Somebody stop me... (Gaming PC Build Thread)

[GreatScawt]

Oh man, I forgot the 3090 could still do that. Do it, Drew :D

I put my name in the EVGA 3080 Ti queue... aaand my name finally got called. So the build as I had imagined is now complete. :up:

[drew]

Sweet. I think it was 3 months wait for me. Ordered in mid-December 2019 (pre-COVID) and got it mid-March.

That said, rather than pay $1800 for another, fairly redundant GPU, I'd rather put that towards a CT-E supercharger for the Civic.

[Blerpa]

So I bought two things...

https://i.imgur.com/6c4P5FM.jpg

[Rare White Ape]

Oh nice :up:

[Tom Servo]

Noice!

[GreatScawt]

Hell yes! 3080Ti bros :hard:

[Yw-slayer]

Still rocking a 1070 at home, and a 970 at work. Just removed my... 560Ti from the home server (since it has integrated graphics anyway). :lol:

[Yw-slayer]

Not exactly a gaming pc as it's for work, but I out in an order for a 12700 to replace my work 6500. The last straw was an 8 person zoom conference audio stuttering while I tried to open a JPG in WhatsApp. This new computer should also be much faster at OCRing 300+ pg pdfs.

[drew]

The announcement of the 3090TI didn't really even bat an eye with me. After looking at some side by sides vs the 3090, 5-10 frames average on most games isn't worth the (wait) and dropping $2500.

[Yw-slayer]

Yeah, screw that. Only buy 2nd or 3rd-tier cards. Or geforce now.

[Rare White Ape]

Drew you said 3090Ti and I immediately went, "Wait, what? The new cards have been announced already?" thinking you were talking about the 40xx series.

September of every even numbered year is usually the announcement time. That's only 5 months away. Why would anyone go for a 3090Ti now?

[drew]

Exactly. Even if they announce a 4XXX series, I'm not budging. I went from a 680 to a 1080 to a 3090. I have no issues skipping a couple steps between upgrades. Until they announce the 5090 with 30GHZ 48gb ram and 10000 cuda cores, I'm good.

[Blerpa]

I've a 3080 Ti, and not a shitty founder one, but one of the best customs out there along with the TUF by Asus, so no bloody way I may be interested in the stupidest GPU ever.
4000? I'm going to be interested in a new GPU by the time the 5000 or 6000 are going to be out.

[Tom Servo]

I think most people are in that boat, like I think most of us are with phones - regularly skip a generation when upgrading.

I am excited to see where this whole path-tracing thing goes though, the demos they've shown look pretty damn impressive.

[Rare White Ape]

Well I’m in the market for a new GPU this year. I think my 2070 is faulty because games are crashing more regularly with a ‘waiting for frame buffer to drain’ issue.

[Alan P]

Zero interest in any new card now or even in 2-3 years. I only play at 3440x1440p Ultrawide so my 3080 is great for me. Plays anything and everything I throw at it at 100+FPS which is the max refresh of my monitor. G-Sync limits me to Nvidia cards and I have the white thing going on right now so won’t be changing for anything until 2024 or later.

[Yw-slayer]

I'm going to wait for the 4xxx series, and ETH 2.0, to launch before I even consider buying anything.

[drew]

I think most people are in that boat, like I think most of us are with phones - regularly skip a generation when upgrading.

I am excited to see where this whole path-tracing thing goes though, the demos they've shown look pretty damn impressive.

I just traded in my Note 8 from 2018 for the S22 Ultra OMFG Bank Raper Edition® (because, Employee discounts kick ass). I'm out of the phone market for the next few years.

[Yw-slayer]

I bought 2 used 3070s (less than a year old, in ana ircond room) off a friend who has used them for mining. Total cost usd640.

One is in the work 12700. The other one is too long for my 6700k as the hard drive cage is in the way.

I think a full IT rejig may be in order. I am considering getting a Macbook Pro 14 for work and moving the 12700 home to use for gaming and so on. Something also needs to be hooked up to the 75" TV. But if I can use steam link or geforce now on the macbook then why wouldn't I just do that and keep the 12700 in the study for photo editing and h4rdcor3!1!!!?!? gaming?

[2ndMoparMan]

Never did post here, but back in May I did a huge upgrade. Full on new pc. Went from a i5 4410 with 8gb of ram and a GTX 760 to a AMD 5600X, 6700XT and 16gb of ram with a 1tb nvme SSD. Full custom build from Microcenter. Fuckin love it.

[Alan P]

I bought 2 used 3070s (less than a year old, in ana ircond room) off a friend who has used them for mining. Total cost usd640.

One is in the work 12700. The other one is too long for my 6700k as the hard drive cage is in the way.

I think a full IT rejig may be in order. I am considering getting a Macbook Pro 14 for work and moving the 12700 home to use for gaming and so on. Something also needs to be hooked up to the 75" TV. But if I can use steam link or geforce now on the macbook then why wouldn't I just do that and keep the 12700 in the study for photo editing and h4rdcor3!1!!!?!? gaming?

Dremel. Who uses Mechanical hard drives these days anyway?

[Alan P]

Never did post here, but back in May I did a huge upgrade. Full on new pc. Went from a i5 4410 with 8gb of ram and a GTX 760 to a AMD 5600X, 6700XT and 16gb of ram with a 1tb nvme SSD. Full custom build from Microcenter. Fuckin love it.

Pictures!!

[Yw-slayer]

Dremel. Who uses Mechanical hard drives these days anyway?

Me, due to 13+ years of digital photography/video. I can remove the hard drive cages from the tower but I can't be bothered as I will get a new 7xxx/13xxx rig later this year anyway. Probably get a smaller one and consolidate the old drives. By that point I will have a desktop and a notebook that could be respectably used as NASes in addition to two Pis. All the money I've wasted over the years...

[Alan P]

Me, due to 13+ years of digital photography/video. I can remove the hard drive cages from the tower but I can't be bothered as I will get a new 7xxx/13xxx rig later this year anyway. Probably get a smaller one and consolidate the old drives. By that point I will have a desktop and a notebook that could be respectably used as NASes in addition to two Pis. All the money I've wasted over the years...

Amazon prime gives you unlimited photo storage.

How are things in HK anyway?

[Yw-slayer]

It might, but I am still editing photos from 2016 in Lightroom and surely that won't be possible if I store the raws on prime?

Things are OK, really. Once they get rid of mandatory hotel quarantine (even the current 3 day one) things will be fully back to normal. Which is the most important thing.

[Tom Servo]

Surprisingly, it looks like it does support RAW images: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GGU2SU8Y22DZYRMQ

[Rare White Ape]

Amazon Prime has unlimited photo storage?

All included with the free shipping, the monthly Twitch sub, and the Prime Video streaming service? And everything else that I don’t yet know about?

When it’s this cheap and convenient, I do begin to wonder what the actual cost is. They already run a delivery service that’s almost on the level of Uber Eats, where the poor drivers are under-paid and over-worked to exhaustion.

My mind immediately asks, what kind of data are they harvesting from all your photos for this price?

[Yw-slayer]

Surprisingly, it looks like it does support RAW images: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GGU2SU8Y22DZYRMQ

For storage, I suppose it would. But to edit certain folders I'd have to do some syncing-resyncing-etc.? Quick google shows many possibilities:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Lightroom/comments/gdespx/lightroom_classic_amazon_prime_photos_combo/

Also, with Amazon Prime and Amazon Drive (latter of which is coming to an end next year and will be replaced by Amazon Photos?) I would only have 5GB video. But I have way more than that.

I have looked at this a few times over the years, and it just comes back to "Store photos on massive local hard disk, back them up to another local computer/server, then back up original and/or local computer/server onto remote server". At the moment I have this setup and the third step goes to both Spideroak and Backblaze. I may cancel the Spideroak subscription as it does not really seem to be necessary for this, or for work-related stuff.

The other reason I do this is that I am not at the mercy of cloud-based services changing random stuff, particularly as I have 2 local copies.

Admittedly life would be simpler if I actually edited my photos and kept those on a main drive/hot storage cloud drive, then just kept the RAWs backed up elsewhere. But who got time to edit all the photos.

[Rare White Ape]

New Nvidia 40 series announcements:

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2022-nvidia-announces-rtx-4090-and-4080-graphics-cards-dlss-3

There’s also a new software program coming called RTX Remix which allows people to use simple tools to enhance old games with modded ray traced lighting, physics based textures, improved geometry, and all sorts of things using AI upscalers.

They’ve already used it to create Portal RTX, a worked-over version of the original Portal, and are releasing it for free if you already own the game on Steam.

[Tom Servo]

Saw a screengrab from one of the videos showing FS2020 at 137fps using DLSS3. I generally try to skip a generation when upgrading, but that sounds awfully enticing.

[Kchrpm]

Can I use one to run ACC on three 4K screens???

[Rare White Ape]

You could probably run ACC on a billion 8K screens.

[Blerpa]

Boosted Media runs ACC on three 4K 120Hz 65" oled TVs.
With a 3090.
And resolution scaled to 80% or such.

[Rare White Ape]

Will from Boosted is a good bloke. I’ve chatted with him briefly a few times on Facebook where he started an Aussie Fanatec owners page, and he’s so genuine and helpful to everyone. Almost to the point where lots of people think he’s some sort of representative for Fanatec!

People constantly ask the same old easily researched questions. I roll my eyes until they fall out of my head, but there’s Will happily providing info. What a guy :)

[Yw-slayer]

I am tossing up between a T300, a G923, and simply using the money for other stuff such as STACKING ETHEREUM.

[Rare White Ape]

This is fucking nuts.


https://youtu.be/Gr6VOrKiXwU

[Tom Servo]

Wow, that was something else. That "capture the game world and let you fuck with it outside the game" feature is amazing.

[2ndMoparMan]

I'd wait and see what RDNA3 can do.

[21Kid]

That's awesome. I'm not a fan of playing through games multiple times. I have so many that I need to finish the 1st time, lol: that it feels wrong re-playing games I've already beaten.

