Help me build my PC 2016 Edition Catch All

JC wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--Nl-AFDTs--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/ivylfcc2sbtapctaqtx4.png)

The video card isn't plugged in. It's just laying in the case. Maybe there's a ribbon cable connector they left out for photo reasons? It *is* pretty though.

complexmath wrote:
JC wrote:

IMAGE(https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--Nl-AFDTs--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/ivylfcc2sbtapctaqtx4.png)

The video card isn't plugged in. It's just laying in the case. Maybe there's a ribbon cable connector they left out for photo reasons? It *is* pretty though.

That seems to be the common logic. A pci-e extension cable would have hidden a lot of the other guts.

Probably that 3m PCI-e extender the A4 uses.

Thanks for all the comments. I'm going with the Windforce card - it's probably going to run cooler (or no worse) than my current R9 270. I'm not overclocking anything and the case has plenty of fans.

Malor wrote:

It's pretty, but that's an astonishing amount of money for a wooden case. You'll pay about double for one of those, compared to building it yourself from parts.

You could buy a saw, router, and the necessary wood, and probably still save money.

Yeah, especially since it is using all off-the-shelf parts with no customization.

That said, if they sold just the case I would be interested in it for my next build.

I'm willing to bet that some enterprising woodworker is going to do just that at some point in the near future. I wish my carpenter friend hadn't moved or I'd recruit him..

My new 6400 didn't work in my motherboard, so I've got a new one, but noticed that the 1151 socket pins are bent. I've ordered a jeweller's loupe and some tweezers - I'm going to try and straighten them. Has anyone else managed this? There's also a trick with a propelling pencil with no lead in.

DudleySmith wrote:

My new 6400 didn't work in my motherboard, so I've got a new one, but noticed that the 1151 socket pins are bent. I've ordered a jeweller's loupe and some tweezers - I'm going to try and straighten them. Has anyone else managed this? There's also a trick with a propelling pencil with no lead in.

you purchased it new and it came with bent pins? Return that, don't mess with it and break a pin. Then you're stuck

Oh, I'm already stuck: I bought it 6 months ago, and fit a CPU and h55 to it before seeing the cpu failure light. It's very possible that I bent the pins. They won't take it back now. I don't normally buy the motherboard first for this reason, but there was a great bundle offer and I decided to grab it and take the risk.

I have the choice of fixing it or buying a new mobo.

Ah ok. I've used the pen tip trick before but it was on an older CPU with a lot less pins.

I think you can manage it, just go slow and very gently.

I'm getting really tired of having 3 separate SSDs as drives and deleting games to fit other games. I'm planning on a raid 0 SSDs like some of you power players have. Is it worth it? Would you place the OS in the raid 0 or a separate SSD?

If you setup an array and lose a drive, you lose it all.

What you're looking to do isn't really worth the hassle. I'd just go for a larger SSD and replace your smallest one.

You could try spanning via windows 10. Again though, you're introducing complexity to the system and that typically means bad things if something goes wrong.

http://www.windowscentral.com/how-cr...

Regardless of if you do raid or spanning you'll have to reformat everything.

JC wrote:

If you setup an array and lose a drive, you lose it all.

What you're looking to do isn't really worth the hassle. I'd just go for a larger SSD and replace your smallest one.

You could try spanning via windows 10. Again though, you're introducing complexity to the system and that typically means bad things if something goes wrong.

http://www.windowscentral.com/how-cr...

Regardless of if you do raid or spanning you'll have to reformat everything.

Yeah, I was going to recommend spanning, too. Seems the easiest option, although I haven't looked into what happens if you lose a drive. In old Windows Home Server setups, files could still be read from the drives the data was stored on if it happened to not be on the drive that failed. Don't know if Windows 10 works similarly or not.

Microsoft confirms Game Mode coming in Windows 10 Creators Update

Not much detail on what this will do, though, other than to "optimize the gaming experience".

Chairman Mao wrote:

Not much detail on what this will do, though, other than to "optimize the gaming experience".

Optimize for Microsoft, most likely, probably not for users.

