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Silento Boborachi posted:If someone can just give a quick yay/nay on the builds and what I should do for a 2nd graphics card that would be great, I am thinking I might try sa-mart for an older card as the newer cards become more available Save some money on other parts of your build and put more money into your new graphics card, it was only less than a month ago that a gpu could be up to half of the build cost. Used market is constantly in flux but I think it's difficult to find cost-competitive used cards right now. Since you're getting a GPU you could get a 12400F to save $40. You don't need a top of the range cooler for this, the $37 Thermalright the other guy recommends is fine, or going all the way down to the $20 Deepcool Gammaxx 400 still kicks the poo poo out of the stock cooler the only caveat being you need to contact Deepcool for free LGA 1700 mounting hardware. That's $110 saved right there. I'd also take the B660 motherboard suggestion, there are few features on the Z690 that you will benefit from. Now with $550 in hand, you can actually buy a 6700 XT for less than $500 these days, which is competitive with the 6600 XT price-performance wise especially since I can only find $385 at cheapest for the 6600 XT. In the 6700 XT's price range the Nvidia equivalent is the 3060 Ti, currently as low as $550. Unless you need Nvidia's featureset or plan on playing games with ray tracing the better deal is probably the cheaper AMD cards.
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May 18, 2022 18:11
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Anti-Bunny posted:Currently on a AMD FX-8370E + GTX 970 and way beyond time for a new video card, but thinkingI should just replace everything. Probably leaning towards a prebuilt unless buying parts is actually going to be significantly cheaper.. (the prebuilt market did get better in the last 10 years, right?) Skytech prices are reasonable and everything else is inoffensive.
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May 20, 2022 20:40
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Sanctum posted:I'd rather spend $1k on a sensible mid-range PC every 5 years than blow $4k on something high end. I don't know what your peripherals situation is like but adding a good modern monitor can massively increase your enjoyment even though it does not make the PC go faster, plus more screens better. I would rate a $1500 computer and a $500 monitor (plus whatever you had before) higher than a $2000 computer with a 6-10 year-old reused monitor. Other people have linked builds but yeah, a 12700F and a 3080 is reasonably within your budget. Shop around a bit for the GPU as prices vary day to day.
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Jun 15, 2022 19:45
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In the $2k range am I still looking at something noticeably better than my old machine?
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petit choux posted:Greetings, thread, I was hoping for some advice and a chance to show off these computers. I was at a thrift store and they had a box of assorted hardware, including what I thought were terminals, so I snapped up the whole box for $20. But they turned out to be complete computers, complete with OS (NT 6.4) and really nice touch screens, USB 3, etc. My point is, I wish to back up the OS, install Windows 10 on them, and was kind of wondering if there may be any wisdom available to me here, or perhaps another thread? Those are an absolute steal for $20, NT 6.4 (Win 10) point of sale terminals like that go for like $400 used. I don't know anything about modding them though, but I would say attach a keyboard, go into the bios, make sure you can boot from a usb drive, and then you can probably do everything normally.
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Jul 24, 2022 23:27
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Fixit posted:I was approached to help a close friend build a computer. The main purpose of the computer is streaming. I do not stream so out of my element here. The ask was to help setup a dual pc streaming setup. I don't think they need dual pc streaming because the friend does cooking streams, not gaming. Tell me if I am wrong though. He wants one pc to stream and then the other to do all the "fun" stuff like light control and sound effects. If the streaming PC is strong enough wouldn't they just need another monitor to control the lights and sound? I would strongly suggest to verify the need for a dual PC setup because unless you are gaming or doing something of similar intensity like, say, rendering 3d on the first PC, I do not understand the use case at all, and in fact it would be outright detrimental for running in a camera. Which PC are you building then? The stream encoding PC does not need to be that high-end. Either you get the latest generation of NVENC on the GPU (all NVENC chips of the same generation are the same so it doesn't have to be a high end card, any 30-series I think), or you ignore GPU entirely and get a good CPU. Intel is technically on top right now with 12th gen for mid-range price brackets, but it does depend on motherboard cost, shop around and if a 12400 or 12600k makes sense those would be better depending on budget, both have igpu. 12400f if you're going with nvenc. Nothing wrong with AMD's offerings if the cheaper motherboard costs make them more budget friendly wherever you are shopping. For the streaming PC you will need a capture card, as that is the typical method to go from the gaming PC to the streaming PC The PC running the game (or other similarly intensive task) is just a normal gaming PC, so just the biggest GPU in budget and a 12400f, etc. ALL THAT SAID I still don't understand the use-case I just hope there's enough info here to untangle it for yourself.
