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I'm in the "I just don't have the time, nor the desire anymore" category. Back in the day I'd happily sit there and put together a desktop from the ground up, obsessing over every component, then spend hours seeing how much I can overclock things while still staying stable, but it's just not a great use of time anymore. So I'm instead in the camp of letting a vendor make decent choices for me, but it seems like I'm likely to get ripped off in some way regardless on the less visible components such as the power supply, the RAM, etc. Even on the PowerSpec line that you recommended, there are some brutal reviews from people claiming that they were using crappy low-grade components. I'm just not sure how to both save time and get an actual quality product in the end here :/ I'm OK with spending a few hundred extra in exchange for saving myself some time, that's not the biggest issue for me. DreadCthulhu fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Sep 8, 2020 |
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Sep 8, 2020 02:02
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The pc parts thread is happy to pick components for you given a budget and resolution, and a local computer shop, assuming you have one, will be happy to put it together for you for probably less than hp/dell/etc charges above cost; once you've done it a few times its actually pretty quick. Or like, the nerdy neighbor kid. But your current build is fine overall. Once we have hard numbers on power draw it'll be easy to see if it's a drop-in kinda deal.
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Sep 8, 2020 02:08
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Some Goon posted:The pc parts thread is happy to pick components for you given a budget and resolution, and a local computer shop, assuming you have one, will be happy to put it together for you for probably less than hp/dell/etc charges above cost; once you've done it a few times its actually pretty quick. Or like, the nerdy neighbor kid. Sounds good. I actually did look up a few people in the area on Thumbtack who are surprisingly affordable. I might be able to work something out with them and see if they can do the manual labor. Just got to make sure I bitlocker every drive in case I have to leave it with them, or just pull out the drive altogether before sending it in.
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Sep 8, 2020 02:19
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Generally what I've learned from watching YouTube videos is that most prebuilts suck somehow. They may not enabling the proper ram speeds, Stuff may not be fully connected or connected poorly or sometime simple stuff like boot drives not properly set in the bios. So you end up with a prebuilt and still have to chase poo poo down. The help me build a pc thread will help you pick the parts based on need and budget. building doesn't take more than 1-2hrs and you now have something you know was done right. It took me about 2 or so hours from getting my toolkit and knife opened and opening up the boxes to logging in. This was with the added effort of raiding my old PC of parts (drives ram fans psu,. basically all that was left was one empty ssd and the Mobo/cpu).
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Sep 8, 2020 02:59
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I am looking for a simple USB "switcher" to share a USB DAC between two PCs. Only one at a time needs to use it. I was thinking of something like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B074TYDJK2/ref=ox_sc_act_title_4?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1. The problem with this particular unit is it appears to make 5V avaliable on all three USB ports at all times if any device is connected. Which appears to damage some devices. Anyone know of a USB "switch" that for sure doesn't have this flaw?
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Sep 8, 2020 07:21
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https://www.amazon.com/HyperX-Amp-S...ps%2C160&sr=8-3 any better suggestions to beef up a decent set of PC headphones?
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Sep 8, 2020 13:00
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Statutory Ape posted:https://www.amazon.com/HyperX-Amp-S...ps%2C160&sr=8-3 Are you just looking for more volume?
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Sep 8, 2020 17:21
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Statutory Ape posted:https://www.amazon.com/HyperX-Amp-S...ps%2C160&sr=8-3 You can get a really good USB DAC that works better. I’d ask the headphones thread though. They are really knowledgeable. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3563521
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Sep 8, 2020 17:34
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VelociBacon posted:Are you just looking for more volume? Yeah p much. One of my computers gives a way better experience as far as volume. Its for gaming mostly I figured that might be a cheap way to uh..equalize the experience lol
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Sep 8, 2020 17:41
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My Q300L micro atx case is a little notorious for having bad airflow so that’s what I’m working on before upgrading my GPU to a 3080. As it stands I have 2 140 noctuas in the front with 2 120s on the roof and a single 120 in the back. Am I wasting power and space with the top-front exhaust fan? Am I just exhausting fresh air? Another consideration is the new bottom to top cooling of the 3080 FE I’ll be trying to snag. Here’s a pic! I’ve since dusted.  Look at how small the airflow holes are drilled. Should I just give up and get the Fractal C mini?
