Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

ARM architecture has been unimpressive outside of its power consumption. The licensing and proprietary restrictions attached to ARM-based SOCs introduce a lot of headaches. If they no longer have the low power thing going for them, then NVidia is going to have a hard time with that piece of the business.

I've decided to tell myself that it's not that I can't find a 3080 GPU for sale, it's just that I'm waiting for the 3080 Ti.

Gremlin wrote:

I've decided to tell myself that it's not that I can't find a 3080 GPU for sale, it's just that I'm waiting for the 3080 Ti.

It's clearly a long-grift to get us all to pick up the ludicrously priced 3090s instead.

Feeank wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

I’m using the LG 48” OLED for my main PC monitor. It works great. Basically about as close to a perfect screen as you can buy right now.

How far away from the screen are you thou? I used to have a 40'' Samsung tv/monitor as my main but using it for anything other than gaming was taking a toll on my neck/arm. I had the screen mounted on the wall above a desk with another screen next to it over a different desk and I sat about a meter/ 3 feet away from the main screen so I was forced to lean back and keep my neck further away which lead to heavy muscle fatigue/stiffness and nerve issues.

I’m about 3 feet away from the screen..I love it as it means I can run it at native windows 10 scaling.

Not that it matters right now, but NVIDIA has announced the RTX 3060 12GB, which confirms what we saw leaked from ASUS a couple weeks ago. That leak also included a 6GB version of the 3060, along with the 3080 ti. The 3060's MSRP is $329, for whatever that will end up being worth.

I'm guessing this means a 6GB 3060 would probably be the $299 card.

Why the f*ck are they announcing new cards when they can't make the old ones?

Malor wrote:

Why the f*ck are they announcing new cards when they can't make the old ones?

Last week AMD announced the upcoming "release" of the 6700, which is even more laughable. AMD's still only getting a fraction of the number of GPUs out that NVIDIA is. If eBay listing counts are anything to go from, AMD looks like they're churning out about 1/4th of NVIDIA's (already paltry and completely insufficient) output.

Why would they give the 3060 more VRAM than the 3060 ti? What is the thought process here?

They think they can make more money that way.

Maybe they think that people who are wowed by the "ti" branding are less likely to pay attention to specs.

Middcore wrote:

Why would they give the 3060 more VRAM than the 3060 ti? What is the thought process here?

AMD went excessive on VRAM (the 6700 and 6700 XT will have 12GB), so now NVIDIA has to follow suit to not give AMD something that has any appearance of superior specs to NVIDIA's competing offering.

What anyone will do with 12GB of VRAM on a 3060, I have no idea. It has a narrower 192-bit memory bus, so it doesn't match the memory bandwidth of the 3060 ti.

VRAM sizes are approaching the average total system RAM sizes of the tier of PCs they target, and it's silly IMO. Really I suspect it's just because DRAM is cheap right now, so why not shove a bunch extra in?

I was disappointed by how little RAM the 3070 and 3080 have. My ancient 970 is still hanging in there (not by choice, really, I'd replace it if I could), and the biggest problem with getting better visuals is lack of VRAM. It has 3.5G usable, and it's four generations old, so expecting more than 8 gigs in a current card, particularly as expensive as they are, doesn't seem unreasonable.

The 970 still has substantial firepower at 1080p. If it had more VRAM, I suspect games like Red Dead Redemption could look a fair bit better without hurting framerates much.

I like that aspect of the new AMD cards. 12 gigs seems about right, compared to system RAM and older cards.

Of course, you can't buy any of these goddamn things, so it's dueling numbers on spec sheets, really.

Malor wrote:

I was disappointed by how little RAM the 3070 and 3080 have.

In theory the 3080 having GDDR6X is supposed to compensate for the "low" amount of RAM, quality over quantity. In theory.

Middcore wrote:
Malor wrote:

I was disappointed by how little RAM the 3070 and 3080 have.

In theory the 3080 having GDDR6X is supposed to compensate for the "low" amount of RAM, quality over quantity. In theory.

If you've got 10 gigs of textures, the RAM being fast doesn't seem all that useful. Sure, okay, maybe you can swap textures in and out faster because of PCIe 4 and fast memory, but you still can't have all 10 gigs loaded at once.

That kind of live texture management shifts a high burden onto the software devs that would be easily fixed in hardware.

So I put my new RTX 3070 into my living room PC build.

Previously the build was a Ryzen 1500X, 8GB of cheap-ass 2133 RAM, and an RX 480.