I'm currently trying to get through Cyberpunk 2077 & Days Gone... I have Last of Us 2, God of War, and a few others on deck. Although I really want to play the remastered Mass Effect series. I should really play the others for the 1st time. :( I think the problem is that I like too many varieties of games. :|

[Rare White Ape]

So… uhhhh… here’s what I look at now.

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/766849930366681110/1037569603888500766/IMG_2376.jpg

[Yw-slayer]

It runs Crysis OK?

[Rare White Ape]

Wouldn’t have a clue because I don’t play Crysis.

But if I did, it would probably run much worse because of all the extra pixels I now have to deal with!

[stephenb]

5120*1440?

How you finding it, much adjustment required? How much distortion at the edges, assuming a large FoV give a fish eye effect?

[Rare White Ape]

Yeah I was going to do a longer write up with screenshot examples. There’s a tonne of stretching on the outer edges. What’s really disappointing is that while modern games support arbitrary resolutions (advertised as triple or ultrawide support) only one of them in my library that I know of actually does it properly. It’s iRacing.

The worst offender is Halo Infinite when flying the aerial vehicles. The camera zooms out for a better view so the surrounding areas are massively stretched.

MSFS looks magnificent but also has a problem with stretched edges, but I did find a lens distortion correction setting that fixes it by 50%. You can zoom the view slightly to make it even better.

[Blerpa]

I don't have any problems on my 21:9 (3440 x 1440) 34" monitor.
The only offenders? Those two pieces of shit that are Fallout 4 and Elden Ring.
Friend of my has the 1080p G9, so 32:9 as well as yours but he did not find any trouble with any game.

[Rare White Ape]

Perhaps they aren’t conscious of the issue. I’ll get examples for you later when I’m at the pooter.

One good thing has occurred though. I’ve been dealing with a persistent and unfortunate crashing issue with my GPU over the last year. I could run iRacing if I limited it to 1080p and 60fps. If I tried any frame rate above 70 it would crash. Thankfully it could handle 3840x1080 to suit the ultrawide. Other games would crash all the time too. I lost so much iRating due to hardware DNFs.

I tried everything and never got a result, but then yesterday I underclocked my GPU to 95% and got more frames and what appears to be full stability out of it. Now I’ll be playing all of my games at 1440p native res, and they look so sharp and clear!

[Blerpa]

That sounds like there's a problem with your gpu, tho.

[Rare White Ape]

Yes. But I also think there’s something going on with the fan curves. I’m using MSI Afterburner to fiddle with it. When I underclocked then hit the Apply button, the fans zoomed up to higher speed. This leads me to believe the card might have been hitting a temperature limit and crashing. DXGI-ERROR-DEVICE-HUNG was one message I saw a few times. I should check within BIOS and see if I’ve changed something by mistake.

[Yobbo NZ]

Have you checked if there is a bios update for both the motherboard and the gpu?
From memory, you had a 3060? That should be on par with my 5700XT.

[Rare White Ape]

Nah I've got a 2070.

GPU is up-to-date, mobo BIOS I will leave as-is because I am scared of bricking it, and it works perfectly fine (i.e. if it ain't broke don't fix it).

And I checked, there's nothing in my BIOS that's related to GPU settings anyway.

[Rare White Ape]

Alright some notes about running a super ultra curved, super ultra wide monitor. Please indulge me as I get into the weeds of technicality a little bit.

It's a 49" Samsung G9 Neo, 5120x1440, 240 Hz, HDR, variable refresh etc etc. Top of the tree. Previously I used my 55" 4K TV but ran it in 1080p mode so that I could get 120 Hz out of it.

It's now mounted above my pedals on the VESA mount which came with my racing rig, whereas before the screen was on a TV stand almost twice as far away. The screen has the same physical width as my TV but half the height. Using iRacing's built-in FOV calculator I went from 53 to 84 degrees, so I get a significant increase. I do lose about 20% of screen height though, so 16:9 video is smaller but 2.39:1 movies are bigger provided they fill the screen.

Good bits:

Response time and input lag is nearly zero. This is a very minor difference to my TV which had one of the lowest input lag scores of any TV when I bought it in 2018; 7 ms in game mode. Now it's purportedly 1 ms, and I'd be hard pressed to see the difference.

Very wide and even display of colour and brightness. Makes games feel like they're on a huge theatre screen, which I had only experienced in VR before. Landing a small plane on a big runway in MSFS makes you feel small! The centre of screen is also up at my eye level now, which helps a lot.

Multitasking. I can have a billion windows open side-by-side. Samsung even has a neat piece of software called Easy Setting Box where you can customise the preferred size of your windows with a drag-and-drop interface, which might even be useful for people with normal screens, so check it out. Another good one is picture-by-picture, where the monitor can display two full-screen 16:9 images from two of the three inputs. You can mix-and match between HDMI or Display Port, pick which input uses the left or right, or even overlay an image on the corner on top of a full 32:9 main screen.

Best feature is VRR provided by G-Sync. I now have absolutely zero tearing, and uneven frame rates might still look choppy but they're displayed much better. It's even palatable when the scenery around MSFS's Manhattan pushes your GPU into 15-20 fps territory, so long as you don't look sideways. A nice calm forward viewpoint is best here. Anything above 45 FPS looks like silky smooth 60, and above 60 is just butter.

Bad bits:

Nothing caused by the monitor, but here is where things go deep with my own findings, which may not be correct, but here goes...

Almost no games truly support this monitor. It's meant to be the best, and in a hobby where people always want the best it's surprising that there is nothing said about this. The core of the problem is that all games assume you have a flat screen, and display 3D images accordingly. When you take this flat perspective and then curve it around you, the far portions of the screen become distorted. Add in a lack of lens correction and it is even worse. Let me explain with a really shitty graphic:

https://i.imgur.com/w4Bl1Hi.png

Look at games in this way: your eye is the camera, and the screen is a window to the 3D world. Objects are presented to you as if the screen is your window for looking at a 3D environment. The outermost edges of the screen represent your FOV, and if you want things displayed realistically you will want the calculated FOV to be correct. For sim racing this is very important, but for other games it might be a personal preference or a 'nice to have' feature.

Now consider what it means when the screen is curved around you. In the graphic, the place where the lines intersect is where the objects should be rendered on the screen. If the screen is curved, these locations will change. As you can see the lines converge onto different locations of the curved screen compared to the flat screen. But since most games display only a flat image, you will get a warped perspective because you're essentially looking at the image from the wrong angle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ambassadors_(Holbein)).

As mentioned earlier, Halo Infinite looks terrible. Great game, but distracting warping. Here are some examples. The first image is using the default Halo setting of 78 degrees FOV. Look at the tower right in the centre of the image.

https://i.imgur.com/dJYo3Ne.jpg

Here's the same scene, same settings, but I pan to the left and the same tower is now at the far right edge of the image. It now takes up roughly twice the horizontal screen area of the first image, and is quite a bit taller. The base is the same level because it is near the centre of the screen, where distortion is much lower.

https://i.imgur.com/XGBJ2WL.jpg

Here are comparison shots of Halo in the default 78-degree FOV, as well as the calculated 'correct' (for my setup) FOV of 84, and the minimum of 65 degrees. Yes, I made jifs for you!

https://s4.gifyu.com/images/Halo-FOVs.gif

I even have video of what it looks like in motion, both using Halo's default FOV.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R9VeVQqR_0&ab_channel=MickJohnson


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr1pGMVEEqY&ab_channel=MickJohnson

It's so badly exaggerated when flying the aerial vehicles that I don't know how they would let this go. A partial fix for this is to use lens correction. Here's what it looks like in MSFS.

https://s4.gifyu.com/images/Screenshot-562.gif

As you can see they increase the size of objects in the middle of the screen so that the objects nearer the edges are in a more correct perspective. This is a stop-gap measure as it probably only accounts for flat screens. And even then, I think what Halo looks like is far too much for lens correction to sort out.

[Rare White Ape]

How does iRacing fix this? There are two things it does. Firstly, it has the option to allow the game to render the screen as three separate images with zero bezel width. I know Assetto Corsa Competitzione has a similar option, and other sims may do this too. iRacing has an excellent built-in calculation tool that does all the wok for you; just plug in the usual distance and width numbers and the radius of the curve and it will split the screen, easy as that.

https://i.imgur.com/yZivB3G.png

I tried ACC's triple screen settings menu and it'll do the same thing, but you have to enter it all manually. I did the sums: screen width 397mm, angle of side screens 22.9 degrees. You will have to provide your own distance measurement, which is definitely a DIYC process. Here's another really shitty graphic to help out:

https://i.imgur.com/cpu6U35.png

Here is what iRacing looks like in both corrected and uncorrected perspectives. You might see that the magnitude of the change is much higher than the example shown from MSFS. ACC looks very much the same. Perfect:

https://s4.gifyu.com/images/truck-onboard-1.gif

https://s4.gifyu.com/images/Screenshot-553.gif

However....

Look closely at the corrected viewport of the bottom image.

https://i.imgur.com/qKhiMsd.png

It might be hard to notice at first, but the top of the structure near the top edge of the image has two noticeably warped sections on it. This is also present in ACC. Nearer the horizontal centre of the image it's not noticeable, but at the top edge it's very clear, and quite distracting while driving because it moves along like a wave going through the grandstand. Thankfully at the bottom the view is mostly taken up by the interior of the vehicle which doesn't move a lot otherwise it would be noticeable there too. Here's some arrows to help point it out:

https://i.imgur.com/PJ5KxUw.png

There is another artefact that comes from the multi-projection setup. See if you can spot it.

https://i.imgur.com/Xvcf0AL.jpg

There is a noticeable gap in the motion blur effect, also present in ACC. Again, helpful arrows for your pleasure.

https://i.imgur.com/gF8gqyY.png

What I believe is happening here is:
1. For the 'waves' at the intersection of the projections, the game is projecting three flat screens, so you get the warping again, but reduced intensity and in the middle of the screen.
2. For the motion blur, things like this are calculated in screen space using data from the previous frame, and because this is the edge between viewports there might not be enough information to blur what is displayed on this part of the image. You are essentially looking at a clean portion of the frame not obscured by motion blur.

