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Khizan
Jul 30, 2013


Two questions:

1) What would a good CPU cooler be for a 3600 in the Fractal Design Nano-S? I'm not intending on overclocking, so the Wraith Stealth it ships with would probably be fine, but I'd prefer something a bit quieter. Fractal Design website says maximum height of 162mm.

2) What's the current go-to recommendation for a graphics card for 1080p with reasonably high settings in the sub-$500 range? I've got an RX580 right now. According to the website, maximum length is 315mm, maximum recommended thickness is 39mm. I'm assuming a 2060, but maybe some variety of 1660 Super or an AMD card?

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Arrath
Apr 14, 2011


My dear old mom has finally reached out to me for advice for a new computer instead of buying another HP junkpile.

She is envisioning this as a web browsing, book researching and writing machine. I think, besides wiping my recently replaced desktop and handing it down (deff a power hungry overkill for this use case), that I'd be hard pressed to throw together a bare bones machine for less than this:

https://www.amazon.com/Acer-TC-885-UA92-Desktop-i5-9400-802-11AC/dp/B088X29HF6

While maybe throwing in a couple tb HDD for extra space, as that is her number one bullet point with all the research and reference materials she will have. Opinions?

Umbreon
May 21, 2011

nitsuga posted:

A 3600 or 3700x are good options now. I can’t imagine anything cheaper would be worth the upgrade nor anything more expensive depending on your needs and budget. Zen 3 will be out soon though, but the chips are more expensive and who knows what will actually be available.

I'm reading a review on the 3700x and apparently while it lags behind intel's stuff for gaming by a 10% or so gap, the gap becomes nonexistent at 1440/4K. As I run everything at 1440p on my 2080 super, this should basically be a shoe-in of an upgrade correct?

I guess the only thing to do now is wait for the Zen 3 and see if that's worth a buy instead, but I'm wondering if it'll wind up going the way of the RTX 3070.

denereal visease
Nov 27, 2002

"Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own."

Thanks DrDork, sean10mm, and CaptainPsyko; just wanted to cross check.

Really stoked to see Noctua finally release so many chromax coolers. Copped a U9S chromax for my partner to go with an SF600 for the aforementioned 3700X/3070 build.

Khizan posted:

1) What would a good CPU cooler be for a 3600 in the Fractal Design Nano-S? I'm not intending on overclocking, so the Wraith Stealth it ships with would probably be fine, but I'd prefer something a bit quieter. Fractal Design website says maximum height of 162mm.
The Noctua NH-U12S chromax.Black would be your best bet if it's not outside of your price range. I believe the Scythe Fuma 2 is very popular as well, not 100% sure if it would fit.

nitsuga
Jan 1, 2007

Umbreon posted:

I'm reading a review on the 3700x and apparently while it lags behind intel's stuff for gaming by a 10% or so gap, the gap becomes nonexistent at 1440/4K. As I run everything at 1440p on my 2080 super, this should basically be a shoe-in of an upgrade correct?

I guess the only thing to do now is wait for the Zen 3 and see if that's worth a buy instead, but I'm wondering if it'll wind up going the way of the RTX 3070.

I think for now that’d be a good combo. A 2080 should hold its own for a while still, and you can upgrade that when good GPUs are a little less scarce.

Toxic Fart Syndrome
Jul 2, 2006

*hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.




...the meter only goes to 3.6...

Pork Pro

Khizan posted:

Two questions:

1) What would a good CPU cooler be for a 3600 in the Fractal Design Nano-S? I'm not intending on overclocking, so the Wraith Stealth it ships with would probably be fine, but I'd prefer something a bit quieter. Fractal Design website says maximum height of 162mm.

2) What's the current go-to recommendation for a graphics card for 1080p with reasonably high settings in the sub-$500 range? I've got an RX580 right now. According to the website, maximum length is 315mm, maximum recommended thickness is 39mm. I'm assuming a 2060, but maybe some variety of 1660 Super or an AMD card?

Probably a 1660 Super, but the 3070 is right there for a little more, right at $500. Rumors of the 3060 Ti seem like it may be worth waiting for if you're sticking at 1080p!