Now it's a Ryzen 3600X, 16GB of 3600 RAM, and the RTX 3070.

I'm still using the same microATX B350 board (MSI B350m Gaming Pro) which required a beta BIOS that basically stripped all the graphical stuff out of the original BIOS and replaced it with a simple text-based interface in order to open up enough room to support Ryzen 3000 CPUs.

Amazingly, the board worked perfectly on first try (post-flash) with both the 3600X and the DDR4 3600. I had expected it likely that I would need to run the RAM at 3200 on this board, but it had zero issue with the 3600 XMP profile. (I got smart and avoided RAM using Hynix chips. This kit is Micron E-die which I've also been happy with in my main build).

Also still using the SilverStone GD09 case:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/JuxhEl8.jpg)

I put in a Corsair 120mm AIO, which helps given the relatively tight quarters of the case, except for the fact that the hose length is *really* stretched to the limit. (It would work much better if I could mount the radiator on the motherboard side of the case, like another person has done with a GD09 build, but my little mATX motherboard puts the auxiliary CPU power plugs and the RAM slots too close to the edge, leaving enough room for a fan but not a fan with a rad on top of it.)

This build is hooked up to a huge 85" Samsung TV (Q70, 2019 model) that supports 4K@60 or 1440p@120, plus FreeSync. Obviously the RX 480 wasn't particularly well suited for driving demanding games on that kind of display. I had looked to pick up a 5600 XT or 5700 on sale during BF/CM sales, but none materialized. Then when the TV got a firmware update that seemed to enable G-Sync Compatible over HDMI with 30-class GPUs, that's when I decided to go big and take the plunge and get the RTX 3070 for this. Sure enough, it did work, with a little fiddling.

I of course use 1440p@120 almost exclusively because 60hz is for the birds, though I'm gonna have to at least look at what the 3070 can do with games like Hitman in 4K.

For reference in case anyone else tries using a 30-series card with a 2019 Samsung TV:

* for the G-Sync Compatible adaptive sync, I had to set FreeSync on the TV to "Ultimate" instead of "Basic". (Basic would start working but result in black screens)

* for 1440p@120, I had to create a custom resolution: 2560 horizontal, 1440 vertical, 120 hz refresh rate, and I had to change the timing from "Automatic" to "GWT" (at least that's what I think it was, it was the first option after Automatic). I'm sure I could fiddle with a Manual timing, but this was sufficient to get running.

* My audio setup is PC -> TV (via HDMI) -> audio receiver (via optical). This did not work immediately when I swapped in the 3070. The problem seems that I was using the HDMI port on the card that's designated HDMI 2. As an HDMI audio device, it showed up correctly in Windows and sound tools showed it producing audio, but no sound came from the speakers. Switching to using the HDMI port on the card that's designated as HDMI 1 fixed the issue. Looked exactly the same within Windows, but audio actually came out of the speakers.

Gremlin wrote:

I've decided to tell myself that it's not that I can't find a 3080 GPU for sale, it's just that I'm waiting for the 3080 Ti.

Well today NVIDIA announced the 3080 ti is on "indefinite hold" so that wait might be a while.

I just saw that Best Buy has the Seasonic 850 PSU in stock (for the first time in months). Here is the link if folks are interested.

*Legion* wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

I've decided to tell myself that it's not that I can't find a 3080 GPU for sale, it's just that I'm waiting for the 3080 Ti.

Well today NVIDIA announced the 3080 ti is on "indefinite hold" so that wait might be a while. :)

Welp.

So I had a 3070 in my cart from Newegg tonight, but bailed on it for two reasons:

1) It was MSI. Won't buy from them.
2) They wanted $800 for it. For a 3070. Direct from Newegg.

Malor wrote:

So I had a 3070 in my cart from Newegg tonight, but bailed on it for two reasons:

1) It was MSI. Won't buy from them.
2) They wanted $800 for it. For a 3070. Direct from Newegg.

I wonder if that's the tariffs going into effect?

Edgar_Newt wrote:

I just saw that Best Buy has the Seasonic 850 PSU in stock (for the first time in months). Here is the link if folks are interested.

Note that PX units produced as late as early 2018 are known for having issues with GPU's that can draw high transient load. That's all the higher end RTX 30X0 series cards and the 6800XT and 6900XT.

