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Butterfly Valley posted:How frequently UPSs get recommended or spoken about in PC threads has always been a bit confusing to me - am I just being dumb by not having had one here in any of the European countries I've lived in, or is the power grid just that much more unreliable in the US? I can understand the parts of the US where biblical weather is frequent, but everywhere else? Yeah the quality of local electrical grids can vary quite a bit in America. Theres also the question of how recently your homes electrical has been updated. There are a LOT of houses that are still running on wiring that’s decades old and it predates a lot of modern code requirements like grounded outlets. I had a friend who lived in a house from the 50s and the wiring hadn’t been touched since. He suffered from constant brownouts and you’d better believe he had every machine in the house on a UPS.
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Nov 9, 2025 23:56
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Rexxed posted:You can put the old one on your network equipment and NAS if you have one and then use a new 1500VA unit for the PC. As someone with frequent power issues who's lost a couple of power supplies to storms, it's worthwhile to invest in something to go between the wall and your expensive equipment's power input. I think I may be grossly misunderstanding, and most/all of us including myself have one unit that does both, but is not a proper surge protector (read: not what you buy for $10 at Walmart) sufficient for this purpose and a UPS to keep the machine running when the power goes out a separate issue? I may be decades behind the curve here.
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Nov 10, 2025 00:20
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Butterfly Valley posted:is the power grid just that much more unreliable in the US? The majority of the country is inhabited and run by people who actively oppose doing anything constructive that doesn't primarily line the pockets of the correct rich assholes-- or anything constructive at all, at this point. The free market will provide everything I want at a lower price! Oh no, the free market is loving me over horribly, I guess there's nothing to be done about this, this is just the way things have to be, we cannot change anything, we have to go back to the ~great times~ when there were definitely no taxes or regulations
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Nov 10, 2025 00:32
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Zoya posted:hi friends! so .... this PC in the quote right there ...... ate poo poo yesterday for seemingly no reason. she was looking at posts and suddenly, the right monitor went out, as she started shaking the mouse the mouse lights go out, then the audio cut off, then the left monitor went out... one after the other, every peripheral died out. tried to reboot and, nothing. can't even POST. mobo cycles through a variety of debug codes then lands on FF... "fault found". wow thanks great error code, very helpful. tried reseating the RAM, nothing. tried USB-flashing the BIOS to update it (successfully), nothing. tried popping the CMOS battery out as a hail mary... nothing. kaput. gently caress. microcenter said their repair queue is three weeks long lol 🙃 guess i'm rawdogging this poo poo myself, i long for death
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Nov 10, 2025 00:32
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OK, here's what I can find for reasonably-priced Z790 boards with seemingly good VRM, at least 3 M.2 slots (most have four), and at least WiFi6 (mostly 6E). Most of them have two USB-A 5Gbps, one USB-A 10Gbps and either one 20Gbps or 10Gbps type-C on the back panel, which seems a bit stingy. Both of you are using DDR5-6000, so I didn't really filter by max DDR freq. support, since I assume that won't be relevant given the current trajectory of memory prices, but they all support at least 6800, and most 7200. • Asus Z790 Gaming WIFI (PRIME) (specs): $150 - the cheapest Z790 board and appropriately appointed, three M.2s, no integrated backplate, no secondary M.2 heatsinks, but at least the VRM heatsinks look fine and it's one of the only affordable boards with WiFi7, if that matters. 