The PC thread

[Bolsters]

Prices of components going up was to be expected given the current circumstances of the world, but I've been noticing things increasing by not insignificant amounts already (at least here in Australia). I had a wishlist on a popular online retailer over here and it's gone up by $300 in just a week without me adding to it or changing anything in it. I'd been thinking of building a new gaming PC before the Coronavirus but now I'm considering whether to wait until after it all blows over and things start returning to normal (years) or spending more than I wanted to rushing and buying stuff now. I can't even find everything I want in stock either, and the prices will likely increase more while I have to wait.

[jasc15]

I heard about this thing called pi hole which seemed simple to set up.  It redirects ads and trackers to an "empty" address on the raspberry pi.  I use several browser add-ons to accomplish this on my phone and PC, but this works for every device on my network, including 2 Rokus. Normally i spend hours reading about a thing before i actually spend money and try it out, but this was cheap enough; I spent something like $55 on a raspberry pi 4 and a few accessories.  Within about 2 hours I had it up and running without much drama.  It's the first time I've done anything with Linux and it was amazingly easy, though I couldn't explain what I really did.  The instructions on the pi hole site and a tutorial or two were enough.

Once I got that running, I thought I would see if I could make the pi a print server, too.  There is this thing called CUPS which was even easier to set up.  Now I can have the rarely used printer in my basement with the router, rather than upstairs on my small desk.

I'm now considering also setting it up for NAS, and maybe even a Plex server (though I hear it has some limitations in this capacity).

[cramx3]

My brother had a raspberry pi set up as a plex server for awhile when he lived with me.  Pretty cool all the things you can do with a raspberry pi.  He's currently working with his friend on setting on up to control a bucket to water plants as a project. 

[faizoff]

Anyone have any experience with 6TB or 8TB drives? I had a 5TB one a while back and I recalled those having issues because of the platter number and size. I have a Seagate 4 TB drive which I think is beginning to fail. Getting errors when trying to copy to that drive but have no problems copying from it.

I've already backed things up from it, so good to go to replace it. Just wondering if a much larger capacity has at least the same reliability.

[cramx3]

I tried a 6TB Drive once and it failed immediately so I returned it and haven't tried anything beyond 4TB since.  At work we use 6TB and 8TB hard drives on our storage units that seem fine.  I think you might need software to use the larger sized drives on a window PC, but I forget.

I've been thinking lately that I want to build a new PC.  I'm getting a fat tax refund so I can use that money.  My current M.2 drive is full, my gaming SSD is full, and I feel like my 4TB drive is failing as it started getting loud (I have another one to replace it with).  So if I need to rebuild my OS and reset all my drive set ups, I might as well just upgrade to a new motherboard/CPU as well.  I've noticed when I play games, my CPU is running at 95-100% so I think my CPU is bottlenecking me as well.  I haven't looked yet on what's the latest and greatest per buck, but I'm open to switching to an AMD processor.

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

I tried a 6TB Drive once and it failed immediately so I returned it and haven't tried anything beyond 4TB since.  At work we use 6TB and 8TB hard drives on our storage units that seem fine.  I think you might need software to use the larger sized drives on a window PC, but I forget.

I've been thinking lately that I want to build a new PC.  I'm getting a fat tax refund so I can use that money.  My current M.2 drive is full, my gaming SSD is full, and I feel like my 4TB drive is failing as it started getting loud (I have another one to replace it with).  So if I need to rebuild my OS and reset all my drive set ups, I might as well just upgrade to a new motherboard/CPU as well.  I've noticed when I play games, my CPU is running at 95-100% so I think my CPU is bottlenecking me as well.  I haven't looked yet on what's the latest and greatest per buck, but I'm open to switching to an AMD processor.

What's your budget going to be?

[cramx3]

Good question, I haven't actually started to think about components I want and my budget, but right now I have a lot of excess cash since I'm luckily still employed and not spending money on anything really right now plus a nice multi thousand dollar tax return.  My budget could be a few thousand dollars for this.  I definitely want something on the high end as well as the latest/greatest graphics card which I expect would be around 1k for just that.  For my video recording/editting needs on these newer very resource demanding games.  Only thing I don't need are any SSD/HDD as I already have those sitting here waiting to be used.  I do think I will want a new monitor as well, and those aren't cheap.  Don't need top of the line for that, but almost anything would be an upgrade over my current like 10 year old monitor.

[ReaperKK]

That's excited cram, I can't wait to see your specs. I remember building my pc last year and it was a lot of fun.

Funny enough I was an AMD fan boy since the K2 days and built my first intel rig just recently it's going to be hard to go back. I use my PC for gaming 90% of the time but with your video editing I think and AMD rig might be the best route.

