Help me build my PC: 2024 Catch-All

fangblackbone wrote:

Those are sh*t though.
I bought my 580 for $200 in 2017.
Why would anyone buy a ~590 for $200-250 in 2022?

Because a 580 costs $350-450 in 2022.

A screencap of some of the 580s sold on eBay today:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/lw4CRM8.png)

Left out of the screenshot was the malfunctioning one sold "for parts only" that went for $255!

f*ck me!

Is it wrong that I am considering selling my 580 now?

I have a GTX 1080 sitting in a secondary computer, barely getting used. Every time I dismiss the idea of selling it, the prices of cards increases.

I'm getting to the point where I might have to pull the trigger now.

Might be a good idea to keep it in case your primary fries.

Don't you be putting that out there in the universe!

Shh, nothing's gonna hurt you, Thirtyeighty....

fangblackbone wrote:

Those are sh*t though.
I bought my 580 for $200 in 2017.
Why would anyone buy a ~590 for $200-250 in 2022?

One more data point: In June, I found my old 560 in a closet, put it up on eBay, and somebody paid $185 for it.

It's crazy out there.

How do we update the EVGA queue summary? I forgot to mention it at the time, but I got my 3090 FTW3 Ultra offer email on 10/6/2021 (and subsequently sold a kidney for the card).

Looks like the 12400 will be the best performance per dollar chip, but the 12100 will be really powerful entry level chip for <$100:

Intel Alder Lake Core i3-12100F CPU Is The Fastest Quad-Core Ever Made, Beats LN2 Overclocked Chips at Stock Clocks With Stock Cooler

Still need to see actual game performance though.

Yeah, have to give it to Intel, they've seemingly managed to legitimately recapture a CPU market segment with their low-end chips. The blazing heat and power usage you get on the high-end with Alder Lake isn't a concern with the cheaper, smaller core-count chips, so there's less to critique Alder Lake on down there even before they start winning on price.

As GN put it: "RIP AMD low-end (for now)". AMD's left the $200 and below segment completely neglected, and that's left the door open for Intel to make a splash and really draw AMD's mid-range value proposition into question. Hopefully AMD has some decent responses coming, but CES didn't really inspire confidence that anything worthwhile is coming until the later half of the year.

For anyone using any of the Logitech wireless that support the Lightspeed wireless charging (ie. the 502, 703, 903, or G Pro wireless mice), one of my new favorite things is this little wireless charging dock.

I never bought one of the Lightspeed wireless mouse pads because they are so small compared to the Glorious 3XL mousepad I use. But as a dock that I can pop the mouse on rather than having a loose charging cable floating around on my desk, it's great. It also includes a USB port on the back for holding the mouse's wireless receiver, letting it also act like one of those extension cables for positioning wireless receivers in a better spot.

Pretty much my only complaint with the G Pro wireless was the lack of a charging dock.

(Also note, if you do buy this thing, the little charging disc that replaces the one the mouse comes with has a 10g weight in it, for who knows what reason. But that disc pops right out, so you can use this without adding weight to your mouse.)

[quote="fangblackbone"

AMD's new laptop gpus gives me the impression that the only reasonable way to game in 2022 is with a laptop.[/quote]

I'm doing this. I picked up a legion 5 with a Gtx 1650 for $650 bucks on sale today. Sure it won't be doing 4K or even 1440p anytime soon, but that is what my ps5 is for. Indy gems and CRPGs will be just fine on this for a few years and I can play my huge back log of last steam games

This might be blasphemy, but who are some reliable sources for pre-built PCs? I know about Alienware because they're Dell, and I know it's easy to get ripped off in this space, but that's about it. If possible I'd like something close to what I might build myself, should I wish to go back to doing piecemeal upgrades in the future.

GamersNexus liked (at least, compared to the field) the NewEgg house brand ABS, along with Skytech's Chronos model.

My brother bought a CyberPower prebuilt similar to the one GN tested, where they pointed out it was "almost good" except for the terrible thermal setup disqualifying it. We swapped a decent tower cooler in place of the crappy default CPU cooler, flipped the front fans to intake, and added a couple exhaust fans to the empty spaces on the top of the case, and literally dropped the Cinebench temperatures by 40 degrees C. GN was right, it was a great computer other than the default thermal setup, but that was easily fixable compared to some other prebuilt flaws.

If you're interested in piecemeal upgrades, stay far away from Dell. Their systems include components with custom form factors and interfaces.

peanut3141 wrote:

If you're interested in piecemeal upgrades, stay far away from Dell. Their systems include components with custom form factors and interfaces.

Yeah. CyberPower, ABS, and SkyTech are all using standard off-the-shelf components, which is part of what GN liked about them. My brother's CyberPower definitely felt like someone's custom built system after we fixed the cooling configuration. People that want to make hardware changes in the future should definitely lean towards builders like these versus something like the Alienwares that are very limited in their adaptability.

Anyway, when it comes to picking out a prebuilt, quality can vary from model to model at the same builder, so I would suggest identifying some specific builds you're interested in, and then bringing them here for discussion (and/or searching for reviews and discussions elsewhere).

Fwiw, the Alienware I had only was a major no no when it came to cpu cooling. And, yeah, the huge front fan had to run way too often, making it pretty noisy.

Otherwise, ran well and got a good price during a sale + 1st time financing coupon knocked another chunk off. Can't complain in that regard.

Have not had any issues with the 3 Alienwares we've bought over the years. I'm satisfied with the ability to add my own drives and such within the limits of the firmware; others may prefer a more open architecture. But the performance and reliability is top of the list.