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Aug 21, 2022 10:31
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CoolCab posted:i think there are other positives to running the stream from another machine; if the game crashes or whatever you don't risk losing your stream, there's no microstutters or whatever as you've alluded to with competitive games and you can have someone else do the technical work on another device, i would imagine even remotely if you had to. also you can run much more complex like overlays and UIs and stuff and not worry about system resources. i wanna say steve from hardware unboxed swears by it. It's a massive pain in the rear end, audio setup for dual PC is a nightmare that requires a mixer with routing, doubly so if you're regularly in discord calls, capture cards are some of the most unreliable pieces of hardware on the market, two keyboards and mice getting in your way, hell some people even need two stream decks. Not something I would choose unless the performance difference would actually matter.
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Aug 21, 2022 10:45
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Sanitary Naptime posted:Hey folks, it's time for an upgrade! I hosed up and skimped on the motherboard when I first bought this, so I've never gotten the most out of my RAM, and the whole thing is like 3 years old at this point. echoing that you want a GPU upgrade and if you do choose to also upgrade the CPU you don't need a new motherboard or ram, a zen 3 processor like the 5600X is just a bios update for your B450 I'm seeing 3070s as cheap as £550 on pcpartpicker's search, which isn't necessarily the cheapest available but serves as an example. 3070 is about the max I would want to put into a system with a 650w power supply. The rest of the budget can go to a 5600X or 5800X (+cooler), whichever you want to afford. Not sure how much you recoup off of selling the 2060, maybe about £150? But it's a good way to extend your budget if you want to sell it after upgrading. e: Many posts since I wrote this, yeah a CPU upgrade could fix the ram stability on the same mobo. I don't see much availability for the 5700X for the UK but there's nothing wrong with the 5800X TheDemon fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Aug 21, 2022 |
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Aug 21, 2022 10:58
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Fixit posted:Ah ok! That makes a lot of sense. I will double check the need for a dual PC but highly doubt they need it. With a 6-core like the 12400 just make sure they are actually using NVENC encoding in OBS but yes that sounds fine. Wibla posted:I guess they bought a Sony mirrorless that does 4K or something If it's a 4k camera like the above speculation they may require a HDMI capture card/dongle to accept live video with it, something like the Elgato Cam Link 4K (or a cheaper alternative but I am not that familiar with your options, sorry). This can go all the way up to something like the Blackmagic Design DeckLink Quad HDMI for more HDMI cable 4k cameras. It really *really* depends on exactly what the setup is, you need to know exactly how each of the cameras connects and feeds live video. Re: USB, that's actually a pretty complicated issue if they're higher quality or framerate cameras. On a hub, even a USB 3.0 hub, if the devices are USB 2.0 they will all share 2.0 bandwidth to my understanding (I am sure we will have half a dozen people telling you how I'm wrong if that's not correct). If the devices are 3.0 it's a bit more convenient with higher bandwidth available. Even multiple USB ports on the same motherboard can share bandwidth depending on how they are connected internally, so it really depends on exactly what will be required. I would try a usb hub first, and if that + the motherboard ports isn't sufficient you may need to spend a small amount on a PCIe USB Controller card. Paying more initially for more ports on the motherboard I am a bit lukewarm on.
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Aug 22, 2022 01:10
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My impression was a lower end setup with maybe one 4k camera and a few 1080p 30fps webcams maybe. Given that it seems likely the existing setup is not very high spec if they are laymen asking a friend to build something for them, and given that they are presently using USB which would preclude the type of camera that needs HDMI cards. But yes, the moment you add high quality cameras to the setup it needs much higher tier hardware. Not a higher tier computer necessarily, but higher tier connections and decoding.
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Aug 22, 2022 05:39
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Fixit posted:Sorry for the delayed update, family came into town. Jesus christ, that's 5x 4k cameras. And they're using a HDMI to USB converter... I hope it's a proper capture dongle. Kind of a mess. I will do a lot of research and get back to you.
