Help me build my PC 2017 Catch All

apaksl wrote:
Amoebic wrote:

I would like to try and see if I can scrounge up old parts folks have replaced or upgraded out of that people may possibly still have laying around? I'm really keen on the idea that there are parts from several different people that come together in my new thing made of effort and love. Sorry, really trying to not sound like a creepy frankenstein's monster about this.

My brother-in-law (Apaksl on the forums) built his and Marshlight's computers, as well as the ones for their daughters. He's generously offered to help assemble what I can pull together, and to check with any offers people may have to see if it's workable with the motherboard and cpu I pick up, and reimburse shipping if it seems like a good fit.

Case and monitor I feel like will be expensive to ship around so I might try and see what I can scrounge up locally. I'm literally googling these words as I try to write this post, apologies if what I'm asking doesn't make sense or reads in dumbass.

Hi, I figured I'd introduce myself, I've never been active in the GWJ community, and honestly, I've only been listening to the Conference Call podcast cause my sister-in-law is a frequent contributor.

Last year before Christmas Amoebic hooked me up with all her hand-me-down PC parts so I could scrounge together a couple PCs for my kids, and now I feel bad she doesn't have anything left for herself. Amoebic said she wanted to ask on the forums if there were any hand-me-down parts collecting dust, and I said I would pay to have them all shipped to me and then buy whatever else is needed to put it all together.

I told her to say "thanks but no thanks" to any offered CPUs because of the trouble involved in acquiring motherboards for discontinued Intel CPUs, but if someone wants to offer her a CPU/motherboard combo that would certainly be appreciated.

I have a Corsair HX750 semi-modular power supply I'm no longer using. I got it at the beginning of 2015 IIRC, as a warranty replacement for one that randomly rolled over and died. Haven't had any problems with it, it was just overkill for my new system and I wanted to go full modular. Of course you can get solid PSU's brand new without spending much if you're alert for deals so if you'd rather not take the risk on a used one it's cool.

I gave away my previous system recently, but I'm always up for helping a deserving GWJer get new gear.

Ditto. Robear gave his last system to me and I squared it away so my boys could each have a PC. I could very easily donate a bit to the bucket.

Also, for LCD monitors, thrift stores can be amazing places to get something cheap. Both of my boys are running on monitors that I paid about $10-$20 for each. You just need to be able to test them beforehand, I've been burned a couple times with busted screens that looked fine and I didn't bother testing. Or hit up Craigslist for old office equipment.

PurEvil wrote:

Also, for LCD monitors, thrift stores can be amazing places to get something cheap. Both of my boys are running on monitors that I paid about $10-$20 for each. You just need to be able to test them beforehand, I've been burned a couple times with busted screens that looked fine and I didn't bother testing. Or hit up Craigslist for old office equipment.

I hadn't thought of thrift stores, but I had been intending on either buying a used 1080p 24" monitor off craigslist for Amoebic, or maybe finally buying myself a nice monitor and giving her mine (it's not terrible, just a basic 1080p/60hz 24")

If you're not looking for bleeding edge monitors, Craigslist is a goldmine. Wife paid $100 last year for a decent 27" 1440p monitor.

I am always wary of buying used tech. I work in tech support/AV I have seen what people do to their stuff. Also my stepdad has bought some shady af stuff off of Craigslist that didn't work (hacked memory card that claimed to be bigger than they were) or was obviously stolen (a Kindle Fire that was semi-locked but semi-usable for some odd reason).

Speaking of sketchy used tech...

I've got a newly freed up i7-4790k CPU/motherboard, 32GB of RAM, GTX 970, and an unused 250GB Samsung SSD, any/all of which I'd be happy to contribute.

I love you all, thank you so much.
Re: a go fund me. Not something I can do easily from Canada, but I'll chat with ApakSL about doing such a thing to help cover shipping costs for folks donating parts, as well as cover any gaps filled?

