|OT| The PC Hardware Thread -- Buy/Upgrade/Ask/Answer

[warp_]

the part around the xbox logo should be the same as the rest of the controller. that's how they identify the newest model with bluetooth. the older model has shiny black plastic around the xbox logo. don't get that thing.

Xbox Wireless Controller | Xbox

Experience the modernized Xbox Wireless Controller, designed for enhanced comfort during gameplay.

www.xbox.com

 

[Li Kao]

ISee It might be handy to post a link to an example, just so Li Kao gets the right one. You know what his luck is like.

[UWSL][/UWSL]
You may have a point [UWSL][/UWSL]

But on Amazon the new model has its own tab, I should be fine.
A little less fine with the fucking price point, 50 euros with discount applied.
...
Oh, wait, good old luck ! The product ships within 1-2 months [UWSL][/UWSL]

 

[warp_]

i think ms is starting to slow down or cut off hardware production on xbox one stuff with the new one coming out in three months. only the s model console and white controller seem to be still being made but it is sold out in many stores.

 

[Copons]

Just bought a Logitech G502 Hero (after suggestion by RPS reporting a ~50% off on Amazon UK for the next 12 hours, in case others are interested) to replace my old and battered Mionix Naos 7000 (now called 3200? ).

I'm not really into the G502 flashy looks, but eh, price seemed about right and a mouse change was really overdue.
Worse case scenario, I've returned more expensive stuff to Amazon (like a 2080S ).

The mouse got here this morning, and I've been using it for a few hours.

I still have to get used to the fact it's smaller (I was "warned" by the reviews, but I never quite understand what "large hand" means... like, I have slightly larger hands than most people I know, but I'm no NBA player?) than the Naos, but it feels good enough, and I appreciate that the right side is rugged, making it easier to pick up without it slipping off my ring finger.

I also have to retrain myself to have a mouse wheel with a working middle click.
It's cool that the wheel has 2 settings: smooth or "clicky". Smooth feels SUPER good, but I can't seem to control it as well as I would, and it happens to me quite often to accidentally scroll it when raising the finger from the wheel.

Also, it looks quite good IRL!
It's like straight out the Death Star, but for some reason I'm digging it much more than expected.

I haven't tried adding any weights to it. It feels heavy and balanced enough to me already.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

Wow, thanks Scan & DPD! I threw caution to the wind and ordered some new RAM last night expecting it to turn up on monday but it arrived today before the delivery slot. Good job, peeps!

Fingers crossed everything is looking good. Especially the OpenGL apps and Benchmarks that i haven't been able to run in a Dog's age so now i'm off to give [UWSL]Moose Life[/UWSL] a whirl as it was having all sorts of issues. Wish me luck!

 

[Stevey]

I've used SCAN a lot, always quick delivery.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

I've used SCAN a lot, always quick delivery.

Yup, i've used Scan and Overclockers for decades now i was just surprised to see my stuff delivered today when i ordered it lateish last night. 30 minutes in Moose Life and no OpenGL errors or crashes. Good Times. Now my eyes hurt though.

 

[Durante]

This is pretty massive:

(Apparently the RTX 3090)

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

Yeah, i've seen some pictures and a triple-slot brick that size whooo, that's a chunky card. I'm more interested in the 2070 equivalent as that'll hopefully be closer to my budget and a bit smaller.

In other news, wish me luck. I'm "silently" being forced to update to Windows 10 2004 which is worrying. I'm expecting to have to reinstall a bunch of drivers later on as the drivers Microsoft useually tries to fob me off with are trash.

 

[curi0usBystander]

My 1070 palit gamerock is massive (and that's an aftermarket card) I fear how big this cards are gonna be.

 

[C-Dub]

For the longest time Microsoft never forced Windows 10 2004 on any of my Windows computers (Gaming PC, Surface Pro 6, Linx Vision tablet and my girlfriend's HP laptop).

Then I switched my gaming PC's Windows drive to an NVMe and decided to do a fresh install of Windows 10, as I don't particularly trust any sort of drive cloning software and figured starting afresh might be good anyway. Obviously the Media Creation Tool put 2004 onto my USB installation drive. Once the Gaming PC was back up and running, every Windows device in the home got the update pushed to them. Literally, within hours they were all prompting to update. I warned my girlfriend her laptop would do it too, but she ignored me and then Windows rebooted during her online pilates class.

