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[PC Build Thread] What's your budget?
jungleroomx
It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered User regular
It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered User regular
Welcome to Part Shoppers Anonymous the Penny Arcade Computer Build Thread!
(this OP is shamelessly stolen/modified from tsmvengy who shamelessly stole it from GnomeTank who shamelessly stole it from our missing overlord alecthar (via Jebus314, and minor incident, and BouwsT).
Tl;dr:
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Acronyms!
PC - Personal Computer
CPU - Central Processing Unit (Computer's Brain)
GPU - Graphics Processing Unit (Computer's Muscles)
PSU - Power Supply (Computer Power Plant)
MOBO - Mother Board (Computer Skeleton / Nervous System
RAM - Random Access Memory (Computer's Short Term Memory)
HDD - Hard Disk Drive (Computer's Long Term Memory, with high capacity but low speed)
SSD - Solid State Drive (Computer's Long Term Memory, with low(er) capacity but high speeds.
NVME - Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller (A small slot connecter attached to your motherboard for on-board storage, insane speed)
"Why should I build my own computer when I could just have a bunch of underpaid assembly line workers do it for me?"
Knowledge: Building your own computer is a learning experience. To start with, you'll probably end up doing a lot of research on the current state of consumer computing hardware, along with learning a bit about how various computer components work within a complete system. You'll also gain valuable knowledge about the actual assembly of a PC, something that definitely comes in handy if you find yourself doing family tech support.
With all that said, I want to highlight a very important point. If all you need to do with a computer is browse the internet, consume media, and use productivity software like Microsoft Office, there's admittedly little reason not to buy a prebuilt machine. Because of the economy of scale, you will almost always get a higher spec'd computer for cheaper if your budget is less than $400 or so. Quality can still sometimes be an issue, and you won't gain any knowledge, but cheap computers are probably a better deal prebuilt.
"You've convinced me to build my own, what's inside the box again?"
In general there are 8 main components to a PC.
Here are a few questions you should ask yourself when you're ready to start researching parts for your new PC. Once you have some answers to these questions, post them in this thread and others will jump in to fill in the gaps and get you well on your way to completing your order! Don't be intimidated if you don't know any of the answers though, as any questions (no matter how basic) are always welcome. In general though, the more information we have about what you want and how much you're willing to pay to get it, the better the advice you'll get.
"I'm totes ready to buy, but everyone keeps posting this PC partpicker thing. Where do I actually get my stuff?"
US
Got all that? Need help building? LTT has you covered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL4DCEp7blY
(this OP is shamelessly stolen/modified from tsmvengy who shamelessly stole it from GnomeTank who shamelessly stole it from our missing overlord alecthar (via Jebus314, and minor incident, and BouwsT).
Tl;dr:
.
We do our best to provide advice about component choice, shopping for components, assembling the PC itself, and even a little bit of troubleshooting for new builds (if you're having issues). To my knowledge no forumer has ever left with a non functioning build. We'll get you there! All at a measly 250% of your original budget!chrishallett83 wrote: »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWWlEo0uIRgAcronyms!
PC - Personal Computer
CPU - Central Processing Unit (Computer's Brain)
GPU - Graphics Processing Unit (Computer's Muscles)
PSU - Power Supply (Computer Power Plant)
MOBO - Mother Board (Computer Skeleton / Nervous System
RAM - Random Access Memory (Computer's Short Term Memory)
HDD - Hard Disk Drive (Computer's Long Term Memory, with high capacity but low speed)
SSD - Solid State Drive (Computer's Long Term Memory, with low(er) capacity but high speeds.
NVME - Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller (A small slot connecter attached to your motherboard for on-board storage, insane speed)
"Why should I build my own computer when I could just have a bunch of underpaid assembly line workers do it for me?"
Knowledge: Building your own computer is a learning experience. To start with, you'll probably end up doing a lot of research on the current state of consumer computing hardware, along with learning a bit about how various computer components work within a complete system. You'll also gain valuable knowledge about the actual assembly of a PC, something that definitely comes in handy if you find yourself doing family tech support.
