M3 is too boring so I have not followed details but I have just heard the trend. Independent benchmarks will tell us more than Just Josh's M3 devices price characterisation as "disgraceful".

By the way, are you aware that Apple, to its shame, has dramatically degraded the RAM bandwidth in the M3 Pro and Max? It was 200GB/s and 400, now it's 150 and 300... The "locomotive" of the industry suddenly crashed...

Desktop graphics cards still increase at a rate of ca. 4x efficiency (speed per watt) in 6 years and 2x cost-efficiency (speed per watt per € ) for applications without CPU or RAM bottlenecks. If you need none, it all boils down to manufacturing quality per price, which has been deteriorating indeed.

I lost interest in desktops after I stopped playing. My old PC still work reliably, but basically I use them for entertainment and all kinds of tests and as insurance in case of problems with laptops. I could have long been, 3 times, at least, both change, but there is no desire. And while the general trends in general do not impress me and rather depress with the unlimited increase in consumption, i.e. An extremely slow increase in productivity for 1W over the past 14 years.. Remember the first 10 years since the 2000 and 90s - then the increase in performance has been really impressive..and now the technological swamp, and even with gallopping prices of $.

In general, I believe that it is necessary to change hardware at about the same prices in $ and an increase in processor performance by at least 5 times in the same energy consumption. But this is not close to the processors. Those. Real progress has definitely slowed down very much since 2011, as with HDD. He is no longer able to cover prices by innovation in IT. And the X86 memory controllers are generally just shameful both on desktops and laptops. I do not see the meaning of 16-32 cores with such a shameful bandwidth of memory controllers.

Until I see how in servers, HBM3 memory on desktops, in mainstream PC decisions, I have no real interest in changing the desktop. The bandwidth of ram should already be at least 300GB/s+ for 2-3 years age on mainstream desktops.

Thank you for your report!

My motherboard is MSI B650 Tomahawk Wifi.

I tend to use my desktops for ca. 10 years, although I may upgrade one part or another. That said, depending on future GPU(s), I might wish to replace the CPU and then might be forced to also buy a new mainboard and more RAM. Unlikely. More likely, I will keep this PC for a longer time.

Robert, The TDP of my old processor is 95W officially from Intel. But he has been at 42% acceleration for more than 13 years!

My 140mm cooler (which hasn't been changed since November 2009) has no "curve" at all, it runs at about 900rpm all the time, which is simply not audible in a quiet room with a heavy metal large tower case, where additional measures have been taken to dampen vibrations and output noise outside.

The motherboard is NOT modified with radiators, only what is covered from the factory. It has been working stably for almost 14 years at 42% overclock. Just a very high quality motherboard from MSI. I also have an even older and cheaper motherboard from MSI for socket 775 - its capacitors swelled after 1 year when trying to overclock C2D (but not in the VRM zone of the processor - there are high-quality thin-film capacitors everywhere), but it still works stably with Xeon E5450 without overclocking, not surprisingly, after 15+ years...

I don't see any problem in making a practically silent system unit of a desktop computer with a consumption of up to 200-250W, unlike laptops, where this is physically impossible without limiting the total consumption (inside the laptop case - the screen panel does not count) to values less than 75-80W.

You just need to initially correctly and carefully choose the best quality motherboard with the ports and slots you need outside and inside, based on the fact that it will be with you for at least 10 years. Unless, of course, you are one of those who change hardware every 2-3 years, or even more often. You always need to anticipate trends in IT and understand whether there will be a radical leap in productivity. Back in 2009, I understood that Lynnfield, overclocked by 42%, was unlikely to lag much behind future Intel/AMD processors for another 7 years, and this is what happened in reality. This was an exceptionally good purchase considering it is still running strong after 13+ years. And only next year it will become completely bad, for a simple stupid reason - the bastards at Microsoft retired W7 too early, and because of this, in the winter of 2023, the manufacturers of key browsers refused to support it - first Google, then Mozilla.

You can, of course, install LTSC 2019 on it, which will be supported until about 2028, but alas, under W10 its performance will no longer be enough both in terms of response and in terms of free memory (and there is a maximum of 16GB).

