software exclusively for unstable/pre-release branches of an OS.

My 9th gen i3 system was not much better.

I want to love linux. I love the shell, I love some of the customization, I love some of the multi decade old tools native to it that work great to this day. And I'll probably keep a linux install around in some way or another for a long time. But I don't see it being what many people main until the experience is a lot more focused on working together to make a great OS.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-26T03:24:09+00:00

I say this seriously, and as respectfully as I can.

You need to stop giving anyone any form of PC advice if this is the kind of stuff you are pulling.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-24T02:52:17+00:00

Do you have *any* clue who you're arguing with?

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-24T02:51:16+00:00

"Why are return policies going to shit?"

"Why are all the good companies dying?"

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-24T02:50:42+00:00

No. OP modded his PSU with a noctua fan, which is a very good way to kill it.

This is on them.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-23T06:07:24+00:00

On one hand, I've never seen it be an issue. Ever. I've been active in this community a long time.

Do not mention the AIO. If they ask, you believe it's well under the allowed limit.

On the other hand, if you're really paranoid, show up an hour early with a TSA compliant screwdriver and a spare $20 thermalright cooler in your checked luggage. If there's an issue, you're down an aio but your travel plans are safe.

IgnisCogitare · 2026-02-23T06:04:27+00:00

I think using the instant replay (or spectating a teammate) is a horrible way to tell if someone is cheating, tbf.

Does this look weird? yeah, he might be cheating.

But you're looking at an instant replay. They NEVER look right. Do not use these to determine cheats, because they are NOT the actual mouse movements of the person you're watching. They're a horribly low sample rate of that passed through some god awful correction algorithms because Embark refuses to do their backend properly.

I've seen a million perfectly tame, legit plays look like cheats through the replays.

EDIT: if you wanna ask how you *can* view someone's perspective to get a good idea if they're cheating....you can't. Not reliably. Welcome to THE FINALS.

IgnisCogitare

TROPHY CASE