[faizoff]

The new AMD rigs are killer and have an amazing value for price compared to the what Intel is currently offering. I did look into them last year trying to see if I really needed a new build. My 9 year old self assembled PC holds up quite well still.

I might jump with an 8TB drive as the replacement of my failing drive. Just because of the novelty of having a single 8 TB drive.

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

Good question, I haven't actually started to think about components I want and my budget, but right now I have a lot of excess cash since I'm luckily still employed and not spending money on anything really right now plus a nice multi thousand dollar tax return.  My budget could be a few thousand dollars for this.  I definitely want something on the high end as well as the latest/greatest graphics card which I expect would be around 1k for just that.  For my video recording/editting needs on these newer very resource demanding games.  Only thing I don't need are any SSD/HDD as I already have those sitting here waiting to be used.  I do think I will want a new monitor as well, and those aren't cheap.  Don't need top of the line for that, but almost anything would be an upgrade over my current like 10 year old monitor.

This is what I'm currently offering in the $3000 range for my customers. If you don't need the NVME drives, you can drop those and easily drop in a 2080ti and still be within the $3000 range.

I highly recommend that Motherboard and processor. It's what I'm currently running in my setup. If you want to do the 2080ti instead of the super I'd recommend this

[cramx3]

Good question, I haven't actually started to think about components I want and my budget, but right now I have a lot of excess cash since I'm luckily still employed and not spending money on anything really right now plus a nice multi thousand dollar tax return.  My budget could be a few thousand dollars for this.  I definitely want something on the high end as well as the latest/greatest graphics card which I expect would be around 1k for just that.  For my video recording/editting needs on these newer very resource demanding games.  Only thing I don't need are any SSD/HDD as I already have those sitting here waiting to be used.  I do think I will want a new monitor as well, and those aren't cheap.  Don't need top of the line for that, but almost anything would be an upgrade over my current like 10 year old monitor.

This is what I'm currently offering in the $3000 range for my customers. If you don't need the NVME drives, you can drop those and easily drop in a 2080ti and still be within the $3000 range.

I highly recommend that Motherboard and processor. It's what I'm currently running in my setup. If you want to do the 2080ti instead of the super I'd recommend this

First link doesnt work, says the list is private.

I was discussing with my gaming friends last night, it seems this summer there will be the new line of graphics cards so I think I will wait on that, but might build the computer earlier and use my 1080 to start.  The problem is really my hard drives and that's pushing me to want to upgrade the motherboard/cpu sooner while I have to rebuild windows anyway.  The graphics card is an easy upgrade once everything else is in place. 

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

Good question, I haven't actually started to think about components I want and my budget, but right now I have a lot of excess cash since I'm luckily still employed and not spending money on anything really right now plus a nice multi thousand dollar tax return.  My budget could be a few thousand dollars for this.  I definitely want something on the high end as well as the latest/greatest graphics card which I expect would be around 1k for just that.  For my video recording/editting needs on these newer very resource demanding games.  Only thing I don't need are any SSD/HDD as I already have those sitting here waiting to be used.  I do think I will want a new monitor as well, and those aren't cheap.  Don't need top of the line for that, but almost anything would be an upgrade over my current like 10 year old monitor.

This is what I'm currently offering in the $3000 range for my customers. If you don't need the NVME drives, you can drop those and easily drop in a 2080ti and still be within the $3000 range.

I highly recommend that Motherboard and processor. It's what I'm currently running in my setup. If you want to do the 2080ti instead of the super I'd recommend this

First link doesnt work, says the list is private.

Try this one https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yq7QYH

And yes there are new cards coming out, but it may not be until the fall. You could indeed keep using your 1080 until then and then upgrade.

[cramx3]

That link works.... yea the NVMe is overkill.  I have a new one already, just ~500G and that's more than enough for the OS only.  That motherboard has 3 m.2 slots which is overkill but not enough SATA ports for me.  I've currently running with 6 SATA drives, so I see the trade off but for my set up, I don't think that is worth the money to go all in on NVMe when I have so many good SATA SSDs that I get from work. 

The CPU and RAM look good.  I currently have 16G of RAM and I haven't seen my usage top out but it get's high (around 70%) so I'm thinking the upgrade to 32G is a good idea.

Also the liquid cooling... I was thinking that.  Those kits are so much simpler to set up and use these days that it might make sense to make that leap. 

[ReaperKK]

I really like liquid cooling. My office that my pc is in does go up by 10 degrees when I start playing a game like it used to.