I believe these two problems are unavoidable for now. To fix the first one you would have to render the game using a unique camera for every pixel. To fix the second, it might mean rendering a small overlap, which would take up unnecessary processing power or introduce other perspective issues. I live with them in order to appreciate the fix they have provided.

Finally, what else has iRacing done that puts them above all other games with this solution? The secret is in the extra check-box in the monitor setup screen: Enable SMP/MVP. Nobody else does this.

What is SMP/MVP?

It's a technique that GPUs use to share rendering tasks across multiple view ports. For Nvidia cards it's called Simultaneous Multi Projection. For AMD cards it's called Multi View Projection. Things like wireframes, textures, shadows, and other effects are calculated once and shared to each rendering view instead of having to be done multiple times. It was originally developed by Nvidia and introduced in the 10-series Pascal cards as a way to solve the problem of needing to buy multiple GPUs to render multiple view ports at full quality, and iRacing supported it way back then.

Since then it has only seen adoption in VR games, because it can be used to pre-warp each eye image before it is projected through the VR headset lenses and into your eyeballs. SMP can run 16 projections at once! For VR, each eye is split into four quadrants and warped, as well as having the rendering shared for each eye.

And no games apart from iRacing support it for non-VR screen use, as far as I can tell.

[Rare White Ape]

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

[Yobbo NZ]

All I know is, I can't play my Xbox on a flat screen/TV anymore after using a curved monitor.

[Yw-slayer]

Man, some major first world problems going on here.

*Goes to buy a 1TB SSD for his work notebook*

[Alan P]

I have a friend who has one of these and he plays most normal games in 3440x1440p and puts up with black borders at the extreme edges. As you've said very few games support such a wide resolution without any issues of one sort or another.

[21Kid]

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.LOL :lol:

I didn't even realize they still made curved screens. Your setup does look pretty sweet though. :cool:

I don't know if there'd be any way to correct teh issue you're having. That seems like it would take a lot of computational redirection to fix.

[Blerpa]

I have a friend who has one of these and he plays most normal games in 3440x1440p and puts up with black borders at the extreme edges. As you've said very few games support such a wide resolution without any issues of one sort or another.

3440x1440p is the standard 21:9 resolution for QHD, I have it as well.
Aside from Fallout 4 and Elden Ring, plus few indie games, the whole PC videogame industry market supports that resolution with no trouble, so your friend is doing something wrong.

Also, most of the 21:9 monitors are curved for practicity reasons, the only 21:9 flat screens are mostly LG office monitors. 32:9 follows the same guise.
Meanwhile curved 16:9 monitors are quite useless to this day.

[Rare White Ape]

I didn't even realize they still made curved screens. Your setup does look pretty sweet though. :cool:

Thanks! And yeah curved screens are out of style for TVs but still quite common for monitors.


I don't know if there'd be any way to correct teh issue you're having. That seems like it would take a lot of computational redirection to fix.

From what I’ve been reading, adding additional virtual cameras and simultaneous processing is really easy at the game engine level.

[21Kid]

From what I’ve been reading, adding additional virtual cameras and simultaneous processing is really easy at the game engine level.
Makes sense... like how iRacing does it in your earlier post.

[Rare White Ape]

Another thing about this screen: it's curved and sits close to you.

It tends to bounce every little noise you make right back into your ears.

Hearing myself licking my lips is... unsettling :lol:

[Yw-slayer]

What about the sound of F...

[XHawkeye]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fi_4RYVWIAAeldz.jpg

[JoeW]

So I have a few surplus mechanical Hard Drives in smaller sizes 1-2TB. All WD. Anyone want one or two? I had a drawer full of smaller dives with backup info but I am moving to consolidate them onto 1 or 2 larger drives.

[XHawkeye]

Upgraded my 1700X to a 5700X and now things happen 50%-60% faster. Kept the X370 MB so it took as long to update the BIOS as it did to swap the cpu.

[Yw-slayer]

So I have a few surplus mechanical Hard Drives in smaller sizes 1-2TB. All WD. Anyone want one or two? I had a drawer full of smaller dives with backup info but I am moving to consolidate them onto 1 or 2 larger drives.

I have similar issues. You could raid0 them in a cheap nas for kicks?

[Rare White Ape]

I spent yesterday stripping the old PC down and giving it a good clean. I think I'd mentioned my crashing issues in iRacing here a few times with all signs pointing to GPU problems, but while its temps were running at a nice and easy 80°C, I noticed the CPU temps spiking up to near 100° just before the game would die. I'd considered buying a new larger cooler to replace the admittedly very small cooler I have now, but figured it's been four years since I built it so why not rip it apart and put some new goo in there?

https://i.imgur.com/VI8VU5u.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/zfe8std.jpg

Nice to see the thermal paste was evenly spread in my first attempt at this sort of deal. It was still gooey as well - no crusty bits! It wiped off easily and both surfaces were pristine. Interesting wang-shaped gap in the centre though. Presumably that's where the contact was tightest. I also cleaned out as much dust as I could, even unscrewed the fans and gave them a good wipe down. End result is my CPU temps have dropped by 20-30°C and I probably saved myself a couple of hundred bucks on new equipment.

Fingers crossed it works reliably now, as it did when new. The new season of Fake Racing Cars starts next week and I don't want to be losing even more iRating to annoying computer problems.

If it works, then it's nice to see that the 9th-gen i5 and RTX 2070 combo is still a reasonably solid and viable way to play PC games in 2022. It's not spectacular but it does the job.

[Blerpa]

I'd suggest a proper air cooler or a 240 AiO instead of a low profile one: usually the low profile are abysmal in performance, even the Noctua ones.
Or even a new case... NZXT are known to be ovens (aside from the new Airflow one).

EDIT: for the future, eh.
What thermal paste are you using? It went spread decently, only a bit worried for that patch off center.
But surely now you laid it even better if you got 20-30 degrees less!

[Rare White Ape]

I use the paste that came with my cooler. A blob about the size of two grains of rice is all you need.

[Freude am Fahren]

My LG Ultrawide of only 3 years has bitten the dust. Randomly starting shitting the bed as soon as I loaded up MSFS 2020. I think not coincidentally....

Couldn't quite decide to go for another UW again or 4k. Decided on UW, but we'll see.

[XHawkeye]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrMheRYXsAAUqxm.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FrMh25JWwAAJ6NN.jpg

https://twitter.com/Motorsport/status/1635688027455467548

[Blerpa]

So, I updated my main build.
Not very convinced by new AM5 mobos and cpu and not liking Intel ways I just changed few things on my actual PC.
CPU is now 5800X3D (from 5600x), ram is upgraded from 16GB DDR4 3600 CL16 to 32GB of the same ilk, I switched from an air cooler (Noctua U12S Chromax Black) to a 240mm AiO, the Deepcool LS520 (very easy to mount and set), and while I was there I changed the case too, passing from the giant old Coolermaster H500 ARGB Mesh to an actual Lian-Li O11 AIR Mini, still able to fit an ATX mobo with ease.
Pretty satisfied by the CPU in gaming and the AiO... I've filled the whole case, AiO radiator as well, with 8 Sickleflow ARGB fans (both 120 and 140mm), still noise is ok!

https://i.imgur.com/msaugSv.jpg

[Tom Servo]

I was blown away by how quiet modern fans are. I've got I think seven on my current build and you cannot hear them.

[Rare White Ape]

RTX 4070 is now a thing.

I'm due for an upgrade... maybe ;)

[Tom Servo]

Lol, they're all still more expensive than my couple years old 3080.

[Rare White Ape]

Yes, as Linus Tech Tips noted, it seems like great value among the 40-series, but that's probably only a thing because the top end of the 40-series looks like terrible value :lol:

Funny thing is, the AMD RX 6800 XT is starting to look like fantastic value... but it doesn't have DLSS 3.0 in its tool kit.

[Yobbo NZ]

Yes, as Linus Tech Tips noted, it seems like great value among the 40-series, but that's probably only a thing because the top end of the 40-series looks like terrible value :lol:

Funny thing is, the AMD RX 6800 XT is starting to look like fantastic value... but it doesn't have DLSS 3.0 in its tool kit.

I'm still waiting for the 6800XT to get sub $700 before I'll be tempted.
Nothing wrong with my 5700XT yet, but newer is better, right?

[Blerpa]

Lol, they're all still more expensive than my couple years old 3080.

Actual 4070 in US should be 100 dollars cheaper than the 3080 10 GB.
Performance are about the same but the 4070 is smaller (in the case of the Founders Edition by Nvidia), more efficient consumption-wise, with lower temps, with quieter fans and with DLSS 3 exclusive to 40xx cards.
So a bit of a win in any case.

RWA, the 4090 is excellent value for the type of card that is: 1600-1800 euro for a stunning GPU for 3D, calculation, machine learning and heavy productivity is peanuts.
Gaming wise it is still unbeaten by anything out there, the 7900XTX barely keeps close... but go buy a 4090 for gaming only if you have lot of money to waste or peculiar needs (like 21:9 or 32:9 monitors with very high refresh or triple 4K 120Hz setups).

Yobbo, 6800XT is a great card, and 12+ VRAM is useful these days.

I'm still on my 3080 Ti and either an incredible deal comes around in the future for a 4090 or I'm going to wait a possible 5080/5090 otherwise.

[drew]

I just pulled the trigger on 2 gbps internet, because, why not, it was +$50 (fuck it). Along with that though, some issues (bottlenecks) came to light:

Only have 1G capacity with the built in NIC, easily resolved with a $20 2.5bgps PCI card.
5-port switch is alsgo 1G, so bought a 2.5gb swtich.