- Quality: PCs from companies like Dell and HP are built cheaply. Sometimes this isn't a huge issue. Intel, for example, doesn't sell a separate "from the junk pile" line of CPUs. Hard drives are generally of fairly consistent quality among manufacturers. However, depending on the PC, you may end up with a fairly anemic, or even cruddy, generic PSU, along with motherboards that are generally pretty limited in their flexibility and feature-set, and don't even get me started on the cases they use. Building your own PC gives you complete control over the quality of the components you use.
- Flexibility: A prebuilt PC sometimes comes with proprietary components, or in a case with a proprietary form factor with a weird sized PSU. When you build your own PC, you can select the components with an eye towards whatever degree of flexibility or upgrade path you deem appropriate. Because retail component design adheres to certain standards, you end up with a more modular system that can be changed more easily.
- Value: When it comes to a PC with real horsepower, manufacturers believe we're willing to pay a serious premium. Building your own Gaming (or Workstation) PC almost always saves you significant amounts of money.
With all that said, I want to highlight a very important point. If all you need to do with a computer is browse the internet, consume media, and use productivity software like Microsoft Office, there's admittedly little reason not to buy a prebuilt machine. Because of the economy of scale, you will almost always get a higher spec'd computer for cheaper if your budget is less than $400 or so. Quality can still sometimes be an issue, and you won't gain any knowledge, but cheap computers are probably a better deal prebuilt.
"You've convinced me to build my own, what's inside the box again?"
In general there are 8 main components to a PC.
- CPU: This is the central processing unit. It is the heart of your PC build and is what controls how quickly your computer can perform various tasks. There are only 2 manufacturers (AMD and Intel), and these days Intel is dominating. As of writing this OP, AMD has released their new Ryzen CPU's, which are presenting some much needed competition in the CPU space! Pro-tip, over the years CPUs are generally tracked by their architecture (which alludes to how they are designed) and each unique architecture is given a name (Newest are Skylake for Intel, and Ryzen for AMD). There are a multitude of different specs for CPUs, but it's nigh impossible to use them for comparison across manufactures and often times even across different architectures. Generally you will want to go to a place like Tom's Hardware and look actual measured comparisons between the chips to decide... If you're looking for high end performance, and the best bang for your buck, you will also want to look out for unlocked CPUs that allow for overclocking. These days it is a very painless process, and can easily give you a 10-30% performance boost for the cost of a bigger heatsink. For intel CPUs, model numbers that end in a K do not come with a heatsink (as you'll likely be buying a larger one any way) and allow overclocking.
AnandTech's Holiday 2021 CPU Comparisons
Tom's Hardware Best CPUs
Feel free to ask for current recommendations. - GPU: This is the graphical processing unit. As the name implies it controls how pretty things will look, and what games you can play. The first important decision for your GPU is onboard versus discrete. These days Intel and AMD are offering combined CPU/GPU chips that are really pretty good. For everything besides gaming and graphic intensive work, these combined chips offer the best performance at the cheapest price. If you're building a HTPC (home theater PC) for example this is definitely the way to go. AMD may lead on the higher end, as their APU line (their terminology for the combined CPU/GPU) can have better GPU performance with similar CPU performance than the corresponding Intel products. A top of the line AMD APU will be good enough to stream any video content, watch blurays, and even play some older games at moderate settings...
