New computer time

Quizzical

For various reasons, I need another computer.  My original plan was to get a new gaming computer and then move my old one (built in 2018) to the new place where I need a computer.  I'm not happy with the video card options available today, however.

As such, my plan is to build a new computer that will someday be my primary gaming computer, but not put a video card in just yet.  I'll add a video card and then switch it to be my primary gaming computer once I'm more satisfied with the options--and prices--available.

A lot of people post on this site looking for help on what to buy.  I'm planning on building a new computer here, so I thought I'd post what I'm looking at:

https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-7-7700x-ryzen-7-7000-series/p/N82E16819113768
https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-b650m-ds3h/p/N82E16813145414
https://www.newegg.com/team-32gb/p/N82E16820331704
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811147308
https://www.newegg.com/seasonic-focus-plus-750-gold-ssr-750fx-750w/p/N82E16817151187
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-plus-2tb/p/N82E16820147744
https://www.newegg.com/deepcool-liquid-cooling-system/p/N82E16835856147
https://www.newegg.com/microsoft-windows-11-home/p/N82E16832350881
https://www.newegg.com/metallic-black-msi-optix-g241v-e2-24/p/N82E16824475134
https://www.newegg.com/cyberpower-cp1350pfclcd-nema-5-15r/p/N82E16842102133

I haven't placed the order yet.  I'll probably get around to it in a couple of days.  As I noted above, there isn't a video card, but I'll use the integrated GPU for a while.

I do need a new monitor for the new computer, but only one, and it doesn't need to be that large or fancy.  I also want a UPS for the new computer.  I plan to pair the new UPS with my gaming computer for now, then move my old one to back up the new computer.

Getting Windows 11 on a DVD probably strikes you as weird, but the DVD version is the one on sale.  You're really just paying for a license key, and I'll download the latest version from Microsoft's site to a USB stick for the actual installation.

Cleffy

How boring, everything is well thought out and has cost/benefit factored in.

Cleffy

Since no one else can think of anything... Go with a $1000 OLED monitor. What is the point of a good gaming PC without a great monitor? Cheap IPS monitors barely look better than a TN panel.

Quizzical

For what it's worth, I've now placed the order after adding a monitor arm, an ethernet cable, and replacement batteries for my old UPS.  I was wondering if prices would change over the course of the few days, but they generally didn't.

I did have another look at buying a new video card.  I'm not interested in anything slower than a Radeon RX 6800 XT or a GeForce RTX 3080.  I did at least think about getting this:

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-radeon-rx-6800-xt-rx6800xt-pgd-16go/p/N82E16814930049

On the Nvidia side, prices are terrible.  There were only four options under $800, all of which cost at least $700.  Two were pre-orders from Maxsun and Yeston, and one was a recently launched card by Peladn.  I'm wondering if Nvidia signed up new board partners (or perhaps ones from other markets to enter the US) if they were willing to take some old RTX 3000 series parts off of Nvidia's hands.  That left this as the cheapest Nvidia option from an established board partner:

https://www.newegg.com/msi-geforce-rtx-3080-rtx-3080-gaming-z-trio-10g-lhr/p/N82E16814137677

That's about 50% more than the AMD option above, and for similar performance.  It sure looks to me like Nvidia is in no hurry to sell off their glut of RTX 3000 series inventory.

Cleffy

I have an RTX 3090, and I am coming from a Vega Frontier Edition. I was thoroughly unimpressed with NVidia's offering when it comes to gaming. The performance is barely double what the Vega Frontier Edition could do in games. For compute it's significantly faster as my compute workload uses Cuda.
The unimpressive part is the software and driver suite. It's just so basic compared to what AMD offers, even though I had to use a specific workaround with my AMD GPU.

Quizzical

Cleffy said:

Since no one else can think of anything... Go with a $1000 OLED monitor. What is the point of a good gaming PC without a great monitor? Cheap IPS monitors barely look better than a TN panel.

My gaming computer has three monitors in portrait mode for a combined resolution of 4320x2560 and a combined diagonal size of 47".  I don't want to go back to just one monitor, nor do I want to pay $1000 each for three new monitors.

The use for my new computer is going to be far less demanding on monitors, and even the monitor that I bought will be a major upgrade over the laptop that I'm using now.

maskedweasel

Quizzical said:

Cleffy said:

Since no one else can think of anything... Go with a $1000 OLED monitor. What is the point of a good gaming PC without a great monitor? Cheap IPS monitors barely look better than a TN panel.

