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

C-Dub

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I feel like mice quality/longevity isn't as good as it used to be these days.
Of course it isn’t. They build them cheaper, charge more for them, and so long as it doesn’t break in like 2-3 years and the user experience is good, most people are likely to go and buy the latest version of that mouse when the old one stops working.

It’s a bit harder to retain customers on mice that last more than 5 years.
 
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Parsnip

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I'm curious what will happen. My Logitech G5 R2 that I got in 2008 and used daily broke in 2022, in March, and I got a Razer DeathAdder V2. I'm actually very happy with that so far, but I don't expect it to last 14 years.
Damn, that's a long lasting mouse.


After the last two of my Logitech G603 had a failing scroll wheel (different type of failure in both), I also got a Razer DeathAdder V2 (X Hyperspeed) and it's been alright. The only thing I'm missing is an extra button at the top, where most mice seemingly put a DPI switch these days, I just want to use that as the middle mouse button. I hate clicking the wheel, and even though the thumb buttons on DeathAdder are alright, I still miss that middle mouse button. Other thing that I have noticed in comparison to the G603 is that this Rzer one seems to run out of battery faster, but it also only takes one AA vs the 2 AA the Logitech mice takes, so I'm not actually sure how big the difference is in reality. Third thing is that the feet/pads seem to pick up dirt more easily, but that also could be seasonal since it's summer now and my windows are open more, so there's definitely more dust in the air as a result.

If I end up liking this in the long run and by extension am satisfied with the Razer brand as such, I may also end up upgrading to the Basilisk V3 X Hyperspeed.
It has the middle mouse button! :heartblob:
 

low-G

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Back in the 00's Logitech mice only ever lasted me months or a couple of years. Now I haven't had a single mouse fail since '10 when I stopped buying Logitech mice for that reason and started exclusively buying 'no-brand' mice... Then a few years back the G502 Hero went on sale and I bought that and that's been fine since...
 

Eila

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Back in the 00's Logitech mice only ever lasted me months or a couple of years. Now I haven't had a single mouse fail since '10 when I stopped buying Logitech mice for that reason and started exclusively buying 'no-brand' mice... Then a few years back the G502 Hero went on sale and I bought that and that's been fine since...
The G502 Hero is my wired mouse as well. Been doing well for over a year now. I wish I had spent the extra cash on the wireless, just so I didn't have to get both. It's kind of a big price difference, though.
 

LEANIJA

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I'm curious what will happen. My Logitech G5 R2 that I got in 2008 and used daily broke in 2022, in March, and I got a Razer DeathAdder V2. I'm actually very happy with that so far, but I don't expect it to last 14 years.
Ive been using DeathAdders for a long while now. I like them a lot ... but I did I wrote DeathAdders for a reason, as I had several. The first one lasted a couple years and then developed a double click problem; The one after that also lated a few years before developing a middle click problem, but apart from that is still usable, and I took it to work to replace the godawful mouse I had there. The current one, a DeathAdder Elite (RZ01-0201) has been the longest-serving so far and is still doing great.

good luck with yours :)
 
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Durante

Durante

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My DeathAdder will get quite a bit less use than my G5 did since I recently ordered a new keyboard (first in .... 15 years?) and saw that the same company also made vertical mice (for relatively cheap), so I got one of those as well. The plan when that arrives is to connect both, and use the DeathAdder for gaming and the vertical mouse for work.
If I can actually get used to that.
 
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Mivey

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For what it's worth, I have been using a DeathAdder V2 Pro (the wireless version) since late 2019, and I had no issues with it so far. Great mouse and Razers software isn't completely useless.
 
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didamangi

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If the double clicking on my g604 really gets on my nerves, and it probably will, I'll shell out the $100 for the Razer Basilisk Ultimate with the dock.

Hopefully the optical switches means if there's any defect developing down the line it isn't double clicking., at least for the left and right mouse click.
 

MonthOLDpickle

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Oct 31, 2018
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When I can build a new PC I need to figure out if I want to stick with two monitors (gsync) or one like wide 2K (gsync)...I am so use to two monitors...
 