Regarding gofundme, I don't think any additional funds will end up being necessary, I've already been emailing with someone who contacted Amoebic, they offered a case/CPU/motherboard/RAM/GPU (and maybe a PSU? I'm still waiting to hear). After that it would basically just be storage and a monitor. I'll her my monitor, good excuse to upgrade.

Rykin wrote:

I am always wary of buying used tech.

I bought an RX 580 8gb off craigslist for $120 last November for $120, it was before the mass crypto mining sell off of the last few months so it was a pretty good deal in my book. Even though the dude showed up with the card not even in a static bag it worked fine, I'm still using it now.

At the same time though, I bought a modular PSU off r/hardwareswap and the dude sent me the cables for a different PSU and it ended up wrecking my motherboard. Luckily it was a really old system anyways so it was a good excuse to upgrade.

benign1 wrote:

Speaking of sketchy used tech...

I've got a newly freed up i7-4790k CPU/motherboard, 32GB of RAM, GTX 970, and an unused 250GB Samsung SSD, any/all of which I'd be happy to contribute.

Whoa! That right there is a solid base!

That's exactly what I'm currently running as my normal gaming desktop, and it's just fine. The I/O's a bit slow, because of the Spectre and Meltdown OS patches, but games run great. Pretty much anything will run very nicely at 1080p, and many games run pretty well even at 1600p. (60Hz monitor, though, this thing wouldn't support 120+fps very well.)

Well, it sounds like maybe Amoebic should make sure we're all friends on Steam...

Thanks everyone for your support so far! There's possibly even talk of an SSD? I've never had one before?? This is so exciting?!?

ApakSL and I have been chatting about planning a date where I can go down to the states for a few days to go through build 101 as he/we assemble this summer.

I'm looking forward to sharing things with you all and asking questions. I'm giddy. Like first day excited for class giddy!

Amoebic wrote:

Thanks everyone for your support so far! There's possibly even talk of an SSD? I've never had one before?? This is so exciting?!?

ApakSL and I have been chatting about planning a date where I can go down to the states for a few days to go through build 101 as he/we assemble this summer.

I'm looking forward to sharing things with you all and asking questions. I'm giddy. Like first day excited for class giddy!

Looks like ApakSL has you covered, but if you need a monitor and pass through the Seattle area, I've got this one I need someone to take from me.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Looks like ApakSL has you covered, but if you need a monitor and pass through the Seattle area, I've got this one I need someone to take from me.

Which part of the Seattle area? I'm in Lynnwood.

apaksl wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

Looks like ApakSL has you covered, but if you need a monitor and pass through the Seattle area, I've got this one I need someone to take from me.

Which part of the Seattle area? I'm in Lynnwood.

Nice! I'm in Kent.

Put your OS on your SSD and experience boot times in the seconds. You'll never go back to spinning rust (for OS, anyway).

SSDs are so cheap now that even a brand new 120GB one is $20, possibly even less with a good deal.

IMO there is now zero reason to put together a build that does not have an SSD for the boot/OS drive.

If you can swing it, a 250ish gig SSD is a lot more usable, because that lets you keep a few AAA games resident at any given time. Some games load much faster from SSD than from hard drive, and most will show at least some improvement.

On my 160G, I was constantly managing space, and was really surprised by the major usability difference in moving up to just 240G. You wouldn't think it would matter that much, but it reduced the amount of attention I had to pay to storage by about 90%.

I saw some chatter over on Ars Technica that they really do believe that the 3950 will run standard clock speeds for 16 cores and keep it under 105 watts. They say that, in general, you can trust AMD's TDP claims, but you can't with Intel. Intel was getting beat up for using too much power, so they changed their definition of TDP to be pretty useless, a narrow definition that's stock clocks under "standard load", which is undefined. Basically, you can't really tell with an Intel chip how much peak power it will pull. In some cases, it's 250% more than the TDP rating.

With AMD, they say, you can trust the TDP. If it says 105 watts on the tin, it will consume 105 watts at stock clocks and full load.