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Aug 28, 2022 19:56
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Fixit posted:Sorry for the delayed update, family came into town. Well, the prognosis is not good. That's going to be a lot of trouble. You have here FIVE devices that require dedicated USB 3 bandwidth to run at 4k30. In order to run at full spec these will each need their own dedicated USB controller (or as Elgato puts it, USB root hubs). Most motherboards have one and it's not often good quality even in high-spec motherboards, and the number of controllers is often not reported on the motherboard technical specs at all. I've seen many reports of people having trouble running two or three such devices per computer the motherboard ports or on hubs. The four OBSBOT cameras don't have HDMI out so you cannot run one of those fancy 4x HDMI input Blackmagic cards. Nor can you run a video input switcher as those typically don't take USB input. In other words professional hardware built to solve this problem is not an option, so you're being asked to custom-build a video interface device as a PC. There are also THREE more devices that while they don't require all of USB 3 bandwidth you still have to respect their bandwidth requirements. It's entirely possible to have trouble running two 1080p60 webcams on a low quality controller for example, or if they can do two, it will start to fail at three. Note that usually the controller is the limit, not the port specs. I would not be too worried about the wifi stuff. Okay so what's the solution? #1 I am speculating here, you could get an appropriate external Thunderbolt controller and compatible motherboard. IF the hub has dedicated USB 3 controllers for their ports and converts that into thunderbolt to connect to the motherboard. The only one I could find that specifically specced out its controllers was the StarTech TB33A1C, but there could be others. I strongly suggest if you try this that you buy from somewhere that gives you hassle-free returns, in case it doesn't work. As for the compatible motherboard... thunderbolt isn't part of any board required specs, so most manufacturers either leave compatibility on a header somewhere (needing a card to make it work), or only include it on their highest end boards. As an example, Asus has thunderbolt ports on their Z690 ProArt Creator and Z690 ROG Maximus Hero only, which are $500 motherboards. A lower end H670/Z690 board with thunderbolt header + card on the other hand could run you $200+$150 or so. #2 Alternately, buy a board with PCI-E slots and two or three well-specced USB 3 controller cards, you only need two ports per card, but the key is these will connect via PCI-E and add USB controllers and their associated ports to your motherboard without going through the existing usb controller. In this case you're looking for decently-specced PCI-E slots, doesn't need to be graphics card quality, but PCI-E 3.0 1x is too low for your needs, 4x+ would be fine. A fairly budget example might be this Asus board with 2 slots, or this MSI board with 2 slots, or this with 3 slots, or the same thing with Wifi. Looks like generally two slots that aren't buried by a 2-slot GPU is reasonable, three slots very difficult to find. This also forces you into a full ATX form factor. If you wanted to use that 16x slot under the GPU on the Asus Z690-P D4 (Wifi), you may be able to squeeze a cable under there to move the buried slot down a level. Maybe. As for the USB cards: https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pexusb321c (single port but it is the fastest solution) https://www.inateck.com/collections/redcomets-series/products/pcie-usb-3-2-gen-2-extension-card-with-4-usb-a-and-1-usb-c-ports-ku5211alp_red (it claims to be able to do two full speed ports, worth a try for the price) https://www.startech.com/en-us/cards-adapters/pexusb312a3 (but only PCIE 3.0 2x) These look promising, there are a lot of options and very few that show their full specs. Not sure on quality but spec-wise the first two seem like good bets. For either you will also need a super cookin' CPU to do all that decoding, plenty of memory, and probably a decent amount of high speed storage. GPU is about the only place you can skimp, I can see why dual PC is an option for this insanity but NVENC should work fine for streaming. So here's a build then: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KFndJM I've picked the 12700K and 3060 because all these cameras have to have some kind of computational cost, but I am really not sure exactly how much. You would save significantly going to the 12600K, and save some dropping the video card down to previous gen. There's supposedly some video work advantage sticking with the 12600K over the version without integrated graphics. If they don't have multiple monitors add some budget for that for sure. Lastly, the storage solution could change significantly depending on their needs, if they're archiving any video you probably want a hard drive too, if they are archiving any amount of 4k they will quickly need a NAS so I hope not. You will additionally need one of these options: StarTech TB33A1C (manufacturer site, shop around) Thunderbolt card OR 2x https://www.inateck.com/collections/redcomets-series/products/pcie-usb-3-2-gen-2-extension-card-with-4-usb-a-and-1-usb-c-ports-ku5211alp_red (manufacturer site, shop around) I would personally go with the pcie cards since that seems more tested to me. If they work and you need the 4th USB controller try a cable from the blocked pcie slot. Plus check what they're using for their HDMI to USB converter and make sure it's working and delivers 4k. And when you get this all together carefully label each port because it will be a hassle if you or the user doesn't think it through. As an aside this is why multi-USB-webcam setups are not popular, multiple HDMI inputs are far easier to deal with in the professional space. e: It's entirely possible that even after all this, drivers just don't support doing 8+ webcams on one computer and that's the reason why they wanted multi-PC in the first place. Though it seems like OBSBOT cameras will work. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Aug 29, 2022 |
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Aug 29, 2022 05:55
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I verified the PCIE lane issue before picking board types but yes it was a concern. These USB cards actually max out at PCIE 3.0 4x so it's not so bad as it seems. 12900K is +$200 so it's kind of in budget, probably want a better cooler for that too. Absolutely agree that the better, more expensive solution is a HDMI switcher or multi-input card and more HDMI cameras. But we're talking about $600 per camera and a $600 capture card, and after spending $3k on that they still will be using 4 webcams over usb and wifi and will still need a new PC at about $1200+. The in-between patch for me would be to get the new computer with the usb cards (only $30 each) and drop less essential cameras down to 1080p30 so the machine can handle it. They have a lesser machine right now so that is almost certainly what they are currently doing, just much worse if the hardware is worse. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Aug 29, 2022 |
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Aug 29, 2022 07:47
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horse_ebookmarklet posted:Currently I am running a (2016 vintage) box running ip camera recording software. It has been rock solid but I want to add some more IP cameras, HOWEVER it is really at its limit, ~80% CPU utilization idle. A 12100 and a cheap LGA 1700 motherboard, or a 5600G (absolutely firesale prices right now imo) and a compatible board, would be about $200 and would probably beat the pants off the 7700k, but yeah you don't have any true upgrades for $100.
