Arrow Lake upgrade thread

[Aslanna]

I wasn't planning on upgrading until near the end of the year or early 2026 but with large tariffs potentially driving up prices on components I decided maybe I should put together something now. So it's a it of a panic-buy build I suppose since I don't have time to do as much research as I typically do.

Here is what I came up with so far: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/TjKnMC

Still a work in progress but wanting to get things ordered by the end of Sunday.

CPU - Decided to go with the Ultra 7. I hope I don't regret it! But I really wanted better power usage than a 14700k even at the cost of a few fps in games that I don't even play anyway. I'd get this at Microcenter as it's $299 there.

Cooler - This is more a placeholder as I don't know if a cooler being more expensive than the CPU is a good use of money.

MB - 2 PCIe slots seems limiting but other than a GPU not sure what I would use a slot for. I would have preferred a 10Gbps LAN port though. I might poke around to see what else is out there as I'm not sure why I am sticking with Asus other than habit.

Memory - I wanted to go with CUDIMM but the largest ones I could find were 2x24 and I don't want to buy 2 sets of those, as 48GB isn't enough, since that would be a bit expensive. I'm sure 6800 will be fast enough for my usage and having 96GB will be nice. And if needed one can easily add 96GB more but I more than likely will be able to live with 96GB*.

Storage - Nothing out of the ordinary here.

PSU - Seems to have decent reviews and $250 (after the gift card rebate) is pretty competitive. People say it's a bit on the large size though so may have to look into a new case.

GPU - A new one is out of the question these days so I will move over my 3080Ti. And even if the inventory (as well as MSRP) issues ever get sorted out they'll be 40% higher due to tariffs. Too much!

Case - Unknown.

OS - Sadly I'll probably go with Windows 11.

* It's not all for program usage as I am fond of using a ramdisk for placing things such as my browser cache and temp files as without that I was getting 10s of millions of I/O writes from my browser to my SSD which is not good for SSD life. By the time I noticed it the health on my drive was 95%. You may want to check yours as well! Run Process Explorer from Sysinternals and add the I/O Writes column if it's not there by default and see if there are any high amounts. I think with a Chromium-based browser some stuff actually gets written to the Windows User Data directory as well so it's a bit more involved getting that pointed to a ramdisk. I think I had to create a link or something. I suppose it's not a huge deal as SSD drives aren't overly expensive (at the moment) but I didn't like it!

[Aslanna]

1. 128 MB RAM. I updated to 128 awhile back. RAM is cheap and AI stuff takes advantage of it as overflow sometimes if you really want to use an LLM that doesn't fit into VRAM (just a lot slower). 64 is absolute minimum these days but I'd highly recommend just getting 128 to start with.

A bit of a compromise between 64 and 128 as I'm going with 2x48 for 96GB. If that's not enough I'll go to 192!

3. Intel is a dying company. I wouldn't be surprised if they go the route of Motorola/IBM etc soon. They are "old and crusty" and I don't think their employees are motivated that much to do quality work/support etc. Not sure why you still want to go with them. My AMD CPU and Motherboard have been rock solid since whenever I upgraded years ago. AMD CPU = Good. AMD GPU is not something you'd want if you EVER want to mess around with AI. I haven't researched CPUs in a long time so don't know the current situation with those.

If money was no object I'd probably get a 9950X3D. But I don't game all that much so the 265k will be a decent upgrade from my 2018 9700K and $300 isn't crazy. They were bad value at their original price and performance but Intel has rolled out some microcode fixes and prices have fallen since nobody bought them. Mostly it comes down to I'm familiar with the Intel architecture and I don't have time to get up to speed on all the AMD model numbers when it comes to the CPU and motherboards.

But I did consider AMD and even spent a few hours reading a bunch of reviews and looking at motherboards. I'll give Intel one more chance and if they still aren't competitive when I get around to my next upgrade in ~7 years, or if the 265k turns out to be a dumpster fire, I would more than likely go with AMD.

5. By far the most important component is the GPU

I don't disagree but there's no good options out there and it's only going to get worse. If I could get a 5090 FE for MSRP I'd consider it. But that's not happening. It's the crypto/covid shit all over again.

