Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

You can get in the queue at EVGA, not sure how long the wait is now, but I eventually got one there.

Intel up to their old tricks again.

https://www.hardwaretimes.com/intel-...

TheGameguru wrote:

Intel up to their old tricks again.

https://www.hardwaretimes.com/intel-...

Wow. I expected it to be higher for roughly equivalent level parts but did not expect 2.3X as much power usage. That's nuts.

Intel just can’t decide what sort of processors they want to specialize in. They keep changing their focus every five years or so, seems like.

I'm checking out pre-built PCs. The prices for the graphics cards still seem a bit crazy. And, truth be told, I'm also feeling a bit lazy.
What's a general good gaming build? Intel i7, RTX 3070, 16 GB?
Am I being to harsh against AMD? I do see AMD Ryzen in most of the builds in my area. Not sure if there's a shortage of Intel processors.

AMD is typical right now, yes. Intel has only recently put out products that are comparable to AMD.

garion333 wrote:

AMD is typical right now, yes. Intel has only recently put out products that are comparable to AMD.

AMD is generally still giving you more bang for the buck.

Rykin wrote:
garion333 wrote:

AMD is typical right now, yes. Intel has only recently put out products that are comparable to AMD.

AMD is generally still giving you more bang for the buck.

Especially when factoring in TDP/cooling.

slazev wrote:

Am I being to harsh against AMD? I do see AMD Ryzen in most of the builds in my area. Not sure if there's a shortage of Intel processors.

Intel has been the inferior option for a couple generations now. They're just barely beginning to play catch-up.

Price and availability in this COVID world can tilt things somewhat, but on level ground, you're wanting to choose the AMD option almost every time.

And seeing the power envelope games Intel is already playing to try and make their next-gen CPU beat AMD's current-gen CPU (scroll up a few posts), I doubt Intel is on the verge of flipping that script. Intel's new manufacturing process is, they claim, on par with the 7nm process of their competitors... but AMD is about to leave 7nm behind and move on to 5nm later this year, so Intel's caught up just in time for AMD to take the next step and leave them behind again.

Well, that just shows how long I've been away from all this.
Thanks for the info, everyone. I'll probably go with an AMD processor then.

Does it make sense to also go with an AMD graphics card? From a quick look around, Nvidia seems to edge out in terms of power, but AMD balances it out in terms of price.

Nvidia's DLSS feature is pretty damn amazing and AMD's response is less than stellar.

That said, the real answer is: GET WHATEVER YOU CAN GET YOUR HANDS ON.

Ahem.

Yeah. All things being equal, NVIDIA would still be the preferred option, but I would not snub a 6700XT or 6800XT at a good price.

DLSS support is starting to trickle into VR titles where it can REALLY make a big difference, so if VR is of interest to you, then I would tilt the scales in NVIDIA's direction a little more. The list of supported titles is very short right now and only contains a few recognizable titles (No Man's Sky and War Thunder being the most notable), but the potential for other titles to update and get some major gains is there.

If you are looking for a prebuilt, I recommend following this reddit thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsal...

They post and comment on deals as they come through.

I don't live in North America, but thanks anyway.

I'm not into VR, but DLSS could be interesting, especially for future titles. Again, thanks for the suggestions.

I now have 2 Alienware deskside PCs and a laptop, and they are all screamers and rock solid builds. You are allowed to mod them and the warranty stays intact. Support programs are good and let you know when new drivers are available, that sort of thing.

Ars has their review of Alder Lake CPUs up. Sounds like Intel is back on top of things raw performance wise, but is still less performant per watt.

Almost a year ago I purchased a LG 21x9 2k monitor and had hoped to get a replacement for my inadequate 1060 in a reasonable amount of time. I've been having to set resolution scaling to 2/3rds, where available, in most game to get the frame rate over 35-40 fps.

After waiting in the EVGA queue for over a year for a 3080 FTW, I finally got to order a 3080 ti FTW for which I had signed up for back in June.

Installed last night and I can fully enjoy my year old monitor now. Only game I have that has any type of benchmarking is Red Dead 2, I had managed to get 42fps using 2/3 scaling and Hardware Unboxed settings on the 1060. Using those same settings and running 200% scaling I can get 45fps and 94fps using 100% scaling.

Can't wait for another play through of that game and a few others that I've played this last year with muddled graphics.

Now the question is do I drop for a 5000 series processer in place of my 2700x.

Redhwk wrote:

Now the question is do I drop for a 5000 series processer in place of my 2700x.

Double check and be sure your motherboard supports the upgrade you want first.

Most X370/B350 and other first gen boards only got updates for support up to the 3000 series chips.

