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[PC Build Thread] New graphics cards are outrageously expensive. News at 11.
GnomeTank
What the what?Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
What the what?Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
Welcome to Part Shoppers Anonymous the Penny Arcade Computer Build Thread!
(this OP is shamelessly stolen/modified from our missing overlord alecthar (via Jebus314, and minor incident, and BouwsT).
Tl;dr:
.
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.
"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
(this OP is shamelessly stolen/modified 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.
"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 Q1 2017 CPU Comparisons
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, eSADA, ect...) 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. These days there are basically 3 rules to follow when buying RAM. (1) Buy DDR4: Only legacy sockets from AMD and Intel support DDR2 and DDR3 is quickly being phased out. This is a compatibility check with the motherboard so always look at the motherboard specs to verify, but almost everything currently sold these days is DDR4. (2) Don't overthing the RAM speed (2400 MHz can be had for cheap). Slower and you may seem some changes in performance for a cheaper price, and faster does NOT provide a good performance per dollar value. Timings largely mean nothing, and should be completely ignored for your first build. (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 you're 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. 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 850 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.
Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: BrainlingOh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
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Test boot successful!
Yes, that's 26C idle. Admittedly in the bios, and doing nothing, but mmm, chilly.
Also woah to those temps, ice cold
Edit: also, as a Canuck I'd suggest removing ncix is a viable source. There are so many issues going on at that company right now and way more people than is proper are reporting what is essentially zero customer service, false stock levels, paying for "in stock" items and waiting up to a month for response or refund.
They were my go to for years and now, even the one down the street from me is empty and barren. It's one of the surviving locations and the staff there have nothing to even put on the shelves. Empty!
Minesweeper is gonna look fucking awesome!
There was almost one snafu with the GPU power in that I wasn't sure if I would have needed a second cable for it since none of the god damned pictures for the STRIX showed the fucking power ports! But, it turns out I did, in fact, have the second cable with me. Which saved the annoying headache of not being able to access the others for the entire weekend and needing to wait until after work Monday to do any of this.
The back of the case is still a fucking mess. Not going to do a whole lot with it until my white CableMod stuff gets here. The Captain 240's was almost not long enough, it was a really tight fit.
S340 case for under $30
Nintendo ID: Incindium
PSN: IncindiumX
Phanteks Enthoo Pro M Special Edition (basically an Enthoo Pro M Tempered with white interior).
Just took a peek at Best Buy for some tech gifts. Noticed they have some SanDisk SSDs for pretty great prices. I saw a 960GB for $199 that I may have to pick up on principle. It would be worth at least taking a trip to your local store.
I got that originally from @Karrde1842 a few years ago as a pair, which is still a really super-cool thing. When I originally built this machine, I ran them both just for giggles.
I pulled them for a 560ti I got from @symbolsor (also a super-cool thing) but had to revert when the 560 started bugging out. The inside has changed a little since I took that second picture. The LED fans in the front were swapped out. In fact, all the fans in that image, as well as the two set up in pull for the radiator were swapped for Noctua NF-A14 and an additonal A12 on the bottom. A couple more HDDs in the back and the optical drive was replaced with a true SATA BD-R.
No current pictures yet because my setup isn't geared for looking at any of it. I'll try next weekend and perhaps use that as an excuse to properly sort the cables. I just kind of threw them together behind the MB and considered it good enough if the door closed correctly.
The last three things to buy will be a new KBaM and a good monitor. The first two will come in time, the latter when I feel like dropping a whole 'nother bundle on a quality monitor.
I'm hoping this sale season I get to snag a nice solid aluminum case for this new rig. Maybe I'll pick up some extra cooling too...
Tinker, tinker, tinker.
I have had my gaming box in an NZXT H2 case for years. It's great, but it is probably the largest case I ever want to own. Full ATX towers in this day and age is kinda silly. These days its main drawbacks are lack of front facing USB-C and a complete lack of support for dual-fan radiators of the kind you find in closed-loop liquid cooling kits.
Inside this huge box is a full ATX motherboard and a quad core i5-3570k @ 4GHz (ivy bridge). Earlier this year I put a 1070 in it. This build still works quite well for 1440. I wouldn't mind updating the cpu/ram and getting an M.2 slot for a post-SATA SSD, but this isn't really a priority.
What is a priority is that I want a dedicated workstation. I want a security-focused build and I want to stop "trusting" my gaming box in this sense. And as my day job involves serious data crunching using rapidly changing tech, having a platform of my own to play around and crunch public datasets during weekends and such will be more valuable to me than you might imagine. This box needs to have as much RAM and as many cores as I can get, within reason.
I've also got a real soft spot in my heart for AMD. Always have. I have not been able to express my affection for years because they have been such complete fuckups, but with Ryzen/Threadripper I feel like I've gotta come back.
The problem with TR isn't so much money (though that doesn't help) as it is that TR motherboards are usually EATX and that's a new, big case that I don't want. TR's advantage, other than sheer core count, is that it in theory can support ECC ram, though its a crap shoot if the motherboard will even bother to recognize it as such (and then only in linux, but that's fine for me).