Balthezor: have you considered using mountpoints? You can mount NTFS volumes on subdirectories, instead of drive letters. They still have separate space usage, so you still have to monitor them, but depending on how you're installing, it might potentially fit better. You can also use 'junction points', which are basically aliases, making a link to a file or a directory in another place. This is another way of doing more or less the same thing; you could link a directory on the D drive to be visible somewhere under the Steam folder, for instance.

A RAID 0 is logically a lot simpler, but less reliable; if any drive fails, you lose everything. If you want to go that way, for simplicity of usage, then you'll want to have a good daily backup. 4TB drives are cheap and, for the most part, very reliable. You don't have to get one that big, of course, if you don't want to spend that much.

Malor wrote:

You can also use 'junction points', which are basically aliases, making a link to a file or a directory in another place. This is another way of doing more or less the same thing; you could link a directory on the D drive to be visible somewhere under the Steam folder, for instance.

If you do that, how do you pick whether Steam should use the steam folder drive or the junction point directory?

Probably buying my new PC this week, and will end up with 2 drives.
Found this guide to split up steam installs, but it sounds somewhat cumbersome, having two install directories. Especially if you want to move things between the two.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...

I have steam games installed on 2 different SSD drives, neither of which is the OS drive. Other than the initial 'set up as a steam folder', it's been as simple as choosing which one I want a game to install to at install time. After that, it doesn't have any impact of using steam/library.

Moving things between the two might cause some more issues, though, so I can't vouch for that :/

Unless you're moving games *often*, it's not at all cumbersome.

Here's a quick video of me moving Odallus (because it's small) from one drive to another:

(Highly recommend setting up a Library in Windows for just such an occasion.)

Ah, yeah, delete and reinstall after moving the folder looks easy. Thanks.

There's a program that will move games around for you, and will manage junction points so that Steam can't even tell they've been moved. Maybe it's called Steam Mover? We were talking about it a lot there for awhile, but I never used it myself.

Steam Mover is absolutely an option. Since it really only requires a few mouse clicks, and I'm doing it maybe a few times per month, I like keeping track of it myself.

(A general note: Steam'll let you delete/install multiple games simultaneously, in case you want to move several games at a time.)

Steam Mover is basically an easy tool for moving files and creating symbolic links. While "steam" is in the name, it will work for everything. I have the default install location for Steam and Origin on an SSD, and then I use Steam Mover to move games that don't benefit from fast read/seek times to a large mechanical HD.

complexmath wrote:

Steam Mover is basically an easy tool for moving files and creating symbolic links. While "steam" is in the name, it will work for everything. I have the default install location for Steam and Origin on an SSD, and then I use Steam Mover to move games that don't benefit from fast read/seek times to a large mechanical HD.

At one point, I moved Origin games (BF3 I think) with Steam Mover, but Origin didn't like the symbolic links when updates were available. I ended up just having to also do some registry changes in Origin to keep that from breaking things.

Things have improved a bit with both Origin and Steam now letting you pick install locations at install time, so I haven't messed with it in awhile.

Motherboards are confusing these days.
Is Thunderbolt support looking relevant for PC in the future - something worth paying extra to get in a motherboard?
Do motherboards really need a specific thunderbolt 'header' to support thunderbolt add-in cards down the road? It seems like an absurdly over-complicated solution.

My opinion only- if you have to ask if you need thunderbolt, you don't.

Thunderbolt has no value to current PCs and there's nothing you can't do with existing connections that are already completely accepted standards.

Don't pay extra for this feature as you'll never use it.

Good. Didn't really want to either. Just wanted to be sure I wasn't making a stupid mistake.

Question: 3.1 USB is it prone to fail or is not well supported? I had a USB hub plugged in and one day Windows decided it didn't like that port at all.

It's no more prone to failing than any other port.

Is the port completely dead or just not recognizing that hub?

JohnKillo wrote:

Question: 3.1 USB is it prone to fail or is not well supported? I had a USB hub plugged in and one day Windows decided it didn't like that port at all.

My front USB 3.1 ports quit working. I guess I should check the cables inside to be sure it's not a mechanical issue.

In other news, my onboard NIC seems to have quit working. I bought a wireless USB stick, so I'm using that now, but I've never experienced this before.

I guess that's two issues on this board - maybe it's time to upgrade? Somebody give me money.

Not completely dead. I plug the hub into another USB 3 and worked great. I tested a USB C cable and that worked but the keyboard was no bueno.