|
A 120mm fan or two in the back to draw air through that space will probably help a lot.
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 06:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 16:55 |
|
|
Asking my previous question got me thinking about my current desktop.Jaxyon posted:Look upon my ancient workhorse and despair So my computer is now 12 years old. It's honestly a miracle that the thing has run 24/7 for that time and not had a major component failure. The quoted post is 3 years old. But needs haven't changed, though hopefully graphics cards are a bit more reasonable than in 2021, if you don't need latest gen.
So the big question, and I guess I can anticipate the answer, is it cheaper to build in my decade old ITX case, or just start fresh with something moderately sized in mATX or ATX? I like my Prodigy but I can understand if a lot has changed in over a decade of PC components.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 07:51
|
|
|
Jaxyon posted:Asking my previous question got me thinking about my current desktop. The original Prodigy is indeed very dated. Modern ITX cases are both more compact than the Prodigy and support larger GPUs while also offering better airflow/cooling potential, but in exchange, they support fewer/no 3.5" drives. Also, I'm going to argue that you don't have storage taken care of since your boot drive is still just a SATA drive, and we now strongly prefer NVME SSDs as our boot drives. They are significantly faster than SATA SSDs (over 10x faster for the fastest ones). If you do want to still build in the Prodigy, I'd warn against putting anything that uses too much power in there since it's a low-airflow case. Also, the choice in GPU will depend on whether you have both front drive cages installed or just the basement one (next to the PSU). If you're using both drive cages, then you'll need a single-fan GPU, and for some reason those come at a price premium despite being cheaper to make than their larger counterparts (I guess because they're lower-volume products). If you aren't using that upper drive cage, then you can fit GPUs up to 310mm long, which is enough for most midrange GPUs. I'd probably recommend a GPU somewhere in the RTX 4060 range. That card can run anything you want at 1080p, and it uses only 110W - 120W, making it suitable for a low-airflow case (modern AMD cards produce a lot more heat). And for CPU, I'd go with AMD over Intel for the same reason: their vastly better power efficiency. This is along the lines of what I'd recommend for your Prodigy (assuming the top drive cage is removed): PCPartPicker Part List CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor ($195.00 @ Newegg) CPU Cooler: Thermalright Assassin X 120 Refined SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler ($17.89 @ Amazon) Motherboard: ASRock B650I Lightning Wifi Mini ITX AM5 Motherboard ($199.99 @ Newegg) Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL32 Memory ($96.90 @ Amazon) Storage: Gigabyte AORUS Gen4 7300 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($77.99 @ Newegg) Video Card: MSI VENTUS 2X BLACK OC GeForce RTX 4060 8 GB Video Card ($295.00 @ Amazon) Case: BitFenix Prodigy Mini ITX Tower Case Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS GX-750 ATX 3.0 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Newegg) Total: $962.76 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-04-23 11:56 EDT-0400 If you go full ATX instead, you can take advantage of Microcenter's awesome bundle deals to save some money, though not a lot once you count in the price of a new case. As far as alternative mITX cases that support 3.5" drives go, off the top of my head there's the ssupd Meshroom, though it would increase the cost of the build by a lot. It's expensive and it works best with all-in-one liquid coolers (which are easy to install and use, but also expensive). The Cooler Master NR200P would be a little cheaper than the Meshroom and also comes with two 2.5"/3.5" mounts, which means not all three drives would fit. You can let the SSD dangle since it doesn't really matter if it's mounted properly, but that's really janky. Though I guess, in the end, the Prodigy would be fine to reuse... Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Apr 23, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 16:53
|
|
|
Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:The original Prodigy is indeed very dated. Modern ITX cases are both more compact than the Prodigy and support larger GPUs while also offering better airflow/cooling potential, but in exchange, they support fewer/no 3.5" drives. Also, I'm going to argue that you don't have storage taken care of since your boot drive is still just a SATA drive, and we now strongly prefer NVME SSDs as our boot drives. They are significantly faster than SATA SSDs (over 10x faster for the fastest ones). That's fair, and I didn't know that about NVME's. The other 3.5" drive is legacy, I should probably get rid of it, while the 8TB Red is my main storage quote:If you do want to still build in the Prodigy, I'd warn against putting anything that uses too much power in there since it's a low-airflow case. Also, the choice in GPU will depend on whether you have both front drive cages installed or just the basement one (next to the PSU). If you're using both drive cages, then you'll need a single-fan GPU, and for some reason those come at a price premium despite being cheaper to make than their larger counterparts (I guess because they're lower-volume products). If you aren't using that upper drive cage, then you can fit GPUs up to 310mm long, which is enough for most midrange GPUs. I'd probably recommend a GPU somewhere in the RTX 4060 range. That card can run anything you want at 1080p, and it uses only 110W - 120W, making it suitable for a low-airflow case (modern AMD cards produce a lot more heat). And for CPU, I'd go with AMD over Intel for the same reason: their vastly better power efficiency. Thank you for the detailed response, I didn't expect so much knowledge on that case.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 17:56
|
|
|
Figured I'd update again since it's been a couple weeks with the new build. I was having some issues with the GPU randomly crashing and I was worried I'd have to RMA it. After a bunch of testing, I found the culprit: a bad/loose power cable. Managed to discover it when I had a flash of inspiration and I nudged the PC case, and then the GPU "crashed" again. So I swapped out the cable and make extra sure everything was properly seated. Haven't had any issues since. The GPU crashes were marked by the loss of display, both CPU fans suddenly going up to 100% speed, and the system itself remaining up (I could still hear audio). The system would log it as "xid 79 GPU has fallen off the bus" with unknown process pid/name. Scribbled notes for anyone that might be searching for my particular error in Linux: quote:Possibly solved! I noticed that when I slightly nudged my PC case, I got the GPU crash. Removed the NVIDIA-branded 12VHPWR cable adapter & the two 8-pin PCIe connectors that came with the PSU. Swapped out with the 12VHPWR cable that was included with the PSU. DizzyBum fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Apr 23, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 18:18
|
|
|
SFF 2012 Edition 
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 18:26
|
|
|
orcane posted:SFF 2012 Edition Yeah it's got handles I never used and it's the size of a small ATX tower.