Finally (sigh), WiFi on the Xfinity router is dogshit, which is moot, since the RX8000 Netgear router I bought (and paid out the ass for) in 2016 reached it's limits as well. Netgear is releasing a new Wifi 7 router in a month (that was pre-ordered RS700 (https://www.netgear.com/home/wifi/routers/rs700/)), that I'm hoping will have the same "future proofing/longevity" the RX8000 had.

Lastly, I ordered all new Cat8 ethernet, since the Cat/Cat6 are past their limit as well.

After doing all that shit, it wasn't exactly a "cheap" upgrade. But, fuck it.

It's fucking stupid:
4069

[Freude am Fahren]

High speed Wifi routers are stupid expensive it seems like these days, especially if you want whole house high-speed. I'm definitely going to try and wire my next place for Ethernet. We rent right now, so not really worth it. We have 1Gig AT&T fiber, but I never see more than 200Mb in my office/gaming room, which is on the opposite side and one floor up. Even putting my phone right next to the router (R7000 from ages ago), I max out around 350-400 I think. Plugged in, I get the 1Gig.

Also, didn't WiFi6 like JUST come out. I am connecting to customer Wifi all the time and see the 6 icon like maybe 5% of the time.

[Alan P]

I just pulled the trigger on 2 gbps internet, because, why not, it was +$50 (fuck it). Along with that though, some issues (bottlenecks) came to light:

Only have 1G capacity with the built in NIC, easily resolved with a $20 2.5bgps PCI card.
5-port switch is alsgo 1G, so bought a 2.5gb swtich.

Finally (sigh), WiFi on the Xfinity router is dogshit, which is moot, since the RX8000 Netgear router I bought (and paid out the ass for) in 2016 reached it's limits as well. Netgear is releasing a new Wifi 7 router in a month (that was pre-ordered RS700 (https://www.netgear.com/home/wifi/routers/rs700/)), that I'm hoping will have the same "future proofing/longevity" the RX8000 had.

Lastly, I ordered all new Cat8 ethernet, since the Cat/Cat6 are past their limit as well.

After doing all that shit, it wasn't exactly a "cheap" upgrade. But, fuck it.

It's fucking stupid:
4069

Meanwhile I'm on 80mbps. Although i will admit I could get 1Gbps but don't want to change to the other provider as I'd pay double, and their contention ratio is shit. 1G symmetrical is coming in a month or three anyway.

[Yw-slayer]

I'm going to wait another 4-5 year before going to full 2.5GE or higher. No rush.

[XHawkeye]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FuB2txBaQAE51c5.jpg

My first computer was an Osborne II

[drew]

Still waiting on the new router. Already found the wifi card for the Dell laptop so she can get "more".

[21Kid]

LOL. I'm still waiting to upgrade to wifi 6E.

Should I just wait for 7 now?

I have 500 Mbs internets. That's plenty fine for us.

[drew]

The only reason I went with the new 7 router, is the hopes that it will max out all the other devices' radios. Right now, the Xfin modem/router is only getting 200-300 to things, because the wifi is shit in it.

6E is "good" up to about 1.2G or so, from what I read. Which is moot, since most standard NIC/wifi cards are tapping out at 500-600M anyway. I plan on upgrading what I can when the router shows up.

[Alan P]

In two minds. Well, three actually.

I have a 3080 10GB which has provided Sterling service in every game I've thrown at it, including Jedi Survivor and CP2077. It's connected to a 3440x1440P AW3418DW IPS 21:9 120Hz Ultrawide. I love the monitor, I really do, it's still fantastic and i cannot fault it in any way, it just feels like the obvious place to upgrade as I have £1k cash sitting in my account waiting to be spent, which i could spend on a lovely shiny Alienware OLED Ultrawide. However, the other thought is that a 10GB Card is going to, potentially, be a limitation in the future and perhaps this is where I should be looking, although I feel that even a 4070ti is terrible value, as is a 4080, especially as I'd have to pay the 'white tax' to coordinate with the monochrome nature of my build.

Alternatively I could just do nothing as I've had no problems and spend it all on Lego. I do have a PCI-E Gen 4 vertical riser to put in place of the Gen 3 one I have so I can update the BIOS without having to tear it all apart and I have 2x Gen 4 P{CI-E Gen 4 2TB NVME's to put in. One was supposed to go back but TBH I will probably keep it and go double Gen 4 4TB of storage.

Ryzen 7000 series seems almost pointless at this stage as I'm not convinced my usage, 90% games, warrants upgrading in this direction as I'm already running 32GB of 3200MHz RAM and a 5950x. For Games. Not convinced a 5800X3D is even worth it either.

[Yw-slayer]

I'd buy some Ethereum. Not financial advice, your mileageay vary, etc.

[Rare White Ape]

1000 quid worth of Lego seems like a fun time.

[Rare White Ape]

I’ve got an i5 9400K paired up with an RTX2070, which I built back in 2018.

Question for the brains trust here:

Should I spend $2500 building an entire new PC with a 13th-gen i5 and a 4070 (which will bring things like DDR5 and PCIE Gen 4 support) or would I get roughly the same amount of upgrade if I just spent $1000 on a GPU only and slotted that in to replace the existing GPU?

In US dollars, the equivalent prices would be maybe $1500 for the full kit and $600 for just the GPU.

[Alan P]

I’ve got an i5 9400K paired up with an RTX2070, which I built back in 2018.

Question for the brains trust here:

Should I spend $2500 building an entire new PC with a 13th-gen i5 and a 4070 (which will bring things like DDR5 and PCIE Gen 4 support) or would I get roughly the same amount of upgrade if I just spent $1000 on a GPU only and slotted that in to replace the existing GPU?

In US dollars, the equivalent prices would be maybe $1500 for the full kit and $600 for just the GPU.

Assuming it's purely for a gaming upgrade, go i7 and unless you need G-Sync or DLSS, something like a 6800XT or even go full on with a 7900XT. I wouldn't consider a 4070, they're overpriced and underperform. They're beaten in many benchmarks by a 3080 10G which is going for $400-$450 used.

[Yw-slayer]

Also, and if ddr5 is still as expensive as it was last year, just stick with a ddr4 mb?

If you're building a new pc, I'd also just wait a month or so for the 14th-Gen stuff to come out to see what it offers.

[Rare White Ape]

Good tip on the 14th Gen, cheers. DDR5 RAM modules don’t seem overpriced, it’s more the motherboards being $100 more expensive really. The DDR5 boards also have more high-endy gamer/enthusiast features which inflate the prices even more.

@Alan it’s purely a gaming upgrade. Actually thinking about it, yeah the price increase between an i5 and i7 isn’t as significant as I thought previously because all the other hardware is the same.

As for your GPU thoughts, DLSS3 is a huge selling point for me. I’m aware that the 40 series isn’t much chop compared to the upgrade that 20-30 series was so we’re unfortunately in that weird “should have upgraded earlier/almost worthwhile to wait for the next range” time frame right now.

But the core question I have is: if I just upgraded the GPU to a 4070 now (and then maybe a full system rebuild 3+ years later) would I reap worthwhile benefits if I kept the rest of my hardware?

[Rare White Ape]

I should mention, other things to factor in are that I can buy computer components through my salary packaging, which means I don’t pay tax on the money I earned that goes towards these purchases, but they cannot be second-hand and have to be purchased from an Australian retailer.

In real terms, for every 1000 I spend, I pay $325 less in tax.

[Rare White Ape]

I am thinking I might go with option B:

Get an RTX 3070 for now, which will get me though for a few more years before I do a bigger upgrade later when new hardware comes out. I can get a 3070 for $650, which is almost $420 USD (nice). Not bad value.

What say ye?

[Yw-slayer]

A 3070 is cool. I have 3 which I bought secondhand off my crypto mining friend, and which I almost never use for gaming other than some Genshin Impact.

[drew]

The exact GPU I bought 2.5 years ago, is still being sold for the same price. WTF.

[Tom Servo]

That's the shitty part. Why, back in my day, when a new series of GPUs came out they cost what the old one did and the old ones go down in price. Nowadays you've got nvidia asking for $2k for a graphics card.

Feh.

[Rare White Ape]

I went with option A. Got a 4070. It's pretty much exactly the upgrade I was expecting.

In MSFS I have gone from pushing it to reach 60 fps in favourable scenic areas (flying over Innsbruck) to easily reaching into the 70s with it dropping to 60 when overflying the airport at 5000 ft, and from struggling to reach mid-20s in large cities (Manhattan) to a much more playable 45+, both scenarios with frame gen on. Now I can increase settings like terrain LOD without really penalising myself because the game is so ridiculously CPU heavy in the background that these things don't matter. You can still forget about flying near JFK in New York, as that's locked at 20 fps. Bring on MSFS2024 to fix this crappy part of the game engine.

Portal RTX was a 15 fps nightmare back in December when I last played it, now I can get 60s using DLSS ultra performance mode almost everywhere with everything set to max. Add in frame generation and that increases to 90+. Interestingly if I use DLSS quality I'm down to 25 fps and adding frame gen adds nearly zero benefit. However DLSS ultra perf looks so sharp that I see myself using that all the time with little to complain about.

Lego Builders' Journey is a simple game with fantastic ray tracing implementation. All settings max and DLSS performance (again, looks very crisp compared to quality mode or off completely) gives me 50+ fps. My GPU runs pegged out at 99% but the CPU runs at less than 20% :lol:

As for games that don't have RTX features like DLSS:

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor still can't reach 60 fps for me too easily. I keep ray tracing off in that game because it only affects reflections (so no RT for lighting, shadows etc) and knocks 20% off the frame rate. I can bump up LOD, texture and shadow quality without penalty so I'm still very CPU limited. The game uses AMD's upscaling method over DLSS and looks muddy as hell in some cases and there's only a minor improvement in frame rate with it on, so I leave it set to quality mode. The game looks super crisp with it off though, so it's tempting to be happy with 30 fps and lock it there.