[cramx3]

I don't have heating issues in my PC, but it would be nice if it were a bit quieter and it does look cool.

[El Barto]

I don't have heating issues in my PC, but it would be nice if it were a bit quieter and it does look cool.

You'd probably dig the Re-Animator day-glo coolant flowing about. 

[cramx3]

Puppies shared this motherboard with me

https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/PRESTIGE-X570-CREATION

REALLY digging it.  It's pretty expensive, but the NVMe features, 6 SATA ports, an insane amount of USB, and a cool look plus everything else really makes me drool a bit. 

[Northern Lion]

Just thought I'd chime in on the subject of cooling.  Don't liquid cooling systems still have potential leak issues?  And don't they need to be drained and refilled every once in a while?

As you can tell, I've never used liquid cooling in any of the rigs I have built.  But if you're looking for quiet, I used BeQuiet! brand fans, cpu cooler and case last time around and I really don't hear mine at all.  I get really good temps (I should with 9 fans) and I don't hardly hear a thing even under heavy loads.  Plus, no maintenance except cleaning my filters on occassion.

[Podaar]

Nah, modern liquid cool systems are pretty bullet proof, easy to install, maintenance free, and super effective.

[cramx3]

Nah, modern liquid cool systems are pretty bullet proof, easy to install, maintenance free, and super effective.

Yea, I wouldn't bother with the old school style of liquid cooling and it's why I never cared for that back in the day, but these days it's a solid product that you just install and it works.  Pretty affordable too.

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

Just thought I'd chime in on the subject of cooling.  Don't liquid cooling systems still have potential leak issues?  And don't they need to be drained and refilled every once in a while?

As you can tell, I've never used liquid cooling in any of the rigs I have built.  But if you're looking for quiet, I used BeQuiet! brand fans, cpu cooler and case last time around and I really don't hear mine at all.  I get really good temps (I should with 9 fans) and I don't hardly hear a thing even under heavy loads.  Plus, no maintenance except cleaning my filters on occassion.

As Podaar and Cram alread said, liquid coolers are extremely bulletproof these days, as long as you buy from a reputable company. The current Liquid Cooler I'm using (Fractal Design Celsius S36) I've had for 3 years and it still works as well as it did the day I bought it. I'm actually about to move it to my wife's system since I'm upgrading her system and I have a new one coming for mine. I thought about doing a full custom loop water cooler, but since my system gets taken apart fairly frequently for testing and such, it would just be too much of a hassle.

As a side note, I love BeQuiet's products. I use their DarkRock Pro 4 for air cooling cpu's if I don't go with liquid cooling in my builds.

[Northern Lion]

Thanks guys, that's really good to know.  I might have to give it a try on a future build.

[JayOctavarium]

Lol you guys and your bad ass computer building.

Here I thought I was cool for buying a new "gaming" laptop and ordering more RAM for it.


Actually I am so stoked for this laptop. Acer Nitro 15. It's not much (i5, 128gb SSD, 1TB HDD, 8gb Ram soon to be 16 gb, 4GB GTX 1650), but it is the most powerful computer I've ever owned. My previous laptop was a shitty Toshiba with an i3 and... well that's it. The new one can actually run AAA games pretty smoothly.


@Marc do you ever stream?

[cramx3]

Nah, my computer can't stream, at least not with my green screen, I would need a stream PC.  I think with the new gen of CPUs, you don't really need a seperate stream PC.  Either way, I tried streaming before the green screen when my PC was capable of doing it and I'm just not a very good consistent entertainer

[faizoff]

So I installed my 8 TB drive today making the total of my desktop space to 20 TB lol. With one of the 4 TB drives looking like it's failing, can't be too careful.

[cramx3]

  to more storage

sooo I figured out my bottleneck for recording my gameplay.  This is actually very positive news for me.  I've been using performance monitor while gaming, and while gaming/recording to see what the issue might be.  My CPU was seemingly the bottleneck as it was around 90% capacity while gaming and then 99% while gaming and recording.  I forced chrome to close to get those percentages down a bit more and thought maybe that was it, too many applications open even though my RAM would stay around 70-80% regardless of recording.  I started looking at OBS, the recording software.  Turns out there's a newer encoder that uses your GPU, not CPU to encode video.  My GPU wouldn't top 20% usage through all my testing.  So this makes sense for me, put the load on the GPU not CPU.  Once i did this, and after much more testing...  I can now max out my Call of Duty graphics while recording without issue.  My CPU still gets worked at 90% but not topping out which is what I think caused my issues.  GPU doesn't get to 50% and RAM is the same around 75%. 