NarohDethan

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Final Upgrade List:

Ryzen 7 7800X3D
MSI B650 Tomahawk WIFI
GSkill Trident NEO 32GB 6000MHZ
Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE
MSI MPG A850G 850W
MSI RTX 4080 Gaming X Trio
Samsung 980 Pro 2tb
Corsair 5000D AirFlow
 

Li Kao

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Can one person who knows something about media servers / NAS make me a PC config ? Just to evaluate the budget.
Seeing that 4-bays NAS are super pricey I thought it wouldn't hurt to see what it would cost with a small PC.

I suppose you don't need a monster for that.
 
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C-Dub

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Can one person who knows something about media servers / NAS make me a PC config ? Just to evaluate the budget.
Seeing that 4-bays NAS are super pricey I thought it wouldn't hurt to see what it would cost with a small PC.

I suppose you don't need a monster for that.
This is as close to my config as I can get: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/fytzmr

My build is completely overkill, though. So don't get sticker shock at £1200. I built it out of parts I was using for other things, and you can build an excellent NAS for a fraction of this cost, especially if you already have the HDDs.

In fact, if you are on a tight budget, maybe consider buying a second-hand server or Mini ITX PC from eBay and moving the whole thing into a better case. For £400 I saw a 10 core XEON with Nvidia M2000 GPU, 64GB RAM and 256gb NVMe. Pop that into a case with good airflow and space for a bunch of HDDs (see below) and you'd have an all-singing, all-dancing home media server. And even that might be overkill depending on what you plan to do with it. I've seen some people use a 10th gen Core i3 with a NAS on a super tight budget (about £300-£350 not including HDDs), but their Plex server only does 1080p transcodes to one device at a time.

I'll give you my rationale for all the parts:

Intel Core i5-11400 + Motherboard + Cooler
This is actually a spare CPU from an old mini-PC I built that I no longer used. Before this I was using an i7-6700K and having literally no issues, so an 11th Gen Intel i5 is probably overkill by quite a bit. Motherboard is Mini-ITX, which is required for the case. The cooler was part of the old build that was tight on space, but you probably have scope to use a bigger cooler in the Node 304. That said, at 65w doing NAS tasks I've had no issues in the Node 304, which provides a lot of airflow to the components. What I'll say is with that CPU, I have never had an issue transcoding any video file.

Corsair Vengeance LPX 32gb
You can probably get away with 2x4gb or 2x8gb on a pure NAS server. The reason I've chosen 2x16gb is because I use my RAM as a transcoding drive for Plex and the 8gb I originally built it with was not up to the task. If you're not likely to do any transcoding, you won't have such heavy RAM requirements.

500gb NVMe SSD
Cache drive. So when I write to the NAS, it writes files to the cache drive first before they propagate to the array of HDDs. This means I can use most (if not all) of my 2.5gigabit network speeds when writing to the array. If you don't have a cache drive, you'll be hamstrung by the write speed of the array. Using a SATA SSD is fine for cache too, but you lose one of your SATA ports by doing this and while the SATA SSD may be cheaper up front, it means you only get 3x HDDs, which means you'll be hitting your capacity sooner and buying a SAS card to expand your storage. It's cheaper in the mid-to-long term to use an NVMe SSD as your cache, the bigger the better.

HDDs
Use whatever you want. One thing I'd recommend if you're using Unraid is to set a drive the same size as your largest storage HDD aside for parity. Parity lets you swap out any drive for one up to and including the same size as the parity drive at any time without losing data.

So if you look at my config, I've got 1x16tb as parity, and 1x16tb + 1x8tb + 1x4tb as storage. This gives me 28tb (16+8+4) total storage on the array, and I also get parity. So because I have parity, if any of my three storage devices breaks, I can replace them with a drive of equal or greater size (up to the size of parity, which is 16tb) and I won't lose any data. I just switch the drive out, tell Unraid to restore parity and wait 24 hours and my NAS is operational with all my data intact.