In iRacing I've added about 50% to framerates. Up from mid-60s to high 90s. It was pretty smooth anyway and the uptick is not that noticeable. It did struggle with packed rolling starts with 20 cars in a small area dropping it to 45-ish but now that never goes below 60 fps.

I know this is an outside use case but I get no performance improvement when playing Tears of the Kingdom when emulated through Yuzu. This would not have been pushing my 2070 either, because it's by no means a mature program at this stage, and the point of emulating a game on PC rather than using real hardware is not just to get high frame rates. In the Depths it'll hit 60 fps when away from any combat, and running around Lookout Landing drops it to 25 fps. Apparently the Switch version of Red Dead Redemption can be emulated at a locked 60 fps using a GTX 1080 and a few tweaks to the code, if that helps illustrate things.

And, uh, the Quake II remake runs at a jelly-like 239 fps almost all the time. No DLSS needed here.

Down the road: I haven't tried any VR yet, but I am expecting that MSFS will finally be great to play there, DLSS 3.5 has just been announced so that will make things even better, and the Half-Life 2 RTX Remix version should be a really good test run for the tech. In coming months I will start looking at a new CPU and motherboard combo :shocker:

[Blerpa]

Great update RWA, although I think you are hold up by the CPU which is by now a bit old.
I'm on a 3080 Ti with a 5800X3D (21:9 1440p Dell monitor) and I get better framerate than your PC with the new 4070.
I looked around to see what resolution are you gaming at but I did not find it... if 4K 16:9 then I guess you are doing ok for now, if 1440p you need a new CPU.

New gen games are coming along, 32GB of ram and at least SSD sata are going to be new requirements - not that ram is expensive these days, you can get 32gb of decent DDR4 and DDR5 in the realm of 120-130 euro/dollars often.
New games are also using CPU as well... the old saying that at high res only gpu matters is going out of the windows already at 1440p, soon going to be a point in 2160p too.

[Rare White Ape]

My monitor is the Samsung G9, so 5120x1440. Not quite in the realm of 4K but getting up there, being effectively twice the pixels of 1440p and slightly more than your screen.

As for the CPU, it is a 5 year old i5 and needs an upgrade. Instead of waiting to have the cash to upgrade everything holus-bolus I figured why not get a GPU now and enjoy a little boost in the mean time? It's actually quite amazing to me that it took this long for games to start utilising more than one thread of a CPU because the last 10 years they've been available for both consoles and PC, and this is the first generation where it starts being a thing.

[Yw-slayer]

Congrats, man.

[Rare White Ape]

News:

I made a small upgrade. Literally.

https://i.imgur.com/CvBgPOr.jpg

Don't worry, Adam's @highmileage sticker will be transferred across. Hot Wheels Audi for scale.

https://i.imgur.com/S8ajQUn.jpg

It's a Lian Li|Dan Case A4-H2O (https://lian-li.com/product/a4h2o/). They're very well made and laid out, and come in at a very good price compared to other small ITX cases. I think my NZXT case was $220 AUD when I got it 5 years ago, and this was $230. Most of these tiny enthusiast cases come in at around $200 USD... if you can buy one since they're made in such small volumes. And that doesn't include shipping. I was wanting something like this for ages and I finally did it.

It's designed to accommodate a water radiator in the top of the case, which doubles as a hot air exhaust, but I just bought some mega cheap case fans and put them in the top. They have this horribly jaunty cabling and those ugly spare plugs. Is it worth rewiring them to get rid of the plugs, or should I just leave them shoved up there?

https://i.imgur.com/WDhuAED.jpg

Aside from that it was a bloody pain in the arse to build in because there's not a lot of room. I had to troubleshoot getting it to turn on but figured it out eventually. It's done now and I like it a lot!

Other news:



Star Wars Jedi: Survivor still can't reach 60 fps for me too easily. I keep ray tracing off in that game because it only affects reflections (so no RT for lighting, shadows etc) and knocks 20% off the frame rate. I can bump up LOD, texture and shadow quality without penalty so I'm still very CPU limited. The game uses AMD's upscaling method over DLSS and looks muddy as hell in some cases and there's only a minor improvement in frame rate with it on, so I leave it set to quality mode. The game looks super crisp with it off though, so it's tempting to be happy with 30 fps and lock it there.

Jedi: Survivor got an update last week which added DLSS3 to the game. I now am able to get over 60 fps in a mission level if I run all graphics settings on ultra with DLSS/FSR off but DLSS frame generation on. It looks crisp and runs quite smoothly now, with odd annoying stutters. In the open world areas I get 40-ish at the same settings, so the go is to run DLSS quality mode with frame gen on, and this way I get over 60 fps. There is plenty of stutter in these areas but unfortunately this can't be improved due to poor optimisation.

[drew]

Nice!

As an aside, as it turns out, they didn't cancel my order (Netgear) so the RS700 router showed up last week.... I still haven't taken it out of the box, as we're moving in next week.

If I told myself 10 years ago I spent $700USD on a router, I probably have punched myself in the balls. I still might.

[Phil_SS]

Why do you need a $700 dollar router?

[drew]

Because I'm a trend whore. Admittedly, it should be the last one I need for a long, long time. I bought a similar router (Netgear) in 2015 that this one is replacing.

[Alan P]

4193

Bought an additional 2TB Gen 4 NVME, a PCI-E 4.0 Riser and a Phanteks NEON light strip. Also replaced the AIO as Lian Li were recalling all the early Galahad coolers, So not it looks like the above.

[Yw-slayer]

Those Silicon Power 4TB NVMe PCIe4.0 drives are damn cheap for what you get.

[Rare White Ape]

Guys I’m having some major problems with my PC randomly shutting down. Wondering if you can please help. The changes I’ve made are that I upgraded the GPU and transferred into the new case with two new case fans. Everything was fine but two weeks ago it started rebooting itself.

The time interval for rebooting is completely random so I can’t specify a cause. Most of the time the screen goes black and reboots. 5-10% of the time, it’ll freeze completely with the last image still on screen and I have to manually restart it.

The event viewer logs state that there was possibly an unexpected loss of power. I’ve triple and quadruple checked all the cables and connections, and everything is plugged in correctly. The only dodgy connection is the front USB plug on the motherboard because it’s really hard to connect, but that shouldn’t cause shutdowns and reboots.

The symptoms of the shutdowns pointed to perhaps the GPU crashing. Previously I had a 2070 and now I have a 4070. I checked and the new GPU shouldn’t ask for much more power than the old one, so my 650 watt power supply should be sufficient. I did change to a different power output on the power supply and that seemed to fix it for about four days last week but the problem has returned.

My next steps are to swap out the GPU and put the old one in, and beyond that put everything back in the old case as it was before the upgrades started. Would you guys have any suggestions on what to do before I go to that trouble?

[Yobbo NZ]

Personal experience with USB ports...
My motherboard has a USB 3.2 and USB C on the same input at the back. If I clumsily try to plug the C in and get the 3.2 slot, it causes a shutdown/reboot.
Or could your PSU be starting to fault and not keep up with demand?

[Rare White Ape]

Could be the PSU.

I put the old GPU in and the system didn't recognise it at all, which is weird. The fans were spinning but it only had video output available via the motherboard. I'm back on the 4070 now.

I've undervolted the GPU to 90% just in case...

[Yobbo NZ]

Last week I moved my GPU to this current gen with a Sapphire Pulse 7900XT.
I can now crank graphics to max on most games.
Tried iRacing with everything turned up and FPS unlocked, somewhere in the region of 380FPS.
Turned it back to 144 to match the monitor and save power.
Quite surprised with Cyberpunk, can benchmark over 100FPS with quite a few options cranked up @ 1440P.
Very happy with it.

[Rare White Ape]

I solved my PC rebooting woes... by buying a new power supply.

The issue got worse and worse and I couldn't guarantee it staying on for more than half an hour. Once the PSU warmed up it was game over. Last weekend it got so bad that it would reboot, then get stuck on the boot screen because the power cut again. Time for a new one.

My old PSU is a 600W Corsair unit that's 5 years old, so it is still under warranty. I can get it fixed and use it again once I get through this upgrade process and have enough parts to build a second PC with the old bits. I intend to surprise my dad one day by giving it to him so he can play racing sims.

My new PSU is a Lian Li 750W. I would have bought the equivalent Corsair version but they are sold out everywhere, and I sure as fuck wasn't waiting for a restock. The Lian Li is great so far. I read reviews online and people would complain that it is as good as the Corsair but very loud by comparison. I honestly can't tell the difference over my headphones and the pedestal fan and the wind outside blowing air around.

Interestingly, I had GPU freezing issues going back 18 months - the GPU would hang temporarily but the system wouldn't reboot. If it happened while in iRacing I would get an error log saying "DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_HUNG" and iRacing Support told me the GPU was faulty. Everything I saw online also said that it was a fault in the GPU. I managed to treat this by reducing GPU voltage to 80% and it was fine until I got the new GPU a few months ago. With the new GPU, the iRacing error logs would have the exact same message. Perhaps the new GPU running at 100% voltage finally put the bullet in the head of my PSU.

[Yw-slayer]

My (bought from crypto mining friend) 3070 also gave up the ghost by just shutting down after 30mins of being on - with the interval reducing if I rebooted without letting the computer sit.

I was not surprised by this given its history, but I was surprised at how much quieter my other (not previously crypto mining) 6+4 pin Gigabyte Vision 3070 was compared to this Gainward 6-pin 3070.

[Rare White Ape]

Ignore my previous post. My PC crashed again. I'ma try other options.

I just re-(re-re-re-re)-seated the GPU because it's on a riser cable. Moving back to the old case is the next step.

[Alan P]

I may have just bought a new OLED 34" Ultrawide gaming monitor. That I don't really need. Oops. I think I might cancel it actually.

Cancelled it. Really couldn't afford it even though it was a very good price.

