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WE TACKLE TOUGH READER QUESTIONS ON...94 MAXIMUMPC AUG 2019 maximumpc.com
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Buy Now?
I am in the throes of
building a new system,
and have a question on the
next generation of Ryzen
processors. Is it worth
the wait for the new Ryzen
3000, AMD X570, chipset,
or should I go forward
with the AMD X470 chipset,
Ryzen 2700X, and upgrade
the CPU later? The machine
will be handling moderate
gaming, moderate photo,
and everyday use. Also,
what components would be
potentially affected by the
new AMD X570 chipset?
–Thom MasonExEcutivE Editor, AlAn
dExtEr, rEsponds: At the
time of going to press,
Ryzen 3000 still hasn’t
been released, and we’re
waiting to get test samples
so we can see if the reality
can live up to the hype.
We suspect it will, though,
and from what we’ve
seen so far, it’s going to
shake the desktop PC
market up significantly.
The shift to PCIe 4.0 is
the big sell for the X570
motherboard, which will
see storage performance
improve significantly,
as well as ushering in
potentially better graphicsperformance—but initially
don’t expect too much from
a gaming perspective.
So, we’d definitely wait
until Ryzen 3000 comes
out, which leaves us with
the question of which
model you should buy,
and this we honestly can’t
say at this point, as it
really does depend on the
performance on offer from
each. If we had to make
a recommendation, the
Ryzen 7 3700X looks like
the best bang for anyone’s
buck right now.Spin Cycle
Is there a way to reduce the
CD/DVD-ROM drive rpm
when playing DVD movies?
Some DVD movies play
at extremely high rpm,
causing the drive to make a
lot of noise. –Wayne R.ExEcutivE Editor, AlAn
dExtEr, rEsponds: There
used to be several tools
that would help with this,
but given the declining
popularity of optical media
and drives in machines,
these seem to have fallen
out of favor. There used
to be a such a tool in Nero
(remember that?), by the
name of NeroDriveSpeed,
and if you search aroundyou should be able to find it
in an archive somewhere,
although we have no idea
if it works, as we don’t
have a machine with an
optical drive to hand. If
the problem persists,
you may find that your
drive is faulty, in which
case replacing it may be
your best bet. Looking at
Newegg, a replacement
can be had for around $25.AMD 4K Blu-ray
A couple of issues ago,
you tackled a letter from
a reader who was trying
to build a rig capable of
playing 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
discs. At the time, the only
CPU capable of doing the
decoding was a specific
Intel processor. Since then,
I’ve heard rumors that
certain Nvidia GPUs are
capable of offloading the
decoding, and it shouldn’t
matter what CPU you use.
I’d like that to be true, as
I have my heart set on a
Ryzen chip for my next
build. Do you have any
inside knowledge?
–Bill WheelerExEcutivE Editor, AlAn
dExtEr, rEsponds:
Unfortunately, not much
has changed when itcomes to Ultra HD Blu-
ray playback, and to
legitimately play your
movies, you still need
an Intel Kaby Lake or
Coffee Lake CPU with
Software Guard Extensions
(SGX). There’s a limited
number of drives that
work with it as well. You
can find a complete list
of supported hardware
at http://www.cyberlink.com/
support/product-faq-
content.do?id=19860. The
frustration is that there’s
no hardware reason why
AMD’s Ryzen chips aren’t
supported—it isn’t to do
with a lack of performance,
but the DRM requirement is
only solved by SGX.Better than RAID
In the July 2019 issue, there
was a feature called “Deep
Into Storage Spaces.” Great
article about a relatively
useless implementation of
drive pooling in Windows 10
called Storage Spaces. That
is, until you introduced the
“Solid States” boxout—very
cool. I immediately used
an HDD and SSD to set up
a tiered simple storage
pool using the commands
in the boxout. The article
clearly states that working
from new unformatted
Ryzen 3000 Purchases
Optical Drive Noise
AMD Blu-ray Support