A more down to earth Ryzen build, putting out a bunch of watts, in a small case, is going to be noisy, but this is fine as there's no reason why I can't put this workstation in a closet and use it headless. I might not even bother to install a GUI at all. In this scenario I'd build another, extremely light weight "thin client" box that just runs a terminal and a web browser. I'd do security sensitive things like paying bills / banking on the thin client instead of the workstation directly.
Another idea I've had is to upgrade my gaming box, switch to Micro ATX or Mini ITX, and throw the workstation into my existing gaming case. But I'd have to be careful with thermals etc to try to keep the noise levels down to something like where they are now, as don't have to option to shove a gaming box in the closet.
I probably won't bother doing anything until early next year, but I guess what I'm getting at is do you guys have strong opinions about cases and form factors?
I'd say the delidding was a success? Under normal gaming loads I haven't seen temps above 45C on any core.
Also ran some artificial benchmarks just to see what my theoretical performance jump is. My old system was an i7-4790K, all core OC of 4.7ghz, with 32GB DDR-1866mhz CL11 RAM. New benchmarks are on my i7-8700K, currently no OC, with 32 GB of DDR4-3200 CL14 RAM. Same video card and storage: 1080 Ti FE, 1TB Samsung 850 EVO and 500GB Samsung 840 EVO.
3DMark
Time Spy: old 8134, new 9332
Fire Strike Ultra: old 6662, new 6833
Fire Strike Extreme: old 12085, new 12783
Fire Strike: old 18889, new 22351
So 3DMark proves to us pretty clearly that CPU matters as resolution goes down. My smallest gains were at 4K and 1440p resolutions where the CPU just isn't the bottleneck. Time Spy did see a nice boost as DX12 can make good use of CPU resources. This is the first time I've ever had a machine go over 20k for Firestrike, so that's a cool personal achievement.
Cinebench R15
Multi
Old (4790K): 992
New (8700K) 1413
Single
Old (4790K): 176
New (8700K): 192
No surprise here right? Even with no overclock the 8700K creams my overclocked 4790K by a lot in the multi test because Cinebench loves cores. Even in the single threaded the 8700K flexes it's muscles. I'll be interested to see how this number goes up as I put some overclock on the CPU.
I was fairly intent on overclocking my 8700k but now that I have it, and I've done some stress testing and minor gaming I'm finding that it's so GD fast already I was content to lock it in at 4.8ghz and 1.29. I'm still testing to drop volts down and I may re-evaluate when I get the delid done but these are great chips out of the box.
As it is now my quick test in Witcher 3 has essentially locked in at high enough fps that I no longer see stuttering in any areas of the game. ROTR is also sitting at 100-140fps on very high vs my old 3570k/gtx770 on low-medium.
https://mycherrytree.com/products/borg-cube-pc/
Is not like... "Parts", but is a flippin' cool idea nonetheless.
Sorry I'm not really answering your question...but, if you're really interested in Threadripper processors, there are ATX motherboards from MSI, Gigabyte, and ASRock (or this other ASRock) that you could check out before going the SFF route.
The price difference is not that big (especially currently, looks like the demand for the 8400 is MUCH higher) but would I ever actually feel the benefits? With the poor TMI and no plans to delid, I'm wondering if utilising the "K" part will even work well enough to be noticeable.
The k part is of interest for anyone who wants to overclock, or anyone planning to squeeze extra life out of their CPU (by overclocking it later)
The CPU does not render graphics. In 99% of situations your GPU is what is going to be determining your maximum frame rate.
http://images.frys.com/art/email/112317_thu062olj_tg1/TG1_web.html
NZXT S340 for $29. Thermaltake View $39
I asked in the Netherlands subreddit, and got a resounding, "Uh sometimes just to use the hype, but the deals don't compare."
there's the one or two unbelievable deals that actually are, which are designed to get you in the store/on the website and spend money on other things that are on an "ok" sale, but nothing you don't see during other points of the year.
https://m.newegg.com/products/N82E16811854003
e: Oh and my CableMod order gets here Tuesday. I'll be re-wiring that day and get some final pictures for the picture thread.
Nintendo ID: Incindium
PSN: IncindiumX
Each one has a different line for its attached information, so it almost feels like it was trying to do a stack dump but the logger isn't reading it right.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
In other news, used windows' ability to revert off of 1709, it does not appear to have helped.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
Never actually done a board swap on an existing system before, how much of a shitshow is this gonna be in terms of drivers and such? Did make sure to grab some thermal paste because I'm suspecting I'm gonna need to unseat the stock cooler to get the CPU out.
Warframe/Steam: NFyt
NewEgg had discount code for $13 off today. So $76.99 for a 256GB Intel 545s. The Samsung 850 EVO 250GB is $89.99
Nintendo ID: Incindium
PSN: IncindiumX
This is good to know.
I really wish they wouldn't put these kind of gaudy lighting nonsense on prosumer workstation-ish boards like this.
I also don't want to exaggerate the likelihood of my going that route. A ryzen 8 core would probably suffice.
Yes, you'll need to unseat the cooler. The last board swap I did was fairly uneventful. Granted, I stayed within Asus, so I'm not sure if that matters.