I know Windows has that home network update propagation feature, but I legitimately think that something was stopping Windows from downloading the update, and as soon as one of my PCs got it, all of a sudden it started sending it out to the rest.

Thankfully, I've been using it on all devices for the last week (except for the Linx Vision, which I'm going to update now) and nothing seems broken.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

There were terrible issues with 2004 when it was first released and a bunch of blocking issues were identified so microsoft pulled it from general release. They then rereleased it but only for people who actively looked for it and chose to install it. It would seem that they consider update 2004 stable enough, lol, to force onto regular users.

So far some of my settings haven't transferred, most annoyingly my wallpaper grrr, and i have the issue where the event logs are full of ESENT SRUjet errors. I'm about to run some apps and see if there's any performance issues.

 

[warp_]

i made the mistake of installing 2004 right away to fix the stuttering issues i have sometimes with a my second monitor and it was a damn mess so i had to roll back. the second time i installed it post-nvidia driver update it was much better.

I know Windows has that home network update propagation feature, but I legitimately think that something was stopping Windows from downloading the update, and as soon as one of my PCs got it, all of a sudden it started sending it out to the rest.

there's a setting in the update menu that actually will do that, under delivery optimization. once one pc on a network gets the update it'll push it out to others on the same network to save on bandwidth usage. i've got it turned off but it's on by default.

 

[ISee]

Sorry to be that guy.
But for once, 2004 worked fine for me since day one.

 

[low-G]

Wonder if I should buy a few more Xbox One gamepads (which is my favorite gamepad yet), in case the XSX gamepad is actually shit in some way. I’m particularly worried about regression on the dpad.

Thinking about the Nvidia cards, I don’t have much in the ways of games I actually want to play that don’t run perfectly smoothly. I wonder what the thing to upgrade from Turing to Ampere will be, if anything. 970->1070 was as much about the additional VRAM I began to need in games than performance, and I bought a 2080 for the ray tracing features.

I suspect the motivating factor may be if they heap on more raytracing features in some game I want to play.

Sorry to be that guy.
But for once, 2004 worked fine for me since day one.

Same. It’s more about how your system took the update, and individual hardware differences, than the update itself.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

I've just reinstalled a bunch off Apps and Drivers to see if that makes things more stable. I've managed to go in and stop a couple of windows services and reset their database files so hopefully that will stop the flurry of ESENT errors i'm getting.

It's just annoying that after getting my system stable yesterday 2004 has come along and now it's all wonky again. Thanks MS!

edit: and just had my first BSOD in over a year. Hmmmmm.

 

[Copons]

So what about all the Ampere leaks?
I know I'm putting the card before the horse (), but I'm starting to be kinda afraid for both their size (my case has room for up to 320mm, but I'd rather go under 300) and the power required (finally got my 650W PSU replaced).
Ah well, I guess I'm really worrying too much and too early.

 

[Durante]

I'm thinking about switching my 120mm front intake fans to 140mm

 

[ISee]

I'm thinking about getting a bigger case.
3090 will be a hot card.

 

[warp_]

i saw rumors of it being a foot long

 

[Copons]

You two are scarying the hell out of me

 

[Durante]

I mean, I don't expect most people to buy 3090s.

 

[warp_]

those pics leaked and its a three slot card, if you needed more fear put into you lol

 

[Durante]

I think that the size of the NV/FE cards is interesting because it will give a better idea of how good the thermal engineering actually is on those cards -- so far, the Nvidia FE cards have always been limited by their relatively modest size compared to high-end third party cards.

 

[ISee]

There are rumors about the PCB itself still being pretty small and compact in size. Would be interesting for water-cooling.
If thermal density isn't too high.
Gamer Nexus taking everything apart will be my first video.

 

[Copons]

I mean, I don't expect most people to buy 3090s.

True dat.

I'm not aiming at the 3090, as I'm not sure how my heart would cope with returing it to Amazon after a couple of weeks.

Still, my 780 is showing its age (and my 4K monitor is not helping...), so I'm mostly terrified by any possible obstacle that might separate me from this overdue upgrade — the Covid-related shortages are plenty enough.

 

[ISee]

True dat.

