PC Building Guide and Discussion #13

[Osprey]

I haven't really found anything that I want to play that makes me want something more than my 480 yet. Had it almost 3 years.

I think the longest I ever had a card was my 9800 GTX, about 4 years, purchased on first release. Beast of a card.

I remember when, back in the late 90s, top-end 3D accelerators were only $100-150 and it was practical to buy a new one every year. I bought a Verite 1000 in 1996, a Verite 2100 in 1997 and a Riva TNT in 1998. Of course, you almost had to upgrade every year because gaming graphics were taking major leaps each year and you needed to keep up. Nowadays, graphics have stabilized so much that games released 5 years ago don't look all that worse than current games, current games are usually quite playable on old cards after lowering settings that don't seem to have much of any impact on graphics quality, card prices are a little ridiculous and people are waiting longer to upgrade. I miss the days of looking forward to each new graphics chip (because I knew that it'd be cheap enough that I could buy it at release), being able to justify buying it and staying on the cutting edge.

 

[guinness]

I remember when, back in the late 90s, top-end 3D accelerators were only $100-150 and it was practical to buy a new one every year. I bought a Verite 1000 in 1996, a Verite 2100 in 1997 and a Riva TNT in 1998. Of course, you almost had to upgrade every year because gaming graphics were taking major leaps each year and you needed to keep up. Nowadays, graphics have stabilized so much that games released 5 years ago don't look all that worse than current games, current games are usually quite playable on old cards after lowering settings that don't seem to have much of any impact on graphics quality, card prices are a little ridiculous and people are waiting longer to upgrade. I miss the days of looking forward to each new graphics chip (because I knew that it'd be cheap enough that I could buy it at release), being able to justify buying it and staying on the cutting edge.

CPUs are similar too. I remember ~20 years ago, when I first started college, and I thought I was hot shit with my Pentium II 300...by the time I graduated, I think I had a Athlon XP something. I had one those overclockable Celerons in-between too, now my phone and tablet are more powerful, have more storage, and easier to use.

Moore's law meant something in my day! Now, even with adult me money, I can't really be arsed to update my PC, it just doesn't move my needle anymore...in that regard, I think gobs of RAM and SSDs are a godsend, even my 2012 MBP runs decently well still because of that.

 

[Osprey]

CPUs are similar too. I remember ~20 years ago, when I first started college, and I thought I was hot **** with my Pentium II 300...by the time I graduated, I think I had a Athlon XP something. I had one those overclockable Celerons in-between too, now my phone and tablet are more powerful, have more storage, and easier to use.

I had the Celeron 300A around that time. Is that the one that you had? That was the most amazing CPU that I've ever owned. It was easily overclockable from 300Mhz to 450Mhz (i.e. a 50% overclock), which is just patently absurd. Basically, for only $150, you could get performance out of it that was equal to a Pentium II 450, which cost $500 more and was Intel's fastest processor at the time. I'm not sure that I've ever geeked out more and been more proud of my enthusiast skills than I was in learning about, buying and successfully overclocking the 300A.



That's the only time that I ever bought a Celeron, because no enthusiast bought them, but the 300A and 333A were different from every other Celeron and were practically that in name only. For the last 20 years, it's been hard to be very satisfied with 5% or even 10% overclocks on every other CPU when I fondly remember pulling 50% with my 300A.

 

[SniperHF]

Slot 1/2/a had awful cooler designs though
But they didn't get all that hot back then either.

I actually chopped one up to make a cooler for a Voodoo 3.

 

[Zodiac]

i'm still using an i5 760 @ 3.8ghz. the thing is like 1o years old and when paired with a decent video card, it still runs games quite well.
i'll probably upgrade to one of the new Ryzens in the coming months ...but that old i5 cpu is a workhorse.

 

[SniperHF]

It probably holds you back more than you'd think, the minimum FPS numbers in particular.
PCIe 2.0 only is also worth 5% or so by itself.