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Sep 8, 2020 17:45
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Rolo posted:Am I wasting power and space with the top-front exhaust fan? Am I just exhausting fresh air? Things might change if you install a 3080 FE but with your current GPU I believe the answer is yes.
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Sep 8, 2020 17:49
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Rolo posted:Look at how small the airflow holes are drilled. Should I just give up and get the Fractal C mini? Oh the memories. 20 years ago I had an Inwin Q500 with similar small holes and I cut of the metal trying to reduce noise. Amazing that still today manufacturers are trying to get us to accept that kind of setup.
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Sep 8, 2020 17:54
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Incessant Excess posted:Things might change if you install a 3080 FE but with your current GPU I believe the answer is yes. I can’t find it right now but there is a GN video about this and they suggest not using top fans.
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Sep 8, 2020 17:58
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Saukkis posted:Oh the memories. 20 years ago I had an Inwin Q500 with similar small holes and I cut of the metal trying to reduce noise. Amazing that still today manufacturers are trying to get us to accept that kind of setup. I know. I love everything about this case but that. As it stands I can run my most intense games and the max recorded HWMonitor temps for both the cpu and GPU end up being about 79-81 for short bursts. I haven’t done any benchmarking since turning the front 120s into 140s because I’m out of town. I feel like it’s not going to be awful but I don’t know how much a top of the line card is going to add to ambient case temp and if I need to start planning upgrades. Rolo fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Sep 8, 2020 |
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Sep 8, 2020 18:03
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Rolo posted:Look at how small the airflow holes are drilled. Should I just give up and get the Fractal C mini? Check out the Fractal Meshify C if you're into good airflow. It's still a quiet case. Personally, I have 2 NF-A14 PWM for input in the front and 1 NF-S12A PWM going out in the back.
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Sep 8, 2020 18:08
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Rolo posted:My Q300L micro atx case is a little notorious for having bad airflow so that’s what I’m working on before upgrading my GPU to a 3080. Benchmark it and see if you notice a difference.
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Sep 8, 2020 18:22
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I'm constantly amazed by the lack of dust my Fractal case lets in. The filters are extremely good it would seem. The case is ~40 lbs empty so I make an effort to not move or open it, but I do at minimum once or twice a year. Didn't even need to spray anything out last time 
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Sep 8, 2020 18:30
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I’ve been benchmarking by just playing games. What’s a good program that will stress both the CPU and GPU at the same time?
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Sep 8, 2020 18:30
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Flight Simulator 2020
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Sep 8, 2020 18:34
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Assassin's Creed games are pretty poorly optimized on both the CPU and GPU side.
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Sep 8, 2020 18:37
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Been like 10 years since I benchmarked on Windows but Prime95 and https://www.geeks3d.com/furmark/ are the things I remember being good. They do CPU and GPU separately, maybe 3dmark is good for testing realistic gaming workloads?
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Sep 8, 2020 18:44
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Rolo posted:I’ve been benchmarking by just playing games. What’s a good program that will stress both the CPU and GPU at the same time? Free and able to stress a multitude of components: https://www.ocbase.com/
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Sep 8, 2020 20:21
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What do people use to benchmark their builds in a way that helps them understand if given their hardware, it's performing anywhere close to optimally? Context: I was looking at Linus' video on rating premade PC vendors and he was doing something to benchmark the pc under load and see if the CPU was turboing up correctly, if the GPU was doing its thing, if the cooling was correctly reacting to the higher temperature generation and so forth. Please advise.
