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Build your own computer guide

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Dec 15, 2009#1

Bonhomme Richard

Word on the street is it would be helpful to create a guide to learn how to build your own computer. I learned how to build my own computer by upgrading an old one part by part (added bonus of learning to fix my mistakes quickly so Dad wouldn't find out I broke the computer he spent a ton of money on) and I really think that's the best way to do it if you're just getting started. I'll be linking other threads to this thread that deal with various parts of the computer. I figure that way everything can get a good overview with added comments from everyone afterward. Hopefully that will make referencing easy.

The following spoiler tag has an overview of the vital components for those that could use it. It's a bit of a block of text, so those of you that don't need it can scroll to the links faster.

To give some info on how to look at a computer I usually like to use the example of a library. The power supply is the breaker box coming into the building. It steps down the power coming in to a level that each component connected to it can handle without frying it (I know that’s more of what a transformer on the pole does, but indulge me). The files are the books on the shelves and the collection of all the shelves are the hard drive. The table you’re working at can be considered the RAM. When looking something up, it’s very unlikely you would go find a book, read it, get the information you need, return it to the shelf and start on the next book. You would bring various books to your table and reference each one while doing your study. The RAM is like that in that it stores files in an area for easy access. How much RAM you have is how big the table is you’re working at. The CPU is a little tricky in this example, but the simplest way to think about it is how quickly you can figure out what you’re reading in the books on your table. The connection to your hard drive (IDE, SATA 1.5 or 3.0) is how quickly you can get to the books on the bookshelves and get them to your table. The motherboard is kind of the floor connecting everything together.

Thread Links
Power Supply
Hard Drive

...more to come - this is a work in progress

Nov 11, 2011#2

SpecialKO

Yearly bumps!

Nov 11, 2011#3

PatrThom

I would have already happily posted a guide (or three) by now except that hardware changes so quickly and it is absolutely impossible to assemble a generic build that meets everyone's needs.

--Patrick

Nov 11, 2011#4

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
I would have already happily posted a guide (or three) by now except that hardware changes so quickly and it is absolutely impossible to assemble a generic build that meets everyone's needs.

--Patrick

^^ this. Any computer guide is obsolete the instant it is published.

Nov 11, 2011#5

phil

could there be just a basic one about just what basic components are needed and how to actually assemble them? I think I could shop around and get the parts I want for the PC I want to build but I honestly have never actually put one together and don't know where to start.

Nov 12, 2011#6

SpecialKO

phil said:
I think I could shop around and get the parts I want for the PC I want to build but I honestly have never actually put one together and don't know where to start.

Ditto. I've replaced almost every single component in various PCs I've owned except the mobo and CPU, so I'm assuming I could manage, but you know what they say about assumptions...

Nov 12, 2011#7

strawman

I've moved my guide to its own thread, 'cause that's how I roll, dawg.

http://halforums.com/xenforo/threads/stienmans-build-it-yourself-guide.26682/

Nov 1, 2013#8

GasBandit

Tech Report's fall 2013 system guide came out today. Man, it's worse than being on a diet in a candy store on days like this.

http://techreport.com/review/25584/tr-fall-2013-system-guide

Nov 1, 2013#9

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
worse than being on a diet in a candy store

You have no idea. Seriously. You don't.

--Patrick

Nov 1, 2013#10

Bowielee

I will resist the urge to update computer. Works just fine and plays current games at full bells and whistles... but processor bottlenecking some stuff...... no .... will not buy....

Nov 1, 2013#11

bhamv3

Why do I feel like I should've waited a month or two to buy my new rig.

Nov 1, 2013#12

GasBandit

bhamv3 said:
Why do I feel like I should've waited a month or two to buy my new rig.

Don't worry, in 2 or 3 months another system guide will be out.

Oct 26, 2014#13

GasBandit

http://techreport.com/review/27252/tr-fall-2014-system-guide

Techreport Fall 2014 system guide

Oct 27, 2014#14

Thread Necromancer

GasBandit said:
http://techreport.com/review/27252/tr-fall-2014-system-guide

Techreport Fall 2014 system guide

for the necro

Oct 27, 2014#15

GasBandit

Thread Necromancer said:
for the necro

I dunno if you can really "necro" a sticky, even if it IS a year since the last post.

Oct 27, 2014#16

PatrThom

It would've been locked in another week anyway, wouldn't it?

--Patrick

Oct 27, 2014#17

Dave

Nope. That mod is gone.

Oct 27, 2014#18

Thread Necromancer

I didn't realize it was a sticky...

... I waas a little drunk

Oct 28, 2014#19

Chad Sexington

Why can they not put it all on one page.

Oct 28, 2014#20

GasBandit

Chad Sexington said:
Why can they not put it all on one page.

Ad revenue.

Oct 28, 2014#21

PatrThom

Chad Sexington said:
Why can they not put it all on one page.

So many sites draw out their reviews to generate more pages to click, which generates more ad revenue. It's not a big deal to me if they want to add in an extra page, but when there start being 3-5 obviously unnecessary pages, it gets tiresome.

--Patrick

Dec 12, 2014#22

GasBandit

Christmas 2014 system guide is up.

http://techreport.com/review/27488/tr-christmas-2014-system-guide

Feb 26, 2015#23

GasBandit

Spring 2015 system guide.

http://techreport.com/review/27832/tr-february-2015-system-guide

May 12, 2015#24

GasBandit

May 2015 system guide!

http://techreport.com/review/28198/the-tech-report-system-guide-may-2015-edition

May 12, 2015#25

PatrThom

FYI for anyone watching/thinking about this stuff. This fall (probably) we start getting DX12, DDR4 and HBM memory, AMD starts to completely redesign their CPUs, Intel should be coming out with their Skylake line (with better USB 3 support), and SSD prices will probably continue to fall. Oh, and Windows 10 is coming, too.

So what this means is that we're at another corner in computing, another sea change, another point where a lot of things are going to change at once but haven't yet. My personal advice is that now is a good time to build, because the DDR3 generation is stable and well-tested, and it'll probably be until mid-/late-2017 before the DDR4 generation really starts to settle down. And if you do build now:
-Make sure the board supports PCIe 3.0
-Try to get something with 4 RAM slots
-An M.2 slot would be nice, one capable of size 2280 even better
-Intel CPUs are still the best performers, so you probably want a socket 1150 board
-Minimum of 2xSata-III (Sata/600) ports
-Should have an extra 4-pin or 8-pin power hookup from the power supply

--Patrick

May 12, 2015#26

GasBandit

You heard the man. The PC dev cycle solstice is upon us. This is the time to consecrate your new rig to the glory of the master race.

May 12, 2015#27

PatrThom

I hear that Windows will stop having version numbers, too, making it less like an operating system and more like a makes-your-computer-work service that they just push updates to for the rest of your computer's life. I wonder how that'll turn out?

--Patrick

May 12, 2015#28

Shakey

PatrThom said:
I hear that Windows will stop having version numbers, too, making it less like an operating system and more like a makes-your-computer-work service that they just push updates to for the rest of your computer's life. I wonder how that'll turn out?

--Patrick

It seems to work for Android. Your computer will also only get updates for as long as it meets the minimum requirements. So it's not exactly the entire life of the computer.

May 12, 2015#29

PatrThom

Shakey said:
It seems to work for Android. Your computer will also only get updates for as long as it meets the minimum requirements. So it's not exactly the entire life of the computer.

It works for OSX/iOS also, I just don't know how far back they will keep open the "window" of compatibility, hardware-wise. 3 years? 5 years? 7 years? Or will they divide by generations?

--Patrick

May 12, 2015#30

Gared

PatrThom said:
FYI for anyone watching/thinking about this stuff. This fall (probably) we start getting DX12, DDR4 and HBM memory, AMD starts to completely redesign their CPUs, Intel should be coming out with their Skylake line (with better USB 3 support), and SSD prices will probably continue to fall. Oh, and Windows 10 is coming, too.

So what this means is that we're at another corner in computing, another sea change, another point where a lot of things are going to change at once but haven't yet. My personal advice is that now is a good time to build, because the DDR3 generation is stable and well-tested, and it'll probably be until mid-/late-2017 before the DDR4 generation really starts to settle down. And if you do build now:
-Make sure the board supports PCIe 3.0
-Try to get something with 4 RAM slots
-An M.2 slot would be nice, one capable of size 2280 even better
-Intel CPUs are still the best performers, so you probably want a socket 1150 board
-Minimum of 2xSata-III (Sata/600) ports
-Should have an extra 4-pin or 8-pin power hookup from the power supply

--Patrick

Damnit, now I'm really torn. My current computer is at least 6 years old (if not older) and has really come to the end of its lifecycle. Not in that it won't work anymore, it still performs most tasks I throw at it without an issue, but it can only support up to more GB of RAM and they have to be DDR2, it can't handle USB 3.0, and putting either an SSD or a better video card in it would really be a waste of money. Oh, and it's an off-gaming-brand AMD Athlon desktop (Lenovo), that was $699.99 at Fry's however many years ago. I was really tempted to throw together a budget build for around $750 from the guide up there that would at least get me up to Haswell and DDR3 support with an Intel quad-core. But, the performance of my computer isn't preventing me from playing any of the games that I currently desire to play, or preventing me from browsing the net with about 80 tabs open at a time (except when the flash container in Firefox starts eating exceptionally high amounts of RAM and I have to shut it down), so I don't exactly have a need to replace it any time soon.

Grr.

May 12, 2015#31

PatrThom

Gared said:
Grr.

I think the most important question to consider is this: "Do you feel your current computer will meet your needs until Q2 2017 (i.e., 2 more years)?"
If the answer is yes, you're probably good.
If the answer is no, then it's probably time to start scoping out a build.
Rationale: By the start of 2017*, barring any really disruptive technology, legislation, or act(s) of God, the market should have started to settle down and coalesce around the new standards, and prices should also be stabilizing.

--Patrick
*my guess only, I am not basing this on any real data, just a feeling that it'll take until H2 2016 for things to settle down techno-allegiance-wise BUT then adding a few more months because of inevitable holiday season "everyone's gotta have the new hotness" markups and other craziness.

May 12, 2015#32

Gared

It should be fine for me for the next two years, barring any catastrophes, acts of God, or incredibly nasty virii. I've been living on computer savings time for so long I wouldn't even know what to do with a top-of-the-line new computer. Hell, I just had to upgrade my video card last summer when I bought Tropico 5 because my last one didn't support DirectX 11 (probably because DirectX 8 was the standard when I bought it). The only thing I'm really concerned with is the possibility of suffering a system casualty after the new tech comes out, but before prices can calm down.

May 12, 2015#33

PatrThom

Gared said:
The only thing I'm really concerned with is the possibility of suffering a system casualty after the new tech comes out, but before prices can calm down.

Don't worry about that. Not because it's something that won't happen, but because it's something totally beyond your control. Prepare yourself for the possibility that it could happen (keep your system dusted, make backups, look for swelling caps, etc.), but don't lose sleep over it.
Also, to build a $2000 system in 2 years, you only have to sock away $20/wk if you start today.

--Patrick

May 18, 2015#34

jwhouk

Finally going to add 8 GB of memory to the Gateway, since I have two open slots.

May 18, 2015#35

PatrThom

Up from 2GB?

--Patrick

May 19, 2015#36

jwhouk

PatrThom said:
Up from 2GB?

--Patrick

6. Weird setup: it came with 4 in one slot and two in the other.

May 23, 2015#37

jwhouk

And if you don't hear from me in the next three weeks, it's because said memory fritzed my 'puter.

May 23, 2015#38

PatrThom

Depending on the rest of your computer, there are reasons why you might only want to run three sticks of memory.
But really, mixing sizes usually just means slightly reduced performance. Mixing timings is another issue.

--Patrick

May 23, 2015#39

jwhouk

14 GB. Not noticing much difference. Inside of computer was one big dust bunny, though :O

May 23, 2015#40

PatrThom

Ok, now THAT'S a problem.

--Patrick

May 23, 2015#41

jwhouk

Blew it out with canned air. I just need to remember to do that more often.

May 26, 2015#42

Eriol

I found a spiderweb in a computer once. Not mine. Was in a nook with no airflow but had a bit of heat. Probably loved the spot.

May 26, 2015#43

PatrThom

Eriol said:
I found a spiderweb in a computer once. Not mine. Was in a nook with no airflow but had a bit of heat. Probably loved the spot.

I would love to post pictures of some of the computers I service, but because I can't share pictures of the service area itself due to legal confidentiality stuff, you will just have to use your imagination. I will say that many computers come in looking no different than your average dryer lint screen.

--Patrick

May 30, 2015#44

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
You heard the man. The PC dev cycle solstice is upon us. This is the time to consecrate your new rig to the glory of the master race.

Tue is Computex, and then we should start to hear what everyone will be coming out with (whether they're at the show or not).
New processors (Broadwell/Skylake), new sockets (LGA1151), new motherboards (1xx series), new interfaces (TBolt 3), new PSUs, new GPUs, all kinds of stuff.

--Patrick

Jun 8, 2015#45

GasBandit

Jun 8, 2015#46

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
(PC Gaming Graphic)

We're updating/replacing two rigs in our household. It's going to be just over $2500 for the both of them. I'll post the specs and rationale in this thread once it's all together (waiting on the CPUs to actually hit the market so we can buy them).
The rigs being replaced were originally built in 2005 and 2007. It's going to be quite a leap.

--Patrick

Jun 10, 2015#47

GasBandit

Intel's integrated graphics processors are getting to the point where a gamer doesn't necessarily have to get a discrete GPU if they're not concerned about 1080p/60fps or 4k or such. Intel has now set up a gaming portal to recommend games that work well on their IGPs, and what settings to use for the best experience.

http://techreport.com/news/28436/intel-gets-gamers-up-to-speed-with-optimal-igp-settings

For example, the optimal 1366x768 settings for borderlands 2 on an i5 running an HD 4600 IGP are:

I mean, sure it's not blowing the doors off anything, but a laptop running medium settings at full native resolution is a pretty good deal.

Jun 10, 2015#48

SpecialKO

That is a cool little tool.

Jun 10, 2015#49

PatrThom

I am currently playing HotS and D3 on "medium" on an Intel HD 4000 (Ivy Bridge IGP). I get solid 30fps in D3 (so long as some Barb isn't spamming whirlwind) and a flat 30fps in HotS and that's plenty good enough for portable gaming, even though it's an integrated graphics processor that was released in Q2 2012.
News flash, though...the new "interim" Broadwell chips that were released? The new i7-5775C and i5-5675C? They have an updated graphics engine (HD 6xxx) that is about 40% faster than the 4xxx series and they come with bonus on-chip VRAM that will boost that lead even more.

And all of this is ahead of Intel's Skylake release slated for H2 2015/H1 2016, which will boost that performance even more. This means the market for low-end graphics cards (such as the revered Radeon HD 5670 or GeForce GT 430/530) is vanishing, since these "free" graphics obviate the need for a discreet GPU if your needs are low.

--Patrick

Nov 27, 2015#50

DarkAudit

Welp.

As of Wednesday, my HD 6800 video cards have passed into "legacy" territory. As in the last Catalyst drivers are really the last, and there will be no Crimson drivers other than the beta. I'm still running the AsRock P67 Extreme4 motherboard with the i5 2500K and 8GB RAM. Everything is ticking along nicely, except I keep getting out of memory errors when trying to run WoW with Ultra graphics. I've got the swap file on the HDD I use for personal files. The system files are on the 128GB SSD.

So what to do? This is a circa 2011 system. Go for a new set of video cards? Start over with a whole new build with the latest and greatest? Is Crossfire still a thing?

Nov 27, 2015#51

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
Go for a new set of video cards? Start over with a whole new build with the latest and greatest? Is Crossfire still a thing?

No need to start over. Crossfire is still a thing.
What matters most is which OS you're going to be using.

--Patrick

Feb 25, 2016#52

PatrThom

Thanks, Kris, for saying what's on my mind every time I go looking for computer components.

--Patrick

Feb 28, 2016#53

jwhouk

Onto a different subject: what non-Windoze OS could I throw on an older Toshiba Satellite laptop to make it somewhat useable?

Feb 28, 2016#54

GasBandit

jwhouk said:
Onto a different subject: what non-Windoze OS could I throw on an older Toshiba Satellite laptop to make it somewhat useable?

Your best bet is probably one of the flavors of linux. Probably Ubuntu, though Slackware has a reputation for making older machines run well.

More info: http://www.techradar.com/us/news/so...oose-the-best-linux-distro-for-laptops-915579

Feb 28, 2016#55

PatrThom

For at least the immediate future, I would avoid Mint.

--Patrick

Feb 28, 2016#56

jwhouk

It's an old Toshiba Satellite A105; I wouldn't mind trashing Windows XP off it, but I don't think it's got enough memory for a double partition.

Pinguy OS sounds like it'd be simple enough to install (maybe), but would it work on that machine?

Feb 28, 2016#57

GasBandit

Honestly, you might just be better off dropping 200 bucks on a chromebook.

Feb 28, 2016#58

SpecialKO

Turn it into a Chromebook?

Feb 28, 2016#59

PatrThom

A very quick Googling suggests Ubuntu MATE might be a good contender.
Your computer is not 64-bit capable, so most of the fresh, new OSes probably aren't going to devote as much attention to your x86 computer as they do to newer x86-64 ones.

--Patrick

Feb 28, 2016#60

jwhouk

The specs:

Intel Celeron 390
2 GB/4 GB RAM (I believe it has maxed out memory)
60 GB HD (SATA)
Radeon X200M video card, 64 MB
802.11 b/g Atheros Wi-Fi

Jan 4, 2017#61

PatrThom

Just gonna drop this here for y'all to peruse (I know I still owe everyone a deep specs dump, that's still gonna wait).

Kaby Lake processors have finally been released! Yay!
Well, turns out there's no real reason to buy one over the current 6xxx Skylake CPUs UNLESS you fall into one or more of the following categories:
-You want to overclock an extra 2%-ish above Skylake
-You plan to stream 4k video specifically from Netflix
-You have a use for the extra 4 PCIe lanes the 270 chipset will give you (and if you don't know what that means, then you don't)
-You intend to get in on the ground floor of Intel's Optane technology ... whenever it finally goes official
...otherwise Skylake will give you virtually the exact same performance as Kaby Lake in every way not explicitly mentioned above.

--Patrick

Jan 6, 2017#62

LordRendar

I am planning on switching to Intel since i think my old AMD Phenom II 955 BE is bottlenecking my 970. I dont want to spend more then 250€ for a MOBO and processor at the moment. Should I go for a 1150 Mobo and CPU or 1151?

Jan 6, 2017#63

PatrThom

LordRendar said:
I am planning on switching to Intel since i think my old AMD Phenom II 955 BE is bottlenecking my 970. I dont want to spend more then 250€ for a MOBO and processor at the moment. Should I go for a 1150 Mobo and CPU or 1151?

I'm still rockin' a 1090T, though that's 6-cores to your 4. I would check to see if it's really bottlenecking your 970, though, especially since even the cheapest currently-available quad-core LGA1150 (the i5-4590) is currently selling for about $200* all by itself (i.e., not counting the motherboard).

--Patrick
*at Newegg, didn't check elsewhere.

Jan 16, 2017#64

LordRendar

Should I maybe wait for Ryzen and see how it shakes up the market?

Jan 16, 2017#65

PatrThom

LordRendar said:
Should I maybe wait for Ryzen and see how it shakes up the market?

Yes.
At best, it'll be better than Intel's increasingly stagnant offerings.
At worst, it'll drive Intel's prices down.

--Patrick

Feb 22, 2017#66

LordRendar

From all that I heard in recent news, I will probably stay Team Red.

Feb 22, 2017#67

PatrThom

The top Ryzen chips were opened for preorder today, and AMD is claiming that the 1700X (their #2 offering) gives performance equivalent to an Intel Core i7-6900k, but for 60% less money. The official launch date isn't until next week, at which point the review embargo will end and we will find out the validity of that claim.

--Patrick

Feb 22, 2017#68

Dave

PatrThom said:
The top Ryzen chips were opened for preorder today, and AMD is claiming that the 1700X (their #2 offering) gives performance equivalent to an Intel Core i7-6900k, but for 60% less money. The official launch date isn't until next week, at which point the review embargo will end and we will find out the validity of that claim.

--Patrick

It might be a race to the bottom! (Price-wise, that is!)

Feb 22, 2017#69

PatrThom

It seems Intel's not doing very well these days, if the rumors about Brian Krzanich's attitude are true.

--Patrick

Feb 22, 2017#70

PatrThom

Main Ryzen models to watch:
1200X (4 core, 4 thread, $149)
1400X (4 core, 8 thread, $199)
1600X (6 core, 12 thread, $259)
1700X (8 core, 16 thread, $399)
("X" models will auto-turbo if able)

I suppose the $499 1800X is positioned as the real "enthusiast" model, but I suspect it's really just a higher-qualified 1700X, so I don't know if it's really worth the 20% price premium (just like the difference between Phenom II 1090t and 1100t)

--Patrick

Feb 23, 2017#71

Eriol

I don't care too much which company is on top, but I just hope that AMD has given Intel a run for its money again. Competition is good. This "2nd string" thing that AMD has been doing for a while now has not helped consumer prices, so let's hope that this will be as good as they hype it to be, just to give the consumer a break for once.

I fully respect Intel, but anybody that is as dominant as them for so long will start behaving badly. The only respite we've gotten is that they've been shitting their pants over their failures in the mobile space. But how long will that last? Whatever you can say about Intel, their engineering department is HUGE. They have the smarts, they just need to leverage it correctly. Which I hope they do, but hopefully now at lower prices!

Feb 23, 2017#72

SpecialKO

In my dreams, ARM will pull a viable desktop gaming solution out of a hat, and pure chaos (and price-dropping) will ensue.

Don't judge me.

Feb 23, 2017#73

Eriol

SpecialKO said:
In my dreams, ARM will pull a viable desktop gaming solution out of a hat, and pure chaos (and price-dropping) will ensue.

Don't judge me.

Because I'm actually a Super Villain, the more likely scenario IMO is that Intel will produce an ARM chip that absolutely destroys everybody else's market share.

Feb 23, 2017#74

PatrThom

Eriol said:
Because I'm actually a Super Villain, the more likely scenario IMO is that Intel will produce an ARM chip that absolutely destroys everybody else's market share.

As far as ARM usurping x86 goes, I think what most people are worried about is Apple's A-series SoC's.

--Patrick

Mar 2, 2017#75

PatrThom

Ryzen is officially out. Here's the tl:dr; --

• Intel still has the best single-thread performance, i.e. it's still best for gaming, especially the ones that are quad-core with hyper threading (4C/8T).
• Intel has the most PCIe lanes, which means better support for silly things like triple-/quad-SLI or 4 simultaneous RAID cards.
• Intel is still best for applications that require lots of system memory bandwidth or that rely heavily on AVX instructions.

For pretty much everything else, the 1800X is basically a Core i7-6900k, but at half the price. Workstation users/render farms/transcoders, rejoice!

--Patrick

Mar 8, 2017#76

PatrThom

Eriol said:
Because I'm actually a Super Villain, the more likely scenario IMO is that Intel will produce an ARM chip that absolutely destroys everybody else's market share.

Well, they had better hurry.

The writing on the wall is clear to anyone that's not living in a pineapple under the sea: Microsoft's impending adoption of ARM-based chips is likely the first challenge to Intel in the server arena. Intel reportedly holds 99% of the server CPU market, and it won't easily part with market share.

--Patrick

Mar 8, 2017#77

Eriol

PatrThom said:
Well, they had better hurry.

I agree, though I'll bet they have one waiting in the wings when this ACTUALLY drops.

Oct 7, 2017#78

PatrThom

Eriol said:
I don't care too much which company is on top, but I just hope that AMD has given Intel a run for its money again. Competition is good.

Yes, and it has finally happened. Intel's new i7-8700k is the best consumer chip Intel has ever made, and (barring any critical chip errata that might be discovered) I can say that they have finally produced a worthy successor to both the 2600k and 4790k. Word is that, clock-for-clock, single-thread performance is about 15% faster than the 4790k and about 40% faster than the 2600k, and you get six of these cores instead of the usual 4, and all of those cores can simultaneously be pushed to 4.8GHz or sometimes 4.9 on nothing but air cooling (normally the chip limits max speed to 4.3GHz), which means you could get an additional 12% performance increase even beyond that, and all of this in a TDP envelope only 4W higher than Kaby Lake.

Unfortunately, much like when the newer Tualatin Pentium-III's replaced the older Coppermine core, even though the socket physically stays the same, you will need to get a new 300-series motherboard. Older LGA 1151 boards will not support the 8xxx series, not even with a BIOS/EFI/Firmware update. The new chips require different power delivery, old boards just won't be wired properly to do so.

...so if you've been putting off upgrading/replacing your gaming rig, we are now at one of those times when the CPU industry turns a corner. If you are looking to get the most cores per dollar, Ryzen is still the undisputed king of work done per dollar spent, but if you are a gamer, then Intel has finally delivered a processor worthy enough to retire any gaming rig that isn't currently running a Core i7-7700k, and even makes a strong case for replacing a 7700k system IF you want to be able to stream on the same box where you play, since the extra 2 cores give it enough oomph to run your streaming engine without having to have a second dedicated computer pick up that slack.

We will see whether Intel can keep them on the shelves. We will also see if there are any glaring flaws in the chip that get discovered in the next 3-6 months. If neither of these turn out to be a problem, then Coffee Lake will be a real winner. Things are getting interesting in the CPU world again.

--Patrick

Dec 21, 2017#79

Eriol

New System Guide out from The Tech Report, Winter 2017 Edition.

I always find these useful, even if I'm not shopping at the time. It's not bad to have a running "this is the current state of things" reference, and this has been consistently good for that for years now.

Dec 21, 2017#80

PatrThom

Arstechnica has had their guide out for a week or so, too.
They used to segregate by Budget Box / Hot Rod / God Box, but this year, they've broken their tiers into Thriftstation (<$600), Workstation (<$1200), and Battlestation (<$GDP)

--Patrick

May 3, 2018#81

Gared

Wow, all that discussion about Meltdown and Spectre, and the new Zen architecture flaws, and my big rant about Microsoft - all gone. Anyway, sometimes we have to compromise our righteous cause for the actual reality of things, and sticking with Windows 10 over reverting to Windows 7 is going to be one of those times, for me. So, instead, what I'm in the process of picking up is:

500GB WD SSD - Acquired
ASRock X370 Pro4 AM4 motherboard - Acquired
AMD Ryzen 5 1600 6-core 3.2GHz CPU (Summit Ridge) - Ordered
GeIL Evo Potenza AMD 16GB DDR4 (rated for Summit Ridge, I triple checked) - Ordered
Arctic Silver Thermal compound - Ordered
Windows 10 - To be purchased again
Thumb drive for Windows 10 install - Ordered

The motherboard even comes with a handy chart to show you how to slot your RAM depending on which version/generation/whatever of chip you have. Right now the rest of the parts are slightly on the back burner until we can figure out what's going on with this stupid insurance thing.

May 3, 2018#82

PatrThom

Also if you have the ability, you're going to want to move to the 2xxx-series Ryzen CPUs (such as the equivalent Ryzen 5 2600) UNLESS you are specifically sticking with the 1xxx-series due to their lower cost. But right now the price difference between those two CPUs is only $10, so really you should be going with the 2600 instead of the 1600 unless that extra $10 is going to break your build budget.
You already have your board, and it's based on the X370 chipset, which means you will miss out on the new Precision Boost Overdrive and StoreMI technologies that are only available for X470-based boards, but PBO only applies to the -X CPUs (which you are not using) and StoreMI is for boosting performance of mechanical drives (which you are also not using), so you likely won't be missing much by not going X470.

