I’ve published a few other articles focused on this theme of ‘good things coming to me who waited’ – for instance I got a Power Mac G4 cube, about ten years after it had any relevance. I was gifted a 27 inch iMac… about five years after its usable life and eleven years after its launch. A couple times I’ve been given incredible PC builds from friends, only also a decade after they mattered. So in a sense, I nearly got the AMD Ryzen 3 3300x on time.
Approximately one year prior to this article, AMD launched two budget tier components in their Zen 2 architecture based line up: the 3100x and the 3300x. Each is a 4 core/8 thread part, but the 3100x split the cores among two chiplets, incurring a minor performance hit, while the 3300x gained a small amount of performance by using one fully functional chiplet, with the caveat of generating a little more concentrated heat. The problem was, demand for computers and components was incredibly high (and remains fairly high today, depending on the parts) so the 3100x and 3300x were virtually paper launches, so limited was the supply. I suppose manufacturing was shifted in favor of higher end and/or Zen 3 based parts because I didn’t see so much as a mention of either part until…
a couple weeks ago, when my local Micro Center happened to have a few 3300x in stock. And even though I have no need of one, I really really needed one.
So I bought one.
I’m the type of person who actually has spare AM4 motherboards as well as compatible RAM and SSDs, even cases to put it all in, really the entirety of entire computers still hanging around, parted out, but I didn’t put it together. It was too unnecessary. I guess I kept telling myself I might return it, until the return window closed, and then I wondered if I’d sell it, for a better price for being still sealed new in box.
But all it did was sit. The most minor of accomplishments completed, a year after its relevance.
I was inspired last night to build for no other reason than I had been expecting my Mini ITX AM4 board in the mail from an Amazon third-party and it was delayed. I was just so ready to build that that I couldn’t shake the need to build, despite not having what I was intending to assemble. So after debating a while, I constructed a system around the 3300x. I even went ahead and did a scuffed build stream on Twitch, just because.
There were even a couple charity viewers. It’s nice to have friends.
Basically, due to impatience, the 3300x system now exists.
Not too sure why.
The hidden benefit of streaming was that I finally know the approximate time to build a single storage device (nvme) system – that being relevant because it means there’s no other power cables to manage besides ATX 24 pin, CPU 8 pin, and GPU 8 pin.
And then CPU fan, exhaust fan, front audio, front USB, and front panel. Nothing major.
Speaking of CPU fan, WOW was that Arctic 33 needlessly complex. Equally complex as it was a third of an inch too tall for my beloved SAMA IM01 SFF chassis…
The 3300x is a system built around the AMD Ryzen 3 3300x 4 core/8 thread Zen 2 based AM4 CPU. It got paired with an old favorite – the Gigabyte B450 Aorus M mATX motherboard and G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-3200 MHz (2×8 GB for 16 GB total). I think I lose PCIe 4.0 but, it doesn’t matter for me or for this system at this point in time. One oddball 128 GB Samsung m.2 2230 nvme device is used, too short for any proper motherboard standoff but held in place by the Gigabyte provided heatsink. And just for fun, and for the fact that the 3300x lacks any onboard graphics, I plugged in the spare AMD Radeon RX 570 4 GB by PowerColor, enjoyed for its zero spin idle fan capability, and for the novelty of an “All AMD” system. It also has a somewhat elegant adapter to turn the PCIe power connector back on itself, routing the cable away from… the opaque side panel through which cable clutter can’t be seen anyway.
Ah well.