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

L3_Ca$h

Junior Member
Nov 24, 2021
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i own a 9600k, i have a friend interested in buying my mobo, my cpu, my cooler and my ram. i should sell it to bought a new 12600k with mobo, ram and cooler?
will worth it? probably will be a ddr4 mobo because i cant find ddr5.

i own a gtx 1070 and i cant bought a new gpu because prices here are insane. and im not sure how much the new cpu upgrade can be for gaming..
You may not notice a huge jump in a lot of games until you upgrade the GPU but that 6c/6t CPU will probably start holding you back in AAA games soon so not a bad time to upgrade imo.
 
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PhaZZe

MetaMember
Mar 12, 2019
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You may not notice a huge jump in a lot of games until you upgrade the GPU but that 6c/6t CPU will probably start holding you back in AAA games soon so not a bad time to upgrade imo.
will do it, im pretty sure in 6 months my cpu will be more cheaper, will use the 25% off in amazon with a credit card in chile and lets see what happend

thanks L3_Ca$h
 
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Stevey

Gromlintroid
Dec 8, 2018
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I would imagine tour 1070 is bottlenecking your 9600k let alone a 12600k.

What monitor do you have?
 

PhaZZe

MetaMember
Mar 12, 2019
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I would imagine tour 1070 is bottlenecking your 9600k let alone a 12600k.

What monitor do you have?
yeah, i know my gpu is bottlenecking everything but at least i can get a upgrade more cheap because i can sell my 9600k for more money and the 25% off really helped.

my monitor is lg 27gl850a-b.

buying a gpu in chile its impossible, i was trying to look up for a 3080 in amazon and nope still more expensive.
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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Hey, I still haven't decided on a mouse, wire or wireless ! Fuck.
But then I watched a video about mechanical keyboards and... is this really this expansive and laborious to build ? The body of the keyboard is not fucking cheap, but then you have 65+ keycaps to add to the price, this is huge. And, please excuse me while I hyperventilate, you have to lube a metric ton of small shit with a paintbrush ?
:fearful-face:
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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edit: Ordered a Viper Ultimate with charging dock for 60€, damn, ignoring GPUs there are some sweet deals for all the other stuff happening right now.
Mmh, yeah, I have a good deal on it too. Less so but still. 75 for mouse + dock.
Not sure if the added buttons on the right are usable, though. But this mouse has got a lot of praise.
 

EdwardTivrusky

Good Morning, Weather Hackers!
Dec 8, 2018
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Li Kao Why the fuck are you looking at homebuild mechanical keyboards!? They will be hellish expensive and are meant for people who are REALLY into the scene and know EXACTLY what components and design they want. As stevey said, just look for a mechanical keyboard but make a list of what you need and like first.
ANSI or ISO?
full size or smaller?
What shape keycaps do you like?
What layout of CTRL/ALT/SHIFT keys do you like and what sizes?

That's enough to consider without deciding which aluminium backplane you want and what type or mix of gateron and cherry switches you want.
 
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L3_Ca$h

Junior Member
Nov 24, 2021
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Hey, I still haven't decided on a mouse, wire or wireless ! Fuck.
But then I watched a video about mechanical keyboards and... is this really this expansive and laborious to build ? The body of the keyboard is not fucking cheap, but then you have 65+ keycaps to add to the price, this is huge. And, please excuse me while I hyperventilate, you have to lube a metric ton of small shit with a paintbrush ?
:fearful-face:
I was looking into those too, but ended up just buying a prebuilt one (Ajazz K870T) and I love it so far.
 

Panda Pedinte

Best Sig Maker on the board!
Sep 20, 2018
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So I need a motherboard for my Intel 10400F, while navigating some local retailers I found a Biostar H510MH/E. This board seems interesting and is in an ok price range if you take in consideration how crap are the pc parts prices in my country right now, though I'm not familiar with that brand can anyone chime in?
 

L3_Ca$h

Junior Member
Nov 24, 2021
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Ugh I thought my 3080ti died! It’s been a rough couple days lol

Upgraded to z690/12700K, and sometimes didn’t get video, I thought it was the DDR4 being inconsistent running above JEDEC. Worked mostly fine for a couple days though. Then yesterday couldn’t boot to anything but a black screen. Thought the mobo was bad. Got a different one at Best Buy and rebuilt the system. Same thing happened.

Put in a vanilla 3080 and all worked normally… shit. That means it might be the 3080ti.