I'm not aiming at the 3090, as I'm not sure how my heart would cope with returing it to Amazon after a couple of weeks.

Still, my 780 is showing its age (and my 4K monitor is not helping...), so I'm mostly terrified by any possible obstacle that might separate me from this overdue upgrade — the Covid-related shortages are plenty enough.

780 is a 250W card.
3080 should also come out with 250W.
I think you'll be fine.

 

[warp_]

i'm just curious what they will perform like compared to the 20 series. obvious the 3090 will be a monster but i wanna know how the midrange looks.

 

[Stevey]

Plenty of room in my case for a new card

 

[Pommes]

I may go with the AMD offerings this time around, since I use Linux almost exclusively nowadays.

 

[ISee]

Many RTX 2080 Super cards just dropped to ~ 650€ in my part of the world.
No idea if that's a good or bad deal with the RTX 3070 in mind though.

 

[SkyStarblaze]

Seeing these estimated prices for the whole RTX 3000 lineup really makes me hope that a 3060 will be a substantial upgrade over a 1070 as this may be as much as I'm willing to afford :/

 

[Durante]

The news about the PCB manufacturing complexities in involved in getting to those GDDR6X ram speeds doesn't look good for costs on the higher-end boards (especially for the double-sided 3090 of course).

Seeing these estimated prices for the whole RTX 3000 lineup really makes me hope that a 3060 will be a substantial upgrade over a 1070 as this may be as much as I'm willing to afford :/

I think it should be a substantial upgrade (if the usual lineup performance percentages hold for the 30 series).

 

[SkyStarblaze]

The news about the PCB manufacturing complexities in involved in getting to those GDDR6X ram speeds doesn't look good for costs on the higher-end boards (especially for the double-sided 3090 of course).

I think it should be a substantial upgrade (if the usual lineup performance percentages hold for the 30 series).

That's good to hear, what is the usual estimated performance percentage upgrade?

And hi Durante by the way, nice to see you here

 

[Durante]

Well, there are a ton of estimates and unconfirmed rumours here, but most leaks put the 3080 at a ~25% uplift over the 2080ti.

A x60 GPU is usually ~60% of the performance of a x80 GPU. If that holds true for the 30 series, and the uplift is also true, then a 3060 should be ~75% of the performance of a 2080ti, which is ~100% faster (this varies pretty wildly by game) than a 1070 when GPU limited. So from all of that a 3060 should be ~50% faster than a 1070 (though this ignores features like RTX/DLSS/etc.).

But as I said, that's all just based on rumours, leaks, and historic trends.

 

[low-G]

Seeing these estimated prices for the whole RTX 3000 lineup really makes me hope that a 3060 will be a substantial upgrade over a 1070 as this may be as much as I'm willing to afford :/

If a 3060 is a substantial rasterization upgrade over a 1070 that will be pretty amazing to me personally. That suggests to me something around a 2080 super in performance, which is possible but I'm skeptical until we get any real hard info.

 

[Durante]

It really depends on how much the 20x -> 30x step (which we can now assume to be on Samsung 8nm) acts like a traditional node upgrade. Because in that case it wouldn't be surprising to see that kind of generational improvement. But apparently the Samsung node is not as significant an upgrade over TSMC 12nm as one might hope.

Well, we'll only be in the dark for a week or so at most now (for the general series at least, concrete x60 specs are probably later).

 

[warp_]

if they ask prices like $600-800 for a small step upgrade, wow. 3090 is probably excluded but also its $1400 or whatever so that's its own market.

i feel like if amd can show big improvement in their new cards the world is their oyster cause nvidia is leaving a ton of room in the low end of pricing.

 

[xinek]

What do people do when they upgrade PC parts? I may consider upgrading to the new card, because it seems like a good idea to try and sell my 1080ti before it's too ancient. Do people use eBay? I'm a little wary of selling there due to scams.

 

[Durante]

I think many people resell their stuff. I only do that when I find someone locally who wants it (usually I go quite a bit below market value for the advantage of simply handing it over).

I usually keep at least 1 recent and functional component of each type around as a backup.

 

[low-G]

What do people do when they upgrade PC parts? I may consider upgrading to the new card, because it seems like a good idea to try and sell my 1080ti before it's too ancient. Do people use eBay? I'm a little wary of selling there due to scams.

