Advice sought for desktop upgrade

[Derek Smith]

I normally treat myself every year to something nice for my desktop. In the first half of 2020, I bought the following:

Ryzen 9 3900x
Asus M6 550M mb.
Corsair LPX 2400mhz 64 meg DDR4 RAM.

I re-used an 8GB Radeon RX570 GPU.

The intent was to cope with video and image manipulation, using PowerDirector and the Affinity trio. It did this wonderfully.

I started learning Blender and later Unreal Engine 4, but as I've progressed, my desktop struggles with demands. The shutdowns with UE have become frequent. Blender renders tend to warm up my office and I've experienced the occasional freeze and even shutdown.

I want to upgrade so that it can cope better. GPUs are horrific prices. My GPU is now twice the price it was in 2019.

Advice asked for and very welcomed.

[arcturus]

Could cooling be the issue? This week my PC just switched itself off twice for no reason. I restarted it and went in to the BIOS and noticed the cpu temp was 105C. I then looked at the water cooling radiator and it was choked with dust. Hoovered it out and we are back to normal again. Ini hindsight it had been getting slower over the past few weeks but is now as fast as the day it was built. You could use Core Temp to monitor the temps from within the OS to see if that is the issue.

I'm not saying yours is full of dust, but I'm just wondering if it needs better cooling with all the work it is doing.

[Derek Smith]

arcturus said:

Could cooling be the issue? This week my PC just switched itself off twice for no reason. I restarted it and went in to the BIOS and noticed the cpu temp was 105C. I then looked at the water cooling radiator and it was choked with dust. Hoovered it out and we are back to normal again. Ini hindsight it had been getting slower over the past few weeks but is now as fast as the day it was built. You could use Core Temp to monitor the temps from within the OS to see if that is the issue.

I'm not saying yours is full of dust, but I'm just wondering if it needs better cooling with all the work it is doing.

Thanks for that.

I've put in an extra couple of fans, making six in total, plus the two on the GPU - it's a wonder the machine doesn't move across the floor. I clean the various fans and such regularly. The addition of the two fans was an improvement, one to suck and one to blow, every man's dream, and the temperatures tended to peak later. The CPU runs cool most of the time and notably not near the top before the shutdowns. It has a thermostatically-controlled fan, with pretty lights, and these hardly ever get to top speed. I've moved the midi-tower case into a cooler area.

With two 140mm case fans at the front, one at the side by the GPU, and two 140mm on the rear of the case airflow seems assured. The cables have been stuffed out of the way as much as possible. The only thing that concerns me is that, although I have an M.2 SSD for the OS, I have three HDDs in-between the two fans at the front, or at least the lower, and the GPU. I've got them on quick shutdown, so the HDDs are 'resting' when I'm using Blender and UE.

[mmm-five]

What cooler is it?

Has the CPU/cooler ever been checked/repasted to ensure it's hasn't dried out?

How much space is free on the m.2 SSD?

[Derek Smith]

mmm-five said:

What cooler is it?

Has the CPU/cooler ever been checked/repasted to ensure it's hasn't dried out?

How much space is free on the m.2 SSD?

I've got approx half of the 1TB SSD empty. I use it for rendering and then clear it.

The CPU has the cooler it came with and runs remarkably cool. One of my programmes, forget which, goes for CPU rather than GPU and that's the only thing that seems to excite a change of colour, but not a great increase. I had no problems with photos or video but Blender sometimes struggled, but there are workarounds which, although they take time, I can live with. I want to expand what I do but accept I can't. Unreal Engine on the other hand, knackers it once away from the purely basic.

I've got 64gig of RAM, DDR4 at 2400. I was told memory rather than speed was important, that for video. And I got it a bit on the cheap side. If I went for DDR5, as on my GPU, and a bit up on speed, would that be worthwhile?

[bigandclever]

What might the crash dumps indicate? If they exist, of course.

[xeny]

When you say shutdown, what exactly happens? Do you know what the power supply is, and how old it is?

You talk about changing colour - how are you viewing/monitoring CPU/GPU load & temperature?

Edited by xeny on Thursday 5th May 15:19

[Derek Smith]

I monitor temperatures on Radeon software for the GPU

For the CPU I have CPUID.

By shutdown, what normally happens is that the machine freezes. The hourglass sometimes appears, but not always. I've left it for dinner and a movie, so 2.5 - 3 hours without change. I used to get the machine switching off entirely before I monitored temperatures closely and the extra fans, but since then, I get lockdown.

Off babysitting now, rather like those answering my problem I suppose.

[PHlL]

I'd expect cooling is too the issue. As you said you've tried extra fans and not much help, assume you've checked something basic as the the PSU has enough watts?

Also, I'd of personally of chosen a fast speed ram. 2400Mhz is one of the lowest for that MB, think it'd support up to 4400Mhz. 64gb is on the higher side of things, I'd of gone for faster speed over size. Is it 4x16 or 2x32? Not that this should impact things too much for the issue you're encountering.

[Jinx]

The 570 isn't a power hungry card and neither is the 3900X (relatively) so TBH I would look at the RAM. An extended RAM test wouldn't go amiss and I'd also reseat them just in case. I'm guessing these are 4x16GB sticks? Could you run 2x16GB for awhile and see if you are still having the system freezes? I would also do a quick check on the storage ( Crystalmark info). I had a recent spate of blue screens - caused by Dell's support assist of all things - wasn't even running just the self-updater. All fine after I nuked it.

[xeny]

Possibly an obvious question, but is the motherboard BIOS up to date?

Is there anything written to the Windows event log?

[Derek Smith]

Cheers, guys. I opted for RAM that was on offer. Probably a big mistake.

Appreciate all the help and suggestions.

Derek

[AJBek]

sounds very like RAM, I have had similar symptoms with overclocked RAM on a ryzen system. Download memtest64 and install it to a usb stick - boot off that and run for a few hours - you really want no errors at all. If you find any try one stick at a time to narrow it down.

[biggiles]

How hot does the PSU get? If it's not the CPU or GPU, it might be the PSU overheating. Higher-rated ones are fairly easy to switch in, and if you do upgrade, you can take it with you.

[Derek Smith]

biggiles said:

How hot does the PSU get? If it's not the CPU or GPU, it might be the PSU overheating. Higher-rated ones are fairly easy to switch in, and if you do upgrade, you can take it with you.

I've got a 750W Corsair CPU and, my assumption was, that was ample. I have only one other card. I'll monitor it. It feels cool at the moment, but I'll run Blender and see if it is marginal.

[xeny]

Derek Smith said:

I've got a 750W Corsair CPU and, my assumption was, that was ample. I have only one other card. I'll monitor it. It feels cool at the moment, but I'll run Blender and see if it is marginal.

750W should be ample. Can you give us a list of programmes that are fine and programmes that are troublesome? If we characterise then as CPU load or GPU load, maybe that will reveal where the problem is.

What kind of CPU temperatures are you seeing? To an extend with the hardware you're describing, I'm not sure you'd need extra fans which makes me slightly suspicious about CPU cooling.