If you get one before you open it try to make sure it was actually produced after 2018. Given how stock has been I would hope anything you find at this point would be new production, but you never know.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
Malor wrote:

So I had a 3070 in my cart from Newegg tonight, but bailed on it for two reasons:

1) It was MSI. Won't buy from them.
2) They wanted $800 for it. For a 3070. Direct from Newegg.

I wonder if that's the tariffs going into effect?

They might try to say it's that, but uh... MSRP on a 3070 is $500. Even if it's a drastically fancier card.. anything over $600 is just stupid, tariffs or not.

Thin_J wrote:
Edgar_Newt wrote:

I just saw that Best Buy has the Seasonic 850 PSU in stock (for the first time in months). Here is the link if folks are interested.

Note that PX units produced as late as early 2018 are known for having issues with GPU's that can draw high transient load. That's all the higher end RTX 30X0 series cards and the 6800XT and 6900XT.

If you get one before you open it try to make sure it was actually produced after 2018. Given how stock has been I would hope anything you find at this point would be new production, but you never know.

Chairman_Mao wrote:
Malor wrote:

So I had a 3070 in my cart from Newegg tonight, but bailed on it for two reasons:

1) It was MSI. Won't buy from them.
2) They wanted $800 for it. For a 3070. Direct from Newegg.

I wonder if that's the tariffs going into effect?

They might try to say it's that, but uh... MSRP on a 3070 is $500. Even if it's a drastically fancier card.. anything over $600 is just stupid, tariffs or not.

The MSRP on the 3070 WAS $500. When it released last fall, pre-tarriffs. Nicer AIB's were already going for over $600 pre-tariffs. Basically only the Founder's Edition was actually $500.

Malor wrote:

So I had a 3070 in my cart from Newegg tonight, but bailed on it for two reasons:

1) It was MSI. Won't buy from them.
2) They wanted $800 for it. For a 3070. Direct from Newegg.

Yeah, no, that's bullsh*t.

I paid $569 for the 3070 I managed to order last week from Best Buy, which was exactly MSRP for that particular model.

Razer has 30 series card laptops you can preorder right now.

Another question I had though, any msrb on the 5000 ryzen laptop chips? Mostly interested because it sounds like a decent way to play games without having to get an actual gaming laptop. I assume it’s much cheaper than having a dedicated gpu.
On that note, how does intel compare with their latest integrated graphics? Either looks like it would be fine for my purposes

FiveIron wrote:

Razer has 30 series card laptops you can preorder right now.

I'm sure it will fulfill all the needs of the people that need 12 seconds of high graphics performance before it starts throttling.

I’m sure, maybe just put the whole thing on a cooling block?

It sounds like the AMD 5000-series laptop chips are going to be a total fustercluck. They're just randomly mixing Zen 2 and Zen 3 parts. You have to manually figure out which is which.

I truly loathe marketers sometimes, and I'm extremely disappointed with Lisa Su for allowing this bullsh*t.

As I recall, the 5500u and 5700u are the zen 2 equivalents of the 5600u and 5800u which are zen 3 with the same core/thread counts.

It also looks like the HX processor is the monster that is using the same apu technology as the Xbox and PS5. The HS is one step below that. And the U processors are the ones with incredible battery life.

On a side note, I just got a 28" zero edge 4K monitor for $229 and I love it! I believe it is TN which I know isn't the greatest color space and viewing angle. But it replaced a 22" 1080p monitor that is over 10 years old. It is 1ms response time which smashes the 8ms of the old monitor and I am sure while it doesn't have the color space of an OLED, it is markedly better than 10 year old technology. My aging RX 580 is running windows @4K well and I can run games like Diablo 3 in windowed mode capably and covering a large portion of my desktop. (probably a bit higher than 1440p) Oh and all the screen space for tabs and windows and apps is amazing.

Here's how desperate the GPU market is right now:

In July 2016, I bought my RX 480 8GB for $240.

Today after listing it for only 2.5 hours, I sold that same RX 480 on eBay for $215 (plus shipping), and I think I lowballed myself a little and could have listed it for $230.

I've got another RX 480 to sell (a cheaper 4GB, single fan version though), and I was going to wait until I get my 3080 (and replace that 480 with the 1080 my main system has now), but now I think I should just sell the 480 while the getting is good, and live without a GPU in that secondary system until I can grab the 3080.

Wow, I should probably list my 970 if I can ever get a 3070 to replace it. It's still a solid 1080p card for most games, although Red Dead Redemption doesn't do very well with it.

Recently sold used GTX 970's on eBay have mostly gone in the $120-150 range. You could get them for under a hundred bucks a year ago.