If, however, you are looking to game or do a lot of video editing/other graphics intensive work, then a discrete graphics card is the way to go. For the purposes of gaming, the rest of your system is mainly an effort to get out of your video card's way. The price of a solid video card reflects that; for gaming PCs the video card will be the most expensive single component you purchase. For discrete GPUs there are again 2 manufacturers, AMD (formally ATI) and Nvidia. Unlike CPUs the GPU race has been a bit stale for well over a year, but we're always hoping for better competition to allow for good consumer choice! To make things more confusing AMD and Nvidia don't actually sell graphics cards themselves, instead the sell the designs (or base hardware) to other companies who build them and sell them to consumers. This means that for any given GPU model (say the Nvidia GTX 1060), there will be several different vendors selling that exact model (like this GTX 1060 sold by EVGA). Different vendors can have different coolers, different amounts of overclocking, and different build quality, so be careful with who the exact card is coming from. Feel free to ask for current recommendations. - Motherboard: The motherboard is the complex circuitry that connects all of your fancy parts together. Buying a motherboard is all about quality, compatibility, and options. The two most important compatibility issues are getting the right socket for your CPU, and getting the right size for your case. Whatever CPU you are interested in getting should have a corresponding socket number (like LGA 1151 for Kaby Lake Intel based CPUs), and you absolutely must get a motherboard with that socket. Motherboards also generally come in a few different sizes (or form factors), with the most common being: ATX, micro-ATX, mini-ATX, and mini-ITX. The key here is to make sure that you Case specifically says it is compatible with the form factor you choose. For quality purposes you generally want to stick to the main manufacturers: MSI, ASUS, EVGA, ASRock, and Gigabyte. Finally, it's all about the options. Make a list of everything that you want to hook up to your PC and what type of connection it needs (USB 3.0 vs 2.0, HDMI vs DVI vs Display Port, eSATA, etc...) and find yourself a motherboard that has all the necessary connections. Other things to consider are SLI/crossfire compatibility (which allows you to run 2+ GPUs simultaneously for Nvidia or AMD cards respectively), PCI-E slots (quantity and bandwidth per slot typically described as 8x or 16x), CPU overclocking compatible, onboard GPU compatible, soundcard capabilities, and ethernet capabilities. Feel free to ask for current recommendations.
- Memory: This is often referred to as the RAM or Random Access Memory, and it controls how many things you can do at once. Rules when buying RAM: (1) There are two types of RAM for new builds right now: DDR4 and DDR5. DDR5 is used on some of Intel's newest boards and is currently much more expensive - consider this when picking your motherboard as they are compatible with one or the other, not both! (2) RAM Speed: for DDR4, RAM at either 3200mhz or 3600mhz is good. (3) Buy 8-16 GB and as many DIMMS (or sticks) as channels on your motherboard. So if your motherboard supports 2 channel memory, get 2 sticks of 8GB Ram (for 16GB total). RAM is cheap so lean towards more rather than less, but for most people anything more than 32 GB will be wasted (even 32 GB+ is only for most power users, or insane amounts of multi-tasking). Feel free to ask for current recommendations.
- Hard Disk Drive/Solid State Drive: This is where all of your software and data is stored. If your budget can swing it the most effective setup is to use a smaller SSD (240-500 GB) for your programs and OS, and a larger HDD (1-4 TB) for media storage. Not all SSDs and not all HDDs are created equal. SSDs come in 2.5" form factor (uses a SATA cable and power cable) or M.2 form factor (plugs into a slot on your motherboard). M.2 drives also come in SATA or NVME flavors (NVME is faster and preferred). For HDDs the spindle speed (typically 5400, 7200, and 10000 RPMs) dictates how quickly you will be able to access your data, with higher RPMs giving faster access. For purely data storage the speed tends not to matter that much, but for programs/games loading will be much faster. Any SSD will be far quicker than even the best HDDs. Most importantly for both you want something that is reliable, so check the comments/reviews for any particular model. Just keep in mind that every single model ever created will have some small number of drives that fail and those will be the bulk of the people leaving comments. As a general rule, Samsung EVO SSD's, and Wester Digital brand HDD's are generally the golden rule. Feel free to ask for current recommendations.
- PSU: This is the power supply unit, and as the name implies it powers your PC. There are 3 basic factors to consider for a PSU: modular/non-modular, wattage, and efficiency. A non-modular PSU will have all of the cables permanently attached and can be a pain to keep organized compared to being able to remove unnecessary cables. Wattage is the amount of power your PSU can supply and you generally want your computer to run close to but not at the maximum rating for your PSU. To see what that would be before you buy your PSU, just find any online wattage calculator, put in the parts you want to use, and viola. Finally there is the efficiency, which is rated as Bronze, Silver, Gold, etc and indicate how efficiently the PSU takes your wall power and converts it to useable power for your PC. Generally Seasonic (and PSU's build by Seasonic and sold under different names) are the golden standard here on the forum. Feel free to ask for current recommendations.
- Case: This is where you put all those things above. Don't underestimate the importance of a good case. A Good cable management system and layout can make building a PC a vastly superior experience, as well as giving longevity to your build through superior heat management. Also that shit should look badass. The only requirement though is that you find a case that is large enough to house all of your components (this is not a trick, often times GPUs, PSUs, certain types of memory, and some optical drives will not fit in a particular case), and can accept the form factor for the motherboard used. Feel free to ask for current recommendations.