20Gbps USB Type-C is on the back panel. It claims to have 3x PCIe 3.0x4 slots, which is weird, and I don't know enough about Z790 chipsets to know if that's a real thing or if they're hiding some lane sharing from the spec sheet, but they'd mostly be obscured by the GPU anyway, so it's a waste of lanes either way. Asus tends to cheap out on obfuscated stuff with their PRIME boards, so the claimed 14x50A VRM stages that are already the bare minimum for an i7 will not be up to the task of supporting an i9. • Asrock Z790 Pro RS WIFI (specs): $152 - four M.2s with only one heatsink for the primary, probably better VRM than the Asus board, PCIe 4.0x4 slot that will probably block the GPU if used for anything but a low-profile M.2 riser, and an extra internal USB3 header (which no cases support anymore) and a 20Gbps Type-C on the front header. Fine I guess? • MSI Z790 Gaming Plus WIFI (specs): $160 - very similar to the Asrock board, same four M.2 slots but with heatsinks for all, same probably-useless 4.0x4 slot, same extra USB3 header, 20Gbps Type-C on the back panel. • Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX (specs): $190 - four M.2s with heatsinks, great VRM, one whole extra USB3 5Gbps port on the back, still only WiFi6E. It's a bit nicer, but I'm not sure it's worth the $30 over the MSI board. A TOSLINK audio output I guess, and I suppose the two PCIe 4.0x4 slots are far enough down that they won't block the GPU much with NVMe risers, but 6 M.2 SSDs seems like overkill. • Asrock Z790 Steel Legend WiFi (specs): $190 - five M.2s with heatsinks for four, very good VRM, lots of extra USB3 ports, TOSLINK audio output, front header 20Gbps type-C port. Probably better value than the Gigabyte board overall, especially if you can use the extra USB ports. Everything above those seems to be worse, usually budget boards that are long out of production and now overpriced. If you're not picky, the ~$150 Asrock or MSI boards will probably be fine.
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Nov 10, 2025 00:44
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Eric the Mauve posted:I think I may be grossly misunderstanding, and most/all of us including myself have one unit that does both, but is not a proper surge protector (read: not what you buy for $10 at Walmart) sufficient for this purpose and a UPS to keep the machine running when the power goes out a separate issue? They should be separate problems, but they often overlap because they're both meant to deal with power outages in some fashion. I imagine people had to grapple with the dilemma of UPS vs Surge Protector during the inception of UPSes as a household item when they probably didn't have surge protection in-built, but nowadays the UPSes that lack it are very not worth considering. Theoretically you can go "UPS > surge protector > wall outlet", but depending on how much power draw the UPS has (which should be a lot) it'll damage the surge protector pretty swiftly. And going "surge protector > UPS > wall outlet" will leave the UPS unprotected, defeating the purpose of such a setup and potentially making disaster losses way worse. UPS instructions will commonly tell you not to daisy chain them with surge protectors for exactly these reasons. SL the Pyro fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Nov 10, 2025 |
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Nov 10, 2025 01:03
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mikey posted:OK, here's what I can find for reasonably-priced Z790 boards with seemingly good VRM, at least 3 M.2 slots (most have four), and at least WiFi6 (mostly 6E). Most of them have two USB-A 5Gbps, one USB-A 10Gbps and either one 20Gbps or 10Gbps type-C on the back panel, which seems a bit stingy. thank you, this is incredibly helpful. gonna go with the MSI board, cuz of our two PCs mine had an MSI and hers had an ASrock and of the two, the MSI didn't explode for no reason in 2 years! and ALSO because i don't really have time to sit and think about this cuz that $160 pricetag on the MSI at newegg expires 6 hours from now and jumps up to $240, apparently, lol
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Nov 10, 2025 01:16
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SL the Pyro posted:They should be separate problems, but they often overlap because they're both meant to deal with power outages in some fashion. I imagine people had to grapple with the dilemma of UPS vs Surge Protector during the inception of UPSes as a household item when they probably didn't have surge protection in-built, but nowadays the UPSes that lack it are very not worth considering. I thought that UPS->surge protector->wall outlet was perfectly fine, assuming that you get a high quality surge protector which can handle the full 15A of a standard outlet. I know I got a Tripp-Lite Isobar to go with my Cyberpower UPS because while the UPS itself advertised a surge protector function as well, its rating was pretty weak comparatively.
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Nov 10, 2025 02:54
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mikey posted:...This build will be a lot more upgradable, may perform a bit better, but costs $140 more than the 8400F pre-builts. Thank you for the effort of putting that together. This is a step up from the G240 that I had posted earlier and it seems to address most of the issues. Two channels of DD5R RAM, the CPU seems to be well-liked for simulators, and 16GB of VRAM in the GPU. It is slightly more expensive than the build you posted but I'm willing to pay a small premium for something already put together. https://www.microcenter.com/product/698874/powerspec-g527-gaming-pc Now I just need to find time to drive down and pick it up.
