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I'm playing around with NZXT's PC Builder, and you can get some halfway-reasonable deals. I managed to tweak a 3060 Ti build down to $1538.91, around $60 less than the cheapest prebuilt with a 3060 Ti on newegg, and those often have worse specs than this in some ways, or overspend in other unnecessary ways. Could be an option for people who want a midrange gaming prebuilt. Looking at the prices, these are MSRP for all of the parts except for the graphics card, and then a $99 build fee on top of that (plus the full cost of a windows key which you should never have to pay for when going DIY). Being able to get a 11400 for $180 helps a lot in cutting down costs. (We'd be recommending that chip a lot more here if it were actually available at that price.) It's a shame they don't let you pick a cheaper motherboard, though. Note: I have no idea what their build quality will be like. I didn't know NZXT even had a PC building service until now. Also the 510 is a case that's not particularly great from an airflow standpoint, but it's probably good enough with those parts. They don't offer any other options worth taking. They have higher-end GPUs available, but the markup on those is insane. $1300 for a regular 3080 kind of thing. edit: In the time it took me to write this, a "low stock" warning appeared over the 3060 Ti, so that seems to be going fast. I saw this after it appeared in a LTT video and apparently a lot of other people are jumping at this opportunity. edit 2: Checking in one day later, and they did indeed run out of that specific 3060 Ti, and they replaced it with a Gigabyte Eagle OC that costs $60 more ($589.99). Kinda lame. Still might be better than random newegg prebuilts, though. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 06:00
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Orders have been placed! Went with the Dark Rock 4 as far as cooling goes over the Fuma 2, since it seems pretty equivalent in terms of performance, and I could get it immediately (with the rest of my order). Went a bit over-budget total, by around 200 euro, but between GPU prices, and choosing some components over others (white PSU, could've gotten a cheaper case) it's not too bad. Thanks again everyone for the help. Looking forward to putting it all together! Haven't installed Windows since XP, but it doesn't sound too bad.
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Jul 29, 2021 11:59
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The majority of the time it is very, very painless, don't worry
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Jul 29, 2021 14:46
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Pilfered Pallbearers posted:Dude that had the lovely build me, hello Took me a week to mull these suggestions over. Steam Deck is a very tentative "maybe" for me. Seems a bit counter-intuitive to 100% fully replace an old PC with that, even if you have the dock and monitor to make it some kind of odd pseudo-USFF setup that never leaves your desk. Assuming that I went that route, that's what I'd intend to do – I wouldn't even consider using it as a handheld since the controller layout just looks ridiculous and awkward to use. Still pretty early to tell if Windows will reliably run on the things, not to mention there hasn't been any official word on if the drivers are readily available to re-download if you ever need to do a clean install. Plus the storage space seems small compared to most PCs even if you got the mid-range model, aftermarket SD cards notwithstanding I'm likely gonna say "no" to the Series S, though. The fact online play costs  (Couldn't care any less about whatever "Gamepass" is) has dissuaded me from touching an Xbox for the last twelve or eleven years. Plus, none of my friends own one or care to so I really don't see the pointHonestly still wondering if the newer Zen3 APUs would work for me at a $700 CDN price point. But if you don't think that's the way to go, I suppose my only other option would be to live with this i3 4150/GTX 750 combo that can't run anything made after late 2015 for another six to twelve months until the market isn't completely hosed – or until the power supply fries and takes something with it Hiraeth fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 16:35
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Hiraeth posted:I'm likely gonna say "no" to the Series S, though. The fact online play costs Gamepass is the best deal going in gaming right now in terms of the sheer amount of content available and planned.
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Jul 29, 2021 16:45
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the pc version focuses on a ton of co op content, too. me and my friend group tend to go from game to game pretty often and it sucks to have to wait for it to go on super sale or eat the cost of the game x 6 or w/e. a subscription makes perfect sense for us, we wouldn’t have played deep rock galactic without it and that game owns. app sucks rear end mind.
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Jul 29, 2021 16:57
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Butterfly Valley posted:Gamepass is the best deal going in gaming right now in terms of the sheer amount of content available and planned. This may be beyond the scope of this thread, but I've always been curious how Gamepass works. I know it's a monthly sub, but do the games in it rotate, or is it just that more and more get added by the month?