--Patrick

May 3, 2018#83

Gared

PatrThom said:
Also if you have the ability, you're going to want to move to the 2xxx-series Ryzen CPUs (such as the equivalent Ryzen 5 2600) UNLESS you are specifically sticking with the 1xxx-series due to their lower cost. But right now the price difference between those two CPUs is only $10, so really you should be going with the 2600 instead of the 1600 unless that extra $10 is going to break your build budget.
You already have your board, and it's based on the X370 chipset, which means you will miss out on the new Precision Boost Overdrive and StoreMI technologies that are only available for X470-based boards, but PBO only applies to the -X CPUs (which you are not using) and StoreMI is for boosting performance of mechanical drives (which you are also not using), so you likely won't be missing much by not going X470.

--Patrick

Good to know, I'll switch up to the 2600. I primarily went with the X370 so I could eventually run dual video cards, I think that's probably a good enough upgrade in computing power for me.

May 3, 2018#84

PatrThom

Gared said:
Good to know, I'll switch up to the 2600. I primarily went with the X370 so I could eventually run dual video cards, I think that's probably a good enough upgrade in computing power for me.

My only real worry is that your board shipped with the P4.50 BIOS instead of the P4.70 required to support the 2xxx-series CPUs. If that's the case, there will be a sticker with "P4.50" written right on it just above the first (short) PCIe slot (which means the board shipped with 4.50, but it may not necessarily still be 4.50 right now). Fortunately, if you do run into this issue, AMD has created an official page with alternatives to get your BIOS updated, with solutions up to and including potentially loaning you an older CPU just long enough to run the update.

--Patrick

May 4, 2018#85

Gared

PatrThom said:
My only real worry is that your board shipped with the P4.50 BIOS instead of the P4.70 required to support the 2xxx-series CPUs. If that's the case, there will be a sticker with "P4.50" written right on it just above the first (short) PCIe slot (which means the board shipped with 4.50, but it may not necessarily still be 4.50 right now). Fortunately, if you do run into this issue, AMD has created an official page with alternatives to get your BIOS updated, with solutions up to and including potentially loaning you an older CPU just long enough to run the update.

--Patrick

Hopefully it won't be too much of a hassle. It shipped with P4.50, but it has Ryzen 2000 Desktop Series Ready splashed liberally around the box and reviews from people who purchased their boards at the same time I did report no problems recognizing the 2xxx chips with no BIOS tweaks, so I think I'll go with the 2600 and if it doesn't work I'll have this machine available to download the BIOS update to and I'm sure someone can help me flash the BIOS.

May 4, 2018#86

PatrThom

4.70 was released in early March, so if you bought it much past that, they likely already updated it for you. I just don’t know how long ago you started this build and so had the board hanging around in an unopened box.

—Patrick

May 4, 2018#87

Gared

PatrThom said:
4.70 was released in early March, so if you bought it much past that, they likely already updated it for you. I just don’t know how long ago you started this build and so had the board hanging around in an unopened box.

—Patrick

Oh, I bought the board last week because it was $10 off.

May 4, 2018#88

Gared

Ordered all of the parts except Windows 10. Couldn't get all of them rushed so I'm not bothering to rush ship any of it, I should get all the pieces by mid-May, and then I'll buy Windows 10 again, set up the USB drive as a boot device, and get to work.

May 4, 2018#89

PatrThom

Gared said:
Oh, I bought the board last week because it was $10 off.

Hey then it paid for the 2600 upgrade.

—Patrick

May 10, 2018#90

Gared

Alright, everyone wish me luck. The parts are here, the tower is assembled, and I have a 16GB thumb drive with the Windows 10, Steam, Discord, and Chrome installers. I'm going to power down and switch towers. If you don't hear from me for a while, it didn't work.

May 10, 2018#91

Gared

And we're back. I have to say, honestly, that was the smoothest a computer build and OS install has gone since I installed Windows for Workgroups in fall of '98. Hurrah for proper preparation.

May 10, 2018#92

PatrThom

Gared said:
And we're back. I have to say, honestly, that was the smoothest a computer build and OS install has gone since I installed Windows for Workgroups in fall of '98. Hurrah for proper preparation.

Assembling computers is crazy easy these days.
Installation and configuration are the hardest parts now.

--Patrick

May 10, 2018#93

Gared

PatrThom said:
Assembling computers is crazy easy these days.
Installation and configuration are the hardest parts now.

--Patrick

I loved how well labeled all of the jumpers were on this board. That used to be the bane of my existence when installing a motherboard. Now I just have to hope that ASRock's quality holds up on this board.

May 10, 2018#94

PatrThom

Gared said:
I loved how well labeled all of the jumpers were on this board. That used to be the bane of my existence when installing a motherboard. Now I just have to hope that ASRock's quality holds up on this board.

A lot of motherboard manufacturers include a header block for all those cables that go to the front panel, etc. You just attach all the front panel wiring to the block, then plug the block right onto the motherboard. Soooo much easier.

--Patrick

May 11, 2018#95

SpecialKO

Are AIO CPU coolers worth the hype at this point? I stayed away from open-loop cooling because it was far more work and maintenance than I wanted to invest in, but as I'm planning to replace my old CPU/mobo/RAM combo, I thought it worth asking about closed loop vs. just getting a nice non-stock air cooler.

May 11, 2018#96

GasBandit

It's been my experience that, unless you're SERIOUSLY overclocking, and/or the room the computer is in is always 85+ degrees, there's never really been a need for CPU liquid cooling (GPU.. maybe... but not CPU). Regular old fans and heat sinks work just fine, and are quieter than ever.

May 11, 2018#97

strawman

I agree with Gasbandit, and would further suggest that you never build a system with water cooling initially. Build it stock, then use it and see if you experience any throttling.

The only exceptions for that are 1) you already know you're going to be pushing the components harder than they were designed or 2) you're really, really, really intent on building the quietest system possible, and are going to use oversize radiators and fans. Modern mid to high end CPUs and GPUs can't be made quiet without a lot more radiating area.

May 11, 2018#98

PatrThom

Thirding GasBandit.

Unless you are dealing with a hostile environment OR you have some kind of internal space limitation, there is no need for what liquid cooling offers unless you already intend to push your system’s limits, and even then, you’re talking about increasing power and cooling requirements by 20-30% for a 5-10% improvement in performance.

—Patrick

May 16, 2018#99

PatrThom

Oh, and here's a couple handy links I posted that got lost in the wipe:

Here is the USA Amazon link to get a SanDisk Cruzer Fit USB 2.0 16GB flash drive, which is an ideal platform for booting/installing OSes (or even for running an embedded install such as an open-source NAS/UTM distro), because it's large enough to hold all the install information and it's USB 2.0 which means it still works with OSes that don't natively understand USB 3.0 (e.g., Windows 7). Also it's only US$8.00 (at the time of this post, up from US$7.00 before the wipe).

...and here is the embed, assuming your ad blocker lets it through:
Amazon product

Also a reminder that Microsoft has downloadable ISO installer images available for Windows 7 (for now), Windows 8.1 (for now), and Windows 10, both 32- and 64-bit versions. Their website will tell you that you will need a product key to download the ISOs, but strangely enough, if you go to download them from a non-Windows OS, the site will just let you download the ISO straightaway without having to go through weird Media Installation Tool installation steps, etc. So if Microsoft tries to put up too many roadblocks, just hit up that friend who runs a macOS/*nix box to download it for you. Oh, and just a bit of advice ... even if you don't need one/all of these right now, you might want to grab them all anyway and keep them handy just in case.

Also here is a link to the excellent Rufus tool that drastically simplifies the process of turning an ISO into a bootable flash drive, or just making flash drives bootable in general.

--Patrick

Aug 13, 2018#100

PatrThom

Hmm, I know I wrote up something here on the forum where I concluded (at the time) that the best AMD chip for gaming (especially for simultaneous gaming AND STREAMING) was the Threadripper 1900X due to having the highest base/turbo clock speeds of all the Ryzen chips with the bonus of having the Threadripper's greater number of PCIe lanes, but now I can't find it anywhere. Must've been lost in the wipe, I guess.

Anyway... now that the review embargo has been lifted on AMD's second-generation Threadripper parts, we're starting to get some data, and for most gaming, the best AMD CPU is turning out to be the Threadripper 2950X, which steps you up to twice as many cores as the 1900X and slightly faster clock speeds, as well as slightly faster memory and other improvements that come with the shrink to 12nm circuitry instead of the 1xxx-series' 14nm circuitry.

All of that said, the fastest mainstream CPU for gaming is still something from Intel's Core i7-8086/Core i7-8700x Coffee Lake 6-core lineup, but if you feel like you need to skip the Intel chip for some reason (cost of upgrade, availability, Meltdown/Spectre concerns, contract/vendor restriction, need more than 6 cores, tired of waiting for 10nm, whatever), and you plan to game with it, then right now the 2950X is probably the best non-Intel choice.

However, IF the folks at AMD finally decide to release an 8-core 2xxx-series Threadripper, this recommendation might change, since having fewer cores usually means more thermal headroom to hit even higher clock speeds. So far AMD has not announced any kind of plan to replace the 1900X with a revised version, but then again they also didn't announce the 1900X until a month or two after the rest of the 1xxx-series, so we'll see.

--Patrick

Aug 19, 2018#101

PatrThom

Oh, and word of NVIDIA’s 2xxx-series is starting to trickle out.

Specs leaked for upcoming PNY and MSI 2080/2080 Ti

No performance numbers yet, of course. Looks like we might hear something between now and mid-September, maybe?

—Patrick

Aug 20, 2018#102

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
Looks like we might hear something between now and mid-September, maybe?

WELP:

Nvidia’s new RTX 2080, 2080 Ti video cards ship on Sept 20, starting at $799

—Patrick

Aug 20, 2018#103

Eriol

PatrThom said:
WELP:

Nvidia’s new RTX 2080, 2080 Ti video cards ship on Sept 20, starting at $799

I wish we had that multi-reaction thing. Thumbs-up for info. :eek:

on price. (that's like $1k canadian, at least)

Aug 20, 2018#104

Bubble181

PatrThom said:
WELP:

Nvidia’s new RTX 2080, 2080 Ti video cards ship on Sept 20, starting at $799

—Patrick

That's more memory and a better processor than my computer.

Aug 20, 2018#105

GasBandit

Eriol said:
I wish we had that multi-reaction thing. Thumbs-up for info. on price. (that's like $1k canadian, at least)

And it's not even the expensive one. The 2080 Ti is $1200 american.

Aug 20, 2018#106

Dave

I wondered how long it would be before Dave's video card was obsolete. It was inevitable, but it still hurts a little. And no, I'm not switching until games catch up and surpass my current card, which will be some time.

Aug 20, 2018#107

GasBandit

Dave said:
I wondered how long it would be before Dave's video card was obsolete. It was inevitable, but it still hurts a little. And no, I'm not switching until games catch up and surpass my current card, which will be some time.

Just because there's a newer model doesn't mean yours is obsolete

I mean, it's not like the new raytracing stuff is gonna be mainstream for quite a while.

I mean, you can still play rimworld (and empyrion) just fine.

Aug 20, 2018#108

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
you can still play rimworld (and empyrion) just fine.

I’m still playing on a 7970 which came out in 2012, and it’s right about on par with the GTX 1050 Ti. (That’s the Ti version that came out in Autumn 2016, not the new, neutered 1050 from this past Spring).

—Patrick

Aug 20, 2018#109

Ravenpoe

Dave said:
I wondered how long it would be before Dave's video card was obsolete. It was inevitable, but it still hurts a little. And no, I'm not switching until games catch up and surpass my current card, which will be some time.

I don't know what your current card is, bigger stuff doesn't make it obsolete. Unless you are trying to push graphics to a 16k projector on the side of your house, your current card should power most games for the next years, and even then only the most cutting edge will likely start to make it stumble.

Hell, I still do most of my gaming on a laptop with a gpu from last generation in it, and it runs nearly everything flawlessly.

Aug 20, 2018#110

GasBandit

Ravenpoe said:
I don't know what your current card is

Mofo has a fuckin 1080. He's not obsolete

Aug 20, 2018#111

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
Mofo has a fuckin 1080. He's not obsolete

1080 Ti, you mean.

—Patrick

Aug 20, 2018#112

Ravenpoe

GasBandit said:
Mofo has a fuckin 1080. He's not obsolete

That's the card in my main rig that I don't even use! He'll be set for a long time.

Aug 20, 2018#113

Gared

Pffft. Bitch, I'm running a 750 Ti. I'm starting to run into some serious lack of VRAM issues. Eventually I'll have to upgrade to whichever cards my motherboard supports for whatever AMD calls SLI these days.

Aug 20, 2018#114

PatrThom

Gared said:
Pffft. Bitch, I'm running a 750 Ti. I'm starting to run into some serious lack of VRAM issues. Eventually I'll have to upgrade to whichever cards my motherboard supports for whatever AMD calls SLI these days.

That’s the card in my son’s rig. It’s a surprisingly capable card because, unlike most of the rest of the Kepler-based 700-series cards, it is essentially a very low-level Maxwell-based 900-series card. It’s probably the best card you can get that doesn’t need an aux power cord AND has native VGA out.

Also, hear my words right now...do NOT buy any GT 1030 nor GTX 1050 2GB. Just...don’t.
Right now I wouldn’t buy anything older than 9xx (NVIDIA) or 5xx (AMD), and I wouldn’t buy anything below the “6” tier (960, RX 560, 1060, etc).

—Patrick

Aug 20, 2018#115

Gared

PatrThom said:
That’s the card in my son’s rig. It’s a surprisingly capable card because, unlike most of the rest of the Kepler-based 700-series cards, it is essentially a very low-level Maxwell-based 900-series card. It’s probably the best card you can get that doesn’t need an aux power cord AND has native VGA out.

Also, hear my words right now...do NOT buy any GT 1030 nor GTX 1050 2GB. Just...don’t.
Right now I wouldn’t buy anything older than 9xx (NVIDIA) or 5xx (AMD), and I wouldn’t buy anything below the “6” tier (960, RX 560, 1060, etc).

—Patrick

Oh, Nvidia cards are right out if I ever want to run two cards at the same time, which I may eventually want to do once I get back on my feet. It was one of the things I specifically looked into when choosing a motherboard. I just can't remember off the top of my head which cards it does support for that feature, so <shrug>.

Aug 20, 2018#116

PatrThom

Gared said:
I just can't remember off the top of my head which cards it does support for that feature, so <shrug>.

The technology is (was) called Crossfire, but even AMD's own site is pretty thin on relevant (i.e., current) info. More people these days are just going single-card for gaming due to the increased hassle and power requirements of multi-GPU setups. People doing GPU computing, however (e.g., cryptocurrency miners), can't get enough of it.

--Patrick

Aug 21, 2018#117

Ravenpoe

Gared said:
Oh, Nvidia cards are right out if I ever want to run two cards at the same time, which I may eventually want to do once I get back on my feet. It was one of the things I specifically looked into when choosing a motherboard. I just can't remember off the top of my head which cards it does support for that feature, so <shrug>.

Here's a relevant question, what do you want to do that requires two cards?

Aug 21, 2018#118

Gared

Ravenpoe said:
Here's a relevant question, what do you want to do that requires two cards?

Right now, not a damn thing, which is why I'm perfectly happy keeping my 750 Ti for now. Originally, I was looking into it for potential video editing work, since the one place that my current card did really struggle was when I was trying to splice baking videos together and such.

On an unrelated note, what's the current recommendation for internal HDDs? Non solid-state - I still have my 500GB SSD for the OS and apps, but I'd love something internal for document storage. Maybe if I can give Microsoft an internal drive location, it'll stop trying so damn hard to default to their cloud for saving.

Aug 21, 2018#119

Dave

I would think that the 500GB SSD would be fine for both the OS and document storage. Documents don't usually take up a huge amount of space. But then again you know your needs way better than I so I assume I'm understating your storage needs for documents.

Aug 21, 2018#120

Eriol

Gared said:
document storage

"Documents" Riiiight....

I'm guessing you mean the video editing that I cut out of your post? In that case, yes you need mass storage, but I can't help you with that one. But actual "documents" take up like no space whatsoever. Images and video? Holy crap space.

Aug 21, 2018#121

Gared

Eriol said:
"Documents" Riiiight....

I'm guessing you mean the video editing that I cut out of your post? In that case, yes you need mass storage, but I can't help you with that one. But actual "documents" take up like no space whatsoever. Images and video? Holy crap space.

Actual documents, amazingly enough. I have 4TB of external storage for video files. My understanding of SSDs (if I was anywhere close to getting @PatrThom's buying advice last spring) is that it's not the amount of data you save to them, but the number of read-write accesses that wears them out, and that's what I'd like to prevent, since I was only able to afford a 500GB drive, and it has a shorter expected lifespan. But I will probably have a lot of pictures to store there as well.

Aug 21, 2018#122

Ravenpoe

Gared said:
Actual documents, amazingly enough. I have 4TB of external storage for video files. My understanding of SSDs (if I was anywhere close to getting @PatrThom's buying advice last spring) is that it's not the amount of data you save to them, but the number of read-write accesses that wears them out, and that's what I'd like to prevent, since I was only able to afford a 500GB drive, and it has a shorter expected lifespan. But I will probably have a lot of pictures to store there as well.

Accessing doesn't wear them out, rewriting does. It's only if you are changing those files often that you start to wear out the drive.

Though, with modern ssd technology, the amount of times you need to rewrite to a sector is so high that they tend to have about the same life expectancy as physical platter drives, so I honestly wouldn't worry about it.

Aug 21, 2018#123

Eriol

Gared said:
Actual documents, amazingly enough. I have 4TB of external storage for video files. My understanding of SSDs (if I was anywhere close to getting @PatrThom's buying advice last spring) is that it's not the amount of data you save to them, but the number of read-write accesses that wears them out, and that's what I'd like to prevent, since I was only able to afford a 500GB drive, and it has a shorter expected lifespan. But I will probably have a lot of pictures to store there as well.

You have nothing to worry about with endurance: https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

Unless it's continual thrashing (not you), the wear-out thing for a typical person is basically a hard-drive company scare-tactic (FUD).

Aug 21, 2018#124

PatrThom

Gared said:
it's not the amount of data you save to them, but the number of read-write accesses that wears them out

Ravenpoe said:
Accessing doesn't wear them out, rewriting does. It's only if you are changing those files often that you start to wear out the drive.

SSDs only "wear out" on writes. You can read from them as many times as you want with no real penalty. Long-term data retention is a concern, but this is more an issue with drives which are being stored and therefore not used for extended periods of time.
SSDs also do something called "wear leveling" that ensures the entire drive is used at an even rate, so it makes no difference whether you write the same file 1000 times or write 1000 separate files, it is the same amount of wear as far as the drive is concerned. This is also why you should NEVER DEFRAGMENT SSDs, because all it does is inflict extra wear for no real benefit, since the drive literally does not care whether file fragments are ordered sequentially on the disk or not.

The biggest concern about wearing out SSDs isn't really the amount of raw data written to a drive, but something called "write amplification." When you rewrite a 4k file, you may think you are only consuming 4k worth of writes, but you are probably not. SSDs have to have their data shuffled around because while you can write data in small chunks, you can only erase it in big chunks. This means that file updates can't happen in situ (i.e., you can't actually save over an existing file's location). What is happening when you make changes to a file is that the new, updated version of the file is written somewhere else on the SSD and the old version is marked for deletion. Every now and then, the garbage collection routines come around and blank out the deleted areas for reuse, but that entire area has to be blanked out all at once, so any remaining "good" data in that area has to be moved somewhere else and then that area is cleared for re-use. You can see a good description of this process here. And of course once you start to run low on free space, this process has to happen more and more frequently, which accelerates wear.

So yes, this "SSDs wear out" thing is definitely not a hoax/FUD, and it is definitely something you should consider, but only if you're subjecting it to the sorts of workloads or operating it under the sorts of conditions that will cause the drive to wear out faster. Video/audio editing has the potential to rewrite lots of data (less so if the programs you use are ones that do non-destructive editing) which is why I had recommended getting the larger drive. Not getting the larger drive does mean that your drive will wear out faster, but "faster" may only mean the difference between 8* years' life v. 6* years, and you should be using that external drive for doubling up the storage of your most important stuff anyway.

This is why the newer Optane/3d Xpoint/QuantX flash is such a big deal, because that technology can be erased/written one bit at a time and therefore won't suffer from the above-mentioned write amplification. Unfortunately, it is still too new and expensive for mainstream high-capacity drives.

tl:dr; SSDs are amazing, but they have limitations for certain kinds of workloads.

--Patrick
*Numbers for illustration only and not in any way based on actual data.

Aug 21, 2018#125

Gared

Well, after having two hard drives fail (one external, one internal) in the past two years, I am definitely much more backup conscious than I was before, and all of my (important) documents are duplicated on an external and a cloud storage location, so that's not an issue. The 4TB of external storage comes in the form of two 2TB WD Elements portable drives, so that's a little bit of an issue, but not much of one since this motherboard and case combo has an abundance of USB ports. However, the USB 3.0 header still doesn't run remarkably well, so it's a little more of an issue. One of these days I'll have to see if there's a firmware update for the motherboard that addresses the issue, but it seemed to be Windows update related the last time I looked.

Primarily, what's going to be happening is that I'm going to be taking a lot of photos and doing a substantial amount of editing to most of them. For one thing, I'm going to have to remove Blurple LED lighting from a significant amount of them; and for another, a lot of them are going to be macro shots. Now, I don't necessarily need to transfer the raw images off of whichever SD card they're coming from before they're edited down to their final form, but I will need to store "master" copies of the edited results. And now that I think about the project more, I'm realizing it's also going to require a db on the back end for search and archive purposes. I'd like to keep a local backup of the prod db and keep the test db on my local machine, but the live prod db will be stored on my host's servers. There may eventually be some light video editing, and there is certainly the potential for the need for audio editing, but nothing that's currently planned. Each of the sets of photos will need to have text files with some pretty detailed descriptions, which will be read frequently, but shouldn't need to be edited all that often.

So, lot's of photos, a test db, frequently written but hopefully rarely accessed backups of the live db, and a butt-tonne of .txt and .html files.

Aug 21, 2018#126

GasBandit

For platter HDs, I've been using Western Digitals, and have been pretty satisfied with them. They go by color:

WD Green: Budget/low power drives
WD Blue: Everyday normal use
WD Black: Gaming (higher transfer rate for loading game data faster)
WD Red: NAS/RAID storage (heat/vibration resistant, longer service life)
WD Purple: Surveillance/DVR (Firmware/caching configured to optimize being CONSTANTLY written to, 24/7)

For documents and photos, I'd go with blue drives, if you're looking for a single drive to put in a desktop machine. If you want to build a NAS or RAID, though, I'd shell out the extra for some reds. There's a lot to be said for a raid 5, I'm finding...

Aug 21, 2018#127

Gared

GasBandit said:
For platter HDs, I've been using Western Digitals, and have been pretty satisfied with them. They go by color:

WD Green: Budget/low power drives
WD Blue: Everyday normal use
WD Black: Gaming (higher transfer rate for loading game data faster)
WD Red: NAS/RAID storage (heat/vibration resistant, longer service life)
WD Purple: Surveillance/DVR (Firmware/caching configured to optimize being CONSTANTLY written to, 24/7)

For documents and photos, I'd go with blue drives, if you're looking for a single drive to put in a desktop machine. If you want to build a NAS or RAID, though, I'd shell out the extra for some reds. There's a lot to be said for a raid 5, I'm finding...

Excellent, so WD Blue for now, and WD Purple if/when this becomes a commercial endeavor. :thumbsup:

Aug 21, 2018#128

GasBandit

Gared said:
Excellent, so WD Blue for now, and WD Purple if/when this becomes a commercial endeavor.

Well, TBH, purple is probably overkill unless you're using it to store the video footage from a half dozen 1080p cameras. Blue's probably what you need, unless, as I said, you switch to NAS/RAID storage later.

Aug 21, 2018#129

Gared

If I manage to take this hobby to a professional level, one of the licensing requirements will require Purple. And a lot of redundancy.

Aug 21, 2018#130

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
For platter HDs, I've been using Western Digitals, and have been pretty satisfied with them. They go by color:

WD Green: Budget/low power drives
WD Blue: Everyday normal use
WD Black: Gaming (higher transfer rate for loading game data faster)
WD Red: NAS/RAID storage (heat/vibration resistant, longer service life)
WD Purple: Surveillance/DVR (Firmware/caching configured to optimize being CONSTANTLY written to, 24/7)

For documents and photos, I'd go with blue drives, if you're looking for a single drive to put in a desktop machine. If you want to build a NAS or RAID, though, I'd shell out the extra for some reds. There's a lot to be said for a raid 5, I'm finding...

-Greens usually have reduced spindle speed to lower the power requirement, but otherwise they are essentially Blues.
-Blues are just an “ordinary” drive.
-Black drives will have a faster spindle speed, more cache, built-in SSD acceleration, or other optimization for “performance.”
-DO NOT BUY A RED DRIVE (or any other “RAID-optimized” drive, usually indicated by ERC/TLER/CCTL) TO BE A SINGLE DRIVE IN A SYSTEM. Yes they are optimized to run 24/7, but they are also tuned so that if they ever throw an error they will just report the error and blissfully move on. This is different from other kinds of drives which will retry the failed read/write operation several times before giving up. Drives with RAID firmware are meant to be used in an array where the failure of any one drive will be compensated for by one or more other drives AND where spending too long (sometimes several minutes) trying to recover from an error could potentially result in taking the entire array offline, so they won’t bother wasting extra time trying to recover your data.
-Purple drives are built for more hostile environments, but they are mainly optimized to prioritize writes, because in the surveillance industry, it’s more important to keep recording the incoming data stream than it is to retrieve any of the existing data. This usually won’t make much difference to end users unless you are saturating the drive bus with read/write requests, and all it really means is that when the drive is busy, it will restrict its read speed enough to make sure that all the writes get done in time. This means they also don’t waste a lot of their time trying to recover errors.

tl:dr; Blue is the right choice for most people, unless you NEED any of the other features.

—Patrick

Aug 22, 2018#131

GasBandit

Getting back to our "obsolete" video cards for a second...

Aug 24, 2018#132

Frank

I need a new mobo/processor and RAM.

My old 2500K just don't cut it anymore. I feel like I can wait on upgrading my video card for a good while (970 GTX).

Aug 24, 2018#133

PatrThom

Frank said:
I need a new mobo/processor and RAM. My old 2500K just don't cut it anymore.

Unless the hardware is failing on you somehow, You don’t really NEED a newer CPU until you’re ready to replace your whole system. They’re supposedly stupid easy to overclock to ~4.4GHz (a 20% increase) and when it finally DOES come time to replace your rig, you’re going to want to take advantage of EFI, M.2, Hex-core, SSD, PCIe 3, DDR4, GDDR6, and by then it’s just going to be a whole new system anyway. Oh, and there should also be thousands of used 1080’s on the market by then for cheap.

—Patrick

Aug 24, 2018#134

Frank

PatrThom said:
Unless the hardware is failing on you somehow, You don’t really NEED a newer CPU until you’re ready to replace your whole system. They’re supposedly stupid easy to overclock to ~4.4GHz (a 20% increase) and when it finally DOES come time to replace your rig, you’re going to want to take advantage of EFI, M.2, Hex-core, SSD, PCIe 3, DDR4, GDDR6, and by then it’s just going to be a whole new system anyway. Oh, and there should also be thousands of used 1080’s on the market by then for cheap.