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Nov 10, 2025 04:45
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Eletriarnation posted:I thought that UPS->surge protector->wall outlet was perfectly fine, assuming that you get a high quality surge protector which can handle the full 15A of a standard outlet. I know I got a Tripp-Lite Isobar to go with my Cyberpower UPS because while the UPS itself advertised a surge protector function as well, its rating was pretty weak comparatively. That, and it's my understanding that surge protectors wear out - the more times they actually serve their function, the less capacity they have going forward. The power here is good enough I don't worry about it too much, but now that I think of it I should probably demote a couple to glorified power strip and replace them. https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gear/a68809913/how-often-should-you-replace-surge-protectors/
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Nov 10, 2025 05:56
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ThirstyBuck posted:Thank you for the effort of putting that together. Oh hey, that's the first 7500X3D I've seen in the wild, they haven't even announced it yet. No benchmarks yet of course, but it's a 7600X3D with a -200Mhz boost clock, so in gaming it should land bit north of the 9700X, probably closer to its sibling. Depends on how much the game leans on L3 cache, but from the iRacing benchmarks I saw, it varied - X3D cache helped the worst case scenarios and minimum framerates a lot, but wasn't as helpful for max framerates. That build should work well. The motherboard's VRM isn't ideal, but that's probably the lowest wattage CPU you can stick in an AM5 socket, so it'll be fine, and certainly better than a non-Microcenter pre-built.
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Nov 10, 2025 06:35
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Asrock update: MULTI KILL! Also I just found out that someone spotted a 9700X3D on Passmark, and there was apparently a 9600X3D leak a while back, both probably still months out given the 1.5+ year delay between the 7800X3D and 7600X3D. Hopefully the three will lower-tier SKUs will actually be somewhat available and priced well, because right now there's a big gap in pricing and gaming performance between the 9600X/9700X and the 7800X3D.
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Nov 10, 2025 07:00
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mikey posted:That could also be the CPU's IMC. If it were AMD, that'd be my guess, but usually Intel's are a bit more reliable. If it is the CPU, and it's still within the 3 year warranty, a faulty memory controller is a valid reason for an RMA. Unfortunately, I do not! I could drop it by a local computer shop I trust to have it tested, though. Maybe they could sell me a used one to test with myself. Thanks for the feedback and help, as always! E: including the list of mobos, too. It is tempting to grab the last one, since I use a bunch of USB devices and have been making compromises. broken pixel fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Nov 10, 2025 |
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Nov 10, 2025 07:08
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If the RAM won't even POST at 6000 in your current board, then it won't be too much more difficult to test a new motherboard on its box with just the CPU, RAM and ATX24+EPS power cables from the PSU before you remove the old one. If it POSTs with the new board, it was probably the board, and you can swap them. If not, the CPU must be the culprit, and there's little wasted effort beyond some cables and the RAM. One weird thing I just noticed about that Steel Legend board is the little note under Storage in the spec sheet: M2_1 and M2_2 cannot be populated simultaneously Which is, uh, wait... what? I mean, that's not really a dealbreaker, it's still an OK board with four M.2 slots, but... why?  I guess the M2_1 slot doesn't share any lanes with the GPU slot, while M2_2 is gen 5 but does, so they're options that give you different tradeoffs? e: I looked at the board diagram in the manual after failing to locate the second M.2 slot in any of the images, and it's literally opposite the first one under the heatsink. So you can only physically slot in a single M.2 between them. Never seen that one before! mikey fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Nov 10, 2025 |
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Nov 10, 2025 07:30
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Butterfly Valley posted:How frequently UPSs get recommended or spoken about in PC threads has always been a bit confusing to me - am I just being dumb by not having had one here in any of the European countries I've lived in, or is the power grid just that much more unreliable in the US? I can understand the parts of the US where biblical weather is frequent, but everywhere else? It depends where you are. I'm in a rural area that's become pretty suburban over time, but all of our power lines are overhead. It's also very lush here so there's trees all over the place, especially next to roads and right next to the power lines. They do trim them somewhat to keep the tree branches off the lines but I lose power several times a year because a tree blew down and pulled down a power line somewhere vaguely to the north. New Jersey is the most population dense state in the country and everyone in my area has a generator so they won't freeze to death in the winter and/or have all the food in the fridge and freezer spoil when there's long outages. The worst was after the hurricane in 2012 where we were out for 11 days. I started buying UPSes in 2003 when the big east coast power outage that went up into Canada and darkened NYC killed a couple of power supplies in computers and also in at least one CRT TV, and I have at least 10 now. Most of them are still fine with regular battery changes, but a couple have succumbed to old age. Anyway, there will never be enough money to bury all of the power infrastructure, the power companies are already privatized and do as little as possible to maintain things.