7. 1000W+ PSU for sure. I have high quality 750W and run the 4090 just fine but would probably need to upgrade for the 5090. Quality PSUs matter. don't cheap out on that component. quality > higher Watts

Yeah I am going with the 1500 and it seems quality and has a 10 year warranty. I am using the 850W version in my current PC and have had zero problems. The length of the 1500W is 200mm though which is a bit troublesome when it comes to cases so instead of the Fractal North XL, which if using that PSU would only accommodate a single 3.5" drive won't cut it since I have 2 of them, I'll probably go with the Antec Flux Pro. That's right, Antec cases are back on the menu! I also have said I hated glass side panels but what the hell. Everyone else is doing it so why not. Only thing is the front fans aren't RGB so I'd have to replace those at some point. I'll be going with an AIO cooler so I'll have the RGB covered on the top!

I mostly picked the Antec based on the Gamer's Nexus review and benchmarks where it did pretty good in all the categories. And I needed more than 1 3.5" bay. At least for now.

[Winnow]

20 Cores. nice.

1500 Watts! You're ready for the RTX 6090 whenever that comes out.

I had to search for it. 1500 Watts is around the max load an outlet 110V can handle : )

I was going to recommend the Noctua NH-D15 CPU fan but it looks like you went nuts with the CPU cooling solution : )

Looks like my last build was in Nov 2019. This PC (with the memory and multiple GPU upgrades) has lasted awhile! Maybe I can make it another year.

Good luck with your build!

[Aslanna]

1500W is definitely overkill for this build but Corsair only seems to sell one 1200W power supply and it's the same price as the 1500W so I figured why not go large. The efficiency ratings seem about the same. Maybe I'll do some quick research to check if having too large of a PSU for a smaller load is bad. I sort of picked this one based on getting a 5090 some day but that will probably never happen.

I probably don't need 'Platinum' either but as you say don't skimp on the PSU.

As for the cooling I haven't decided yet on that one. I just picked something so partspicker would stop yelling at me about it. It will be RGB though.

[Winnow]

As for the cooling I haven't decided yet on that one. I just picked something so partspicker would stop yelling at me about it. It will be RGB though.

Yeah I'm not up to date on latest cooling stuff.

The huge Noctua fan I got has been super quiet. My whole build is quiet. I hear my CPU more than my GPU when at high loads. I don't think my GPU fans even run most of the time (if not using it for AI stuff). I know something is wrong if I actually notice fan noise. Usually it means CUDA isn't working and CPU is being used.

I usually keep MSI Afterburner running on a side screen to monitor the GPU MHz. Easy way to know if something isn't working if it's running at 210 MHz idle instead of ~2700-2895 MHz when generating something in AI. It's all or nothing. There's no half power in AI. It always makes maximum use of your GPU. I also monitor the VRAM. Nothing sophisticated, I use the task manager's Performance for GPU monitoring. With AI video, there are various ways to play with offloading blocks to make a longer video or higher resolution video without exceeding 24 GB in VRAM. MSI Afterburner is also what's used to undervolt so that needs to be running anyway. (Undervolting is set and forget as long as you have Afterburner run at startup)

I don't know if it's as important these days but when I researched my builds in the past, I always dug through forums to see if others had success with certain motherboard/memory combos. I didn't do that when I I upgraded to 128 GB (had to buy 4 new sticks and get rid of whatever I had) I just made sure it was they right type of RAM. I also didn't worry about how fast the system RAM was since it really is all abut the GPU and VRAM for performance. I didn't buy the slowest/cheapest but didn't get the "best". You might look into it, but it always seemed like differences in RAM only had a tiny difference in speed/performance compared to CPU and now mostly GPU.

My real world test is always if anything "feels" slow. Nothing on my system feels slow to me outside of AI which then only comes down to what GPU you have. I'm mostly SSD everything now. I do have a couple spinners left but they only store stuff and aren't used for anything that would need speed.

Last random note. I lost a 14TB hard drive a few weeks ago (it fell off the top of my case so not a situation with any warning signs). It was full. Thankfully it was the one HD that caused the least pain to lose. Mostly Movies/TV/VR Movies (1000's of videos but all replaceable). I bought another 4 TB Samsung external SSD to replace it. The cool thing about this is that since I use "Everything" to index my drives. All 14TB of files are still listed in that index under the old drive letter so I can see what exactly was on that drive and what I want to replace. I replaced a few right away, like around 400GB over a few days of the ones I wanted the most. (unlimited gigabit internet for the next two years at a cheap rate due to special offer from Cox)