This also means I can switch either the 8tb and 4tb drives each with a HDD up to 16tb in size and Unraid will restore parity. Once parity is restored, I can then replace the other drive for a total of 3x16tb storage and 1x16tb parity.

Fractal Design Node 304 Mini ITX + 400W PSU
This case has great airflow. It can fit 6 HDDs in the front, and the front-mounted fans blow cool air across those 6 HDDs, then across the CPU, and then it gets expelled out the back. And if you're prepared to sacrifice 2 HDD slots (meaning you can still fit 4 in this case) you can fit a GPU in this case.

The PSU is basically the cheapest Gold rated PSU I could find on PCPartPicker. I have a 500W Bronze in mine but I'm gonna swap it out when I've got a bit of money.

This list doesn't include a 32gb USB stick needed for your Unraid installation (it installs to a USB stick, not an internal drive), and the Unraid license.

If you want help using Unraid and what software is good, the SpaceInvaderOne YouTube channel is an incredibly valuable resource. He shows you how to do all the cool shit with Unraid and nearly everything I do on my server comes from his channel.

---

As a follow up, Li Kao - if I were building an absolute barebones NAS, here's the config I'd use: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Lrnxhk

For this one, I've gone with an i3-12100, a bigger fan (it's basically the cheapest), a cheap-ass motherboard, and only 8gb RAM in dual channel.

But a build like this comes with compromises.

The CPU is fine, and as a bare minimum it comes with onboard graphics so you can get into the bios and such without plugging a GPU in.

Your RAM is slower, which probably won't matter for storage, but there may be things you want to do on your server in the future that can benefit from faster (and more) RAM.

No SSD (but there's an NVMe slot for a future upgrade) so out of the gate you don't get any cache, so writing to the drive is gonna be slooooooow.

The case is the same as the one I have. I just frickin' love this case.

This comes in at £415. But if you shop around for a Mini-ITX PC on eBay you can get a much better second hand PC for the same price. The parts may be a little older, but for NAS purposes they do an absolutely fine job.
 
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Li Kao

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Damn, I don't know what to do anymore. Sticker shock is not even approaching my reaction, lol. But yeah, once I deleted the HDDs and considered reusing the 2600x I have somewhere, well, it's more or less the price of a mid-range NAS.
And my mother just told me she is not a fan of letting something powered on at night, which is, uh, problematic.

This is not in my budget anyways, I'm afraid.

I don't really know what to do. I'm tired of having no order in my digital life.
Objective 1 - Have a backup of two big Calibre libraries. And admin paper. And family pics. The backup should preferably be automatic and scheduled regularly. Then optionally put the thing on the cloud for a third backup, but that's less urgent.
Objective 2 - It would be cool if my smart TV could access the ungodly amount of media I backed up along the years.
Objective 3 - Related. I'm tired of being constantly at war with my 64go Ipad storage, I would very much appreciate to be able to access media and comics wirelessly from an external storage.

I don't have the kind of money to buy a NAS + HDD. I can hypothetically put 200-300 toward bigger storage or devices, but more than that requires far more long term budgeting.

To be exhaustive, I have a 2600x lying around, a NZXT H500 and a 2070 super.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
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Damn, I don't know what to do anymore. Sticker shock is not even approaching my reaction, lol. But yeah, once I deleted the HDDs and considered reusing the 2600x I have somewhere, well, it's more or less the price of a mid-range NAS.
And my mother just told me she is not a fan of letting something powered on at night, which is, uh, problematic.

This is not in my budget anyways, I'm afraid.

I don't really know what to do. I'm tired of having no order in my digital life.
Objective 1 - Have a backup of two big Calibre libraries. And admin paper. And family pics. The backup should preferably be automatic and scheduled regularly. Then optionally put the thing on the cloud for a third backup, but that's less urgent.
Objective 2 - It would be cool if my smart TV could access the ungodly amount of media I backed up along the years.
Objective 3 - Related. I'm tired of being constantly at war with my 64go Ipad storage, I would very much appreciate to be able to access media and comics wirelessly from an external storage.