This, by the way, is part of the reason for the really wild variance in TDPs between Intel and AMD in the Bulldozer era; Bulldozer really wasn't very efficient, but AMD also told the truth about how much power their chips used under load. The situation looked much worse than it actually was.

All this time, I had no idea.

If only the market held Intel to account for their fictional TDP ratings. It's the server market especially where this should matter, but that market just mindlessly orders Intel no matter what.

If ever data centers seriously started buying into AMD...

We bought into AMD for our clustered compute solutions about a decade ago. I still can't get the boss to order AMD for regular servers, but at least some of our load is non-intel, and it's the ones i play with so i feel better about myself.

benign1 wrote:

Speaking of sketchy used tech...

I've got a newly freed up i7-4790k CPU/motherboard, 32GB of RAM, GTX 970, and an unused 250GB Samsung SSD, any/all of which I'd be happy to contribute.

Wah, wah, wah. That's a very niiice. Something like this is perfect for overwatch. I have a slightly less powerful system (3570k) and it runs overwatch very well. It's super awesome of you to offer any of the parts here.

Amoebic, let everyone know what else you need. With or without this nice base there should be enough parts for a build. Do you have/need a case? PSU? Monitor?

Thanks to everyone for all the awesome advice you gave me back on page 77.

So far I've been chipping away at both builds.

The smaller Optiplex 780 DT had this weird GPU extension bracket in it so it could take a bigger card "sideways and facing down" over the motherboard. I took that out, and then upcycled an old IKEA metal trolley lid to make a custom backplate with all the card's IO ports cutout. That was good fun, I got to play with my Dremel, the case has MUCH better unrestricted airflow, and the kids are happy as!

I had to troubleshoot a non-startup issue. Seems that one of the RAM sticks was "busted", unclipped it, and everything has been great so far.

I'm slowly chipping away at my main unit, the Optiplex 990.

Rykin, thanks for the tip on the "picky RAM". I found a guy locally who overclocks RAM, and reclaims components from older units, etc. His place is amazing, it's like a mad scientist's lab. Cooling pipes, fans, liquid filled stuff. He even had a heat sync setup that could utilise dry ice... But he was also able to match the RAM I had already installed in the machine identically, and for a very modest price, so I now have 16GB in there, instead of 8GB, for only AU$40.

I'm picking up a eVGA GD Series 650W 80PLUS power supply tomorrow from a local computer store. I figured "new was better" for the PSU, and it's a good price as their EOFY Sale kicks off with a special day of discounts in the morning. It's also a direct match in size for the DELL PSU (thanks omni) and I don't have to worry about limiting myself to power off the MB.

The next stage is the GPU.

I'm still holding out for a decent price on that GTX970 that Robear and *Legion* suggested. Patience is key it seems. *Legion* I went back and re-read what you had posted, and I have seen a card locally that a guy is selling for a fairly decent price. It's not a 480, but the 470 you were talking about.

HIS AMD Rx470 4GB OC GPU w/ Box *Mint Condition* is the way he's got it listed on eBay, and I can pick it up for $AU180. There are a couple of GTX 970 in that same ballpark, but they look a bit "worse for wear", and to be honest, they look quite a bit longer, and I have limited space in that case because of where the drive bays are located in that bottom section, I think I need to get my tape measure out again!

There was another card listed MSI RX 480 8GB Gaming X - Samsung memory! knocking around for another $20 or so. Would that be a better purchase for the price, or will I not really notice the difference between the 470 and 480? I can see that there is twice as much RAM involved here, but would I be better served funnelling those funds into an SSD?

The second hand 580s are a weird bunch, with some being in the same ballpark as the 470/80s, and others being AU$100 clear of those same prices. If it's worth camping out for one of those instead, let me know. I'm in no hurry to have this built, and I'd like to do it as "right as I can".

I'm going to drop this link here, so you guys can get a feel for AU pricing on these cards "new", just so you can comment on if I'm getting a good deal or not. I know it's a hard call, not knowing the local market, etc, but I'll leave it here any way.