Tried the 3080ti in another system and it was still being weird.

So I did some reading on the EVGA Reddit and apparently some cards need a vBIOS update and some cards don’t work right on PCI-E 4.0.

So I swapped my boot drive to a chipset m2 slot, set the cpu pci slot to Gen 3, put the 3080ti back in, and it booted into windows at 800x600 on the 3080 driver.

Quickly installed EVGA precision X1, updated to the 3080ti driver, went into X1 and installed the vBIOS update.

Seems to be working again! I was sweating because I’ve painted the backplate and was worried they’d deny my RMA if I had to send it in.
 

Knurek

OG old coot
Oct 16, 2018
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I have a multi-monitor setup with two GSync screens, mandating DisplayPort cables.
I also stream extensively to my tablet, through either Moonlight or Steam Remote Play, favoring the earlier because of absolutely horrible, immersion breaking judder Remote Play seems to introduce.
Thing is, whenever I try to shut a monitor down, Windows will randomly (sometimes it happens after 10 minutes, sometimes an hour in, sometimes it just doesn't happen at all) determine it has been unplugged and rearange the desktop/icons/opened program windows/screen resolution. Same thing if I switch my primary display from DP to HDMI input (where the consoles reside).
I have a DisplayFusion macro setup that will automatically re-arrange the icons/programs/etc to their correct position, so it wasn't such a big issue previously, but ever since I switched to streaming through Moonlight, everytime that happens, the streaming session gets forcibly closed (alongside with any game I'm playing), without saving progress.
Does anyone know if there's any way to mitigate this? Keep Windows thinking both screens are 'on' despite them having been turned off?
 
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Valdien

✵ Chaos! ✵
Mar 26, 2020
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Which would you say is the better choice? A laptop 3060 or a desktop 1660?
Well, in terms of raw performance and power consumption (thermals aside), 3060 is the better choice (DLSS & RTX). The performance difference between a laptop Nvidia card and its desktop variant have decreased a lot, too. Ampere is somewhere around 5-10% weaker depending on the model.
 
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d00d3n

MetaMember
Jan 26, 2019
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What is the best controller for pc gaming these days (mouse and keyboard excluded)?

My xbox elite controller v2 has ended up with a partially non-responsive rb button after spending some time replaying dark souls 3, so I don't think I will be buying another one of those (Additionally, I already sent it in for service due to analogue stick drift, so the quality control seems to have some serious issues)

Anyone who would recommend the xbox series x controller? I already have a Steam controller, but I prefer an analogue stick for camera control in third person games such as the souls games ...
 

L3_Ca$h

Junior Member
Nov 24, 2021
7
17
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What is the best controller for pc gaming these days (mouse and keyboard excluded)?

My xbox elite controller v2 has ended up with a partially non-responsive rb button after spending some time replaying dark souls 3, so I don't think I will be buying another one of those (Additionally, I already sent it in for service due to analogue stick drift, so the quality control seems to have some serious issues)

Anyone who would recommend the xbox series x controller? I already have a Steam controller, but I prefer an analogue stick for camera control in third person games such as the souls games ...
Xbox One/Series controllers are my go-to

The button prompts always match up in games, and it works without additional configuration more often than other controllers.

I do recommend using the wireless dongle as the others said, I have had it drop out when pairing over Bluetooth. The dongle “just works”.
 
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Knurek

OG old coot
Oct 16, 2018
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What is the best controller for pc gaming these days (mouse and keyboard excluded)?
Series X controller is good for 3D games, but if you plan on using DPad, take note it's immensely, eye-gratingly too loud.
I use Wii U Pro pad personally for most and DS4 for games that work better with analog triggers.
 
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Durante

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
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What is the best controller for pc gaming these days (mouse and keyboard excluded)?
I would have said Steam controller, but if you prefer a stick then I really like my 8BitDo SN30 Pro+ (what a name). The 8BitDo Pro 2 looks even better.
 
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Parsnip

Riskbreaker
Sep 11, 2018
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I also use just the Series X controller with the original humongous Xbox One wireless receiver. It's comically large but it's great that they are compatible with the Series pads so I didn't have to hunt a new one down.
 
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Kyougar

No reviews, no Buy
Nov 2, 2018
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Anyone have a recommendation for a smallfactor PC/Laptop/Pad to replace my old gaming PC that is only functioning as a Media/Forum PC now.