I've bought and tweaked a few ABS systems for friends during the pandemic.. mostly removing the Rosewill PSU's and putting in something more expensive and in theory reliable.. the Rosewill brand isnt the worst of the worst but given how much of a hassle PC buying/building is right now I'd rather just be safer.

But overall I do like that ABS systems are bloat free.. cabled reasonably cleanly and for the most part of just basically "basic".

I've had bad luck with PSUs in the past, so when I build my own I tend to over-spec them. I think I have a plan for that though...

Just a FYI, the EVGA 30 Series GPU Queue system is going through a major revision for the 3050, 3080 12gb and 3090Ti. Here is the current status of the queue system (along with links to the new 30 series rules).

https://www.evga.com/support/queue3/

Since picking up the Odyssey G7 monitor, I've been experiencing random brief black screen flashes.

Apparently this is a known issue with the NVIDIA driver:

In multi-monitor configurations, the screen may display random black screen flicker. [3405228]

According to NVIDIA in December, it is supposed to be fixed in the next Game Ready Driver, which releases this Friday. Here's hoping.

When I talked in the top post about using the /r/NVIDIA driver threads to get the lowdown on driver updates, this is what I was talking about. NVIDIA's last driver actually released with this issue erroneously listed among the fixes, but the discussion thread revealed that to not be true and NVIDIA eventually updated the release notes.

Edgar_Newt wrote:

Just a FYI, the EVGA 30 Series GPU Queue system is going through a major revision for the 3050, 3080 12gb and 3090Ti. Here is the current status of the queue system (along with links to the new 30 series rules).

https://www.evga.com/support/queue3/

Sweet! This may help me a lot. I have a good history of purchases ending at a 1080, so this may help me this year since accounts that have bought a 30 series card have less priority. I don't participate in the forums or anything which I just won't have time for. We'll see. Gonna get more proactive here this year trying to get one.

Huh. Looks like I'm an "elite" member. Maybe that will help.

So, I'd like to get in the queue for the 12 GB 3080. I've got a 4K LG OLED so the extra memory may not be worthless. I think these are the actual pages for the 2 different versions:

https://www.evga.com/products/produc...
https://www.evga.com/products/produc...

Looks like I'm an elite member thanks to all the EVGA cards and motherboards I've bought over the years, and I have a 5% new member prize discount coupon code. Any advice on getting in the queue? Will the notification option pop up for me at 9:00am PT tomorrow on those cards? I've removed all notifications from my account active or otherwise because they were from well over a year ago, and I never got notified. I figure I should just try and reset and focus on the new releases.

Looks like I have a couple referral codes for becoming an EVGA elite member if anyone wants me to send you one. You would have to NOT have an EVGA account, and I imagine there is a bunch of stuff you have to do or buy to get the membership...

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

So, I'd like to get in the queue for the 12 GB 3080. I've got a 4K LG OLED so the extra memory may not be worthless. I think these are the actual pages for the 2 different versions:

https://www.evga.com/products/produc...
https://www.evga.com/products/produc...

Looks like I'm an elite member thanks to all the EVGA cards and motherboards I've bought over the years, and I have a 5% new member prize discount coupon code. Any advice on getting in the queue? Will the notification option pop up for me at 9:00am PT tomorrow on those cards? I've removed all notifications from my account active or otherwise because they were from well over a year ago, and I never got notified. I figure I should just try and reset and focus on the new releases.

Looks like I have a couple referral codes for becoming an EVGA elite member if anyone wants me to send you one. You would have to NOT have an EVGA account, and I imagine there is a bunch of stuff you have to do or buy to get the membership...

In my experience the server gets hammered right around the time they open up the queue, but hopefully the new system mitigates that since it deprioritizes first come first serve. But yeah once you get the page to load, the button should be active.

Okay, thanks!

I actually think it is unlikely that the 3080 12gb autonotify button will turn on tomorrow. It turned on today for about an hour (well before 8 am PT). They then turned it off after an onslaught of "elite" members signed up. Not sure when they will turn it back on, but I am doubtful it will be tomorrow. The 3050's button should turn on for Elite members around 6 am on 1/27. Not sure about the 3090Ti. Best of luck!

Edgar_Newt wrote:

It turned on today for about an hour (well before 8 am PT). They then turned it off after an onslaught of "elite" members signed up. Not sure when they will turn it back on, but I am doubtful it will be tomorrow.

Oh good grief.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Edgar_Newt wrote:

It turned on today for about an hour (well before 8 am PT). They then turned it off after an onslaught of "elite" members signed up. Not sure when they will turn it back on, but I am doubtful it will be tomorrow.

Oh good grief.

EVGA is trying, ya know? They're doing what's best for the consumer but the demand is INSANE.

I'd recommend joining the Falcodrin Discord server and setting alerts for the EVGA channel.

garion333 wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Edgar_Newt wrote:

It turned on today for about an hour (well before 8 am PT). They then turned it off after an onslaught of "elite" members signed up. Not sure when they will turn it back on, but I am doubtful it will be tomorrow.

Oh good grief.

EVGA is trying, ya know? They're doing what's best for the consumer but the demand is INSANE.

I'd recommend joining the Falcodrin Discord server and setting alerts for the EVGA channel.

Yeah, I will probably have to go that sort of route.

To understand where the North America queues are, try the EVGA Queue Summary. It isn't 100% but it is sufficiently accurate (IMHO).