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Nov 10, 2025 09:31
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I have one but I doubt I need it to be honest. We get little power flickers maybe 2-3 times a year (goes out, comes back on 2 seconds later as the grid reroutes). Haven't had an outage longer than a few minutes in years.I don't do heavy gaming anymore so it's not a huge deal if a flicker abruptly ends my Computing Session. Cost to replace my PC were it to get fried in a freak power incident would be $1500 or so. Cost of a decent UPS is over $200. It's probably not over a 15% probability that the latter will prevent the former during its lifetime. Eric the Mauve fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Nov 10, 2025 |
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Nov 10, 2025 13:03
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I used to live in a Canadian rural area that has frequent blackouts during thunderstorms (which are common in the summer). Also some big outages when there is a particularly harsh ice storm and power lines collapse under the sheer weight of ice, or trees collapse for the same reason and bring down a power line on the way. A lightning strike once killed most of the electrical appliances in the house, when the nearest utility pole was struck. The infrastructure is a mess but I think there are also limits to what it can endure. Also consider that utilities are run underground in large parts of Western Europe. Of course a UPS is of limited use in these scenarios. I guess solar panels, a diesel generator and disconnecting from the grid during extreme weather events is the best option  E: that house was 100 years old and still had knob and tube wiring in a couple spots. But I’ve also encountered ancient wiring in the EU Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Nov 10, 2025 |
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Nov 10, 2025 13:23
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Getting a whole home surge protector is worth it to avoid damage done to electronics caused by lightning strikes and similar. UPS’s are great for giving you enough time to safely shutdown those electronics, especially if you are doing something like a firmware update. The power grid in some areas of the US can be so bad that they can cause device resets even during clear weather. It can also be worthwhile for those who WFH to have their work machines and networking equipment all be battery backed so that they don’t get interrupted during something important because of an event outside of their control.
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Nov 10, 2025 13:49
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I hope this is an ok place to ask for a recommendation/suggestion for a specific part? I have an old dell doing double duty as a Plex server, with all the drives plugged into a four bay media box. I have all four bays filled with four 20+ tb drives, and all four drives are functionally full. I would like to add another four bay media box, but this stupid dell only has one USB 3 port. These Media Box things have their own power source, so could I run two of them off a usb3 hub? If not, does anyone have a suggestion for a USB3 pcie expansion card that ISN'T a piece of garbage? I've not had much luck with them in the past
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Nov 10, 2025 14:58
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Eric the Mauve posted:I have one but I doubt I need it to be honest. We get little power flickers maybe 2-3 times a year (goes out, comes back on 2 seconds later as the grid reroutes). Haven't had an outage longer than a few minutes in years.I don't do heavy gaming anymore so it's not a huge deal if a flicker abruptly ends my Computing Session. Man, I wish this were the case for me. A UPS wouldn't really help with most of these, but in SE Michigan we get hours-long power outages at least a few times a year, and flickers or sub-minute outages several more times a year. And every 3 to 5 years, we get a power outage that lasts one or more entire days. I seriously looked at one of those home battery systems just because I'm so sick of this, but that tech is still way too expensive.