- Bling Factor LED lighting is critical to PC modding, and should be included in every case and component where possible.
SmokeStacks wrote: »
I've done extensive research into LEDs (I went to college for this), I'll go ahead and quote an old post I made regarding my findings:SmokeStacks wrote: »LEDs play a vital role in any PC build! In case anyone doesn't know, no PC is complete without an associated set of colored LEDs. However, it is very important that you choose your LED colors carefully, as each one has specific advantages:Red LEDs are very powerful. They make your PC run much, much faster. If you are looking to get a performance boost but can't afford higher quality parts or are unable to overclock, red LEDs are the way to go. Just make sure to beef up your cooling levels, because they will make your PC run much hotter. All of the top MLG Pro gamers use red LEDs (including myself).
Blue LEDs are great. They make your machine run much cooler. If your ambient temperatures are on the rise and you can't afford spending $20 a piece on high quality Noctua fans or $Idaho on expensive watercooling setups, blue LEDs are your best bet. I once knew a guy who had so many blue LEDs that his case pulled double duty as a minifridge. Not even joking. We'd keep the root beer in there during LAN parties.
Green LEDs are great because they make your system use significantly less AC power to run, thus lowering both your electricity bill and your carbon footprint. A set of high quality green LEDs surrounding a 1000w PSU will bring its power draw down to as low as 4-500w (not counting the extra power used to run the green LEDs).
White LEDs are (on paper) the best option, as they combine the benefits of red, blue, and green LEDs. Be very careful though!, white LEDs aren't very common because the light gives you cancer.
Legends tell of the fabled Purple LED, but so far they have eluded me. Could such a thing really exist? While evidence suggesting the existence of purple LEDs has been found in ancient Sumerian ruins, my years of investigation and research have led me to the conclusion that purple LEDs are a myth that exist solely in the delusional babblings of men who have gone mad while searching for them. The are the El Dorado of the PC building world.
You might think to yourself "Why wouldn't I combine LED colors in my case and gain multiple advantages without the drawbacks of white LEDs?". In the early fifties, when PC LEDs were still in their infancy, LED-combination experimentation using a series of lead sheets and mirrors appeared promising (aside from a few tragic mishaps due to the ineffective safety measures prevalent in laboratories at the time), unfortunately combining LED colors has proven impossible, as the effects simply cancel each other out.
Sure, some people prefer a "pure" PC and might not use LEDs at all, considering them to be "cheating", but you gotta ask yourself - if you were an Olympic athlete, and someone said you could inject LEDs to make your performance significantly better, would that be "cheating"? Of course not.
Hope this helps. - Other: This is just a list of other parts to keep in mind, that you may or may not need. Additional fans, optical drive, soundcard, WiFi card (or USB dongle), monitor, keyboard, mouse, cables (fan cables, SATA cables, ect...), aftermarket CPU heatsink (necessary for overclocking), and zipties (or other cable management device). Feel free to ask for current recommendations.
Here are a few questions you should ask yourself when you're ready to start researching parts for your new PC. Once you have some answers to these questions, post them in this thread and others will jump in to fill in the gaps and get you well on your way to completing your order! Don't be intimidated if you don't know any of the answers though, as any questions (no matter how basic) are always welcome. In general though, the more information we have about what you want and how much you're willing to pay to get it, the better the advice you'll get.
- What kind of computer do you need? The 4 basic categories are: standard gaming PC, HTPC, server, and a serious Workstation.
- What's your budget for this project?
- What needs to be included in that budget? Do you need a monitor, keyboard and mouse to go with it? Are there components from a previous PC that you are carrying over to the new build? What about an operating system (like Windows 10)?
- What are your performance needs? For games, what resolution do you game at, and what kind of performance do you want to see there? For professional tasks, what are you doing and what kind of numbers would you like to see?
- Do you have any partiality towards specific manufacturers, like Intel/AMD, AMD/NVIDIA, or perhaps specific vendors?
- Do you have any specific needs? That is, are you looking for quiet operation, small form factor, significant upgrade-ability, or other specific features?
