Help me build my PC 2020 Catch All

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

That's what the Arc GPUs are for

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

That's what the Arc GPUs are for :D

Honestly, Arc is the only Intel product I'm interested in seeing.

Again, a greenfield project unconstrained by prior design - and also unconstrained by Intel's fabrication failures, because Arc will be manufactured by TSMC like everyone else's silicon.

Somebody's got to bring back the low end market. Somebody's got to start trending the prices back to not having to sell a kidney to get one range.

fangblackbone wrote:

Somebody's got to bring back the low end market. Somebody's got to start trending the prices back to not having to sell a kidney to get one range.

Agreed. It was just a few years ago when AMD dropped Polaris in the form of the RX 480 for $199 (4GB) and $239 (8GB). That was plenty for midrange systems.

The RTX 3060 and RX 6600 MSRPs are $100 above that.

We need the $200-250 GPU back. And then from there maybe we can get the $150-175 GPU back too.

I was going to post something about the 5700 already getting price dropped to around $300 before the new gen of cards came out and the 5700's comparable replacement is introduced at $400.

But that is beating a dead horse.

So I can't resist: my RX 580 was $200 in 2017. I'm not paying double for 40% performance boost 4 years later. (especially when I could have bought it for $300 in 2019)

Gumbie wrote:
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.

Yeah, with my monitor being Ultrawide 2K, not 4K, I probably don't at this point.

*Legion* wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

Somebody's got to bring back the low end market. Somebody's got to start trending the prices back to not having to sell a kidney to get one range.

Agreed. It was just a few years ago when AMD dropped Polaris in the form of the RX 480 for $199 (4GB) and $239 (8GB). That was plenty for midrange systems.

The RTX 3060 and RX 6600 MSRPs are $100 above that.

We need the $200-250 GPU back. And then from there maybe we can get the $150-175 GPU back too.

I'll honestly be surprised if we ever see this market segment again, at least at anything close to that level of value.

They simply don't have any reason to sacrifice fab capacity for cheaper lower margin parts.

Until demand changes or fab supply massively increases (lol) this is the market.

Thin_J wrote:

They simply don't have any reason to sacrifice fab capacity for cheaper lower margin parts.

The cheaper parts are often just versions of more expensive parts that have production flaws.

"We tried to make a six core chip, but only two cores work. Should we throw it away or sell it as a lower cost two core chip?"

The interesting thing is that, if I remember correctly, companies have at times countered low sales of high-end chips by killing some cores during the manufacturing process.

Back in the day Intel would manufacture the discount 486SX by fabbing a 486DX and then grounding out its floating point unit. Later they would partially disable the L2 cache to turn a Pentium III into a Celeron.

There are all sorts of reasons to do it. Like they cripple higher end CPU to make more budget CPUs for pre-build vendors. Even if the pre-builts make lower margins, there are advantages from manipulating and controlling that market. (which intel is famous for)

And like Robear said, there is no reason a third party gpu vendor couldn't reduce RAM or use cheaper RAM to make a reduced cost GPU. This is especially interesting with the costs of GDDR6 and GDDR6x. (GDDR6x is apparently cutting big into Nvidia's margins currently)

Thin_J wrote:
*Legion* wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

Somebody's got to bring back the low end market. Somebody's got to start trending the prices back to not having to sell a kidney to get one range.

Agreed. It was just a few years ago when AMD dropped Polaris in the form of the RX 480 for $199 (4GB) and $239 (8GB). That was plenty for midrange systems.

The RTX 3060 and RX 6600 MSRPs are $100 above that.

We need the $200-250 GPU back. And then from there maybe we can get the $150-175 GPU back too.

I'll honestly be surprised if we ever see this market segment again, at least at anything close to that level of value.

They simply don't have any reason to sacrifice fab capacity for cheaper lower margin parts.

Until demand changes or fab supply massively increases (lol) this is the market.

I hate that I think you're right.

Thin_J wrote:

I'll honestly be surprised if we ever see this market segment again, at least at anything close to that level of value.

I don't see NVIDIA or AMD chasing that segment.

But I could see Intel targeting that segment as a way to get a foothold into the GPU market. Especially if, as I assume, they struggle out of the gate to compete with NVIDIA or AMD in the higher segments.

Intel needs to land a "win" somewhere in order to be taken seriously in the GPU market, and filling the $200 void with a decent offering would be a good way to do it.

You know, at least for a couple of months, before NVIDIA responds by hastily farting out a 3050 that's clearly a 3060 with 1/3rd of it hacksawed off.

Help me build a minimally-capable PC!

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been doing a lot of cloud and console gaming, especially as my PC really begins to show its age. This is my current rig:

CPU: AMD FX-8350 CPU
GPU: Radeon R9 280X 3GB
RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600
MOBO: Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z

The thing is, as cloud gaming has advanced, my PC can’t even keep up with minimum requirements for high-end streaming. It cannot decode VP9, which is needed for Stadia Pro. I cannot reliably watch 4K videos even from local sources, and 2K can stutter. HDR is out of the question. Streaming anything above 1080p60 just isn’t feasible, which makes my GFN 3080 subscription only worthwhile for couch gaming.