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Sep 9, 2020 02:38
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DreadCthulhu posted:What do people use to benchmark their builds in a way that helps them understand if given their hardware, it's performing anywhere close to optimally? Context: I was looking at Linus' video on rating premade PC vendors and he was doing something to benchmark the pc under load and see if the CPU was turboing up correctly, if the GPU was doing its thing, if the cooling was correctly reacting to the higher temperature generation and so forth. Please advise. Short answer is whatever game you're playing, if it's hitting the expected fps given the parts reviews than it's fine. You can use hwinfo or afterburner to keep an eye on temps. With prebuilts the question is 'did they gently caress something up somewhere' given that it's supposed to be an out-of-the-box experience. If you built your own, installed the cooler properly, and turned on XMP, it's not really something to worry about.
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Sep 9, 2020 03:12
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DreadCthulhu posted:What do people use to benchmark their builds in a way that helps them understand if given their hardware, it's performing anywhere close to optimally? Context: I was looking at Linus' video on rating premade PC vendors and he was doing something to benchmark the pc under load and see if the CPU was turboing up correctly, if the GPU was doing its thing, if the cooling was correctly reacting to the higher temperature generation and so forth. Please advise. Whenever I complete a new build, I put the Unigine Heaven benchmark on loop overnight with MSI Afterburner (using the big edition of the default MSI Afterburner v2 skin) running. The default Afterburner skin gives a nice graph that you detach and have it show GPU/CPU core temp, speed, fan speed, etc. I probably don't need to let Heaven run overnight to check stability tbh; an hour or so is probably enough lol.
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Sep 9, 2020 03:22
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Does anyone know roughly how little power draw I can get away with on a e5-2407v2, ddr3 32gb, 4xSATA SSD? I've forgotten all basic physics regarding volt / watt * amp. It's a server that's going into somewhere with power constraints and I entirely forgot to measure this before shipping it.
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Sep 9, 2020 04:13
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Biowarfare posted:Does anyone know roughly how little power draw I can get away with on a e5-2407v2, ddr3 32gb, 4xSATA SSD? I've forgotten all basic physics regarding volt / watt * amp. It's a server that's going into somewhere with power constraints and I entirely forgot to measure this before shipping it. a PSU calculator says that that's probably going to draw between 200 to 270 watts assuming a near-full load on the CPU. You can get away with less if the CPU isn't running that loaded all the time - dropping the utilization to 50% says it's going to draw about 180 watts.
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Sep 9, 2020 04:33
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gradenko_2000 posted:a PSU calculator says that that's probably going to draw between 200 to 270 watts assuming a near-full load on the CPU. You can get away with less if the CPU isn't running that loaded all the time - dropping the utilization to 50% says it's going to draw about 180 watts. Any cheap CPU (E3? E5 ending in L?) or similar I can do to drop power load? Or reduce to 2 drives/half RAM? I have a rough cap of 0.5A 208V, and it isn't going to be using heavy CPU at all.
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Sep 9, 2020 04:35
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Biowarfare posted:Any cheap CPU (E3? E5 ending in L?) or similar I can do to drop power load? Or reduce to 2 drives/half RAM? I have a rough cap of 0.5A 208V, and it isn't going to be using heavy CPU at all. Go here: http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/ Filter the list to just LGA1356 (I assume that's the socket for your motherboard, since that's what the E5-2407v2 uses) The list should be cut down to just four URLs: E5-1400, E5-1400v2, E5-2400, and E5-2400v2 Go into one of them, like E5-2400v2: http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Xeon/TYPE-Xeon%20E5-2400%20v2.html Filter the "Power" heading to "Medium". That should give you a list of CPUs suffixed with an L. All of those have a TDP of 50 watts, as opposed to the E5-2407v2 with a TDP of 80 watts. Not sure what's cheap/available for you, but for example if I use an E5-2418Lv2 in the PSU calculator, with 50% utilization and everything else you listed, the load wattage drops to just over 160 watts. If you also cut the RAM from four sticks of 8 GB DDR3 to two sticks, the load wattage drops to just over 150 watts.