—Patrick

Where were they used? That's always the scary part of used video card market now.

I mean, I do want to upgrade it because high end games no longer run well anymore. They don't run poorly or anything but I don't PC game to compromise.

Aug 24, 2018#135

DarkAudit

Has something changed in the last year? That was the last time I checked, and the general consensus was my 2500K rig really only needed a video card upgrade to keep up with the Jones'.

Aug 24, 2018#136

PatrThom

Frank said:
Where were they used? That's always the scary part of used video card market now.

I expect they'll be sold 3 in a pack, and if one goes, you won't care because you'll still have 2 more.

DarkAudit said:
Has something changed in the last year? That was the last time I checked, and the general consensus was my 2500K rig really only needed a video card upgrade to keep up with the Jones'.

Intel i5-2500K Benchmark in 2017: Finally Showing Its Age
tl;dr: Sandy Bridge (2xxx) was one of THE best processor generations in the last decade (assuming you didn't postpone until Ivy Bridge (3xxx), which was just basically the die shrink of Sandy Bridge OR were lucky enough to snag a Broadwell (5xxx)), but it has been 7 years now and the Kaby/Coffee Lake generation is finally a worthy successor (with preference going to Coffee).

--Patrick

Aug 24, 2018#137

Frank

Yeah, the 2500K was the best computer parts purchase I've ever made. Never regretted it.

Aug 27, 2018#138

Eriol

PatrThom said:
I expect they'll be sold 3 in a pack, and if one goes, you won't care because you'll still have 2 more.

Intel i5-2500K Benchmark in 2017: Finally Showing Its Age
tl;dr: Sandy Bridge (2xxx) was one of THE best processor generations in the last decade (assuming you didn't postpone until Ivy Bridge (3xxx), which was just basically the die shrink of Sandy Bridge OR were lucky enough to snag a Broadwell (5xxx)), but it has been 7 years now and the Kaby/Coffee Lake generation is finally a worthy successor (with preference going to Coffee).

I have a 3470 at home, and thinking of upgrading next year sometime (after the new nVidia generation has sane prices) but until Meltdown is COMPLETELY fixed without performance degradation, not interested in an Intel chip with the "supposedly fixed" problems. That whole fiasco is making me seriously consider going back to AMD for my next CPU.

Aug 27, 2018#139

PatrThom

You can mitigate a lot of the risk simply by disabling Hyperthreading, but then that's a lot of horsepower to just leave on the table.

Also, as far as 1070/1080 cards go, here is a snapshot of some current prices. Keep in mind these used to go for US$900-1100 as recently as July.

--Patrick

Aug 27, 2018#140

GasBandit

Man, snagging my 1060 for $200 right out of the gate was one of the best computer-purchase decisions I've made in a long, long while.

Aug 27, 2018#141

Chad Sexington

It's been a long time coming, but I'm finally going to build myself a new computer. This one is old. It's served me well, but it is time to retire it. I don't think I can really sell anything off of it; it's almost 10 years old I think, and just about everything in it is the same age.

Also, I liked this:

Oct 23, 2018#142

Yoshimickster

My motherboard has 2 empty DDr3 slots and I was hoping to upgrade from 8 gigs to sixteen, does it make more sense to get 2 ram cards with 4 gigabytes each, or one with eight gigabytes?

Oct 23, 2018#143

GasBandit

Yoshimickster said:
My motherboard has 2 empty DDr3 slots and I was hoping to upgrade from 8 gigs to sixteen, does it make more sense to get 2 ram cards with 4 gigabytes each, or one with eight gigabytes?

It depends on the motherboard, but usually, the answer is two identical 4s, preferably identical to the two 4s you already have.

One eight will still work, but usually, two identical fours (or really, 4 identical fours) will be faster.

Assuming we're all talking about chips of the same speed.

Oct 23, 2018#144

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
One eight will still work, but usually, two identical fours (or really, 4 identical fours) will be faster.

Ehhh....no. It does depend a lot on your motherboard...and your processor. Definitely will need to know both before you go shopping, or else run the risk of having memory failures or even damaging your motherboard/CPU.

Your motherboard manual should show the maximum memory supported by the board (sometimes this maximum will change based on which CPU you are using, too!), and sometimes you can exceed what it says if the reason they didn’t go higher at press time was because the larger modules weren’t yet available in quantity, but unless you have proof that you can use larger/higher density modules than what is listed in the manual, you’re taking a risk. Type and speed (DDR3-1333/PC3-10600) are merely the starting point, there is still more research to do. How many channels? How many banks per channel? How many ranks per module? Do you need unbuffered/buffered/registered/ECC*? If you don’t know the answers to these questions (or how to answer them), most motherboard manufacturers will have some sort of “qualified memory vendor list” available for download, and you should stick with whatever models they have tested.

—Patrick
*for most consumer motherboards, unbuffered is fine.

Oct 23, 2018#145

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Ehhh....no. It does depend a lot on your motherboard...and your processor. Definitely will need to know both before you go shopping, or else run the risk of having memory failures or even damaging your motherboard/CPU.

Your motherboard manual should show the maximum memory supported by the board (sometimes this maximum will change based on which CPU you are using, too!), and sometimes you can exceed what it says if the reason they didn’t go higher at press time was because the larger modules weren’t yet available in quantity, but unless you have proof that you can use larger/higher density modules than what is listed in the manual, you’re taking a risk. Type and speed (DDR3-1333/PC3-10600) are merely the starting point, there is still more research to do. How many channels? How many banks per channel? How many ranks per module? Do you need unbuffered/buffered/registered/ECC*?

—Patrick
*for most consumer motherboards, unbuffered is fine.

Eh, he said he had 2 free slots, and was currently at 8, so I assumed he had two full slots with 4s in them, and thus I recommended buying two more 4s of those exact types, because you can be pretty sure they'll work.

Oct 23, 2018#146

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
Eh, he said he had 2 free slots, and was currently at 8, so I assumed he had two full slots with 4s in them, and thus I recommended buying two more 4s of those exact types, because you can be pretty sure they'll work.

That is very good advice...IF his board/processor can support >8GB, don’t force the memory bus to downclock when moving from 2 to 4 modules, there’s no physical/electrical/thermal restriction preventing all 4 slots from being filled, and you are taking into account the number of channels/ranks the system can handle.

I mean, yes, getting two more of the same module is probably fine, but there’s no guarantee.

—Patrick

Oct 23, 2018#147

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
That is very good advice...IF his board/processor can support >8GB, don’t force the memory bus to downclock when moving from 2 to 4 modules, there’s no physical/electrical/thermal restriction preventing all 4 slots from being filled, and you are taking into account the number of channels/ranks the system can handle.

I mean, yes, getting two more of the same module is probably fine, but there’s no guarantee.

—Patrick

I've never had it not be fine. And I've built a few. If he's got 4 slots of DDR3, I'd be extremely surprised if it could not handle 4 4s. 4 8s I might want to double check... but 4 4s is almost a sure thing.

Oct 23, 2018#148

PatrThom

There isn’t even a guarantee that 2x8, or even 1x8 would work, which is annoying because you normally get better performance running 2x8 instead of 4x4 due to reduced load/latency on the memory bus. Plenty of DDR3 machines can’t handle when an individual module is > 4GB (the “density” issue), and some boards with 4 slots can’t support > 8GB and just have the 4 slots so you can go 4x2GB.
So again, RTM B4 you RAM.

—Patrick

Oct 23, 2018#149

Yoshimickster

From what I've read here I think I'm safe going with 2 4 Gigabyte ram cards of the same model as the ones I got.

Oct 23, 2018#150

Frank

Just ordered an MSI X470 mobo, a Ryzen 5 2600x and 16 jiggabites of DDR4.

I'm pretty into the fact that the Ryzen chips offer a pretty substantial boost over my 8 year old processor without breaking the bank too much. Stupid money.

Dec 3, 2018#151

PatrThom

Linus is known for having strong opinions on things, but my opinion kinda parallels his (Intel SO needs to stop artificially segregating their lineup just so they can have more pricing tiers! e.g. Six Core Xeon E: Almost Identical Parts, So Buy The Cheap One), so I'm gonna post this here.

--Patrick

Dec 17, 2018#152

DarkAudit

According to discogs,

Collection Value:*
Min: $2,703.54 Med: $5,345.55 Max: $13,484.13

I might have played a dozen or so albums since the move. Playing them at my most convenient to me hours and/or at my preferred volume is not viable, no will it be in the foreseeable future. It's time to put the sunk-cost fallacy to the test and cut ties. And then what? How about...

Even though my Tom's Hardware build has served me extremely well, it was a 2011 build. It's time to move on. That $1K rig should be pretty sweet.

Dec 17, 2018#153

PatrThom

I haven't even watched this video, but yes it is definitely a good time to be building a new PC. I started taping out what I want months ago (spoiler alert--It does NOT contain anything from the NVIDIA 20xx-series) but it totaled up about $1500 and it's not like I have $2k worth of unused vinyl sitting around (ok maybe I do I have no idea...but not all of it is mine!) HOWEVER that was before graphics card prices started to return to normal levels, so it might be time to revisit that spec sheet hmmm....

--Patrick

Dec 17, 2018#154

Tinwhistler

Do they have this in article format? I don't really wanna watch a video to see what the latest recommendations are...

Dec 17, 2018#155

drifter

@Tinwhistler There's a list in the description, also here if you want to avoid the autoplaying video.

Dec 17, 2018#156

Bubble181

Logicalincrements (I swear they don't pay me) has two builds up built around current end-of-year promotions, for 700 and about 1500 dollars. Check them out Here.

Dec 25, 2018#157

DarkAudit

After a bit more reading, and hearing VRM a whole lot more than I thought I would, I'm going with the MSI B450 Tomahawk instead of that Gigabyte B450 Aorus Elite. Since I plan on overclocking, that extra money spent now should save heartache later.

And from @Bubble181's list, that RX 580 looks like a decent option as the 1070s disappear from stock. And at half the price.

Dec 25, 2018#158

PatrThom

The RX580 is a decent card for 1080p gaming, it's just based on a design from 2016 (the RX4x0 series) that's been tweaked and retweaked over and over again and so it doesn't really bring anything new and its performance is only about on par with a GTX1060 (but with a noticeably higher power draw). If you plan on overclocking, see if you can get an RX590, which is essentially a superclocked RX580 but fabbed on a smaller process (RX590=12nm, RX580=14nm).

AMD's best card for gaming right now is actually the Vega 56 (The Vega 64 may be better for mining/compute loads, but the difference in gaming isn't big enough to justify the price/heat increase). NVIDIA's best bang-for-buck card is still the 1070ti (currently available for $400-450 if you look around), but trying to guess actual stock levels of GTX10x0 cards is a huge mystery because when GPU mining finally started tanking, it left NVIDIA sitting on a huge pile of leftover GTX10x0 cards which they are essentially ignoring because they want you to forget about those and buy their new 20x0-series instead.

I don't know what your price target is, but I wanted to make sure you knew what was up.

--Patrick

Dec 25, 2018#159

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
I don't know what your price target is, but I wanted to make sure you knew what was up.

I'd rather not spend $300+ on a GPU if I can help it. My "monitor" is actually the 43" Sharp/Roku TV, so it's limited to 1080p and 60Hz no matter what. With the amount I game, spending that much on a GPU is gonna be a waste anyway. I still want something relatively decent, however.

Dec 25, 2018#160

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
I'd rather not spend $300+ on a GPU if I can help it.

Well if you’re trying to max your GPU but stay sub-$300 then you really only have two choices. Maybe this article will help you choose. Just make sure to stick with something that has 6GB or more of VRAM.

—Patrick

Dec 25, 2018#161

GasBandit

My 1060 3-gig is perfectly fine for 1080p gaming, and only costs $200.

Dec 25, 2018#162

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
My 1060 3-gig is perfectly fine for 1080p gaming, and only costs $200.

Yes, but if you’re just now climbing into a brand new video card, the current VRAM recommendation seems to be “whatever is more than 5GB” since newer games are already starting to outgrow cards with only 3GB or 4GB of VRAM. From that article:

Last in line we have Vermintide 2 which consumed about 9GB of RAM, while VRAM usage was relatively low at 5.5 GB.

Note that V2 is the least taxing title in the list. (Note also that they ran all the tests at 4K, so 1080p users should expect VRAM usage of only about 1/3 the listed amount, meaning 1080p V2 should use about 2GB VRAM).

I mean, getting “only” a 1060 3GB is still going to be better than getting a GTX1050, GTX970, or RX570/560, but if stepping up to 6GB or 8GB on the GPU won’t add much to the price, you probably should (since unlike system RAM you can’t increase VRAM later when you have more funds without replacing the entire card).

—Patrick

Dec 25, 2018#163

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Yes, but if you’re just now climbing into a brand new video card, the current VRAM recommendation seems to be “whatever is more than 5GB” since newer games are already starting to outgrow cards with only 3GB or 4GB of VRAM. From that article:

Note that V2 is the least taxing title in the list. (Note also that they ran all the tests at 4K, so 1080p users should expect VRAM usage of only about 1/3 the listed amount, meaning 1080p V2 should use about 2GB VRAM).

I mean, getting “only” a 1060 3GB is still going to be better than getting a GTX1050, GTX970, or RX570/560, but if stepping up to 6GB or 8GB on the GPU won’t add much to the price, you probably should (since unlike system RAM you can’t increase VRAM later when you have more funds without replacing the entire card).

—Patrick

I play vermintide 2 just fine at 60 fps. Techspot just has no concept of a budget for a PC under $1000.

Dec 25, 2018#164

PatrThom

You would think their budget would be $1024.

—Patrick

Dec 25, 2018#165

PatrThom

I mean, I get where you’re coming from. Who in their right mind really NEEDS a machine that can play Overwatch at full 4K res with a guaranteed minimum 60+ FPS? It’s the test results themselves from the article that I believe relevant when making purchasing decisions you may be stuck with for the next 3-5 years (or more).

—Patrick

Dec 26, 2018#166

DarkAudit

CPU, mobo, and RAM all ordered. Paid for strictly with record sale money.

Dec 28, 2018#167

DarkAudit

First batch of parts arrived. PSU ordered. I tried to order the case, but it jumped from $59.99 in my wish list to $77 in the moment it took to go from add to cart to checkout. AND it lost prime shipping. Sent a nastygram to the seller and canceled the order.

Jan 6, 2019#168

DarkAudit

Everything is on hand except the new GPU. I went ahead and did the build. Meet (Insert Name Here)

AMD Ryzen 2600 @ stock (With the Wraith Stealth cooler, that's the only real option.)
MSI B450 Tomahawk motherboard
16 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 RAM
1TB WD Blue M.2 SSD (The 2TB HDD will go in after the install is done for video storage.)
Same old R7 360 video card pending either turntable sale or payday.
Corsair Carbide 270R case. Solid panel, no window.

Jan 15, 2019#169

DarkAudit

Annnnd, it's done. Say hello to Kaiju.

Jan 15, 2019#170

GasBandit

Oooh pretty!

Jan 15, 2019#171

PatrThom

Reminds me of my wife’s build. Case, Motherboard, PSU, CPU/Fan, M.2 stick, RAM, and that was everything. I had to keep pausing because the case was so empty and I felt like I was leaving something out. No disk nor disc drives, no SATA cables everywhere, no sound or Ethernet card, not even a GPU. Just lots of empty space.

—Patrick

Jan 26, 2019#172

DarkAudit

I added a third ML120 fan to the front, and until such time as I decide to replace the CPU cooler and overclock, it's done done. And published on PC Part Picker (pending moderation.)

Feb 9, 2019#173

DarkAudit

Replaced the CPU cooler with the MSI Core Frozr L. The same cooler Gamers Nexus uses in their case evaluation test suite. Temps immediately dropped 10-20C.

Feb 11, 2019#174

DarkAudit

Ok.. NOW it's done? Last of the ML120 fans in place. Pushing a lot more air out the back than the stock fan.

Mar 4, 2019#175

PatrThom

Building a new system? Make sure you go at least hexacore.
Not building a new system? Consider whether upgrading to a minimum of 16-32GB RAM, switching to an NVMe-based SSD, or upgrading the GPU to a GTX1660 Ti or better will make enough of a difference, and if the answer is that none of them will, then it's time to put all upgrades on hold until you can build a new system with at least 6 cores.

--Patrick

Mar 4, 2019#176

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Building a new system? Make sure you go at least hexacore.
Not building a new system? Consider whether upgrading to a minimum of 16-32GB RAM, switching to an NVMe-based SSD, or upgrading the GPU to a GTX1660 Ti or better will make enough of a difference, and if the answer is that none of them will, then it's time to put all upgrades on hold until you can build a new system with at least 6 cores.

--Patrick

Eh, looking at their graphs, I'm not sure I agree with that conclusion. I have to chuckle when they call 30fps "unplayable." I remember when 12fps was acceptable in a First Person Shooter.

But I will say, if you plan to do anything VR, you DO need a beefy-ass processor. My recent upgrade from an i5-4670 (quad core) to an i7-4770 (4 core 8 thread) has really made the oculus behave much nicer - and that was just a tiny step up.

Mar 4, 2019#177

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
upgrade from an i5-4670 (quad core) to an i7-4770 (4 core 8 thread) [...] was just a tiny step up.

The difference in clock speeds is very minimal (max 100MHz difference, or about 2.5%, and only when at max turbo boost), but the fact that the 4770 supports twice the number of threads (due to SMT or "Hyperthreading" as Intel calls it) should bring a performance increase of about 30% in multithreaded workloads (those that can take advantage of 5 or more threads). And yeah, that ain't chump change.

--Patrick

Apr 16, 2019#178

Far

It's time. Ripping out my 1070 and using that for the time being as well as some hard drives.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/RYR9MZ

My biggest regret with my last build was that it didn't look good. I have the money to throw some extras at it this time.

Apr 16, 2019#179

GasBandit

Far said:
It's time. Ripping out my 1070 and using that for the time being as well as some hard drives.

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/RYR9MZ

My biggest regret with my last build was that it didn't look good. I have the money to throw some extras at it this time.

That's a smexy beast.

Apr 16, 2019#180

Far

GasBandit said:
That's a smexy beast.

That's the hope. I'm having an internal struggle regarding whether to pick up white modular ps cabling as well.

Not really, its gonna happen. I'm just trying to pretend I'm having a quandary about ordering $60 cables...

Apr 16, 2019#181

PatrThom

Just two bits of advice:

- The 660p is a QLC drive, meaning it has lower endurance and speed (1700MB/s) than, say, a TLC Samsung 970 Pro (3200MB/s) However, the 660p does have the advantage of being a LOT cheaper.

- ALL of the LGA1151-based processors are limited (by Intel) to 16 “direct” PCIe v3.0 lanes (ones which attach directly to the CPU), which they usually expect will go to one x16 slot for a GPU, or perhaps split x8/x8 between two slots to allow XFire/SLI with two GPUs. This means that EVERYTHING ELSE that is not connected to one of these two blessed slots has to share the slower DMI 3.0 link between the CPU and the rest of the motherboard. All the USB ports, the LAN port, the sound, the M.2 slot, any other PCIe slots, and all the SATA ports have to share that one ~4GB/s link. Probably not an issue with the 660p (because it’s too slow...yay?), but installing any faster M.2 drive might be enough to make your LAN/SATA/sound/etc hiccup due to bottlenecking that bus.

For this reason, consider mounting your M.2 drive on a PCIe x4 carrier board and installing it into that second “blessed” slot. Experimentation by people with more time and connections than myself has shown that the performance difference between running a GPU at x8 or x16 is at its absolute worst a paltry 1%, so if you’re willing to sacrifice maybe 1-2 FPS off your graphics, you could noticeably increase the speed/responsiveness of your SSD. This means the board has to be ok with putting something other than a GPU in that second slot, though. Most are, but not all.

—Patrick

Apr 16, 2019#182

Far

Thanks for that @PatrThom, I can build the thing fine but stuff like this always eludes me.

To verify, the carrier board you're referring to is one of these guys right?

https://m.newegg.ca/products/N82E16815256024

For the price it seems like a no brainer to at least give it a shot.

Apr 16, 2019#183

PatrThom

Far said:
stuff like this always eludes me.

Don't feel bad, it eludes most people, because most people don't realize that it would even matter. Heck, back before SSDs, it usually didn't matter, because it would take 8-10 HDDs ganged together before you would hit the kind of bandwidth demands you can get today from even one "average" NVMe SSD. It means having to find a board's "block diagram," which will look something like this:

(This one is generic -- no slot assignments, etc. Incidentally, I know it says "Xeon" on it, but this is essentially the exact same layout as the Z390 that's on the board you chose)

Once you've found it, you can see the paths data will have to take moving from place to place, and trace which slots are hooked up to what chip, and then make some decisions about where your components should be installed in order to cut down on traffic bottlenecks. The motherboard makers don't always make this easy. The manual for that Gigabyte board, for instance, does NOT include a block diagram, so you just have to figure out which slots go to what based on the part that explains "This is shared with this, plugging in an M.2 card will disable SATA ports 0 and 1 and slot 4" kinda stuff.

Far said:
the carrier board you're referring to is one of these guys right?
https://m.newegg.ca/products/N82E16815256024

That's the simplest kind, yes. Just make sure it's x4. There are also ones that come with heatsinks and/or fans (M.2 cards can get very hot), ones that come with onboard splitters/switches to let you load two cards at once, and even utterly ridiculous ones that let you load four simultaneous cards. Trouble is, once you start getting into the multiple ones (or even fast enough single ones), that's when you could potentially start hitting those bottlenecking limitations I was talking about IF you don't plan ahead of time which slot(s) you'll be using.

--Patrick

Apr 23, 2019#184

PatrThom

This, but don't.

...Ever.

--Patrick

Apr 24, 2019#185

GasBandit

The GTX 1650s are out, and they seem to perform slightly better than 1060s, and only cost around $150.

So if you are looking to build or upgrade a budget gaming rig on the super cheap, this is it. This is your moment.

Amazon product

Apr 24, 2019#186

PatrThom

And I still hold to my opinion that the only real reason to get a 1650 is because you don't have the budget (either power OR cash) for a 1660Ti.

--Patrick

Apr 24, 2019#187

PatrThom

Oh, and Intel finally officially launched the rest of their Coffee Lake refresh processors today, meaning that the 9xxx-series now has something like three dozen total models spanning 2C/2T models all the way up to 5.0GHz 8C/16T models.
No (official) word on the equivalent E-22xx-series Xeons yet, but word is they're coming.

--Patrick

Apr 27, 2019#188

DarkAudit

GasBandit said:
The GTX 1650s are out, and they seem to perform slightly better than 1060s, and only cost around $150.

So if you are looking to build or upgrade a budget gaming rig on the super cheap, this is it. This is your moment.

Amazon product

No, it's not. "Dead on arrival" -- Hardware Unboxed.

"Is Nvidia even trying?" -- JayzTwoCents

Also "Dead On Arrival" -- Gamers Nexus

Smart money buys an RX 570.

Apr 27, 2019#189

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
No, it's not. "Dead on arrival" -- Hardware Unboxed.
"Is Nvidia even trying?" -- JayzTwoCents
Also "Dead On Arrival" -- Gamers Nexus

Smart money buys an RX 570.

570? Heck, you can get full RX 580’s for ~$160 now. Spend the extra $10 and treat yo'self.

EDIT: Here's another relevant nugget about the 1650 launch (for those who didn't watch any of the above videos):

No Press drivers? No way to test it ahead of time? Then how can we possibly get an idea of its performance?
...though I suppose that does give us some indication of its performance, since they clearly don't want anyone to know how good the card is(n't) prior to launch.

—Patrick

Apr 30, 2019#190

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
Incidentally the goto "solid performers" right now are the 1TB WD Blue and the SanDisk Ultra 3D, which are pretty much the exact same drive wearing different clothing (WD and SanDisk are the same company now). Both can be had for < $300 and come with a three-year warranty.

They might have been $300 a year and a half ago, but the 1TB Blue SSDs can now be had for $125-$150 (depending on revision WDS100T1B0A v. WDS100T2B0A with the 2B0A being less expensive), you can now buy the 2TB model of the 2B0A for ~$225 (the 1B0A version only goes up to 1TB), and reports are that a 4TB version is imminent (though it is being listed for ~$625).

So yeah, if you are still using SATA for your daily driver, it's DEFINITELY time to consider stepping up.

--Patrick

May 14, 2019#191

PatrThom

If the latest sidechain vulnerability news has you worried about going with Intel for your next build (which is understandable), you may be interested to know that the fastest AMD CPU for gaming right now* is the Threadripper 2920X, with benchmarks showing it roughly equivalent to that of the (six year old) Intel i7-4770. On the plus side, the 2920X is a newer architecture and has 3 times as many cores as the 4770, but it also requires just over twice the power and costs a little over twice as much. The current darling of non-exotic gaming CPUs is the Intel i7-9700k, which will give you 8 cores that perform ~25% faster than the 4770/2920X for a price that is almost smack in the middle between the two and a power budget only a smidge over that of the 4770, though the 9700k is, of course, a chip that's on Intel's vulnerability list.

EDIT: If you're looking for something less exotic than a Threadripper CPU, the Ryzen 2700X is the best-performing of the "Consumer" lineup and isn't that far behind at about 98% as fast as the 2920X.

--Patrick
*Under the assumption that gaming benefits most from single-thread performance, that is.

May 22, 2019#192

Soupy

Not a builder or hardware guy by ANY means, so I need some advice. My rig is dying and my wife said 'just order a new one'. I did a few searches and came across this. Any thoughts? I've seen similar rigs on newegg.ca as well or I could just go back to dell/alienware but I feel like i'm paying for the name there.

Feedback appreciated!

May 22, 2019#193

PatrThom

Well, for starters, at this point in history, I wouldn't buy any new AMD-based rig built around any of the pre-Zen CPUs.
If it says it is using an AMD CPU but doesn't say it's using a "Ryzen," "Epyc," or "Threadripper" CPU, you can immediately remove it from consideration.

--Patrick

May 22, 2019#194

grub

It also is still running DDR3 which is 12 years old, so it won't last much longer.

Another $200 would get you this, which is much newer and will probably last longer.

May 22, 2019#195

figmentPez

@PatrThom @Soupy Any of these systems look promising? Factory Reconditioned HP Gaming Computers at Woot

May 22, 2019#196

PatrThom

The price points for the ones I would consider seem to hover right around US$1100, nothing close enough to the $800 of the TigerDirect one linked earlier.

--Patrick

May 22, 2019#197

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
If it says it is using an AMD CPU but doesn't say it's using a "Ryzen," "Epyc," or "Threadripper" CPU, you can immediately remove it from consideration.

Let me add that on the Intel side of the fence, I would only be considering systems powered by 6xxx-series (Skylake) CPUs or newer.
But no matter which camp you pick, I would also skip anything that is not at least 4 full cores, 6 if you can get it.

--Patrick

Jun 1, 2019#198

Far

Mostly done, specs are almost what I'd posted earlier but I dropped a bit off the ram, down to 3200's instead of the 3600 I had and I've yet to buy the M.2 drive, next week.

No trouble during set up, booted first try and runs great so far. Messed a bit around with overclocking it but I'm not gonna go crazy. It's already running like a beast without it.