 

[Zodiac]

ya its a bottleneck for sure, but im only targeting 60fps ...and i guess the games i've been trying out lately are kinda old, too ...ie, dark souls 3, gtav, dark souls remastered. those games have been running very good fps @ max detail and 1440p with the vega56. tried out a little Far Cry Primal and Battlefield 1, too ... and both of those seem to run good.

i'll have to try out The Division 2 and Witcher 3 ...that might make things a little more interesting.

did you see the 'potato masher' video?

he runs a i5 750 @ 3.7ghz with a gtx 1080 ....benchmarks a few games, and the old cpu still manages ...but yeah, the bottleneck is there.

probably before Xmas, i'll go for the full upgrade ...grab a new Ryzen cpu, motherboard, ram, new case ...etc.

 

[SniperHF]

Witcher 3

Witcher 3 wasn't helped much at all by my upgrade from a 2500k to a 3770k, so probably not. It's mostly 4 threaded. Dunno about Div 2.

I mainly got it for Kingdom Come Deliverance which kicks 4 threaded CPUs asses.

 

[Zodiac]

yeah i heard that game was pretty demanding. it's part of the new humble bundle monthly, too ...so i'll be trying it out soon.
Humble Monthly

i'll go in with low expectations ...maybe i'll be pleasantly surprised that way ...somehow. heh.

 

[WickedWrister]

What's the deal with these new AMD grapics cards? Are they as goood as advertised?

The last PC I built was in high school back in 2007-08 to play Half Life 2, Far Cry, etc. Life and college got in the way of me building another PC but my love of gaming never disappeared. Now that I've got a bit more disposable income, I'd like to build another gaming PC built for todays generation of games.
Back in the day I want to say I had an Intel 2.6 ghz processor, ATI Radeon, 2 GB RAM. Dual core GPU's were just becoming a thing.
From the news I've been reading, has AMD just come out with a new line of CPU's and GPU's? Does anyone have a decent build list (including peripheral devices like monitor) for somewhere around ~$1250

 

[SeidoN]

has AMD just come out with a new line of CPU's and GPU's?

Ryzen 3 has just come out and looks to be quite beastly for the price

they also just released the RX 5700 and 5700XT GPUs which appear to be quite good. they are benching as good as the new 2060 Super and 2070 Super respectively for a bit less cash

 

[SniperHF]

What's the deal with these new AMD grapics cards? Are they as goood as advertised?

The last PC I built was in high school back in 2007-08 to play Half Life 2, Far Cry, etc. Life and college got in the way of me building another PC but my love of gaming never disappeared. Now that I've got a bit more disposable income, I'd like to build another gaming PC built for todays generation of games.
Back in the day I want to say I had an Intel 2.6 ghz processor, ATI Radeon, 2 GB RAM. Dual core GPU's were just becoming a thing.
From the news I've been reading, has AMD just come out with a new line of CPU's and GPU's? Does anyone have a decent build list (including peripheral devices like monitor) for somewhere around ~$1250

I'm not too up on the new CPUs yet, dunno if the value would be there with a $1250 budget that needs monitor+KB+mouse. Do you want like a normal 1080p monitor 21-24"(at this budget, probably) and a mostly regular mouse/kb or fancy "gamer" type mouse/kb with programmable buttons and such.

Also USD or CA?

yeah i heard that game was pretty demanding. it's part of the new humble bundle monthly, too ...so i'll be trying it out soon.
Humble Monthly

i'll go in with low expectations ...maybe i'll be pleasantly surprised that way ...somehow. heh.

I played about 25% of the game with a quad core, it's definitely playable. Certain settings in the options can be turned way down to help the CPU. In the biggest cities the lack of more cores hurts. In the open fields it's mostly the same.

 

[sabresfan129103]

I'll probably upgrade my GPU around the time Cyberpunk comes out. I'm still rocking a GTX 780 which does surprisingly well still. Got my 4790k OC'd to 4.5, and I only game at 1080p, so I'm thinking a card along the lines of a RTX 2060 or a 1660 ti will be good for me. Maybe even an rtx 2060 super.