"I'm totes ready to buy, but everyone keeps posting this PC partpicker thing. Where do I actually get my stuff?"
US
There are a number of solid online purchasing options available to US consumers. My personal favorite is Newegg, though there are other options like Tiger Direct, and (of course) Amazon. Brick and mortar buyers can find some components at big box retailers like Best Buy and Fry's, though I've found that prices from online retailers are significantly better than these stores. The exception to that seems to be Microcenter, which often has great deals on processors and motherboards in particular.
Canada
Some more recent opinions:
Amazon.ca
Newegg.ca
UK
djmitchella wrote:Re: first post -- for the 'Canadian shops' bit, you should add memoryexpress.com to that list (not sure how they are for mail order, but as an in-the-flesh shop, at least, they're great).
Other Links:BouwsT wrote:I used Memory Express for my last build, they are actually really great so far for their mail orders. Also, their price beat is stronger than newegg.ca (10% of difference, rather than just a straight match). I would definitely recommend them for Canadian buyers, at least to check out.
Amazon.ca
Newegg.ca
Online retailers in the UK include Ebuyer, which apparently has a wide selection of components, Novatech, which also does custom systems and apparently has some fans in UK PC forums, and dabs.com, a site recommend by our very own Big Isy, who cited their frequent free shipping/free game deals.
Australia
Our very own Tef put together a very thorough buying guide for Australians:
And here is a handy flowchart!Tef wrote:Online retailers (Australia-wide)Other Australia-based Online Retailers
- www.pccasegear.com - Based in Melbourne, these guys are as close to an Australian Newegg as you will find. PCcasegear are known for their reliable service and good RMA (returning faulty equipment) policies. They have a somewhat decent range of equipment, for Australia and while generally pretty cheap, there certainly are cheaper options out there. For people in Melbourne, you can also visit their store front and pick up the parts personally.
- www.msy.com.au - A cheaper alternative to PCcasegear that is still reasonably reliable. MSY does suffer from a limited range and volume of stock on occasion. As of October 2011, they do not have a delivery system in place (in progress, according to MSY) so you will have to pick up the parts from their brick and mortar shops. Fortunately, they have numerous store fronts around the country, so finding one nearby shouldn't be too hard to do. Be aware that when you're shopping online make sure you set your store location to the store that you'll be picking the parts up from. MSY filter their displayed products based on what shop you've selected and it's very annoying to get to the checkout and realise all your parts are only available in far north Queensland.
www.mwave.com.au www.megabuy.com.au www.umart.com.au - These are some other notable budget PC shops. They'll ship anywhere domestically and are usually competitively priced. Do note that they're budget resellers (particularly in the case of megabuy) and their customer support and shipping status/timeframes may not always be as great as what you'll find from MSY/PCcasegear.
International Purchasing
An option exists to purchase parts overseas and ship them in yourself, thus avoiding the mark-up from Aussie vendors. www.priceusa.com.au is the only vendor the writer has experience with and therefore is the only one this writer is prepared to recommend with confidence. There are several caveats associated with international orders, namely that support/returns will be more difficult due to distances and there is a potential for longer lead-times on orders (though this is not always the case). Recommendations for overseas shipping would be that you don't order cases and possibly PSUs from overseas, as the associated hikes in shipping costs make this expensive (it should go without saying that you should do your own research on this point though, as it may be more cost effective depending on where you can buy domestically).
Purchase Support and Services
www.staticice.com.au and www.ausprices.com are two good price comparison sites that you can use to find who's selling what and for how much. The former is probably the highest quality of the two; just make sure you're looking at the Australian version (i.e. .au at the end)
While ostensibly a forum for PC overlockers, forums.overclockers.com.au has a surprisingly good quality sub forum relating to the state of PC part purchasing in Australia. They are a good location for solid advice on retailers (after PA, of course!).
Failing all that, send a mention or a PM towards Tef or chrishallett83, both Australian forumers, who are usually more than happy to offer advice.
Got all that? Need help building? LTT has you covered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL4DCEp7blYSterica on
+7
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Posts
A 4070.
Will be the first Nvidia gpu I've had since the 750ti which was a remarkable little overachiever.
Excited to get to use dlss and give Portal Rtx a go as well.
