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

[didamangi]

Mouse companies hate this one little trick, well except this one company I guess.

Hotswappable mouse switches. Dang, to think a mouse switch costs less than $1 and most mouse issues are double-clicking.
I change mine to a huano silent switch for my silent build.

 

[Kvik]

Not having a good morning at all since my desktop rig refused to POST. Can't even go to the BIOS. Even after BIOS clear jumper salvo.

I think it's time to let this one go. This rig was a Haswell-E/X99 i7-5930K circa 2015. It had several upgrades since then, so I guess the new system I'm building to replace it will be a mix of old and new.

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU
ASRock X870 Pro RS Mobo
G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32 GB DDR5-5600 CL36

Keeping the case (FD Meshify C), Corsair HX 860W PSU, RTX 3070, 1TB Samsung 850 Pro NVME and 4x SATA SSDs.

Maybe I'll post build logs once I've got started on this.

 

[didamangi]

AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU
ASRock X870 Pro RS Mobo
G.Skill Ripjaws S5 32 GB DDR5-5600 CL36

Keeping the case (FD Meshify C), Corsair HX 860W PSU, RTX 3070, 1TB Samsung 850 Pro NVME and 4x SATA SSDs.

Maybe I'll post build logs once I've got started on this.

Maybe get a better ddr5 kit? like 6000 mhz cl30? You might leave performance on the table with that one. Altough the difference for x3d it's not as big as non x3d.

 

[Kvik]

Maybe get a better ddr5 kit? like 6000 mhz cl30?

Ah, the desktop rig is primarily for work, and the CL36 kit was on special. The couch gaming rig has a much faster kit.

 

[spindoctor]

I could use a little bit of help for a friend who is looking to buy a prebuilt PC in the USA. Since I'm not from there I figured I'd ask folks here for some opinions.

He was looking at this particular model - Legion Tower 5 Gen 8 (AMD) | AMD Ryzen™-powered gaming rig with future-ready graphics | 90UX0013US - and he said he could get it for about $1250 plus tax. So that's his budget give or take I guess.

My first instinct was to tell him to just build a PC instead of buying a prebuilt. He has done it before so doing it is not an issue, but he said that you cannot get the components you get in a prebuilt at a comparable price if you buy them separately. This is the part I don't know about. In my country there are no prebuilts but you can get one custom made which always means parts at roughly MSRP plus charges for actually building them. My apprehension with prebuilts is that they will use subpar components without the average person knowing it. So for example they'll say it has a Gen 4 SSD but what they hide is that it uses a subpar controller or they advertise DDR5 memory but hide that is has very poor CAS latencies. Things like that which people don't normally look for.

Another minor contradiction is that he's in no hurry and I told him to wait for Black Friday deals to kick in but at the same time he linked a deal on slickdeals a couple of days ago and then he was slightly unhappy that he missed it when it expired because of FOMO.

So I guess my question is... Can you build a PC with your own, good quality components and reasonably match prebuilt prices? Is there a generally accepted good company for prebuilt PCs? Perhaps even a specific model that you guys can link to if possible. Waiting for Black Friday deals makes sense right or should he just go ahead and get a good deal if he sees one?

 

[Copons]

Hi friends!
I've just changed case from an old rattling Cooler Master N400 to a NZXT H6 Flow. It doesn't rattle anymore which is good, but it's quite noisy even when it's not doing anything special and the inside of the case is freezing.

I wonder if I could adjust the fans to spin slower, but I've never quite understood how the various curves work and what would happen if I turned them all down.

These are the fans:

• Front: 3x NZXT 120mm PWM
• Back: 1x Cooler Master 120mm DC (taken from the old case - currently mounted incorrectly to get air in instead of out; will address soon).
• CPU: stock Ryzen 3600 fan.

The board:
MSI B450 Tomahawk Max.

I've also installed the MSI Center + Cooling Wizard crapware, so I should be able to adjust fan curves without rebooting to BIOS.

Can anyone recommend a nice childproof tutorial for this stuff?

 

[didamangi]

Hi friends!
I've just changed case from an old rattling Cooler Master N400 to a NZXT H6 Flow. It doesn't rattle anymore which is good, but it's quite noisy even when it's not doing anything special and the inside of the case is freezing.

I wonder if I could adjust the fans to spin slower, but I've never quite understood how the various curves work and what would happen if I turned them all down.

These are the fans:

• Front: 3x NZXT 120mm PWM
• Back: 1x Cooler Master 120mm DC (taken from the old case - currently mounted incorrectly to get air in instead of out; will address soon).
• CPU: stock Ryzen 3600 fan.

The board:
MSI B450 Tomahawk Max.

I've also installed the MSI Center + Cooling Wizard crapware, so I should be able to adjust fan curves without rebooting to BIOS.

Can anyone recommend a nice childproof tutorial for this stuff?

So I guess my question is... Can you build a PC with your own, good quality components and reasonably match prebuilt prices? Is there a generally accepted good company for prebuilt PCs? Perhaps even a specific model that you guys can link to if possible. Waiting for Black Friday deals makes sense right or should he just go ahead and get a good deal if he sees one?

Not from US but he can try pcpartpicker.com for building/comparing prices. And from watching tech tubers, it looks like micro center have some good deals for pc parts for US. Waiting for Black Friday is also a good idea.

I'm trying to match the legion specs and came up to almost $1500 atm. So $1250 is cheaper. But reading the bad reviews on lenovo's page, seems like the psu is not of the highest quality., so that's one red flag I can think of.

 

[Parsnip]

Can anyone recommend a nice childproof tutorial for this stuff?

I don't know about child proof tutorial, but GitHub - Rem0o/FanControl.Releases: This is the release repository for Fan Control, a highly customizable fan controlling software for Windows. is your best friend.
It's more powerful than mobo tools typically are because it sees your GPU stuff too.

Just as an example, I have a pretty basic setup here that I think I've optimized for silence fairly well.
I have two curves, one for CPU temps and one for GPU temps. But I leave the GPU control alone and let the GPU BIOS do whatever it does. The GPU temp based curve is actually for my case fans.
So CPU fans follow the CPU curve, and case fans follow the GPU curve.
So on idle it typically means that my CPU fan is at approx 20%/500RPM, in other words silent. Case fans never spin up..
If I do CPU only, heavy stuff it will spin the CPU fan up according to the curve I've set. Case fans never spin up.
And then when I'm gaming or doing other GPU stuff like rendering on Blender, case fans will react to the GPU temp curve and once GPU temps reach 65C, the case fans will also start working.

 

[Copons]

Thank you didamangi and Parsnip, I learned a lot!

However, it turned out that NZXT was kind of at fault.

The fans included in the case didn't have any specifications, just a name: "F120Q Airflow (Case Version)".
The regular (non-case?) version is PWM, which is the setting I was using.
Turned out the case version is DC.

So, yeah, no wonder it was loud, and my adjustments weren't working.

I've switched to DC, and now they are reasonably quiet, and the case is not freezing my legs anymore.