Having said all that, it doesn't solve my storage problems which was a main reason to want to build a new PC.  This gives me confidence my GTX 1080 can go a lot further than I imagined with it's power. 

[faizoff]

Very cool that you figured it out. That 1080 is a beast of a card, if and when I get a new PC was thinking of a 1060ti card as I don't game very aggressively or even have any of the new games for that matter.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

Right now I have 4 SSDs, one 120 only for my OS and 2 250GB and one 500GB but it would be convenient to have one large SSD if the price wouldn't be so damn ugh!

[Chino]

How much difference does a screen really make when looking at games? I bought this monitor when it was on sale at Costco for $129.99. It's been great, but I bought it when I just wanted to run my laptop into something and wasn't gaming or anything. Now I have a decent PC and play games a lot. I know nothing when it comes to specs on screens. How much room for improvement do I have if I were to want to upgrade?

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-32-monitor-d3218hn/apd/210-anej/monitors-monitor-accessories#polaris-pd

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

How much difference does a screen really make when looking at games? I bought this monitor when it was on sale at Costco for $129.99. It's been great, but I bought it when I just wanted to run my laptop into something and wasn't gaming or anything. Now I have a decent PC and play games a lot. I know nothing when it comes to specs on screens. How much room for improvement do I have if I were to want to upgrade?

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-32-monitor-d3218hn/apd/210-anej/monitors-monitor-accessories#polaris-pd

Can't say I know very much about screens but I bought a AOC 24" G2460PG 144Hz G-Sync two years ago and going from 60hz to 144 was a diffrence. I think going to a higher resolution will be a much bigger improvment but of course that also include more strain on your hardware when playing games. However I can't say i've noticed G-Sync that much but I guess if I would do a heavy comparison I might notice it more.

[cramx3]

I pulled the trigger this morning since I got my state tax return back (which just about pays for all this) and my federal return should come tomorrow (along with a typical pay day):

MSI Prestige X570 Creation Motherboard (AMD AM4, DDR4, PCIe 4.0, SATA 6Gb/s, M.2, USB 3.2, AX Wi-Fi 6, 10G Super LAN, Extended-ATX)

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-core, 24-thread unlocked desktop processor with Wraith Prism LED Cooler

32G of RAM - Corsair CMW32GX4M2C3200C16 VENGEANCE RGB PRO 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4-25600) C16 Desktop memory Black

and another license for Windows 10.

I should get it all by May 30th so I think I will take the following Monday off from work to build it (work is practically begging people to burn PTO).  I'll pop it into my current case and re-do my hard drives with the new ones that are sitting on my desk and then take my old motherboard/cpu/storage and put it into my old case with my old GTX770 as my second PC that could eventually become a stream PC.

[The Walrus]

Badass, Marc!

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

I pulled the trigger this morning since I got my state tax return back (which just about pays for all this) and my federal return should come tomorrow (along with a typical pay day):

MSI Prestige X570 Creation Motherboard (AMD AM4, DDR4, PCIe 4.0, SATA 6Gb/s, M.2, USB 3.2, AX Wi-Fi 6, 10G Super LAN, Extended-ATX)

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-core, 24-thread unlocked desktop processor with Wraith Prism LED Cooler

32G of RAM - Corsair CMW32GX4M2C3200C16 VENGEANCE RGB PRO 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3200 (PC4-25600) C16 Desktop memory Black

and another license for Windows 10.

I should get it all by May 30th so I think I will take the following Monday off from work to build it (work is practically begging people to burn PTO).  I'll pop it into my current case and re-do my hard drives with the new ones that are sitting on my desk and then take my old motherboard/cpu/storage and put it into my old case with my old GTX770 as my second PC that could eventually become a stream PC.

If it's not too late to change it, I would definitely up the ram speed to at least 3600mhz. The price difference it fairly minimal and ram speed helps immensely with Ryzen's Infinity Fabric. It is quite a noticeable difference.

Other than that, it looks fantastic. That motherboard is amazing. I built a workstation for a guy that does lots of audio work with that board, mostly because it has tons of usb ports, which he needed. But the feature set on it is amazing too.

[cramx3]

It's an extra hundred bucks for a speed I likely wont even notice.  I don't feel it's worth it today, but being the motherboard supports the next gen, it leaves me room to upgrade.  That's already a huge boost over my current build in every area

[King Puppies and the Acid Guppies]

It's an extra hundred bucks for a speed I likely wont even notice.  I don't feel it's worth it today, but being the motherboard supports the next gen, it leaves me room to upgrade.  That's already a huge boost over my current build in every area

Fair enough. From what you've told me about your current build, it's definitely going to be a massive upgrade.