Jun 3, 2019#199

Far

Guy was giving me shit for my cable management(which wasn't finalized in the initial pics, that was literally a "Yay! It post!" Picture). I did go back and tidy it up a bit.

Jun 18, 2019#200

GasBandit

Just a quick note because I don't remember if anybody ever brought it up before or not, but there's a site called pchound that really comes in handy for figuring out a pc build

http://pchound.com

and it can give you vBcode output so you can paste it in a forum for feedback, for example:

PC Hound Part List - June 2019 AMD good build

CPU: AMD AMD Ryzen 5 2600 ($149.61 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE B450 AORUS PRO WIFI ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.SKILL 16GB (2 x 8GB) TridentZ RGB Series ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 06G-P4-2061-KR ($349.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 750W FOCUS Plus 750 Gold SSR-750FX ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital 500GB BLACK SN750 NVMe WDS500G3X0C ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 100R CC-9011075-WW ($54.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $974.54
Price may include shipping, rebates, promotions, and tax
Generated by PC Hound

Jun 22, 2019#201

GasBandit

How to get Windows 10 cheap, or possibly free.

Jun 22, 2019#202

Terrik

GasBandit said:
Just a quick note because I don't remember if anybody ever brought it up before or not, but there's a site called pchound that really comes in handy for figuring out a pc build

http://pchound.com

and it can give you vBcode output so you can paste it in a forum for feedback, for example:

PC Hound Part List - June 2019 AMD good build

CPU: AMD AMD Ryzen 5 2600 ($149.61 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE B450 AORUS PRO WIFI ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.SKILL 16GB (2 x 8GB) TridentZ RGB Series ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 06G-P4-2061-KR ($349.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic 750W FOCUS Plus 750 Gold SSR-750FX ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital 500GB BLACK SN750 NVMe WDS500G3X0C ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 100R CC-9011075-WW ($54.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $974.54
Price may include shipping, rebates, promotions, and tax
Generated by PC Hound

Neat site, but why do I never get any compatibility matches for PC coolers?

Jul 7, 2019#203

PatrThom

AMD Launches 7nm Ryzen 3000 CPUs (and also some new graphics cards but they're not as disruptive)

The number of samples at PassMark is incredibly small (just 2 for each as of last night), but still...

...Yes, you are seeing this right. Zen2 is beating everything else on the chart. If these numbers hold up, then the whole gaming world just got turned upside-down. This is BIG. Like, AMD64 levels of big.

--Patrick

Jul 7, 2019#204

Terrik

That's pretty much all I needed to see. Especially since the i9-9900k is on a dead-end socket, and at the very least, you can upgrade to the next version of Ryzen chips without having to replace the motherboard

Jul 7, 2019#205

DarkAudit

tl;dw: Ryzen Zen 2 marginally worse than intel at gaming, but slaughters the competition at productivity/content creation.

Jul 7, 2019#206

Terrik

Marginally worse is right. It looks like a couple frames at most.

Im wondering about the X570 Mobos now.

Jul 7, 2019#207

DarkAudit

I still haven't had a chance to check Navi reviews yet. Maybe over breakfast tonight.

Jul 7, 2019#208

PatrThom

Terrik said:
That's pretty much all I needed to see. Especially since the i9-9900k is on a dead-end socket, and at the very least, you can upgrade to the next version of Ryzen chips without having to replace the motherboard

I know. So glad I didn't start building the Intel system I'd been musing, for two reasons:

1) The Xeon E-2176G I was considering up 'til now (second bar from bottom in pic above) is competitive, but it is (slightly) more expensive (when you can even find one) and has only 6 cores compared with 8 in the 3800X (which is the CPU I'm considering now). Plus there's that whole Intel speculative TLB Spectre/Meltdown/etc vulnerability thing.

2) All Kaby/Coffee Lake-based Intel chips (such as the 2176G) only have 16 PCIe lanes attached to the CPU, which means that if you want the fastest possible performance, you have to cut your GPU down to 8x so you can use the remaining 8x to attach your SSD(s) directly to the CPU in order to keep them from getting bottlenecked/choked by having to share bandwidth with everything else in the system (USB ports, SATA ports, sound card, Ethernet, etc).

The Ryzen 3k I/O allows for twenty total PCIe lanes, which means you can have a full 16 lanes for your GPU and 4 more lanes left over for your main high-performance SSD. Plus (on X570 at least) all those lanes are PCIe 4.0, which means they're twice as fast as Intel's. Additionally, on X570 that bottleneck connecting the CPU to the rest of the system is also PCIe 4.0, which means the bandwidth bottleneck I mentioned earlier has only half as much of an impact.

In short, unless some sort of early-adopter time bomb gets discovered, there's just so many reasons right now not to go with Intel (for a gaming build, at least). Graphics cards might be another story, pretty sure NVIDIA's 2070 Super and 2080 cards are still on top for now.

DarkAudit said:
I still haven't had a chance to check Navi reviews yet. Maybe over breakfast tonight.

Most recent benches I've seen show 5700xt neck-and-neck with 2060 Super/2070 Standard.

--Patrick

Jul 7, 2019#209

Terrik

PatrThom said:
I know. So glad I didn't start building the Intel system I'd been musing, for two reasons:

In short, unless some sort of early-adopter time bomb gets discovered, there's just so many reasons right now not to go with Intel (for a gaming build, at least). Graphics cards might be another story, pretty sure NVIDIA's 2070 Super and 2080 cards are still on top for now.

Most recent benches I've seen show 5700x neck-and-neck with 2060 Super/2070 Standard.

--Patrick

Eh the 2080ti is still top dog, and I'm going to build a system, you can bet that's going to be included.

Jul 7, 2019#210

PatrThom

Terrik said:
Eh the 2080ti is still top dog, and I'm going to build a system, you can bet that's going to be included.

Well sure, if you're just going to throw $$$ at it for more FPS, the RTX 2080 Ti is still ~20% faster than the 5700XT, IF you're GPU-bound, that is.

--Patrick

Jul 7, 2019#211

Terrik

Looks like if you worried about gaming and want to go with AMD, the R7 3700x is more than enough, since at 1440p and up it's mostly GPU bound anyhow.

Jul 7, 2019#212

PatrThom

I admit the choice for me does come down to a choice between the 3700X/3800X (since they are the 8-core models). I am leaning toward the latter somewhat for its slightly higher boost but mostly for its higher TDP ceiling which means less throttling and better tolerance for higher temperatures when on air.

Also I may debate running it with SMT disabled just to further lower the heat output (and for game compatibility), so I am looking at 8c as a minimum.

--Patrick

Jul 7, 2019#213

Terrik

Also the Ryen 3700x/3900x only underperform the i9-9900k at 1080p. Presumably at 1440p and 4k there is no discernible difference (this bears repeating). My brother codes in python and creates cancer simulations to send to a super computer, so he thinks he might go for the 3900x

Jul 7, 2019#214

PatrThom

Terrik said:
My brother codes in python and creates cancer simulations to send to a super computer, so he thinks he might go for the 3900x

He might want to hold out for the 3950X (September, I think?). Just sayin'.

I mean, it's basically 2x3700X/3800X bolted together on one substrate. No additional RAM, though. You just get more cores, not more I/O.

--Patrick

Jul 8, 2019#215

Eriol

This is a pretty decent rundown of the basic architecture, and how it's different than prior generations. Short answer: chiplets: https://techreport.com/review/34672/amd-ryzen-7-3700x-and-ryzen-9-3900x-cpus-reviewed/

This also corroborates the point from earlier about number of PCIe 4.0 lanes. 16 to graphics, 4 to SSD, 4 to rest of the chipset.

Jul 8, 2019#216

jwhouk

So basically a bunch of chips on one chip, essentially?

Jul 8, 2019#217

PatrThom

A bunch of different chiplets on one multi-chip module (MCM). That way the various parts don't all have to be the same process node. The CPU cores can be 7nm, but the I/O can be 12nm. The CPU chiplets are even made in Taiwan while the I/O is made in the USA. This is handy for consumer chips, especially because it allows more modularity when it comes to core count.

The top two chiplets are 7nm (up to) 8c modules, and the lower one is the 12nm I/O. The models that are 8c or less only have one or the upper chiplets. This means that when you start talking about server chips, you can put A LOT of cores into a single socket:

If each of these CPU chiplets are also 8c, that means the above MCM could be packing 64 cores (or 128 threads). Note also that the I/O chiplet is also much larger than the consumer one, meaning it probably has many, many more PCIe lanes, memory channels, etc.

--Patrick

Jul 9, 2019#218

DarkAudit

The super-short LTT summary of their Zen 2 reviews:

Linus Tech Tips said:
AMD completely dismantled Intel's entire consumer product line.

Jul 9, 2019#219

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
The super-short LTT summary of their Zen 2 reviews:

Hey remember that Intel discrete GPU that's coming out? Yeah, it looks like it's fallen off the RADAR what with all the attention AMD and NVIDIA are getting.

--Patrick

Jul 9, 2019#220

DarkAudit

The new value king, the Ryzen 5 3600.

Nice to know Steve's favorite B450 motherboard is the same one I have.

Jul 9, 2019#221

PatrThom

For $200 it’s really hard to beat.

Also if you’re one of those looking for ECC support (like, say, for a roll-your-own NAS), ASRock has a 4xx-series board which explicitly supports ECC (but not PCIe 4.0, sadly).

—Patrick

Jul 9, 2019#222

drifter

Man, y'all make me want to upgrade my computer. Can't really justify it tho :|

Jul 9, 2019#223

Terrik

I'm really having a hard time getting a good read on what's considered a good x570 Mobo.

Jul 9, 2019#224

PatrThom

Terrik said:
I'm really having a hard time getting a good read on what's considered a good x570 Mobo.

Depends on what feature(s) you're after: Choosing the right X570 Motherboard - Anandtech

Personally, I want something in a µATX size.
...BUT as of right now, there's exactly one. Everything else is either Mini-ITX/DTX or else ATX and larger.

Also make sure that whatever board you pick a) has a capable heatsink/cooling setup on the X570 chipset (it's significantly hotter than X470) and b) has plenty of power delivery phases/reserves (I'm assuming you plan to use one of the 105W or higher CPUs, of course). The GB X570 Aorus Xtreme appears to be the one to beat in this regard, as it is the only board with > 12 "true" (not "doubled") power phases, but of course since it's brand new I don't know if that will translate directly into "overclocks better than anything else." Also it's $700 just for the board (without CPU).

--Patrick

Jul 9, 2019#225

Terrik

Yeah $700 seems a bit much for a board.

I'll check out the Anandtech article and see whats up.

Jul 9, 2019#226

Terrik

The ASUS ROG Strix X570 E-gaming doesn't look too bad or the AORUS Master

Jul 9, 2019#227

PatrThom

Terrik said:
Yeah $700 seems a bit much for a board.

Once you want more than 8 power phases, VRMs start to get expensive. I'm sure the board has additional bell$ and whi$tle$ that justify the price, but any board that wants to provide smooth, buttery power delivery is going to get a correspondingly hefty hike in the price dept.

No reason you gotta run out and buy a board RIGHT NOW, might as well wait 5-6mo until Holiday Season arrives and see what reviews say and what other products come out.

--Patrick

Jul 9, 2019#228

Terrik

PatrThom said:
Once you want more than 8 power phases, VRMs start to get expensive. I'm sure the board has additional bell$ and whi$tle$ that justify the price, but any board that wants to provide smooth, buttery power delivery is going to get a correspondingly hefty hike in the price dept.

No reason you gotta run out and buy a board RIGHT NOW, might as well wait 5-6mo until Holiday Season arrives and see what reviews say and what other products come out.

--Patrick

Was actually trying to get it for when my brother comes to visit the weekend after next. I was thinking a build similar to this. What do you think? Just kind of waffling on the Mobo:

Jul 9, 2019#229

PatrThom

Ha! I like how you get $20 off the $1200 GPU cuz it's on promo.

I'll be honest, everything's still so new that I don't know what plays nicely with what else yet, but it looks like you chose the right speed RAM (3600) to keep it at the lower 1:1 ratio (and the Internet agrees with you on the brand). Not sure why you're getting WinX Home instead of Pro, is it just because of the price? The 970 Pros are better than the 970 EVOs, but I don't know what the price difference would be offhand. I also don't know which M.2 slot(s?) are connected directly to the CPU (full speed) v. connected to the X570 (shared speed), but you did say you weren't sure about the board yet. Given the choice, I'd just put a 2TB into whichever is the "fast" slot and leave everything else on SATA. Other than that, I might go up to 850-950 on the PSU just to leave room for a possible 3950X upgrade (or at least more headroom for overclocking).

--Patrick

Jul 9, 2019#230

Terrik

Yeah the Pro is $300 vs the EVO for 170$ both at 1 TB.

Samsung - 970 Evo 2 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive $549.00

So a 2TB is more expensive than buying 2 individual. If I keep with the motherboard I have in there, I have 3 m.2 slots, however it warns me, "The motherboard M.2 slot #3 shares bandwidth with SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports. When the M.2 slot is populated with a PCIe-based M.2 drive, two SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports are disabled"

Jul 9, 2019#231

PatrThom

I suppose that means slot #3 must be one of the "slow" ones.
There are other 2TB M.2 drives for less than the 970, for instance can get a 2TB Sabrent for ~220. Current kings are the Optane drives or the upcoming crop of PCIe 4.0 M.2 cards that can hit 5GB/s.

--Patrick

Jul 9, 2019#232

DarkAudit

Just because an SSD goes in an M.2 slot, does not make them equal. Some, like my WD Blue, are merely a SATA III drive in an M.2 suit.

We should probably say NVMe if were really talking about NVMe drives.

Jul 10, 2019#233

PatrThom

Yes at this point when I say M.2 I mean NVMe. In my opinion, there's no real point in wasting an M.2 slot on a SATA drive when you likely have perfectly good SATA ports elsewhere on the board. And any board that comes with an M.2 slot that doesn't support NVMe is going to have to defend their reason for doing so to me.

--Patrick

Jul 12, 2019#234

Terrik

I've ordered everything except the CPU which isnt in stock yet:

My new system shall be:

CPU: Ryzen 9 3900x

Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix X570-E Gaming ATX Motherboard

Video: ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080TI Overclocked 11G GDDR6

Storage: Samsung 970 EVO 1TB - NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD
Samsung SSD 860 EVO 2TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD

RAM: Ballistix Sport LT 32GB Kit (16GBx2) DDR4 3200 MT/s (PC4-25600) CL16

Cooling: CORSAIR H100i RGB PLATINUM AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
2x CORSAIR LL Series, LL120 RGB, 120mm RGB LED Fan, Triple Pack with Lighting Node PRO- White

PSU: CORSAIR HXi Series, HX850i, 850 Watt, 80+ Platinum Certified

Case: LIAN LI PC-O11 Dynamic

Not really sure if I'm forgetting anything.

So I changed the storage, because the truth is, I have no idea what I'd use 2TB of NVMe for, and certainly not 500 bucks worth. 1TB for the OS, and another 2TB for games on an SSD should be sufficient. Truth is, at least right now, there's no real difference between an NVMe and a SATA SSD for gaming performance. Upgraded to an 850 PSU, because it does seem a like a good idea. As for the RAM, did some research and people were saying its a better idea to get a 3200 CL 16 and OC it to 3600 CL16 if you really need it that fast for some reason and save yourself a couple hundred dollars, rather than paying the super premium up front. Ballistix was recommended because it OCs pretty well, or so they say. The E-gaming mobo has only 2 NVMe slots, but that's good enough. I might stick a 2 TB in a year or two when prices come down. I still have other SATA connections if I really need to buy some extra space in the mean time.

Jul 12, 2019#235

PatrThom

Terrik said:
Truth is, at least right now, there's no real difference between an NVMe and a SATA SSD for gaming performance.

For gaming, random read/IO per second is the metric to look for, and if you're OK with moving things around when you run out of room, even 500GB is enough for gaming.

Also weren't you supposed to be building this system for someone else?

--Patrick

Jul 12, 2019#236

Terrik

PatrThom said:
For gaming, random read/IO per second is the metric to look for, and if you're OK with moving things around when you run out of room, even 500GB is enough for gaming.

Also weren't you supposed to be building this system for someone else?

--Patrick

Yeah a saw a few "real world" benchmarks and in almost every single case games loaded just as fast on the SATA SSD as they did on the NVMe. That saved me some money.

Oh and eh, no. My brother is coming to visit, and we were going to put it together when he gets here. He's making his own, similar system himself. This is the comp that's going to get me through the rest of dental school.

Jul 12, 2019#237

Eriol

I'm not in the market for a new box yet, but when I am, I'm going to look for one thing in particular: a video card that doesn't sound like a leaf blower. It's quiet enough most of the time because it's under my desk, but only if there's music/dialogue playing. In the "quiet moments" all I hear is fan. It's an eVGA 1060, and it's just too damned loud. I don't need "silent" just "not noticeable". It's fine on the desktop and/or web browsing, but playing 3d games? It revs up and unless the music or other stuff is playing, it's noticeable. It may not be that different than typical, but I've got to think there's better solutions out there.

Jul 12, 2019#238

PatrThom

Eriol said:
I've got to think there's better solutions out there.

Nothing out there that isn't liquid-cooled, unless maybe you're thinking about keeping your computer room at a constant 15°C (or lower). There are things you can do to reduce the amount of heat generated (at the cost of speed) and things you can do to make the fan quieter (which will run the card hotter than spec), but everything else is probably gonna involve some kind of cooling loop.

--Patrick

Jul 12, 2019#239

Bubble181

PatrThom said:
Nothing out there that isn't liquid-cooled, unless maybe you're thinking about keeping your computer room at a constant 15°C (or lower). There are things you can do to reduce the amount of heat generated (at the cost of speed) and things you can do to make the fan quieter (which will run the card hotter than spec), but everything else is probably gonna involve some kind of cooling loop.

--Patrick

Well, there still are very big differences. My current card is (a little bit) overclocked, in a hot room, and all you want, and it's still pretty much whisper quiet even at peak performance. Some brands have much better cooling handling than others, be it fan placement, air flow, better bearings, whatever.

Jul 12, 2019#240

DarkAudit

Coming at the problem from a different angle thanks to late-night gaming sessions in close quarters. The ATH-M50 headphones.

Jul 13, 2019#241

DarkAudit

Gamers Nexus guest presenter Buildzoid asks, "Do you really need PCIe 4.0?" Short answer: NO.

He likes the B450 Tomahawk, but there seems to be no mention from these tech reviewers about the situation on the MSI forums and subreddit.

Jul 13, 2019#242

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
"Do you really need PCIe 4.0?" Short answer: NO.

Agreed (for now).

The SINGLE biggest advantage (to most consumers, at least) of going with X570 and PCIe 4.0 right now is the doubled speed of the link between the processor I/O and the chipset. There isn't anything NOW that can really take advantage of a PCIe 4.0 slot (again, for the majority of consumers) because even though Gigabyte's fabulous new PCIe 4.0-enabled NVMe SSD (which they show at the 1:01 mark in the above video) can eke out an extra 1GB/sec in sequential reads, it doesn't make a huge difference in random reads/IOPs. So until Intel comes out with a PCIe 4.0-enabled Optane controller, we're probably not going to see a significant advantage to 4.0 except in synthetic benchmarks.
I know I said "to most consumers," and that is because one of the things you CAN do with PCIe 4.0 is run 4 ports of 10Gig Ethernet off a x4 slot (4x10Gb Enet = 5GB/sec, PCIe 4.0 x4 = ~8GB/sec) rather than having to "waste" an entire PCIe 3.0 x16 slot to install a x8 card OR split your GPU lanes 8x/8x to feed such an Ethernet card.

--Patrick

Jul 13, 2019#243

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
I know I said "to most consumers," and that is because one of the things you CAN do with PCIe 4.0 is run 4 ports of 10Gig Ethernet off a x4 slot (4x10Gb Enet = 5GB/sec, PCIe 4.0 x4 = ~8GB/sec) rather than having to "waste" an entire PCIe 3.0 x16 slot to install a x8 card OR split your GPU lanes 8x/8x to feed such an Ethernet card.

And what consumer grade internet connection would make such a configuration necessary? We've got 10Gbps ethernet ports standard now? Where can you max out even that?

Jul 13, 2019#244

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
And what consumer grade internet connection would make such a configuration necessary? We've got 10Gbps ethernet ports standard now? Where can you max out even that?

This is not about upgrading the WAN connection to your ISP, this is about upgrading the LAN connection(s) between the machines in your home/small business. Throwing movies/music back and forth with Plex, network backups to a NAS, recording hi-def security cameras, screen sharing...1Gb/s Ethernet (i.e., 125MB/sec, which is about the sequential read/write speed of a single mechanical SATA hard drive) just doesn't go as far as it used to any more, especially when you pile on all the WiFi-enabled devices in homes today.

I know our home is not typical, but any given evening we will have 3 IPTVs, 6 mobiles, and 7 PCs all in use simultaneously (yes, really!) across the 5 people who live there.

--Patrick

Jul 13, 2019#245

GasBandit

I can tell you, the 4k setups I work on in a professional setting definitely want 10 gb networks, these days.

Jul 14, 2019#246

DarkAudit

What does $50 more get you? An X. Not worth it.

Jul 19, 2019#247

Terrik

Here it is

Jul 20, 2019#248

PatrThom

Done anything with it yet other than light it up?

--Patrick

Jul 20, 2019#249

Terrik

PatrThom said:
Done anything with it yet other than light it up?

--Patrick

Installed windows, windows update, downloaded NVIDIA drivers, and currently downloading some games on battle net and steam to try things out .

Aug 23, 2019#250

PatrThom

Terrik said:
Installed windows, windows update, downloaded NVIDIA drivers, and currently downloading some games on battle net and steam to try things out .

...aaaaaannnd?

PatrThom said:
I admit the choice for me does come down to a choice between the 3700X/3800X (since they are the 8-core models). I am leaning toward the latter somewhat for its slightly higher boost but mostly for its higher TDP ceiling which means less throttling and better tolerance for higher temperatures when on air.

Nevermind. Gonna get the 3700X.

An odd thing from that review (and others like it): In AMD's pursuit for performance, they decided to cut the memory write channel for each "chiplet" from 32-bit to only 16-bit in width. Their rationale is allegedly that memory writes aren't usually a bottleneck, but that still gets results that look like this in benchmarks:

The CPUs with 2x chiplets (3900X, 3950X) don't have this problem because they have twice as many memory write channels (one for each chiplet), so they therefore have twice the performance of the single-chiplet models. However, since the other benchmarks (gaming, productivity, etc) seem to justify the sacrifice, it's probably not going to be an issue unless you have some kind of excruciatingly specific workload.

--Patrick

Sep 29, 2019#251

PatrThom

Hey @Garedicus @GasBandit @figmentPez @Frank @Ravenpoe and anyone else...

Microsoft Just Hid The ‘Use Offline Account’ Option For Installing Windows, Here’s Where To Find It

--Patrick

Feb 10, 2020#252

LittleKagsin

Okay I know this is an old thread but I have a question...

I have been doing so much research about PC’s and building my own. My question is, can I buy the parts I want and then have someone else actually build it?

So far I see one or the other: prebuilt ones (that don’t have the parts I want) or buy the parts yourself and build it yourself. I don’t trust myself to actually put it together. Is it a thing for me to outsource the building bit?

Feb 10, 2020#253

Bubble181

Yes. Nerds tend to line up to do nerdy stuff like that for pretty girls.
Alternatively, if you think it's just a little but wrong to take advantage of tech-interested acquaintances, some pc shops will build your build, usually runs around €100 or so.

Feb 10, 2020#254

LittleKagsin

Bubble181 said:
Yes. Nerds tend to line up to do nerdy stuff like that for pretty girls.
Alternatively, if you think it's just a little but wrong to take advantage of tech-interested acquaintances, some pc shops will build your build, usually runs around €100 or so.

Haha, i mean I want to pay someone to do it! I'm not gonna take advantage of someone's skills like that.

I just wasn't sure. I'll see if I have any places nearby that offer that.

Feb 10, 2020#255

Bubble181

There arte also websites that'll build it for you - but obviously that means buying most if not all pieces through them, which means you'll be overpaying for at least some parts.

Feb 10, 2020#256

LittleKagsin

Bubble181 said:
There arte also websites that'll build it for you - but obviously that means buying most if not all pieces through them, which means you'll be overpaying for at least some parts.

Good to know! Thank you!

Feb 10, 2020#257

PatrThom

LittleKagsin said:
Haha, i mean I want to pay someone to do it! I'm not gonna take advantage of someone's skills like that. I just wasn't sure. I'll see if I have any places nearby that offer that.

This is a good choice. There are many places/people/pezzles who might assemble a computer for you, but shipping a fully-assembled computer requires special care and packaging, especially regarding the strain generated in transit by beefy heatsinks and GPUs.

--Patrick

Feb 10, 2020#258

DarkAudit

LittleKagsin said:
I buy the parts I want and then have someone else actually build it?

Oh, hell yes. Find a savvy friend and you can get it done for the low, low price of pizza and beer.

Feb 10, 2020#259

DarkAudit

LittleKagsin said:
I'm not gonna take advantage of someone's skills like that.

There are people who build systems just for fun. They may want to pay YOU.

Feb 11, 2020#260

LittleKagsin

PatrThom said:
This is a good choice. There are many places/people/pezzles who might assemble a computer for you, but shipping a fully-assembled computer requires special care and packaging, especially regarding the strain generated in transit by beefy heatsinks and GPUs.

--Patrick

Oh most definitely! I’ll find someone local if I don’t end up building it myself.

I don’t want to have to ship it.

DarkAudit said:
There are people who build systems just for fun. They may want to pay YOU.

I would feel too bad!

Feb 11, 2020#261

Bubble181

Don't, if you happen to know someone like that!
There's a clear difference between taking advantage of someone, or giving someone the opportunity. Building a pc is a fun and stimulating puzzle for some.
If there's a college or uni near you with a CS department, there's a good chance there'll be students willing to do it for less than a website would charge, and with any pieces you like.
Back in my uni days, the CS fraternity had a service where you'd give them a budget and some pointers for intended use (gaming, design, whatever) and they'd order all pieces and assemble it for, I think, €50 back then.

Feb 11, 2020#262

Dave

Find a nerdy friend. Ask them if they'd be willing to HELP YOU build a computer. Assemble the parts using PC Part Picker - you can order them directly from there and they will be compatible.

Then build it yourself. It's really not that hard and you'd have the piece of mind having the nerdy friend there to help. Then when you fire that bad boy up, you'll know in your heart of hearts, "This thing. I BUILT this mother fucker."

Feb 11, 2020#263

ncts_dodge_man

Most things only fit in one way - there are some things that are very sensitive (CPU pins being the biggest problem - do NOT bend these ever), but if someone who has done this more than a couple of times can assist, you should be fine to assemble it yourself.

I've assembled/upgraded servers before, so I may be a bit biased, but it used to be much tougher.

Feb 11, 2020#264

LittleKagsin

I talked about it with some friends last night and they mentioned having a friend who does this for a living, so I’ll probably hit him up and see if he can help.

Dave, you mentioned PC Part Picker but ive been using Newegg, any reason I should change that? Do this think PC Part Picker is better?

Feb 11, 2020#265

Bubble181

LittleKagsin said:
I talked about it with some friends last night and they mentioned having a friend who does this for a living, so I’ll probably hit him up and see if he can help.

Dave, you mentioned PC Part Picker but ive been using Newegg, any reason I should change that? Do this think PC Part Picker is better?

