Farthest Purchase: Ordering from Newegg Global Philippines

It was November the 2nd, and I was finally able to order a the graphics card I had my sights on for the past months, the EVGA RTX 2060 KO, only to find out it was out of stock, and in Amazon it reported that the next restock was in December.

Instead of waiting for Black Friday, RTX 3060-related price drops, and Christmas sales, I jumped the gun and ordered a EVGA RTX 2060 SC (Superclocked). It's the vanilla RTX 2060, I know, and it's late 2020, I know. But there's something about EVGA cards that just makes them look better than what local choices are available here in the Philippines. What we do have here in the Philippines is Galax, Gigabyte, Zotac, MSI, and Asus. 

You might ask what I have against such manufacturers and the answer might surprise you. It's their really over-the-top branding on their GPU. It makes the GPU look overly gaudy (Galax, Asus, Gigabyte) or just outright out of place (Zotac, damn the way they slapped Zotac and RTX on the shroud is atrocious to be honest lol)

Anyway, so what you actually need to do is go to Newegg, then select your region. Items available will depend on this so choose honestly. 

This isn't a shopping guide so I won't cover everything. But I will tell you to avoid being scammed or outright surprised by the unexpected, turn the following options on:

That way you won't have a Lazada-like experience of 3rd party vendors in your catalog. Reason being it might be harder to deal with them with warranty.

Paying for your items is pretty straightforward for they accept Visa and Mastercard, or if you want to use PayPal they support that as well. I used PayPal with my order though.

Now for the fun part. How the item will actually get to you, dear reader, in the Philippines or to what other place that isn't USA.

Much to my surprise, the SSD isn't in the same Newegg warehouse as the rest of the items. It's at the other coast of America. 

Above is the screenshot of my order. Of course I have scrubbed it out of any meaningful tracking information. At the time of purchase and at the time of posting this, December 13th of 2020, Newegg is running a free shipping promo for orders 15,000 PHP and above. Aside from the graphics card, I also included an SSD and RAM. Both of those I can easily get in the Philippines but bruh when I compared Lazada prices vs Newegg, it was actually cheaper to buy abroad this time around lol.

Once you're done paying for your items. You'll be notified of the charges made to your credit card and not later than 24 hours you will get shipping information.

Shipping was through UPS. UPS' local partner here in the Philippines is apparently Air21 but it was 2GO that delivered both of my orders.  The parcel from California arrived within the delivery window of 10 days but the one from New York took 12 days. 

You would expect it would be shipped from California to Anchorage (Alaska btw), then down to somewhere in Japan or HK but boy oh boy I was wrong. Like all UPS packages, first, it went to their Worldport facility in Kentucky first, then flew out to Dubai (UAE), then to Shenzen (CH), then to Clark (PH), and finally to my home province of Misamis Oriental. That's about 2/3 around the world. The same thing happened to the 2nd package. I lost the detailed tracking information though, should've saved those and did this blog earlier. 

UPS has in-house custom clearance and my purchase already included VAT so I didn't have to pay any import fee or any fee, or contact customs for that matter.

Yeah they disinfected it at some point.

When will we see the packaging upgraded from carton though? 

You can watch the unboxing video here. The smaller parcel, the SSD, arrived in this:

Yep, one of those envelopes with built-in bubble wrap.

It didn't get squished lol. Of course there's some minor bend in the box but it wasn't bad enough to dent the plastic shroud protecting the actual SSD.

To sum it up, the experience was seamless. Go to Newegg if you are unable to find or your favorite store is unable to order parts (like EVGA cards damn they're so hard to find and order in PH). Or if for some odd reason the item you want is cheaper in Newegg (VAT and Shipping included) than in Lazada or that store Kris Aquino is promoting, I say give it a shot. Those memes and posts circulating of bent graphics card from Newegg are outliers. Your precious GPU is just as prone from being bent with local couriers, especially if the couriers are feeling a bit like playing basketball for some reason but instead of using a ball, they're using your parcel.

For me, only EVGA's aesthetic suited my needs. None of the fat shrouds of other brands. None of the fancy RGBs. None of  the out of place RTX badges yuck. Sadly EVGA added that red lip thing in their RTX 3000 series and I feel absolutely betrayed.

