Help me build my PC 2017 Catch All

Most generally actually only have one, unless you buy higher end motherboards. And in the case of non super high end boards there's not much reason to go multiple M.2 drives because often you get full PCIe x4 speed out of one M.2 slot but the other will be limited to SATA speeds.

Unless you're buying the MX300's and just want them so you don't have to run cables, because the M.2 drives are the same price as standard SATA anyway. That's a choice I can get behind. Not having to run cables to drives is *bliss* when you're building.

Should be interesting to see how the 3 M.2 slots in the Asus Zenith x399 mobo are wired. ThreadRipper has 64 pciE lanes so there should be bandwidth even in an SLI/Crossfire setup.

Tagging the thread.

But wanted to know, I wanted a server to play online... so, should I mainly check for CPU power + HDD + RAM ?

I was eyeing some i5 second or third gem to build up something, or should I get a newer CPU ?

thanks.

I really liked the look of the $1200 build but I modified it a bit with a larger HDD, a different (cheaper/disk driveless) tower, and greater power supply. I don't piece computers together often so I'm looking for input whether or not I would have any issues with the parts chosen. I don't think I modified too much, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/yNHhHN
I will be having help assembling it by someone who knows what they're doing, thankfully.
I just don't want a pre-built for the difference in quality over cost.

Shadout wrote:

Sounds interesting. From time to time considering to take the jump to 4K or 144hz.
But both? How will you even run any games on it.

144hz >>> 4K.

I think 144hz 1440p is the way to go right now. I just upgraded from a 144hz 1080p to a 1440p panel (jumping from an RX 480 to a GTX 1080 to power it).

Going 144hz 4K might be interesting if you could actually get nearest-neighbor scaling (aka integer scaling, aka pixel quadrupling) and perfectly scale a 1080p image to the 4K panel native res, without any interpolation. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case. Panels themselves seem to use an interpolation scaling algorithm that does not take exact divisors into account, and the GPU drivers don't seem to do it either.

Tagging as I'm thinking about a CPU upgrade in the near future - currently running an i5 3470 with DDR1600 and I think it's holding my GTX1070 back a fair bit on newer games.

I doubt it will given past releases but the Coffee Lake release could prompt some price drops here and there.

Hard to say for sure.

The rumors are positive enough I might consider waiting though. The new i5 lineup could completely supplant the Ryzen R5's if the pricing is right. It's Intel so it probably won't be, but who knows

***

Benchmarks are out for Vega 56 and 64.

The rumors were pretty close to being right now.

To me though, the big thing that sticks out the more of these I read and watch is just raw power draw.

i7-7700k system with a factory OC'd GTX 1070:
Peak: 302w
Average: 260w
Idle: 77w

Exact same system with an OC'd Vega 56:
Peak: 487w
Average: 386w
Idle: 82w

Y'all, the card wins on average performance by like 1-3fps when OC'd. That power draw is *insane* for one card at those performance numbers now. Yeah, you'll probably save $30-$50 buying a Vega 56 over a GTX 1070 but... be prepared to throw that extra at the power supply you'll need to keep the Vega card happy. Or just throwing it at your electric bill over time. Either/Or.

I'm pretty sure my 1800x/1080Ti system pulls less wattage on average than that peak. In fact I think I'll check that tonight. I'm curious now.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

On a side note my ThreadRipper 1950X arrived and I have my cooler and ram waiting but no motherboard yet.. guess Newegg sent that from a different warehouse.

Please post a picture with a banana next to it.

It's going to give the banana an inferiority complex.

-BEP

Y'all, the card wins on average performance by like 1-3fps when OC'd. That power draw is *insane* for one card at those performance numbers now. Yeah, you'll probably save $30-$50 buying a Vega 56 over a GTX 1070 but... be prepared to throw that extra at the power supply you'll need to keep the Vega card happy. Or just throwing it at your electric bill over time. Either/Or.

It's interesting to note that at least on paper HBM memory is supposed to offer higher bandwidth than DDR5(x) at less power draw. So AMD isn't seeing obvious efficiency there or if they it just means that these GPU's could have been even more power hungry.

Guess Nvidia isnt in a hurry to release their next generation then.
Computer is. Sad.

TheGameguru wrote:
Y'all, the card wins on average performance by like 1-3fps when OC'd. That power draw is *insane* for one card at those performance numbers now. Yeah, you'll probably save $30-$50 buying a Vega 56 over a GTX 1070 but... be prepared to throw that extra at the power supply you'll need to keep the Vega card happy. Or just throwing it at your electric bill over time. Either/Or.

It's interesting to note that at least on paper HBM memory is supposed to offer higher bandwidth than DDR5(x) at less power draw. So AMD isn't seeing obvious efficiency there or if they it just means that these GPU's could have been even more power hungry.