My gaming computer has three monitors in portrait mode for a combined resolution of 4320x2560 and a combined diagonal size of 47".  I don't want to go back to just one monitor, nor do I want to pay $1000 each for three new monitors.

The use for my new computer is going to be far less demanding on monitors, and even the monitor that I bought will be a major upgrade over the laptop that I'm using now.

I would be interested to see what your monitor setup looks like in the end. 

Ridelynn

Only things I can add.

I've moved over all my UPSes to Eaton / Tripp-Lite. They are a bit more expensive, but I consider them insurance. I've had a lot better luck with these so far than I have APC units, which always seem to go bad shortly after their first battery replacement. They are much more aggressive on voltage correction (which is good - that's what protects your equipment).

I can also say, not that this will sway any opinions, but just to provide another data point, in my household I've currently got 4 gaming computers (not all mine, mind you). Half of them are running nVidia, the other half AMD. I've had more issues with nVidia drivers in the last few years than AMD, by far. 

Cleffy

The CyberPower UPSes aren't that bad. I think they used to have tear downs on Toms Hardware of UPSes and Power Strips. I do have a Tripp-Lite IsoBar on my system not on a UPS. I have also encountered the cheapo Tripp-Lite power strips.

Quizzical

My other UPS is made by CyberPower, and I bought it in 2009.  It has generally worked flawlessly until the batteries wear out.  The original batteries lasted six years, the first set of replacements three, and the second set four.  The replacements were made by other companies.  I didn't list it above, but I also bought another set of replacement batteries for that UPS, as the ones in it are failing again.

My existing UPS will correct voltages without going to the battery so long as the input voltage stays above 100 V.  Really, though, a typical computer power supply is rated as being able to handle anywhere from 100-240 V, and a high quality one won't complain if the input voltage is several volts away from the nominal 120 V input.  Monitors don't have that protection, nor do some other, cheaper things, but losing a monitor isn't the same sort of disaster as frying everything inside of your case.

Mendel

Quizzical said:

For what it's worth, I've now placed the order after adding a monitor arm, an ethernet cable, and replacement batteries for my old UPS.  I was wondering if prices would change over the course of the few days, but they generally didn't.

I did have another look at buying a new video card.  I'm not interested in anything slower than a Radeon RX 6800 XT or a GeForce RTX 3080.  I did at least think about getting this:

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-radeon-rx-6800-xt-rx6800xt-pgd-16go/p/N82E16814930049

On the Nvidia side, prices are terrible.  There were only four options under $800, all of which cost at least $700.  Two were pre-orders from Maxsun and Yeston, and one was a recently launched card by Peladn.  I'm wondering if Nvidia signed up new board partners (or perhaps ones from other markets to enter the US) if they were willing to take some old RTX 3000 series parts off of Nvidia's hands.  That left this as the cheapest Nvidia option from an established board partner:

https://www.newegg.com/msi-geforce-rtx-3080-rtx-3080-gaming-z-trio-10g-lhr/p/N82E16814137677

That's about 50% more than the AMD option above, and for similar performance.  It sure looks to me like Nvidia is in no hurry to sell off their glut of RTX 3000 series inventory.

Monday is Cyber Monday.  Several consumer sources expect that will be the best day to buy computer gear.  See if you can cancel that order, and replace it again on Monday.  No harm, no foul if the prices aren't better.  Savings if they're cheaper.

Quizzical

Mendel said:

Quizzical said:

For what it's worth, I've now placed the order after adding a monitor arm, an ethernet cable, and replacement batteries for my old UPS.  I was wondering if prices would change over the course of the few days, but they generally didn't.

I did have another look at buying a new video card.  I'm not interested in anything slower than a Radeon RX 6800 XT or a GeForce RTX 3080.  I did at least think about getting this:

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-radeon-rx-6800-xt-rx6800xt-pgd-16go/p/N82E16814930049

On the Nvidia side, prices are terrible.  There were only four options under $800, all of which cost at least $700.  Two were pre-orders from Maxsun and Yeston, and one was a recently launched card by Peladn.  I'm wondering if Nvidia signed up new board partners (or perhaps ones from other markets to enter the US) if they were willing to take some old RTX 3000 series parts off of Nvidia's hands.  That left this as the cheapest Nvidia option from an established board partner:

https://www.newegg.com/msi-geforce-rtx-3080-rtx-3080-gaming-z-trio-10g-lhr/p/N82E16814137677

That's about 50% more than the AMD option above, and for similar performance.  It sure looks to me like Nvidia is in no hurry to sell off their glut of RTX 3000 series inventory.