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Jul 29, 2021 16:59
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Serperoth posted:This may be beyond the scope of this thread, but I've always been curious how Gamepass works. I know it's a monthly sub, but do the games in it rotate, or is it just that more and more get added by the month? Yes. More specifically, Microsoft owned/adjacent games are day one releases and permanently on there, and then games by other developers rotate with generous enough timeframes to allow you more than enough time to complete them as long as you pay attention. Given Microsoft's strategy of aggressively purchasing and consolidating studios like Bethesda, Arkane, id Software, Obsidian, Rare, MachineGames etc that's a shitload of great games that are already available and all new games from those studios will be available from release. You also have EA Play included with the Ultimate sub, adding a glut more content.
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Jul 29, 2021 17:34
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very similar to netflix really
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Jul 29, 2021 17:48
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Hiraeth posted:me, hello The APU is unlikely to really perform much better than what you have. You should hone down exactly what you want to do with the unit, then exactly how much you're willing to spend, then a rec is easier. For instance, if part of your intent is to have a machine that can run windows and do windows things, the steam deck probably isn't it.
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Jul 29, 2021 17:55
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Pilfered Pallbearers posted:The APU is unlikely to really perform much better than what you have. Mentioned what my use-cases were in the OP already. I can give you a refresher with some more details, if it helps. Get ready because it's gonna be – probably unnecessarily – wordy Ideally, I'm looking for a Windows-based computer that can run current games made within the last five years (And likely a couple of upcoming titles) at sub-1080p based on the fact that I'm running a Dell P2016, which I'm honestly totally okay with continuing to use. An example of how my PC's been causing me some grief recently: there are times every so often where I play a lot of Tower Unite, an open world VRChat-esque game that's been early access for half a decade now and is incredibly unoptimized as a result. My PC can barely reach 30fps when I crank the settings down to low on 1280x800. I have friends on Zen+ systems with GTX 970 cards that can run the game nearly flawlessly at 1080p, sometimes even 1440p, on ultra at 60fps. As long as I can play anything (Mostly platformers, a small handful of FPS titles especially since I've wanted to get into the newer Doom titles for a hot minute, and action games like the Yakuza and Souls series) at a near constant 40fps running on medium settings at 1440x900 then I'm happy. 60fps would be nice, but it's honestly whatever to me. And yeah, a big thing for me is being able to play some games online with friends on the same platform. As far as I know, nobody in my primary social circle owns a Series X/S at all Aside from that, I'm just using it for web browsing, Discord calls/720p Discord streaming, your basic office apps like Word or Excel whenever the need calls for them, and emulation for N64 and GameCube. Budget-wise I really don't want to spend more than $670 to $700 Canabux for the system if I can help it – no peripherals. And while I can acknowledge that gaming prebuilts are pretty much the most readily available option, I can't help but think also the ugliest things in the world (I mean the PC that I initially got from my friend before I didn't go through with it had a Rosewill Line-M case where I wanted the front LED fan replaced with a non-LED one) and I don't want to bother paying that price point for something I won't even fully utilize Fair enough if I have to settle with a laptop/used desktop that's only slightly newer than what I have. If I have really hyper-specific expectations to the point where I'm SOL with options because I'm one of few people who is absolutely fine with low-end specs then I'm cool with the honesty Hiraeth fucked around with this message at 12:45 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 19:16
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you could buy a secondhand 970, they've cooled in price a bit. you'll still be CPU bound but it will make a big difference. what's your power supply in your current case like?