 

[Blueblood9]

so just got back from microcenter and looks like im going with the new gen Ryzen 5 3600x at 250 vs the last gen R7 2600 at 220. Ive been asking a bunch of friends in the know about this kind of thing (computers) and they say the price for performance from the new gen Ryzen processors are redonkulous

and ended up completly changed my build and got everything (minus the case for 800)

 

[SniperHF]

Ryzen 5 3600x at 250 vs the last gen R7 2600 at 220.

That's probably the right call, the 3xxx chips actually have good single threaded performance to go along with the multi core performance.

I've seen the older r7's a bit cheaper than that, maybe on a super tight budget I'd consider it but it always bugged the hell out of me as someone who plays older games frequently that new AMD cpus had worse single threaded performance than Intels from 2012.

Now they are fully competitive or outright better depending on the price bracket.

 

[Blueblood9]

That's probably the right call, the 3xxx chips actually have good single threaded performance to go along with the multi core performance.

I've seen the older r7's a bit cheaper than that, maybe on a super tight budget I'd consider it but it always bugged the hell out of me as someone who plays older games frequently that new AMD cpus had worse single threaded performance than Intels from 2012.

Now they are fully competitive or outright better depending on the price bracket.

i was talking to the guy at microcenter and he said the new gen AMD;s have caught up with intel and there is no difference in performance anymore.

Now all i need to do is find a case that looks cool for 70 bones.

 

[Blueblood9]

can someone tell me what the major difference is between the new Ryzen 5 3600 and the 3600x?

 

[SeidoN]

can someone tell me what the major difference is between the new Ryzen 5 3600 and the 3600x?

higher clock speed and better bundled cooler

 

[Blueblood9]

higher clock speed and better bundled cooler

is that worth the extra 50 bucks?

 

[SeidoN]

is that worth the extra 50 bucks?

Nope. You can overclock that 200mhz yourself easily and you can get a better aftermarket cooler for less than 50 bucks

 

[SniperHF]

is that worth the extra 50 bucks?

Looking at the performance, no. It's not a terrible value or anything but you could get a way better cooling spending that $50 separately.

Or just keep the money and not notice the difference anyway

If you're overclocking get a 3600 + a Scythe Fuma (little more than $50, but worth it)
Otherwise just leave it with the stock heatsink.

 

[Blueblood9]

Looking at the performance, no. It's not a terrible value or anything but you could get a way better cooling spending that $50 separately.

Or just keep the money and not notice the difference anyway

If you're overclocking get a 3600 + a Scythe Fuma (little more than $50, but worth it)
Otherwise just leave it with the stock heatsink.

thanks. Im gonna go stock for now because i think i wanna water cool it eventually.

Still having issues finding a case i like

Ill post my build once i buy all the pieces

 

[SniperHF]

Still having issues finding a case i like

Well if your future plans include water cooling (if you aren't ocing more than the previously mentioned 200mhz I wouldn't bother with water) you'll need to pick a case with the space for a radiator.

Do you want a mid tower, full tower, super mid (kinda between a full/mid), micro atx?
Open or closed look.
Do you need a 5.25 bay?

 

[Spawn]

Thoughts:

https://www.amazon.ca/CyberpowerPC-..._DLandingS_PC_b917fda1_12&smid=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB

Not sure I'm getting a better deal for under $1K?

I pop in here once every 6 months or so wanting to get a new computer but always chicken out lol.

 

[SniperHF]

Thoughts:

https://www.amazon.ca/CyberpowerPC-..._DLandingS_PC_b917fda1_12&smid=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB

Not sure I'm getting a better deal for under $1K?

I pop in here once every 6 months or so wanting to get a new computer but always chicken out lol.

SSD is a little small but it's a nice package in CDN.