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Sep 18, 2022 12:19
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loopsheloop posted:I'm getting ready to go back to school online and it seems like a good occasion to build a new desktop. Coming from an Ivy Bridge machine running on a SATA SSD. I can transfer over the SSD, a network card, and my 970. If it's the same price, go with the 12100, it performs the same or better even in multi-core workloads, comes on a socket that will last at least one more generation, and supports PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 which is rarely but occasionally relevant.
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Sep 22, 2022 05:50
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njsykora posted:The 2 important parts of a PSU are wattage and efficiency, any off the shelf PSU you buy these days will almost certainly have the connections you need. Wattage is easy, and efficiency is usually marked by that "80 Plus" badge, though it's not an exact science and some manufacturers get dodgy with gaming the tests it's all we have for easily spotting. So what you're after in terms of a straight replacement is 500W, 80 Plus Bronze, though generally I'd recommend 80 Plus Gold if you can though they're usually not much more expensive. Efficiency doesn't really matter, for me I look at wattage (or rails but that's too much for most buyers), warranty, and brand rep. Warranty length almost always correlates directly with quality, 5 year warranties are standard, 10 year warranties are where it's at. Efficiency refers to power usage at the wall, the rated wattage is what's available after the efficiency cut.
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Sep 25, 2022 18:06
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tpink posted:And that's really helpful too and why I wanted a sanity check before plonking down that kind of a cash on a monitor. Is there like a minimum refresh rate I should target? Gaming monitors tend to come in 120, 144, and 165 hz ranges and there's probably not too much difference between those visually. 240hz also exists but the tech to drive it is iffy at 1440p. With a 1.5-2k PC most gamers would expect to run a 1440p display at 144-170hz, while their secondary and tertiary monitors aren't used for gaming and don't need to be fast refresh. I'm not personally familiar with the higher budget options, low budget in this category I would expect to spend 300-500 for a 27 or 32 inch 1440p display. 4k displays at 144hz+ do exist and are in your 1k monitor budget, but to run demanding games at high settings and 4k 144hz+ you need to use an upscaler like DLSS. The 4090 will also do it now but it costs your entire computer budget. More new tech pending I guess. If you really enjoy the ultra wide experience gaming monitors do exist at that refresh, as Dr. Video Games says.
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Oct 13, 2022 18:42
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tpink posted:Just what I was looking for - thank you! I assume there's probably not an insane difference between a decent 144hz-refresh monitor for like $500-600 and an uber expensive monitor for $1k and up, and if going above 4k/144hz requires an upscaler, that tells me I very likely don't need to get something that expensive and can just be happy with a monitor in the $500-600 range. Well, you could look for image quality features like HDR, and to get a monitor with good HDR implementation you'll pay good money.
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Oct 15, 2022 07:17
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:The open world tend to be fairly complex with lots of NPCs, cars, and other random objects. It's also heavy on the data streaming side of things, which requires CPU overhead. When you turn on ray tracing, they try to include everything in the "BVH" (basically, an index of objects and their positions to be accounted for), which can be very CPU-intensive. There's an "object range" setting for ray tracing that can have a heavy impact on CPU performance depending on how high you crank it. I don't know if you're going to be CPU bottlenecked in this game at 4K with your system, but if you are, then it's probably not by much, to be honest. The easy way to check would be to just look at the GPU utilization percentage while playing. If it's not consistently ~98% or higher, then your GPU isn't being utilized to the fullest. 4k and especially 4k raytraced has been GPU bound even with top of the line cards so I wouldn't worry about that as long as the CPU is in a modern generation
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Nov 19, 2022 19:18
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Taima posted:I've never been much of a visual flair kind of guy when it comes to computers, but when I got a 4090 I realized that my case, fan setup, and basically everything to do with cooling and visual aesthetics kind of sucked in comparison. It felt weird to have a top of the line system and such garbage everything else. The vertically mounted GPU in the middle of this system breaks my brain. Hot air rises so you will always be intaking on the bottom and exhausting on the top. GPU fans push air onto the GPU fins, so it will always be taking air from the back of your case and spewing hot air from every other direction. Logically you want cold air onto the GPU, so the ideal seems to be swapping the rear case fans to intake. The only caveat is rear fans rarely have dust filters, as most default configurations will exhaust using the rear fans. Sometimes you can buy an aftermarket dust filter that sticks or magnets on, I'm not sure. It wouldn't be the end of the world to leave these on exhaust if you swapped the front AIO to intake. Your AIO can be configured in either intake or exhaust configuration, the difference will be a few degrees of CPU temp but that might not matter too much performance-wise. Swapping it to intake will convert you from a negative pressure setup to a positive pressure one, which is somewhat desirable from a dust and airflow standpoint.