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Jul 29, 2021 19:29
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Hiraeth posted:Honestly still wondering if the newer Zen3 APUs would work for me at a $700 CDN price point. But if you don't think that's the way to go, I suppose my only other option would be to live with this i3 4150/GTX 750 combo that can't run anything made after late 2015 for another six to twelve months until the market isn't completely hosed – or until the power supply fries and takes something with it If you want to do a penny pinch salvage build like I did last year for an old rig I had, peruse SA-Mart and find a goon who can sell you a Haswell-based i7 for cheap (I managed to pick up an i7-4770 and 16GB of RAM for $80 from a goon last year) and a used 970 or something. You can try your luck at EVGA's B-Stock to nab a GTX 1660 Super or something equivalent for sub ~$200 (I got lucky before the GPU Apocalypse and scored a B-Stock 1660 Ti for ~$150). EVGA B-Stock recently had 1080 Ti cards for $250. [edit] Also, Game Pass is insane value. Get it, even if just for PC. teagone fucked around with this message at 23:59 on Jul 29, 2021 |
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Jul 29, 2021 23:45
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Could some kind goon soul give me a recommendation on a cookie cutter medium to higher end gaming PC build? I'm 100% out of the hardware loop now but am still leery of prebuilts out of habit and I'd like to avoid getting gouged in general. Country: Finland What I'd be using it for: gaming, photoshop, poo poo posting Budget: $2100 Res / Refresh: I have a 144 hz monitor and would prefer to have that frame rate solidly for competitive games and 60+ for single player. I currently have no ambitions of going past 1080p but would prefer the liberty of changing my mind in the future. So yeah basically something that'll allow me to have smooth and pretty visuals in current video games. I'd also prefer room to grow, i.e. I don't mind splooging a bit for components that are overkill for strictly 1080 if I get value out of it down the line. Current rig is also a product of goon advice and the best one I've ever had, but it's finally breaking down after 10 years of service 
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Jul 30, 2021 20:31
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Blunt Instrument posted:Could some kind goon soul give me a recommendation on a cookie cutter medium to higher end gaming PC build? I'm 100% out of the hardware loop now but am still leery of prebuilts out of habit and I'd like to avoid getting gouged in general. What GPU do you currently have? You're about to be told you can't upgrade it at the moment.
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Jul 30, 2021 20:38
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is 2100 finish dollars or 2100 american? cause you can get a very good prebuild if you shop around for over two grand, i'd have to politely disagree. you might be marked up a little but nowhere in the same galaxy as much as buying the component separately.
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Jul 30, 2021 20:43
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yes it is still totally loving mad this is still true. if you can get a card at MSRP or even more ideally a FE card you'd be able to put together a price competitive build no problem, that one component will bottleneck your entire friggin budget. go for a reputable prebuild maker, trust idk do they have trustpilot or something in finland? some place with great reviews for service and bring whatever you find here, we'll happily tell you if it's good.
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Jul 30, 2021 21:13
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Blunt Instrument posted:Could some kind goon soul give me a recommendation on a cookie cutter medium to higher end gaming PC build? I'm 100% out of the hardware loop now but am still leery of prebuilts out of habit and I'd like to avoid getting gouged in general. The basic rundown of this gen: 3060: Decent 1080p card that will run most current games at 60 at high to max settings, provided you turn ray tracing off. 3060 Ti: The max settings plus moderate ray tracing 1080p card. There won't be much this card won't be able to handle at 1080p over the next few years. Can dip its toes in 1440p too. 3070: Same story as the 3060 Ti but with 1440p. 3070 Ti: A 5 to 10% more powerful 3070 but for 20% more MSRP. Pretty pointless card, though actual street prices put them close enough together to make it worth considering in some circumstances. 3080: Ostensibly the 4K card, and it's good at it now, but it can be borderline on some high-end or poorly-optimized games. Its 1440p performance is strong enough to last at least a couple card generations, I'll bet. The current street prices for this and the next couple cards make them completely out of the question here. 3080 Ti: Somewhat more reliable 4K performance for way more cost. 3090: A workstation GPU positioned as a gaming GPU. Nvidia claimed it's an 8K card, but that's laughable. It does have genuinely good 4K performance even in shittily optimized games and that will probably hold true over the next few years, but it comes at a $1500 MSRP and over $2500 street price. (edit: actually its 4k performance is still kinda meh in watch dogs legions and cyberpunk 2077 without dlss. oh well lmao) Everything to do with Radeon this gen: One step behind Nvidia. They're offering vaguely equivalent or sometimes slightly better rasterization performance with worse ray tracing performance, and they lack other nvidia features like DLSS support or NVENC. Their street prices are generally a fair bit lower though due to weaker crypto capabilities, which makes them genuinely worth considering if you're just going by that. All that said, actually obtaining GPUs at a fair price is nearly impossible right now. You could possibly put together a 3070 build within your budget, but it's close and it depends on what your local market conditions are like. For the CPU, the go-to midrange choice is the 5600X. I'd start by ctrl+f'ing the last few pages for "5600X" to get an idea of what people are building or recommending. I have a feeling some kind of 5600X/3070 build is what you'll want to settle on. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 30, 2021 21:51
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i got a 3070 and a 3300x and at 1440p it works extremely good. a 5600X build will most likely comfortably futureproof you for at least one GPU upgrade and will be very good if you have any productivity role for it.