Former Human
Oct 15, 2001

I could use some advice on the best way to build a super cheap PC for my niece for Christmas. She mainly wants it to play The Sims 3 and 4, Minecraft, and basic things like that. She already has a Macbook she uses for school and internet stuff.

By "cheap" I mean I barely have a budget, maybe $200. I have an old EVGA GTX 670, Cooler Master 620W PSU, and WD 2TB HDD I can contribute to it, which is decent enough for those games. I actually played Doom 2016 on the 670 before I upgraded to a 1070.

I thought about buying a used i5 Dell Optiplex or similar office computer, adding a SATA SSD and the parts I already mentioned. I don't know if whatever motherboard and case the Optiplexes use would work with a full-size video card, though. I'm just spitballing here. Any help?

spunkshui
Oct 5, 2011



Former Human posted:

I could use some advice on the best way to build a super cheap PC for my niece for Christmas. She mainly wants it to play The Sims 3 and 4, Minecraft, and basic things like that. She already has a Macbook she uses for school and internet stuff.

By "cheap" I mean I barely have a budget, maybe $200. I have an old EVGA GTX 670, Cooler Master 620W PSU, and WD 2TB HDD I can contribute to it, which is decent enough for those games. I actually played Doom 2016 on the 670 before I upgraded to a 1070.

I thought about buying a used i5 Dell Optiplex or similar office computer, adding a SATA SSD and the parts I already mentioned. I don't know if whatever motherboard and case the Optiplexes use would work with a full-size video card, though. I'm just spitballing here. Any help?

Id consider used market with that budget.

She tried running them on the mac?

Toxic Fart Syndrome
Jul 2, 2006

*hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.




...the meter only goes to 3.6...

Pork Pro

Former Human posted:

I could use some advice on the best way to build a super cheap PC for my niece for Christmas. She mainly wants it to play The Sims 3 and 4, Minecraft, and basic things like that. She already has a Macbook she uses for school and internet stuff.

By "cheap" I mean I barely have a budget, maybe $200. I have an old EVGA GTX 670, Cooler Master 620W PSU, and WD 2TB HDD I can contribute to it, which is decent enough for those games. I actually played Doom 2016 on the 670 before I upgraded to a 1070.

I thought about buying a used i5 Dell Optiplex or similar office computer, adding a SATA SSD and the parts I already mentioned. I don't know if whatever motherboard and case the Optiplexes use would work with a full-size video card, though. I'm just spitballing here. Any help?

Here is my stab at it, an interesting puzzle:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock A520M-HDV Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($64.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill RipJaws V 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 CL19 Memory ($28.99 @ Amazon)
Case: DIYPC Solo-T2-BK Black USB 3.0 ATX Mid Tower Case ($29.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $243.94
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-11-01 01:14 EST-0500

Add in the parts you mentioned and voilà!

spunkshui posted:

Id consider used market with that budget.

She tried running them on the mac?

Yeah, realistically I usually get a refurbished laptop for something like this...

FreeKillB
May 13, 2009

Former Human posted:

I could use some advice on the best way to build a super cheap PC for my niece for Christmas. She mainly wants it to play The Sims 3 and 4, Minecraft, and basic things like that. She already has a Macbook she uses for school and internet stuff.

By "cheap" I mean I barely have a budget, maybe $200. I have an old EVGA GTX 670, Cooler Master 620W PSU, and WD 2TB HDD I can contribute to it, which is decent enough for those games. I actually played Doom 2016 on the 670 before I upgraded to a 1070.

I thought about buying a used i5 Dell Optiplex or similar office computer, adding a SATA SSD and the parts I already mentioned. I don't know if whatever motherboard and case the Optiplexes use would work with a full-size video card, though. I'm just spitballing here. Any help?
As a general rule, in that price range 'slap a GPU and SSD in a used optiplex' is about the best you can do. If you can stretch to 250 to 300 then you can probably build something vaguely acceptable from scratch.

There are two issues I can see with your specific plan:

1) You have to be able to physically fit the card in the case. You should preferably use the largest type of optiplex (mini tower), as the small form factor cases are generally only immediately compatible with low profile cards although you do something like using a pcie extension cable. You might still need to remove the drive cage even with the larger models depending on your GPU size, the one spec sheet i could find listed 167mm as the max length for the expansion slot.