The 56 at least absolutely could have been. It had all the same VRM circuitry on it as the 64 but all the power options are locked at more conservative ceilings and you can't flash the bios to unlock it because of some security thing they've done this time. GamersNexus had some success overclocking the HBM specifically and then undervolting the card after setting a higher power offset or something, but it seemed like *a lot* of work for not very much gain because of the way the card is locked down.

Vega appears to have fallen short of the initial lofty mining performance expectations, though there is some discussion as to how that might still look after memory overclocking, optimizations in mining software, etc.

No Vega 64 or 56 for sale today that I can find. The direct links from AMD to NewEgg and Amazon show only out-of-stock versions of the 64. Most of them are $599. Anyone see anything different?

Between that and the power consumption I'm re-considering Nvidia.

JeffreyLSmith wrote:

No Vega 64 or 56 for sale today that I can find. The direct links from AMD to NewEgg and Amazon show only out-of-stock versions of the 64. Most of them are $599. Anyone see anything different?

Not really. Looks like a few went on sale at MSRP and were snapped up, along with all the ones that got marked well above MSRP.

I don't think it will be realistic to buy Vega at MSRP anytime soon. Maybe when the AIB boards launch. Maybe not even then. The GPU shortage has let up ever-so slightly (as in, you can actually buy GTX 1060s now), but obviously we're still far from the end.

Between that and the power consumption I'm re-considering Nvidia.

I haven't regretted it yet. Still some GTX 1080s selling at $509 on NewEgg. I took mine and clocked it up so that it boosts to 2050-2075 MHz, and I've had it higher than that, but just getting on the right side of 2.0 GHz seems enough for a GPU whose default boost is 1733 MHz, especially since I haven't been all that aggressive with power settings or thermals. It feels like my 1080 has plenty more headroom and I'm just snatching the low-to-medium hanging fruit.

Meanwhile, Guru3D found their attempts to overclock Vega led to inescapable down-clocking. Maybe AIB boards will help, but as of right now, Vega 64 may be "trading blows" with a stock clocked 1080, but it seems most 1080s can very trivially jump up to at least 1900 MHz boost clock and beyond.

TheGameguru wrote:

I would do AIO liquid coolers at all price points if I could figure how. I find them vastly easier to install and work with inside a case.

Now I'm debating returning the Hyper 212 and getting a 140MM AIO liquid cooling solution. THANKS INTERNET!

Yeah, those don't look like very good video cards. That power draw is kind of nuts.

I think this goes back to them relying so much on automated circuit tools (and crowing about doing so). That's what you get: brute-force circuits that aren't very efficient and rely on high clocks to work well. To my mind, they've outsourced their core competency.

NVidia, on the other hand, has been sort of 'cheating', doing things like lossless texture compression to cut down on bandwidth demands. Bandwidth is the scarcest resource on high-end video cards, and the essence of optimization is to use less of whatever you have the least of. The ideal optimization is not to do the work in the first place, but barring that, doing less of it is the next best thing. Texture compression is a very clever way to reduce bandwidth needs in gaming, though it's much less effective in compute environments.

And we see the results here: they're burning a TON more power to pretty much do the same thing. Because they've got a lot of raw bandwidth, I think one area where these cards may do well is in very high-resolution, high-refresh situations, where the NVidia tricks stop working as well. Their compute scores may also be better, again because they're using true bandwidth instead of texture ju-jitsu. I haven't, however, read any actual benchmarks confirming this.

Carlbear95 wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I would do AIO liquid coolers at all price points if I could figure how. I find them vastly easier to install and work with inside a case.

Now I'm debating returning the Hyper 212 and getting a 140MM AIO liquid cooling solution. THANKS INTERNET!

Just be aware that liquid coolers are less reliable than air coolers. If the liquid leaks or the pump breaks, you have to replace the whole thing. I've had two liquid coolers, one from Corsair and one from Intel, and both of them failed. They were excellent when they worked, but they didn't keep working.

Air coolers, barring some kind of mechanical damage, can't fail. About the worst than can happen is for a fan to die, but those cost less than $10 , are easily sourced from any number of local businesses, and take about five minutes to replace.

You're not helping Malor. I'll probably stick with the Air for now since I already have it in hand and the build is happening this weekend. I pulled the stock 120mm that came with my case and replaced it with 2x 140mm intake fans, so I already have a spare 120mm if I need it for the 212 sitting in my current or my old PC.

I think AIO failure rates in general are much lower than in Malor's personal experience. When I considered the jump to an AIO and did a lot of searching around, the conclusions I drew from what I found were that failure rates are pretty acceptably low.

My only thing would be sticking with someone like Corsair for their service in the event that a problem does happen, and paying close attention to it when you fire it up for the first time. Beyond that, use something like hwinfo64 for monitoring CPU temps, fans, pump, etc.

