PC Building Guide and Discussion #11 (everything is expensive...)

[ohcomeonref]

Got my first pc built, and it s up and running. It would've been a flawless build except for my putting the little led, power switch, etc cords in backwards, and it didn't turn on at first so I thought it was the CPU, do I had to take the heatsink off and everything but it was on right. Turns out my power supply cord wasn't all the way into the box.. Oh well. Any just have programs. I downloaded MSI after burner and another one that automatically detects drivers. Should I be adjusting anything - overclocking or any of that stuff?

Depends on your hardware and what you plan to do. Some people can't wait to start tweaking their GPU, CPU, and/or RAM while others are just content with stock settings (some people even overclock their monitors). Depending on your hardware, overclocking may not even be worth it. If you have an Intel K-series chip then there tends to be quite a lot of headroom whereas if you have something like an R5 1600x there's hardly any overclocking headroom at all, even with liquid cooling.

 

[SniperHF]

Got my first pc built, and it s up and running. It would've been a flawless build except for my putting the little led, power switch, etc cords in backwards, and it didn't turn on at first so I thought it was the CPU, do I had to take the heatsink off and everything but it was on right. Turns out my power supply cord wasn't all the way into the box.. Oh well. Any just have programs. I downloaded MSI after burner and another one that automatically detects drivers. Should I be adjusting anything - overclocking or any of that stuff?

Along with what comeonref said, I don't usually tweak anything until I have a baseline. Whether that's just playing some games or actually benchmarking.

If happy with it as is, I leave it.

Of course if you want to do it just to say you did, there's some value in that

 

[Leafs at Knight]

Cool, cool. Thanks.

 

[Led Zappa]

OK, since I know some admins visit this thread, I'm gonna throw this out there:

I just installed ESXi 6u5 on an IBM HS22 blade server. I got a warning that the CPU may not be supported in future versions of ESXi.

Anybody know how serious this is or is it just a warning that may not come true?

For those interested in tech you might find this story interesting. If not, skip it.

We have a IBM Bladeserver H chassis. We needed some more blades and I found a fully loaded chassis cheap ($600+$200 Shipping), so I jumped on it. Servers had 2 CPU's and 8GB RAM.

Well, I go to add a server to our Windows VM Cluster and move some systems over and I can't. The CPU is an older architecture and they all have to be at the same level as the higher one for some tech reason if you want to use Vmotion and not take your servers down. Anyway, I buy the same CPU's as our old ones and pop em in and everything is hunky dory.

My fear is these are old servers and that we'll either have to replace all the CPU's if we have to upgrade past 6u5 (They are forcing us to upgrade because they won't sell us licenses for 5.5) motherf***ers.

This is becoming one big racket between the Silicon, Server & App Sellers.

*Semi Rant Over*

 

[Kestrel]

Got my first pc built, and it s up and running. It would've been a flawless build except for my putting the little led, power switch, etc cords in backwards, and it didn't turn on at first so I thought it was the CPU, do I had to take the heatsink off and everything but it was on right. Turns out my power supply cord wasn't all the way into the box.. Oh well. Any just have programs. I downloaded MSI after burner and another one that automatically detects drivers. Should I be adjusting anything - overclocking or any of that stuff?

What's in your system again? Anyhow, I probably wouldn't bother overclocking, unless you just want to do it for the sake of doing it. I'm expecting that you got enough of a system that you should be running everything just fine.

 

[Leafs at Knight]

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/W7W9kT


Nothing super high tech, but it should be more than enough for what I'm looking for.

 

[SniperHF]

OK, since I know some admins visit this thread, I'm gonna throw this out there:

I just installed ESXi 6u5 on an IBM HS22 blade server. I got a warning that the CPU may not be supported in future versions of ESXi.

Anybody know how serious this is or is it just a warning that may not come true?

For those interested in tech you might find this story interesting. If not, skip it.

I'm not as well versed in ESX as I'd like to be , but I think that it should still work provided you can actually install the next versions, meaning there's no block during install.