2)Power draw. Your power supply is big enough to drive the GPU but you have to be careful to figure out if the motherboard uses the standard 24 pin connector or something nonstandard and proprietary, my cursory googling indicates that Dell used a proprietary 24 pin connector for a long time and you might be able to find an adapter online but it might be a pain. Using the stock PSU will almost certainly rule out your card and require something smaller and more efficient like a 750Ti, 950 or 1050Ti. (looking for ~75W tdp or less)

If you can overcome those issues then it's probably the best you can do for $200 or less. Definitely get a cheap SSD for a boot drive.

Ideally you could theoretically find the right kind of used desktop using a standard (non-proprietary) old but not too old motherboard, then \ just slot in the GPU, PSU, and a cheap SSD.

FreeKillB fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Nov 1, 2020

redpleb
Feb 1, 2013
anyone else order anything from amazon and have really fucky shipping? I ordered a bunch of my new computer parts and it said most of them were going to come in yesterday and now it's saying on the site that the package is "late" because theres been no update on the tracking info since thursday or friday when I ordered everything and it hit me with the ominous "if it doesn't show up by tuesday you can request a refund or replacement". not confidence boosting.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

redpleb posted:

anyone else order anything from amazon and have really fucky shipping? I ordered a bunch of my new computer parts and it said most of them were going to come in yesterday and now it's saying on the site that the package is "late" because theres been no update on the tracking info since thursday or friday when I ordered everything and it hit me with the ominous "if it doesn't show up by tuesday you can request a refund or replacement". not confidence boosting.

I've had that happen to a couple of orders recently. I figure they're having warehouse workers strike and maybe the hurricane damaged infrastructure or something because they're a terrible company to work for. I just take the refund and reorder if I have to. I'm supposed to get some shock cord in today which is a Sunday but they did ship it yesterday so maybe it'll happen. I don't usually care if they can get me something on a Sunday, most of the time it can wait. Prime shipping has been really spotty for a couple of years but the pandemic has made everything worse.

South
Apr 9, 2001

I am the highest paid lifeguard in the world. Love me.
Noticed a lot of questions about upgrading power supplies. This should handle anything you throw at it.

https://www.newegg.com/evga-supernova-850-ga-220-ga-0850-x1-850w/p/1HU-00J7-004V4

EVGA SuperNOVA 850 GA, 80 Plus Gold 850W

$120 after discount and mail in rebate.

It's sold and shipped by Newegg, not a 3rd party, which should make it easier if you have any issues with it.

Tatsuta Age
Apr 21, 2005

so good at being in trouble


My m-audio speakers from (just checked) 2011 are finally on the fritz and I need to replace them. What's the go-to ~$150 ish computer speakers people are getting now?

bus hustler
Mar 14, 2019

Former Human posted:

I could use some advice on the best way to build a super cheap PC for my niece for Christmas. She mainly wants it to play The Sims 3 and 4, Minecraft, and basic things like that. She already has a Macbook she uses for school and internet stuff.

By "cheap" I mean I barely have a budget, maybe $200. I have an old EVGA GTX 670, Cooler Master 620W PSU, and WD 2TB HDD I can contribute to it, which is decent enough for those games. I actually played Doom 2016 on the 670 before I upgraded to a 1070.

I thought about buying a used i5 Dell Optiplex or similar office computer, adding a SATA SSD and the parts I already mentioned. I don't know if whatever motherboard and case the Optiplexes use would work with a full-size video card, though. I'm just spitballing here. Any help?

Where do you live? It'll be a matrix of used parts, the issue is you likely can't swap in the PSU for the optiplex. I'm happy to help, SA-Mart will also be good for CPU/mobo/RAM combos.

Tatsuta Age posted:

My m-audio speakers from (just checked) 2011 are finally on the fritz and I need to replace them. What's the go-to ~$150 ish computer speakers people are getting now?

Edifier R1280T I think is the go to around $100, a few more bucks for BT. I have a perfectly cromulent knockoff from amazon too under the name "singing wood bt25" but i got them for $50, at the regular price just get the real ones

bus hustler fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Nov 1, 2020

Gunder
May 22, 2003

My current 1080p gaming system has an Intel i5-6600k CPU, and I'm wondering if it's not starting to show its age a little with newer titles. I have it paired with an RTX 2060 and 16 gigs of ram. Would a Ryzen 7 3700X be a reasonable upgrade? How're the Wraith Prism fans that come bundled with those CPUs? I have a Cryorig H7 paired with my current chip that I could possibly reuse?

