Pimp my PC: The PC circlejerk thread

[FinalBaton]

got my new HTPC/work desktop. Just for shits and giggles, I might replace it's 6th gen i5(6500) with a 6th gen i7(6700), and put in a little card (gtx 1650), all the best that this machine can handle, mobo and psu and cooling wise. also comes with 8gb of DDR4 memory but expendable up to 64gb of DDR4 (how much is worth it here?)

would I be able to play some gaymes with this rig? I'm talking 1080p. I'm fine with medium settings everywhere. I'd play a recent-ish game here an there, but more interested in indie games and emulation.

(I'm not considering building an additional gayming pc tower. if I can play on this HTPC desktop then that's cool, if not then no big deal)

[drauch]

Yeah, I've got a 1050 4GB in one of my machines that I was using until I upgraded to the 2070s. I'm thinking you could definitely play some new stuff on medium no problem.

[FinalBaton]

Thanks bud! That's exactly the kinda info I was hoping to get. Cheers

[ZellSF]

Turns out setting memory to 3266mhz wasn't a good idea. I got a random restart and saw I got constant errors in the event log, that kept going until I changed memory speed to 3200mhz. I really hope that was the reason for the random restart, since I obviously can't be sure of that. Windows really should inform you of when hardware errors occur.

After that I set the CPU voltage offset down by quite a bit since precision overboost seems to like setting voltage a bit too high and it lowered temperature by 5C and fan noise by a lot without any apparent performance or stability loss yet. Yes it's a great idea to induce more potential stability problems before I'm sure what caused the first one.

I should probably be able to get even better speeds or temperatures with some experimenting. But I'm worried about breaking something. Or just spending too much time on it.

also comes with 8gb of DDR4 memory but expendable up to 64gb of DDR4 (how much is worth it here?)

Pure gaming with those specs? Stick with 8GB until you run into problems. If you're multitasking while gaming you might see some benefit going for 16GB.

[ZellSF]

And after removing the memory stick and inserting them into the right slots RAM is now stable at 3600mhz.

I would have saved much time on this PC upgrade if I had read the manual. The M.2 and SATA ports not being activated at the same time? In the manual, but 20 minutes of troubleshooting for me...

Unfortunately having the RAM in the right place means my CPU fan is now slightly off.

[ZellSF]

And I figured out what my graphic booting problem was. I needed the Nvidia Graphic Firmware Update Tool for DisplayPort 1.3 and 1.4 Displays: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/nv ... pdate-x64/

How the hell did I figure that out?

[FinalBaton]

thanks for your input regarding RAM @ZellSF! I'll keep that in mind

I also work on that pc (but use a VM so it's all dependent on internet browsing). I do some audio production in DAW, but generally don't use a ton of Virtual Instrument pluggins nor a shitload of tracks. I MIGHT edit a bit of video in the future but not doing it right now.

[Mischief Maker]

Trump gives a final "Fuck You" to US gamers on his way out the door:

GPU exemption in Trump's China tarrifs set to expire, jack up GPU prices by 25%

On top of the recent Bitcoin boom.

Suddenly I'm glad Cyberpunk was a dud.

[ZellSF]

Sort of gave up on getting the 3080 TUF (haven't cancelled the order obviously, with how much prices have gone up) and tried for a 3090 instead. Easier to get a hold of, but quality control isn't a thing any longer. I've gotten two cards, a Inno3D iChill 4X that was unstable at stock settings (and it's not a factory OC card) and a Asus Strix with pretty bad coil whine.

The performance difference from my old 1070 is enormous though. Some cases less than expected, other cases exceeding expections. Some examples:

Alien Isolation (with AliasIsolation) - 60+ FPS - 7680x4320
Control - 60+ FPS - 2560x1440
Crysis - 100+ FPS - 3840x2160+4X MSAA
Crysis 2 - 100+ FPS - 3840x2160
Deus Ex Mankind Divided - 60+ FPS* - 3840x2160
Doom (GZDoom) - Only CPU limited with custom wads - 3840x2160+4X MSAA
Duke Nukem 3D (Raze) - 120~ FPS + 7680x4320+16X MSAA*
Persona 4 Golden - 120~ FPS - 7680x4320
Prey (2017) - 120~ FPS - 3840x2160
Soma - 60~ FPS - 5760x3240
Valkyria Chronicles 4 - 60+ FPS - 7680x4320
Vaporum Lockdown - 120~ FPS - 3840x2160

Actually started and finished both Control and Soma while testing cards. Control is not a game I would recommend for anyone who doesn't have a DLSS card. Not because DLSS is so great, the game just has no other temporal antialiasing method.

* I think Nvidia drivers interpret 16X MSAA to mean 2X SSAA.
** Keeps over 60 FPS with all settings maxed out, but you really don't want to, it has some settings that are very expensive for little benefit. With reasonable settings it's closer to 100.

[ZellSF]

Have to mention two things. If you get an Ampere card I really recommend you learn how to overclock/undervolt it. Unless you're unlucky, there's some pretty significant gains to be made either in noise or performance. Or less significant improvements in both.

