Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

Yeah I won’t get into the whole AIO vs. Air discussion but at the same time I’ve used AIO for years now with no problems. It’s clearly specific to this brand and company and it’s just a garbage product (like many different products end up being)

I agree with you on low profile ram. All my other systems have it but I did buy 128GB of fancy Corsair RGB ram for my Threadripper system that I don’t want to get rid of it.

https://www.tftcentral.co.uk/blog/lg...

Some surprise news from Nvidia and LG.. looks like LG will enable G-Sync compatibility for the 2019 E and C series OLED HDTV's. Pretty awesome and now I want to upgrade my old 2016 LG that I use as my PC monitor.

TheGameguru wrote:

https://www.tftcentral.co.uk/blog/lg...

Some surprise news from Nvidia and LG.. looks like LG will enable G-Sync compatibility for the 2019 E and C series OLED HDTV's. Pretty awesome and now I want to upgrade my old 2016 LG that I use as my PC monitor.

The mainstreaming of variable refresh rate technology seems to have accelerated of late. ~3 years ago it cost me $700 for my XB271HU and now you can buy something roughly equivalent for $280. No word yet on whether it'll be G-Sync compatible, but I might pick one up either way. That's a very good price for 27" 1440p VA with or without VRR.

TheGameguru wrote:

https://www.tftcentral.co.uk/blog/lg...

Some surprise news from Nvidia and LG.. looks like LG will enable G-Sync compatibility for the 2019 E and C series OLED HDTV's. Pretty awesome and now I want to upgrade my old 2016 LG that I use as my PC monitor.

I bet LG was already working on FreeSync for the next gen consoles and this was a bonus. They haven't announced according to the article, but probably had some kind of promotional deal to announce Nvidia first.

Cool, though.

Could someone break down for me the tradeoffs in buying a new, current-gen entry-level card (e.g. GTX 1660 Ti) versus an older, used mid-tier card (e.g. GTX 1070), assuming that the prices are roughly equivalent?

Does anyone have any experience with UPS? (Who am I kidding? Of course, someone does! :))

My old UPS battery died some time ago and I should replace it. The problem is I have no idea replace with what.

It seems there are 2 main brands - Cyberpower and APC. The former seems to be cheaper (watt for watt), is it because they are worse? My old one that died was Cyberpower btw.

All I need is 5-10 minutes to shut down my PC safely if I lose electricity (or for the PC to do it automatically if I am not around). How big the battery do I need? I have a fairly standard and kinda old gaming PC - i7 CPU from about 5 years ago, a couple of SSDs, 1 HDD and a 1070Ti video card.

I was thinking about getting APC BE850M2 (https://www.amazon.ca/SCHNEIDER-ELEC...) , is it going to work for me?

Thanks lot, guys.

Any decent UPS should allow you to replace just the batteries, not the whole unit. Is yours just meant to be thrown out??

Probably better off making a thread for UPS or asking in the general tech question, but in general Cyberpower is fine and APC is good too but more expensive. Just get one with 'pure sinewave' to ensure compatibility.

Math wrote:

Could someone break down for me the tradeoffs in buying a new, current-gen entry-level card (e.g. GTX 1660 Ti) versus an older, used mid-tier card (e.g. GTX 1070), assuming that the prices are roughly equivalent?

Check the benchmarks and see which is better? The other consideration would be power draw, usually newer cards will draw less, if that matters in your system or to your electric bill.

Outside of that you have the usual risk with buying used (how was the card used, does it have a problem, it has no warranty, etc). If they are the same price and about the same benchmarks, then definitely buy new. You might even get a free game code or two out of it!

Most of Cyberpower's UPS's supply what they call a "simulated sine wave". Depending on what you have plugged into it, and how far off the "simulation" is, this can be a bad thing. They do have a line with "PFC" in the model name that produces a pure sine wave. I haven't had any issues with those.

It's hard to know how much time you'll have without knowing your power draw. If you were idle at the desktop, I think you would get 5-10 minutes easily, but being in a game that's burning CPU and GPU would shorten your time significantly.

I have had this one for a little over 8 months, and it's been fantastic. https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00...

It may be more then you want, (although they go on sale often) but this one gives me about 25 minutes of power and that includes power to my monitors, my router, network switch and modem. If I am home when the power goes out and I shut down my computer right away I can get like two hours of backup for just the wifi stuff.