Monday is Cyber Monday.  Several consumer sources expect that will be the best day to buy computer gear.  See if you can cancel that order, and replace it again on Monday.  No harm, no foul if the prices aren't better.  Savings if they're cheaper.

New Egg's Black Friday deals went live no later than Monday.  All but one of the items that I linked above as having bought are listed as Black Friday deals.  So is the Ethernet cable that I bought but didn't link.  A lot of them are genuinely large discounts, too, so I'm very skeptical that prices will drop further for "Cyber Monday".  If anything, the risk is that what I want could sell out, or I wait too late until the sales are over.

MMOman101

The thing this post taught me is you know about cpus and gpus but shit about coolers and cases.

Quizzical

MMOman101 said:

The thing this post taught me is you know about cpus and gpus but shit about coolers and cases.

I know that I didn't want to spend a fortune on a cooler or a case and that I didn't need to.  There are nicer coolers and cases out there, but they tend to cost more than $50.

MMOman101

There has been a lot of testing on coolers and pretty much everyone has come to the same conclusion.  240 aios are about as good as well  built tower coolers.Tower coolers last for ever if you can replace the fan and aios have a lot of failure points.  If you are going to get an aio you should get a minimum of a 280. At least you gain some benefits for the inherent risk.  

There does not seem to be any credible reviews for the case. It might be good. Who knows.  If you feel all cases are substantially similar that just kind of confirms my statement though.

Vrika

MMOman101 said:

There has been a lot of testing on coolers and pretty much everyone has come to the same conclusion.  240 aios are about as good as well  built tower coolers.Tower coolers last for ever if you can replace the fan and aios have a lot of failure points.  If you are going to get an aio you should get a minimum of a 280. At least you gain some benefits for the inherent risk.  

There does not seem to be any credible reviews for the case. It might be good. Who knows.  If you feel all cases are substantially similar that just kind of confirms my statement though.

No, Quizzical bought really good case and cooler for the price. He'd have needed to spend twice that much money to get something better, and there was no need to since the ones he picked out work perfectly fine.

Quizzical

MMOman101 said:

There has been a lot of testing on coolers and pretty much everyone has come to the same conclusion.  240 aios are about as good as well  built tower coolers.Tower coolers last for ever if you can replace the fan and aios have a lot of failure points.  If you are going to get an aio you should get a minimum of a 280. At least you gain some benefits for the inherent risk.  

There does not seem to be any credible reviews for the case. It might be good. Who knows.  If you feel all cases are substantially similar that just kind of confirms my statement though.

I paid $50 for an AIO with a 240 mm radiator.  Yes, there are big air coolers that will work about as well.  I didn't see any of them available for $50 or less.  Smaller air coolers that can readily be had for $50 won't perform as well.

I also paid $50 for a case with three 120 mm front fans, one 120 mm rear fan, a top mounting spot for the 240 mm radiator, and plenty of space for a typical gaming desktop.  I don't doubt that their are nicer cases out there.  But they tend to cost more than $50.

I'm not likely to have outlandish needs on either a cooler or a case, either.  I don't overclock, and I chose a CPU with a 142 W turbo power.  If the CPU had a higher turbo power at stock speeds, I'd probably throttle it back in the BIOS.  The video card that I'll eventually add likely hasn't launched yet.  I expect to get something rated at no more than 300 W, and expect to throttle it back further by nixing the turbo for most games.

Both the case and the cooler came with free shipping, too.  That matters a lot on a case, as big, heavy items can easily be expensive to ship.  Had either of those items cost $100, I'd have bought something else instead.

Splattr

Hey Quiz, you do know that if you spent more money you could get better parts like a bigger cooler and a fancy case, right? /s Really, though, nice job on picking balanced components at good prices.

I do have a question about the RAM. You went with 4800 MHz. Did you go with the lower speed for the value price or is it not worth it to go with faster ram? I've seen everything from "fastest must be bestest" to 5600/6000 is the sweet spot to comparisons that show very little to zero real-world advantage to using faster ram. Would love to hear your take on it.

Tiller

Your actually buying a Windows license? I've been transferring mine since 2010.

Quizzical

Splattr said:

Hey Quiz, you do know that if you spent more money you could get better parts like a bigger cooler and a fancy case, right? /s Really, though, nice job on picking balanced components at good prices.

I do have a question about the RAM. You went with 4800 MHz. Did you go with the lower speed for the value price or is it not worth it to go with faster ram? I've seen everything from "fastest must be bestest" to 5600/6000 is the sweet spot to comparisons that show very little to zero real-world advantage to using faster ram. Would love to hear your take on it.