Newegg is a store, pc part picker is a site that searches other stores for you. You'll likely be cheaper off using part picker, but you may end up buying your stuff from 12 different stores across the nation. Newegg is one of the store stores PC part picker checks, and unless things have changed, usually one of the cheaper ones. It's a trade-off of hassle vs better price.
I'd say it's worth recreating your build on pc part picker, just to gauge the savings you're looking at. For 20 bucks, I'd say it isn't worth it. On the other hand, you might have to deal with just two or three stores, and save 200 dollars, who knows?

Feb 11, 2020#266

ncts_dodge_man

PC Part picker also will show you if things are compatible or not - so you don't run into the issue that something doesn't work together when you go to assemble it.

Plus they have some pre-built guides for ideas on comparing what you're putting together.

Feb 11, 2020#267

Bubble181

And if we start these recommendations, I personally have a soft spot for logicalincrements.com . Their guides are great, their price comparisons are fair, and, important for me but completely useless for you, they have a specific Belgian branch with local prices :cool:

Feb 11, 2020#268

Dave

What they said.

www.pcpartpicker.com allows you to pick the parts you want, look at individual ratings for each item, and order the parts right from the site! Also as @ncts_dodge_man says, when you pick a part after that point it ONLY shows parts which are compatible. So you won't wind up with a case that won't fit the motherboard. It's amazing. It also shows bundle deals and you can track the price as you go so you know you'll always stay within your budget.

PC Part Picker is a fucking AMAZING site and all nerds I know recommend it highly.

Feb 11, 2020#269

PatrThom

Dave said:
PC Part Picker is a fucking AMAZING site and all nerds I know recommend it highly.

PcPP is usually good about researching dimensions so you don’t put a 10in GPU into a case where the HDD bracket limits its length to only 9.5in. It saves the time/tedium of looking up dimensions of all the components you want to use or having to return ones that don’t fit. It also has a good filter feature where you can limit to things like “only show me μATX boards with X470 chipset on board” or “only show me HSF (HeatSink & Fan) coolers that can handle 95W and higher CPUs but are still shorter than 160mm in height.”

I’m not saying you should always take their word as gospel, but it will definitely help narrow your candidate pool while you’re still in the planning stages.

--Patrick

Feb 11, 2020#270

LittleKagsin

So far, my build is all compatible.

Pretty damn proud of myself.

Feb 11, 2020#271

PatrThom

LittleKagsin said:
So far, my build is all compatible.
Pretty damn proud of myself.

It‘s always an important moment in a gamer’s life.

—Patrick

Feb 11, 2020#272

GasBandit

Dave said:
build it yourself. It's really not that hard

Feb 11, 2020#273

PatrThom

They did USED to be more complicated. But that was a while ago.
Now there’s no more “Oops I plugged the floppy cable in upside-down” or “Did I set both drives to ’master’?”

Also @LittleKagsin don‘t forget to post your build so the rest of us can all argue over which parts you really should’ve used.

—-Patrick

Feb 11, 2020#274

grub

My standard mistake was plugging the cd-rom audio cable in backwards and reversing my stereo setup.

Feb 11, 2020#275

LittleKagsin

PatrThom said:
They did USED to be more complicated. But that was a while ago.
Now there’s no more “Oops I plugged the floppy cable in upside-down” or “Did I set both drives to ’master’?”

Also @LittleKagsin don‘t forget to post your build so the rest of us can all argue over which parts you really should’ve used.

—-Patrick

I'll just post the damn list right now.

And I'll tell you guys right now that I don't give a shit what you think I should or should not get. :rofl:

AMD Ryzen 7 2700
Corsair H115i Pro cpu cooler
MSI B450 Tomahawk motherboard
G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB (in red)
Caviar Blue 1 TB Internal Hard Drive
Corsair MP510 960 GB SSD
Raedon RX 5700 XT Red Devil
Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ gold cert.
Antec P120 Crystal case

And I'm offended you think this is an important step in a gamer's life when console gaming is as valid as PC, sounds pretty elitist. I'm also pretty put off by the idea that it's not 'that hard'. Ya'll are kinda rude. This is a lot of money, I don't want to accidentally break something or do something wrong. Like, I get where you guys are coming from, I get it, especially sine a lot of you have done this before and likely for a long time, which is great for you! And super cool that you have this skill set. But I'm not much inclined to ask anything else. I'll just figure it out on my own.

Feb 11, 2020#276

grub

There is very little you can break in building a computer. I'm sorry if it came across in a condescending way. I am super jealous of that build, my pc is 6 years old.

Feb 11, 2020#277

LittleKagsin

grub said:
There is very little you can break in building a computer. I'm sorry if it came across in a condescending way. I am super jealous of that build, my pc is 6 years old.

It's okay.

I'm sure you guys were just trying to make me feel better about it, when it actually made me feel worse.

I'm glad you approve! This is my dream build, but it'll definitely be a long process - my boyfriend and I need a new apartment first, so this is all a..way in advance plan. :/

Feb 11, 2020#278

PatrThom

LittleKagsin said:
I'll tell you guys right now that I don't give a shit what you think I should or should not get.

We knew this, otherwise you would’ve asked already.

If you want to do it yourself, that’s fine. But the big question: when you assemble it, are you gonna stream that?

—Patrick

Feb 11, 2020#279

bhamv3

LittleKagsin said:
I'll just post the damn list right now.

And I'll tell you guys right now that I don't give a shit what you think I should or should not get.

AMD Ryzen 7 2700
Corsair H115i Pro cpu cooler
MSI B450 Tomahawk motherboard
G.Skill Ripjaws 16GB (in red)
Caviar Blue 1 TB Internal Hard Drive
Corsair MP510 960 GB SSD
Raedon RX 5700 XT Red Devil
Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ gold cert.
Antec P120 Crystal case

And I'm offended you think this is an important step in a gamer's life when console gaming is as valid as PC, sounds pretty elitist. I'm also pretty put off by the idea that it's not 'that hard'. Ya'll are kinda rude. This is a lot of money, I don't want to accidentally break something or do something wrong. Like, I get where you guys are coming from, I get it, especially sine a lot of you have done this before and likely for a long time, which is great for you! And super cool that you have this skill set. But I'm not much inclined to ask anything else. I'll just figure it out on my own.

That's a very nice list of great components, but you know what I'm drooling over most right now? That case. That's a really pretty case.

Feb 11, 2020#280

LittleKagsin

PatrThom said:
We knew this, otherwise you would’ve asked already.

If you want to do it yourself, that’s fine. But the big question: when you assemble it, are you gonna stream that?

—Patrick

YOU KNOW. I thought about it, but?? I dunno. Would you guys wanna watch? I'll still probably ask my friends' friend to help me, so it would probably just be me and him, with me awkwardly running around in the background. Yay, nay?

Post automatically merged: Feb 11, 2020

bhamv3 said:
That's a very nice list of great components, but you know what I'm drooling over most right now? That case. That's a really pretty case.

SAME. It turns me on honestly.

Feb 11, 2020#281

PatrThom

My only question is whether its really a 2700 or a 3700.

bhamv3 said:
That's a really pretty case.

It will never be InWin Allure pretty, though.

—Patrick

Feb 11, 2020#282

LittleKagsin

PatrThom said:
My only question is whether its really a 2700 or a 3700.

—Patrick

The Ryzen? It's really a 2700.

Feb 11, 2020#283

LittleKagsin

And even more important, lets appreciate my eventual gaming chair:

Feb 11, 2020#284

GasBandit

That's definitely a pretty good build. I wasn't trying to make you feel worse, just joking about the very common perception that PC building is hard, when the reality is that these day's it's no harder than putting up a tent - with a lot less physical exertion.

That said, if you're gonna put this off for several months because of money... you might want to re-check your list for price fluctuations immediately before you order. There might be a better deal. Especially for the video card.

This page is my mantra: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html

Feb 11, 2020#285

PatrThom

LittleKagsin said:
The Ryzen? It's really a 2700.

The graphics card (5700xt) was current generation, so I wondered if the CPU was a typo. The 2700 may not be the latest, but it is still plenty capable for today’s stuff. And they’re cheaper now that the 3000’s are out.

And that case is HUUUUUGE. You could practically live in it if only the side panel wasn’t clear. Glass houses and all.

—Patrick

Feb 11, 2020#286

LittleKagsin

GasBandit said:
That's definitely a pretty good build. I wasn't trying to make you feel worse, just joking about the very common perception that PC building is hard, when the reality is that these day's it's no harder than putting up a tent - with a lot less physical exertion.

That said, if you're gonna put this off for several months because of money... you might want to re-check your list for price fluctuations immediately before you order. There might be a better deal. Especially for the video card.

This page is my mantra: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html

Thank you! And I'll be sure to double check before I buy.

PatrThom said:
The graphics card (5700xt) was current generation, so I wondered if the CPU was a typo. The 2700 may not be the latest, but it is still plenty capable for today’s stuff. And they’re cheaper now that the 3000’s are out.

And that case is HUUUUUGE. You could practically live in it if only the side panel wasn’t clear. Glass houses and all.

—Patrick

Oh, yeah, no, I thought about doing the 3700, but I think the 2700 will be powerful enough for what I need and cheaper, so. ://// That's why.

IT IS. And I'm gonna be that person that vomits RGB all up in there - just red though.

Feb 11, 2020#287

GasBandit

The 2700 is an excellent value, and as you say, pretty much powerful enough for just about anything, including VR (especially when paired with a 5700xt).

Feb 11, 2020#288

Tinwhistler

Most everything these days on a PC is made-to-fit...most of the cables fit into the motherboard in specific locations and it's nearly impossible to put them in the wrong place.

the place you might have the most issues (depending on your case) is plugging in all of the case wires into the motherboard spots for them.

This is literally the shittiest part of building a computer, and I hate it every time I have to do it. Some cases organize the wires better than others.

Everything else looks like this:

Specific shaped cables going into specific shaped spots.

Feb 11, 2020#289

drifter

LittleKagsin said:
YOU KNOW. I thought about it, but?? I dunno. Would you guys wanna watch? I'll still probably ask my friends' friend to help me, so it would probably just be me and him, with me awkwardly running around in the background. Yay, nay?

Post automatically merged: Feb 11, 2020

Awkwardly running around in the background... in costume?

Heck, maybe that should be your streamer niche. Doing everyday stuff in costume. Might attract weirdos, though. Well, even more weirdos than us.

Feb 11, 2020#290

LittleKagsin

drifter said:
Awkwardly running around in the background... in costume?

Heck, maybe that should be your streamer niche. Doing everyday stuff in costume. Might attract weirdos, though. Well, even more weirdos than us.

Haha, I mean I could.

:rofl:

You’re not wrong!! I could do that.
I do have an idea already of what I want my stream life to be - I want to stream games that I think would’ve been popular if streaming had been around back then. The games that have been left to time because they’re not the classic classics but old enough that everyone’s forgotten them, like Sly Cooper or Jak and Daxter, Guitar Hero even. I think it will be fun. And also Rocket League because my obsession with that game is...real damn high.

Feb 11, 2020#291

Dave

960 GB SSD?!? Almost a TB SSD. God damn.

Feb 11, 2020#292

Dei

Dave said:
960 GB SSD?!? Almost a TB SSD. God damn.

I have 2TB SSD because I am a hoarder and hate deleting things ever. (I also have an even bigger secondary drive :|)

Feb 11, 2020#293

PatrThom

drifter said:
Awkwardly running around in the background... in costume?
Heck, maybe that should be your streamer niche. Doing everyday stuff in costume.

I mean, there's precedent.

GasBandit said:
The 2700 is an excellent value, and as you say, pretty much powerful enough for just about anything, including VR (especially when paired with a 5700xt).

The 2700 is more or less equivalent in speed to the 3600. The 3600 is a smidge faster, but the 2700 has two more cores and is $50 less, so yeah, excellent value.

Tinwhistler said:
the place you might have the most issues (depending on your case) is plugging in all of the case wires into the motherboard spots for them.
View attachment 32845

This is literally the shittiest part of building a computer, and I hate it every time I have to do it. Some cases organize the wires better than others.

I like the motherboards that include a header where you assemble all your cables onto a block and then just plug the block into the board. SO much easier.

Dave said:
960 GB SSD?!? Almost a TB SSD. God damn.

Shh...nobody tell Dave about the ~4TB Kingston DC450R.

--Patrick

Feb 11, 2020#294

LittleKagsin

Dave said:
960 GB SSD?!? Almost a TB SSD. God damn.

I ain’t fucking around!! (And I don’t want to have to upgrade it for a long while. :/ )

Dei said:
I have 2TB SSD because I am a hoarder and hate deleting things ever. (I also have an even bigger secondary drive :|)

This.

Feb 11, 2020#295

Dave

I have a total of ~10 TB of storage. But only 256 GB of that is SSD.

Feb 11, 2020#296

grub

I'm with you in regards to hoarding. I've got 8TB of HDD installed in my pc currently. Only 480GB of SSD.

Feb 11, 2020#297

DarkAudit

VERY nice build. Better than mine, actually.

I would recommend a better cooler than stock. The MSI Core Frozr L is top notch.

Feb 12, 2020#298

LittleKagsin

DarkAudit said:
VERY nice build. Better than mine, actually.

I would recommend a better cooler than stock. The MSI Core Frozr L is top notch.

thank you for the suggestion! I like my choice of the Corsair H115i though (especially when paired with the 2700).

And I’ll have 3+ RGB fans in there as well - Antec Prizm 140 and 120’s.

Feb 12, 2020#299

PatrThom

LittleKagsin said:
And even more important, lets appreciate my eventual gaming chair:

View attachment 32844

This chair looks like it has great... neck support, I guess?

--Patrick

Apr 15, 2020#300

Tiger Tsang

Hmmm, well, for now I'm just pricing things. I need to check my old PC rig and see what's salvageable. The case for sure, I'm pretty sure the PSU is okay, by now it's fairly old but it was lightly used before my HDD died, I should be okay for a CPU cooler. If the old liguid cooler is gunked, I should still have a pretty beefy regular one.
It's replacement was an ACER that wasn't really upgradeable. I did get a 1050 ti but it's already a bit dated. I'm either going to turn it into a media machine or snag the 1tb HDD out of it.
I can't see needing beyond 1080i def for a graphics cards. Something that would be able to run RDR2 and Cyberpunk would.
I'm just not sure if getting parts and having to buy win 10 or just getting a decent upgradeable system would be better.

Suggestions?

p.s. looking in the 600-700 range

For a whole system looking at something like this

SkyTech - Gaming Desktop PC - AMD Ryzen 5 2600 - Newegg.com

Buy Skytech - Gaming Desktop PC - AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (6-Core, 3.40 GHz), AMD Radeon RX 580 4 GB, 8 GB DDR4, 500 GB SSD, Wi-Fi, VR Ready, Windows 10 Home 64-bit, Archangel with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

Apr 15, 2020#301

sixpackshaker

Man, I can kick myself. I bought the parts for a decent gaming rig back in February. It is all still in the boxes on my kitchen table. Just after doing 8 hours at work, I really don't feel like effing with more computer related stuff.

Apr 15, 2020#302

PatrThom

Tiger Tsang said:
Suggestions?

If you're not sure which CPU to get (and you've decided not going to keep whatever one you already have), then that means you probably want a Ryzen R5 3600.
No, really. It's such a value that tech sites constantly recommending it became a meme.
Its successor isn't supposed to be ready until sometime in Q3, so if you need a new system now, that's probably the way to go.

You can get a decent 2TB SATA SSD for about $225 these days. I chose a 2TB Seagate BarraCuda 120 (model ZA2000CM1A003, US$250) based on its purported MTBF in order to replace the 1TB HDD in Cranky's older Athlon64 X2 machine, and of course it makes a huge difference.

sixpackshaker said:
Man, I can kick myself. I bought the parts for a decent gaming rig back in February. It is all still in the boxes on my kitchen table. Just after doing 8 hours at work, I really don't feel like effing with more computer related stuff.

Pfft. Casual.

--Patrick

Apr 15, 2020#303

Tiger Tsang

PatrThom said:
If you're not sure which CPU to get (and you've decided not going to keep whatever one you already have), then that means you probably want a Ryzen R5 3600.
No, really. It's such a value that tech sites constantly recommending it became a meme.
Its successor isn't supposed to be ready until sometime in Q3, so if you need a new system now, that's probably the way to go.

You can get a decent 2TB SATA SSD for about $225 these days. I chose a 2TB Seagate BarraCuda 120 (model ZA2000CM1A003, US$250) based on its purported MTBF in order to replace the 1TB HDD in Cranky's older Athlon64 X2 machine, and of course it makes a huge difference.

Pfft. Casual.

--Patrick

If I go the parts route, well I'll be looking at a MB, cpu, OS install, ssd or ssd/hdd combo, memory, graphics card. I'll have to double check what's in my acer memory wise but i'm pretty sure its ddr3 and not 4, and maybe a power supply. between the 2 pcs I know I have a working dvd drive. That SSD is very nice but that would probably be siphoning money from the mb/cpu and/or GPU.

Apr 15, 2020#304

PatrThom

Are you looking for prebuilt + add-ons, or for a piece-at-a-time full upgrade path?

Can you post (or PM) your entire current build? Case, MLB, CPU, PSU, GPU, RAM, Drive(s), add-in cards, etc. The more info you can collect on the specific parts you already have, the better advice I or anyone else here can give.

These days, the price differences between the OEM and Retail versions of Win10 x64 Home and Pro don't seem as wide as they used to be. The only reasons I can see for you to choose Pro over Home would be if your machine will have 2 or more CPUs (not likely), Hyper-V virtualization (if you want to run Virtual Machines, also probably not likely), or if you want the BitLocker whole-disk encryption (this is something your job might require if you also use the machine for work). NewEgg shows Win10x64 Home OEM going for $110 while the Retail version goes for $140. Personally I'd pick the Retail version if the difference is going to be only $30. That would still leave a little over $500 in the budget for the rest of your machine.

--Patrick

Apr 15, 2020#305

Tiger Tsang

Right now I havea pre-built Acer Aspire intel i5 4440 8 g ddr3 that I've stuck a gtx 1050ti in.
The old PC is a full size tower PSU is AGI 550W, Once the HDD died, it was already a dated system so I took the emergency route with the ACER.

Yeah, I'd get home not pro.

the r5 3600 and a decent mb looks around at least 300ish. GPU 180-200, I'm 90 % sure the power supply from the pc before that is good and is fairly beefy, and I can, between the 2 pcs, get a dvd if I want one. that would still be leaving storage. Memory $80ish if I get 16g up front.

The acer would still be a perfectly cromulent media pc to hook up to the tv, and heck still play older games.

Apr 15, 2020#306

PatrThom

There's more than one Aspire out there that used the 4440, so I just went by your stated specs.
Your old PSU is actually going to limit you somewhat. 550W is a bit low for modern GPUs, or at least for the "premium" ones. Should be fine for any of the GeForce "6" models or below, though (1060, 1660, 2060, etc), assuming it has enough of the proper connectors (SATA, PCIe aux power 6/8) to feed everything you put in the box. But it would certainly be enough to get you started. Let's see what some numbers would look like:

0.00 - PSU - Salvaged AGI 550W
0.00 - CAS - Salvaged Full Tower Case
0.00 - HDD - 1TB (salvaged from Acer)
0.00 - GPU - GeForce GTX 1050ti (salvaged from Acer)
0.00 - ODD - Salvaged DVD drive
115.00 - OS - Win10 x64 Home Retail
175.00 - MLB - X570 Socket AM4 MLB of some sort (there are many at this price point)
175.00 - CPU - AMD Ryzen R5 3600 (HSF comes in the box if your water cooler is indeed broken)
80.00 - RAM - 2x8GB DDR4-3200 CL16 (CL14 is better/faster, but more expensive)
=======
545.00 - TOT - $55 worth of wiggle room, maybe enough for a 1TB SSHD instead of scavenging from the Acer?

So let me talk about the above. I know you want a better graphics card, but that shouldn't be your first priority, especially with your stated budget.
Buying a new CPU means buying a whole new motherboard and RAM, yes. But a 3600 is 6 years newer than the 4440, and scores 40% better at single-threaded tasks (e.g., gaming). Oh, and the 3600 has 6 cores instead of only 4, uses 20W less power than the 4440, and since it can do SMT (which Intel calls "Hyperthreading") on top of those other things, it is almost 4x faster overall than the 4440. Your graphics may not get prettier, but you'd be surprised at what percentage of stuttering in modern games is due to the CPU bottlenecking, and not the GPU.

Upgrade the HDD to a SSD later. Upgrade the GPU to something else later (especially since it might mean having to upgrade your PSU at the same time--if not for Wattage, then for plugs). Right now the oldest thing in your system is its core, so upgrade that first.

DISCLAIMER: The above is a personal recommendation only, and should not be taken as professional advice.

--Patrick

Apr 15, 2020#307

Tiger Tsang

ASRock X370 Killer SLI/ac AM4 AMD Promontory X370 SATA 6Gb/s ATX AMD Motherboard and the 3600 for 260 if I can get the damn combo cost to kick in.

Apr 15, 2020#308

Tiger Tsang

Well I'll wait on the GPU but I just tossed this off to amazon

ASRock B450M PRO4 AM4 AMD Promontory B450 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard $88.99
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core, 12-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor with Wraith Stealth Cooler $175
Windows 10 oem usb $120
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16 Desktop Memory Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M2B3200C16),Vengeance LPX Black $77
ADATA SU635 960GB 3D-NAND SATA 2.5 inch Internal SSD (ASU635SS-960GQ-R) $90
Thermal paste and 3pack of small case fans for $20

With tax a little over $600. It split it up into 2 orders for some reason.
I'll take my old case to work tomorrow and blow/clean it out, and check water cooler and see if the dvd drives show up in bios.

Apr 15, 2020#309

PatrThom

Uh, I wouldn't really recommend putting a Ryzen 3xxx into any of the X3x0-based boards. The VRMs aren't as good as the ones in the 4xx and newer series.
The 4xx-based boards are better, but still not as good as the X570-based ones. About the only real advantage a B450 has over an X570 is price. That's it. Price. That's the only advantage. I mean, if that's what you were after, then I get it. Personally I would've gone for the X570 just for the greater expandability, but it shouldn't hurt your performance at all unless you wanted to go with 2x GPUs, which I wouldn't recommend on µATX anyway.

The rest looks solid, though I admit I don't know much about the SU635 SSD...oh, it's QLC. Best advice I have for you there is to make sure you always keep at least 1/4 of the drive empty, otherwise you're going to see some serious slowdowns. Until people stop making TLC drives, I will always pick them over QLC, even if the QLC ones are cheaper.

--Patrick

Apr 15, 2020#310

Tiger Tsang

I'll eventually get a big honking HDD for older games and such. I don't think I'll let that become an issue.

*edit* 2 GPU's!!! Look at daddy warbucks over here

.
Oh and the PSU has the dual sli power cords and such. So as long as it works I"m good there. and if it's not working, With all the different delivery times I"ll have plenty of time to get a new PSU.

But thanks for the insights.

Apr 16, 2020#311

Tiger Tsang

Well, the PSU does appear dead. ordered a Corsair 650W $70. While I have your attn, and you have your thumbs on these issues, what would you recommend in the next month or three for a graphics card in the 250 range give or take?

*edit* I meant to add, the corsair liquid cooler doesn't appear to have leaked and I can hear sloshing sounds, but I didn't *obviously* get to power it up. Should be okay?

Apr 16, 2020#312

GasBandit

Tiger Tsang said:
what would you recommend in the next month or three for a graphics card in the 250 range give or take?

PassMark Videocard Value Chart - Performance / Price of Videocards

Videocard performance / price value chart for Videocards for sale. Updated daily.

www.videocardbenchmark.net

Right now, the GTX 1660 super is your best bang for the buck in the $250 range.
A viable AMD alternative is the RX Vega 56.

If you absolutely gotta have the raytracing, you can spend $300 and get a GTX 2060.

Apr 16, 2020#313

PatrThom

Tiger Tsang said:
what would you recommend in the next month or three for a graphics card in the 250 range give or take?

GasBandit said:
Right now, the GTX 1660 super is your best bang for the buck in the $250 range.
A viable AMD alternative is the RX Vega 56.

Gas and I may disagree on other things, but on this we are united. The GTX 1660-based family of cards are THE best bang-for-buck-and-Watt out there right now (barring the exceptions I mention in the post I linked).

The only thing I will disagree with is that I would pick the 1660 Ti over the 1660 Super (can get a refurbished Ti for only $20-30 more than a Super these days) because the Ti has more cores and TUs enabled than the Super. In other words, while the two cards may have relatively equivalent performance, this is because under the hood the Super has a turbocharged V6, but the Ti has a V8. To put it another way, since they both use the exact same chip at their heart, a 1660 Super is just a "normal" 1660 which has been overclocked and tweaked to get it near the performance level of a stock 1660 Ti, but then there's nothing saying you can't get a stock Ti and then overclock that to get performance that consistently beats that of the 1660 Super. However, if you absolutely can't afford the price premium, then yes, the 1660 Super would be my #2 choice.

Also going to add that the previous generation 1070, 1070Ti, 1080, and 1080ti actually perform better than any of the 1660 cards (though they do use more power), so if you find a sub-$200 deal on one of those, consider grabbing it.

DO NOT get a Vega 56 or Vega 64 for gaming. Yes, they will perform better than either of the 1660 cards, but they do so at something like twice the power/heat budget of the 1660s.

--Patrick

Apr 16, 2020#314

PatrThom

Also, how did you test your power supply to see if it was working? I ask because a computer PSU is designed to not turn on unless it can tell it is actually plugged into something. You can't just plug a PSU into a wall outlet and then plug in a fan or something to see if it's working, you have to do something like this in order to get it to actually fire up.

--Patrick

Apr 16, 2020#315

sixpackshaker

PatrThom said:
Gas and I may disagree on other things, but on this we are united. The GTX 1660-based family of cards are THE best bang-for-buck-and-Watt out there right now (barring the exceptions I mention in the post I linked).

The only thing I will disagree with is that I would pick the 1660 Ti over the 1660 Super (can get a refurbished Ti for only $20-30 more than a Super these days) because the Ti has more cores and TUs enabled than the Super. In other words, while the two cards may have relatively equivalent performance, this is because under the hood the Super has a turbocharged V6, but the Ti has a V8. To put it another way, since they both use the exact same chip at their heart, a 1660 Super is just a "normal" 1660 which has been overclocked and tweaked to get it near the performance level of a stock 1660 Ti, but then there's nothing saying you can't get a stock Ti and then overclock that to get performance that consistently beats that of the 1660 Super. However, if you absolutely can't afford the price premium, then yes, the 1660 Super would be my #2 choice.

Also going to add that the previous generation 1070, 1070Ti, 1080, and 1080ti actually perform better than any of the 1660 cards (though they do use more power), so if you find a sub-$200 deal on one of those, consider grabbing it.

DO NOT get a Vega 56 or Vega 64 for gaming. Yes, they will perform better than either of the 1660 cards, but they do so at something like twice the power/heat budget of the 1660s.

--Patrick

I bought the 1660 Ti. I am happy that you receive it so well.

Apr 16, 2020#316

PatrThom

sixpackshaker said:
I bought the 1660 Ti. I am happy that you receive it so well.

At this moment in time, for what it offers, the 1660 cards are (again, excepting the specific things I call out in the post I linked) as much of a no-brainer as picking the Ryzen R5 3600 for a CPU, and right now the 1660 cards are the Toyota Corolla of graphics cards. If someone were to ask me, "I don't know what I need, what should I get?" then those are the two answers you're almost guaranteed to immediately receive, because by asking that sort of question you have already told me you are probably not the kind of person who is going to worry about things like ECC memory, GPGPU computing, Twitch streaming, etc.