In hindsight, seeing the shitshow the RTX 30 series and RX6000 launches have been, I'm glad to have brought this card instead of waiting for stocks to stabilize. The 3070s and 3060s here in PH are way out of SRP and even major retailers are using the gray market to acquire sufficient stock. Anyway, since I only play Black Desert Online most of the time, what's the need for a 3000-series card lol. 

Thank you for reading through this rant, now go ahead and do your first newegg order.

Intel in 2020? For Black Desert Online? I5-9400F + GTX 750ti

If you've read any Black Desert Online optimization guide, you may have come across something along the lines of "BDO doesn't like hyperthreading" but that's not it why I decided to switch from my 3400g.

It's just that I got tired of below 60fps gameplay. 😂 Anyway I decided to go with the 9400F because I didn't want to wait and save for an i5-9600K (I was planning for a 666 theme build with a 9600K, RTX 2060, and 2666mhz DDR4) but noooooo I wanted to jump the gun before COVID19 affected the prices (to it did but not dramatically).

For the motherboard, I decided to got with the B365 chipset instead of the H310 one because all the H310 boards available then didn't have heatsinks on the VRMs. I went specifically B365M-A  Prime because it looked simple and doesn't have the obnoxious branding and heatsinks the available MSI boards had.   

Pretty in Monochrome

Don't mind the AMD sticker  on that Team Elite+ RAM. That Zotac graphics card has been with me since 2015. I was planning to buy a Zotac 760 or even 770 but all the models looked outlandish compared to this single fan 750ti. Powering this system is that EVGA BV-450 watts from my Ryzen 5 3400G. Oh? There's no SSD? Chill, it's part of the next post. 

It took me this long to realize Arctic has included something like that in their tubes of MX-4 thermal paste.. 

I know I'm supposed to just use a pea-sized drop but an x-pattern does provide better coverage across the die. 

The cpu cooler is a Gammaxx 300R. The R, by the way, stands for red.  Interestingly, Deepcool took some years to make a blue variant. 

For the case, I brought a used Aerocool V3X. I've always loved Aerocool cases, too bad their availability here in my town is shit. I spent close to 25 USD on paint for a 20 USD (I'm talking USD here because most of my readers are from the US) used case. Spent one can of primer and two cans of black spray paint. 

Good thing there was no flat black available otherwise I wouldn't see this glorious shiny surface of just black spray paint. The spray paint brand I always use. RJ Acrylic Epoxy Spray Paint.

The seller actually included the original fans that came with this V3X. Of course I cleaned them up first because he didn't bother to clean them lol. It's missing a drive tray though which is sad considering I brought an 80mm fan for it (actually I brought 3 new fans because I though the case didn't have included fans)

.

The red and black aesthetic is old but really good.

First boot and without the side panel on, it's this cool.

The acrylic side panel is a bit banged up and it's also tinted to look like it's smoked.  I actually like the smoked effect because the light doesn't go through brightly and doesn't cause glare like it would have if the panel was clear. 

So how does Black Desert Online fare on this  i5-9400f + 750ti systei? Well I fucked up and didn't manage to save my benchmark runs but it's between a Ryzen 5 3400G and a  Ryzen 5 1600AE + RX 570. You can manage to run 60fps on this one but not all the time. You'll have to lower the graphics to medium preset.

Returning to AMD on a Ryzen APU Part 3: Overclocking the Ryzen 5 3400G MANUALLY (Results and Rant)

So, I finally bought myself a higher wattage PSU (but a remarkable questionable 80+ bronze 450 watt PSU from EVGA) so I can overclock outside of PBO. Here's a set of quick and dirty settings to comfortably overclock a Ryzen 5 3400G. First order of business to to power off your computer, turn it again then enter the bios. Go to advance frequency settings (using a Gigabyte board btw) and change CPU clock, CPU voltage, GFX clock, GFX voltage. 

CPU clock: 4000mhz

CPU voltage: 1.35 (started at 1.3750)

Vega 11 clock: 1650 mhz

Vega 11 voltage: 1.3 

Vega 11 memory clock: 1600 mhz

Since you can't the GFX memory speed on the bios, you'll need to do the last part with RyzenMaster. Remember to only change this part in RyzenMaster:

I think you can get away with just the stock memory clock speed of 1333.