I wish you to choose something thoughtfully and also with a large margin, so that the computer is stable when you squeeze everything possible out of it and will please you for at least 7-8 years. Unfortunately, I'm sure that modern motherboards and processors with elements of artificial aging will not withstand the same periods of time as my 2009 computer, which still copes perfectly with Youtube in 2023 at 2.5k@60fps resolution even without using hardware decoding , only by the processor... and this is a very serious load for a 2009 processor, even at 42% overclocking...

Quote from: NikoB on October 30, 2023, 14:43:07Cooling the processor and VRM zone (with a high-quality motherboard) does not pose any problem. My old system case with the processor overclocked by more than 40% has been working stably for more than 13 years. At the same time, the processor cooler is 100% silent under any load - less than 1000 rpm. The processor never overheats, despite consuming up to 130W during overclocking. The VRM zone on my high-quality motherboard is completely covered by radiators with heat pipes.

So it's funny for me to read that someone can't cool a processor with a ridiculous consumption of only 65W, when I easily managed it with 130W, 14 years ago.

The most important thing for success with a stable build is a high-quality motherboard with fully enclosed heatsinks across all key hot spots and excellent, high-quality capacitors/mosfet's. This is the secret of success.

Let me try to understand your solution.

When you say "the processor cooler is 100% silent under any load - less than 1000 rpm", you cannot mean 0dB as you use rotating fans. Less than 1000 RPM does not necessarily qualify as "reasonably silent" but less than 800 RPM might. Maybe you are less sensitive to low noise than I am? My idle RPM is 450 ~ 500 RPM, which is practically silent relative to the case fans. Under load, the CPU fans become somewhat unpleasant with more than 1050 RPM.

So if I translate your "less than 1000 RPM is silent" as "reasonably silent", the aim then is to achieve at most 1000 RPM under 100% CPU load. Maybe I can achieve this by altering the fan curves to start around 700 RPM and go to 1000 RPM already at, guessing, 70°C. I have not tried such because then I would already hear the CPU fans under low load. I prefer not to hear them then but only hear them every few dozen minutes for a couple of seconds under high load. Nevertheless, can you please share your CPU fan curve(s) and model of CPU cooler?

When you say that your processor never overheats, what maximum °C does it reach? My 89°C is also not overheating from a view of CPU safety or throttling but is only an indicator of high fan RPM. You might wish to call also this "overheating" but, if so, please clarify.

When you describe your VRM zone as "completely covered by radiators with heat pipes", do you mean those of the mainboard or have you custom-built your own radiators with heat pipes for the VRMs? Of course, (only) the former applies to my mainboard.

You speak of "fully enclosed heatsinks across all key hot spots and excellent, high-quality capacitors/mosfet's". What does "fully enclosed" mean? Like on every medium to high end mainboard? Otherwise, inhowfar better? "all key hot spots" of course. I presume your mainboard has better capacitors/mosfets than mine, but does excellent instead of intermediate quality of them matter for CPU heat and, if so, how and why?

I guess you understand that I will not change the mainboard, buy a particularly expensive one or next time. Rather, next time, I want to buy a 15W- CPU (or such in a notebook), whose cooling should be easy despite the ATX layout flaws.

Cooling the processor and VRM zone (with a high-quality motherboard) does not pose any problem. My old system case with the processor overclocked by more than 40% has been working stably for more than 13 years. At the same time, the processor cooler is 100% silent under any load - less than 1000 rpm. The processor never overheats, despite consuming up to 130W during overclocking. The VRM zone on my high-quality motherboard is completely covered by radiators with heat pipes.

So it's funny for me to read that someone can't cool a processor with a ridiculous consumption of only 65W, when I easily managed it with 130W, 14 years ago.

The most important thing for success with a stable build is a high-quality motherboard with fully enclosed heatsinks across all key hot spots and excellent, high-quality capacitors/mosfet's. This is the secret of success. But people, foolishly, skimp on key things and end up with daily headaches and garbage in the system unit. And motherboards have become monstrously expensive, even those that are of really high quality. For a simple reason - modern requirements for consumption from chips are prohibitive. Especially on laptops.

The technological dead end in x86 is obvious. Even despite the fact that AMD makes processors using better technical processes compared to Intel. Both companies fail to cope with their responsibilities as "technological" leaders and are gradually losing ground.