I don't have the kind of money to buy a NAS + HDD. I can hypothetically put 200-300 toward bigger storage or devices, but more than that requires far more long term budgeting.

To be exhaustive, I have a 2600x lying around, a NZXT H500 and a 2070 super.
Storage isn't cheap, sadly. And I didn't do this in one build - this is a machine I've cobbled together over the last few years, using whatever HDDs I've had lying about. I've only recently started taking it seriously and adding 16tb drives to the array, but as you can see, at nearly £300 a pop I'll be adding them to the server over the next few months.

That said, given the parts you already have, here's what I've been able to put together.


Take out any parts you already own/don't need.

My rationale for this is largely based on the motherboard choice, which is far and away the cheapest option out there at £70, but it'll do the job.

Most of this build is self explanatory, but the reason why I haven't put an NVMe in is because when the NVMe slot is used, two of the SATA ports are disabled.

It therefore makes more sense to not use a NVMe and instead use a SATA SSD for cache and then you've got a spare SATA socket for an extra 2.5" drive.

The drives I've used are dictated by what fits in the case. The H500 stores 3x 3.5" drives, and 3x 2.5" drives.

Judging by the parts you say you already have, and removing the non-cache storage (which presumably you'll build up separately), this comes to £277.55.


If you were to change the case to, for example, a Fractal Design Node 804 (which is the bigger cousin of the one I have) then you get physical space for 10x 3.5", which you'd be able to make full use of with the right SAS PCI card.
 
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Li Kao

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I don’t even know the definition and use of transcoding. I may be in over my head. Turnkey NAS looks more noob friendly. But OTOH I also read that QNAP has been targeted by ransomwares three times in the recent past. Not a good look.
The whole thing is tempting though.

I already have the hdd for the nas from a past try, two 4to WD Red. The thing is, predictably, they are now full of different data.
 
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C-Dub

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Off the shelf NAS is great if you have simple needs and are happy to be locked into a vendor ecosystem. But as you said, privacy is a concern.

I think there's nothing wrong with that and making your own NAS requires work, planning and patience. Unraid is about the easiest way to have a powerful NAS and sometimes shit you've installed on it just breaks. Sometimes things you install on it don't even work to begin with.

For me it's worth the effort and investment because I can just hop on to the unofficial Unraid app store, download a docker container for some obscure app that serves a very specific function I need, and nine times out of ten I can get it working with a little bit of tinkering.

My Unraid server is not only a Plex server. It's also a PVR for any shows I want. On Plex I just search for a show, add it to my watchlist, and an app then sends that to a PVR app. That PVR app searches the torrent sites for the thing, the thing gets downloaded by my client, and once it's downloaded the PVR grabs the file, parses all the junk out and sticks it in my Plex library.

All of this happens behind a VPN, except for the Plex app itself, so I can access it remotely.

It also finds subtitles if they're missing from my downloads and installs them straight into the file, just in case I need them. And the next thing I'm looking to setup is a feature to use system downtime to scan my video libraries for overly large versions of films, and re-encode them in a more modern codec, bringing the filesize down significantly.

But in addition to that, it's also a 28tb Time Machine for mine and my girlfriend's MacBooks. It stores all my ROMs which I can download to any device on my LAN via a web interface.

It's also my Smart Home hub, as it runs Home Assistant.

Some people install their own email servers, calendars, reminders, bookmark syncing and such. You can install Calibre to manage your eBooks, or Kapowarr as a PVR-like app for comics/manga. I've seen Minecraft Bedrock servers hosted on Unraid, plus various other game servers for games of Steam games.

You can use it for LANCache, which allows you to cache Steam downloads on your server and "download" them to your PC or Steam Deck over LAN instead of online, drastically reducing the bandwidth used and increasing the speeds for transfers, though this one has kind of been made more useless thanks to network downloads.