--Patrick

Apr 16, 2020#317

Tinwhistler

PatrThom said:
Also going to add that the previous generation 1070, 1070Ti, 1080, and 1080ti actually perform better than any of the 1660 cards (though they do use more power), so if you find a sub-$200 deal on one of those, consider grabbing it.

I bought a card quite some time ago, and remember spending about $300 (and considering it a good deal at the time) but didn't remember what I had...just opened dxdiag--it's a 1070. I guess It was a good deal after all

Apr 16, 2020#318

Tiger Tsang

PatrThom said:
Also, how did you test your power supply to see if it was working? I ask because a computer PSU is designed to not turn on unless it can tell it is actually plugged into something. You can't just plug a PSU into a wall outlet and then plug in a fan or something to see if it's working, you have to do something like this in order to get it to actually fire up.

--Patrick

It was plugged into the mb at first. Hmmm, flaky at best, it would start spinning some then quit shortly after trying the wire trick. I'll stick with safe then maybe with all the new stuff.

Apr 16, 2020#319

PatrThom

The lowest priced 1070-and-above card I could find doing a quick search was a refurbished reference-design 1070 for 199.99.
I was hoping the prices for that generation had fallen further than that by now, but 1080Ti cards even NOW appear to still be going for almost $500 or more, yeesh.

--Patrick

Apr 16, 2020#320

GasBandit

Doom Eternal was the first (and currently still only) game I can't run on full-bore ultra settings at 1080p on my 1060 3 gig.

Apr 17, 2020#321

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
DO NOT get a Vega 56 or Vega 64 for gaming. Yes, they will perform better than either of the 1660 cards, but they do so at something like twice the power/heat budget of the 1660s.

...also I discovered it appears AMD declared the Vega 56/64 to be end-of-life sometime last July, so I have no idea what that's going to do to prices for the cards now that they've technically been out of production for almost a year.

--Patrick

Apr 17, 2020#322

Tiger Tsang

Well got to looking at the dvdrw on the old system. They have the old style connecter and no SATA, new MB is all SATA, oh well.

Apr 17, 2020#323

PatrThom

Tiger Tsang said:
Well got to looking at the dvdrw on the old system. They have the old style connecter and no SATA, new MB is all SATA, oh well.

New SATA DVD-RW price ~$20-30
v.
SATA<->IDE adapter price ~$20-30

Looks like your wallet may not be able to tell the difference.

--Patrick

Apr 17, 2020#324

GasBandit

Tiger Tsang said:
Well got to looking at the dvdrw on the old system. They have the old style connecter and no SATA, new MB is all SATA, oh well.

Wow.. like.. an IDE ribbon cable? Jeez, I don't think I've seen one of those in 10 years.

Apr 17, 2020#325

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
Wow.. like.. an IDE ribbon cable? Jeez, I don't think I've seen one of those in 10 years.

Want me to mail you one? I have a few.
Ok, more than a few, if you include the father-in-law's stuff.

--Patrick

Apr 17, 2020#326

Tiger Tsang

PatrThom said:
New SATA DVD-RW price ~$20-30
v.
SATA<->IDE adapter price ~$20-30

Looks like your wallet may not be able to tell the difference.

--Patrick

Well not knowing if they'd work, I just spent 30 more bucks and got a blu ray writer. But I think other than whatever gpu i get in a couple of months i'm set.

Apr 17, 2020#327

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Want me to mail you one? I have a few.

...I also haven't had an optical drive since 2014.

Apr 17, 2020#328

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
...I also haven't had an optical drive since 2014.

On the floor next to Gas' desk:

--Patrick

Apr 17, 2020#329

Tiger Tsang

any recommendations on moving most of my info over to the new computer. Various setups, favorites, various games not under steam or gog etc?

Apr 17, 2020#330

PatrThom

Not really. If you're moving to Windows 10 you'll have to reinstall all of them from scratch anyway because of the newer folder structure.

--Patrick

Apr 17, 2020#331

GasBandit

Yeah. Best to start from scratch.

PatrThom said:
On the floor next to Gas' desk:

View attachment 33628

--Patrick

Pssht, physical media is for people who don't run their own plex/ftp/VNC servers

But I uh.. do have 5 or 6 large external drives.

And one little USB stick on my keychain.

Apr 20, 2020#332

sixpackshaker

I was not paying the most attention when I bought my case. It does not have any space for optical drives. The drivers for the mobo is on cd.

Apr 20, 2020#333

Dave

Tiger Tsang said:
any recommendations on moving most of my info over to the new computer. Various setups, favorites, various games not under steam or gog etc?

Most Steam or GOG games should be reloaded as they mostly all have cloud saves anyway. If you want, I can give you access to my Dropbox. I'm only using about 37 GB of the 2 TB I pay for, so you'd have plenty of room for your pictures and files until you moved them to the new place.

Apr 20, 2020#334

PatrThom

sixpackshaker said:
I was not paying the most attention when I bought my case. It does not have any space for optical drives. The drivers for the mobo is on cd.

Fortunately there is nothing saying you have to actually mount the optical drive into the chassis.
Just plug it in and set the naked drive atop a pile of books or something next to your build until you get what you need off it, then remove it.

Can also get USB<->SATA adapters for cheap if you want to keep it on standby in case something like this happens again.

--Patrick

Apr 20, 2020#335

sixpackshaker

I have the adapters. Even an external case I can drop one into. I just assumed the case had a swing out front. I also did not plan on putting a drive on it. It just bothers me that there is no choice. The new case is even larger than my current one.

Apr 20, 2020#336

PatrThom

sixpackshaker said:
It just bothers me that there is no choice.

Apple may get most of the flak for this (since they were probably the first large mfr to drop it) but really the reason optical media is going away is because even an 8GB dual-layer disc just isn't sufficient any more for people's data storage/transfer needs, and since the assumption is that everyone these days has at least 60Mb/s home Internet (which is A LIE, but that's another story), there's almost no point since that's about a 20min download.

Speaking of which, reinstalling the OS on my computer was an absolute joy because the Ethernet port doesn't work without drivers, but to get them you had to go to their website, but you can't go to their website without Ethernet...etc. Luckily sneakernet still works.

--Patrick

Apr 20, 2020#337

Bones

PatrThom said:
Apple may get most of the flak for this (since they were probably the first large mfr to drop it) but really the reason optical media is going away is because even an 8GB dual-layer disc just isn't sufficient any more for people's data storage/transfer needs, and since the assumption is that everyone these days has at least 60Mb/s home Internet (which is A LIE, but that's another story), there's almost no point since that's about a 20min download.

Speaking of which, reinstalling the OS on my computer was an absolute joy because the Ethernet port doesn't work without drivers, but to get them you had to go to their website, but you can't go to their website without Ethernet...etc. Luckily sneakernet still works.

--Patrick

and that is why I keep both a dvd and blu-ray in my computer(and I am one of those old weirdos that demands everything on physical media...)

Apr 20, 2020#338

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
Luckily sneakernet still works

I made sure to grab all the drivers for my new system off of the vendor's website and put on a thumb drive before the parts even arrived.

Apr 20, 2020#339

PatrThom

Bones said:
I am one of those old weirdos that demands everything on physical media...)

Hey, there are perfectly justifiable reasons for that.

—Patrick

Apr 21, 2020#340

Tiger Tsang

Heh, live and learn, need a mount for my ssd. All the parts aren't here anyway

And now whether to go with liquid cooler or the one that came with.

Apr 21, 2020#341

PatrThom

Yeesh at this rate you might as well have done an entire new build.

--Patrick

Apr 21, 2020#342

Tiger Tsang

PatrThom said:
Yeesh at this rate you might as well have done an entire new build.

--Patrick

heh except for the case, I pretty am

At least the bracket I bought will work for 2 2.5 ssd, though I"ll probably just a get a multi TB hdd later.

Apr 21, 2020#343

GasBandit

Tiger Tsang said:
Heh, live and learn, need a mount for my ssd. All the parts aren't here anyway

And now whether to go with liquid cooler or the one that came with.

One of my SSDs is still just dangling in the case by its cord, heh.

Apr 21, 2020#344

PatrThom

One of the most common mounting solutions for SSDs tends to be double-sided tape.
The boot drive for my NAS computer is suspended by the tension from the power/SATA cables and a piece of packing tape looped around a part of the frame.
People talk about SSDs' speed and lower power consumption, but you never see stuff like "I mounted it with pipe cleaners!" in the advertising.

--Patrick

Apr 21, 2020#345

Tiger Tsang

Hmmm doing some research, I should probably just junk the liquid cooler. It never got to get used much before whatever died in the old PC, died. But it is fairly old.

The current big SNAFU is my OS was scheduled for this week, and now it's currently showing May 1.

Apr 21, 2020#346

GasBandit

To be honest, Tiger, I've really never found a genuine need for liquid cooling. I mean, if you're planning to do some insane overclocking maybe... but I've been air cooling (in Texas!) for forever and the only heat issue I ever had was back on my old 8800 GTX running Crysis, and that was because it was factory overclocked.

Apr 21, 2020#347

Tiger Tsang

Yeah, I just salvaged the big fan off the radiatior. pretty much down to PS and the OS and patience.

Apr 21, 2020#348

PatrThom

Tiger Tsang said:
The current big SNAFU is my OS was scheduled for this week, and now it's currently showing May 1.

You can always download and make your own installer, and then just wait to activate it until your box comes. The key is all you're really paying for, anyway. Well, and the physical medium, but that's only a small fraction of the price.

GasBandit said:
I've been air cooling (in Texas!) for forever and the only heat issue I ever had was back on my old 8800 GTX running Crysis, and that was because it was factory overclocked.

Yeah the only reasons I've ever considered liquid cooling were either because I was contemplating an exceedingly hot chip (either inherent or overclocked) or because my goal was to make the machine the quietest it could possibly be. To date, I have never needed to go with liquid cooling to meet either of those goals, I've always managed to find something conventional that did the job.

--Patrick

Apr 21, 2020#349

Tiger Tsang

Well, got a windows 10 key for 45 buck and I'm currently making a boot up USB drive with installation. Go go Gadget Power Supply.

Apr 21, 2020#350

PatrThom

Just FYI, you don’t need a Windows key to download the .ISO. Microsoft obfuscates the Hell out of it, but the downloads are still accessible without one.

—Patrick

Apr 21, 2020#351

Tiger Tsang

No, I wanted an activation key. pretty much I just need the power supply, and time to install all the basic crap.

Apr 23, 2020#352

Tiger Tsang

Well, after a bit of a fright while powering up the 'new' Frankenstein, all's well. And as I move data from this PC, so far so good. Moving this PC to a media machine seems wise as I type this looking at the TV screen

May 6, 2020#353

PatrThom

As a long-time user of the X method, I feel vindicated.

--Patrick

Jun 17, 2020#354

PatrThom

New Ryzen 3x00XT chips are out!

tl;dr: If you already have a Ryzen 3k, don't bother upgrading. If you were planning on getting an X chip that has an XT alternative, get the XT variant instead--it's the same price and has higher clockspeed. Otherwise get a 3600 unless you were already planning on getting a 3950X which still sits at the top of the stack.

Rumors are that the 4k series may be delayed, but so far AMD is still saying "Late 2020" so right now those are probably just rumors.

--Patrick

Sep 14, 2020#355

Bubble181

So...I'm starting to think about looking into upgrading/rebuilding my PC. Definitely nothing too urgent about it - I'm currently rocking a GTX760 and i5-4570 with 8GB Ram, so it's not like I need to be on the bleeding edge of things. I'd like to be able to play Cyberpunk, though, and I somehow doubt I'll meet recommended specs.
I'm just preeeetty sure I'll have to replace my motherboard (ASRock B85M-HDS) as well, which means I might as well build a full new PC at that point.
Am I right in thinking I'm best served waiting for the new graphics cards to drop and hopefully push down prices a bunch?

Sep 14, 2020#356

Tinwhistler

Cyberpunk 2077: Release Date, Gameplay, Multiplayer, Keanu Reeves, Virtual Reality, UK Pre-Order Editions And Everything We Know For PS4, PC And Xbox One

Here's everything we know about CD Projekt Red's highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077, from release date to storyline.

www.gfinityesports.com

this is someones WAG about it.

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz / AMD Ryzen R5 1600
RAM: 16 GB RAM
HDD: 70 GB of space
GPU: AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
OS: Win 10 64
Direct X: Version 12
Screen Resolution: 1080p

Sep 14, 2020#357

Bubble181

Hey, I'd actually be closer to that than I expected. Still, though :-P

Sep 14, 2020#358

Dave

Tinwhistler said:
Cyberpunk 2077: Release Date, Gameplay, Multiplayer, Keanu Reeves, Virtual Reality, UK Pre-Order Editions And Everything We Know For PS4, PC And Xbox One

Here's everything we know about CD Projekt Red's highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077, from release date to storyline.

www.gfinityesports.com

this is someones WAG about it.

CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz / AMD Ryzen R5 1600

RAM: 16 GB RAM

HDD: 70 GB of space

GPU: AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070

OS: Win 10 64

Direct X: Version 12

Screen Resolution: 1080p

I could play it now! But I'm still going to upgrade.

Sep 14, 2020#359

Tinwhistler

Dave said:
I could play it now! But I'm still going to upgrade.

The game's being released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. Usually, when a game is released on multiple platforms, the release versions are made to match the lowest common denominator--so, generally, PC users catch a break in terms of hardware requirements.

Sep 14, 2020#360

Dave

Tinwhistler said:
The game's being released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. Usually, when a game is released on multiple platforms, the release versions are made to match the lowest common denominator--so, generally, PC users catch a break in terms of hardware requirements.

Well, I went and did a thing I usually don't do. I just preordered the game. Very few companies warrant a preorder from me.

Sep 14, 2020#361

Tinwhistler

Dave said:
Well, I went and did a thing I usually don't do. I just preordered the game. Very few companies warrant a preorder from me.

I've had it on my wishlist forever. But I haven't pulled the trigger.

Sep 14, 2020#362

PatrThom

Bubble181 said:
Am I right in thinking I'm best served waiting for the new graphics cards to drop and hopefully push down prices a bunch?

That’s what I’m going to do. And GPUs, too.

—Patrick

Sep 17, 2020#363

Dave

All right, fuckers. Tell me what I've done wrong with my build. Please note that even though I have the RTX 3080 included, it's not in the price and not available to buy. I just needed to be sure it passed the compatibility test.

Part List - AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, GeForce RTX 3080 10GB, Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker

Part List - AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, GeForce RTX 3080 10GB, Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower

pcpartpicker.com

Sep 17, 2020#364

Bubble181

Well, you're causing envy and jealousy, and that isn't good. Especially since that builds would cost about €300 more here, easily.

Sep 17, 2020#365

Dave

Well I'm keeping my keyboard/monitor/mouse setup as well as my current HDs. That means I'd have 500 GB SSD for the OS, two HDD (4 TB & 1 TB), a 2 TB SSD for games, and an external 5 TB drive for backups and music.

But I really needed an upgrade to the CPU and mobo.

Sep 17, 2020#366

Dei

Since I got a new desk, I have room for a second monitor now. What second monitor should I get? I would like it to be 4k, and my new main monitor. I'm not going to go crazy and have three monitors like my husband does. I don't want it to be wildly expensive, but it doesn't need to be cheap.

Sep 17, 2020#367

GasBandit

I like Asus, but most anything that isn't acer or lenovo should be ok.

I can look at it better when I'm at a real desk later

Sep 17, 2020#368

PatrThom

Dave said:
All right, fuckers. Tell me what I've done wrong with my build.

I thought you weren’t going AMD? Or was that just the GPU?
I would go 3900xt or 3950x instead of 3900x. I also expect all the 3000-series prices to drop once Zen3 is unveiled in a few weeks. Personally, I’m gonna wait for Zen3 no matter what because of its better cache, and it’s not like you aren’t going to be waiting anyway because of the GPU.
Oh, and since it’s not my money, you should upgrade your OS drive from whatever 500GB you have to a 1TB SSD like the HP EX950 if you want to stay with PCIe v3, or one of the newer v4 drives like the Sabrent Rocket.

—Patrick

Sep 17, 2020#369

Dave

Point by point:

AMD CPU good. AMD GPU bad.
There was a jump in price for the 3950 I wasn't willing to pay and the 3900xt was $50 more for very little upgrade in performance. (x benchmarks at 32,856 while the xt is 33,237).
I'm keeping my OS drive. OS isn't that much of a load and the M.s will be my games drive.

Sep 17, 2020#370

GasBandit

Dei said:
Since I got a new desk, I have room for a second monitor now. What second monitor should I get? I would like it to be 4k, and my new main monitor. I'm not going to go crazy and have three monitors like my husband does. I don't want it to be wildly expensive, but it doesn't need to be cheap.

How big is your existing monitor, and do you want this one to be the same size, or bigger? And if bigger, how big? For a 4k, I'd usually say you want it to be at least 27".

Sep 17, 2020#371

Dei

GasBandit said:
How big is your existing monitor, and do you want this one to be the same size, or bigger? And if bigger, how big? For a 4k, I'd usually say you want it to be at least 27".

This is my current monitor, it's the biggest one I could fit on my desk at the time, so I definitely want it to be bigger. I have plenty of space, but I probably don't want to go more than 27 - 30" just because I'm not used to looking at a monitor that big.

Sep 17, 2020#372

GasBandit

Dei said:
This is my current monitor, it's the biggest one I could fit on my desk at the time, so I definitely want it to be bigger. I have plenty of space, but I probably don't want to go more than 27 - 30" just because I'm not used to looking at a monitor that big.

Do you need 144hz, or is 60 enough for you?

Sep 17, 2020#373

GasBandit

If I were getting a 4k monitor today, I'd probably getting this one - it's 4k, 27", gsync/freesync, 144+hz, and Asus.

Amazon product

Sep 17, 2020#374

Dei

GasBandit said:
If I were getting a 4k monitor today, I'd probably getting this one - it's 4k, 27", gsync/freesync, 144+hz, and Asus.

Amazon product

Is that the right one? It says it's 1080p.

Sep 17, 2020#375

PatrThom

Dave said:
AMD CPU good. AMD GPU bad.

There was a jump in price for the 3950 I wasn't willing to pay and the 3900xt was $50 more for very little upgrade in performance. (x benchmarks at 32,856 while the xt is 33,237).

I'm keeping my OS drive. OS isn't that much of a load and the M.s will be my games drive.

-Ah, ok.
-The XT is a slightly newer revision, so it might overclock better or be more efficient, but whether or not that’s worth +$50 is of course up to you.
-I still would go with the Sabrent 2TB for your game drive over the ADATA 2TB just for the speed boost, depending on the price difference.

I didn’t mention this before, but for best results your 3200MHz RAM should be CL14 for use with Ryzen, not the CL16 you have listed in PCPP. CL16 is what you should get for 3600MHz RAM.

—Patrick

Sep 17, 2020#376

GasBandit

Dei said:
Is that the right one? It says it's 1080p.

No. It was not.

Here's what I meant. It's 60 hz.
Amazon product

144hz are all much more expensive, like, $1700 and up.

Sep 18, 2020#377

Dave

Parts bought. Most will arrive by Tuesday but the power supply might not be until OCTOBER!! It's going to be real hard to just let those parts sit there.

I did change one thing. I got a fan that is a lot shorter. I was reading on the case and the fan that I initially had was about 5 mm too tall to fit.

Part List - AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, GeForce RTX 3080 10GB, Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker

Part List - AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, GeForce RTX 3080 10GB, Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower

pcpartpicker.com

Sep 18, 2020#378

Dei

OK @PatrThom why do you have that reaction on Gas's post?

Sep 18, 2020#379

PatrThom

Dei said:
OK @PatrThom why do you have that reaction on Gas's post?

GasBandit said:
much more expensive, like, $1700 and up.

I’m in the market for a monitor right now, but all I want is just a 1080p monitor with a stand in the 11-13in range, and all I can find is glorified tablets or no-name eBay stuff with horrible grammar that I don’t quite trust.

—Patrick

Sep 18, 2020#380

Dei

Also the price of that monitor went up $100 since yesterday lol. I'm going to just sit on it and watch the price for a bit I think.

Sep 19, 2020#381

Dave

Surprise of surprises! My power supply came today, only two weeks early! So as soon as I get the case & motherboard I can put this bad boy together!

But I do have a question I can't find an answer for. I bought a fan for it, yet the processor COMES with a fan. I just can't find any information as to whether or not the fan is any good. Anyone have Google-fu better than mine?

Sep 19, 2020#382

PatrThom

Dave said:
I just can't find any information as to whether or not the fan is any good. Anyone have Google-fu better than mine?

The fan is good, but it’s meant for Mini-ITX builds and the like (That’s what the “i” stands for).
Noctua does NOT really recommend the L9i for the 3900x CPU. They recommend something like the NH-U12A or NH-D15S instead. Your case says it supports up to 170mm cooler height, and those are only 158-160mm which will leave plenty of room (About 1/2in).

—Patrick

Sep 22, 2020#383

Dave

All right, fuckers. All parts are in (except my RTX 3080, of course). Time to build this bitch. My next post is either gong to be triumphantly from my new PC or on my phone as I sob quietly in the darkness.

Catch you on the other side.

Sep 22, 2020#384

PatrThom

I'll hang out in discord if you hit a snag, but I know this ain't your first rodeo.

--Patrick

Sep 22, 2020#385

PatrThom

Three hours and counting.
We'll leave a fan lit in his honor.

--Patrick

Sep 22, 2020#386

DarkAudit

An hour to build, everything else to install and update Windows.

Sep 22, 2020#387

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
An hour to build, everything else to install and update Windows.

Ah yes, always the most nerve-wracking part of any build.

--Patrick

Sep 23, 2020#388

Dave

Nope. Had some issues with cabling and with a fan that just plain didn't want to work, but we got it. Plus, I was showing my son how to do this so we went pretty slowly.

It's up & running, although I'm not happy with benchmarking yet. I still have to update all drivers.

Sep 23, 2020#389

PatrThom

Other than the cooler and the video card, did you make any other changes to what you have listed on your most recent PCPP?

--Patrick

Sep 23, 2020#390

Dave

Nope. Cooler and old video card.

Sep 23, 2020#391

PatrThom

Dave said:
I'm not happy with benchmarking yet. I still have to update all drivers.

Check for a firmware update for your two M.2 drives before you get too deep into everything, too. One or both of them may need a firmware update to work with newer Win10 releases, and many times applying a firmware update will blank the drive.

Also you have sort of backed yourself into a corner by splitting things up across two separate M.2 drives. You are going to want whichever one gets used MOST to be in the upper M2_1 slot, because that is the one hooked directly to the CPU. The lower M2_2 slot is routed through the PCH (i.e., what passes for a "southbridge" these days), which means whatever you slot in there is going to have to share bandwidth with your network card, all your SATA ports, most (but not all) of your USB devices, and anything you put in the lower three PCIe slots.

Your top PCIe slot, your onboard sound, your RAM, your uppermost M.2 slot, and the four USB ports inside the red rectangle on your back panel all have dedicated lines to your processor. They don't share anything with anybody else. They all get to talk directly to the CPU independently and uninterrupted by any other components. VIP status, baby!

However, everything else on your board (all the remaining USB ports, all the SATA ports, the LAN, the lower M.2 slot, and the other three PCIe slots) all gets funneled through a x4 PCIe v4.0 link that joins the CPU to the PCH, which means they have to share the ~7.5GB/s provided by that x4 link split between all of them. That said, this should not cause any sort of problem at all UNLESS you someday exceed that budget by replacing the lower M.2 SSD wth one that actually runs at full PCIe v4 speed, by installing an expansion card in the other x16 slot (or you fill both x1 slots simultaneously), OR you decide to hook up a whole mess of USB and/or SATA devices.

tl:dr; For best performance, don't add any future PCIe cards into your machine alongside your GPU (with one exception--you can safely add a SINGLE x1 card into the lowest PCI_E4 slot), and if you ever decide to upgrade to a M.2 SSD that supports PCIe v4.0, make sure you install it in the upper M.2 slot.

--Patrick

Sep 23, 2020#392

Dave

I only have 1 M.2 drive.

Sep 23, 2020#393

Dave

And now Windows is telling me that my computer is not activated, even though I have a product key (I made sure I took a picture of the product key before the upgrade). And even though I'm booting from the same hard drive, Windows is telling me the product key is bad and either wants to continually have a little "Activate Windows" thing on my screen that NEVER goes away, or purchase another Windows license even though this one is still good. They're probably telling me that since it's a different computer it doesn't count. Fuck that. You want me to pirate and I'll fucking do it.

Sep 23, 2020#394

Dei

Dave said:
And now Windows is telling me that my computer is not activated, even though I have a product key (I made sure I took a picture of the product key before the upgrade). And even though I'm booting from the same hard drive, Windows is telling me the product key is bad and either wants to continually have a little "Activate Windows" thing on my screen that NEVER goes away, or purchase another Windows license even though this one is still good. They're probably telling me that since it's a different computer it doesn't count. Fuck that. You want me to pirate and I'll fucking do it.

Windows has been that way for a long time. If you call, there's a chance that will reactivate it for the new computer, but since everything is new they also might not.

Sep 23, 2020#395

GasBandit

Dave said:
And now Windows is telling me that my computer is not activated, even though I have a product key (I made sure I took a picture of the product key before the upgrade). And even though I'm booting from the same hard drive, Windows is telling me the product key is bad and either wants to continually have a little "Activate Windows" thing on my screen that NEVER goes away, or purchase another Windows license even though this one is still good. They're probably telling me that since it's a different computer it doesn't count. Fuck that. You want me to pirate and I'll fucking do it.

kmspico is your friend.

Sep 23, 2020#396

Dave

Got it. You have to jump through hoops but you can reactivate.

Sep 23, 2020#397

PatrThom

Dave said:
I only have 1 M.2 drive.

I thought you said you were keeping the M.2 from your other computer to use as a boot drive?
Well, keep the split nature of your MLB in mind if you decide to add other stuff later, regardless.

Dave said:
Got it. You have to jump through hoops but you can reactivate.

If your Windows license is for the "OEM" version, then technically you're supposed to buy a new Windows when you move to a new computer, and they might fight you. If it's for the "Retail" version, then they're supposed to let it reactivate.

--Patrick

Oct 23, 2020#398

Bubble181

Stupid question. I was just browsing a bit on logicalincrements, and annoying myself with the price differences for PC parts. The exact same build in the US would cost $1423 (=€1203), and in Belgium, €1589 (=$1881).
So. Besides the PSU (what with different voltages and such) and the keyboard (different lay-out), is there any piece of the PC where it makes any difference at all whether you'd buy it in the US or EU? Obviously shipping isn't free, either, but I'm pretty sure I can get a 20 pound box from the US to Belgium for a LOT less than the difference between those two.
I'm not really in a position to buy a full new build right now, just idly wondering. Perhaps I'll start looking around for someone to ship it all to me in one bog box in a couple of months, but we're not there yet :-P

Oct 23, 2020#399

PatrThom

Bubble181 said:
Besides the PSU (what with different voltages and such) and the keyboard (different lay-out), is there any piece of the PC where it makes any difference at all whether you'd buy it in the US or EU?

Fun fact, most power supplies these days are either “full range” 110-240V or user-selectable between 110-120 and 220-240, so that part might not even matter.