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Nov 10, 2025 15:13
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Various posters posted:Memory prices are going up If Covid taught us anything, it's that once prices normalize at a new high, they do not in fact come back down. When the companies realize collectively that they can maintain the pricing trend, why would they cut profits?
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Nov 10, 2025 15:37
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mikey posted:If the RAM won't even POST at 6000 in your current board, then it won't be too much more difficult to test a new motherboard on its box with just the CPU, RAM and ATX24+EPS power cables from the PSU before you remove the old one. If it POSTs with the new board, it was probably the board, and you can swap them. If not, the CPU must be the culprit, and there's little wasted effort beyond some cables and the RAM. Huh. I mean, I can’t see myself slotting more than 3 M.2s, but like, strange to have that limitation.
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Nov 10, 2025 17:45
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Rexxed posted:Anyway, there will never be enough money to bury all of the power infrastructure, the power companies are already privatized and do as little as possible to maintain things. That can be done with a little bit of regulation. Finland has a largely privatized electricity sector and after a bad storm about a decade ago the government implemented a Standard Compensation. If a customer experiences an outage 12-24 hours long they will be compensated 10% of their annual electricity bill, 20% for 24-48 hour outage, up to 200% for outages over 12 days. With a little bit of statistics the power companies can figure how much of their grid they need to dig underground. https://www.kkv.fi/en/consumer-affairs/housing/electricity/compensation-for-power-cuts/
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Nov 10, 2025 20:38
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Captain Yossarian posted:I hope this is an ok place to ask for a recommendation/suggestion for a specific part? My trajectory for the same problem is a case that holds more internal drive bays and a SAS to SATA PCIe card.
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Nov 10, 2025 22:21
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Hi, I'm looking into creating a couch gaming/entertainment SFF PC that's going to be hooked up to my living room TV. My only hard requirements are an AMD GPU (going to be running bazzite linux and I don't want to deal with linux/nvidia finickiness) and the SSDs listed below since I had them lying around. Case: NCASE M2 round CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 4.7 GHz 8-Core Processor ($469.00 @ Newegg) CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III 280 72.8 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($135.99 @ Amazon) Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX B650E-I GAMING WIFI Mini ITX AM5 Motherboard ($179.99 @ Newegg) Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory ($229.99 @ Amazon) Storage: Samsung 850 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive Storage: Crucial P3 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($109.52 @ Amazon) Video Card: XFX Speedster MERC 310 Black Edition Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24 GB Video Card ($849.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Corsair SF1000 (2024) 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply ($199.99 @ Newegg) Case Fan: ARCTIC P14 Slim PWM PST 52 CFM 140 mm Fan ($12.99 @ Amazon) Case Fan: ARCTIC P14 Slim PWM PST 52 CFM 140 mm Fan ($12.99 @ Amazon) Something I was wondering is how easy it is to fit the extra SATA SSD in this case. Thanks in advance for any advice! soupcon fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Nov 10, 2025 |
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Nov 10, 2025 23:09