There's even a Docker app called Stash. I'll let you work out what that's for. :sneaky:

FYI: Transcoding is basically taking a file (for example a 4K HDR movie) and converting it to another format on the fly. So if you're watching on a Steam Deck, for example, the Plex server will transcode the movie to 720p before it sends the file over the network. That requires temporary storage and GPU/CPU time to do the conversion.
 
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Li Kao

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Let’s say I go for smöll first. I already have 2 WD Red 4To. I buy 1 for that sweet 4To and one for parity. How do you upgrade that setup for bigger space (if you don’t add a disk and divide my brain by zero) ?
Would you have to change the parity drive to a 8To, rebuild parity, and then change one of the storage HDD and restore the raid data ?
 

C-Dub

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Basically, yeah. Parity always has to be your biggest drive, but it doesn't have to be the total of all the other drives.

So if you had 6x SATA slots, 1 parity and 3 drives, this is how your config might look.

1: Parity (4tb)
2: Data (4tb)
3: Data (2tb)
4: Data (1tb)
5: Empty
6: Empty

You still have SATA 5 & 6 free, and you want to expand your storage. At present, you could add another 2x 4tb SATA drives because your 1 parity drive is 4tb.

What parity does is ensure you can lose a drive in your array and use parity to restore it. Unraid supports up to two parity drives, and with 2 parity drives you can lose 2 drives before data is lost.

But what if you wanted to put an 8tb drive in?

Well, you'd need to change your parity drive, because parity must be the largest drive in your array.

So what you could do is unmount (not physically remove, just switch off from a software perspective) your 4tb parity drive, format it, and mount it again as a data drive in your array. Then you could add two 8tb drives in, one for parity and one for data.

So now your config would look like this:

1: Data [was parity] (4tb)
2: Data (4tb)
3: Data (2tb)
4: Data (1tb)
5: Data (8tb)
6: Parity (8tb)

Does that make sense?
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
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Would you have to change the parity drive to a 8To, rebuild parity, and then change one of the storage HDD and restore the raid data ?
Also, you don't need to restore any data if you're not swapping data drives. If you replace your parity drive, you just need to rebuild parity. If you replace a data drive you use parity to restore data. You can add data drives to an array at any point and your total storage will simply expand to accommodate the new drive.

So adding is safe to do without any restoration of parity or data. Adding will merely extend what you've got, whether that's extending your parity to two drives or extending the total size of your storage.

But replacing a drive requires either a full data array, or a functioning parity drive, depending on what you're replacing.

Replace a data drive: you need a working parity drive.

Replace a parity drive: you need a fully working data array.

Parity is also optional. My first config of my server had no parity drive, only data. Parity is most useful if you have more than one drive, as you avoid data loss across the whole array if one of your data drives dies. But if you're starting off small you can start off with a data drive, add parity as your first upgrade, then add further drives as data in the future.
 

Li Kao

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C-Dub I spoke too soon and missed the big precision ! You don’t need the parity drive to be at least equal to your biggest drive ? How ? Is there a minimum size ?
edit. Gotcha. not as big as the total space, but must be the biggest drive.

And speaking about the thing, it awfully reminds me about the file type whose name I forgot that was used on newsgroup to repair a dowload.

Oh yeah, the .par

It’s for parity and I’m just discovering the obvious, right ?

-

As I can’t buy a NAS and the drives, I’m wondering if I could buy 1 drive for my PC and make this raid (is it Raid 5 ?) with my data drives. Kinda weak ass nas, but hey, I would have the drives, a space bump and a backup.
I have 1x 1To ssd, 1x 1To hdd and 2x 4To hdd. What are my options for the last sata slot remaining ? Which should be the parity drive ?
edit. Oh, you need to format the disk to make a raid ? Well, fuck.
 
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C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
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I don't know much about Raid. The OS I use for my NAS is Unraid. I won't be able to help you with any raid configuration.

If you're using Unraid, you'd use one of the 4tb drives as your parity. I'm not sure if parity is a feature of raid, or an Unraid thing.