As for the second part, to some degree the materials themselves will matter (RoHS compliance or tariffs, for instance), but my guess is that what most affects regional retail pricing is the cost of bringing specific IP across borders. Each country has their own idea about what software/firmware/hardware is considered “legal” and so localizing installs or even adjusting performance in order to fit government regulatory guidelines for import/export/sale will sway the price accordingly. Did you know that in 1995 it was straight-up illegal for any American company/individual to ship any computing device with performance greater than 1.5 GFLOPs to China? But a modern RTX 3080 can theoretically crunch 30000 GFLOPs just 25 years later, and changing governmental regulations is...slower.

—Patrick

Oct 27, 2020#400

Gared

So, what I wound up with, when all was said and done, is:

ASRock X570 Pro4 mATX
16GB of DDR4 2133
Radeon RX570
Ryzen 3600
Corsair 750W PSU
Optical Drive
1TB 7200rpm Seagate that came in my Lenovo in 2008.

I do miss the fast startup of an SSD, but two of them were fried by this PSU and there's no way in hell I'm hooking up the last. And it still won't run Dual Universe.

Nov 20, 2020#401

PatrThom

Reviews for Radeon 6x00 cards are coming in (mainly 6800/6800XT).
The verdict:
-Do you care about raytracing, CUDA, G-SYNC, DLSS (upscaling), or streaming? Get the NVIDIA RTX 3080.
-Do you care about “native” 1440/4K, larger VRAM, lower power usage, or Vulkan? Get the Radeon 6800 XT.
-Are you still gaming at 1080p or below? Pick whichever one is available. It really doesn't matter.

—Patrick

Nov 20, 2020#402

Dave

Man, I guess I should get a 3080. I do enjoy my steaming.

Nov 20, 2020#403

PatrThom

AMD does have tools and technologies devoted to streamers and such, the NVIDIA ones are just better (and more mature) in almost every way,

—Patrick

Nov 20, 2020#404

GasBandit

But how does it do Pork Buns?

Nov 20, 2020#405

PatrThom

Yes, yes. We all hate autocorrect.

—Patrick

Nov 20, 2020#406

Dave

Way to edit your thread instead of sucking it up, pansy.

Nov 20, 2020#407

Dei

TBH, I'm pretty sure my video card choice is more likely to come down to whichever one I can actually get a hold of first at this point.

Nov 20, 2020#408

PatrThom

Dave said:
Way to edit your thread instead of sucking it up, pansy.

<Wayne’s World sounds...>

Gruebeard said:
Danggit, @Patricki. You're not supposed to edit out your goof after it's been humourously pointed out

PatrThom said:
I will frequently edit old posts if I see a spelling error or something.

</...Wayne’s World sounds>

I try to fix my mistakes rather than just forgetting about them...unlike some people.

—Patrick

Nov 20, 2020#409

Dave

But when called out on such a mistake, editing it is disingenuous and can be confusing to people trying to figure out what just happened. And it makes you look like a humorless prat.

Nov 20, 2020#410

PatrThom

Dave said:
But when called out on such a mistake, editing it is disingenuous and can be confusing to people trying to figure out what just happened. And it makes you look like a humorless prat.

Everyone has the ability to quote a post in their reply in order to “freeze” someone’s comments in their original state. Additionally, if it’s really so important to you, as an admin you have the ability to edit any post you want and add whatever fact-check disclaimer you think it deserves. Correcting a typo is hardly ”disingenuous.”

What _I_ don’t understand is how someone who sounds so butthurt over something as minor fixing a typo gets to call me a “humorless prat.”

—Patrick

Nov 20, 2020#411

GasBandit

I think this has gotten out of hand and we should just let it go.

And that's me saying that. :confused:

Nov 20, 2020#412

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
I think this has gotten out of hand and we should just let it go.

Well, you’re not wrong.

—Patrick

Nov 20, 2020#413

Dave

Guys, guys, GUYS! I'm kidding! I'm not serious! I thought the "humorless prat" thing would have clued you in considering you've been KILLING the comedy in Discord.

Dec 26, 2020#414

DarkAudit

If we actually get that full $2K (yeah, right), I may be in the market to replace this 5 year old laptop. Figure half that will get me something decent. Don't really need a full-on gaming laptop, because it'll see most of its use at work for browsing, Word, PS, anime watching, and so on. Gaming just asks for me to be interrupted repeatedly as soon as I launch something, so why spend the money?

(ETA: why a hug? It's just this laptop's time to pass the torch. It's still got a long life ahead as a possible linux machine if the plan comes to fruition.)

Jan 30, 2021#415

LordRendar

After transfering my PC (i5-6500, 5700xt) into my new case (a Lian Li Cool Mesh) i suddenly got problems with my GPU. I also switched PSU from a thermaltake 630w to a be quiet! 550w. The GPU would crash as soon as I start a game. I now have it undervolted and everything runs fine, but this isnt a solution for the long run. Should I reinstall my old PSU?

Jan 30, 2021#416

PatrThom

Make sure the supplemental power plugs that go into the top of the card come from two separate cords.
AMD's official 5700XT page recommends a minimum 600W PSU, so maybe it really does matter?

--Patrick

Jan 30, 2021#417

LordRendar

Sigh. Back to the ol' ketchup and mustard cables. Might just buy some cable extensions so I dont have to see them.

Feb 1, 2021#418

PatrThom

Soooo...looks like people have started GPU mining again. RX580/8GB cards seem to be in high demand.

-Patrick

Mar 9, 2021#419

Dave

I've been having issues in PUBG seeing the enemies on my 4K monitor. I thought it had a higher refresh rate when I bought it. So I just bought a new 2K 170Hz monitor. Maybe now I can see things. If this doesn't work then it's definitely my old eyes.

Apr 19, 2021#420

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
If there was any doubt before as to whether things have gotten out of hand, I hope this has helped lay that doubt to rest.

Soooo a bit of an update to this, for anyone who doesn't ride the tech news sites as hard as I do.

We already know about the GPU situation, and how mining and scalpers have combined to drive the price of graphics cards to double their MSRP (or even more, in some cases). The same is true for the top-tier CPUs, with Ryzen 5950x models selling at around a 50% premium over their MSRP.
But now there is word that RAM prices are going to rise as 2021 continues. Some places have already hiked RAM prices 20-30%, with predictions that the premium on DDR3/DDR4 may increase to as much as 40-50% by the end of the year.
And now there's news that new digital currencies based on storage space (Burst, Chia, etc) may be catching on, which is drying up supply of large-capacity (4GB and up) HDDs. This has triggered an associated panic buying of SSDs, meaning that storage prices in general are also trending upwards.

All this means that today you can expect a build with MSRP of ~US$2375 to actually set you back about US$3750 (about a 50% total markup) unless you get really lucky with your shopping. In other words, it is an absolutely terrible time to be building a top-tier system right now. There are still some deals to be had with some 6-core mid-range Intel CPUs if you're willing to accommodate their slightly higher power draw, but that's only gonna shave about US$150-200 off the total price.

Oh and this one's for @DarkAudit - We know NVIDIA is releasing a line of dedicated mining cards to fill the demand, but did you know you may soon be able to get your dedicated mining cards that will sit in a box where nobody can see them... with RGB?

--Patrick

Apr 19, 2021#421

Frank

This all can't hold....

Apr 19, 2021#422

PatrThom

Frank said:
This all can't hold....

I sure hope not. All this coronavirus-fueled scalping is getting to the point where, just like oil/gas and telecom industries before them, I'm worried the scalpers will deliberately start to take actions in order to prolong the current situation just so they can keep their profit margins nice and high for as long as possible.

--Patrick

Apr 19, 2021#423

Bubble181

No doubt they will. But modern day graphics and games really don't need a lot more improvement - while they're will always be people chasing that one extra shiny pixel, the pressure to upgrade really isn't what it was 1990-2010. If they push prices that high it may well result in a crash... Guess we'll see who can survive on office boxes, laptops and mining rigs alone.

Apr 19, 2021#424

PatrThom

Bubble181 said:
while they're will always be people chasing that one extra shiny pixel, the pressure to upgrade really isn't what it was 1990-2010.

I wish you were right, but with games/software starting to require specific minimum revisions of SSE/AVX/FMA/DirectX or whatever, Anyone running Broadwell (2014) or older is gonna hit a point where they have to upgrade because the software makers are deliberately choosing to leave them behind.
Heck, with all the scalpers jacking up prices, I want to know if there's even such a thing as an "Apple Tax" any more.

--Patrick

Apr 29, 2021#425

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
new digital currencies based on storage space (Burst, Chia, etc) […] has triggered an associated panic buying of SSDs, meaning that storage prices in general are also trending upwards.

It begins!

Chia crypto mining spurs 500% jump in Adata SSD sales

:mad:

—Patrick

Aug 15, 2021#426

Cobra_Royality

I had heard that this is a bad time to build a new PC but I would still like to build my first one by the end of year if possible. I am looking to stream games for the most part with a budget of $1500-$2k. Any suggestions on parts for a build? I'm willing to use last gen parts too if that helps to keep things in budget.

Aug 15, 2021#427

DarkAudit

Cobra_Royality said:
with a budget of $1500-$2k.

That's enough for a GPU. Barely.

Aug 16, 2021#428

GasBandit

Cobra_Royality said:
I had heard that this is a bad time to build a new PC but I would still like to build my first one by the end of year if possible. I am looking to stream games for the most part with a budget of $1500-$2k. Any suggestions on parts for a build? I'm willing to use last gen parts too if that helps to keep things in budget.

Right now the only way to get a decent gaming rig with a good GPU for under 2k is pretty much to buy a laptop. All the discrete GPUs are still being gobbled up by crypto miners and scalpers. It's a real mess.

But here, have a look at this:

ASUS TUF Gaming F17 Gaming Laptop, 17.3" 144Hz Full HD IPS-Type, Intel Core i7-11800H Processor, GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, 16GB DDR4, 512GB PCIe SSD, Gigabit Wi-Fi 6, Windows 10 Home, TUF706HE-DS74 - Newegg.com

Buy ASUS TUF Gaming F17 Gaming Laptop, 17.3" 144Hz Full HD IPS-Type, Intel Core i7-11800H Processor, GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, 16GB DDR4, 512GB PCIe SSD, Gigabit Wi-Fi 6, Windows 10 Home, TUF706HE-DS74 with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

It's $1300, has a 3050ti and 16gb of ram - not future proof, but definitely good enough to stream 1080p gaming, and entry level (non-streamed) VR.

Aug 16, 2021#429

PatrThom

Cobra_Royality said:
I had heard that this is a bad time to build a new PC

You heard correctly.

DarkAudit said:
[A budget of $1500-$2000 is] enough for a GPU. Barely.

There are quite a few used GPUs coming onto the market as China cracks down on mining, but most of those are cards that have been rode hard and put away wet, as they say. DA's not too far off the mark, since the best values in the GPU market these days are either the 8GB AMD "Polaris" (RX 4x0/5x0) or NVIDIA 1060 6GB cards. And when I call them "best value" it's because they're "only" going for double the MSRPs they were released at FIVE YEARS AGO.

Prices on CPUs seem to be getting closer to "normal," but there's still quite a ways to go before we're back to pre-pandemic levels. If you're going to be streaming then you probably want 8-core, and best value mainstream 8-core CPUs are going to be Ryzen 7 5800X or Core i7-11700K (though the Core i7 draws noticeably more power than the Ryzen) and the Ryzen 7 5700G or Xeon W-1370P are essentially identical in performance if you can't find either of the first two. All of 'em are probably going to go for around $400 or so not counting a fancy cooler. Motherboards are $200-300. RAM isn't supposed to come off its high prices for another few months. SSDs are still kinda high but you can get decent 2TB PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives for $250-$300 (and really you don't need PCIe 4 drives yet). Basically you're looking at about $850-$1100 for a desktop build minus a graphics card, but then you gotta tack on the cost of whatever GPU you can manage to find, which will probably add anywhere from $700-$2500. Radeon 6700 XT or 3060 Ti are probably the most affordable current-generation cards, but they're currently going for $600-700 IF you can find them. Don't get the 6600 XT, though. It's not garbage, exactly, but it is a disappointment.

--Patrick

Aug 16, 2021#430

Cobra_Royality

Thank you all for the input. I guess I'll just have to keep waiting and keep saving up money

Aug 16, 2021#431

GasBandit

And I just noticed that laptop I posted also has a thunderbolt port, which is nice. A thunderbolt dock can take a lot of the sting out of laptop ownership, as it lets you have a single plug for your home setup (multiple monitors, keyboard, mouse, game controllers, ethernet port, headset, other USB devices, etc).

I use one at work and I've really been considering getting one for home, except the cheapskate in me balks at paying for something for work out of my own pocket.

Aug 16, 2021#432

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
A thunderbolt dock can take a lot of the sting out of laptop ownership

Many (most?) computers that come with Thunderbolt (rev 3 and newer) ports will also let you attach a GPU externally (software permitting) for when you want to switch to Serious Gaming Mode, and while TB3+ is technically a slower connection than having that GPU installed internally, it'll still be better performance than whatever graphics chips usually come inside of laptops.

--Patrick

Aug 16, 2021#433

GasBandit

PatrThom said:
Many (most?) computers that come with Thunderbolt (rev 3 and newer) ports will also let you attach a GPU externally (software permitting) for when you want to switch to Serious Gaming Mode, and while TB3+ is technically a slower connection than having that GPU installed internally, it'll still be better performance than whatever graphics chips usually come inside of laptops.

--Patrick

Those external GPU enclosures start at around $400 though, don't they? Kind of a good way to blow the budget, though a viable option for the people who absolutely need to have a laptop that they also want to game on, and want to be able to upgrade the GPU in the future, and for whom money is no object.

Aug 16, 2021#434

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
Those external GPU enclosures start at around $400 though, don't they? Kind of a good way to blow the budget, though a viable option for the people who absolutely need to have a laptop that they also want to game on, and want to be able to upgrade the GPU in the future, and for whom money is no object.

Decent ones can be had for as little as $250, and what you get is a box containing a fan, a slot (or two) for the card(s), a power supply and board to translate between PCIe and Thunderbolt, and sometimes additional USB or Ethernet ports. This does not factor in the cost of the GPU, of course, which is still going to dwarf the cost of the box itself. Yes, these "eGFX" boxes are usually associated with people who want to "supercharge" their otherwise anemic laptop so they can game, but they're also used by people who take their laptop into the field to get the data, but then take it back home to process, or by people who want to add additional NVMe storage, video capture/processing cards, and the like. It's not JUST for graphics cards, y'know.

I think the people that want to stream but for whom money is no object are instead going to build one of those systems that's two computers in one case, where they put two computers in their computer so they can stream while they game.

--Patrick

Aug 16, 2021#435

GasBandit

You really don't need a second computer to stream unless you're streaming VR (or streaming a console, if you count the console as the "first computer"). Especially if you're using an NVidia GPU.

For 1080p streaming, even my 1060 3 gig can handle simultaneously streaming and playing.

Really, I think if I could just find a cost effective way to go up to 32 gigs of RAM, I'd be set for the next few years. But I'm using four 4-gig sticks now, filling all my ram slots. So I'd have to chuck those and buy four 8-gig sticks (or two 16-gig sticks) and the cost is nnnyyeghhh... and I curl my toes at 16 gigs of perfectly good RAM just getting yanked and doing nothing.

Aug 23, 2021#436

drifter

SK hynix NVMe drives on sale over at Amazon. $60/108/224 for 500MB/1TB/2TB

Aug 23, 2021#437

PatrThom

drifter said:
SK hynix NVMe drives on sale over at Amazon. $60/108/224 for 500MB/1TB/2TB

I wanted to mention this, too. The SK Hynix "Gold" drives have been a really good value in both SATA and NVMe since they came out, but their biggest drawback has been that the line was only available up to 1TB. As of last week, though, they finally introduced the 2TB model they've been promising, and announced they were putting the whole lineup on sale the very next week (which is now). They're only PCIe v3.0 (not 4.0), but they perform well, they're all single-sided, have a 5yr warranty, and they're TLC (instead of QLC).

--Patrick

Sep 2, 2021#438

PatrThom

Some advice and experimentation from Linus regarding the purchase of used mining cards:

It suggests the conventional wisdom of avoiding heavily-used GPUs may be somewhat flawed.

--Patrick

Sep 2, 2021#439

Cobra_Royality

Do y'all think the upcoming Intel ARC graphic cards will be worth looking into/early adopting? It seems interesting to me because I've always had intel CPUs in my computers. I thought about switching to Ryzen for my build but if Intel is gonna enter the GPU field competitively, I wouldn't mind staying blue

Sep 2, 2021#440

GasBandit

Cobra_Royality said:
Do y'all think the upcoming Intel ARC graphic cards will be worth looking into/early adopting? It seems interesting to me because I've always had intel CPUs in my computers. I thought about switching to Ryzen for my build but if Intel is gonna enter the GPU field competitively, I wouldn't mind staying blue

It's all conjecture at this point. Intel has historically put out top shelf processors and rock bottom awful GPUs. Until I start seeing benchmarks for the ARC (first one will be called "Alchemist") up on videocardbenchmark.net, I'm going to take their claims that it will be similar to a 3070 with the world's hugest grain of salt.

Sep 2, 2021#441

figmentPez

It's not just performance I'm skeptical of, I'm wondering about what Intel's drivers and control panel options are going to look like. I have a feeling people are going to complain less about AMD's drivers when they see Intel's.

Oct 23, 2021#442

DarkAudit

As of today, that RX580 I paid $190 for in January 2019 is selling for $600 on Amazon. Yay.

Anyway, now that I've got the NVMe drive up and running, I decided to take that extra chunk of OT on my last paycheck and turn some of it into another 16GB of RAM. Go me.

Oct 24, 2021#443

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
As of today, that RX580 I paid $190 for in January 2019 is selling for $600 on Amazon. Yay.

I WANT to properly respond to this, but there's no point because it would just be a continuation of screaming into /dev/null.

--Patrick

Oct 24, 2021#444

LordRendar

I am so glad I got my rx 5700 xt for cheap, before the market crashed. Too bad i gifted my 480, including all the old parts of my pc, to a friend of mine. Build her a budget pc from the parts. But hey, I converted her from console to pc and now we play dont starve and stardew valley together.

Nov 26, 2021#445

DarkAudit

Was first tempted to use raise money to upgrade the CPU on the B450 Tomahawk desktop. With other sales and a possible bonus coming, I'm now thinking of just going (mostly) new with an X570 motherboard and a Zen 3 CPU. GPU replacement is currently out of the question, so the RX 580 will get scavenged out of the old box when and if this happens.

Nov 26, 2021#446

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
GPU replacement is currently out of the question, so the RX 580 will get scavenged out of the old box when and if this happens.

Dude, I'm trying to put together a brand new 2021 Rocket Lake system, and this is the same thing I'm going to have to do.

--Patrick

Nov 26, 2021#447

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
Rocket Lake

WHY!?

To quote Tech Jesus, "WASTE OF SAND." If you haven't already bought the CPU, stop. Just forget the 11th gen even exists.

Nov 26, 2021#448

Cat

I was about to ask if there was any way to get a graphics card without starting an onlyfans but it looks like that's still a no. I've got a hold on a steam deck preorder so hopefully I'll be able to get one early next year

Nov 27, 2021#449

Dave

Cat said:
I was about to ask if there was any way to get a graphics card without starting an onlyfans but it looks like that's still a no. I've got a hold on a steam deck preorder so hopefully I'll be able to get one early next year

I've completely given up on getting a 3000 series card. My 1080 is still chugging along fine.

Nov 27, 2021#450

Cat

Dave said:
I've completely given up on getting a 3000 series card. My 1080 is still chugging along fine.

I think I was having overheating problems with my last desktop bc florida but I didn't have the tools or experience to test every part individually to see where it was failing. Bought a laptop instead but the hinge broke and it's tearing the screen off now

Nov 27, 2021#451

DarkAudit

Dave said:
I've completely given up on getting a 3000 series card. My 1080 is still chugging along fine.

The 6700XT MSRP is $479. Good luck finding one for under a thousand anywhere.

Fuck crypto.

Nov 27, 2021#452

Tinwhistler

Dave said:
I've completely given up on getting a 3000 series card. My 1080 is still chugging along fine.

Hell, I haven't felt the need or urge to replace the 1070 I bought years ago. I very briefly considered upgrading my mb/cpu when the i5-7600k turned out not to be win11 compatible...and then I said "who cares?" Win 10 is working fine for me, and the types of games I play also work just fine. I bought these with the expectation they'd last me a good long while. Looks like they're going to last me a bit longer yet.

Paid $230 for the CPU and $394 for the graphics card in 2017. Looks like it was money well spent.

Nov 27, 2021#453

GasBandit

This 1060 3 gig continues to be the best $200 I've ever spent.

Nov 27, 2021#454

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
WHY!?
To quote Tech Jesus, "WASTE OF SAND."

We already sorta had this discussion.
To more specifically answer your "Why?" though, it's because that seems to be the only way to get PCIe 4.x alongside guaranteed ECC support and without the USB issues plaguing the X570 boards.

My second choice is Ryzen 7 Pro 5750G, but again, difficult to acquire at the moment (and does not have PCIe v4 support, only PCIe v3).

--Patrick

Dec 15, 2021#455

DarkAudit

If there is an Xmas bonus this year, and if it's anything like last year's if there is, I'll be in the market for a CPU upgrade. The 5900X is currently on sale, at a price-per-core that makes it the best value of all the 5000 series Ryzen CPUs.

BUT...

If I just upgrade the CPU, it's still saddled with a B450 motherboard and an RX 580 GPU. Meaning a lot of wasted potential left on the table. The 5600X is the lightest hit to the wallet, but doesn't bring as much bang for the buck. Decisions, decisions...

Dec 15, 2021#456

PatrThom

What do you have under the hood right now?

—Patrick

Dec 15, 2021#457

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
What do you have under the hood right now?

—Patrick

A 2600. It's still going strong, but the raise has given me the urge to reward myself with an upgrade.

Dec 15, 2021#458

Bubble181

DarkAudit said:
A 2600. It's still going strong, but the raise has given me the urge to reward myself with an upgrade.

*cries in i5-4570 in his gaming desktop*

DarkAudit said:
If I just upgrade the CPU, it's still saddled with a B450 motherboard and an RX 580 GPU.

*cries in GTX760 in his gaming desktop*

Feel free to just bundle up all your old parts and send 'm this way, I'll give them a happy retirement home :awesome:

Maybe this just drives home how much I'm really not a gamer anymore by any decent definition of the word. Dang.

Dec 15, 2021#459

Tinwhistler

Bubble181 said:
Maybe this just drives home how much I'm really not a gamer anymore by any decent definition of the word. Dang.

I know this feeling so well. Not an hour ago, I was on the Dell website, wondering if I should buy myself a new PC for Christmas with my Dell credit. Looked at everything, sighed, and thought "what's the point? I don't really game much, and my current build is just fine for the gaming I do."

Dec 15, 2021#460

GasBandit

Ditto. I often think "Oh man, my next video card update means a new CPU/MOBO.... so I... wait, what do I even play that needs more than I've got?" And then I stick with my GTX-1060.

Dec 15, 2021#461

PatrThom

I look at my current 2010-era rig with its 2016-era GPU (total components MSRP ~$8000 but of course I paid nowhere NEAR that much because I bought none of it "new" -- MAYbe $2500 out of pocket, max) and think, "Welp 11+ years old, probably time for a new build with newer hardware with newer capabilities."

But then I look around for decent parts and all the pieces I want to get (except cases) have prices that range anywhere from twice to over three times the MSRP and they're still sold out anyway, and I think to myself, "Aw, HELL naw!"

--Patrick

Dec 15, 2021#462

ncts_dodge_man

I am wanting to go from a laptop to a desktop so I can have upgrades a heck of a lot easier (other than RAM), but the chip shortage prices right now are making me have the same reaction - esp. since I'd have to get everything...

Dec 15, 2021#463

Far

I don't want a new graphics card cause I need one necessarily but I'd like to have a second around in case the other dies, my current 1070 is getting up there in age and use so it makes me worried it's gonna crap out on me. If I'm going replace it and keep the older one around as back up, I'd rather it be an upgrade but I will not justify scalper prices nor resort to hunting the damn things down via alert bots and whatnot. So I wait.

Dec 18, 2021#464

DarkAudit

I went ahead and did a fresh install of Windows 11 tonight just to make sure everything is as it should be with the new CPU. I'll run the multi-core Cinebench a few more times over the next week to help the thermal paste cure. The temps are okay, but could they be better?

Dec 18, 2021#465

PatrThom

Probably. But is it worth all the effort to try and lower them just a few more degrees if you’re not actually going to be redlining it all the time?

—Patrick

Dec 19, 2021#466

DarkAudit

PatrThom said:
Probably. But is it worth all the effort to try and lower them just a few more degrees if you’re not actually going to be redlining it all the time?

—Patrick

If I can get it further away from 90C at full load just by adding a couple of extra thermal cycles per day for a week or so, then yes. It'll give me reassurance that my current thermal solution will be good enough for the new application.

Dec 19, 2021#467

PatrThom

DarkAudit said:
just by adding a couple of extra thermal cycles per day for a week or so

I thought you meant you were considering the implementation of more exotic cooling solutions, not merely musing what might happen once your paste was done being cured. My bad.

--Patrick

Jan 3, 2022#468

PatrThom

PatrThom in the tech whine thread said:
[I was going with] A "Tatlow" Xeon build.

Well after some research I decided not to. Sort of.
The "Tatlow" platform (i.e., Xeon W-23xxG + C25x chipset) is nigh-impossible to find at reasonable prices (have only ever found the CPUs listed for somewhere around twice its MSRP :rolleyes:

) unless one wishes to acquire it as part of a prebuilt system, which I do not.
So I will instead be going with its fraternal Workstation twin, the W-13xx[P] + W580 series. Sure, I will lose out on RSTe and VT-d, but I gain additional display and sound capabilities and I really doubt I'll end up needing to dedicate onboard hardware to any specific virtual machines anyway. Also I gain another 30W of CPU headroom, which should translate into longer turbo times assuming I cool it well enough.

And yes, @DarkAudit , I know the 11th Gen 14nm+++++++ Intel processors are "a waste of sand," and the board I've chosen is absolute effing overkill (it actually has a PCI slot? Whaaaat???), etc., but much like my previous Phenom II X6 build, it's being built for a purpose, and that purpose is to hopefully give me 10+ years of rock-solid, reliable service (plus the older, "better" 10th-gen CPUs are limited to PCIe 3.0 and get only half the DMI bandwidth). Published benchmarks show it'll be essentially equivalent in performance to a high-end 5800X-based system, though it'll have ECC RAM (and of course that lovely PCI slot) all at about a +$600 price premium* over the 5800X system. At any rate, it'll mean a jump up to something that's almost 250% the speed of my current system, sooooo...yeah, it should be a noticeable upgrade. Also with Intel suddenly deciding to delete AVX-512 support from their "Alder Lake" 12th-gen chips pretty soon, there was some concern that the supply of "unhobbled" 11th-gen models might dry up (their prices are starting to trend back upwards over the last week, and I assume this is the reason why).

--Patrick
*Most of the "extra" money is thanks to the gonzo mobo and my decision to purchase the retail version of Windows 10 Pro for Workstations instead of the "standard" W10Pro.

Feb 16, 2022#469

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
the best values in the GPU market these days are either the 8GB AMD "Polaris" (RX 4x0/5x0) or NVIDIA 1060 6GB cards.