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 19:19
|
|
|
TBH, upon further reflection, I think you should just grab this combo from Micro Center, maybe change the CPU cooler to this, keep everything else the same and throw it all in something like a Fractal Design Pop Air. That's a compact full-ATX tower that can hold your drives, will be easier to build in, will run quieter and cooler, and won't even be much bigger than your current case when accounting for the protrusions (35L vs 45L, apparently). Plus it'll be cheaper overall, and you get the functionality of a full ATX motherboard.
Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Apr 23, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 19:36
|
|
|
Wibla posted:A 120mm fan or two in the back to draw air through that space will probably help a lot. Do you mean installing fans outside of the case?
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 21:38
|
|
|
Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:TBH, upon further reflection, I think you should just grab this combo from Micro Center, maybe change the CPU cooler to this, keep everything else the same and throw it all in something like a Fractal Design Pop Air. That's a compact full-ATX tower that can hold your drives, will be easier to build in, will run quieter and cooler, and won't even be much bigger than your current case when accounting for the protrusions (35L vs 45L, apparently). Plus it'll be cheaper overall, and you get the functionality of a full ATX motherboard. Thank you again for the recs Edit: Out of curiosity, is the built in graphics of the Ryzen these days better than the graphics card I have(Radeon HD 7850)? Still planning on buying a discrete card but I'm curious how far onboard has come. Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Apr 23, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 21:45
|
|
|
Jaxyon posted:Thank you again for the recs The integrated graphics for the 7000-series Ryzen chips are pretty neutered and are really only capable of serving as a basic windows display adapter. There's a decent chance it'll be worse than your current card (an HD 7850?), though probably not massively so. There's a separate line of AMD processors with superior integrated graphics, the "G" series. It's hard to compare GPUs released so far apart due to differing feature sets and game compatibility, but I wouldn't be surprised if we were talking about a 3x performance increase in the current top integrated graphics (the Ryzen 8700G) over your current card, and another 3x performance increase for the RTX 4060 over that. Or somewhere in that ballpark, in any case. But modern GPUs are also capable of entirely new things compared to your current card (such as hardware ray tracing and advanced upscaling techniques like DLSS).
|
|
#
?
Apr 23, 2024 22:10
|
|
|
Branch Nvidian posted:If you're really stuck on either the Terra or Ridge here is a build with the Ridge that I think would fit your needs perfectly well with lots of room to grow if you decide you want a nicer monitor later on. So two follow-up questions on this from digging into the details here: 1) The 7800x3d processor seems far and away the best gaming processor, but from what I have read seems to have compromises in non-gaming use as a result because it can't hit as high a frequency as most others - and most of what I'm going to be doing is non-gaming. I considered switching to a 7700x, which is cheaper and better at the non-gaming stuff but the difference in gaming stuff seems really significant (and, it strikes me as the sort of capability that might be useful in the future), or an intel processor but those seemed to quadruple the power budget which is non-ideal in a SFF system. So I have been leaning towards a Ryzen 9 7900X3D - which seems to be an odd duck but has higher frequencies to outperform in non-gaming results but still has the same benefits in gaming. It is meaningfully cheaper than the 7950x3d (it's about $470, despite the list price of $600) and also less power consumption (but, can do nearly double the power consumption of the 7800x3d). Is this all dumb and I'm overthinking it, or is this a reasonable change? The extra money isn't an issue. 2) Is there any reason to go for a PCI 5.0 HD? It looks like an extra ~$40 or so. But I'm not going to be doing anything that involves really heavy data use - is this going to show any benefits in day-to-day use?