I wouldn't put the 1tb SSD in the array, but you may be able to use it as a cache drive. But that effectively means you're using 1tb of storage for a write speed boost, and that may be a tad excessive for what you need. I only use my 500gb cache for writing Time Machine backups and hosting docker containers.

As for your question about the size of parity, it must at least be the biggest drive in the system. So if your parity is 16tb (like mine is), I can put data drives up to and including 16tb. But my server is not capped at 16tb total storage as I can put multiple drives in that go past 16tb, so long as each individual drive in the array isn't larger than the Parity drive.

But Unraid requires a dedicated computer, so if you're putting the drives in your current daily driver PC I won't be able to help you there. It's technically possible to have a server and daily driver in one, as you can run Windows in a VM inside Unraid, but it's waaaay out of my experience and use-cases for Unraid, and introduces its own separate set of challenges that I don't know my way around.
 
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Li Kao

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I’m learning a ton of shit here, sorry for all the questions.
But let’s say I go for a fully fledged unraid, I already have 2x4To full. Can I add them to a raid without formatting them ?
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
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I’m learning a ton of shit here, sorry for all the questions.
But let’s say I go for a fully fledged unraid, I already have 2x4To full. Can I add them to a raid without formatting them ?
Nope, Unraid needs to format all drives before they can be added to the array.
 
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Li Kao

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Damn, anywhere I look I get headache. Prices seem to have gone up overnight, so there is that.
And even if I want to simply do an internal raid with a parity drive on my PC, the fucking drive gymnastic required to set it up with empty drives and fill them with my data is dread inducing.

Did I told you all about the time I wanted to do I don't know what with a 4TB drive and ended up formatting it by mistake ? Under no circumstances, never, hold my beer.

Just checked and my priority backup data is 45go
Total with less important is 1.89to
Total with every kind of media is something like 14to
And I really would fucking appreciate 4to more
 
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Li Kao

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CABLE QUESTION - HELP SORELY NEEDED

Today I ventured into the bowels of my PC :sweaty-blob:

Reorganized cables because I couldn't fit the last hdd cage before, the big power cable was in the way. Now everything is squeezed and I'm scared my power supply cables are too squeezed and I will burn the whole building.

That being said, I had a goal ! I didn't do that for the love of cables ! You see, my b450 Tomahawk supports 6 Sata, my case supports 6 sata, but I can only connect 4 sata PWR. There is just not enough cable to reach the more distant HDD.

So my question is, well except 'do designers take coke to put connectors so close to each other' ?
MY QUESTION is, how do I fix this shit ?

Suppositions 1
Are there Sata PWR extenders ?

Supposition 2
I have a whole unplugged PCIE connector on my power supply, would adding the cable solve this issue ?

Spoiler alert
Supposition 2 is shit because I certainly don't throw cables away and I don't have it.



Do I need this ?
 
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Li Kao

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No seriously, I’m 99% sure this is what I need but I would like a confirmation.
Am I the only one whose Sata PWR don’t reach the hdd ?
 

Li Kao

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Oh fuck, I just discovered I could install the SSDs far closer to the HDDs on the side of the case. Maybe I don't need an extender.

Edit
Nah, clusterfuck. Extender will be far easier.
 
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gabbo

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Some advice before I drop some cash on some newer parts for an updated build:
Low profile air cooler (Big Shuriken 3, in this case), would it be enough to cool a 3900x at stock settings, or is it just not up to the task?
Using a GD09 case, so it's not a tight fit, but it's not greatest airflow ever.
 

NarohDethan

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I'm confused whether I need to update my BIOS (MSI B650 Tomahawk) before installing the CPU (R7 7700), after I install everything, or at all (I've heard every firmware seems to introduce new issues).

Low key regretting not going Intel lol
 

Parsnip

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I'm confused whether I need to update my BIOS (MSI B650 Tomahawk) before installing the CPU (R7 7700), after I install everything, or at all (I've heard every firmware seems to introduce new issues).