And now they are also essentially the new minimum.

Elden Ring full system requirements listed, needs a minimum of 12GB of RAM and a GTX 1060

Elden Ring's official Twitter account posted the game's official PC system requirements Tuesday, confirming pretty steep minimum requirements that briefly appeared last week. They are a significant...

www.techspot.com

If you are building new or upgrading, there is now no reason to get anything older than these two unless you want to instantly be left behind by any upcoming game(s).

--Patrick

Mar 5, 2022#470

PatrThom

As a sort of addendum to the above, here is a chart assembled by someone who decided to gather together multiple years' worth of reviews from TomsHardware:

Handy for when you're shopping for a card and want to know how it compares to last year's/the year before's/etc. No hard data yet on RDNA3, Xe, or 40-series, so of course there are none present. The Y axis is performance relative to a GeForce GTX 3090.
Also a reminder that if you are building new, published game minimum requirements suggest you should probably not look at any GPU older than Pascal or GCN 4/5 (Or Gen9 "HD 6xx" in Intel, if you want to go that way). Coincidentally, all three of these graphics technologies were introduced in 2016, so it looks like the industry has designated that year's products as the "anchor" for the present time.

I wish their relative wattages had been included as well, but I suppose that's already a ridiculous amount of work.

--Patrick

Mar 11, 2022#471

Cobra_Royality

PatrThom said:
As a sort of addendum to the above, here is a chart assembled by someone who decided to gather together multiple years' worth of reviews from TomsHardware:

View attachment 40842

Handy for when you're shopping for a card and want to know how it compares to last year's/the year before's/etc. No hard data yet on RDNA3, Xe, or 40-series, so of course there are none present. The Y axis is performance relative to a GeForce GTX 3090.
Also a reminder that if you are building new, published game minimum requirements suggest you should probably not look at any GPU older than Pascal or GCN 4/5 (Or Gen9 "HD 6xx" in Intel, if you want to go that way). Coincidentally, all three of these graphics technologies were introduced in 2016, so it looks like the industry has designated that year's products as the "anchor" for the present time.

I wish their relative wattages had been included as well, but I suppose that's already a ridiculous amount of work.

--Patrick

Wow, this chart really puts into perspective how much I need to upgrade. My poor 860M didn't even make it on here

Mar 11, 2022#472

GasBandit

Cobra_Royality said:
Wow, this chart really puts into perspective how much I need to upgrade. My poor 860M didn't even make it on here

It was a good value for its time, but on this chart it would be roughly where the RX 550 is.

That said, all you really need for 1080p 60fps gaming is a 1060 3gig, in my experience. That's what I'm still rocking, and I don't feel any real need to upgrade. The only times I've had performance issues were in the more demanding of VR games.

Mar 11, 2022#473

PatrThom

Cobra_Royality said:
Wow, this chart really puts into perspective how much I need to upgrade. My poor 860M didn't even make it on here

Tell me about it. Roomie came into some money in Summer/Fall of 2015 and we (mostly me) built a fresh new system for him to replace his old Athlon 64 we built him in 2008. It's a Core i7-5775C with a GeForce GTX 960 4GB and a 400GB Intel 750 SSD, which was absolutely AH-MAY-ZING for 2015 but now "game compatibility checker" websites laugh at us like we've brought a Prius to a drag race.

--Patrick

May 12, 2022#474

Cobra_Royality

Thought yall would enjoy this

Jun 22, 2022#475

PatrThom

Cobra_Royality said:
Do y'all think the upcoming Intel ARC graphic cards will be worth looking into/early adopting?

GasBandit said:
Until I start seeing benchmarks for the ARC (first one will be called "Alchemist") up on videocardbenchmark.net, I'm going to take their claims that it will be similar to a 3070 with the world's hugest grain of salt.

The first benchmarks for Intel's Arc lineup are starting to hit the 'net, for the A380 model at least. The A380 appears to be an A370M (a laptop chip) with slightly better specs, and it seems to score right around the level of the GTX 960/R9 390X, which means that puts it on par with cards that were released in 2015. It does have the advantage of full DX12U(ltimate) and better video encode/decode support, but that's about the only things really going for it.
But if the performance of the unreleased cards scales appropriately, and it's the 500- and 700-series cards we're all really waiting for, then it's probably going to look something like this:
A580 - 1.6x performance of A380 would put it right around GTX 1060/R9 Fury level.
A750 - 2.5x performance of A380 would put it right around GTX 1080/RX 5700 level.
A770 - 3.4x performance of A380 would indeed slot it between the RTX 3070/RX 6800.
Plus of course the full DX12 and encode/decode support.
IF my estimates are true (and if the cards are fairly priced), then these would at least be decent "budget" cards, assuming Intel doesn't crash and burn in the drivers department. If nothing else, they should be good for media boxes thanks to the enhanced video support.

BUT...

If you're holding out for their release in the hopes that one of them might be for you, keep in mind the following system requirements, as recently announced by Intel:

You must be using a 10th generation or newer Intel processor, or a Ryzen 5000-series or newer.
Your motherboard must have "Above 4G Decoding" enabled in the BIOS/UEFI setup.
Your motherboard must also have "Resizeable BAR" (also called ReBAR or "Smart Access Memory/SAM") enabled.
CSM must be disabled in the motherboard setup. No legacy stuff to get in the way.
The card must be installed in a (native?) PCIe v3.0 or newer slot.
You must be running 64-bit Windows 10 build 20H2 or newer, or any 64-bit version of Windows 11, and it must have been installed in UEFI mode.

These are all just my best guesses, btw (except for the above which was explicitly stated by Intel). I don't have any kind of insider info on this stuff, I'm just extrapolating based on what we know/has been revealed so far.

--Patrick

Jun 23, 2022#476

PatrThom

Oh, and now that PCIe v5.0 is finally starting to appear on motherboards, get ready because here comes PCIe v7!

--Patrick

Jul 15, 2022#477

PatrThom

A750 cards have been sighted in machines in YouTube videos, Intel has even published some no doubt hand-picked benchmarks which put it a bit faster (+16%) than my previous estimate. If true, the A750 would be around the level of the GTX 1080 Ti / Radeon 6700 XT. However, if the Fortnite benchmark is to be believed, it's more likely only around 9% faster than my previous estimate (assuming the variance isn't just due to immature drivers).

Still, if it pulls numbers anywhere close to the RTX 3060 like Intel claims, AND if it can do so while pulling right around 200W (compared to the 3060's 175W), then at least it'll be worth considering. If, however, it pulls 230W or has an MSRP much more than US$400...well, then it's all just been a big waste of time.

--Patrick

Aug 1, 2022#478

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
...until Intel comes out with a PCIe 4.0-enabled Optane controller, we're probably not going to see a significant advantage to 4.0 except in synthetic benchmarks.

Well, so much for that idea.

Why the end of Optane is bad news for the entire IT world

The biggest new idea in computing for half a century was just scrapped

www.theregister.com

So...the absolute highest performing persistent storage on the market for gaming or other random-intensive workloads (seriously, at 3-6x the speed, it's not even close) is being discontinued and they are writing all the chips they have in storage off as a loss (rather than building them into actual drives that someone could buy)...all [in my opinion] because people didn't want to pay the inflated prices they were charging for the drives (5x or higher compared to "regular" flash drives). Yes, they could make money by making them into drives and selling them, but they wouldn't make as much money as they were hoping, and so guess better can the whole thing and just throw them all away, darn.

Oh sure, there is the promise of CXL on the horizon, but this could've been here NOW and it would mean better compatibility with "legacy" (i.e., pre-2024*) machines by just dropping a card into a machine rather than requiring a complete redesign of the motherboard, processor, RAM, etc., etc.

--Patrick
*Yes, I said "2024." CXL isn't supposed to really start getting popular until early 2024, and that's only in server deployments. No idea how long it'll take to trickle down to client (i.e., gaming) computers.

Aug 1, 2022#479

Bones

PatrThom said:
Well, so much for that idea.

Why the end of Optane is bad news for the entire IT world

The biggest new idea in computing for half a century was just scrapped

www.theregister.com

So...the absolute highest performing persistent storage on the market for gaming or other random-intensive workloads (seriously, at 3-6x the speed, it's not even close) is being discontinued and they are writing all the chips they have in storage off as a loss (rather than building them into actual drives that someone could buy)...all [in my opinion] because people didn't want to pay the inflated prices they were charging for the drives (5x or higher compared to "regular" flash drives). Yes, they could make money by making them into drives and selling them, but they wouldn't make as much money as they were hoping, and so guess better can the whole thing and just throw them all away, darn.

Oh sure, there is the promise of CXL on the horizon, but this could've been here NOW and it would mean better compatibility with "legacy" (i.e., pre-2024*) machines by just dropping a card into a machine rather than requiring a complete redesign of the motherboard, processor, RAM, etc., etc.

--Patrick
*Yes, I said "2024." CXL isn't supposed to really start getting popular until early 2024, and that's only in server deployments. No idea how long it'll take to trickle down to client (i.e., gaming) computers.

I have a question, so is this basically, "you wont buy, so we will just throw it all away"

Aug 1, 2022#480

GasBandit

How petulant. The technical equivalent of striking off your nose to spite your face.

Aug 2, 2022#481

PatrThom

Bones said:
I have a question, so is this basically, "you wont buy, so we will just throw it all away"

Not entirely. There is the very real chance that this is being done because they're having a bad year, and their Alchemist product is running into tons of VERY bad delays (more on that later), and they plan to go all-in on CXL because, aside from requiring you to build a brand new computer in 2025 or so, it actually IS significantly better (though more expensive--right now, maybe not so much in 3yrs), and so they just don't actually have the capacity to care about Optane right now, and so are just shelving/abandoning it.
...but yeah, it really feels like they're throwing out an entire buffet rather than donate any of it to feed the homeless or something.

--Patrick

Aug 7, 2022#482

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
their Alchemist product is running into tons of VERY bad delays (more on that later)

It's later.
Much of this is based on rumor (I put off for a week hoping more facts would come to light), but Alchemist does not appear to be doing very well. Intel likes making money, so they wouldn't delay Alchemist for S&G, therefore something must be up.

Alchemist performance suffers greatly once the frame rate goes above 90fps. Rumor is this is due to some kind of hardware issue that Intel has tried to mitigate via drivers but with only limited success.
DX12 and Vulcan performance is okay, but DX11 (and by extension DX10 and DX9) performance is much, much slower, meaning older (i.e., most pre-2016) games are going to noticeably underperform.
Igor's Lab reports that one of the board partners (companies such as ASRock, ASUS, Sapphire, EVGA, etc--they don't say which one) has decided to abort making Alchemist cards entirely due to unspecified "quality concerns."
There are rumblings and leaked slides and emails and other internal stuff which suggests Intel, while not exactly panicking about Alchemist, is definitely unhappy/angry/worried/etc. about the whole thing, and may go so far as to cancel any/all future discrete GPU development (Battlemage, Celestial, Druid, etc).
In fact, there are even rumors that Intel will just hang up the discrete GPU business entirely, and cancel the 5xx/7xx series GPUs altogether. And before you say, "That couldn't possibly happen!" remember that we are talking about the company that just took a write-down on over $550million dollars' worth of unsold Optane chip inventory that they're just going to sit on/scrap/set on fire/idaknow what's gonna happen to all of it.

So...yeah. Is it canceled? Is it still coming? Is it any good? We still don't know for sure, and if the following video is any indication, we may not find out until Xmas 2022...which incidentally is also when NVIDIA/AMD are supposed to start releasing their next-generation GeForce RTX 4xxx/Radeon 7xxx cards.
Uh-oh.

At this point, the only real jewel in Alchemist's crown is its HW AV1 encoder, but if it can't game, then I don't know if that's going to be enough to get people to buy them (unless Intel decides to just market them as transcoding coprocessors).

--Patrick

Sep 30, 2022#483

PatrThom

A bit of an end-of-September update, now that there have (finally) been some official announcements:

Sep 27 - AMD's "Zen 4" 7000-series CPUs are available for purchase. The prices are reasonable compared to the 5000-series, and performance of the 7950X is up about 25% over that of the 5950X, though it also pulls around 60% more power, on average. Curiously, it also supports AVX-512, which is an instruction set that Intel introduced, but then abandoned when they introduced their 12th gen chips. If you're not doing scientific computing, this probably doesn't matter...unless you do a lot of emulation (especially console emulation), where it can make a very large difference, indeed. Upgrading to the 7000 series will require a new AM5 board, which will also require upgrading to DDR5 as this new CPU does not support DDR4.

Oct 12 - NVIDIA's official launch date for their 4xxx-series "Ada Lovelace" cards. They are very large (~3+ slots wide) pull a lot of power, generate a lot of frames, and pissed EVGA off enough that EVGA decided to stop making GPUs entirely, which was a big deal since they only ever made NVIDIA cards. NVIDIA claims they bring about 2x the speed of their 3xxx-series counterparts (4x the speed when ray tracing is enabled) at around 50% higher cost than those 3xxx-series counterparts. Most if not all of the important features have been upgraded (new tensor cores, new CUDA cores, etc) and they have also added hardware AV1 encoding support which takes away that one thing Intel had that nobody else did.

Also Oct 12 - Intel FINALLY has an official launch date for ARC Alchemist. The top-of-the-line 16GB A770 will retail for US$349 with the other cards going for, well, less than that. Performance of the A770 is supposed to be on par with NVIDIA's RTX 3060, which currently retails for around US$375. I personally may pick one up just to have one for its spot in history, and so I can physically touch it to prove to myself that it actually exists.

Oct 20 - Intel releases their 13th gen "Raptor Lake" CPUs, which build on the 12th-gen's transition to the hybrid core design (separate performance and efficiency cores). All the chips support both DDR4 and DDR5 (AMD's 7000-series only supports DDR5) and some of them will even support ECC memory IF you pair them with the right motherboard. This technically isn't a new thing for them, but it was usually something they only did with the lowest-end chips (the i3's) and the Xeons, not the mainstream ones in the middle (i5, i7, i9).

Nov 3 - AMD's release date for their 7xxx-series "RDNA3" cards. No dependable data yet, only claims of 20-25% better performance-per-watt compared to NVIDIA's 4xxx offerings and the fact that they will be chiplet based rather than the usual solid, monolithic die. No mention of AV1 support, framebuffer (VRAM) size, output options, what type of power connectors they'll have (8-pin or the new ATX 3.0 12-pin), whether they'll be PCIe 4/5 at 8x/16x, nothing. So far AMD is doing a good job of containing the leaks, we'll see what things are like in mid-October once the boards are actually being manufactured.

Merry Techmas, everyone!

--Patrick

Oct 5, 2022#484

PatrThom

A770 reviews are in. Overall verdict is...actually not terrible? But don't buy if you want consistent performance across multiple games.

Gaming numbers are too inconsistent to really recommend the card unless you know for a fact that the card will perform well in your game of choice, in which case the card does okay, matching or beating the performance of NVIDIA's RTX3060 or AMD's RX6700. Curiously, its relative performance gets better as resolution increases (i.e., it pulls further ahead as screen size gets larger). HOWEVER there is no clear evidence as to whether its hit-or-miss performance is something that will even out as drivers mature, so for now the buying advice is still "NVIDIA for performance, AMD for value," but I guess that now comes with the addition of "Intel later. Maybe."

--Patrick

Nov 11, 2022#485

@Li3n

Maybe not the best place to put some pre-builds, but what do you guys think of these:

Sistem Gaming Acer Nitro N50-640 cu procesor Intel® Core™ i5-12400F pana la 4.40 GHz, Alder Lake, 16GB, 1TB SSD, GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GDDR6, No OS - eMAG.ro

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www.emag.ro

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Cumpara Sistem Gaming Lenovo IdeaCentre 5 17IAB7 cu procesor Intel® Core™ i5-12400F pana la 4.40 GHz, 16GB UDIMM DDR4-3200, 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0x4 NVMe, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, No OS de la eMAG! Ai libertatea sa platesti in rate, Beneficiezi de promotiile zilei, deschiderea...

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Sistem Gaming Lenovo IdeaCentre 5 17IAB7 cu procesor Intel® Core™ i7-12700F pana la 4.90 GHz, Alder Lake, 32GB DDR4, 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, No OS - eMAG.ro

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Cumpara Sistem Desktop PC Gaming ASUS G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70GHz, 16GB DDR4, 512GB SSD NVMe™ + 1TB HDD, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 12GB GDDR6, No OS de la eMAG! Ai libertatea sa platesti in rate, Beneficiezi de promotiile zilei, deschiderea coletului la livrare, easybox...

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Sistem Desktop PC Gaming ASUS G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70GHz, 16GB DDR4, 512GB SSD NVMe™ + 1TB HDD, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, No OS - eMAG.ro

Cumpara Sistem Desktop PC Gaming ASUS G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70GHz, 16GB DDR4, 512GB SSD NVMe™ + 1TB HDD, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, No OS de la eMAG! Ai libertatea sa platesti in rate, Beneficiezi de promotiile zilei, deschiderea coletului la livrare...

www.emag.ro

Sistem Gaming ASUS ROG Strix G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70 GHz, 16GB, 512GB M.2 NVMe™ PCIe® 3.0 SSD, NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX1660TI 6GB DDR6, No OS - eMAG.ro

Cumpara Sistem Gaming ASUS ROG Strix G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70 GHz, 16GB, 512GB M.2 NVMe™ PCIe® 3.0 SSD, NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX1660TI 6GB DDR6, No OS de la eMAG! Ai libertatea sa platesti in rate, Beneficiezi de promotiile zilei, deschiderea coletului la livrare, easybox...

www.emag.ro

I i got about 3 hours before Black Friday ends.

Any of them look worth it?

For prices in USD, just divide by 4.7.

Nov 11, 2022#486

GasBandit

Never get Acer, and stay away from Lenovo if possible.

The ASUS ones look fairly decent... I'd have like to seen 32 gb of ram on those, and the hard drive space is also a little on the low side, but that can always be upgraded later.

Prices seem to be about what I would expect... which probably means they're low.

But I'm worried what the shipping will be like from Romania.

Nov 11, 2022#487

@Li3n

Is the GTX1660TI good enough for most games nowadays?

I've decided a while back that video-cards aren't worth buying expensive, and it's better to just replace them in 2-3 years, after a Lego Star Wars game (II i think) forced an upgrade because it required shader 2.0 or something like that.

And yeah, RAM and drive space i ca upgrade later (i was thinking i might just use the HDD i have right now, maybe even the SSD, they're both fairly new)

Nov 11, 2022#488

GasBandit

@Li3n said:
Is the GTX1660TI good enough for most games nowadays?

As long as you're not doing raytracing, VR, or resolutions higher than 1440p, it's probably still 60fps capable.

Nov 11, 2022#489

@Li3n

Hmm... would i be better off buying something similar without a graphics card, and just use my GTX0150 until low cost raytracing, VR, 4k cards come out ?

At this point i'm just looking to play some Diablo 2 Resurrected...

And i haven't had that great an experience with ASUS either. My last card ASUS was replaced 3 times, and they all had issues (though i do guess them not being produced anymore had something to do with it, prob getting already used cards etc.)

Also, i just noticed the last one has a PS/2... WHAT?!

EDIT: All the ASUS ones have it... WHAT YEAR IS THIS ?

Nov 11, 2022#490

PatrThom

Based solely on specs, I would limit choices to the 5800X and 12700F models and discard the rest.
Of the remaining 4, only two come with a 3060 Ti (the GTX 1660Ti is essentially an RTX 2060 without the R).
Of those two, the Lenovo has better specs (Bluetooth 5.2, WiFi 6, 1TB SSD, slightly faster CPU performance) as well as being 200 Lei less expensive, but I have no real experience with the longevity/reliability of the brand, and neither of them show the interior view to make any guesses as to ease of later expansion. The specs on the Lenovo say it only goes up to 32GB but it should be able to go up to 64GB even with only two RAM slots, it would just mean buying 32GB modules which appear to be anywhere from 1000 to 1500 Lei for a pair of decent 32GB DDR4-3200 ones.

--Patrick

Nov 11, 2022#491

GasBandit

Lenovo frequently has good performance but build quality issues. I use a lenovo laptop for work that I frequently have to thump with my fingertips with a worrying amount of force to get sound to start coming out of the right hand speaker again.

My last 3 personal laptops have all been Asus and I have really had good luck with them.

Anybody who buys an Acer needs to be put on a suicide watch list.

Nov 11, 2022#492

@Li3n

PatrThom said:
and neither of them show the interior view to make any guesses as to ease of later expansion.

The ASUS cases are all teh same, and this seems to be the pic they used for all of them.

But i'm starting to think it's better if i just get back into learning about the components again, and just building something myself... and just hunt for more RAM next Black Friday, and a new video-card the BF after that...

Not a very varied selection on sales for a full desktop...

Nov 12, 2022#493

@Li3n

@Li3n said:
Maybe not the best place to put some pre-builds, but what do you guys think of these:

Sistem Gaming Acer Nitro N50-640 cu procesor Intel® Core™ i5-12400F pana la 4.40 GHz, Alder Lake, 16GB, 1TB SSD, GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GDDR6, No OS - eMAG.ro

Cumpara Sistem Gaming Acer Nitro N50-640 cu procesor Intel® Core™ i5-12400F pana la 4.40 GHz, Alder Lake, 16GB, 1TB SSD, GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GDDR6, No OS de la eMAG! Ai libertatea sa platesti in rate, Beneficiezi de promotiile zilei, deschiderea coletului la livrare, easybox, retur gratuit in...

www.emag.ro

Sistem Gaming Lenovo IdeaCentre 5 17IAB7 cu procesor Intel® Core™ i5-12400F pana la 4.40 GHz, 16GB UDIMM DDR4-3200, 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0x4 NVMe, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, No OS - eMAG.ro

Cumpara Sistem Gaming Lenovo IdeaCentre 5 17IAB7 cu procesor Intel® Core™ i5-12400F pana la 4.40 GHz, 16GB UDIMM DDR4-3200, 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0x4 NVMe, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, No OS de la eMAG! Ai libertatea sa platesti in rate, Beneficiezi de promotiile zilei, deschiderea...

www.emag.ro

Sistem Gaming Lenovo IdeaCentre 5 17IAB7 cu procesor Intel® Core™ i7-12700F pana la 4.90 GHz, Alder Lake, 32GB DDR4, 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, No OS - eMAG.ro

Cumpara Sistem Gaming Lenovo IdeaCentre 5 17IAB7 cu procesor Intel® Core™ i7-12700F pana la 4.90 GHz, Alder Lake, 32GB DDR4, 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, No OS de la eMAG! Ai libertatea sa platesti in rate, Beneficiezi de promotiile zilei, deschiderea coletului la...

www.emag.ro

Sistem Desktop PC Gaming ASUS G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70GHz, 16GB DDR4, 512GB SSD NVMe™ + 1TB HDD, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 12GB GDDR6, No OS - eMAG.ro

Cumpara Sistem Desktop PC Gaming ASUS G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70GHz, 16GB DDR4, 512GB SSD NVMe™ + 1TB HDD, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 12GB GDDR6, No OS de la eMAG! Ai libertatea sa platesti in rate, Beneficiezi de promotiile zilei, deschiderea coletului la livrare, easybox...

www.emag.ro

Sistem Desktop PC Gaming ASUS G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70GHz, 16GB DDR4, 512GB SSD NVMe™ + 1TB HDD, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, No OS - eMAG.ro

Cumpara Sistem Desktop PC Gaming ASUS G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70GHz, 16GB DDR4, 512GB SSD NVMe™ + 1TB HDD, NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6, No OS de la eMAG! Ai libertatea sa platesti in rate, Beneficiezi de promotiile zilei, deschiderea coletului la livrare...

www.emag.ro

Sistem Gaming ASUS ROG Strix G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70 GHz, 16GB, 512GB M.2 NVMe™ PCIe® 3.0 SSD, NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX1660TI 6GB DDR6, No OS - eMAG.ro

Cumpara Sistem Gaming ASUS ROG Strix G10DK cu procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 5800X pana la 4.70 GHz, 16GB, 512GB M.2 NVMe™ PCIe® 3.0 SSD, NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX1660TI 6GB DDR6, No OS de la eMAG! Ai libertatea sa platesti in rate, Beneficiezi de promotiile zilei, deschiderea coletului la livrare, easybox...

www.emag.ro

I i got about 3 hours before Black Friday ends.

Well, well, well... would you look at that, most of these are still on sale for teh same prices... except the last one, which is 450 lei more, which is still less expensive then the crossed out price was yesterday...

Dec 2, 2022#494

PatrThom

GasBandit said:
This 1060 3 gig continues to be the best $200 I've ever spent.

A new graphics card tops the Steam survey for the first time since 2018

The most popular graphics card among Steam survey participants had been the GTX 1060 since it replaced the GTX 750 almost five years ago. But the Pascal...

www.techspot.com

--Patrick

Dec 2, 2022#495

GasBandit

The 1650 may cost half as much but it is 20% slower and still not as good bang for your buck.

GeForce GTX 1650 vs GeForce GTX 1060 3GB [videocardbenchmark.net] by PassMark Software

Dec 2, 2022#496

PatrThom

Agreed. Which is why I have been recommending 1660 or better. I assume the 1650's popularity is due more to its price and presence in laptops (and because it comes in models that don't require aux PCIe connectors) than its actual gaming performance.
I'm looking forward to the slew of Radeon 7k reviews which should be coming out tomorrow or at least by Monday before I start making decisions on price/performance/features.

--Patrick

Dec 3, 2022#497

PatrThom

PatrThom said:
I'm looking forward to the slew of Radeon 7k reviews which should be coming out tomorrow or at least by Monday before I start making decisions on price/performance/features.

Whoops release date is Dec13 not Dec3, my bad.

--Patrick

Dec 12, 2022#498

PatrThom

Reviews are coming in. As of launch*, the 7900XTX/7900XT cards are performing close to the level of a 4080/3090Ti unless you care about raytracing, in which case the NVIDIA cards beat all comers.
So if you think you will be GPU shopping this holiday season, the NVIDIA 40x0 cards are unquestionably the best performers (and also happen to carry the highest prices).
Not counting raytracing performance, the hierarchy looks something like this:
4090
4080
7900XTX
3090Ti
7900XT
(3080 (non-Ti))
(3070)
(3060)
A770

Are you going to use the raytracing features? Suck it up and get one of the NVIDIA cards (4090/4080). You have no other choice right now.
Do you want to save money? Get the 7900XTX. The XT is $100 cheaper than the XTX but offers $120 less performance so the XTX is still technically the best $<->performance deal.
Do you like being an alpha tester? Get the A770. None of the other Intel cards are worth getting for gaming purposes with the possible exception of using one as an AV1 encode/decode coprocessor while streaming/recording.

ONE note: The AMD cards have USB-C and also support the newer Display Port 2.1 standard, while the NVIDIA cards only support up to DP1.4a, which means that technically the AMD cards can support faster frame rates at higher resolutions (4K/8K), but the only real benefit I can see for this at this time is that you would be able to keep using them (i.e., able to connect to a wider variety of future monitors) longer than NVIDIA's 40x0 cards, though whether you would've thrown them away by then anyway due to their slower performance is another story.

--Patrick
*future drivers may change things, though it's debatable by exactly how much.

Dec 12, 2022#499

GasBandit

It's still bringing bile into my throat to try to conceive of a $1000 card being the best price for performance, when my $200 1060 3 gig is only now starting to show its age.

Dec 12, 2022#500

Frank

How has Darktide been running on your PC? I've read some horror stories of performance.

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