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Jul 30, 2021 22:05
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VelociBacon posted:What GPU do you currently have? You're about to be told you can't upgrade it at the moment. I have a 960 right now, I forgot to clarify that I'm aware of the thing where GPUs are a fictional concept. Currently there are a number of 3070s in stock at the retailer I'm probably gonna buy from, but I don't mind buying a last gen one and upgrading it later as long as I get the rest of the hardware set up to make it feasible. Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:technobabble Thanks for the in depth rundown! I'll try looking at the 5600Xs, I'm very much in the dark with CPUs and mobos CoolCab posted:yes it is still totally loving mad this is still true. if you can get a card at MSRP or even more ideally a FE card you'd be able to put together a price competitive build no problem, that one component will bottleneck your entire friggin budget. go for a reputable prebuild maker, trust idk do they have trustpilot or something in finland? some place with great reviews for service and bring whatever you find here, we'll happily tell you if it's good. There were a couple of prebuilts I was looking at, namely one from the asus ROG line and a Lenovo with a 3700X / 3070 for 1600, but they didn't elaborate on any of the components and my old instinct is to not trust it Blunt Instrument fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 30, 2021 22:41
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Blunt Instrument posted:Thanks for the in depth rundown! I'll try looking at the 5600Xs, I'm very much in the dark with CPUs and mobos Look for b550 chipset motherboards with whatever I/O and other features you want.
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Jul 30, 2021 23:10
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I need a gut check on my setup: I'm currently running a 3700X with a X570 Unify mobo and 16GB ram. I finally scored a 3080Ti, and I want to double-check there won't be a significant bottleneck. I used a bottleneck calculator with my CPU and ram against the 3000 series card, and it seems like I'll be OK, especially at 1080p and 1440p. It would be helpful to get a second opinion. I am willing to increase my ram to 32GB.
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Jul 31, 2021 16:24
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Armauk posted:I need a gut check on my setup: You’ll be slightly cpu bottlenecked at 1080 in some titles, but 1440 you should be just fine. Extra ram won’t help.
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Jul 31, 2021 17:15
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Armauk posted:I need a gut check on my setup: so, when we talk about "bottleneck" it's kind of deceptive. it makes it sound like there is one static neck of a bottle and if you throw X GPU at it and Y CPU you can calculate the bottleneck lickety split. that's kind of an oversimplification and one of the reasons those bottleneck calculators aren't very well thought of - it is a moving target within a specific game let alone any between titles. over the course of playing a game the bottleneck will shift between a CPU and a GPU heavy load even depending on things so abstract as "how many physics objects do I need to calculate right now" or "how often do I need to reflect a ray of light for this frame", etc. and as you've somewhat picked up on one of the quickest ways to shift a bottleneck to the GPU is upping the resolution - that's SUPER GPU intensive. so a 3700X will be fine to great almost all of the time. at 1440p or higher the difference is miniscule, and only when the game swings to more CPU heavy tasks do you get that .1% low that many reviewers are testing - .1% of the time the CPU was bottlenecking you. it's not the top of the line right now with the 5000 series out, and those have something of a performance advantage - counterintuitively the most important quality for gaming (generally! big asterix! some games use more CPU and some use more GPU!) is single core performance, so you could probably drop down to a 3600X and get similar performance or upgrade to a 5600X, six core twelve threads, and get something better for gaming. worse for productivity, mind, that's where those cores will come in handy.
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Jul 31, 2021 17:19
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Armauk posted:it seems like I'll be OK, especially at 1080p and 1440p. It would be helpful to get a second opinion. I am willing to increase my ram to 32GB. As others said RAM is irrelevant here, and actually the lower the resolution, the higher the CPU load so 1080p is where you actually could see a difference between processors. 1440p and especially 4k shifts the load to the GPU so the CPU becomes less relevant. At 1440p with a 3700x you're fine.
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Jul 31, 2021 17:58
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Is it possible to use AMD Ryzen 5 5600X with ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus if I don't have an old AMD processor to update the BIOS? Apparently this board doesn't have USB flashback, in which case how are you supposed to get it working?
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Jul 31, 2021 19:11
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When did you buy the motherboard? It probably has the bios update already if you bought it this year.
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Jul 31, 2021 19:23
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Haven't bought it yet, it was on the list on pcpartpicker but it throws up a warning.