Thanks again!

m0nk3yboy wrote:

HIS AMD Rx470 4GB OC GPU w/ Box *Mint Condition* is the way he's got it listed on eBay, and I can pick it up for $AU180. There are a couple of GTX 970 in that same ballpark, but they look a bit "worse for wear", and to be honest, they look quite a bit longer, and I have limited space in that case because of where the drive bays are located in that bottom section, I think I need to get my tape measure out again!

There was another card listed MSI RX 480 8GB Gaming X - Samsung memory! knocking around for another $20 or so. Would that be a better purchase for the price, or will I not really notice the difference between the 470 and 480? I can see that there is twice as much RAM involved here, but would I be better served funnelling those funds into an SSD?

Let's see, from AUD to USD is about 1.44 to 1, so a $20 AUD difference is about $14 US bucks.

No question, I would spend $14 US more for an 8GB 480 versus a 4GB 470. Note that the 4GB versions of the 480s and 470s are clocked slightly lower, so that comparison is between a lower-end 470 versus a higher-end 480. You're looking at a 10% or so price increase for probably around 15% performance gain, maybe slightly more given that the 470 is the lower-clocked 4GB model.

Don't get me wrong, the 4GB 470 is still fine and if the price gap was even larger, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. But if the gap is that narrow, I'm inclined to lean towards the 480. I think between the better core performance as well as the increased VRAM, you'll get a bit longer usable life out of it.

As for the SSD, I loathe to run anything without one. If the difference between the 470 and 480 is the difference between getting an SSD and not getting one, well... it's tough, but if it were me, I would probably take the 480 and figure out how to scrape up some money to do an SSD install later. SSD is a much smaller expense that you can easily add in later, whereas the larger expense of a GPU isn't something you can improve by spending another ~$30 AUD or so a few months from now.

Having the extra VRAM may be nice, because console ports that were originally tuned for the ~6ish gigs of texture memory there should end up being at least as good on your PC, and very possibly better. (more GPU horsepower as well.) Having to run in 4 gigs may require reductions in graphic quality.

Cool, got it.

RX470 < RX480
And
4GB < 8GB

How do the 570 and 580 cards fare? Similar sort of thing, with the 4GB and 8GB differentials? There doesn't seem to be much of a difference in price in the AU eBay Marketplace when I look at the 580s compared to the 480s.

For example, with 2 days to go, a GIGABYTE AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5 Graphics Card (GVRX580GAMING8GD) is sitting at AU$180 + shipping.

I'm going out on a limb here and guessing the 5XX is better than a 4XX, but by how much, and am I starting to over capitalise with only having that i7 2600?

Thanks again, I really do appreciate all the information/experience/knowledge you all share here!

m0nk3yboy wrote:

How do the 570 and 580 cards fare?

I'm going out on a limb here and guessing the 5XX is better than a 4XX, but by how much

The 570 and 580 are just re-releases of the 470 and 480, with slightly higher default clock speeds. Otherwise, they are the exact same GPUs.

The extra clock boost gives the 580 only about a 5% advantage over the 480, while the 570 jumps forward a little more with closer to a 10% advantage over the 470. A 480 still beats a 570, though the 570 closes the gap and is much closer to a 480 than it is to a 470.

*Legion* wrote:
m0nk3yboy wrote:

How do the 570 and 580 cards fare?

I'm going out on a limb here and guessing the 5XX is better than a 4XX, but by how much

The 570 and 580 are just re-releases of the 470 and 480, with slightly higher default clock speeds. Otherwise, they are the exact same GPUs.

The extra clock boost gives the 580 only about a 5% advantage over the 480, while the 570 jumps forward a little more with closer to a 10% advantage over the 470. A 480 still beats a 570, though the 570 closes the gap and is much closer to a 480 than it is to a 470.

Dear Lord... Thanks for the clarification! 480 or 580 it is then!