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 14:52
|
|
|
evilweasel posted:So two follow-up questions on this from digging into the details here: So I swapped it to the 7800X3D because I misunderstood what you were doing with the system. If you plan to just use it for gaming and media consumption then I still think the 7800X3D is the better choice. If you're going to be doing only some gaming but predominately doing some kind of production workloads (music/photo/video editing) then getting a 7700X or 7900X (non-3D) is probably a better use of money depending on how multi-threaded your workflow is. I would suggest against the 7900X(3D) for a gaming CPU because of how the CCDs are configured and, to my knowledge I might be remembering wrong, the beefed up L3 cache only exists on ONE of the two CCDs, and so gaming loads need/want to be done only on that one CCD, resulting in performance similar to what a 7600X3D would be if such a chip existed. tl;dr 7800X3D for mostly gaming, 7700X or 7900X for production work, probably more the 7700X due to thermal considerations. Don't consider the 7900X3D or 7950X3D since they're wildly more than what you need. quote:2) Is there any reason to go for a PCI 5.0 HD? It looks like an extra ~$40 or so. But I'm not going to be doing anything that involves really heavy data use - is this going to show any benefits in day-to-day use? Not really. Consumer PCIe 4.0 devices aren't even saturating their lanes, so PCIe 5 is just a bigger number for the vast majority of users. Plus the way some boards are designed if you have a PCIe 5 drive in a PCIe 5 slot it will lower the speed of PCIe 4 devices.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 15:06
|
|
|
evilweasel posted:So two follow-up questions on this from digging into the details here: The way Ryzen works for higher core counts is with chiplets (CCDs). The 7900 and 7950 both use chiplets. 7900 has 6 cores on each and 7950 has 8 on each. the 7800 has a single chiplet of 8 cores. There is a very large latency penalty when trying to communicate from one chipet to another. As such, the 7900X3D will be worse at gaming than the 7800X3D (because games will only use the X3D chiplet and the 7900X3D has 2 fewer cores) and worse at general computing things than the 7900 (because the X3D cores are clocked a bit lower). It's a really weird chip and doesn't have many good use cases which is probably why you were able to find it so much cheaper than its list price.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 15:08
|
|
|
evilweasel posted:1) The 7800x3d processor seems far and away the best gaming processor, but from what I have read seems to have compromises in non-gaming use as a result because it can't hit as high a frequency as most others - and most of what I'm going to be doing is non-gaming. The non-gaming work you're doing by your own admission isn't very taxing and the 7800x3D won't hold it back at all. The reason to downgrade to something like a 7700x would be if you don't need the additional gaming performance, rather than wanting something that's better for productivity work. As you've already mentioned though you'd like the option to play more modern and taxing games again so I'd just stick with the 7800x3D, as long as it's within your budget.
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 15:12
|
|
|
thanks all, very helpful. it seems picking the right chip these days is much harder than it was six years ago, why can't we just go back to "bigger number == better, get the biggest number you want to pay for" 
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 15:17
|
|
|
theratking posted:Do you mean installing fans outside of the case? Yes 
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 17:57
|
|
|
I hear you like fans on the outside. On the left, nice external clip-in numbers courtesy of Supermicro. On the right, and external jank-fest courtesy of me, some rubber doo-dahs to actually attach it, and a gaffer tape "shroud". It looks appalling, but it is only the NAS in the spare room. Works great thanks to the (also pictured) Noctua speed things because Dell BIOS. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 24, 2024 22:39
|
|
|
EpicCareMadBitch posted:Looking for a computer that would be good for 3d modeling and VFX that wouldn't break the bank. Haven't built anything in years so I'm kinda outta the loop here. Are there any good pre builds out there now? Any suggestions around 1-2k? Thanks. Posted this in the wrong thread. I heard the M2 Mac minis were pretty good. Any opinions? EpicCareMadBitch fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Apr 26, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 01:28
|
|
|
I’m not super confident at how the Mac mini would do unless the software was Mac native and like fine tuned with metal and stuff, but if you can get away with it then it’s a no brainer. macOS is very pleasant to work with every day. I have a top spec m1 mbp for work, and no matter what I throw at it, it gets the job done quickly and impressively quietly. I haven’t kept up with the specs enough to know how the m1 with 64GB ram fares against the M3’s with the same ram, but that’d be something you could dig into FAT32 SHAMER fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Apr 26, 2024 |
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 06:54
|
|
|
Hey thread, long time no see. I am thinking about getting a box to play my old steam games on again but I'm on a budget and in Japan, where the yen is becoming more and more worthless every day. The most recent thing in my collection, and my target game, is Dark Souls 3. Honestly I will not be buying any new AAA games as I am old and jaded, and I have a PS5 for that. My monitor is a pa248qv which is 1920x1200 and has VRR (is this still relevant?) My main fantasy is to avoid Windows completely and run some flavor of linux, using proton to run the non native games. I know historically the advice of the thread is to avoid APUs, buuuuttttt is that still the case? Could I save money and meet my needs with a little AMD APU build? Small form factor is a big plus too.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 10:50
|
|
|
Daddys hot grill posted:Hey thread, long time no see. Maybe the Steam Deck could be a good option for you?
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 11:16
|
|
|
I guess that's an option if I can plug it in to my monitor and use it like SFF computer. Seems the price to beat then is ¥84,800.... and be in stock.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 11:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 16:55 |
|
|
To use it like a pc you'll probably want a dock.
|
|
#
?
Apr 26, 2024 12:01
|
|