For some reason, my CPU voltage here is 1.45. Dunno if this refers to a cap value but certainly I did not set it to 1.45.

CPU-Z and GPU-Z for your convenience. 

For the fun part, here are results and evaluations. First off, we have our favorite Monster Hunter Online benchmark. I don't play the game and I'm not planning to. Just using the free standalone benchmark tool :P

Even with everything overclocked, this result is just 47 points more than 1525mhz/1600mhz settings we achieved though PBO.

If you've been in this blog for long, you do know I regularly play Black Desert Online. Here's how the stock wraith spire of an overclocked Ryzen 5 3400G stacks against BDO in medium settings (upscale enabled)

I'll buy an AIO next. 

This thermometer is situated directly above the power supply and directly below the wraith spire. Look at that internal case temps. I guess the XFan's included in the Deepcool Matrexx 30 isn't helping much. 

As you can expect, the thermals are rather dangerous, if not atrocious. VSOC can go up to 107c and I'm told it's safe until 120c. Talk about thermal headroom huh?

Interestingly, when I reduced the voltage from 1.375 to just 1.350, my 3DMark Night Raid results lowered.

And it got progressively worse this morning. It's almost toe-to-toe with just the PBO settings we had earlier. Though I'm not feeling much of a difference in Black Desert Online.

But mind you, my goal here isn't just to overclock the Ryzen 5 3400G for testing. But rather to beat or match the performance of a GTX-750ti. And I can say we're almost there, just need better RAM and cooling maybe.

Yeah, that 750ti was paired with an E5-2670.

So what can we take away from this? Where do we go from here?

We can still push this certain Ryzen 5 3400G past 4.00ghz if we have better CPU cooling and case thermals. Should have tried this on an open testbench with my Shadow Rock LP. Currently waiting for a compatible Deepcool Gammaxx 300R since the Matrexx 30 has rather lol maximum CPU cooler height limit. This probably isn't the last of this series lol.

Update

Got the Deepcool Gammaxx 300R installed and the 130w TDP tower style cooler does wonders. I don't want to say there's much overclocking headroom left. And Oh, did I mention after trying other overclocking settings on my Ryzen 5 3400G that it power cycled so much my Windows 10 got corrupted? Yeah. Anyway, results below. Fan curve is set to maximum as well. You couldn't fit a Gammaxx 400 much less a Hyper 212 so you're going to be stuck with a Gammaxx 300 or a Gammaxx S40. When am I getting sponsored by Deepcool lol.

Look at how fast that went down. Thank you tower coolers.

And that's it for this system unit. I'm getting an M22 soon but that's going to be after I complete a swap of this B450I Aorus PRO WIFI with a much fulfilling B450M Steel Legend from Asrock. Same case though lol.

Arctic MX4 After 4 Months

This thing held up against a 3400G and a Shadow Rock LP pretty well.

Returning to AMD on a Ryzen APU Part 2: Overclocking the Ryzen 5 3400G Through PBO (Results and Rant)

So you have a brand new (lol it's been out for almost 4 months) Ryzen 5 3400G. It's an unlocked chip and you really want to push it to the limit. What to do?

1. Watch this video about AMD Precision Boost Overdrive
2. Download Ryzen Master
3. Max out all the automatic values 
4. Watch your computer crash and burn Watch your temperatures! You might not be comfortable with the VSOC MOS going upwards to 90c.
5. If you're experiencing stability issues, I suggest increasing the overdrive by the 10s.

 Yeah I just maxed the boost overdrive for GPU clock to 200mhz, while I only added 100mhz to the CPU clock. Also I clocked the memory up to 1600mhz from the base 1333mhz.

Next up are some benchmarks? Dunno just snapped some screens while running tests/games. You can view some actual gameplay benchmarks here:

My system specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 53400G with Vega 11 Graphics

Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus B450i PRO WIFI 

Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury 2666mhz DDR4 (2x4gb) 

Boot Drive: Team Group 240gb SATA3 M.2

Storage 1: Western Digital Green 120gb SATA3 SSD  

Case: InWin Chopin SFF Case with 150W +80 Bronze PSU

 Aida64 Load Temps (Stock)

Aida64 Idle Temps (Stock)

 

Black Desert Online running on the "Really Toasty" profile.

 

 

Black Desert Online running on stock profile.