I'm looking to eventually get a larger 1440p display, and maybe an RTX 3070 Nvidia sometime early next year.

Toxic Fart Syndrome
Jul 2, 2006

*hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.




...the meter only goes to 3.6...

Pork Pro

Gunder posted:

My current 1080p gaming system has an Intel i5-6600k CPU, and I'm wondering if it's not starting to show its age a little with newer titles. I have it paired with an RTX 2060 and 16 gigs of ram. Would a Ryzen 7 3700X be a reasonable upgrade? How're the Wraith Prism fans that come bundled with those CPUs? I have a Cryorig H7 paired with my current chip that I could possibly reuse?

I'm looking to eventually get a larger 1440p display, and maybe an RTX 3070 Nvidia sometime early next year.

Looks like it would be a good upgrade, but at this point I'd wait for Zen3 which will be a better upgrade:

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2655?vs=2665

ShakespearesWilly
Aug 23, 2013
Building a PC for the first time. Is this acceptable?

What country are you in?
UK

What are you using the system for? Web and Office? Gaming? Video or photo editing? Professional creative or scientific computing?
Gaming, some video and photo editing

What's your budget? We usually specify for just the computer itself (plus Windows), but if you also need monitor/mouse/whatever, just say so.
£800

If you're gaming, what is your monitor resolution / refresh rate? How fancy do you want your graphics, from “it runs” to “Ultra preset as fast as possible”?
Mid range?

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/NK37TJ

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£179.00 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard (£156.98 @ Aria PC)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£61.49 @ Box Limited)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£51.68 @ Currys PC World Business)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 6 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card (£199.96 @ More Computers)
Case: Corsair 275R Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case (£65.90 @ More Computers)
Power Supply: Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£99.99 @ AWD-IT)
Total: £815.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-11-01 18:13 GMT+0000

Dial M for MURDER
Sep 22, 2008
Another dumb question. I got my EVGA 3080 and I want to slap it in my current set up while I wait for the rest of the parts to arrive and Zen 3 to be available. Using a power calculator it says at load my computer will use 477 watts, and I currently have a 500w corsair psu.
Am I ok to run it like this for a couple weeks or am I risking damage or anything?

spunkshui
Oct 5, 2011



Dial M for MURDER posted:

Another dumb question. I got my EVGA 3080 and I want to slap it in my current set up while I wait for the rest of the parts to arrive and Zen 3 to be available. Using a power calculator it says at load my computer will use 477 watts, and I currently have a 500w corsair psu.
Am I ok to run it like this for a couple weeks or am I risking damage or anything?

Its very likely to shut off when you try to run a stressful game.

Nvidia recommends 750 and the bare minimum recommendation here for a 3080 is like 600.

Dial M for MURDER
Sep 22, 2008
Yeah that's kinda what I was afraid of. I have a 750 watt coming on Tuesday. I'll just wait until then and swap it out. Thanks

Butterfly Valley
Apr 19, 2007

I am a spectacularly bad poster and everyone in the Schadenfreude thread hates my guts.

ShakespearesWilly posted:

Building a PC for the first time. Is this acceptable?

Mostly looks good however you absolutely need to get an SSD of some form because that's the single biggest improvement in terms of user experience in PCs over the last decade. The Western Digital SN550 is the best option here, either 500GB or 1TB. You could trim your budget a little by getting a cheaper PSU, 750W is overkill for your components. 550W would be more than enough and you could get a semi modular one for ~£60.

Martout
Aug 8, 2007

None so deprived
hey thread, finishing up the final bits for my new rig and wanted to pick your brains on SSD brands and read speeds

so since everything is going to be new and shiny the mobo supports pcie gen 4 however I'm pouring most of the budget for this thing into an rtx3080 so I'd like to find a good balance between speed, quality and price here

I don't do any work-stuff that requires transfer of enormous files or anything so the primary purpose of this thing is gaming

now with that in mind - how much of a difference would I notice if I went for something like a gen3 Kingston A2000 1TB drive with 2200/2000 read/write speed instead of splurging on a gen4 Corsair Force MP600 1TB with 4950/4250 read/write speed? Or equivalent of course, those just happened to be decently reviewed drives in the lower end of the price spectrum. On that note - any brands to definitely avoid?