Might be in a few more years, but you might be looking at a new card by then anyway.
GPU=the other brain specialized for 3d vector math
Their conclusion is that while all of those things can impact DPC latency, and you should try to fix them, there remains a bug with NVidia drivers that causes spikes, and there's literally nothing you can do about it. It's apparently now on NVidia's known issues list, so maybe there's a fix coming.
I have been staring at registry keys and device manager for so long now that I'm not sure if I can even detect the spikes in the actual user experience anymore, and they seem to be limited to only the NVidia driver as well, so I think I'm going to wait on doing a full re-install at the moment. If I do see them again, then I may install a tweaked windows 10 image with all the fixes I've done manually already included, just to make sure I didn't miss something or screw something up.
my problem, from the last thread:
All but the graphics card are brand new, that I've moved over. Installed Win11 (after needing to flash the bios and clear CMOS on the MB to get it to post), clean drivers for everything, etc. Haven't had a crash, temps look good. However, I get periodic lag that affects audio, video, input, etc. Youtube videos will cut out, typing input appears 5-10 seconds after typed. This can happen every 20 seconds, or it can go 20 minutes with no issues, then happen again. It corresponds directly with high DPC routine execution time measured in LatencyMon.
The system:
7800x3d
G.SKILL Flare X5 32GB DDR5 6000 F5-6000J3038F16GX2-FX5
ASRock B650E PG RIPTIDE WIFI
Samsung 980Pro 2TB m.2
NZXT C850 PSU
GeForce RTX 3070
Peerless Assassin air cooler
High latency from (depending, any one of these might be the highest, but all are enough to trigger the warning in LatencyMon):
wdf01000.sys
ACPI.sys
nvlddmkm.sys
ntoskrnl.exe
Tried:
All Windows updates
Disabled High Precision Event Timer device
Uninstalled realtek audio
RAM EXPO and non-EXPO settings
Clean install of graphics drivers, AMD Chipset drivers.
Disable/Enable Network adapter (Killer E3100G)
Turned off wireless card, onboard graphics in bios
Turned power management to performance in CRTL panel and Settings
Turned off USB selective suspend
Turned off PCI-E link state power management
Started trying to set processor affinity for some of the services, but some I can't find in task manager, and this is a cludge anyway.
Memtest - 0 errors
MSI mode for GPU (was already on)
Disabled SATA ports in BIOS
Turned off PSS support, SVM Mode, NX Mode, and AVX512 in bios.
DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
DISM /Online /Cleanup-image /RestoreHealth - this did actually say it found corruption and fixed it
sfc /scannow
Oh yeah, I've seen that. Happens to me on stuff running OpenGL, roughly every 3 seconds on certain things there will be a full spike on my frametime graph. Changed over to Vulkan and it goes way. Keep in mind I'm on a -1070- and it's still an issue on the newer GPU's.
DLSS is magic, you will be very happy.
I am constantly staving off the desire to buy a 4090 to replace my 3080ti.
I already made one irresponsible purchase decision, I should at least wait until the next generation before I do it again.
Probably not. But depends what you're trying to do. If you're happy with the 3070 then the answer is automatically no.
I've been considering a 6750xt as an upgrade, but have been holding out for the next gen to see how they compare. The recently released 7600 looks promising, but I suspect isn't quite enough of a step up to justify spending money. Am I right in thinking a future rx7700 might be about right in terms of hitting my performance targets at a reasonable price?
If you're not shelling out for a 4090, then Nvidia has very carefully pared the value proposition down for the rest of the range. The halo model is now also the price: performance model.
The normal cost/performance benefit of the GPU generational leap? Like how you could get a 3070 for $200 less than a 2080 Super and better performance?
That doesn't exist in the 40 series, past the 4090. At all. You're paying for the same price for the same performance and hoping the game devs include DLSS3 support.
The 4090 does make a ton of sense over the 3090, its a real honest to god halo product with a generational leap over everything that came before.
Every other 40x0 card is there to give you more performance for more money than you paid last time. The cost per frame hasn't moved, which kind of sucks considering how technology + pricing has advanced prior to this.