And the overall quality of products is rapidly deteriorating in all areas. Here, of course, you need to take inflation into account, but according to my personal observations, the quality of products in all sectors, not only IT, is degrading faster than real inflation, which proves the obvious fact that there are simply no resources left on the planet for quality goods for everyone...

Quote from: RobertJasiek on October 28, 2023, 09:13:03until it drops back to 65° ~ 69°. Usually, the CPU runs around 16% without thermal issue.

Correction: 59° ~ 63° when around 15% ~ 16%. (Ambient temperature 21° ~ 22°.)

Quote from: RobertJasiek on October 28, 2023, 09:29:16Why do some Youtuber reviewers boast that notebook fans would never need dust cleaning?! Do they not regularly use their notebooks intensively?!

Good questions Robert, hm. And now the related question here is - do all those air cleaners really help with dust? Perhaps the answer is there? Maybe they use some of those really effective (?) expensive ones in near proximity of their laptop/PC? I'm not willing to spend a couple thousands of €s just to experiment do they work or not though 😒

Oh, an actual concern is dust. I recommend regular cleaning:

- outside mesh every 1 or 2 weeks,
- careful treatment of front mesh every 3 weeks,
- clean all accessible fans with a brush and meshs every 4 months.

Why do some Youtuber reviewers boast that notebook fans would never need dust cleaning?! Do they not regularly use their notebooks intensively?!

My relevant softwares are
- KataGo (a Go playing AI program) for TensorRT,
- a pretrained deep neural net (size 95MB) for KataGo,
- Nvidia CUDA libraries,
- Nvidia CuDNN libraries,
- Nvidia TensorRT libraries.

I use a big mesh case with
- a passive 700W PSU, for which the case has holes above it,
- 3 front Arctic P14 fans,
- 1 rear Arctic P14 fan,
- a mainboard with individual fan headers and good VRM cooling,
- an essentially silent 200W GPU with 3 fans,
- 65W CPU,
- BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU cooler, whose thermal paste I have used.
- mainboard heatsink for the SSD, which I hardly load,
- RAM with heatsinks.

Thermally, the only problem is the CPU if I set CPU and case fan curves too low and the CPU occasionally reaches 30% ~ 100% load. Then temporarily for several seconds the CPU temperature reaches 80° ~ 89° and fan speeds increase for several seconds until it drops back to 65° ~ 69°. Usually, the CPU runs around 16% without thermal issue. I might set higher fan curves but then I would have less silent ordinary operation instead of not that silent (not loud but cannot be overheard any more then) occasional load. I would have preferred a 15W CPU with 8C but such is essentially unavailable for desktop mainboards.

The huge CPU cooler restricts space above the 200W GPU but this is no thermal problem. (It might be for a 450W GPU.)

The GPU occasionally reaches 215W. I have neither restricted its power targets nor altered its voltages. The typical GPU load is 92% ~ 96% but sometimes 50% ~ 100%.

SSD, RAM and chipset have good temperatures. I do not use the iGPU for AI.

@RobertJasiek

Which applications do you use ?   'Handbrake' ?

I guess another of your problems MIGHT be heat dissipation, isn't it ?


Regards.

Although I understand your criticism, it is not as black and white as you paint. An 8C/16T processor serves me well despite relatively low memory bandwidth because my applications do not need the latter (I am lucky in this respect). My major bottleneck is efficiency of energy consumption and hardware price (you are right about its importance) - even before GPU speed.

x86 is already dead anyway. The shameful 128-bit x86 memory controllers are 5 times slower than Apple's 512-bit controllers!

What is the point of 16 cores if they are suffocating with shamefully 1.5 times slower than Intel, AMD memory controllers built into processors with a lack of bandwidth already significantly higher!

Servers are already integrating HBM3 memory with a throughput of more than 1TB/s. But where is at least 250GB/s for an ordinary x86 processor? Not to mention the shameful HX series from Intel and AMD, where there is not even 100GB/s in 2023!

Why do we need so many cores with a slow memory bus, Intel/AMD? It's like buying a Ferrari and trying to drive it on a country, dirt road without an asphalt highway...