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soupcon posted:Hi, I'm looking into creating a couch gaming/entertainment SFF PC that's going to be hooked up to my living room TV. My only hard requirements are an AMD GPU (going to be running bazzite linux and I don't want to deal with linux/nvidia finickiness) and the SSDs listed below since I had them lying around. Because there's no compelling reason to use an AIO with the 9800X3D, if you haven't already bought the case I might suggest going with the Grater variant and just doing an air-cooled mATX build. The price on the motherboard is great, and it's a good board (ignoring the lack of a third M.2 slot), but a good mATX board / good 850W ATX PSU would save about $80, and would require a CPU air cooler, saving another $50 over a solid 280mm AIO. Unfortunately the that variant is inexplicably $70 more expensive, obliterating most of the savings, so I guess it doesn't really matter? It comes down to whether or not you care about having a motherboard with a third M.2 slot. If the Grater variant is still on the table, I can throw out some 3x M.2 B650E/B850 mATX motherboard suggestions that will be comparable to the B650E-I, but none are meaningfully cheaper. This spreadsheet is a good way to quickly compare features. • Asus TUF Gaming B850M-E WIFI: $170 - three M.2 slots, all on the front side, two with no heatsinks, worse audio, but good enough VRM, same total USB as the B650E-I. • Asus TUF Gaming B850M-PLUS WIFI: $200 - same platform and M.2 layout, better audio chipset, VRM, M.2 heatsinks, and more USB ports. A little more expensive than the B650E-I, but better overall. You'd want to pair those with a solid, quiet 850W ATX PSU. Even the NZXT C850 (2024), Asrock PG-850G, be quiet! Pure Power 13 M 850W and the Corsair RM850x (2024) are all considerably cheaper than any SFX PSU, and they all perform better (sans efficiency, which is within 0-1%) and will be quieter than the SF1000. Any Thermalright Peerless Assassin variant for $35-40 will be fine for the air cooler. - The new $85 Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 280mm is much cheaper than the original variant, and should have better performance (it's the same thing with newer and better fans). - You can still get CL30 RAM for less than that G.Skill CL36 kit. That Klevv CL28 kit is great, but it's saying "ships within 10-12 weeks" for me, so I don't think it'll ever materialize. The $190 Patriot kit is the one that hundreds of people in the thread have used without issue. - Regardless of the type of build you choose, definitely do not buy a 7900XT for a penny over $500, let alone $850. It's consistently slower than the 9070 XT in raster (and the 9070 XT's performance has improved from driver updates since that benchmark), and much, much slower in ray-tracing, and you can get a 9070 XT for its $600 MSRP right now. - I understand wanting to re-use the existing SATA SSD, but trying to cram it into that case without blocking something's airflow might be tricky depending on which components you use. Knocking $250 off the price of the GPU should free up enough budget for a fast new NVMe drive, currently $70-250 for 1TB-4TB, and won't exacerbate the rat's nest of cables or negatively impact airflow. Given that SSD prices haven't risen much yet (10-20%), but they're trending up and will spike sooner or later given the jump in NAND flash prices, I'd recommend just getting a good 2-4TB NVMe now rather than waiting a year or two down the road where it might hurt a lot more. A non-DRAM drive will be fine for a couch gaming system, there's no meaningful difference in game content loading performance with significantly faster drives. • Fast 1TB TLC drives start at around $70, but I can't say I'd recommend putting a 1TB drive on a board with only 2-3 M.2 slots when you've already got another 1TB filling one. • Fast 2TB HMB drives with TLC flash start at $130. These have gone up around 15-20% on average in the last few weeks. There's also the unselected Lexar NM800Pro in there for $130, a DRAM drive, but it's using an IG5236 chipset which has had some problems on some models (likely a firmware thing), and I don't know if the Lexar one is affected. Same for the Klevv C930, though the PNY CS3140 for $140 uses a Phison E18 and a solid all-around DRAM drive. • Fast 4TB HMB drives with TLC flash start at $250. Prices on these have worsened more than the other sizes, with some of them going up 50% in the last week. 4TB DRAM drives are all but unavailable at this point, and $300+. If you think you might want a 4TB drive in this build in the next year or two, now's the time to bite. If I have time later, I'll do a direct cost comparison between the ITX/SFX/AIO build and the mATX/ATX/air build. There should not be a meaningful difference in overall noise level or cooling performance, although more case ventilation should always help. mikey fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Nov 11, 2025 |
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Nov 11, 2025 00:44
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Thats a lot of good info, thank you!