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Martout posted:

now with that in mind - how much of a difference would I notice if I went for something like a gen3 Kingston A2000 1TB drive with 2200/2000 read/write speed instead of splurging on a gen4 Corsair Force MP600 1TB with 4950/4250 read/write speed? Or equivalent of course, those just happened to be decently reviewed drives in the lower end of the price spectrum. On that note - any brands to definitely avoid?

Gen4 NVMe drives benchmark very well, but provide little to no actual difference in "normal person" daily use, especially if your primary purpose is gaming (where it's hard enough to notice a meaningful difference between SATA-based SSDs at under 600MBps and the 3,500MBps NVMe SSDs).

For the price, though, you could get an ADATA XPG 8200Pro, which even if you got the slower controller version would still be faster than the Kingston, or an Inland Pro. For a couple bucks more you could ensure you got a faster drive with the HP EX950 or the Hynix P31 Gold. Personally, if $20 mattered to me, I'd roll the dice on the ADATA, since even "losing" would be faster than the Kingston, and "winning" would give you the fastest drive you can get for $120.

None of the Gen4 drives are really worth the price premium right now, even though they are faster on paper.

But again, it mostly won't matter at all. You're talking differences of like 1/4 a second out of 10 seconds in level loading, if not less.

Martout
Aug 8, 2007

None so deprived

DrDork posted:

good advice

cheers, it's currently also an issue of availability and reliability of delivery in times of covid and none of the brands you mentioned are actually available without shipping from out of country apparently. in terms of read-speed, which I assume is more important for games, the PNY CS2130 is available and has 3500mb/s read which is in line with the models you gave and in basically the same price range - any reason to avoid that brand or is that a good bet?

Fantastic Foreskin
Jan 6, 2013

A golden helix streaked skyward from the Helvault. A thunderous explosion shattered the silver monolith and Avacyn emerged, free from her prison at last.

At present there isn't really a perceptible difference between any SSDs, even SATA ones. In the coming years and as the old consoles are phased out this may change, but that's still an unknown. Yes, get and NVMe drive, but don't worry about SSD benchmarks, both because they don't matter for consumer use, and because SSD performance is dependent on a number of factors such that a single number is misleading unless you know what conditions it represents and the conditions of your workload.

E: it doesn't say in the specs so it's not an unreasonable guess that the PNY drive is using QLC NAND, which generally isn't recommended for being a primary drive, buy works fine as a storage drive, or as long as you don't fill it up all the way.

Fantastic Foreskin fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Nov 1, 2020

Martout
Aug 8, 2007

None so deprived

Some Goon posted:

E: it doesn't say in the specs so it's not an unreasonable guess that the PNY drive is using QLC NAND, which generally isn't recommended for being a primary drive, buy works fine as a storage drive, or as long as you don't fill it up all the way.

on the store page (it's a pretty good store so I trust them) it says 3D NAND on the Kingston and PNY whereas for example the corsair force mp400 1tb says 3D QLC NAND

I have no idea what either means, please elaborate :)

Fantastic Foreskin
Jan 6, 2013

A golden helix streaked skyward from the Helvault. A thunderous explosion shattered the silver monolith and Avacyn emerged, free from her prison at last.

Martout posted:

on the store page (it's a pretty good store so I trust them) it says 3D NAND on the Kingston and PNY whereas for example the corsair force mp400 1tb says 3D QLC NAND

I have no idea what either means, please elaborate :)

3D NAND essentially doesn't mean anything, all current NAND gets called 3D NAND.

