Hi my name is Chris and this is Battle(non)sense!
In todays video I want to tell you about my experience with the Ryzen 7 1800x and why
I recently replaced it with a Core i7 8700k.
But first I want to make clear that it is not my intention to hate on AMD or its Ryzen processors.
Even though the 1800x turned out to be the wrong processor for 'me', this doesn't mean
that it is a bad product, or that the Ryzen platform is bad in general.
So last year AMD forced intel's hand when they released Ryzen, which again showed us
that competition drives innovation.
Even diehard intel fans should be happy that AMD finally has strong desktop CPU's again,
as intel did drop the prices of their processors almost immediate after AMD announced their Ryzen line-up.
So last year, I read a lot about how great the Ryzen 7 1800x is for content producers
and according to many reviews and guides, it was also good for gaming as you could easily
overlock it to have all 8 cores run at 4.1Ghz.
So back in September, I decided to upgrade my workstation and move my intel core i7 6700k
to my test PC, which was in desperate need of an upgrade as it struggled to achieve those
high frame rates required for my netcode and input lag tests.
So the 6700k has 4 cores and 8 threads.
The base clock is 4Ghz, and the maximum single core turbo boost is 4.2Ghz, but I had my overclocked
to run all 4 cores at 4.5Ghz.
The 1800x has 8 cores and 16 threads, with a base clock of 3.6Ghz and a maximum single core turbo of 4Ghz.
I paired the 1800x with an ASUS Crosshair VI Hero, 16Gb's of 3200 DDR4 RAM from GSkill,
and for cooling I used the Corsair H100i v2.
So the 1800x has a lower clock speed than my 6700k, but it has twice as many cores and
I thought that I should be able to get it to run at 4.2Ghz on all cores, as that was what I read online.
The problem however was that I could not get it to run at more than 4GHz on all cores.
I followed a ton of guides, I tried many different settings and BIOS versions, and I increased
the CPU voltage to a point where it was borderline safe.
But even though the CPU temperatures were always in the green, I could not get my 1800x
to run at more than 4Ghz.
And I am not talking about the system becoming unstable during some crazy benchmark
the system would freeze during video encoding or even gaming when I tried to run it at more than 4Ghz.
So that was very disappointing.
However, the bigger issue was that besides encoding videos with vidcoder, I barely noticed
a performance improvement compared to my 6700k.
Multitasking was surely better.
But Adobe Premiere in example did not really render much faster, neither did After Effects.
I know that Ryzen depends on very fast RAM, but even after I tried different RAM modules
and various settings, the situation did not change.
Now, to be clear.
I am not blaming AMD nor the Ryzen platform for this performance issue.
The problem is that many applications don't run faster when you throw more cores at them.
And this was the issue that I had.
Depending on the game or the application, the 8 cores of the 1800x running at 4GHz,
performed worse than my 6700k's 4 cores running at 4.5Ghz.
So the problem is not the 1800x, but that I bought a CPU which had great multi thread performance,
while many if not most games and applications barely take use of 6 or more cores.
Then in December I've had friends and subscribers, who knew that I wasn't happy with the 1800x,
tell me about how great the core i7 8700k is for gaming.
However, with its 6 cores running at a base clock of 3.7Ghz, I was not sure how it could
be that much better, especially as it did seem to run very hot which limited its overclocking potential.
But as it turns out you can run the 8700k at 5Ghz on all cores at low temps, if you
dare to delid the CPU, which means that you remove the headspreader, and then replace
the stock thermal grease with liquid metal which lowers the CPU temperature by about 20°C.
So, after a lot of research I eventually decided to get an 8700k, remove that headspreader
and replace that poor stock thermal paste with Coollaboratory's Liquid Ultra.
There are quite many delid tools out there now, and the reason why I went for the Dr.Delid was…
well, it was available.
Every other tool was out of stock and I did not want to wait.
So how does this work.
First of all, make sure that you read the manual that comes with the tool to avoid that
you damage the CPU in the process.
Once you removed the headspreader, you then want to get rid of the seal and thermal grease
left on the CPU and the headspreader.
Then you want to apply the new thermal compound.
But do not use some other thermal paste as that will not make a big difference.
You must go for liquid metal like Coollaboratory's Liquid Ultra or Thermal Grisley's Conductonaut.
Before you start to apply the liquid metal, make sure that you read the manual of the
product, as many come with a cleaning set and tools that help you apply the liquid metal.
When you apply the liquid metal make sure that you do not use too much of it, as that
could then spill and shorten contacts on the CPU.
Once you successfully applied the liquid metal you want to put the headspreader back on.
Some people just put it into the socket and don't reseal it, others leave gaps when
they apply the heat resistant silicone.
I decided to re-seal it entirely like it was before.