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Dec 3, 2022 19:53
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I find myself more likely to run into random driver issues than prolonged use issues. Most I do is pop up a hardware monitoring program when I play my first games so I can check temps after an hour or so.
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Dec 29, 2022 20:53
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I have a 5600x running with the stock cooler. Under a gaming load I'll peak at ~90 with normal temps fluctuating between 75 and 85. Idle is below 45. However a full use stress test is *supposed to* hit 95 and stay there. My opinion is while you will get more out of the chip with an aftermarket cooler, seeing 95C in gaming is not normal even on the stock cooler and indicative of a physical installation problem. The stock cooler is perfectly adequate for normal loads with this CPU. Not that it will damage the chip - the way they're designed these days it won't let you go too high temp without throttling down... but that's exactly the problem, every time you hit the thermal limit the chip will limit its performance to keep itself within acceptable temps.
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Jan 2, 2023 10:23
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boo boo bear posted:thanks for the feedback. everyone else too. I never thought to check samart, so that'll definitely save me some cash. I left the prices in us dollars, since I figured people would be more familiar with it. $1500 american or around $1800cdn. Board is fine but I don't think that bundle is a good deal for you. The 7700X does little for your purposes and an AM5 board shouldn't cost that much. If you must buy an expensive CPU, 5800X3D is where it's at for paradox, and since you can get AM4 boards for less than $180 and DDR4 for $50 cad less than DDR5, you might actually save money. Putting what you save into the GPU will get you outsized performance. If you make minimal changes go with a 6650XT, but there's the upside of a 6700 XT if you can save money somewhere else. Absolutely do not get Intel, their GPUs are not ready sadly. Price/performance has a few sweet spots but driver/compatibility/software is still in complete shambles despite a lot of work since launch. Maybe next generation. Maybe. I kept your non-core parts - you could also make the above SSD swap - but this would be an alternative for the 5800X3D which will outperform the 7600X/7700X for your listed games and saves enough on the cheaper AM4 chipset to get a 6700XT: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/jfDxzf Otherwise a 7600X + cheaper AM5 + 6650XT would work over the bundle+intel.
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Mar 4, 2023 17:46
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mila kunis posted:Thanks! Just get a 5600X. The 5800X is definitely the wrong processor for you, and I have a feeling the 5800X3D is outside your budget at +$140. The 5600X is perfectly good and not very costly.
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Apr 25, 2023 07:49
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Wibla posted:Finally got my rear end in gear and got some upgrades done. Can I ask what possessed you to want 96GB of RAM? You must have a reason given you had so much before too.
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May 10, 2023 01:36
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Arrhythmia posted:I need new ram. Canada. How should I go about it? Arrhythmia posted:AMD Ryzen 6 2600X, ASRock B450M Pro4, respectively. If you're keeping this system for years more, get 16gb or even 32gb of DDR4. Your CPU memory controller supports 2933mhz, but older Ryzen did struggle with memory speed back in the day. Keep that in mind once you're looking at this in bios, you may have to accept lower speeds and 2933 would be the practical limit. I had a gander around Canadian sites and it seems to me you'll be forced into a 3200mhz kit, because 2666/2800/2933 kits at reasonable prices seem to have faded out of stock. On ASRock's QVL for that board+cpu it's a fairly small list of older kits, so don't be surprised if it's difficult to find a kit on the QVL. Something like this. If you really want, dig around until you find something similar to a QVL kit, and keep it under $100 for a 2x16 kit or $70 or so for a 2x8 kit. As far as Canadian stores go, not much choice. These are all online and some you can get in-store service even for online purchases: Memory Express is my fav, their prices vary but surprisingly are often the cheapest, they price match even online, and I've liked their in-store customer service. These days they have stores from BC all the way east to Ontario. Canada Computers is fine, prices vary, you can get in-store customer service if needed. Stores in BC, ON, QC, and Halifax. Amazon.ca can be fine. Normal caveats for buying from Amazon apply. Newegg.ca is okay, generally will be okay but really got ruined by becoming a marketplace, because now you have to be careful about the quality of what you're buying, and that's without going into newegg themselves doing iffy things with returns and restocking. Vuugo is the other weird canadian store and can have some cheap parts but I haven't heard anything about them. All of the above ship anywhere in the country.