My 7-year-old PC is slowly dying. First, it was the fan in the front who got louder and louder until I just made him stop. Now a Fan in the back is wheezing like crazy. Sure, I could change the fans but I don't want to invest in the PC anymore and want to decrease the power usage anyway.

  • the PC would be used for Videos/media consumption and reading and writing in Forums.
  • the use of the (24') monitor and KB/M is paramount, so a laptop is suboptimal
  • should cost 200€ to 400€
  • if it's a pad it needs to support KB/M and Monitor, and have enough power to display 1080p videos.
 

EdwardTivrusky

Good Morning, Weather Hackers!
Dec 8, 2018
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I would have said Steam controller, but if you prefer a stick then I really like my 8BitDo SN30 Pro+ (what a name). The 8BitDo Pro 2 looks even better.
Yup, they are great pads, i have both of them... however they do seem to have an issue with Rumble still. Even after a couple of firmware updates i still have to disconnect the controller every few hours when playing as the rumble starts but doesn't stop. I use the controllers wired so i just unplug it, hold start to turn it off, press start to turn it on again and reconnect it to the PC but it's definitely still a frequent but small issue.
 
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Durante

Durante

I <3 Pixels
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Interesting, I've never had that on mine. I use it exclusively in wireless mode though.
 

lazerfox

Alpine Flower Boy
Dec 31, 2018
333
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Switzerland
My Ryzen 7 2700x is starting to bottleneck my 2080ti in some games lately.

So I've been thinking to upgrade my CPU but I haven't really kept up with development in the last years. I only really care about gaming performance, though buying something that is future proof would be ideal. Naturally I would neet to buy a new motherboard as well but plan on using the same DDR4 RAM.

At first glance it looks like the i9-12900K and the Ryzen 5950X would be best but both seem kinda overkill just for gaming?
 
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Durante

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
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For gaming, an i7-12700K is basically the same speed as a 12900k. An i5-12600K is around 10% slower (and therefore about as fast as a 5950X in games).
 

gabbo

MetaMember
Dec 22, 2018
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Anyone have experience replacing the fans on a GPU? The 1050 TI in my htpc is, well, it makes noises that I can only describe as "lawnscaping equipment in a blender' on boot, and I know for sure it is one of the fans, I've just never run into this kind if issue before, Temps and card performance are still fine and it does stop after roughly 5 minutes, but I figure it's for the best to get that fan out of there.
 

QFNS

Plays too many card games
Nov 18, 2018
1,280
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Anyone have experience replacing the fans on a GPU? The 1050 TI in my htpc is, well, it makes noises that I can only describe as "lawnscaping equipment in a blender' on boot, and I know for sure it is one of the fans, I've just never run into this kind if issue before, Temps and card performance are still fine and it does stop after roughly 5 minutes, but I figure it's for the best to get that fan out of there.
I have not done this but I know there are specialty fan makers who cater to this stuff. So there must be some people who do it. Quiet fans are like a whole thing that people look for and especially order to replace louder ones.

If you find some good videos or whatever let me know too, I'm also interested.
 

Le Pertti

0.01% Game dev
Oct 10, 2018
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lepertti.com
I'm thinking about checking into mechanical keyboards, so where do I even start? I have a few requirements, most important, that it looks good, has AZERTY and Mac keys and that it ships to Europe without huge shipping costs.
 

Parsnip

Riskbreaker
Sep 11, 2018
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The best part about being broke is that it personally doesn't matter to me at all that the GPU prices are whack, I couldn't afford one one way or another.

But shit's whack.

Very curious to see how expensive Intel cards will be relative to their performance.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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where? how?
Nvidia supply them to Scan.co.uk every three weeks or so. Have to go to Scan through Nvidia’s website.

I was in a stock checking discord that pinged me as soon as it went live.
 
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Copons

MetaMember
Nov 12, 2018
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copons.wordpress.com
I guess it's worth reposting then! 🙂
I've got my 3070ti FE at RRP from Scan.co.uk a few weeks ago thanks to this Telegram bot: 🔥 FE PartAlert

It alerts whenever FE cards are in stock in UK (on Scan) and EU (on LDLC, but I'm not familiar with it).
They sell out quickly, of course, but the alerts have been popping up about every 2 weeks, so that's not too bad.
 