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Nov 11, 2025 04:49
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For SFF cases, ALWAYS find the manual and read it before purchase. They generally include every possible layout configuration of the case and will call out where parts like a 2.5” drive can go, clearance of parts, mutually exclusive options, etc. You will also want to measure the parts you are buying two or three times and be very sure to plan out how they will fit in the case. Watch out for things like having a 3 slot GPU reducing clearance for the the CPU cooler by 20mm or a normal PSU making fitting an AIO radiator impossible or have to use a very thin one and thin fans unless you have an SFX PSU. Things of that nature. You really have to plan part purchases out a lot more with an SFF case. Kibner fucked around with this message at 05:09 on Nov 11, 2025 |
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Nov 11, 2025 05:02
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Kibner posted:For SFF cases, ALWAYS find the manual and read it before purchase. They generally include every possible layout configuration of the case and will call out where parts like a 2.5” drive can go, clearance of parts, mutually exclusive options, etc. Also, look up real-world builds and Reddit threads to see what's possible. This was super helpful when I built in the Lian Li Q58 (and also helped me figure out how to cram an ATX power supply and multiple hard drives + a full-sized GPU into my A3)
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Nov 11, 2025 05:06
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soupcon posted:Thats a lot of good info, thank you! Kibner posted:For SFF cases, ALWAYS find the manual and read it before purchase. They generally include every possible layout configuration of the case and will call out where parts like a 2.5” drive can go, clearance of parts, mutually exclusive options, etc. change my name posted:Also, look up real-world builds and Reddit threads to see what's possible. This was super helpful when I built in the Lian Li Q58 (and also helped me figure out how to cram an ATX power supply and multiple hard drives + a full-sized GPU into my A3) Yeah, I really didn't have enough time when writing that reply to check for dimensional compatibility. - I missed that the Peerless Assassin 120 won't fit. The PA 120 Mini is the same price though, still fine for the 9800X3D, and included in several of their example builds. - I saw the build with a top-slot motherboard and a 160mm PSU and figured, cool, this should be easy. Except I didn't see that they're slotting the GPU into the second 4.0x4 chipset slot for that particular one, which is a terrible idea even for a 9070 XT let alone the example 4090. There are basically no current mATX motherboards with second-position x16 slots, so the max ATX PSU length is effectively limited to 140mm. Going from the specifications page and this build where they're actually using the correct slot on the motherboard: https://ncased.com/blogs/m2-builds/m2-build-level3: • PA 120 Mini • Large 304mm x 137mm x 61mm GPU • 140mm ATX PSU GPU size isn't an issue, as the cheapest 9070 XT right now is a 290mm x 123mm x 56mm model. The 140mm ATX PSU is a pretty heavy restriction though, and takes all of the best models out of the running. Here's a selection of viable models, all of which have at least good part quality and performance, though most fall a little short of the Corsair SF1000 in efficiency and overall performance. Of those, the Vetroo G5 / GV 1000W (HWBusters review) has the best balance of quality, performance and price, stays very quiet with up to an 750-800W load (upper numbers in the DC/AC Watts column), and it gets the recommendation of the linked reviewer, who also runs the Cybenetics cert agency. I don't know much about the quality of Vetroo's support in the US, but they do at least have a website for RMA requests, which is more than I can say of Super Flower. Here's the Corsair SF1000's Cybenetics report linked to the same chart. It's about 1% more efficient at 600W, which only represents a dollar or two a year difference at US energy prices, and its overall electrical performance is similar to that of the Vetroo model. (e: Of the other PSUs in that selection link, the Seasonics are priced poorly and have so-so performance, the Corsair RMe series has good noise performance but are a step down in part quality and also in overall electrical performance, the Montech Century II has good parts and very good overall performance and is priced well but its noise levels are just barely acceptable, and the FSP models don't have good reviews or Cybenetics reports except for the 1200W model, so I can only infer from that one, which has decent electrical performance but will likely have borderline noise levels for the 850W and maybe even the 1000W-- plus they're expensive.) I also mis-read the 7900 XTX in your part list as a 7900 XT, but that doesn't really change anything-- you still almost certainly want a 9070 XT over the XTX despite it having slightly less raster performance, both for the still-superior RT performance and for the full-performance FP8 FSR4 upscaling, even before considering the price difference. FSR 3.1 is terrible, frankly, and the XTX has to shoehorn on the leaked INT8 FSR4 model that has roughly half the performance gain over native TAA compared to FP8 FSR4 on the 9070 XT (per this Hardware Unboxed video). Maybe AMD will release an officially supported FSR4 version for the 7000 series GPUs eventually, but it's unlikely the performance gain will be much better than that. Anyway, assuming I'm not missing anything about the dimensional compatibility of these parts, here's a cost comparison between the two sans case, fans and storage. ITX: PCPartPicker Part List CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III Pro 110 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($84.49 @ Amazon) Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX B650E-I GAMING WIFI Mini ITX AM5 Motherboard ($179.