I don't think there is. The only catch would be if you do manage to get a future version going, you'd be SOL for patches for hardware specific issues. But if you're dealing in second hand blades I'd think that's an acceptable risk.

 

[SniperHF]

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/W7W9kT


Nothing super high tech, but it should be more than enough for what I'm looking for.

You might actually see some real benefits from OCing the Ryzen 3. It's a little pokey single threaded wise.

But I'd still give it a shot stock first. And then maybe just to try it, run the automatic overclocking feature in your UEFI settings.

I haven't had the opportunity to mess with Ryzen yet so I can't offer specific help on OCing them.

 

[Devourers]

Depends on your hardware and what you plan to do. Some people can't wait to start tweaking their GPU, CPU, and/or RAM while others are just content with stock settings (some people even overclock their monitors). Depending on your hardware, overclocking may not even be worth it. If you have an Intel K-series chip then there tends to be quite a lot of headroom whereas if you have something like an R5 1600x there's hardly any overclocking headroom at all, even with liquid cooling.

I'm that type of person but right now I just started my second contract with IBM, I simply don't have the time to tweak my settings repeatedly and do suicide runs of p95 to insure stability etc. I never touch ram though, find it to be not worth the gains and annoying as f*** to stabalize. GPU is probably the easiest but I have old GPU's that are reference models, no point, when I get a 1080Ti I'll do it though.

If you aren't technologically intermediate/advanced I say don't even waste your time overclocking Ram/CPU, you may think it's stable and/or that your settings are good but they more than likely aren't. Like I wouldn't overclock a CPU with anything other than offset voltage, etc. I don't like the headroom at all though with my 7700k, I have the Phanteks cooler and my chip runs hot, got a mediocre chip imo but that's the roulette you play with silicon. Would need more free time to investigate further and I just don't have it currently due to slave-like hours at work.

 

[Kestrel]

Initial Coffee Lake reviews are up. I've only had a brief look at one of the reviews, but it appears Coffee Lake likely makes Intel competitive with AMD again (not just gaming), although to be fair, my look was just very cursory. I hope AMD has something up their sleeve to turn the thumb screws on Intel again - I would love to see AMD return to its glory, and see the two CPU companies duke it out for our benefit. Actually, I'm sure this is just a pipe dream, but I'd love another Cyrix type competitor to find room to jump in, and make it a 3+ competitive market again - but I'll settle for a healthy and competitive AMD.

 

[aleshemsky83]

I'm more interested in what the mobile cpus are going to look like, the numbers theyve given are pretty impressive, I probably wont be getting them but I'm pretty optimistic they'll bring down the price of other very good laptops

 

[Kestrel]

Yeah, a laptop is what I'm most likely to be buying in the somewhat less than distant future. My i7-6700K will be good for a long time, so no need to change desktop parts. My 4th gen i7 laptop on the other hand, its 760m is getting long in the tooth, and occasionally glitches, so even though I don't do a lot of gaming these days, its days are numbered.

 

[SeidoN]

ok 8700k, you have my attention

ill probably get an 8600k though, if its not too much worse in gaming

 

[SeidoN]

PCGamesN has the 8600k benching pretty much exactly the same as the 8700k in gaming

hello my 2500k replacement

 

[Commander Clueless]

I'm not super excited about the 8700K. I can see why some are, as it has the productivity capability of Ryzen and the gaming capability of a mainstream i7, but I don't really do anything useful with my PC.

For just gaming, I don't really see a reason to upgrade from my 6700K....other than because I like to upgrade.


The i5-8400 on the other hand looks like a fantastic value chip....probably my new chip to recommend to most people.

The 8600K seems like the new king of (reasonable) gamers.

I'm intrigued by the i3-8100's budget potential.



Overall Coffee Lake looks impressive. Will be interesting to see if/how AMD strikes back.

