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Wow, that's a pretty cool idea I've never considered. Switching CPU governor based on the virtual desktop.

I considering a build with 13600k, and I am seriously just considering going with DDR5-4800. It's a tad cheaper than the DDR-5600 I was initially going to go with. I honestly do not think I would be able to tell the difference in day-to-day usage between DDR5-4800, DDR5-5200, DDR5-5600, and perhaps higher than that.

With that being said, I acknowledge that I am just making an assumption. Have you noticed any difference outside of benchmarks? I am not looking to go higher in speeds because I have seen videos (e.g. from Buildzoid) talking about how awful the 13th gen memory controller is, so I figured I am not really looking to gamble my time and money on max performance RAM.

I have not measured the impact outside benchs and yes you are probably fine with 4800s, but I use my pc for work and I would avoid slower ram when as a dev all my IDEs and processes do nothing but R/W from memory.

As a dev myself, do you think the difference between DDR4 and DDR5 is actually noticeable? That was mainly my justification for going DDR5 -- not gaming -- but I could step down to DDR4 if the the difference is insignificant.

Every time I'm setting up a new PC, I check the prices on RAM and then check the benchmarks for actual usage, and I always seem to find that buying faster RAM is not a good use of the budget, especially because I need a PC with a lot of RAM.

Currently running a 12900k with DDR4 RAM.

When I checked the benchmarks, DDR4 ended up being about 3% slower than the fastest DDR5 which was more than double the price, which for 64Gb was a significant price increase. Even less difference for gaming, something like 1%.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-12900k-alde...

I'm sure it's a similar story for the different speeds of DDR5. The price premium isn't worth the tiny increase in speed. I guess people see the big numbers like 4800 vs 5600 and assume that means it's that much faster, 17%, when in reality it's something like 1-2%.

Faster RAM has always been a ripoff, and like you said you're risking stability issues. https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/ddr5_core_i9_13900k_dd...

I'm really considering just going with a 12th gen, and upgrading in a few years vs. trying to stretch the 13th gen 3-5 years. It's a fool's errand trying to keep up with everything, and I need to do more research from a price vs. value point of view.

What motherboard are you using for your 12th gen? It's honestly been the most difficult part of piecing together my build. It seems like all the decent motherboards are plagued with one or more issues e.g. poor VRMs, poor bios/supporting software [1], NIC disconnects randomly [2], coil whine, etc..

I'll admit, I have only seen benchmarks for DDR5 in regards to games which was not impressive. It's disappoint to see that other applications would only have a greater performance of around 3%. Maybe I will just go with DDR4 then...

[1] I have heard Gigabyte boards have a hell of a time getting RBG Fusion 2.0 to work/save settings.

[2] I have also read to stay far away from boards with Intel's I225/226 NICs or to get a secondary NIC.

Gigabyte Z690 AORUS PRO DDR4. I'm very happy with it. Stable and does the job. BIOS seems good to me, no complaints.

Can't comment on RGB stuff because mine's in a closed black box.

Not sure what NIC it has... specs online say "Intel 2.5GbE LAN chip", my router is only 1Gb but it works fine, no disconnects. PC is Windows only though.

I've mostly had Gigabytes over the years (some Asus as well), and haven't had a lemon motherboard yet, maybe I've been lucky. But I am pretty demanding and don't tolerate faulty stuff well.

I'm also quite annoyed by noise, system is set up to be as quiet as possible with passive PSU/140mm fans/etc. Haven't noticed any coil whine.

I have the same cooler! No expo issues on gigabyte ds3h.

Why haven't you undervolted the cpu with all your interest for noise?

> I have the same cooler! No expo issues on gigabyte ds3h.

Ah I'm less lucky: ASUS Prime B650-Plus mobo and the link says that on the Gamer Nexus forum (?) it could be a problem with ASUS motherboards.

> Why haven't you undervolted the cpu with all your interest for noise?

Honestly I'm not too sure how to do that. I never bother overclocking/underclocking. I like everything stock. I thought running DDR5-6000 from the QVL list in EXPO mode was also something really normal to do.

> Honestly I'm not too sure how to do that.

Quite simple, I always undervolt AMD hardware as they tend to consistently exxagerate on that, gpus too.

https://youtu.be/1pizvaYiVbk

>I thought running DDR5-6000 from the QVL list in EXPO mode was also something really normal to do.

Normal people don't read QVL lists (they wouldn't even know what a QVL is) nor go into the BIOS to overclock RAM (yes, EXPO is overclocking).

I've never heard of QVL before and this comes in great because I want to build a PC. I've been a laptop user for many years.

> Anyway I'm running Linux and put on all (but one) workspaces (or "virtual desktops"), the CPU governor in "powersave" mode, where apparently the CPU doesn't got above 3 Ghz and doesn't go above 45 C. Then on my "dev" workspace, the one where I need the performances, I set the CPU governor to "ondemand"

Is that a feature of a particular desktop or did you write a custom daemon to check on which desktop you are currently? I know that KDE has the concept of activities, which is an even different concept than virtual desktop and would be interesting in that regard.

>...how these 7000 series are meant to operate: they'll boost but then shall lower a clock a bit to not go above 95 C).

Bah, I have clearly been running my fans too hard. Using stock configuration, my 65W CPU idles in the low 40Cs with slightly audible fan noise. If I disable/super-slow RPM until 45/50 C, presumably that would be completely fine, and give me a near silent build. Obvious in retrospect.

Sorry about the OT but I would love to hear your experience with your build since I'm going to build a very similar one: AMD Ryzen 7k with DDR5 and the exact same mobo. My mail is in my profile

Even simpler idea is just to disable turbo for "quiet" mode.