Yeah I have three that have thousands of hours on them and they still work great. That's not to discount the experience of someone who bought two and had two fail, that's kinda nuts and I'd probably be looking sideways at them at that point too, but as long as they keep treating me right I'll keep using them.

Like Guru, I'm not after them for better cooling to be honest, I just want the convenience and relative simplicity of the install and the convenience of not having that giant chunk of metal sticking up in the case in the way whenever I have to work in it.

The last time I used a big tower air cooler it worked great! And then I went to replace the videocard at some point later on and had some tiny number of mm of clearance between the CPU heatsink and the top of the videocard. Zero room to even get a decent size tool in to press down on the PCIe slot tab to get the videocard to pop out. The plastic spudger in my iFixit toolkit wouldn't fit.

You've not cringed until you've tried to use a super fine screwdriver to press on that tab and slipped and lightly stabbed your motherboard.

I'm in the 50-60 builds with AIO's over the years. Yet to have anyone tell me one has failed. I still have a first gen Corsair AIO in my work system. Finally swapped it out a few weeks ago when I switched to Ryzen.

I am most likely going this route with my next build.

I hate all of you.. my water cooler shows up tomorrow.

NowInStock's AMD page has been updated with Vega 56 and 64 pages.

Vega 64 is $599 or more across the board, not that any are in stock. That MSRP sure went out the window immediately... or was it even a valid MSRP to begin with? Apparently not. Those $399/$499 price tags were allegedly "launch only" prices, discounts which applied only to that very first allotment of cards, which sold out immediately. Pretty clearly, this was to have those prices established for positive launch reviews, many of which cited performance-per-dollar.

Realistically, if you want Vega, you're having to buy it in one of the "Radeon Packs", essentially a bundle with either a Samsung Ultrawide monitor or a Ryzen CPU/mobo or both. I guess this was a tactic to prevent the cards from getting snapped up entirely by miners.

*Legion* wrote:

Vega stuff

Well then.

To leave the videocard market yet more stagnant, Nvidia announces Volta GPU's will not release this year.

If Vega wasn't a big bucket of meh I bet Volta would suddenly be way more currently viable to produce as a consumer product. Funny how that works

Yeah the timing of that announcement was not subtle at all.

Apparently a new mining-optimized driver has boosted Vega and Polaris's Ethereum mining performance with larger DAG sizes, so there's that.

I got an interest in Intel CPU. And I was with AMD just recently.

For a 6th or 7th Feb i5, what kind of sockets should I go for? I am kinda seeing there might be a few differences, and something, they could be interchange. Am I seeing right?

Manach wrote:

I got an interest in Intel CPU. And I was with AMD just recently.

For a 6th or 7th Feb i5, what kind of sockets should I go for? I am kinda seeing there might be a few differences, and something, they could be interchange. Am I seeing right?

Coffee Lake gets announced Aug 21st. Rumors are release in Nov-Dec time frame.

http://www.techradar.com/news/intel-...

Will require a new motherboard as current Z170/Z270 motherboards will not support Coffee Lake.

For existing Skylake and Kaby Lake CPU's you can use either Z170 or Z270 motherboards. It makes no sense buying new to get a Z170 so get a Z270.

The confusion is around the new X processors on the X299 platform which typically was for 6+ Core count CPU's but now Intel released 4 core processors that run on the X299. They honestly make little sense as you pay a premium for an X299 motherboard but the 4 core are crippled and dont use all the features.

I'm pricing out GTX 1080 cards, and the options are overwhelming.

Legion, and others, what do you think of the Asus cards? This one, for example, has two HDMI outs and a DVI, which perfectly supports the VR setup (HTC Vive) I have in the basement right now.

I'm not married to one brand. I've been happy with Gigabyte and MSI cards in the past. I know Legion linked a Gigabyte card earlier. I'll do a head-to-head feature comparison tonight. Thanks.

For the most part, a 1080 is a 1080. I bought the Gigabyte because it was the cheapest, while still having a decent cooling setup.

Main differences you'll see are output ports and factory overclock. You've already made note of the first one. Pick a card that has the outputs you need.

As for factory OC, that's nice and all if you literally don't want to touch anything related to clock speeds for some reason. But outside of that, factory OCs on these are all really conservative - usually ranging from high 1700s to mid 1800 MHz - and it's trivial to take probably any 1080 well above that. I dragged about 3 sliders more to the right in MSI Afterburner and I was over 2.0 GHz - it really didn't take much more than that. And my Gigabyte only has a single 8-pin PCIE power input, whereas cards that expect to pull more power for OC purposes usually have dual 8-pins. Probably I could not push the Gigabyte quite as high as some other cards could go, but then again, it sounds like the OC gains get pretty small past the point I'm at.

All to say, I doubt there's really any 1080s I would worry about *not* buying, except ones with a "blower" style cooler (those single-fan enclosure types).