By comparison, the SNES would have cost 10-15x more than the NES following this pricing model. It's dumb and anti consumer.
nvidia is pricing mainstream consumers out of the market because they can, and amd/intel are not pushing against this pricing hard enough because they can sell what they make. It's not great.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Benefits of a big honking case with noctua fans and a 420mm AIO for the CPU.
My temps are insanely good, with ambient office noise being far louder than this system is, even at load.
I could barely hear it - like, I had to put my head close to it - after 10 minutes of cinebench multicore (which admittedly got up to 80-81c but never went higher. If I wanted to increase airflow just a tiny bit more I could have easily kept it in the low 70s).
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
And hey, if you also still need a PC to do actual PC stuff with, well why waste money on a discrete video card when you could get a neat, tidy little miniPC that's small enough to literally hang off the back of your monitor, and has an APU which you know what? It's absolutely good enough to let you have fun with quite a few games anyway when you want a break from doing stuff. Especially now that Steam helpfully specifically labels games that will run well on such hardware.
If a family of friend came to me asking about getting a PC, that would definitely be the route I'd advise them to take in the current climate. You could get a high spec miniPC and a console for what a 4090 costs.
I mean, for a little more than half the cost of a 4090, I got a PS5 and a PSVR2. This generation has killed my desire for a gaming pc. First time I'm not chasing the bleeding edge since 1999.
But at $400 I'm still balking at it. Hopefully they'll think better and drop the price.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Now, I could set up another 420mm radiator just for the GPU and let the noctua fans on the front of the case do their job there… and 420 should disperse the heat so much that the case air shouldn’t bake the interior all that much…
Hmm. Do I really need this level of silence in an office in NYC? Probably not. But it’s weird thinking the build is done.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Yeah, $400 MSRP for an 8GB card that barely rates a -50 class let alone a -60 is just abusive. Do you have a PCIE3 motherboard? Apparently the 8 PCIE lane thing really starts to bite in that situation.
We could see it coming down in price or something, as apparently sales of it are... not great. If Jensen wasn't still brushing excess white powder off his top lip over Nvidia hitting a $1Tn market cap they might do what they did with the 12GB 4080 and pull it and relaunch it as the 4050 super extra ti or something. But they'll probably just ride this one out and drop the MSRP a bit.
IDK, hold out for $320 just on principle? Although from what we know of Nvidia's practices, the AIBs will be eating more of the the price drop than Nvidia.
At that point yup, I'm getting off the wheel and done with chasing performance. No more running decade old games on supercomputer tech for me after that.
I do feel like the industry is overwhelmingly primed at this point to accept something about the power of a modern console on the desktop side for gaming. The PS5 and XSX are both more than capable gaming machines and getting cards to market with their featureset and relative performance (maybe 50% more muscle at most) for at or under 200 bucks would be the gold standard for pretty much all end users.
Target 4k30 or 1440p60 on new things on medium to high settings, not ultra. There is a market for this and it is probably way larger than the markets currently being chased by nvidia.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I am not talking APU here, to be clear.
I think an APU covers most non AAA gaming workloads just fine, and that can be gotten in the newest gen from AMD for 200-250 bucks via the 7600x.
If you want to play AAA games, there needs to be more under the hood - but I feel that more can and should be a 200-250 dollar card a year or two after the console launches.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
From what I've seen from reviewers trying to overclock the RAM, there is a fair amount of unused potential in the 780M (12 RDNA3 CUs). It could certainly exceed the 1060GTX with faster RAM as is. A hypothetical APU that came with a big chunk of vCache for the GPU cores to use might go quite a bit faster.
My budget was close to allowing, but reasonably priced 6750xts just vanished from the NZ market leaving only the stupid expensive ones so I guess I'm definitely waiting on a 7700 or similar at a reasonable price.
How bad are the 6800s?
Keep in mind 6750xts we're regularly 650 nzd, or about 390usd
Yes, but the prices don't appear to be much better after conversion, and then shipping comes in. I actually get better prices buying from Amazon us via Amazon au. But if there are any issues ...
I did just find a 3060ti 8gb for 599, just under the magic 600. But I'm wary of the 8gb of vram when I'm targeting 4k, even if not at top level performance.
I think the best the last gen could do was using a 3090 or 6900XT, and you'd maybe, maybe get 60 fps. I wouldn't try to use anything weaker from last gen.