Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

Oh geez. I shouldnt get another NVME just to fill the empty slot on my motherboard.

Remember, the longer you wait, the bigger the drive you can put there.

I think I nabbed a 3080 FE from this afternoon's Best Buy drops. I won't believe it until it actually shows up on my doorstep, but I got a confirmation email and everything.

Phishposer wrote:

I think I nabbed a 3080 FE from this afternoon's Best Buy drops. I won't believe it until it actually shows up on my doorstep, but I got a confirmation email and everything.

You're probably safe with Best Buy.

They're still selling the FEs at original MSRP, aren't they? That's the best deal going by far. I didn't want a FE back when the 30-series launched because the reference cooler, as usual, isn't as good as the AIB ones (though better than previous reference coolers), but at like a $400 difference from the partner boards, the calculus is a whole different story. Incrementally better cooling and boost clocks aren't worth $400.

*Legion* wrote:

They're still selling the FEs at original MSRP, aren't they?

Yeah, $699.99 before tax. I'm still a little in shock. I would have paid significantly more than that for a 3070 if I had won the lottery on one.
Just like my 5900X, this was via Brobo's Telegram alerts. At one point I think I had 20 tabs open across different containers and browsers before I actually got to the checkout page. And I've done that once or twice a week when Best Buy or Zotac had drops, for the past 6-8 weeks.

Congratulations! I'm super jealous. I had a couple friends trying to help me get a 3070 or 3080 but no luck. I really wanted either the FE or the EVGA 3080. Oh well, I'll keep trying.

The Alienware showed up, so I have a 3070 in hand, finally. Interestingly, this one uses a single 8-pin PCIe connector, rather than that weird 10-pin setup that I gather the retail ones have. To put the 970 back in the Alienware, I need a splitter; instead of one 8-pin adapter, it has two sixes, and the Alienware doesn't have that.

I rather like how easy the Alienware is to work on; loosen one screw on the Kensington lock, and you can pull it out (which the lock would prevent), slide a release lower down, and then the side just pops off. The whole power supply assembly then hinges up with another slide release and pull. None of this stuff is ATX, so you have to go to Dell for parts, but it's a pretty nice setup. Loosening one screw, lifting the power supply, removing a piece of plastic locking it down, and pressing the PCIe4 slot release was all it took to remove the 3070.

I'd love to see real ATX systems set up this way. It reminds me a little of an Apple computer, although I think they'd faint before using dark plastic this way.

The 3070 is absolutely stock, as far as I can tell, a basic NVidia version with all the clocks set that way. It has two fans and seems completely silent when running Valheim, which is the only thing I've really tested it with, yet. Oh, and Civ 6 has a tendency to lock up when the AI Is moving if you run it at 144 FPS.... setting the frame limiter to 60 fixed that.

If they sold proper DDR4-3600 RAM with these things, I think I'd be pretty okay with recommending one. I haven't actually powered it up yet, but I'll try to look in the BIOS once I do and see if 3600 is supported. If it is, adding $100 of aftermarket RAM would make it a pretty nice 5600X machine.... albeit at $1200 for the base model with a weak GPU. (Adding the 3070 cost $650 more.) With the default 550W supply, it would drive pretty much any midrange card. Put the 1000W option in there, and it would drive anything.

It's a little suboptimal (both proprietary and with too-slow RAM), but it doesn't suck. And the build quality is excellent. But, like most Alienware stuff, it's expensive.

edit: oh, and congrats on the 3080!

No luck here on Best Buy either. I was busy at work though so wasn’t quick out of the gate. I had even enlisted the help of my wife starting a few weeks ago. That might have been a mistake though because she was super anxious when some cards were finally being sold after waiting so long listening for alerts. Not sure it’s worth the stress at this point.

Didn't know about the drop and stupid 2 factor authentication wouldn't send me the code. I had 3 different ones in my cart...

Damnit.