S/M/T/QLC all refer to how many bits can be held per NAND cell, 1/2/3/4 respectively. SLC and MLC NAND aren't in the consumer space anymore so we can forget about them. TLC NAND holds three bits per cell and hits a nice balancing act between performance, endurance, and price. We'll take it as our baseline. QLC NAND is the 'new' thing that holds four bits per cell. This allows it to be dramatically cheaper than TLC NAND since you get 33% more space per chip. However, due to how NAND cells work, it also means that the cells wear out with an order of magnitude fewer writes than TLC NAND, often being warranted for less than a single drive-write-per-day. As the typical consumer isn't going to be doing nearly this level of writing, this aspect doesn't really matter. The other factor is that it's much, much slower to write to than TLC NAND. To compensate for this a portion of the drive is reserved to be used as SLC NAND as a cache. As long as your writes aren't so large that it exceeds the cache size the drive appears to operate with acceptable speed and will write the data to the slow but large QLC cells in the background. But, if you're writing truly massive files, or have filled the drive enough that it doesn't have any NAND to spare to use as a cache it will slow down to sub-HDD speeds - this is why smaller QLC drives (~sub 1tb) often have a dramatically lower listed max speed. Reads aren't effected by this and it will always read fairly speedily.

Which is to say, QLC is cheaper but has drawbacks that are fine if you're aware of them and take the proper precautions, TLC drives cost more and don't have these issues. And, while I can't say for sure, I would feel confident assuming anything that doesn't specify that's it's TLC is QLC.

Fantastic Foreskin fucked around with this message at 22:47 on Nov 1, 2020

change my name
Aug 27, 2007

Legends die but anime is forever.

RIP The Lost Otakus.

If I can pawn off my Geforce 1650 Super on a friend for what I paid for it, would it be worth upgrading to the 1660 Super or is it such an incremental upgrade I shouldn't worry about it?

Martout
Aug 8, 2007

None so deprived

Some Goon posted:

lots of solid technical info

right so it more or less comes down to how much stuff I put on the thing? I'll most likely never fill more than half of a 1TB drive with apps/games (movies, music, pictures and such go on a portable HDD) making this a non issue or should I just look at how long the warranty is for, longer warranty means higher chance of it not being the cheaper kind with some variation to account for brand/speed?

trying to get a newbies perspective on this, sorry for being a big ol' dumbo

Fantastic Foreskin
Jan 6, 2013

A golden helix streaked skyward from the Helvault. A thunderous explosion shattered the silver monolith and Avacyn emerged, free from her prison at last.

Martout posted:

right so it more or less comes down to how much stuff I put on the thing? I'll most likely never fill more than half of a 1TB drive with apps/games (movies, music, pictures and such go on a portable HDD) making this a non issue or should I just look at how long the warranty is for, longer warranty means higher chance of it not being the cheaper kind with some variation to account for brand/speed?

trying to get a newbies perspective on this, sorry for being a big ol' dumbo

I can't say I've ever looked to closely at SSD warranties, longer is nice and all but pretty much any of them should long outlive their warranty period. The main thing I'd look at is price per GB which will make it very apparent which is QLC (often sub $100/tb) and which is TLC ($110-140, haven't looked at prices lately), and controller, which I'm actually not up on at all, so hopefully someone else can chime in here. Games these days are loving enormous and windows is a solid 100+ gb by itself, so depending on how much AAA gaming you do I wouldn't count on not filling a 1tb drive, though you can always delete old games.

As long as your aware of the shortcomings of QLC drives I don't think there are any 'gotchas' like there were with SATA drives, NVMe, as I understand it, can work just fine without dram.

I wish I had more solid buying advice but SSDs are an area I never paid all that close of attention to. Best advice I can give is to either buy a drive recommended ITT or at least run any one you're thinking of buying past the thread first. The PNY drive seems an OK general purpose drive if you're not caught off guard by QLCs shortcomings, but as with everything else it's all about budget and use case.

And no worries, that's what the threads here for.

Fantastic Foreskin fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Nov 1, 2020

Fantastic Foreskin
Jan 6, 2013

A golden helix streaked skyward from the Helvault. A thunderous explosion shattered the silver monolith and Avacyn emerged, free from her prison at last.

change my name posted:

If I can pawn off my Geforce 1650 Super on a friend for what I paid for it, would it be worth upgrading to the 1660 Super or is it such an incremental upgrade I shouldn't worry about it?

It's a nice step up, averaging 60+ fps @ 1080p ultra, but it's still a 1080p60 card.