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May 20, 2023 16:59
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Arrhythmia posted:Thanks dude. One of the old sticks died so I'm just looking to replace it. I was in a similar situation replacing a stick for my old PC and it was not easy for me to find the exact same replacement, and you can't really mix and match kits. But if you're lucky to find the exact same ram then yes you can just replace the dead stick. The easy solution would be just buying a new 2x8 kit and fully replacing your old sticks, as in only use the two new ones. Your existing stick seems to be available for cheaper than that so you could try it if you have patience. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 00:48 on May 21, 2023 |
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May 21, 2023 00:45
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Jawnycat posted:Heya, I'm not tech savvy in the slightest and my system is on it's last legs, and I'm also pretty sure it's haunted (weird af semi-persistent audio issues that no one can pin down). Also chronically lazy so having people tell me what to do rather than research myself, ohboy get me some of that. I cheaped out on pretty much everything, maybe see if you can find a cheaper 1tb SSD that still has a DRAM cache but I couldn't. https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/WNfWxs Any worse than a 6600 for the GPU isn't worth buying these days. The difference from the 5600 to the 7600 is $90 for the CPU, then about another $90 for the motherboard and $60 for DDR5, so unless you truly want the latest gen, not on a full budget build. I couldn't really find cheap full modular PSUs in Canada either. Just use the stock CPU cooler. Picked the case because it comes with three full sized fans. Consider not bothering with your wifi card and just using motherboard wifi, I believe the non-wifi version saves a mere $5 and a card seems like a pain in the rear end. Prebuilts... I will check but I suspect you will end up paying $200-$400 in build tax. edit: The best you can probably do is buy everything at Memory Express and pay their $50 build fee. You'll still have to install windows since if you want them to install it you'll have to pay full price rather than grabbing a key from an SA Mart seller. This parts list https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/ytmtjZ... once again you may have to dig for that SSD, MemEx has one left in stock and it doesn't show on PPC. For truly prebuilts you're looking at something like this for comparable specs https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=1446_1448&item_id=230996. Maybe 150 less for open box if you shop around. I know nothing about the brand or their parts selection, there's a lot crappy prebuilts out there. edit2: For people reading who do a lot of system configs, what the heck is with the SSD market? First there was a firesale, then new models came in at similar prices, but most of those don't have DRAM caches, so you end up paying 30-40% more than we used to for the same capability. And that's across pretty much all brands. It loving sucks. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 17:54 on May 21, 2023 |
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May 21, 2023 17:26
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NomNomNom posted:Help me wise ones. We're on the verge of some great games late summer/fall (Armored Core 6, BG3, Starfield, Elden Ring DLC) and I haven't upgraded my pc since 2017. Windows 11 should just be a bios upgrade and maybe a single bit of bios tinkering away https://www.msi.com/Landing/msi-motherboards-windows11-compatible. The same update would give compatibility for 5000-series and X3D CPUs (X3D would also need Win11). If for some reason you can't get this to work then I wouldn't bother upgrading the system but you should be able to do it. Presuming you can get Win11 compatibility and a Zen3 bios update, the only slight fly in the ointment is memory speed, the board claims support for 3200mhz, but fast memory on the 300-series was always iffy. However all DDR4 speeds are basically the same price these days so it's not that material if you're looking at an upgrade. In terms of upgrading existing: The 5600 is $140, the 5600X3D is $230. edit: Forgot to mention the X3D will also need a cooler but is pretty soft on the thermals, so a cheaper air cooler would be fine. For a video card you can pick up a 6600 for $180 or a 6700 XT for $320 either of which are pretty good deals with everyone trying to clear stock right now, though that second-hand 3080 for $400 seems fine too. The used 1070 can be sold if you want. 32gb of DDR4 3600 could be $70 or so, but see the caveat above. If you do go for upgrading then if your PSU is outside of warranty it could be worth replacing it if you intend to do another 5 years. I wouldn't consider a major upgrade like this "limping" along, there's been pretty much no movement with the RX 6000-series to the RX 7000, nor the 3000-series to the 4000-series, so picking up a firesale 6700 XT or a used 3080 right now might buy several years of performance especially if you aren't moving past 60hz anytime soon. The extra cost for the new system is more or less all surcharge to move to a new platform and have shiny new stuff. A video card upgrade alone could be a possibility even limited somewhat by the 1600. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jul 8, 2023 |
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Jul 7, 2023 04:09
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Shop around for a $300 deal on a 6700XT and then shop around for a deal on 32gb of DDR4. I think you can squeeze both in your budget with some bargain hunting.