No luck with Best Buy today. I did get a card into checkout but their anti bot measures got me (ironically as I am not using a bot). As I was trying to pay they wanted to email me a confirmation code ... and by the time I actually got the code, the bb site rejected it as it expired! Requested a new code but never received one and then the checkout expired.

I am trying to console myself in that the card was a straight 6800 and not a card that I would pick given the choice. But in truth I am still very salty about it.

The 3070 is a ... noticeable upgrade from the 970. In playing Horizon Zero Dawn with the 4790K/GTX 970 combo, I used to manage at about 45fps with 1080p Medium settings, and the fans would blow pretty hard. With the 5800X/3070, it does 1440p at Ultimate settings beautifully. It benches at around 105fps, and because GSync now works with this Freesync monitor, I don't see screen tears or hitches at all. It's wonderfully fluid, way way better than it was, and the draw distance is massive.

The closeups on faces still look a little funny, though, even on ultimate. That part didn't change much.

I can't hear anything from the card, but I have a couple fans blowing in the room today , so it wouldn't be very noticeable unless it was at hair-dryer level.

Well I almost got really, really stupid today and paid $1900 for an Asus TUF 6900xt. MSRP is $1500 on this particular card and a local guy was selling one for $2k.. He said he'd take $1900 and in today's climate that seemed fair enough so I was heading out to meet the guy. Fortunately I couldn't quite pull enough money from the ATM. It must have been low or something. That triggered my brain to realize I was out of my mind and I apologized to the guy and canceled.... Oof, that would have been idiotic. Even at MSRP, there is no world where I remotely need a top rung card (not even going into the Nvidia/AMD comparisons).

Yeah there is no way a 6900XT is worth $2K. It has single-digit percentage gaming performance increase over the RTX 3080 whose scalper price is half that. (And loses to the 3080 in RT)

6900XT wasn't a good buy at MSRP. At a scalped price that even increases its distance from the more appropriate cards, it's awful.

I don’t know if Best Buy’s system is keeping the bots at bay, but it certainly seems to keep me from getting a 5900.

Possibly you're a bot?

Click on all the stoplights in this picture.

They are totally going to make a bot that can identify stoplights better than humans can, if they don't already exist...

So I’m going to probably have to upgrade in the midst of this nonsense. My old Alienware laptop is chugging a lot recently and it’s been hard to do the things I need to on it. Mostly running D&D on Roll20 weekly. BUT! Luckily I was able to acquire a PS5 for games and we have 2 old gtx 970s lying around in an old system!

Thinking about going the 10400 route, as I don’t need anything super fancy for what I wanna do with it. Light photo editing via Gimp and running Roll20 snappier than an old laptop.

The 10400 and an MSI B460I board would be around $300. But I think I’d want to get a better cpu cooler? Heard that the intel stock cooler is trash. Going with the AMD 3600x and Gigabyte B550I would be around $450 (all prices on Amazon, it’s the best place for me to get parts in a rural Indiana area). Also, the 3600 isn’t in stock at the moment on Amazon.

Looking at around a price tag of $800 with 16gb RAM and a 1 tb NVME. Thinking this will be the cheapest option and best to tide me over until prices of everything and stock of GPUs start flourishing again (if that fantasy world ever exists again! Is crypto mining always gonna keep card prices sky high from now on?).

tldr- this would be my first time building my own system. Mostly using this computer for D&D over Roll20 and as a supplement to games that aren’t on PS5. But it seems doable to build my own, even more so now than the last time I was looking into it (5-6 years ago). Do y’all think the 10400 and the 460 board would be ok for awhile? I looked into the difference between that and the z490 and I just saw increased RAM speeds and compatibility with 11th Gen intel CPUs as the only benefits (and now that news about 11th gen is out, that seems like not really a benefit at all).

Le0hart85 wrote:

Going with the AMD 3600x and Gigabyte B550I would be around $450 (all prices on Amazon, it’s the best place for me to get parts in a rural Indiana area). Also, the 3600 isn’t in stock at the moment on Amazon.