Low key regretting not going Intel lol
For that specific mobo and cpu combo, it seems like you don't need to update anything for the system to work.
Depending on what it ships with out of the box, you might want to update for the security patches that are in some recent bios updates, but that's entirely up to you.
But I would definitely recommend updating to 7D75v172 when it comes out of beta since the changelog says it should improve system stability when EXPO is enabled, EXPO being the memory thing that you will want to enable.
 

NarohDethan

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For that specific mobo and cpu combo, it seems like you don't need to update anything for the system to work.
Depending on what it ships with out of the box, you might want to update for the security patches that are in some recent bios updates, but that's entirely up to you.
But I would definitely recommend updating to 7D75v172 when it comes out of beta since the changelog says it should improve system stability when EXPO is enabled, EXPO being the memory thing that you will want to enable.
I’ve read that the most recent stable BIOS is a disaster so I’m unsure which one I should install
 

Parsnip

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I’ve read that the most recent stable BIOS is a disaster so I’m unsure which one I should install
Well, all I know is about the X3D related issues with the whole exploding CPU and shit, but that at least should be solved now and wouldn't have affected you anyway.
I guess the question is, disaster in what way? If it's instability, then I suppose the current beta one might be the one to fix that, I just generally would not update to a beta bios unless it's super critical.

In general, I think "if it's not broken, don't try to fix it" applies here as well. That is to say, when you put your system together and everything works great, you don't need to update. I'm not on the latest bios on my system either.
You just have to look at the change logs and see if it concerns you, if it doesn't, you don't need to bother. Obviously security patches are great to have in general, but in reality regular people aren't going to be the targets for these, at least I never heard about that actually happening.
 
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NarohDethan

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Well, all I know is about the X3D related issues with the whole exploding CPU and shit, but that at least should be solved now and wouldn't have affected you anyway.
I guess the question is, disaster in what way? If it's instability, then I suppose the current beta one might be the one to fix that, I just generally would not update to a beta bios unless it's super critical.

In general, I think "if it's not broken, don't try to fix it" applies here as well. That is to say, when you put your system together and everything works great, you don't need to update. I'm not on the latest bios on my system either.
You just have to look at the change logs and see if it concerns you, if it doesn't, you don't need to bother. Obviously security patches are great to have in general, but in reality regular people aren't going to be the targets for these, at least I never heard about that actually happening.
I was thinking about holding out until AGESA 1.0.0.9 once that gets released and just use my system as it is. If it blows then it’s AMD’s problem, I think.
 
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Pixieking

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So, my 4 year old Dell monitor, the S2719DGF is on the outs (burn-in). Looking for a low-to-mid budget replacement (400 Euro max). 27 inch again... G-Sync? Is G-Sync still worth paying a premium for? I have a 2070 Super, and I'll go Nvidia again whenever I have to upgrade. Low response time, obviously. Edit: Forgot I didn't put target res.. 1440p is my ideal... I could go up to 4k if a bargain is found, but don't want 1080p.

Any recs? I'm in Euroland... kinda (Romania), so should be able to get most things, even if it's just through Amazon.de. Currently got this on my wishlist, but my current monitor is still usable, so not rushing into any purchase.

Cheers. :)
 
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NarohDethan

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What would be a good, balanced fan curve? My fans pick up as soon as I open a game.
 

Parsnip

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My case fans don't really spin at all until it gets very hot in there. That and a little bit of hysteresis tweaking eliminated all of the random quick spin up spin down stuff at least my pc tends to do. Eg Windows doing something intensive for a couple of seconds that's still long enough spike for fans to ramp up.
 

MonthOLDpickle

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I literally can't find the suggested stuff where I live. It's not even listed as usually if it is out of stock, it is marked out of stock.

Was just trying to price a build together and walked to see the cost of the Intel Core i9-9900K but like it doesn't even exist..
 