And while AMD cleared X470/B450 support for the 5000 chips, it was on the mobo manufacturers to release those updates and that process was inconsistent at best.

So I finally managed to get a 3090 FTW3 Ultra from EVGA, after signing up to their queue almost a year ago and then forgetting about it.

I installed it and everything was great, except the computer started shutting down randomly, more and more often. No BSOD, no error codes in Event Viewer. I was concerned the 750W power supply was just not enough in spite of being right within EVGA's recommended specs, even given the 3090's desire for more electricity. It *is* a Seasonic Prime Titanium 750W and all tests were perfectly fine, after all.

So after several days of research and more hard crashes, it turns out that this particular make/model of graphics card takes issue with this particular make/model of power supply. Apparently the EVGA FTW series of 3090s and 3080s send a lot of noise down the 12V sense wire, that the PSU freaks out over and wrongly assumes is a massive energy spike, subsequently shutting everything down.

I managed to snag a Seasonic Prime 1000W Titanium and so far I've had zero issues.

So now my newish computer is basically the dream machine I had planned out on PC Part Picker over a year ago, save for the CPU:

- Ryzen 7 5800X
- Arctic Cooler Liquid Freezer II 280 AIO cooler with Noctua fan upgrade
- G.Skill Trident Z Neo 128GB 3600MHz (4 x 32GB)
- EVGA FTW3 Ultra 3090
- Gigabyte Aorus Pro Wifi X570 motherboard
- Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000W PSU
- Lian Li Lancool II Mesh white case
- Noctua Chromax fans throughout (damn these things are quite af even under an hour of full load!)

(I couldn't get my hands on a 5950X in February when my last PC was pooping out, and could no longer hold off work to wait for the CPU).

Now I have no money to buy new games though

All that said, if anyone wants to buy my perfectly-fine-if-you-aren't-running-an-EVGA-FTW3-Ultra-3090-or-3080, Seasonic Prime Titanium 750W power supply, please let me know.

I've also got a spare Gigabyte Aorus 1080Ti Xtreme Edition 11G now, if anyone's interested. I OC'd the hell out of it after getting it into the Lian Li case, but the extra fans pointed at it kept temps at 75°C under max OC and full load. This card is still a beast for most games at max settings at 1080p, even at stock clock speeds. The only setback is the lack of DLSS or RTX, which I needed for work.

Feel free to DM me if you're interested in buying either component, otherwise I'll probably eBay them both soon.

My rule of thumb is if you wouldn't get about 2 people here telling you your power supply is overkill, then it isn't big enough.

Thin_J wrote:
Redhwk wrote:

Now the question is do I drop for a 5000 series processer in place of my 2700x.

Double check and be sure your motherboard supports the upgrade you want first.

Most X370/B350 and other first gen boards only got updates for support up to the 3000 series chips.

And while AMD cleared X470/B450 support for the 5000 chips, it was on the mobo manufacturers to release those updates and that process was inconsistent at best.

MSI X470 GAMING PLUS, I'd need to do a BIOS update but should be good.

WipEout wrote:

All that said, if anyone wants to buy my perfectly-fine-if-you-aren't-running-an-EVGA-FTW3-Ultra-3090-or-3080, Seasonic Prime Titanium 750W power supply, please let me know.

Huh. I just ordered a Seasonic Prime Platinum 850W PSU to replace my 10 year old Corsair HX750. I hope to buy a 3080 at some point in my lifetime. Now I'm wondering if that was the right choice.

Vargen wrote:

My rule of thumb is if you wouldn't get about 2 people here telling you your power supply is overkill, then it isn't big enough.

Honestly I was already running the 750W in my last build and it was still going strong. The only reason I tried to stick with it in spite of the MUCH beefier parts of the current build, was to save at least *some* money after absurd cash dump for everything else (I did port my SSDs over as well). On paper, the titanium 750W would have sufficed, as I have no plans to OC anything any time soon. But with the weird sense wire crashing issue, the only real solutions were either buy a different PSU (and at current costs, I may as well upgrade at that point anyway) or cut the sense wire on the 24-pin motherboard cable which... yeah, I'm not about to f*ck with that....

polq37 wrote:
WipEout wrote:

All that said, if anyone wants to buy my perfectly-fine-if-you-aren't-running-an-EVGA-FTW3-Ultra-3090-or-3080, Seasonic Prime Titanium 750W power supply, please let me know.

Huh. I just ordered a Seasonic Prime Platinum 850W PSU to replace my 10 year old Corsair HX750. I hope to buy a 3080 at some point in my lifetime. Now I'm wondering if that was the right choice.

The issue I came across is extremely rare, from what I gathered. It literally is *this* make and series of 3080s and 3090s with *this* make and model of PSU. And even then, it's not 100% going to happen.