[Yw-slayer]

I frankly think ultrawides are overrated. I prefer having a normal monitor, albeit more for work. I say this as someone who has a Dell U3415W connected as a second monitor.

[Rare White Ape]

I can't live without my 32:9 now.

[Alan P]

I frankly think ultrawides are overrated. I prefer having a normal monitor, albeit more for work. I say this as someone who has a Dell U3415W connected as a second monitor.

I highly doubt I will ever have another 4:3 monitor. So used to 21:9.

[Yw-slayer]

Idk man, I'd rather have the extra vertical space of a 16:10 or even a 16:9. Even if it's not for work.

[Blerpa]

I highly doubt I will ever have another 4:3 monitor. So used to 21:9.

Totally this.
Although actual non-ultrawide (o superultrawide) monitor are 16:9 (few are 16:10), not 4:3 (that was the usual CRT format, both monitor and TV).

[Rare White Ape]

Bleghhhhhhhhh...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISl-QQ5lWI4

Intel 14th gen is a wash. Now they have this 'fix' to turn efficiency cores which were introduced in the 12th gen era into an actual thing that increases performance and runs more efficiently as promised two generations ago, but it is only available for the newest processors. According to the video, Intel says it has no plans to make this software fix available for older chips.

As someone who is shopping around for a new chip and mobo combo, give me one good reason why I shouldn't just get a cheaper 13th gen... or buy an AMD setup.

[Yw-slayer]

Hmmm. Why shouldn't you just buy the 14th gen one which has the fixes? Don't get me wrong, I'm peeved as I have two machines from the 12th gen and one which is 13th gen. But if you buy anything a 14th gen then you get the advantages of that. If you want to make a point and Up Yours them/avoid them profiting from this questionable behaviour, then buy amd if it suits your needs. Buying the older Intel stuff is a bit too much like cutting off your nose to spite your face, especially as they'll still make money off you!

[Rare White Ape]

Well I guess you miss the points here:

1. An older chip is cheaper than a current-gen chip and also plays a part in circumventing Intel's efforts to persuade buyers to get the new ones
2. AMD has a perfectly good (and arguably better, but I am not an expert in this sense) competitor to Intel's latest

If option 2 is the go then Intel gets none of my money at all.

[Alan P]

Bleghhhhhhhhh...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISl-QQ5lWI4

Intel 14th gen is a wash. Now they have this 'fix' to turn efficiency cores which were introduced in the 12th gen era into an actual thing that increases performance and runs more efficiently as promised two generations ago, but it is only available for the newest processors. According to the video, Intel says it has no plans to make this software fix available for older chips.

As someone who is shopping around for a new chip and mobo combo, give me one good reason why I shouldn't just get a cheaper 13th gen... or buy an AMD setup.

If you're buying brand new I'd absolutely recommend going for an AM5 build. If it stays around as long as AM4 did you could be upgrading to a 9000 series CPU in 2029 with your same board. I'm sure Intel would have rolled out at least two new socket types before then.

[Yw-slayer]

Well I guess you miss the points here:

1. An older chip is cheaper than a current-gen chip and also plays a part in circumventing Intel's efforts to persuade buyers to get the new ones
2. AMD has a perfectly good (and arguably better, but I am not an expert in this sense) competitor to Intel's latest

If option 2 is the go then Intel gets none of my money at all.

Yeah, I get those points, but if you want M4X p0W34R?/r?!/!1!1!! then there's no point buying the 12th or 13th-gen models, and if you do then they still get your money, albeit less of it.

That's why we both agree that if the AMD competitor is around the same as the 14th-gen Intel, then by all means knock yourself out and buy it to Up Yours to Team Blue!

[Cam]

I took advantage of Black Friday sales and ordered a new gaming PC.

[Kchrpm]

I expect 4K120 iRacing videos from now on.

[Cam]

My new box finally arrived.

[Rare White Ape]

Got sum specs for us?

[Yw-slayer]

It runs Crysis?

[Cam]

This is what I bought. It was 30% off. https://www.newegg.com/abs-sa13600kf4060ti16g-stratos-aqua/p/N82E16883360412

[Rare White Ape]

Time for me to look at buying a new CPU and motherboard.

I'm looking at the AMD R7 7800X3D and baulking at the price ($749) compared to the R5 7600X ($479) or the Intel i5 13600K ($499). There's a $270 price difference between the highest and lowest here. But looking at the overall package, I'll need a motherboard and cooler which pushes the total cost above $1000, and now that $270 difference doesn't mean a lot. The performance of the 7800X3D is insane when you consider what you get for the extra money.

So, Ryzen 7 it is. Plus I can drop in a new chip & GPU in five years towards the end of the AM5 socket's life and have another massive performance boost, so that's good value for money.

Question though: I'm really quite limited with motherboard options. I need an ITX with an AM5 socket, and there are only a handful of choices available. What would the people in the know recommend? I'd say the X670 options are probably not warranted and I'm even tempted to go with either of the two cheapest B650I options offered on this website, just as an example:

https://i.imgur.com/kidsXez.png

[Tom Servo]

Just saw an article saying that SSD prices are expected to rise by at least 50% over the next year. That led me to look and...if you need an SSD, buy now. Good lord, top of the line Samsung is like $160 for 2TB.

[Yobbo NZ]

RWA - I'd go with a B650, AM4 the Bs were just as good, sometimes better.
Just make sure it's got enough Sata ports for upgrades later on if need be.

[Yw-slayer]

Just saw an article saying that SSD prices are expected to rise by at least 50% over the next year. That led me to look and...if you need an SSD, buy now. Good lord, top of the line Samsung is like $160 for 2TB.

Last year there was an incredible deal on the 4TB Silicon Power NVMe drive (admittedly without heatsink) for USD169 or thereabouts. I bought two because it was...

It's now a bit more expensive but is still worth it.

[Blerpa]

I'd say get the Aorus Ultra, cheaper than the Asus, you do not get to have to use goddamn Aura Sync and you would have 3 M2 slot instead of 2 in the Asus B650.
The X670I only if you are that serious about an uber build (and yet you will get one less M2 slot).

[Rare White Ape]

I found a retailer that has the Ryzen 7 on sale for $639. That makes this whole thing a lot easier!

[XHawkeye]

Are you within driving distance of a Micro Center? That's were I buy motherboards / CPUs.

[Rare White Ape]

I could drive to the airport :lol:

I found another shop that does the Ryzen 7 for $595 so I've ordered that. Woo!

Motherboard choice is made (thanks Blerpa) but I'll hold off buying it just yet. It does have 4 SATA ports on a funky daughter board next to the RAM. We will see how that goes with power cable routing in an SFF case.

Next up I need a cooler and RAM. I'm looking at similar to this one: 32 GB of 6000 MHz DDR5. It has some AMD-specific overclocking feature called EXPO, but is it worth the $10 extra for that over the same RAM without it?
https://www.umart.com.au/product/g-skill-32gb-2x16gb-f5-6000j3038f16gx2-tz5n-trident-z-neo-6000mhz-ddr5-ram-68671

Thanks for your input my guys :)

[Yw-slayer]

Are you within driving distance of a Micro Center? That's were I buy motherboards / CPUs.

Bro RWA lives in Australia

[Blerpa]

If you go AM5 you MUST buy EXPO ram - and AM5 is abysmally bad with ram to start with.
Also even with updated BIOS all the AM5 motherboards are slow to boot.
On AM5 the sweet spot for ram is 6000 CL30, more frequency is not going to do anything with the infinity fabric and slower Cas Latency than 30 is going to hurt.

[Rare White Ape]

This is good info, thanks Blerps. So do the specs on that RAM in the link I posted check out? Its tested latency is listed as 30-38-38-96.

I saw these numbers being quoted while cruising Reddit earlier today and have no idea what they mean, but by that time I had looking-at-stuff fatigue.

I also remember the first generation of Ryzen being really fussy with RAM too.

[Blerpa]

Yeah, those G-Skill are fine! They are exactly 6000 CL30 and 32GB is a given with actual builds IMHO.

[Rare White Ape]

Oh man, looking for parts for an SFF PC is a rabbit hole. You often find yourself on forums filled with enthusiasts, and you see some shit.

Like this guy who crammed a Ryzen 9 and RTX 4090 into a 5 L case :twitch:
https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/complete-s4max23-worlds-smallest-4090-build-brickless-5l-s4mini-4090fe-7950x3d-800w-water-cooled.18499/

That is the sort of shit I think Drew would get into, because he's nuts :)

Initially I was going to look at an AIO water cooler for this one, but it's really damn hard to find 240mm AIOs that are compatible with AM5, and also have a pump block that is shorter than 55mm. And without useless RGB pushing up costs. These usually sell for around $150 on up to $300. The RGB ones tend to sell out first on many of the retailers I look at... take note PC parts manufacturers!

Thank god for Reddit, as I've been able to check some recommendations for good low profile air coolers. One was the latest Noctua NH-L9, which I could find for around $100. Another that people have had good results with is this cooler from a Taiwanese manufacturer which I hadn't heard of: https://www.amazon.com/Thermalright-AXP-90-Profile-Cooler-TL-9015/dp/B09CGXPVC1?th=1

Under $60 incl shipping!

I've currently got an NH-L9 on my i5 and it's great. On my old case with the glass side panel heat did build up inside the case and make things run a wee bit hot, but on the small DAN A4 case everything is so close to the side panels that cool-air-goes-in and hot-air-goes-out with little issue. I'll be considering the Thermalright cooler, so I'm off to find reviews!

[Rare White Ape]

So I’ve made an order for all the rest of what I need.

I got the motherboard that Blerps recommended and the cooler I posted above. For RAM I went with the 32GB G-Skill Fury which has a CL of 32, which according to almost everyone has almost zero effect on performance. It was $50 cheaper than the best price I saw for the CL30 G-Skill Trident RAM.