Looking at around a price tag of $800 with 16gb RAM and a 1 tb NVME. Thinking this will be the cheapest option and best to tide me over until prices of everything and stock of GPUs start flourishing again (if that fantasy world ever exists again! Is crypto mining always gonna keep card prices sky high from now on?).

I was looking at all the same recently. 3600 out of stock is tough. For $200 it seems the best option. The 3600X is $50 more and maybe 5-10% better depending on which benchmarks. Even the 5600X that is the hot thing is only 10-25% better than the basic 3600, depending on the game, your video card, and resolution. But 50% more price at $300 retail, and definitely not 50% better performance.

I think I want a 3600 and one of the budget 450 or 550 motherboards. But finding the CPU seems to be difficult right now.

Stele wrote:

I was looking at all the same recently. 3600 out of stock is tough. For $200 it seems the best option. The 3600X is $50 more and maybe 5-10% better depending on which benchmarks. Even the 5600X that is the hot thing is only 10-25% better than the basic 3600, depending on the game, your video card, and resolution. But 50% more price at $300 retail, and definitely not 50% better performance.

I think I want a 3600 and one of the budget 450 or 550 motherboards. But finding the CPU seems to be difficult right now.

Yeah, I wasn’t sure if I should just wait it out and just get the 3600 or not. Maybe I should look again at 450 boards while waiting to see if the 3600s come back in stock. Thanks for the opinion!

The 3600 is a terrific budget option. It is pushing my rx580 to its extremes on 1080p. And I'll be honest, while the fan may get too loud, I can play things like Diablo 3 at 4K without making the game look like crap.
Most of the time I play at 1440p in a window. (I have a 28" monitor so it works better for performance and reasonable viewing size)

3600 is in stock right now at Amazon. For delivery in May.

But still. At least you'll actually get it, if you want it. And often they get these things earlier, just worst case scenario on date.

If you want something cheap and effective, the 10400 looks decent: it's $160 on Newegg, and while it's no speed demon, it should have plenty of grunt to run Roll 20. The 11400 is slightly better but not really worth the extra money.

In AMD's last generation, the X models were really just an excuse to raise prices. Their improvement is tiny and their cost hike significant. A regular 3600 is more cost-effective if you can find one. But if they're scarce, the 10400s are right there.

Weirdly, I'm liking Intel okay in the low end right now, and AMD much better in the high end. Boy, that's a reversal. And the fact that you can actually get Intel chips is a huge point in favor.

(edit: you probably do want a good cooler with a 10400, the Intel chips all really suck now, heat-wise. )

PC cooling mission a success!!

So my PC's CPU - an aging i7-6800K - has been struggling lately. Nearly every time I play something my AIO cooler winds up like a Dyson vacuum. So loud that unless I wear headphones I can't hear sound.

So I decided that enough is enough and, based upon some comments upthread about thermal paste eventually losing effectiveness, decided to replace the thermal paste between my CPU and the AIO.

I used ArctiClean's 2 step thermal compound remover

IMAGE(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61SXkEoA0VL._AC_SL1000_.jpg)

and then placed an Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pad instead of more thermal paste.

IMAGE(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91bCI29KsnL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)

I also vacuumed some dust and reversed one of the fans to pull air into the case rather than extract it.

The result: 1 hour of Prime95 pounding on the CPU has caused the fans to spin up once (for around 10 seconds) and CPU temperature has been steady at 65 degrees.

Success!!

Thermal pad... interesting...

Stele wrote:

Thermal pad... interesting...

Agreed! Especially considering the kit seemed to have some thermal paste with it?

I'm glad it's working out though!

*Legion* wrote:

Yeah there is no way a 6900XT is worth $2K. It has single-digit percentage gaming performance increase over the RTX 3080 whose scalper price is half that. (And loses to the 3080 in RT)

6900XT wasn't a good buy at MSRP. At a scalped price that even increases its distance from the more appropriate cards, it's awful.