Then you have to put it back into the delid tool, use the frame to position the headspreader
correctly, and apply some pressure on the headspreader.
You need to check the manual of the heat resistant silicone to find out how long it takes to cure.
Then I roughed up the topside of the headspreader a bit, apply the liquid metal and put the
cooler back on.
Please make sure that yours is not made of aluminium, as that will corrode when it comes
in contact with liquid metal.
So, I've had friends and subscribers tell me that my CPU temperature would come down
by 20°C when I replace the stock thermal compound with liquid metal.
To be honest I did not think that this would actually be the case, because that's an insane improvement.
So, on the left you can see that the 8700k ran at about 85°C while all 6 cores were
maxed out by vidcoder.
And on the right, you can see that, with the stock thermal grease replaced by liquid metal
the cpu temperature did not only drop by 22°C while vidcoder was encoding the exact same video,
the fanspeed of the Corsair H100i v2 is now also 420RPM lower, despite using the
same present as before.
So that is indeed a very big improvement, which then also allowed me to run the 8700k
at 5Ghz for the past month.
But what how does that affect the performance.
The open source software blender is very good at maxing out all cores during rendering.
The 6700k, overclocked to 4.5Ghz, finished the BMW benchmark in 7minutes 42seconds
The 1800x, overclocked to 4GHz on all 8 cores did it in 4minutes 34seconds
so it's a lot faster.
However, the 8700k overclocked to 5Ghz on all 6 cores finished it in 4minutes 36seconds,
which means that it's not really slower.
So that's an application that can take use of all the 1800x's 8 cores.
But what if you have an application that can only use 6 cores.
How big is the difference between the 1800x and the 8700k then?
To simulate that I disabled 2 cores on the 1800x which turned it into 6 core CPU
like the 8700k.
Now the 8700k is 1minute and 23seconds faster than the 1800x.
This shows how the performance per core becomes a very big factor when an application does
not take use of all cores provided by the CPU.
This becomes even more evident when I let blender use just 4 cores on the 1800x and
the 8700k, as even the 6700k with its 4.5Ghz is now 1 minute and 9 seconds faster
than the 1800x.
So when you are about to buy a new CPU then you really have to think about what kind of
software you will run on it, because in many cases core speed will trump core count,
especially in gaming.
So after I used the 8700k for more than one month, I've got to say that I am very happy
with its performance during gaming, video editing, video encoding and multitasking.
The delid process is a bit scary, but if you follow the manual of the delid tool then it's
not that hard nor risky – unless you are a very clumsy person.
The overclocking is also quite easy as I ended up only increasing the multiplier to 50 and
the cpu core voltage to 1.35.
I did get my 8700k to run at 5.1Ghz but for that I had to increase the voltage to 1.4,
which I did not feel comfortable with, so I decided to stick with 5Ghz.
I also tried the various presents that are built into the ASUS Maximus X APEX, but I
found that some of these actually made the system less stable at 5Ghz.
So, I only have the multiplier set to 50 and the CPU voltage fixed at 1.35, as that works very well for me.
One thing that I noticed while testing the various presents is that if a present changes
the AVX negative offset to anything but 0, then the CPU would not run at 5GHz on all
cores when I used vidcoder to encode a video with x265.
So if you overclocked your CPU and wonder why it will sometimes not run all cores at
the speed that you set, then this might be why.
However, if you change the AVX negative offset to 0 then you should really keep an eye on
the CPU temperature and make sure that you have a very good cooling solution to avoid
that you run into thermal throttling.
So that was my journey from the 6700k to the 1800x and finally to a delid and overclocked
8700k that I am very happy with.
Last week I then also sold the 1800x and the mainboard, which made my wife very happy as
this whole upgrade project got a little bit more expensive than planned.
But again, the 1800x is a very good processor. You just need to have the right kind of
workload to really benefit from all its 8 cores.
As we just learned a few days ago, AMD will soon launch updated Ryzen processors which
are hopefully able to compete with the current and upcoming intel CPU's, as that will provide
all of us with better, faster and reasonably priced processors in the future.
And that's all that I've got for you today.
Let me know in the comments down below if you also tried to delid a CPU and how that
worked for you – or if you now feel temped to try it out.
Also stay tuned for my netcode analysis of 'Escape From Tarkov' and 'Battalion 1944'.
If you enjoy my videos then it would be great if you could support me on Patreon, as YouTubes
ad revenue is sadly not enough anymore to run a niche channel like mine.
Without the awesome support that I get from my patrons,
Battle(non)sense would not exists anymore.
You can find a link to my patreon in the description down below, where you will also find links
to my social accounts in case that you want to stay up to date on the videos that I am working on.
So, if you enjoyed this video then please give it a like, subscribe for more
and I hope to see you next time!
Until then, have a nice day and take care,
my name is Chris and this was Battle(non)sense.
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