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Vanta Aurelius

Third Strike 4 Life!
Oct 13, 2021
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Does anyone here use the Gigabyte M32U? I've been in the market for a new monitor that I can use for my desktop and for work. The larger size, high ppi, and built in KVM switch really appeal to me.

I recently bought the Samsung Odyssey G7 32", but it suffered from a weird scanline issue, sometimes content would get somewhat pixelated, and the general PPI was more off putting than I thought. I ended up shipping it back for a refund.

I've also been eyeballing MSI's Optix MPG321UR-QD, but it seems to be sold out just about everywhere. If people had an opinion on either of the M32U or the MSI monitor, it would be great to hear your opinions!

Edit: I'm specifically looking for a 32" 4K monitor that won't absolutely blow away my wallet. The Asus ROG Swift PG32UQX looks awesome, but a that $2900 price tag is an immediate non-starter.
 

Dinjoralo

None shall remember those who do not fight.
Dec 6, 2018
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Anything like that stock checker Discord channel for us American yanks?
 

Blu

MetaMember
Mar 12, 2019
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I'm looking at two PCs. This mostly for gaming and will probably dip into game development/3D modeling but it's mostly for games. I'm targeting 1440p and high framerate. High/medium graphic presets are fine with me. Will also be streaming sparingly.

This one from GameStop looks fine? Don't know if I should be targeting a 5000 series CPU and 32gb ram or is this just fine?

This one from BestBuy looks like a better deal but the case looks pretty bad in terms of airflow. Think it will be a problem?
 

Valdien

✵ Chaos! ✵
Mar 26, 2020
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I'm looking at two PCs. This mostly for gaming and will probably dip into game development/3D modeling but it's mostly for games. I'm targeting 1440p and high framerate. High/medium graphic presets are fine with me. Will also be streaming sparingly.

This one from GameStop looks fine? Don't know if I should be targeting a 5000 series CPU and 32gb ram or is this just fine?

This one from BestBuy looks like a better deal but the case looks pretty bad in terms of airflow. Think it will be a problem?
Regarding CyberPower, yes. None of their cases have ever been good and the out-of-the box thermals are atrocious. Doesn't matter whether it's an air or water-cooled setup.



While the pre-built case Steve reviewed here isn't the same, it still has more "holes" for airflow than the one listed on BestBuy.

Skytech Pre-built:



As for ram, 16 GB is still fine for gaming; but yeah 32GB would help out a lot more for 3D modeling/streaming. You can always upgrade it down the road if you feel like it's not enough.
 
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madjoki

👀 I see you
Sep 19, 2018
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That's really exciting panel.

Too bad we are probably talking about multi thousand price?

At least you can't mine bitcoins/NFTs on monitors....
 
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Durante

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
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I expect at least 2000€ (and probably at least 2500€), given the pricing on quite recent/current models that are basically worse in every way

If it reviews well, has no significant drawbacks, and we get the 3 year no-questions-asked guarantee including burn in I'd actually be willing to pay 2500€. It feels like I've been waiting for an OLED monitor like this for over a decade.
 

Troll

Junior Member
Aug 30, 2021
2
0
1
I have an Alienware 15 r3 with windows 11 and I can't get the alienware command center to start. Is this because I'm on w11? Drivers updated but I can't get any of the links from the dell website to launch..

any help would be appreciated
 

gabbo

MetaMember
Dec 22, 2018
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I have an Alienware 15 r3 with windows 11 and I can't get the alienware command center to start. Is this because I'm on w11? Drivers updated but I can't get any of the links from the dell website to launch..

any help would be appreciated
It appears to be a pretty common, if sporadic issue with windows11. Only advice i've seen from some searching is try an older version of the alienware cc software if you can.
 

Troll

Junior Member
Aug 30, 2021
2
0
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It appears to be a pretty common, if sporadic issue with windows11. Only advice i've seen from some searching is try an older version of the alienware cc software if you can.
I can try that. Just need to change the RGB on this keyboard dam it
 

Parsnip

Riskbreaker
Sep 11, 2018
3,239
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Nearly talked myself into buying a RTX 3060 Ti, for like €900.
It would be a great upgrade from GTX 1070 (non Ti) which is closing in 6 years of service.
A 1440p card for the most part, with some 4K exceptions.
I could also probably sell the 1070 for €300 or so, so it would "only" really be €600.

But that's still way too much. :rip:
So then I talked myself out of it and put a price alert on it instead.
Back to waiting for better times.
 
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