Butterfly Valley
Apr 19, 2007

I am a spectacularly bad poster and everyone in the Schadenfreude thread hates my guts.

Martout posted:

trying to get a newbies perspective on this, sorry for being a big ol' dumbo

From the outside it seems like you're way overthinking this, I would echo the other poster and say 1TB is actually sod all in this day and age so you should definitely count on filling it and you'd be better off just going with the SN550 as one of the cheapest decent TLC drives available and worrying about gen 4 NVMe drives when the technology has had time to mature and actually be utilised by anything

sean10mm
Jun 29, 2005

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, MAD-2R World
QLC is a waste IMO because you're saving $10 on a 1TB drive for a whole lot of "it's mostly fine but" BS when you can just get a SN550.

teagone
Jun 10, 2003

That was pretty intense, huh?

change my name posted:

If I can pawn off my Geforce 1650 Super on a friend for what I paid for it, would it be worth upgrading to the 1660 Super or is it such an incremental upgrade I shouldn't worry about it?

Only if you get it used/refurbished imo. Definitely worth checking out EVGA's B-Stock Midweek Madness deals. I managed to snag a 1660 Ti for ~$150 shipped a few months ago. They've even had non-Ti/Super 1660 cards drop for $20 (before tax/shipping), but bots usually get those. Some people on reddit have gotten lucky to get a $20 1660 though. I got lucky with my $150 1660 Ti for sure. EVGA refreshes their B-Stock every Wednesday, but lately their Midweek Madness stock have been going live the night before—my guess is they've started doing that in an attempt to deter bots from scooping up all the good deals.

Gunder
May 22, 2003

Toxic Fart Syndrome posted:

Looks like it would be a good upgrade, but at this point I'd wait for Zen3 which will be a better upgrade:

https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2655?vs=2665

If I could get a good deal on the Ryzen 7 3700X, making it a little cheaper than a new Zen3 Ryzen 5 5600X, would it be worth saving the money and buying the older tech? I just want to make sure that I wouldn't be missing out some great new thing that Zen3 unlocks for gaming.

Suburban Dad
Jan 10, 2007


Well what's attached to a leash that it made itself?
The punchline is the way that you've been fuckin' yourself




Gunder posted:

If I could get a good deal on the Ryzen 7 3700X, making it a little cheaper than a new Zen3 Ryzen 5 5600X, would it be worth saving the money and buying the older tech? I just want to make sure that I wouldn't be missing out some great new thing that Zen3 unlocks for gaming.

Sounds like there's some tech with the new 5000 series and new AMD GPUs that might give you a couple extra percent. Doesn't matter if you're on team green for gpu though obviously. Honestly just wait another 4 days and see how the new stuff benchmarks. For a few bucks more less cores and threads might be way better for gaming.

Former Human
Oct 15, 2001

FreeKillB posted:

You might still need to remove the drive cage even with the larger models depending on your GPU size, the one spec sheet i could find listed 167mm as the max length for the expansion slot.

That's what I read as well, that I would have to get a Dremel tool and cut out pieces of the case, which is a road I really don't want to go down.

iamjohnsalt
Dec 6, 2017

teagone posted:

Only if you get it used/refurbished imo. Definitely worth checking out EVGA's B-Stock Midweek Madness deals. I managed to snag a 1660 Ti for ~$150 shipped a few months ago. They've even had non-Ti/Super 1660 cards drop for $20 (before tax/shipping), but bots usually get those. Some people on reddit have gotten lucky to get a $20 1660 though. I got lucky with my $150 1660 Ti for sure. EVGA refreshes their B-Stock every Wednesday, but lately their Midweek Madness stock have been going live the night before—my guess is they've started doing that in an attempt to deter bots from scooping up all the good deals.

I got a 1660ti as well and do not regret it. Paid way less then for a 1660 super and 1080p60 has been a really nice experience

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FreeKillB
May 13, 2009

Former Human posted:

That's what I read as well, that I would have to get a Dremel tool and cut out pieces of the case, which is a road I really don't want to go down.
I will reiterate that whatever you end up doing (whether it be finding an appropriate desktop to upgrade with your GPU and PSU or building new), make sure you have at least a SSD boot drive for quality of life. This Patriot Burst SSD is about the cheapest I would recommend.

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