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Sep 9, 2020 04:47
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Anyone got a rec on a good USB audio adapter? I have one of these already and it rules -- I wanted another but they're discontinued. https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/atr2usb I know there's a USB-C model of this now but I want to stick with USB3.0 for this.
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Sep 9, 2020 19:22
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How do I gauge if I can use non powered USB hub, or need to go for powered? And will USB hubs play nice with a USB extension. (Nothing extreme, maybe a few feet?) I just got a sit-stand desk and a USB hub might save me trouble by letting me have one long USB cord rather then buying a bunch. But for what I'm hooking up to it, im not clear if I need a powered or unpowered hub. I understand it comes down to power draw, and I'd probably be hooking the following up: Mouse, Iphone charger, USB mic (Snowball), possibly a keyboard, and a wacom tablet.
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Sep 9, 2020 21:07
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I'd definitely get a powered one just based on the microphone and the charger
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Sep 9, 2020 21:37
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Anyone got a recommendation in that case? (Preferably one I can get from amazon.ca) Amazon basics one good enough?
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Sep 9, 2020 21:48
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Those are good, just make sure it's one of the USB 3 ones.
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Sep 9, 2020 21:50
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xtal posted:Those are good, just make sure it's one of the USB 3 ones.
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Sep 9, 2020 21:54
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Oxyclean posted:Apparently they don't have them stocked. (At least, the amazon basics, I'm looking at 40$ for another brand 3.0 hub vs 26$ for the amazon 2.0) Is 3.0 going to be a big deal if I'm not hooking up external drives to it? Probably not, but maybe, and you might want to plug in one or a camera in the future.
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Sep 9, 2020 21:56
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Oxyclean posted:Anyone got a recommendation in that case? (Preferably one I can get from amazon.ca) Amazon basics one good enough? I can vouch for this one. It's pretty great: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0797NWDCB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I'm using the 7 + 3 version.
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Sep 10, 2020 01:03
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Any suggestions for a KVM switch? I've got a PC and a laptop that I want to switch between for keyboard/monitor/mouse, but I don't wanna have to unplug and replug cables 'n poo poo. Both HDMI and DisplayPort/MiniDP would be ideal, since it's a PC and a Macbook.
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Sep 10, 2020 02:56
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Pollyanna posted:Any suggestions for a KVM switch? I've got a PC and a laptop that I want to switch between for keyboard/monitor/mouse, but I don't wanna have to unplug and replug cables 'n poo poo. Both HDMI and DisplayPort/MiniDP would be ideal, since it's a PC and a Macbook. Most cheap KVMs have a limited feature set and kind of suck. Level1Techs has been working to produce better quality (and pricier) KVMs, but a lot of them are sold out due to the mass move to WFH. I don't think I've ever seen a KVM that can handle different display types simultaneously, you'd probably need adapters. If you really need one soon you can roll the dice with whatever's highly rated on amazon but I rarely see them with no complaints. This IOGear for example has a lot of not stellar reviews but it will probably work but just have some kind of issues: https://smile.amazon.com/IOGEAR-2-Port-DisplayPort-Cable-Switch/dp/B076ZDQDN4/ For the price of a lot of that KVM stuff, I'd consider a monitor, kb, and mouse for the laptop with a USB-C dock so it's just one plug, but I'm an ur-goon with 7 monitors on my desks.
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Sep 10, 2020 04:01
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Oh, I forgot to mention that I do have a CalDigit TS3 Plus USB-C dock that I plug the laptop into. I believe it actually has DisplayPort out, which I think is the same as my PC, so the different display types shouldn't be an issue, right? I think. Does that make it easier, or should I stick with the plugging/unplugging plan?
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Sep 10, 2020 14:30
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