I’ve only sold to friends, pushed video cards to older / weaker desktops or put em in a box before.

I absolutely always wait until I’ve used the new GPU for about a month before selling the video card.

 

[warp_]

i usually sell to friends for very cheap or just give a hand me down if getting rid of stuff but i have sold on local marketplaces before. i hear too many bad stories for selling electronics on ebay that keep me away from doing that.

 

[ISee]

Give it away to family and if nobody wants it: Sell on ebay, if it is worth something.

Problems selling to friends is that you are kinda giving them warranty. Because you don't want to take advantage of them.
A GPU, CPU, MB dying weeks after selling is unlikely, but no need to take the risk imo. Also selling something to not "tech savvy" friends means that you are going into legal contract to play tech support for the next ten years. Which can be annoying.

I sold my galaxy s8 to my friends mom for cheap (50€) when my s10. Nothing wrong with the s8, she was just in need of a new, good phone and refused to take it for free.
I'm still playing tech support for her.

 

[low-G]

Problems selling to friends is that you are kinda giving them warranty.

Here's the wild thing, EVGA allows you to transfer the warranty to a new user (last I checked a year or so ago). Last time I used this process (years ago) though it was a bit of a hassle, but my friend got a substantial upgrade for free on the GPU I sold him since the one he sent in was no longer in stock.

 

[ISee]

I should buy more from EVGA than.

 

[Durante]

I always think I should go EVGA due to their nice warranty and step-up policies, but then I remember that I never needed GPU warranty and the step-up thing doesn't do anything when you buy new GPUs close to launch.

 

[SkyStarblaze]

Well, there are a ton of estimates and unconfirmed rumours here, but most leaks put the 3080 at a ~25% uplift over the 2080ti.

A x60 GPU is usually ~60% of the performance of a x80 GPU. If that holds true for the 30 series, and the uplift is also true, then a 3060 should be ~75% of the performance of a 2080ti, which is ~100% faster (this varies pretty wildly by game) than a 1070 when GPU limited. So from all of that a 3060 should be ~50% faster than a 1070 (though this ignores features like RTX/DLSS/etc.).

But as I said, that's all just based on rumours, leaks, and historic trends.

If a 3060 is a substantial rasterization upgrade over a 1070 that will be pretty amazing to me personally. That suggests to me something around a 2080 super in performance, which is possible but I'm skeptical until we get any real hard info.

It really depends on how much the 20x -> 30x step (which we can now assume to be on Samsung 8nm) acts like a traditional node upgrade. Because in that case it wouldn't be surprising to see that kind of generational improvement. But apparently the Samsung node is not as significant an upgrade over TSMC 12nm as one might hope.

Well, we'll only be in the dark for a week or so at most now (for the general series at least, concrete x60 specs are probably later).

Thanks for the insight! If I end up in the ballpark between a RTX 2070 and RTX 2080 I would be happy, especially since I get DLSS on-top. I mean for now I'm sticking with 1080p 144hz anyway.

 

[Durante]

Honestly, if the 3060 doesn't at least match the 2080 (non-S) in modern games then I'd personally consider that a weak showing. It might not be a big node jump, but it's still a node jump and a new architecture.

 

[Phoenix RISING]

I said I was in the market for the next "flagship" card, and I've set aside the money in the bank.

I'm not going to be dumb and just buy a card because it's the top card though. The performance has to justify the price.

I bought a new tower in April. A Cosmos C700P. It's been just sitting in its box because I've been waiting for the new card to come in so I can do the system transfer to a new tower all at once.

zzz

What do people do when they upgrade PC parts? I may consider upgrading to the new card, because it seems like a good idea to try and sell my 1080ti before it's too ancient. Do people use eBay? I'm a little wary of selling there due to scams.

I set them to the side as backups.

Give components as hand-me-downs to my kids and friends.

 

[xinek]

Ok, thanks everyone. It's pretty much what I figured -- PC hardware is mostly an eaten cost. I don't know anyone who would be even remotely interested in buying or even taking my card, so eBay is probably the best bet even if risky. My card is an EVGA, so maybe that will help if I end up putting it on craigslist or something. But yeah, it all depends on what the new cards are offering. The 1080ti has been a dream, so I'm not super excited to upgrade. But it's not getting any younger ...