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Jul 31, 2021 19:31
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Quick RAM question: I’m at 16Gb with 2x8Gb sticks, 3200 16 DDR 4. I’ve built computers before, and have always understood snot matching RAM speed when upgrading from 2x slots to 4x full. I mentioned my old 970 rig before that has 20Gb of RAM with 4x sticks. They are speed matched, but I was cannibalizing ddr3 and now have 2x2Gb in a1/a2, and 16Gb in b1/b2. The two sets match for speed and cl, but are obviously different sizes and brands. I don’t have any trouble with this setup, but I will have enough cash to get more RAM in a month or two in my new 3070/16Gb (2x8) setup. Do I need to buy 2x8Gb or will I be able to get (2x16Gb) of same speed/cl and end up with 48Gb working total. They would probably not be the same brand, but match for all the other important details. I will buy the 2x16 anyway, but is there any reason to or not to keep the perfectly fine original 2x8 sticks, or do they need to be matched in size (and brand?) or just speed/cl to work? It’s hard to explain to Google search terms, and to tell the truth I respect and listen to other Goons far more than asking yahoo or Reddit communities. If I’m not explaining it correctly, I apologize but I don’t have money in hand atm and wanted a buffer for discussion before ponying up $200+ and wasting Watts on older DDR4 that doesn’t contribute but still causes no instability or bugs. Thanks, y’all.
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Jul 31, 2021 20:04
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pisshead posted:Haven't bought it yet, it was on the list on pcpartpicker but it throws up a warning. It was more prevalent an issue at Zen3 launch last fall. As time has gone on, the likelihood of needing to flash your BIOS to support Zen3 continues to go down
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Jul 31, 2021 20:21
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pisshead posted:Haven't bought it yet, it was on the list on pcpartpicker but it throws up a warning. I would get a B550 board instead then. They are usually cheaper and functionally the same. As a bonus they don't have a tiny fan on them like the 570.
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Jul 31, 2021 22:32
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I think it is nearly 100% likely that motherboard will just work out of the box, but there's still a sliver of doubt. And in this case, I would just choose a different board with bios flashback. Mu Zeta posted:I would get a B550 board instead then. They are usually cheaper and functionally the same. As a bonus they don't have a tiny fan on them like the 570. B550 boards can have the exact same issue, though. B550 boards may be smarter depending on their needs anyway, but they don't avoid this issue.
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Jul 31, 2021 22:40
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The warning is from the launch window, when boards with older bioses would still be on the shelves. Nearly a year out it's a complete non-issue.
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Aug 1, 2021 00:26
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For what it's worth I bought both the Asus Strix X570-I and Asrock B550 Phantom ITX (after getting annoyed with the chipset fan on the Asus) from Newegg this past month and both were Zen 3 compatible out of the box.
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Aug 1, 2021 00:35
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There was a goon in here a few weeks ago who bought some random Biostar B550 board that lacked bios flashback and shipped with an old incompatible bios. Asus boards seem especially unlikely to have this happen but I dunno. I feel like there's an incredibly slim but still non-zero chance that you end up some with old pre-Zen3 board somehow with an old bios. If you do not have another compatible AM4 chip, I would just avoid buying any new motherboards without bios flashback unless there's a very specific reason you want that one in particular. There are lots of alternative boards available where that will be an avoidable issue, so you may as well just get one of those instead.
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Aug 1, 2021 00:42
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LuckyCat posted:
Coming back to this from like 10 pages ago. I am ready to put my wallet down so my plan is to reserve everything through Microcenter's website and then pick it up in the morning. I was reviewing my choices and looking at some other options, but I noticed that the Microcenter website seems to indicate that the B550-A isn't compatible with DDR4-3600 memory? Halp! I am also a little stoned so I very well could be reading it wrong. 
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Aug 1, 2021 04:06
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You're fine. Just remember to enable xmp/docp in the BIOS to get the full RAM speed.
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Aug 1, 2021 04:11
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LuckyCat posted:Coming back to this from like 10 pages ago. I am ready to put my wallet down so my plan is to reserve everything through Microcenter's website and then pick it up in the morning. 3200 is the top 'officially supported' speed for Zen3, anything beyond that is considered OC. MSI's website says 3600 is supported by the board. https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/B550-A-PRO/Specification
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Aug 1, 2021 04:14
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Thanks again! Thanks for mentioning that too Mu Zeta, about the xmp/docp, because I wouldn't have known otherwise.
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Aug 1, 2021 04:20
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Mu Zeta posted:I would get a B550 board instead then. They are usually cheaper and functionally the same. As a bonus they don't have a tiny fan on them like the 570. In the end I went for this one "ROG STRIX B550-F".
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Aug 1, 2021 11:47
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