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Jul 15, 2023 00:34
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kedo posted:A question about video cards. My current system is well due to be replaced, and I’m planning on getting the best mobo/processor I can afford within my budget ($2k), so they will hopefully last me quite awhile and allow me to upgrade my GPU and RAM a couple times over the next ~7 years like I’ve done with my current machine. kedo posted:I mean, I'd love to shoot for 4k but it sounds like that wouldn't be in the cards at those settings. Short answer is I don't think your 2080 will achieve those settings on new releases at 1440p or 4k, but might be okay at 1080p. Neither will you be able to do 4k with $500 in GPU. I realize you're looking at a graphics card upgrade down the line but the typical advice for gaming builds is never skimp on your graphics card, this system would do better with all budget parts (eg. 13400 / 5600X) and a 4090, than it would do with a 13900K and a 4060 ti or 6800 XT (there's a conspicuous gap right now at the $500 usd price point too). Fortunately you can build a 7800X3D build, therefore getting the fastest gaming CPU, and pair it with a 4070 or 4070 ti. For 4k use DLSS for about 60fps. I like Grack's 2k build from two pages ago: grack posted:PCPartPicker Part List Not sure if the same discounts are still available so exact vendors might vary, but this build saves you quite a bit in things like cooling and case over the maximum build from PC Part Picker which is designed to get the maximum out of a heat-spewing CPU like the 13900K. For your purposes, you could drop to a 2x16 GB kit of ram, and maybe consider a higher wattage power supply to keep that upgrade potential when the 5090 or 6090 comes out. You can probably make back about $150-200 by selling your 2080 too. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Aug 13, 2023 |
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Aug 13, 2023 00:38
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kedo posted:Thanks all for the input on my GPU search, guess I might want to rethink my budget a bit. :\ Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:I don't think you need to rethink your budget. I think you need to approach this process from another perspective. Trying to buy the best CPU you can afford first and then thinking about the GPU later is the wrong approach. If you try to take a more value-oriented approach from the onset, you'll find that you can end up with a lot of money left over for the GPU. A part of the problem with the CPU-first mentality is that lower-end GPUs don't actually benefit as much from having a faster CPU than higher-end GPUs. So by blowing your budget on everything but the GPU and only getting a midrange GPU, you end up with a heavily imbalanced system where the CPU will be massively overkill and underutilized almost all the time, and the GPU will be disappointing and inadequate for your needs. Extremely good advice. Your budget is fine, you are just approaching building a gaming computer backwards. For gaming there is no use for a high end CPU without a high end GPU first. The build linked would give you the benefits of a very high end card, comparable on the market to the 2080 in its prime, while giving you upgrade room for a something like a Ryzen 8800X3D or 64gb of DDR5 if you want to go there a year or two from now.
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Aug 13, 2023 02:38
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Zoya posted:one last chance for a sanity check before i pull the trigger on this -- i took some of the advice here and swapped out the gfx card for a $100 cheaper gigabyte one, and i took the SSD advice to ... buy more space instead of making the existing space cheaper lol, but whatever, and i very strongly considered swapping mobo to the gigabyte aorus elite AX but the more i researched it the more i found people complaining about coil whine, which gigabyte support seems to refuse to address and which would drive me absolutely berserk in my very quiet house... I see no reason why you can't use a B760, I'm looking at B760 boards right now that explicitly say they support ram faster than 7000mhz, and googling I don't see any significant issues using XMP on most B760 boards. I'll excuse the ram price since it's a CL30 kit. e: Or as the guy above recommended, Z690 is more suited to your use-case since you have a bunch of M2s. As for storage... I kind of understand the smaller TLC drives and the large QLC drive though that's a fuckton of storage you're going for. I guess it depends what you want, but there's hardly a difference between your $135 990 Pros and the $100 P5 Plus, so you can save $70 there. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Sep 26, 2023 |
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Sep 26, 2023 01:44
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actually, i ended up swapping the RAM out for slightly more expensive ram because of CL30 vs CL38, a number i don't really understand, and 64GB is probably massively overkill ..... would i be better off getting 32GB (16x2) with an even higher speed (DDR5-7200 or 7800) for nearly the same price rather than 64GB (32x2) at DDR5-6000? do any of these numbers mean anything except bigger number more better?