 

Monster Hunter Online is a date game but it has a really useful stand-alone benchmark. The stock 3400G scored 4530 points.

This result is from applying the 200mhz on both CPU and GPU clocks.

Overclocking the memory to 1600mhz seems worth it though. If only I had more power. My computer's 150w bronze power supply is starting to feel like a real bottleneck.

Blender Benchmark

Cinebench R15

I'll probably do a more "professional" Ryzen 5 3400G benchmark soon but you know, there's already lots of those online. Heh. Can't wait to upgrade this build (in a better case, with more power, and finally better cooling).

Returning to AMD on a Ryzen APU Part 1: Introduction and Parts List

So I had 450 USD* on my hands. Just enough to get myself a current-generation Ryzen 3000 series APU Prank'ed, the Ryzen 3400G APU is actually a Zen+ 12nm CPU and not a Zen2 7nm CPU.

So why an APU? Actually if you're asking what an APU is, it's AMD's term for a CPU with built-in graphics, it means Accelerated Processing Unit. If you have been in this blog before, you might have read this guide I wrote about setting up crossfire between a A10 APU and R7 video card. 

So just a mere 17 months later I'm back to an APU after going through what? Four totally different computer builds? First it was the AMD A10 7850K + R7 250, then the Intel Xeon X3460 + GTX 750ti, after that was the AMD Ryzen 5 1600 + RX 570, finally for the last 3 months I used that overpowered and high-consumption Intel Xeon E5-2670 + GTX1070 rig. 

My previous build, a workstation I named Alcott/Blue Tears.

Oops, kind of digressed there. So why go back to an APU from a fairly OP build? My reasons are as follows:

1. The previous build was too power hungry, pulling 200 watts from the wall on idle and pulling at least 400 watts when under load. This made me unable to use our family home's solar power system.  This Ryzen 5 3400G system only pulls 60-170 watts (monitor, speakers, and desk lamp included).
2. Due to the motherboard not having spare system fan headers (OEM 7JNH0 Socket 2011), all the fans ran on fixed speeds. At first it was a full 1200 rpm but luckily an online store was selling a fan hub with a switch that allowed for 8 fans running at either low (don't know the exact RPM) or full speed (1200-1500rpm depending on fan model). With fans running at full speeds, the PC was really loud. LIKE IT CAN GET THROUGH HEADPHONES LOUD. With only the CPU fan and PSU fan on the InWin Chopin, it should be comfortably quiet.
3. On top of the case fans, the GPU fan sounded more like a whine at >2000rpm. Though Asus was kind enough to update the DUAL model's bios with the 0db fan feature (this was only available on their Strix lines before) so it wasn't spinning (and hence) wasn't loud on idle. But oh boy was it irritating when it ramp-ed up. Having no GPU, though sounds kinda lame, does keep me sane from the noise and keeps the desire to upgrade low.
4. I wasn't using it as what it was intended to be. I built that rig with a workstation mentality in mind, 16 threads, 32gb RAM, a powerful 8gb graphics card for video editing and rendering 3D backgrounds. I was even supposed to have a friend use it to make 3D backgrounds for us but nope that did not materialize. It became an OP gaming rig instead for games that weren't even current generation nor AAA. I mean come on, why run TERA and Black Desert Online on something like that? TL;DR too overpowered for gaming.
5. Looking at my planned upgrades for it, it would cost me close to 1200 USD, almost twice as much as the original build. It would be cheaper to buy current-generation parts and just buy a 2nd hand GPU if I needed to.
6. Speaking of planned upgrades. GPU are undergoing a rapid phase of innovation. Just look at what AMD has done, First we had Vega, then Radeon VII, then now we have Navi. For some reason AMD is still selling Polaris GPUs. Suddenly your current-gen GPU is now obsolete(?). With an APU, I don't need to worry about being left behind in terms of video cards. I mean, at least I won't be pressured to upgrade. Besides, the APU can run most of the games in my Steam Library just fine (rip Borderlands 3 and Ace Combat 7 I won't be able to play you lol).
7. I started hating LEDs and RGB. 
8. I can't bring it overseas.

So what's cooking? A Ryzen 3400G-based Mini-ITX system.  

All brought from Lazada.ph hahaha, thanks Lazada.