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Corsair SF1000 (2024) 1000 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply ($199.99 @ Newegg) Total: $1731.44 mATX: PCPartPicker Part List CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin MINI 66.87 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.39 @ Amazon) Motherboard: Asus TUF GAMING B850M-E WIFI Micro ATX AM5 Motherboard ($169.99 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Vetroo GV1000 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($109.99 @ Amazon) Total: $1581.34 So, about a $150 difference, with an extra M.2 slot on the mATX build. As long as you can fit a decent 140mm intake fan between/under the PSU and CPU cooler and a 92mm exhaust fan, there shouldn't be any thermal issues with an air-cooled build even without any undervolting (though that will help with noise either way), but it'd be a good idea to read about others' experience with air cooling in this case before making a final decision. If you're certain you'll go through with this build in some fashion no matter what, you may want to buy the RAM immediately and not take the chance that it'll go up another $25-50 while you're finalizing the rest of the build. Same for any of the NVMe SSDs I linked in the last post. mikey fucked around with this message at 09:58 on Nov 11, 2025 |
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Nov 11, 2025 09:13
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Ordered the RAM and a 2TB nvme, thanks! I'll mull over the rest, as for the case I'm getting it as a gift from a friend and I'm 90% sure they ordered the M2 (not the grater) so that's what I'll be going with I guess.
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Nov 11, 2025 13:00
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E: missed a follow-up post and wrote a bunch of redundant stuff
Fruits of the sea fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Nov 11, 2025 |
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Nov 11, 2025 16:04
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Back with another dumb question. I ordered a "MSI MPG B850 EDGE TI WIFI" motherboard for my new build, which will arrive later this week. If I want to use the onboard wifi and bluetooth, do I need to buy an antenna or does one come in the box? Weirdly I cannot find this on MSI's website. I'm like 90% certain it includes one but it would be a real bummer to get the thing built and not be able to use it cause I have no internet lol. Yes yes hardwire ethernet is a million times better. Unfortunately the layout of my home is not conducive to this. Maybe a future project to run a huge cable through the attic.
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Nov 11, 2025 17:44
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The Newegg listing for that motherboard has an antenna pictured with it so I'd expect one to be included in the retail package.
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Nov 11, 2025 17:49
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It'll 100% include an antenna. It's also right there on the website for it:
Butterfly Valley fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Nov 11, 2025 |
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Nov 11, 2025 17:56
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Thanks. It wasn't clear to me if that was actually in the box or a "serving suggestion" photo but apparently it's clear to everyone else 
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Nov 11, 2025 18:46
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mikey posted:Asrock update: MULTI KILL! I have this model sitting in my closet after it killed my 9800X3D!
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Nov 11, 2025 18:57
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I too have an Asrock in the closet (The new non-Asrock motherboard is doing great)
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Nov 11, 2025 21:58
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soupcon posted:Ordered the RAM and a 2TB nvme, thanks! I'll mull over the rest, as for the case I'm getting it as a gift from a friend and I'm 90% sure they ordered the M2 (not the grater) so that's what I'll be going with I guess. Upon further consideration, given the configuration of the case, it probably makes little difference which model you get. If you mounted the PSU with the intake facing outward on the grater version, it would reduce GPU length compatibility to something like 280-285mm due to the PSU cables being further into the case, and the PSU will be blocking most of the front anyway, so the top and bottom will still comprise the majority of air intake in an air-cooled build.
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Nov 11, 2025 23:58
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Maaan, with ASRock having been the cornerstone of the first PC I ever built and being great back then, seeing them take the piss in recent days is really depressing.
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Nov 12, 2025 00:33
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