 

[Kestrel]

I hope AMD does strike back... I suspect they're largely done in that sector until the next Ryzen generation though. But, what do I know?

 

[guinness]

I hope AMD does strike back... I suspect they're largely done in that sector until the next Ryzen generation though. But, what do I know?

Coffee Lake is really just Skylake with more cores (yet more refinement of that 14 nm node) and unfortunately, a new socket. I see it as a response to Ryzen than anything else, otherwise Intel would just plod along with i7/i5/i3 at it's current 4/8, 4/4, 2/4 configuration. I expect socket hell from Intel, being generous I don't.

The gains are there, moar cores!, but I'm unfortunately more jealous of the mobile side. I have no complaints about my i7-7500U, but about a year later to get a real i7 (4C/8H) in the same 15 W TDP is both impressive, and a 'aw, shit, only if I would've waited...". I use Intel's quick sync video encoding on my laptop, because it's actually faster than my 6600K.

The 8700 doesn't sound bad, the 'K' version seems to really jack up the TDP for a marginal gain. The i3 8100 seems nice as well, 4 cores should become yesterday's dual core.

 

[Kestrel]

I think you're definitely right, but it does seem to swing things largely back in Intel's favour, and I'm not sure I think AMD left themselves room to rock right back without some more development time.

 

[Leafs at Knight]

Since I don't have a really good looking game I decided to download the Star wars battlefront 2 beta to see how it runs. I was getting 80-110 Fps on pretty much everything ultra; never went below 80,and was in the high 90s most of the time. PUBG has to be the worst optimized game ever, I couldn't even maintain 60fps on medium, and that game looks pretty gross already.

 

[Led Zappa]

I'm not as well versed in ESX as I'd like to be , but I think that it should still work provided you can actually install the next versions, meaning there's no block during install.

I don't think there is. The only catch would be if you do manage to get a future version going, you'd be SOL for patches for hardware specific issues. But if you're dealing in second hand blades I'd think that's an acceptable risk.

I'd almost prefer we were rev'd out lol. We'd have to get a new server and I'd get to help implement it. Right now I'm working on our Vcenter upgrade because we're can't buy 5.5 licenses anymore and need to add new hosts.

 

[Commander Clueless]

Since I don't have a really good looking game I decided to download the Star wars battlefront 2 beta to see how it runs. I was getting 80-110 Fps on pretty much everything ultra; never went below 80,and was in the high 90s most of the time. PUBG has to be the worst optimized game ever, I couldn't even maintain 60fps on medium, and that game looks pretty gross already.

Yeah PUBG has some serious optimization issues.

As dastardly as EA can be, they usually pay attention to optimization. Usually.

EA really isn't the big baddie they once were, but I suppose that's more about other companies sinking than it is them really getting that much better.

 

[SniperHF]

Finally found a game that actually makes me need more than 8GB, just bought another 8.

Oddly enough it's D:OS 2

I could probably close all my background crap and get by but screw that.

 

[Levie]

My PC just died and was hoping I could get some help troubleshooting.

I was playing a game and all of a sudden the computer just turned off without warning and it won't come back on. When I try flicking the switch it the fan doesn't even come on. Thought that was a power supply issue but it's not, I tried a different psu. light on the mobo still comes on (don't know if that means anything).

Anyone have any experience with something similar?

 

[Kestrel]

My PC just died and was hoping I could get some help troubleshooting.

I was playing a game and all of a sudden the computer just turned off without warning and it won't come back on. When I try flicking the switch it the fan doesn't even come on. Thought that was a power supply issue but it's not, I tried a different psu. light on the mobo still comes on (don't know if that means anything).

Anyone have any experience with something similar?

So, when you have the power supply plugged into the motherboard, and everything completely set up, the motherboard has a light that is on - and this is the case with either power supply? When you push the power button, what happens? Nothing? Fans start up, but no display?

 

[SniperHF]

@Levie
I'll think on it some more later, but one thing that surprisingly works sometimes is popping out the CMOS battery.