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3400G with Radeon RX Vega 11 
• Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus B450I Pro Wifi 
• Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury 2666mhz DDR4 2x4gb  
• CPU Cooler: BeQuiet! Shadow Rock LP 130w TDP cooler but with a 120mm Noctua NF12 
• Case: InWin Chopin SFF Case with 150w 80+ Bronze PSU

But bruh, the graphics card. Yeah bruh, no space for a graphics card and that's gonna keep me away from buying one. I want to believe that the final AM4 APU would be a Zen 3 + Navi one. And I hope that ultimate AM4 APU would still support the B450 chipset lol. 

Now, in order of unboxing, let us walk through some of the parts involved. There's already a ton of unboxing and reviews of the items listed here so you can watch those too if you'd like lol.

First is the InWin Chopin. This small form factor case can be had for at least 85 USD. It comes with 150 watt +80 Bronze rated power supply unit. From what I've read online, this is just a spiced up model of an older  InWin BQ Series SFF case. I chose the silver over the black one because the black model looked like a magnet for hand prints.

That's actually a side panel that slides off and is not hinged in anyway.

It come with these mylar strips. I choose orange for a silver-orange theme. Orange being the color of the Aorus product line and in the PC world, is a kind of neutral color. If you go red, it's AMD, go green and you're Nvidia, go blue and you're Intel. Orange also mean Ryzen as well but the connotation isn't that common.

Look at sleek brushed aluminum.

Hidden underneath that side panel are the two 2.5'' drive bays. Also hidden underneath the InWin logo is a VESA interface. The paint job on the panel looks grainy and poorly done up close. If they dare call it a powder finish, I'd riot.

The cables are nice and all but i wish they were flat or braided. Nothing a little cable wrap can remedy.

The 2 2.5'' drives installed. Cable routing is tricky, be careful not to adversely bend something.

Since this is an ITX build, you can't really expect having enough space for cable management but this case actually has enough space to hide all the front panel I/O and power cables via recesses inside the interior of the case. 

Next is the CPU and motherboard. I bought this as a bundle so they came in the same package.

I thought they sent in 5 optical mice for free but those boxes are just for packaging lol.

Sorry for the excessive lighting but damn this motherboard is so monochrome I like it. But I also feel the M.2 heat sink is kinda useless but hey, it does look clean. The front panel connectors are in an unusual spot? That's probably the usual spot for front panel connectors in a mITX motherboard.

Next is the CPU. Contrary to my previous Ryzen 5 1600. The box for the 3400G comes with a carbon fiber-esque appearance rather than just the plain dark gray of the previous generations. Also since the chip comes with Radeon graphics, it also comes with a Radeon case badge.

Here's the CPU mounted in the motherboard. The golden arrow wasn't there and I had to search the internet if the triangle outline was indeed referring the previous golden triangle thing I was expecting to appear on this AM4 motherboard. As you can observe here, the cables can be nicely tucked to the sides, allowing for a clear and unobstructed area for CPU cooler installation.

The included Wraith Spire box cooler was too tall for the Chopin and I didn't have any compatible cooler at the moment so I opted to just install something that could cover the whole thing but at the same time cool it. So here's where that filthy Shadow Rock LP comes into the equation. I don't have the original SilentWing fan but I did have a Noctua NF12 lying around so there it goes.

After that painstakingly long black screen (which is normal for first boot), I finally got into the bios. See how cool that thing runs with a 130w cooler? 

The Noctua fan was pleasantly quiet, as expected. Even at it's full rated speed of 1500rpm, it was okay. But during gaming, coil whine from the motherboard (or is it the CPU) overpowers the fan noise. More on that on Part 2.

I wanted to overclock the 3400G but I found on youtube that under super stress-test conditions, a similar system unit could draw more than 150 watts from the wall and since I'm limited to 150 watts, I refrained from doing so but I did try, since the 3400G comes with the new Automatic Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) and that thing is accessible through Ryzen Master. So I tinkered about and went straight to +200mhz on both CPU and GPU and it froze the system. Couldn't event get through windows once Ryzen Master loaded in the background. So I promptly uninstalled that thing and I'm back in business, but for some reason UMA and frequency controls are now locked in the BIOS. I'll have to jump the CMOS next time I service this machine.

This ends Part 1. Benchmarks and other stuff on Part 2, coming soon. Thanks for reading.