"Everything" (posted on another thread) is very useful. 12 million files and I can find something instantly. Also, another great thing is that it's live indexing (if you have it open which it doesn't need to be if you only want to used it when you feel like it...it does take a minute to update the index when you open it depending on how long you left it closed but even a month is still only a minute or so to update) so sometimes if I accidentally save something and don't know where, I can just look and find it from the index sorted by date. It also helps with when you install something and crap is being stored in roaming/app/data etc. You can check right away to see where it may have stored something. Also, it's good for monitoring anything that might seem shady because you can see right away what's being changed/saved/stored in real time. This entire index can be stored anywhere you want (fully portable). I keep it behind an encrypted container. That 12 million file DB is a little over 400MB taking about 1 GB when in memory (not that big). I will eventually make a copy of it/archive so I can still see what was in the 14TB drive when I feel like removing those from my main DB. Also, this does remember all my drives including external, encrypted etc so I don't need to add them each time. I think I do a decent job of organizing my files but 12 million...it's just way faster sometimes to find something... or something like pytorch when you have a bazillion VENV environments and are trying to troubleshoot an issue. I have Windows File Explorer indexing disabled but even if you do use it, it's slow as shit and nowhere near as customizable and in your control as Everything. "Everything" is really fast, even scrolling through the entire 12 million+ files but you can of course narrow down searches by drive, etc as well a wildcards etc.

[Aslanna]

Yeah I'm not up to date on latest cooling stuff.

I ended up going with a brand I had never heard of and bought the Thermalright Hyper Vision ARGB. I guess they are on the new side so we'll see what sort of longevity these things have. $160 for a 360 radiator, 3 fans (which I'll probably replace if they are loud), and a 3.4" LCD. The Tryx Panorama 360 looked neat but nobody had them in stock other than with a week delivery and everything else is arriving Tuesday. There aren't a lot of reviews out there but this random guy seemed to like it so it must be good. If not he's definitely getting a thumbs down on that video!

I don't know if it's as important these days but when I researched my builds in the past, I always dug through forums to see if others had success with certain motherboard/memory combos. I didn't do that when I I upgraded to 128 GB (had to buy 4 new sticks and get rid of whatever I had) I just made sure it was they right type of RAM. I also didn't worry about how fast the system RAM was since it really is all abut the GPU and VRAM for performance. I didn't buy the slowest/cheapest but didn't get the "best". You might look into it, but it always seemed like differences in RAM only had a tiny difference in speed/performance compared to CPU and now mostly GPU.

I checked the memory compatibility list for that motherboard on the Asus site and picked based on that. But I didn't check any forums or see if anyone was having issues. I'm just going to have to hope it works out! My main worry is everything all fitting together as it should in the case.

I'm mostly SSD everything now. I do have a couple spinners left but they only store stuff and aren't used for anything that would need speed.

I have a 4TB WD Blue for emulation stuff and an 18TB WD Red which is my main data drive where I have my Plex and other things. I could replace the 4TB with an SSD but it's not high on the list. The case I have supports 4 3.5" drives so it will be fine for now. I already spent enough money so another $250 on a 4 TB wasn't in the budget today.

[Aslanna]

In my haste to order stuff I didn't really notice what RGB the Hyper Vision cooler had. I thought the fans would be the usual light up variety but it's only a thin border around the side of the fans. They are fairly quiet though so no complaints there. Also the LCD wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be but that's because it doesn't want to download the animated backgrounds. I'm not sure if that's me blocking their downloads on my DNS although the logs aren't showing anything so I don't know what domains to allow. This is not a high-priority item at the moment.

The case seems decent.. lots of fans and once I got the fan hub plugged into the MB they ran much quieter since they were running full blast prior to that which was a bit concerning. It's quieter than my current PC but my current PC is from 2018 so I wouldn't be surprised if it needs a thermal paste refresh. It's also keeping things cooler but that could be because the AIO in my old one is a 240 whereas the new one is a 360. The four sticky rubber pads inside the case that the PSU sits on though were super annoying and they came off just my looking at them. I ended up losing one and after over an hour of looking I put in the PSU without it. Of course I found it shortly after stuck to some of the PSU cables. I am sill deciding if I want to remedy that since it would involve unplugging cables and stuff.

I also don't seem to understand cable management. Even using the velcro bands the case has the cabling looks bad. That is mostly all behind the MB tray though so once the side of the case is on it shouldn't be visible. But I really wanted to try and make things look nice and tidy this time!