And at some point when the battery dies I can pull the battery out and replace just that. Fingers crossed, that doesn't happen for a long time.

Gaald wrote:

I have had this one for a little over 8 months, and it's been fantastic. https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B00...

It may be more then you want, (although they go on sale often) but this one gives me about 25 minutes of power and that includes power to my monitors, my router, network switch and modem. If I am home when the power goes out and I shut down my computer right away I can get like two hours of backup for just the wifi stuff.

And at some point when the battery dies I can pull the battery out and replace just that. Fingers crossed, that doesn't happen for a long time.

I've had the 1000VA version since July 2016 and it's worked very well for me. Recently, I've started getting the less than 5 minutes of backup power warning if I'm gaming so it's probably time to replace the battery.

I picked mine up for $90 after seeing it in the ArsTechnica Dealmaster post. From what I recall of my investigations, they're just as reliable as APC, but not as beloved by corporate America.

LeapingGnome wrote:
Math wrote:

Could someone break down for me the tradeoffs in buying a new, current-gen entry-level card (e.g. GTX 1660 Ti) versus an older, used mid-tier card (e.g. GTX 1070), assuming that the prices are roughly equivalent?

Check the benchmarks and see which is better? The other consideration would be power draw, usually newer cards will draw less, if that matters in your system or to your electric bill.

Outside of that you have the usual risk with buying used (how was the card used, does it have a problem, it has no warranty, etc). If they are the same price and about the same benchmarks, then definitely buy new. You might even get a free game code or two out of it!

I've seen benchmarks that show the 1070 ti as faster and others where the 1660 ti is faster. I think generally the 1070 is the faster card though it depends on the game and resolution. I ended up with a 1070 Ti that I got on eBay for $240 (about a month ago). While not the Ti this video seems to paint the 1070 as the better buy (even over the 1660 Ti).

Math wrote:

Could someone break down for me the tradeoffs in buying a new, current-gen entry-level card (e.g. GTX 1660 Ti) versus an older, used mid-tier card (e.g. GTX 1070), assuming that the prices are roughly equivalent?

I've become a big proponent of used PC hardware, just because the bang for buck is off the charts. You don't really have to barter hard with people either, just patience generally, although a busy local market helps a lot with that. If you're in the States though there's always potential good deals on eBay and r/hardwareswap

EvilHomer3k getting a 1070 ti for $240 is an example of really awesome bang for buck. It's not uncommon to find GTX 1080's for about $300 either.

RMA/warranty is a bit more tricky with used stuff but video cards generally have a pretty long life, so it's not usually a concern if you buy it and it works.

So yeah, used hardware all the way with some patience. It's definitely not as easy as going to Amazon and clicking buy however.

Malor wrote:

Any decent UPS should allow you to replace just the batteries, not the whole unit. Is yours just meant to be thrown out??

In the last few months, I've replaced the batteries in two of my Cyberpowers that were years and years old. It's really pretty easy, and much cheaper than buying a new one. You can generally search for the model UPC you have plus the word "batteries", and it will give you options. Most bigger UPS's have battery pairs.

Replacing is like:
1) Unscrew the front and pop off the front to expose the battery
2) Pull out the battery bundle (Battery on top of a divider/wiring on top of another battery, surrounded by tape that functions as a pull tab
3) Remove the plastic
4) Look at how the wires are connected (positives, negatives, then the connections between the two batteries)
5) Unplug, then replace the batteries wired in the same pattern as before (You can even swap one battery at a time to make sure you don't forget how the wiring goes
6) Put the tape back around the batteries
7) Slide the batteries back in
8) Replace the front cover

Both times the batteries were less than $40 from Amazon. I didn't worry about buying the Cyberpower, because if you take the labels off the stock ones, they're rebrands anyway.

Make sure you buy the longest amp/hour batteries you can. That will give you the most back up run time.

Shouldn't step 4 be "Take a phone picture that shows the wire connections"?

And sometimes step 2 is a wrestling match. I'm not sure if my batteries had expanded a little but the pull tabs on mine broke off both times.

Hmm, looks like the forum ate my response.

Thank you, guys! I will look into changing the batteries.

Robear wrote:

Shouldn't step 4 be "Take a phone picture that shows the wire connections"?

No, because the cables are too short and not color coded enough. When they are still plugged up, you can't see much for the divider IME.