Also Cyberpunk 2077 might not have a pretty launch, but it still runs fairy well, the glitches don't seem to indicate anything is fundamentally broken. I'm going to say, give it a year of patches and it will have a great reputation. I don't believe it will be a Fallout 76 situation. And a lot of the complaints are about the PS4/Xbone versions, which shouldn't have launched at all.

I mentioned Cyberpunk 2077 runs fairly well because of the lack of crashes and consistent framerate. Having a high end video card really brings out how many games have terrible streaming solutions leading to stutter (I also have a relatively high end CPU of course). Control was a mess, Soma had occasional dips to single digit framerates when it was loading stuff "in the background".

[ZellSF]

Also looking to replace HDDs I'm really starting to hate WD:

1) They don't clearly communicate which drives are helium based and which aren't.
2) They don't clearly communicate which drives are CMR and which are SMR.
3) They don't clearly communicate what RPM their drives run at.

A quick search tells me SeaGate aren't much better.

[Mischief Maker]

*SIGH*

My dad's computer that I built for him about four years ago up and died on him from something that, according to what they told me over the phone, sounds like a motherboard failure.

It won't be safe for me to come and visit until at least around June. Maybe ordering him a prebuilt one is the solution?

So can anyone tell me who are the decent manufacturers and who are the crap ones right about now? How's Dell?

[Udderdude]

Don't go with Dell. I'd suggest iBUYPOWER or CyberPowerPC.

[Koa Zo]

Don't go with Dell. I'd suggest iBUYPOWER or CyberPowerPC.

despite their horrendously corny name, I had good luck with iBUYPOWER about 9 or 10 years ago.

5 years ago I got a nicely loaded MSi Nightblade MI2 i7-6700K from Computer Upgrade King.
Also had what seemed to be a motherboard failure about 2 years ago. An MSi customer service rep walked me through updating the BIOS and it's worked fine ever since.

[rapoon]

few things

- most x470 chipsets manufacturers have released a "BETA" BIOS supporting the Ryzen 5000 Series. e.g. MSI released theirs earlier this month.
- AMD is now selling CPUs and GPUs directly from their site. I picked a 5600x up earlier today.
- If you're stateside and near a Microcenter, they've had a steady stock of gear. They're circumventing bots the tried and true method: in-store only, 1 per person.

A quick search tells me SeaGate aren't much better.

Seagate datasheets may have what you're looking for.

[ZellSF]

A quick search tells me SeaGate aren't much better.

Seagate datasheets may have what you're looking for.

Oh I can figure it out, I'm just disgusted by how scummy HDD manufacturers are being.

Not that they're alone, if anyone think there's any noble motivations behind Nvidia's CMP cards, I have a bridge to sell them.

[BrianC]

Don't go with Dell. I'd suggest iBUYPOWER or CyberPowerPC.

despite their horrendously corny name, I had good luck with iBUYPOWER about 9 or 10 years ago.

I went with iBuypower for my gaming desktop and I'm very satisfied with it. Customer service was very helpful, as well.

[Mischief Maker]

Thanks for your suggestions, guys. Turns out the happy ending was they took it to a computer repair shop and it was just the ram, so he's got the same PC working again for considerably cheaper.

[cave hermit]

Well Resizeable bar support is out for the RTX 3060, and coming soon for other 3000 tier Nvidia cards.

Basically the CPU traditionally only has access to 256 mb blocks of GPU memory, resizeable bar lets the CPU access all available GPU memory at once for better performance.

Unfortunately for me, you also need a Zen 3 CPU if you're using Ryzen. I'm on a 3900x.

Maybe not such a big deal though, apparently maximum performance boost from resizeable bar is about 10%, and performance benefits are so title dependent that certain titles could see performance decreases instead and as such the drivers will enable resizeable bar only for whitelisted titles (as of now, basically a few AAA games).

Still, it got me thinking about maybe upgrading to a 5900x sometime in the future. I built my PC just as Zen 3 was announced, and went with Zen 2 because I didn't think the performance increase with Zen 3 warranted an extra $150 plus the cost of an aftermarket CPU cooler. Well actually I went with Zen 2 because I was so fucking pumped to build my first PC and the CPU was the last part I was waiting on. But I cite the price increase to justify my impulsiveness.

I bought my 3900x for about $400 at microcenter, and it seems like I could sell it for that much on eBay even used, of course that's probably due to the current semiconductor shortage, which is also why I can't currently get a 5900x even if I wanted. Microcenter did have a few at launch, but that window has long passed.

I'm not sure if even under a best case scenario where I sold my 3900x for $400, it would be worth an extra $280 to get a 5900x alongside an aio cooler. Like, the 3900X came out in 2019, that isn't too long ago, how much could it be holding back a 3080 running at 1440p with vsync/gsync (so no obsessing over trying to run cs:go with 500+ fps)?

[GaijinPunch]

Non-gaming PC question: Any one use a NUC w/ linux? If I can scrounge up the extra grand I'm thinking of getting one. I have a moderate laptop now, but it chugs like a mofo if I need to stream video and type at the same time. Display in 4k may not be helping. Generally I code shit while watching videos all the time it's bothering me. The streaming where my hands aren't on the keyboard is fine.

Thoughts?