And it all came from the one retailer, so the shipping I paid for the full upgrade was only about $50 between this order and the one I made for the Ryzen last week from a different store.

I haven’t bought any storage yet. That will happen soon, as I’ll get this new one up and running first, and then prepare to get the old system up and running as a gift to my dad. He doesn’t know it yet :)

Later today I’ll compile all my receipts and provide a final cost for the build.

[Yobbo NZ]

If you don't frequent this page -
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/cat/computing/deals
Keep an eye on it as cheap SSD deals pop up almost weekly.

[Rare White Ape]

If you don't frequent this page -
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/cat/computing/deals
Keep an eye on it as cheap SSD deals pop up almost weekly.

Thanks for the heads-up :up:

[Rare White Ape]

The brains of the beast arrived today.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/968882946813624392/1193806663900205126/IMG_4188.jpg?ex=65ae0e18&is=659b9918&hm=b5df53e28658e41317ca5fe7da117accd6a98be2f571ec1 454a0d87050fd707d&

Here's what I spent so far.

https://i.imgur.com/2sQVU4f.png

My original rough plan is on the left and the stuff I actually bought on the right. I ended up spending $281 more than the rough plan I had, but I hadn't gone too deep into finding the best value parts at that time (the rest of the spreadsheet which you can't see is a mess of numbers and comparisons, heh).

Of that $281, $182 of it is in the CPU and motherboard. Factoring in the cheaper (but also highly recommended) fan, I get all that extra power for a 6.5% price increase. Hell yeah.

The other $99 is in doubling the RAM, and I had to hastily buy another PSU while I was troubleshooting the crashing issue I had back in November, so I got a really good one :p

Now just gotta wait impatiently for the courier to arrive with the rest.

[Rare White Ape]

All my parts have arrived, but I am unprepared to build.

Two reasons:

1. I found out the motherboard is not compatible with the C: drive in my current PC. It's a 240 GB NVMe M.2 drive which tops out at 550 MB/s, and the new one only accepts PCI-E. So I went ahead and bought a 1 TB PCI-E 4.0 drive that can do 7300 MB/s. And it's on special. That's ready for pickup but the shop closed before I could get there today.

2. I haven't decided if I'm going with Win 10 or 11 yet. I'm leaning towards 10 because it's warm and cozy by this point. There's no real consensus among gamer geeks about which one to go for, so that's kinda weird. Windows 11 just... exists... and nobody really complains about it.

I guess I can plug the new hard drive into the old motherboard and clone it, so at least it'll be up and running as the main drive for the new PC immediately. Hopefully I won't have to keep the partition size the same as the original, but that's not a huge problem at the end of the day as the left over 750 GB can be an extra drive.

I'd just like some opinions on using new vs old Windows first!

[Yw-slayer]

Get Win11. At some point you'll have to upgrade to it anyway, and it's genuinely actually pretty good now. Possibly even better than Win10 at its best.

[Blerpa]

Win 11 works poorly on AM4 and just ok on AM5.
Pretty useless OS, especially for gaming.
Win 11 is recommended only in case you use Intel 12, 13 and 14th Gen, basically the CPUs Microsoft was "optimizing" (read: Intel paid to be optimized) the new OS for.

[Rare White Ape]

I’ll try both then. It’s free to try and a key is $10.

[XHawkeye]

The wife has Windows 11, & hate that I couldn't customize the start menu.

[Yw-slayer]

Does it? My secondhand 5800X and 3070 seem to work fine with Win11. It's slower than my main 13700 but that's to be expected given their release dates.

[Rare White Ape]

Step 1: Install CPU into socket.
Step 2: Apply thermal paste to chip
Step 3: Mount CPU cooler onto the mother board
Step 4: Wonder if you removed the protective film off the bottom of the CPU cooler
Step 5: Unscrew CPU cooler and peel off protective film...

https://i.imgur.com/Ff9AHXZ.jpg

So anyway got it all done yesterday and spent the day fucking about to get it set up to my preferences. Changing to a new PC is hard...

And I'm on Windows 11 for now. It's fine. It doesn't interfere with performance so I'd say it has the green light there.

However it does interfere with the user experience in some amazingly annoying ways and has some breathtakingly fucking stupid requirements that I wish weren't being forced upon us. You HAVE to sign in to your MS account on setup. All of the contents of the My Documents, Pictures, Desktop folders default to OneDrive. Right now it feels like I am fighting to be in control of what happens on my own PC. This battle will continue for some time, until I am comfortable or give up.

But it's fine. I can always revert to Win 10 if I want to.

Moving on: pics!

Old vs new main boards. That's a huge heatsink over the VRMs, and the M.2 slot has its own cooling fan.

https://i.imgur.com/F2rHO15.jpg

Here it is half-assembled. SFF PC enjoyers don't like to make things easy for themselves.

https://i.imgur.com/ABrlTOa.jpg

And all finished. Please disregard the multicoloured fan cables and that big honkin molex plug :thppt:

https://i.imgur.com/3h8NsAB.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/FDFBLmd.jpg

As for performance, unsurprisingly it is a great improvement. Surprisingly the cooler keeps things hovering arouns 65-70C when playing MSFS.

MSFS is much smoother, with frames going from 60-80 up to over 100 fps. So maybe a 20-30% increase. Critically, data streaming is much improved. Flying over a busy airport would lead to huge stutters on the old CPU (I've always set my game to contain ultra airport density and aircraft variety because I am a monster) but now it's smooth and enjoyable.

If I switch to the drone camera and fly it at full speed close to the ground (faster than you'd realistically be able to in any aircraft to test out world data streaming) the frame rate will stay around 80 fps. It'll then drop to about 35 fps when CPU temps hit 85C as the little cooler can't keep up, but this is an extreme case. Wait a few seconds and the temps drop back into the 70s and frame rates pick up. It's neat to watch the graphs in MSI Afterburner when this happens!

iRacing has given me a 100% increase! I saw 200 fps at one point and I think I'll be regularly seeing framerates above 150 quite a lot now. I haven't yet tested it behind a full field of 35 or more AI driven opponents though. On the old rig that would be a 40 fps experience.

[Rare White Ape]

Also I got all black components completely by accident and it looks cool as fuck :D

[Yw-slayer]

The onedrive link thing is somewhat irritating, but can also be convenient.

[Alan P]

The onedrive link thing is somewhat irritating, but can also be convenient.

I'm sure it's a ruse to constantly bug you with notifications that your one drive is nearly full and you should upgrade to their monthly subscription offering.

A small shame you didn't wait for the new Super cards released this month but the new machine looks clean AF!

[Yw-slayer]

I have upgraded onedrive already anyway, so I get both convenience AND no bugging notifications! Heh.

[Rare White Ape]

I was thinking I could use my work credentials to log into Windows and have unlimited OneDrive storage forever :D

And Alan I bought that GPU back in July. Everyone eventually gets that pang of sadness when updated versions of things they just bought get announced.

[Tom Servo]

I will say, after going through the various options, you can get 1 TB OneDrive for free if you also get Office 365, which honestly does often come in handy, and it's still cheaper than a lot of other online storage. I've been quite happy with it.

[Yw-slayer]

Yeah, one might even say that it's...

[Rare White Ape]

…a little bit at a time!

[Tom Servo]

This is not gaming related but also didn't seem worthy of its own post. I picked up an Asus ZenScreen for $200. It's only 1080p, but it's actually really handy to have basically a second monitor that weighs almost nothing and only needs a single USB-C connection, it uses the single connection for both power and video. It's about the same dimensions as my work macbook, so now I can basically have two screens with me when I travel, and right now it's getting a workout as my Diablo 4 helper while I play D4 on the main screen.

It's honestly a really useful piece of gear. I had no idea they existed until I saw the editor from TechDirt show his traveling setup and how he always has one for a second monitor wherever he goes.

[Yw-slayer]

I've been using a second screen for work while travelling for years. In the old days admittedly I used one of the iPad Pros as a monitor.

[Tom Servo]

And you kept it to yourself, forcing me to find out on my own how great it can be all these years later. Nice attitude.

[Rare White Ape]

I could have told you 4 or 5 years ago but you never asked.

[Tom Servo]

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

[Yw-slayer]

Yeah, he didn't even ask a little bit at a time.

[Blerpa]

I got fed up of various little problems with my Lian-Li Mini Air boxy short case, cable accessibility and so on, so I splashed some cash on a new case, still Lian-Li but a full tower behemoth, the Lancool III.
But no more ARGB fans, a new 360mm AiO, still from Deepcool like the last (it was 280mm due to case size restrictions) but black with no ARGBs as well... and, oh well, I snatched a Stryx OC 4090... unfortunately it is white, but it was a good chunk cheaper than any other black or dark 4090s in the market when I bought it.
I'm on ultrawide QHD (3440x1440p 144hz) so the 4090 soldiers on mightly, handling the main Dell 34" screen and the secondary 27" one by LG is a pretty basic task for it.

https://i.imgur.com/Jf3PGGJ.jpg

[CudaMan]

That is awesome. And I love the little stand to help support the big 4090. :)

[Blerpa]

That is awesome. And I love the little stand to help support the big 4090. :)

Thanks man! That stand came with the gpu, it doubles as a screwdriver to help fit the GPU inside the case; look here:

https://i.imgur.com/n9tSQmG.png

The RoG ring is terribly tacky LOL

[Kchrpm]

If anyone gets bored and wants to spec out a triple screen ultra graphics ready rig at the Microcenter near me: https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx

[CudaMan]

I'd do it if I knew more about what's good these days. I've heard recently that the AMD "X3D" CPUs are the hot stuff for iRacing (and other sims maybe?), so I'd probably start there.

[Kchrpm]

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=a9c154c4-83e8-4cab-a04b-f7cd9875e577

Did I do it right? I was mostly just picking the most popular option for everything, because I don't know any better, though I did splurge on monitors because 3440x1440 sounded cool.