From the updated PSU Tier List on Tomshardware forums:

Seasonic PRIME based units experience shutdowns with RTX3080/3090 (and possibly RX6900 XT) GPUs, especially ones with unlocked power limit like FE and ASUS Strix. It is recommended, if going with such units, to overprovision wattage, 1kW for RTX3080 and 1.2kW for RTX3090, or power-limit the GPU, or performing a 'dirty' fix of disconnecting a pin of 12V V-sense wire from PSU-side connector of 24-pin motherboard cable (courtesy of Jonny Guru). Units based on post-2018 revisions of Seasonic Focus platform and majority of units by other OEMs are not affected.

I've lost the exact discussion from JonnyGURU I found on the Linus Tech Tips forums, but once I find it I'll link it here.

All told, you're very likely going to be okay.

ETA: A little more discussion on the matter from Jonny Guru, but still not the original thread I found.

ETA More: Again, not the original discussion I found previously, but he elaborates more on the subject here.

So reading through that, I guess I should amend my previous assurances: Maybe Seasonic Prime PSUs *aren't* great for some 3080s and 3090s, I guess? It seems to really depend on particular GPUs, though. So far my 1000W has had zero issues and I've been working/playing on it for several weeks now, but maybe I just did really well on the dice roll this time....

Rykin wrote:

Ars has their review of Alder Lake CPUs up. Sounds like Intel is back on top of things raw performance wise, but is still less performant per watt.

My takeaway from this is that Intel's manufacturing process problems clearly aren't solved. This long-awaited 10nm-that's-just-as-good-as-AMD's-7nm process-we-swear just feels like 14nm+++++++ once again.

When your brand new process still has to rely on massive power draw to beat out AMD's 7nm chips... oof. Doesn't feel like a chip that's going to be really competitive with Zen 4.

To be fair, Intel has always been on the “more power, higher speed” side of Design Street. They avoided going multi-core/multi-thread for years by jacking up single thread speeds until they were unable to cool the processors successfully under load. At that point, they started on the MC/MT path, but they still love their hot and fast designs…

I just saw an LTT review on the new Intel chips and if you are just looking to game the power output is very reasonable, it's when doing multicore stuff like rendering where the CPU starts to draw a crap load of power.

I haven't watched these other videos yet but it looks like Gamer Nexus and JayzTwoCents might also agree based on the video titles.

The LTT benchmarks were using DDR5 though. So that may also be skewing the results. They are going to put out a video where they benchmark with DDR4 soon.

The final take on that LTT review is that the i5 is the true winner, if you are looking to get better performance around the 5600x price.

Robear wrote:

They avoided going multi-core/multi-thread for years by jacking up single thread speeds until they were unable to cool the processors successfully under load.

Yeah, and that whole single-thread deep-pipeline design rabbit hole they went down nearly killed the company. It was the separate team off in Israel which designed the Pentium M mobile chip (able to make their own greenfield design because nobody cared about the chip), which ultimately provided the design that became the basis for Intel's multi-core architectures that followed, rescuing them from what had become an architectural dead-end and quite possibly saved the company.

Intel right now feels like they're still waiting for another Pentium M to come along.

Gaald wrote:

The LTT benchmarks were using DDR5 though. So that may also be skewing the results. They are going to put out a video where they benchmark with DDR4 soon.

Same for the Ars review. Interested to see how these same CPUs run with DDR4. Also kind of neat that they are rolling out PCIe Gen 5 and better Gen 4 support both via the CPU and via the Z690 chipset. Seems like they kind of dragged their feet on Gen 4, but I wonder if they are rushing Gen 5. Not like there are many Gen 5 devices in the desktop/enthusiasts space and I don't think there are any devices in that space that are pushing the limits of Gen 4 and even at Gen 3 the difference between running your GPU at 16x or 8x is minimum.

One good thing LTT pointed out is that Windows 10 doesn't really know how to deal with the BIG.little chip design that Alder Lake is using so if you want to get the most out of one of these 12th gen chips you will need Windows 11 as Windows 10 may not get patched to support them.

Redhwk wrote:
Thin_J wrote:
Redhwk wrote:

Now the question is do I drop for a 5000 series processer in place of my 2700x.

Double check and be sure your motherboard supports the upgrade you want first.

Most X370/B350 and other first gen boards only got updates for support up to the 3000 series chips.

And while AMD cleared X470/B450 support for the 5000 chips, it was on the mobo manufacturers to release those updates and that process was inconsistent at best.

MSI X470 GAMING PLUS, I'd need to do a BIOS update but should be good.

May not be a big enough jump for you, but I’ll be selling my 3700x in a few days.