Parsnip

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Was just trying to price a build together and walked to see the cost of the Intel Core i9-9900K but like it doesn't even exist..
Core i9-9900K originally came out in 2018 and isn't manufactured anymore so finding it new-in-box is going to be tougher than newer chips for sure.
 

fearthedawn

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Oh..I was looking at OP >.>

Guess I need help since I been out of the game for a decade.
Wow yes, that information was very good but is now horribly out of date and with tech advancing as it does very little if anything at all applies to the current market.

If you tell us what you want a new system for and what kind of budget you're looking at i'm sure we can give you a brief overview of the current options though.



What would be a good, balanced fan curve? My fans pick up as soon as I open a game.
First of all it would be good to know which fans are spinning up:

- GPU: from what i've seen of the new nvidia gpus (i think you bought one if i remember some posts ago correctly) they are usually relatively quiet and shouldn't just go annoying full tilt unless something is wrong or its manually turned up for overclocking, there are of course exceptions to this where some tweaking could help but my first reaction to the new gpu doing that would be checking if its ok

- CPU: more likely culprit, the new cpus can run hot and quickly, if its watercooled and has seperate pump control make sure that it is always running at a decent speed no matter what the fans are doing, as for the fans there is a lot of room to just experiment and watch what the cpu is doing under load, run something like cinebench, watch what the cpu temps and clocks are doing, try lowering fan speed and see if it makes a difference, once you're happy with how it looks under load with some wiggle room for higher environment temps you can adjust the fans to ramp up to that gradually and late since the water has the capacity to soak up small bursts

for aircooling it is tighter, the heat has to go somewhere and if the fan doesn't ramp up right away its only getting worse, if the cooler isn't very overkill for your system (in that case treat it like above) you're usually limited to fiddling around with the curve to avoid any sudden speed changes and test your fan at all speeds, some have an annoying sound at a very specific speed so that might be a point where you want to ignore that advice and jump past.

- CASE: set them to the highest speed you don't mind the noise of and leave them there, if the case doesn't get hotter and hotter under load you're done, if it does try to control them with a sensor that is somewhat reflective of the case temp (maybe on the motherboard) and not cpu or gpu since it is likely only struggling and really needs to make noise when there is a high sustained load going on and not because the cpu unpacks a file for a minute.

just what i've been doing, always looking for better advice.
 
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MonthOLDpickle

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fearthedawn

For the PC itself, budget is pretty open but not godly expensive (from Michael currency prob no more then 3K).

I was waiting to build a PC after I finished my dissertation as that was motivation heh.

I want it for gaming. Didn't need fancy lights. Needs good airflow and cooling as I live in an island that touches the northern line of the equator.

I also don't know if I want to do for monitor, but 2k (which I understand is 1440). Thing is I am so used to having two monitors.

What else?
 

fearthedawn

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Just going by pcpartpicker prices and to give you an idea:

if you pick good quality but nothing fancy you probably end up with costs in this range

airflow case 100
cpu cooler 40-100
psu 100-150
motherboard 150
32b ddr5-6000 100
2tb nvme 100

which makes about 600-700 for the base parts and leaves plenty of room for what matters a lot more: cpu and gpu

technically picking the best of the best for gaming with a 7800X3D ($440) and RTX 4090 ($1650) could come in under 3k overall so it becomes more a question of what you value / want

availability and prices you have access to locally could change this though, as would adding a new monitor (or 2)
 
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fearthedawn

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I been out of the game I have no idea what models of everything to get.

Gonna add this in: 原價屋查價-行動版

It's where I got my stuff from a decade ago.
Unsurprisingly (given where you live) you have access to everything and at current prices. Not sure where to go from here though, i don't think its a good idea to try and give specific advice when fighting through google translate with zero knowledge of the language or local options.
 

MonthOLDpickle

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Yes it's much easier to do with with the list version of the site since I don't read Chinese but the part themselves are labeled so I didn't even need to use translate the first time. I will just try to put a part build in.

foudn the list 原價屋線上估價-含稅

Gonna try to piece together one.

*heh I can't tell which board supports what socket, the i7 13900k is FCLGA1700 according to the intel website..lookign for a mobo heh.
 
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