[Rare White Ape]

Yeah on a quick inspection everything seems to check out. But I'd remove the Blu-Ray drive as nobody has time for that shit anymore (plus you probably already own a decent Blu-Ray player anyway), and the cooler comes with thermal grease, so you save yourself $11 there.

[Kchrpm]

I didn't know if there was still any reason to have an opportunity disc drive!

[Alan P]

Do you need 64GB? It's rather overkill.

Also a 10TB HDD? I assume this is for Photo/Video storage? Won't you just be using the cloud to store all your stuff?

[Rare White Ape]

I’d go with the HDD over cloud to be honest.

[Kchrpm]

I have no idea how much RAM I would need for triple screen ultra iRacing, that's why I asked you guys to review my build. I figured it was easier to have you correct it, as you're doing now, than to build it from scratch.

Should I kick it down to 32? 16?

And the 10 TB was so I could theoretically record stupidly long video from endurance races and then make highlight reels for YouTube or something? I dunno, I was just clicking buttons.

[Yobbo NZ]

32gb should be enough.
Maybe add an SDD for game storage, that'll help speed things up too.

[Rare White Ape]

Keith, if you go back to page 116, you will see that I recently built a PC that's within the same performance ballpark as what you specced out yesterday. I've done you the favour of using the exact same parts* as my build in the Microcenter PC Builder:
https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=dc3bbc5a-6e4c-4807-8398-c35c7ff697e1

*Apart from the CPU fan and case fan extension cable as the identical parts are not available, so I substituted with similar parts.

It's an ITX build with a small case, motherboard and power supply. For your PC you may want to get equivalent parts in ATX size if you want to save money and open up more options. Depending on your choice of case it may come with case fans, so you could delete the ones I added. And I highly recommend getting the 4070 Super over the regular 4070 I have.

Here's the performance I get in iRacing using saved replays that I have on my PC. My monitor is a 5120x1440 ultrawide, which is 2/3 the pixel count of a triple 1440p setup.

The first images are from the Daytona 500 a few weeks ago:
- 37 car field
- Daytime, dynamic sky, no trackside lights
- 3 car types (NASCAR Next Gen Ford Mustang, Toyota Camry, Chevrolet Camaro)
- 31 cars in the view
- 108 fps

https://i.imgur.com/cuSKNuB.jpeg
Graphic settings menu: https://i.imgur.com/jbdqkyu.jpeg
Replay settings menu: https://i.imgur.com/P56kVKt.jpeg

And the Daytona 24 Hour back in January:
- 50 car field (although by this time about 20 of them had retired from the race)
- Pre-dawn, dynamic sky, trackside lighing on
- 8 car types (IMSA Porsche 963, Cadillac V-Series, BMW M-Hybrid, LMP2 Dallara P217, GT3 Porsche 911, Ferrari 296, BMW M4, Mercedes AMG)
- 4 cars in the view
- 122 fps

https://i.imgur.com/giIPVa0.jpeg
Graphic settings menu: https://i.imgur.com/4h1aPiE.jpeg
Replay settings menu: https://i.imgur.com/qmB7fz9.jpeg

I'm not sure how the fps numbers convert to triple 1440p screens. That's a GPU-side concern and having a 4070 Super could lead to great benefits.

[Kchrpm]

Thanks!

100+ fps seems crazy.

[Rare White Ape]

Hey no problem! Also I just noticed you chose 3x 3440x1440 screens. Those are 21:9 ultrawide.

I'd go with 3x 2560x1440 16:9 screens. Having that much extra width is probably overkill, and almost everyone I've seen using triples just runs with 16:9 screens.

You could even consider running 3x 1080p screens and have even more headroom for additional fps.

[Rare White Ape]

I should also add, in iRacing there are two separate graphics menus, one for replay and one for gameplay, so it's difficult to get a proper gauge on how it performs unless you're actually driving. That's why I posted links to the two different menus in my screenshots. I would have to set up an AI race (which would be a good CPU test) and drive behind the field to get a true value.

Actually... gimme a few minutes.

[Rare White Ape]

Here we go. AI race, 36 cars (3x NASCAR vehicles), 35 cars ahead of me, 110 fps. For some reason I couldn't get the AI car set to load the liveries, and each of those would account for a few MB of GPU RAM. I'd say the results are consistent. I'll spectate the next official NASCAR race at Las Vegas in about 15 minutes (against real players) and get figures for that too.

https://i.imgur.com/7pNTT01.jpeg

[Rare White Ape]

Aight, more performance. Now it's just turnming into an excuse to drive a bunch of things in iRacing :D

IMSA at Silverstone, same car set as the Daytona 24 Hour (this is important because additional car types increase CPU load) with 8 cars ahead, 145 fps

https://i.imgur.com/a0ARcKk.jpeg

And NASCAR at Las Vegas, 3 cars and 24 of them ahead of me on the front stretch (this, along with the crowd detail and pit boxes, increases GPU load), 111 fps

https://i.imgur.com/TxRMZRU.jpeg

BONUS CONTENT

A whole lap of Vegas in replay mode. You can see the frame rate waver as I go around the track, and watch it almost go down to 99 fps when I drive through that massive crash.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCGB9t2MVy4

[CudaMan]

Thanks!

100+ fps seems crazy.

You generally want a high stable FPS along with monitor(s) that has a high refresh rate (120Hz minimum I'd say). It's a much better experience.

And another vote for 16:9 if you're going triples. I'd actually prefer 16:10 for more vertical space in the world, but such things seem not to be made based on a quick look see. 1080p is "fine", 1440p might be slightly better if your viewing distance is relatively close, but that's a lot more pixels to push (x3) so a more powerful system is a must. Don't even think about triple 4K.

[Rare White Ape]

Another thing to consider is if you have 120 or 240 hz monitors you can frame limit to 60 fps and have a perfectly even frame pacing of 2 or 4x screen refreshes per frame. And a 240 hz monitor can display 80 fps at 3x refreshes per frame.

[Kchrpm]

I stopped at Microcenter yesterday and found where they moved their sim racing gear. They have the Moza KS wheel I like in stock, and their wheelbases and pedals. After seeing the struggle some people have getting things delivered, I realize I'm pretty lucky if I do decide to do this...if it will fit in the Vette.

But a good rig will certainly not fit in the car.

[Rare White Ape]

So… you’re actually doing this?

Please say yes.

[Kchrpm]

I don't know. I really don't. I want to convince myself that it's not THAT much and it's not THAT complicated and I'll totally want to spend several hours a week every week for years doing races so it will all be justified. So I'm trying to pick out all the pieces and get excited about them, but it's not really working in the face of photography stuff that I'm already invested in and that has other benefits.

Watching onboard videos from IMSA and WEC races help, they mostly make it look easy and fun, but I hate the idea of spending 4 grand building something from scratch just to be shit and ruin team races unless I practice for hours every week in the summer instead of going out and taking pictures of ladies in bikinis.

My other option is to make the bare minimum investment: get a $1k PC that will just barely run stuff in low settings on my TV with my G923. That could happen at any point, but that's not worthy of this thread.

[Rare White Ape]

I’ve learned not to judge people with equipment that fails to meet some nebulous, undefined standard. We all started somewhere.

Plus cheap hardware is a cheap way to try things to see if you will actually like it. If you don’t, you only lose a few bucks if you choose to resell. You only lose a few bucks when upgrading too… ;)

[Rare White Ape]

iRacing will run on a potato PC too, don’t forget. If I dropped all my settings to low, I’d probably see upwards of 200fps.

Might as well get in now while the Corvette GT3 is on development. *cough*

[Rare White Ape]

So yeah I loaded the Daytona 500 replay again, but this time at 1920x1080 and with the lowest graphical settings. The framerate counter gave me 550 fps while I was watching from the perspective of the lead car.

[Rare White Ape]

iRacing with rain performance. Below 60 fps. I may need to reduce some graphical settings :p

https://i.imgur.com/3wsme3L.jpeg

[Rare White Ape]

Additional info for Keith:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Epp83VOBI
This build is about cramming as much power into as small a space as possible while paying attention to value for money. This is the sort of shit I'm really into.
Mid CPU and high GPU
(Intel i5 14400F/32GB RAM/RTX 4080 Super)

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-how-to-build-a-white-gaming-pc
This is more about the build experience and the journey of finding parts, etc. You don't have to go to these lengths to make something as flash as this, but it'll give you an idea of the build process prior to ordering parts.
High CPU and mid GPU
(AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D/32GB RAM/RTX 4060 Ti - same CPU as me)

...not that I'm trying to twist your arm or anything.

As you can probably tell, the go-to for a lot of people right now is the 7800X3D CPU and an RTX GPU in the 4070 ballpark with 32 GB of RAM. It's a fantastic base to work from. Lots of uhhh... photo editing can be done with this.

[Yw-slayer]

AI PHOTO CREATION WITH UR 4070?!!??

[Cam]

Several weeks ago, the wife and I seriously talked about getting a device for playing co-op video games together on the TV. We decided that the best thing to do would be to get a compact/cheap PC and play games through Steam. I ordered one a short time ago for $500 (40% off.) I ordered two Xbox controllers (they work just fine with Windows via Bluetooth.) Got the machine and the controllers, but it did not come with built-in wireless. It was packaged with a USB wi-fi adapter, but no Bluetooth to run the Xbox controllers. I bought a USB Bluetooth adapter at Best Buy on the way home from work the other day. We're gaming! Unfortunately, complex games were running slow, even at 720 resolution, because it did not have a dedicated GPU. I ordered a cheap ($150) video card. Any video card is better than no video card. Got the video card today. Instructions were very meager. Wasn't sure what cables to plug in. Slotted it and plugged in what I thought was power. Reconnected everything and turned it on. It worked! Windows automatically installed the latest driver. I am surprised how easy that was. I expected to be fighting with it. The last time I put components in a computer, it was the previous century. Games are running better and faster, like night and day. Initially, I changed video settings in games to 720 just so they would run at a reasonable rate. Now, they are running at 1080 no prob.