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

[SniperHF]

In what way would it work much better than the USB Adapter I currently use? For what it's worth, it seems like the past couple days there might have been issues anyway with my provider.

Performance wise, if you are happy where you are at probably no appreciable difference at all as long as your USB adapter is USB 3.0 and plugged into a 3.0 port.

If you are having problems and think it's the adapter then there's only really two ways to check it, a new adapter or try another device (laptop, phone) on the wifi and see if it ever disconnects.

Generally speaking I'd be more likely to blame the router before the adapter though.
If you are losing internet access that doesn't necessarily mean you are losing your network connection, so your Wifi could be working perfectly fine if your internet is down. You can check that by looking at the network panel on the start menu (by the clock usually) or just pull up your router's configuration page in a browser.

 

[Kestrel]

It's installed in basically the same way as a video card.

If this is your board:
View attachment 127291

The green one is where you video card should be. If it will fit you could put the PCIe wireless card in the one I boxed in orange.

But for airflow reasons I would put the card in the PCIe port I boxed in blue.
The blue one is an x16 slot but x1 cards like the wireless card work just fine in them.

The bottom 2 ports are regular PCI ports, which are different.

They're still putting out boards with PCI? YUCK! Shouldn't be a surprise considering there's still plenty of VGA and PS/2 ports, along with the occasional serial port still.

Legacy blah blah, I know... I still hate them.

 

[SniperHF]

I wish I had a serial port, then I wouldn't have to use this stupid USB to serial adapter for consoling into Cisco stuff.

 

[Kestrel]

I wish I had a serial port, then I wouldn't have to use this stupid USB to serial adapter for consoling into Cisco stuff.

Haha - you're very much the reason I threw in the line about legacy stuff - I realized who I was quoting, and figured if anyone would have a want/need for legacy connectors, it would be you.

 

[SniperHF]

This isn't new but I just heard of it, Opera put out a little cryptomining hijack test for browsers:
Cryptojacking Test

So you can find out if your browser is vulnerable to sites sucking up your computer resources in a distributed network to make them phat crypto wealth

 

[Kestrel]

This isn't new but I just heard of it, Opera put out a little cryptomining hijack test for browsers:
Cryptojacking Test

So you can find out if your browser is vulnerable to sites sucking up your computer resources in a distributed network to make them phat crypto wealth

Not that Opera is doing this, I think they are trustworthy - but if I were a less savory person, I would create such a site - in order to cryptojack all the rubes that came by to test their browsers

 

[Sarcastic]

Performance wise, if you are happy where you are at probably no appreciable difference at all as long as your USB adapter is USB 3.0 and plugged into a 3.0 port.

If you are having problems and think it's the adapter then there's only really two ways to check it, a new adapter or try another device (laptop, phone) on the wifi and see if it ever disconnects.

Generally speaking I'd be more likely to blame the router before the adapter though.
If you are losing internet access that doesn't necessarily mean you are losing your network connection, so your Wifi could be working perfectly fine if your internet is down. You can check that by looking at the network panel on the start menu (by the clock usually) or just pull up your router's configuration page in a browser.

I'm thinking it's half and half? Sometimes the router is bad but the rest of the house still has internet access. It's only my desktop that gets completely knocked out of action. I might want to replace both even eventually but I'm guessing at this point the issues from the week were just temporary.

 

[SniperHF]

2600k installed and running. time to bench

Bit the bullet on a a 2500K > 3770K upgrade from ebay. $173 US which is about the same price as a R5 1500x. Though if it works out I'll be selling my 2500k which should get me some of that back.

Now to figure out if I need to delid the bugger or not. I usually only run 24/7 OCs at stock volts so I'm hoping it won't get too hot.

 

[Dick Sledge]

So I finally broke down and purchased a gpu for my first pc build.

I ended up getting an MSI rx580 8gb armor mk2 that was on sale at newegg. Also picked up an additional 8gb of ram to total 16.

I went to my case to clear out the slots for it and realized how piss poor my cable management was. So had to clear that out. But overall I'm excited.

 

[SniperHF]

I ended up getting an MSI rx580 8gb armor mk2 that was on sale at newegg. Also picked up an additional 8gb of ram to total 16.

It's a good card, you'll like it. Not gonna set the world on fire performance wise but plays everything pretty well.

 

[Dick Sledge]

It's a good card, you'll like it. Not gonna set the world on fire performance wise but plays everything pretty well.

Trust me if I could get a 1070 or Vega in the $300 I would have jumped all over that. But I'm sure they'd be sold out at that price before I ever found out.

I was debating between the 1060 6gb and rx580 8gb. Chose the 580 for more vram and the fact I have a freesync monitor.

One question I do have though. Do I need to do anything special or in the bios to get my pc to use the gpu over the integrated? Can they run in tandem? Can I switch them back and forth when I'm gaming to not gaming?

Dumb questions I'm sure just ignorant in that case.

 

[SniperHF]

One question I do have though. Do I need to do anything special or in the bios to get my pc to use the gpu over the integrated? Can they run in tandem? Can I switch them back and forth when I'm gaming to not gaming?

Just installing the card should do it, though you'll also have to move your monitor cable to the output on the card.

I believe you can keep both enabled (Dependent on your motherboard settings, check the BIOS) but it's not terribly useful switching between them. Usually the reason you'd want to keep the integrated enabled is for certain features the integrated chip has like quick sync for video encoding. But it wouldn't save you any power as your card would still be running.

Also video cards are pretty low power at idle anyway.

 

[Dick Sledge]

Just installing the card should do it, though you'll also have to move your monitor cable to the output on the card.

I believe you can keep both enabled (Dependent on your motherboard settings, check the BIOS) but it's not terribly useful switching between them. Usually the reason you'd want to keep the integrated enabled is for certain features the integrated chip has like quick sync for video encoding. But it wouldn't save you any power as your card would still be running.

Also video cards are pretty low power at idle anyway.

Thanks for the info. I honestly figured it was as easy as using the gpu hdmi. Doesn't hurt to ask though. There aren't many things I would want to use the integrated for anyways either.

I have an 8350k that currently runs very cool on the small cooler master air cooler I have. It's only an 80mm fan. I'm assuming I'd probably have to upgrade that as well if there's going to be a heavier load while gaming.

I was thinking about getting an rgb cooler anyways.

 

[SniperHF]

Thanks for the info. I honestly figured it was as easy as using the gpu hdmi. Doesn't hurt to ask though. There aren't many things I would want to use the integrated for anyways either.

I have an 8350k that currently runs very cool on the small cooler master air cooler I have. It's only an 80mm fan. I'm assuming I'd probably have to upgrade that as well if there's going to be a heavier load while gaming.

I was thinking about getting an rgb cooler anyways.

In case I was mixed up, just for the purposes of installing your new card it is basically that simple. Card in PCIe slot, HDMI into the card. The going into the BIOS thing was only if you want to run both simultaneously.

Unless you have relatively poor airflow I don't think the addition of the GPU and gaming will affect your CPU temps much. Cooler is better of course but at stock clocks it probably won't matter much.

 

[Dick Sledge]

In case I was mixed up, just for the purposes of installing your new card it is basically that simple. Card in PCIe slot, HDMI into the card. The going into the BIOS thing was only if you want to run both simultaneously.

Unless you have relatively poor airflow I don't think the addition of the GPU and gaming will affect your CPU temps much. Cooler is better of course but at stock clocks it probably won't matter much.

That's good to know. I'll keep track and see how the temps go. I don't plan on overclocking anytime soon either.

 

[SniperHF]

Always a little disconcerting when your "new" CPU crashes in prime 95 after just a minute