If you can show me a 3080 for $1k right now I'd love to buy it. And you could make the same value argument about the 3090 at MSRP. They are both a terrible deal, but the scalper price for a 3090 is $3k plus, and the 3080 is around the same as the 6900xt. Clearly the smart choice is to buy none, but at equivalent pricing the 6900xt vs 3080 is a much more complicated situation.

You're right, I was mixing the hiked price by the manufacturer on one with the post-purchase scalped price of the other. Hard to keep all the various price shenanigans straight.

I looked up some reviews, and those really aren't bad. At low-ish heat output(95 to 125W), they're only a couple degrees worse than good quality thermal paste. At high output (270W), they're more like +5 to +7 degrees (ie, possibly enough to cause thermal throttling), but you're probably nowhere near there.

A good paste shouldn't wear out quickly; Arctic Silver 5, for instance, pretty much never dries out. But it's probably not better than your thermal pad, as it looks like AS5 is falling behind the curve a little, performing pretty similarly to what you bought.

That appears to be a good solution for normal computing, where if you're trying to do something beefy, you'd want paste. At least if you can believe a sample of Youtube videos, Thermal Grizzly's Kryonaut seems to test the best at the moment, with Noctua's NT-H2 slightly behind.

edit: note that bad-quality CPU coolers can crimp or dent the pad, meaning you shouldn't re-use it.

Moggy wrote:

PC cooling mission a success!!

So my PC's CPU - an aging i7-6800K - has been struggling lately. Nearly every time I play something my AIO cooler winds up like a Dyson vacuum. So loud that unless I wear headphones I can't hear sound.

So I decided that enough is enough and, based upon some comments upthread about thermal paste eventually losing effectiveness, decided to replace the thermal paste between my CPU and the AIO.

I used ArctiClean's 2 step thermal compound remover

IMAGE(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61SXkEoA0VL._AC_SL1000_.jpg)

and then placed an Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pad instead of more thermal paste.

IMAGE(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91bCI29KsnL._AC_SL1500_.jpg)

I also vacuumed some dust and reversed one of the fans to pull air into the case rather than extract it.

The result: 1 hour of Prime95 pounding on the CPU has caused the fans to spin up once (for around 10 seconds) and CPU temperature has been steady at 65 degrees.

Success!! :-)

That's great, I think the emboldened section shares the most responsability on your new improved temps, how many fans did you have extracting before? I was considering a thermal pad instead of regular paste for my new rig last year but found too much colliding info regarding it's effectiveness. Same could be said about any paste probably but I'd decided to keep up with the tried and true method.

I was considering a thermal pad instead of regular paste for my new rig last year but found too much colliding info regarding it's effectiveness. Same could be said about any paste probably but I'd decided to keep up with the tried and true method.

From what I could see on various Youtube tests, the pads were about equivalent to Arctic Silver 5, the old standby. Newer pastes seem to do better. Kryonaut tops the lists, but Noctua's NT-H2 is only a little worse, and they explicitly state that their paste lasts five years on a CPU. Kryonaut makes no such claim, instead saying that their paste doesn't dry out below 80C. Since many high performance builds can exceed 80C, I'm a little reserved about it. However, under heavy load, Kryonaut seems to be 5C to 7C better than a pad, with Noctua being at about 4 to 5, so the risk might be worth it for a really high-performance build. (or if you know you can keep temps safely below 80C.)

Arctic Silver 5 can last ten years easy, but it doesn't look like it's any better than a pad. If I wanted something really durable, I'd probably use a pad, because I would know that it wouldn't age just sitting there.

edit: also, pads are best with tight tolerances on the heatsink and a strong clamping force. Cheap heatsinks would probably do better with paste, even something otherwise comparable like AS5. And make sure you tighten those screws well.