With my APC Smart-UPSes, the process has been basically: order new batteries. New batteries show up as a pair, naked. Transfer the wiring harness from the old batteries to the new ones; it's completely straightforward. You basically turn the batteries so they look like this:

+ - - +

You wire a metal bridge across one pair of +/- terminals, which more or less joins the batteries together physically. (just a pair of screws and washers, dead simple.) Then you wire in the connector harness using another set of screws and washers, connecting black and red to negative and positive, respectively. Then you slide the battery pack back into the unit, plug in the connector, and off you go.

Takes, hmm, about ten easy minutes, once every four or five years. The hardest part is wrestling the UPS around, because those batteries are fiendishly heavy.

https://www.techradar.com/news/a-red...

Chart showing AMD’s recent rise to dominance. I think AMD giving away the APU’s that drive the current console market was a smart move in the long run.

Going to that site reminds me how much I hate being asked about notifications, disabling adblock, and auto playing video.

EvilHomer3k wrote:

Going to that site reminds me how much I hate being asked about notifications, disabling adblock, and auto playing video.

I use uMatrix and uBlock Origin, and I have scripting turned off by default everywhere. This means I have to grant permissions and reload several times on new pages, frequently, but in this case I just got the article with no fuss.

I didn't get the graphs, I'd have to turn scripting on for that, but I didn't need the graphs to get the idea that AMD was doing well.

Thanks GG and thread for pushing me into this now mostly complete 2019 build. By far the worst luck I've ever had. I'm on the third power supply, third motherboard, second processor, and fourth hard drive.

If it weren't for the relative closeness of Microcenter I think I'd have gone full luddite. Or was that the issue? Is Microcenter the Harbor Freight of computer watchits?

The case is sweet though. Case The ease of access really helped during the many many swap-outs. Don't think I'll ever go tower again.

If I had understood the voltage issue with the new AMD processors, where the fan just goes bonkers all the time even when the temp is low, I think I'd have stuck to Intel. Latest ABBA bios was supposed to address the issue but I didn't see any improvement.

Interesting about the case -- where are you keeping that then?

I'm intrigued by the idea of a more usable, airflow friendly form factor, but the space where I keep my tower is sort of annoyingly tower shaped at the moment.

I never had issues with my PSU. Just the motherboard. Not sure what your CPU is, though. I just had a 3600. I swapped my B450 (for all I know MSIs b450s are still having problems) for an X570, installed windows, had issues, reinstalled windows with a much newer version of windows, and have had no trouble since. Same PSU, HD, and processor the whole time.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

Thanks GG and thread for pushing me into this now mostly complete 2019 build. By far the worst luck I've ever had. I'm on the third power supply, third motherboard, second processor, and fourth hard drive.

If it weren't for the relative closeness of Microcenter I think I'd have gone full luddite. Or was that the issue? Is Microcenter the Harbor Freight of computer watchits?

The case is sweet though. Your text to link here... The ease of access really helped during the many many swap-outs. Don't think I'll ever go tower again.

If I had understood the voltage issue with the new AMD processors, where the fan just goes bonkers all the time even when the temp is low, I think I'd have stuck to Intel. Latest ABBA bios was supposed to address the issue but I didn't see any improvement.

The fan settings most motherboards come with are the main cause. My 2600X had the same stuff happening until I adjusted my curve to start ramping up the fans more gradually below ~55c, and set a delay of a few seconds in fan smoothing (in the BIOS).

EDIT: Went to find a link. What settings are best for you will depend on your hardware and environment, but getting them to 'good enough' is an easy tweak or two away based on experience.

Yeah, things not having the most awesome fan curves out of the box is not uncommon. My secondary PC is an Intel build that's a few years old, and the default fan settings on that board are atrocious. Noisy bastard just sitting at idle. Taking the fan curves off of "auto" and setting them to something sane solved the problem.

Thanks for the input. I'll have to dig deeper into the fan profiles. I glanced at them in the bios earlier but haven't experimented yet. Was hoping the bios update would do it.

I just set the thing next to my desk, form factor wasn't a big deal. Just the inset handles on the sides have proven their worth already, which I guess with a smoother build wouldn't have been such a benefit.

Only downside I think is that you have to unplug stuff from the motherboard to get good access to the power supply. Shouldn't be much of an issue unless you need to swap out the power supply on the regular. *cough*

How the hell have you had so much bad hardware? Are you building it on top of a Tesla coil?