I know it doesn’t take much to do this, but oddly I find that putting together specs for such a minimally capable machine is much harder than putting together specs for a high-end gaming PC. I have gigabit wired internet and a large monitor capable of 1440p/144hz/HDR, not that I can use most of its capability unless I’m using my Shield Pro on it.

What do I need for this? I’d like it to have DisplayPort out as an option for the higher refresh rates, but it does not need to run games locally at high resolutions/high FPS. Integrated Bluetooth would be great, and I could just repurpose my SSD and HD from my current machine, and probably the PSU and cooler (Corsair 860i, H80i). The only games I play locally are those not available on GeForce Now or Stadia, or that require mods, or that generally just work better from close distance (party-based, text-heavy RPGs, etc.). I would like to be able to continue playing those locally. My currently installed games have very modest hardware requirements:

Pillars of Eternity II Deadfire
Pathfinder Kingmaker
Disco Elysium
Fallout New Vegas
The Bard’s Tale IV
Operencia Stolen Sun
Mafia Definitive Edition

So, what's the least I can get away with for this?

What's your budget?

WizKid wrote:

What's your budget?

As low as possible. This is a temporary machine focused primarily on external cloud horsepower, until I eventually build a new, high end gaming machine. Hopefully component prices will return to normal within a couple of years, especially GPU prices.

HP Pavilion prebuilt. Add in the $20 for a 1650 Super (though the default RX 5500 would probably be OK for your needs too).

https://twitter.com/deepschneider/st...

Not a huge deal as there are workarounds but something to be aware of

*Legion* wrote:
Thin_J wrote:

I'll honestly be surprised if we ever see this market segment again, at least at anything close to that level of value.

I don't see NVIDIA or AMD chasing that segment.

But I could see Intel targeting that segment as a way to get a foothold into the GPU market. Especially if, as I assume, they struggle out of the gate to compete with NVIDIA or AMD in the higher segments.

Intel needs to land a "win" somewhere in order to be taken seriously in the GPU market, and filling the $200 void with a decent offering would be a good way to do it.

You know, at least for a couple of months, before NVIDIA responds by hastily farting out a 3050 that's clearly a 3060 with 1/3rd of it hacksawed off.

It’s also called just buy a console at that price point…better performance and these days you can connect a mouse and keyboard to the Xbox Series X and run the Edge Browser and do productivity work.

Yeah, I'd go with Legion's suggestion. The only worry would be half the cores but those Ryzen 3 cores will be SO much faster. You's probably want to put another stick of RAM in there to match the 16GB you currently have. I wouldn't pay $100 for the upgrade though.

Rykin wrote:
Thin_J wrote:

They simply don't have any reason to sacrifice fab capacity for cheaper lower margin parts.

The cheaper parts are often just versions of more expensive parts that have production flaws.

"We tried to make a six core chip, but only two cores work. Should we throw it away or sell it as a lower cost two core chip?"

Sure. But if your yields are decent enough on the higher end chips this is unlikely to be consistent enough to make releasing the cheaper card feasible. At some point you will have to intentionally sacrifice some of the higher end stuff to make the lower end, because fab capacity is finite.

If that math made any sense for them at all they would have already done it.

Or you end up with sh*t like the weird broken PS5 chips that AMD is releasing in Asian countries in little ITX-like PC's, but the performance is garbage and as a value proposition it's awful. Linus has a video up on that weird mess if you're curious.

*Legion* wrote:

I don't see NVIDIA or AMD chasing that segment.

But I could see Intel targeting that segment as a way to get a foothold into the GPU market. Especially if, as I assume, they struggle out of the gate to compete with NVIDIA or AMD in the higher segments.

Intel needs to land a "win" somewhere in order to be taken seriously in the GPU market, and filling the $200 void with a decent offering would be a good way to do it.

You know, at least for a couple of months, before NVIDIA responds by hastily farting out a 3050 that's clearly a 3060 with 1/3rd of it hacksawed off.

You know what, I think you're right and this is easily the most likely thing. Mentally I've just fully checked out on the Intel GPU thing. I feel like I've been reading about that release for a decade and my brain is so trained to just ignore every stupid rumor or news byte that does appear about it at this point I routinely forget it exists.

But I think you're absolute right. They could slot neatly into that lower and midrange market segment that's being ignored by the big two right now.

*Legion* wrote:

HP Pavilion prebuilt. Add in the $20 for a 1650 Super (though the default RX 5500 would probably be OK for your needs too).

Thanks! So, the Video Connector listed in the Pavilion specs just refers to the motherboard? Adding the 1650 should do it, since If I understand correctly 1440p at 144hz requires HDMI 2.0 or DisplayPort 1.2. I'm still not sure what exactly it takes to decode VP9 or to output HDR. As a streaming machine, it doesn't need to play games at this resolution or refresh rate; it basically just has to be able to play videos and correctly display what the cloud servers are sending.

I'm almost certain there are laptops that can do this, and I could probably pick up a used one for not too much. But I want to be sure that if I buy a laptop or prebuilt PC than can output 1440p I won't end up finding that it doesn't support HDR or VP9 in Chrome or Edge.

conejote wrote:

Thanks! So, the Video Connector listed in the Pavilion specs just refers to the motherboard?