The RAM I got (and MB as well ) is shown as 'Frequently Returned' on Amazon so hopefully it works out as it is on the certified, or at least verified, list for my MB. I turned on xmp and went with the settings it has and have it running at 6800 and there hasn't been any issues but I haven't really pushed it. I suppose I can find some sort of memory stress tester.

PSU seems to be quality but I'm not very knowledgeable about those. Like the 850W version I have it's silent and the fan only comes on if it needs to which it so far hasn't needed to although it's currently at 110F. With no GPU in there the load is only 4-5% according to the iCue software. Which isn't good for efficiency as that's showing only 75%. I'm not sure how my old one is doing as I never installed that iCue software or attached the cable. But for $250 (after gift care rebate), and assuming it doesn't blowup in a few weeks, I think it was a solid deal although it is on the large size. I would have preferred something shorter as 200mm is chonky.

So far everything is working as expected. I'm running it off integrated graphics for now until I get all the applications installed which will probably be a couple weeks. That's why K > KF. Even if you have a GPU to put in there I don't know why you wouldn't spend the few dollars extra and get the one with integrated graphics. Before putting in the GPU though I may have to relocate my NVMe since apparently the slot it's in makes the slot for the graphics card run at x8. I don't know all the technical stuff but that sounds bad since my GPU is x16. The internet seems to think you'll only lose a few fps though so maybe I'll leave it for now.

The system is way overbuilt for the 265K. I'll have to check some more reviews and benchmarks but Microcenter has a 15 day return policy if I want to move up to the 285K but I don't know if that's worth $270 more which is almost double what the 265K cost me.

I have Windows 11 (ugh) installed. I'll get to making it look less like Windows 11 at some point. For the moment all I've done is shift Start to the left and turned on show labels. I don't know how people can use only the icons on the task bar. I don't memorize the icons of my programs!

So far I'm only disappointed in the cooler. Not for it's performance, which I haven't really tested, but mostly for the aesthetics. I got this from Amazon so the return process wouldn't be terrible but I'll probably just stick with it because it would be a hassle to pull it off, clean up the thermal paste, box it all up, send it back, order something new, then go through the steps of reinstalling something else. It would be much better if I can get the display working with the animated backgrounds.

[Aslanna]

I decided since my MB has 7 NVMe slots that I'll use two of them to mirror my OS drive via RAID 1. I can't say I've ever done that before so will see how it goes! I used the $50 gift card from the power supply so the 1TB 990 Pro only set me back ~$55. Cheap!

I've never had an SSD fail before but it's cheap insurance and I won't really need to bother with taking an OS backup. Other than the one I typically take once I have everything installed and configured that way I can quickly get back to a refreshed state if needed.

I'll also be looking into setting up Linux as well in a dual-boot scenario so that I can see if I can get off Windows. Windows 11 sucks. I don't know why anyone would support Microsoft. Even if I am able to block the ads and telemetry gathering it's still icky and I'd rather not support a company like that.

[Winnow]

I decided since my MB has 7 NVMe slots that I'll use two of them to mirror my OS drive via RAID 1. I can't say I've ever done that before so will see how it goes! I used the $50 gift card from the power supply so the 1TB 990 Pro only set me back ~$55. Cheap!

I've never had an SSD fail before but it's cheap insurance and I won't really need to bother with taking an OS backup. Other than the one I typically take once I have everything installed and configured that way I can quickly get back to a refreshed state if needed.

I'll also be looking into setting up Linux as well in a dual-boot scenario so that I can see if I can get off Windows. Windows 11 sucks. I don't know why anyone would support Microsoft. Even if I am able to block the ads and telemetry gathering it's still icky and I'd rather not support a company like that.

I'd use Linux if I liked it. You can probably search this forum for multiple times I tried various linux distributions. I can't stand it. Linux is better for some AI stuff but I use Docker for that or WSL.

Good luck with Linux. I'm not anti Linux, I just can't deal with it and I'm too entrenched with Windows (even though I don't play games anymore which was the #1 reason not to use Linux in the past.)

I'm not adverse to beating my head against a wall for days to figure things out. I've done that multiple times with AI and python. I use way too many third party windows apps customized exactly how I want them to switch to linux. If you don't and mostly just use a web browser and an email client, linux will probably be ok.

I didn't have much luck with various RAID configurations in the past but I wouldn't RAID your OS. I'd keep that drive as basic as possible and raid a non OS drive that has all your personal documents and programs etc. An OS drive is easy to setup and if you use windows, the configuration is saved in the cloud so all your settings are restored.