Higher clocked memory adds a lot to the price tag, and doesn't have much effect on performance for most consumer uses.  So just on a price/performance basis, I didn't want to pay an extra $30 for not much difference in performance.

Furthermore, I wanted 32 GB of memory, and the natural way to do that is as a kit of two 16 GB modules.  New Egg had a bunch of such kits at 4800 MHz, two G.Skill kits at 5200 MHz for $30 more than I paid, and a bunch of memory kits that were factory overvolted and overclocked.  The stock voltage for DDR5 is 1.1 V, and while more voltage does allow chips to clock higher, that has all of the usual drawbacks of overclocking.  For the sake of reliability, I didn't want to go that route.  It's not a huge risk, of course, but the benefit wouldn't be much, either.

There's also the issue that the memory clock speed needs to be handled not just by the memory, but also by the memory controller in the CPU.  A vendor's first memory controller on a new standard is sometimes problematic, and doesn't always support as high of clock speeds as you might hope.

For example, Intel's Alder Lake DDR5 memory controller only officially supported up to 4800 MHz memory on motherboards with only two memory slots.  Get four memory slots, even if you only use two of them, and it only supported 4400 MHz memory.  The DDR4 controller in AMD's Raven Ridge chips had restrictions on clock speed that depended on the number of ranks of the memory module, which is something that is hard to look up.  This probably wouldn't cause any trouble, but it's not worth the risk of pushing higher clock speeds in exchange for no real benefit.

I actually came very close to getting a Ryzen 7 5700G instead.  That would have not just saved $150 on the CPU, but also saved money on a motherboard, memory (DDR4 instead of DDR5), and cooler.

Quizzical

Tiller said:

Your actually buying a Windows license? I've been transferring mine since 2010.

I don't yet have a legal Windows 11 license, or at least, not before buying this one.  I intend to keep this new computer beyond when Windows 10 goes off support in 2025.

Besides, while transferring a license from one computer to another may be allowed when the old one breaks or gets replaced, using the same license for two separate computers at once generally isn't.  The new computer isn't a replacement for my old, but will supplement it.  By usage, it's more a replacement for my laptop, other than when I travel.

Tiller

Quizzical said:

Tiller said:

Your actually buying a Windows license? I've been transferring mine since 2010.

I don't yet have a legal Windows 11 license, or at least, not before buying this one.  I intend to keep this new computer beyond when Windows 10 goes off support in 2025.

Besides, while transferring a license from one computer to another may be allowed when the old one breaks or gets replaced, using the same license for two separate computers at once generally isn't.  The new computer isn't a replacement for my old, but will supplement it.  By usage, it's more a replacement for my laptop, other than when I travel.

Ahh, if you do it right you can ride the free upgrades. You can transfer, but I think once or twice still. I haven't paid for Windows since Windows 7 on my main rig.

Vrika

Tiller said:

Quizzical said:

Tiller said:

Your actually buying a Windows license? I've been transferring mine since 2010.

I don't yet have a legal Windows 11 license, or at least, not before buying this one.  I intend to keep this new computer beyond when Windows 10 goes off support in 2025.

Besides, while transferring a license from one computer to another may be allowed when the old one breaks or gets replaced, using the same license for two separate computers at once generally isn't.  The new computer isn't a replacement for my old, but will supplement it.  By usage, it's more a replacement for my laptop, other than when I travel.

Ahh, if you do it right you can ride the free upgrades. You can transfer, but I think once or twice still. I haven't paid for Windows since Windows 7 on my main rig.

I pre-ordered Win 7 retail version and was able to use its license for everything until earlier this year when I needed to build a new computer without retiring the old one.

OG_Solareus

750watts should be bumped up to at minimuim 850 watts.

Quizzical

OG_Solareus said:

750watts should be bumped up to at minimuim 850 watts.

The CPU won't use more than 142 W.  While I haven't bought a video card yet, I intend to keep that inside of 300 W.  Add in a generous 100 W buffer for everything else that sits behind a power supply (which notably excludes monitors) and it's unlikely that I'll ever draw 550 W from the power supply.  A high quality 750 W power supply is plenty enough for that.

OG_Solareus

Quizzical said:

OG_Solareus said:

750watts should be bumped up to at minimuim 850 watts.

The CPU won't use more than 142 W.  While I haven't bought a video card yet, I intend to keep that inside of 300 W.  Add in a generous 100 W buffer for everything else that sits behind a power supply (which notably excludes monitors) and it's unlikely that I'll ever draw 550 W from the power supply.  A high quality 750 W power supply is plenty enough for that.

if you like living on the edge, that's up too you. how many usb peripherals you using ?