Probably. I can't imagine the NVIDIA cards lacking DisplayPort.

I'm still not sure what exactly it takes to decode VP9 or to output HDR.

Any reasonably modern NVIDIA GPU will have NVDEC GPU-based video decoding, whose supported codecs include VP9. You can see in the chart on that page that the 1650 is specifically listed and has "Yes" under VP9.

As for HDR, according to NVIDIA, all NVIDIA GPUs from 900 series on forward support HDR.

*Legion* wrote:
conejote wrote:

Thanks! So, the Video Connector listed in the Pavilion specs just refers to the motherboard?

Probably. I can't imagine the NVIDIA cards lacking DisplayPort.

I'm still not sure what exactly it takes to decode VP9 or to output HDR.

Any reasonably modern NVIDIA GPU will have NVDEC GPU-based video decoding, whose supported codecs include VP9. You can see in the chart on that page that the 1650 is specifically listed and has "Yes" under VP9.

As for HDR, according to NVIDIA, all NVIDIA GPUs from 900 series on forward support HDR.

This is great information, thank you!

TheGameguru wrote:

https://twitter.com/deepschneider/st...

Not a huge deal as there are workarounds but something to be aware of

Haha, this is just such an Intel thing to do. Once great company relegated to marketing tricks to get by.

TheGameguru wrote:

It’s also called just buy a console at that price point…better performance and these days you can connect a mouse and keyboard to the Xbox Series X and run the Edge Browser and do productivity work.

Sure, if a console is what you want and has what you want to play.

There's an awful lot of software in my Steam account that consoles don't have, though.

I have a RTX 2060 and some SSDs in an otherwise ancient PC full of parts from 2013. The i7 4770 and 16GB of RAM hasn’t prevented me from playing new stuff but it’s a bottleneck I’m feeling more over time. The Battlefield 2042 beta was…rough.

I can wait a while longer for a new video card but I’m looking for a better base system to put that 2060 in now and upgrade the vid card later.

I am too frugal of a spender to pay the prices that high end PC parts are going for right now. Was thinking of grabbing some second hand parts or mid range newer stuff. Maybe grabbing a mostly full machine (second hand or new) that I can slap my video card into? I don’t mind building from parts and I don’t mind working from a full machine as long as it’s parts aren’t low end junk I have to replace right away.

Any suggestions? Grab a midrange Ryzen setup perhaps? Maybe something older like a Ryzen 5 3600 but a newer x570 motherboard I can put a new Ryzen in later?

I’m in Canada if that matters.

TheGameguru wrote:

https://twitter.com/deepschneider/st...

Not a huge deal as there are workarounds but something to be aware of

This sounds so immensely stupid :S And the workarounds presumably also removes some of the benefit of having the two different types of cores in the first place?

At least if it is all in software, it should be fixable...

pandasuit wrote:

The Battlefield 2042 beta was…rough.

To be fair to your system, the BF2042 beta was not particularly well optimized. It ran below expected performance for pretty much everyone.

That said, Haswell CPUs certainly are long in the tooth at this point.

Any suggestions? Grab a midrange Ryzen setup perhaps? Maybe something older like a Ryzen 5 3600 but a newer x570 motherboard I can put a new Ryzen in later?

I’m in Canada if that matters.

Looking at NewEgg Canada, a 5600G is $309 (CAD), and a 3600 is $279. Assuming you aren't finding a better deal on a 3600 elsewhere, I'd take the 5600G in that scenario.

The 5600X is $375 CAD, about 20% more than the 5600G for about 10% more gaming performance.

That all said, the next Ryzen CPUs will be AM5 rather than AM4, so an X570 board isn't going to get you beyond this current Ryzen generation. AM4 lasted four Ryzen generations.

*Legion* wrote:
Any suggestions? Grab a midrange Ryzen setup perhaps? Maybe something older like a Ryzen 5 3600 but a newer x570 motherboard I can put a new Ryzen in later?

I’m in Canada if that matters.

Looking at NewEgg Canada, a 5600G is $309 (CAD), and a 3600 is $279. Assuming you aren't finding a better deal on a 3600 elsewhere, I'd take the 5600G in that scenario.

The 5600X is $375 CAD, about 20% more than the 5600G for about 10% more gaming performance.

That all said, the next Ryzen CPUs will be AM5 rather than AM4, so an X570 board isn't going to get you beyond this current Ryzen generation. AM4 lasted four Ryzen generations.

Assuming I’m happy with a 5600 G or X for a while and will be ok getting a new mobo when I want to upgrade again what is a reasonably priced full size mobo to pair with that processor? I’m not planning to overclock but you never know.

Seems there isn’t a benefit to getting any memory faster than 3200 with those CPUs and when I upgrade again I’ll probably be getting DDR5 anyways so stick with 3200 for this.

Grab a Seasonic GX-750 maybe. Probably get a new M.2 for the system drive and transfer over one of my SATA SSDs for extra storage. Slap it all in something like a Corsair 4000D.