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Lord Ludikrous posted:We aren’t lucky to have any in the U.K. but how come Microcenter has such good prices? Specifically as well their incredible motherboard bundles. Some vendors in the U.K. do bundles but they’re universally awful. Microcenter sells bundles near cost because they make them in-store only. People who are forced to go to the store to buy them can then be sold higher-margin things like other parts, peripherals, services, warranties, etc.
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Sep 28, 2023 03:11
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Dreylad posted:Forgot to ask, is there much difference between CPU coolers? The Thermalright seems to be substantially cheaper than other options, but it's only available on Amazon and it'd convenient to pick something up available at Canada Computers. Any two-fin-stack two-fan cooler will handle your 7700X for gaming loads. I use this review to compare air coolers personally. Thermalright has made their name out of absolutely thrashing the competition at its price point. I think Canada Computers carries the DeepCool AK620 maybe? You will never notice a difference unless you are going hard all-core but it's still twice the price for a slightly worse-performing part.
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Nov 11, 2023 02:36
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Kragger99 posted:I hope this isn't too confusing, but I bought a new Z790 mobo, and found out the main M2 slot (M2_1: which supports Pcie 5) shares Pcie lanes with the first Pcie slot (where the GPU would be installed). This means that if I use the M2_1 slot (which is Gen 5) my 1st pcie slot will only provide x8 (instead of x16). I'm assuming this will impact the GPU in that slot, as it goes from x16 to x8 lanes. I don't have a gen 5 M2 drive, so I won't use M2_1, meaning this shouldn't affect me, but I'm struggling to understand who would use that slot at the sacrifice of x8 lanes for the GPU? Many GPUs can't max a Gen4 8x, and none of them use the Gen5 standard yet. A 5.0 slot performs at double the speed of a 4.0 slot. So your 5.0 8x delivers the equivalent of 4.0 16x to the video card. That is considered the normal right now, therefore no one is yet sacrificing anything. A 4090 loses about 2% in average performance going from Gen4 16x to Gen4 8x (eg. half the speed you at Gen5 8x have). In theory lesser cards would use less of the bandwidth.
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Jan 14, 2024 23:56
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:I would like to buy a pre-built computer. I know I can build one. I am comfortable with working with computers. It's just annoying and not very fun and I don't particularly want to do it. Most of the reputable builders don't even make products in the sub-$1500 category. I saw ABS mentioned earlier, they are at least known. Go here https://www.newegg.com/ABS/BrandStore/ID-8484, go to "All Products", checkbox new products only, and sort by price lowest to highest. The cheapest system doesn't have a GPU and is for business use, but everything else seemed fine by the specs. The other option, and what I've recommended to build-refusing friends in the past, is go to your local PC parts chain with a parts list and they will offer assembly for a build fee. Usually that will cost you 50-100. Possibly also a Windows install fee if you don't want to do that, but then you will also have to pay full price for Windows rather than buying a key in SA Mart. The other downside is you will have to buy all your parts in the same place, rather than being able to shop around. The classic sub-$1000 recommendation for a long time was the RX 6600 plus Ryzen 5600, and I honestly don't think that's changed, because the next step up GPU-wise is the RX 7700 XT and that will push most systems over $1000 total. e: I guess it's still possible to buy the RX 6700 XT on Amazon for a normal price, but it's out of stock most elsewhere. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Feb 21, 2024 |
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Feb 21, 2024 07:41
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Black Noise posted:I've built 2 pcs 1 that exploded because I got the cheap PSU and the other that lasted until I had to go to college. Presuming this is for an upgrade, select in PCPartPicker your old motherboard as if you were building a new PC on it and the site will attempt to filter to compatible RAM when you subsequently select RAM. Yes if your old motherboard was DDR4 and a desktop then you want DDR4 DIMM but it one hundred percent depends on your motherboard. RAM isn't cross-compatible (eg no DDR4 in a DDR3 board) so we'd need to know that to help.
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Mar 16, 2024 17:44
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Black Noise posted:It is for an upgrade. The trouble is I can't find the board on the site. Can you take a picture of the RAM in your current system, or measure it with a ruler? A DIMM module (which is also UDIMM) will be about 5.25 inches in length, while a SODIMM module will be half that length at about 2.66 inches. Based on that prebuilt it should be DDR4 in either case but I do agree the documentation seems confused.
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Mar 16, 2024 21:33
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Nothing wrong with Corsair getting in on case accessories, but there's an entire market for wooden case replacement panels on Etsy that are cheaper and in many cases look better than first party stuff.
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Mar 19, 2024 06:05
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Board is fine. Dual tower cooler recommended for 700 and 900 intel CPUs, unless you don't plan on using the CPU for anything heavy.
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Mar 23, 2024 18:20
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