Help me build my PC: 2024 Catch-All

Happy New Year to you all, I just bit the bullet ordering a RX 6650xt (XFX merc 308) I'll be receiving it around the end of the month I think, I'll also get to pick 2 free games from someplace (I guess steam?)

The card looks fantastic and it matches very well with my case, I didn't want a card with 3 fans in it but searching online couldn't find any negative review on the model and brand, and apparently the 3-fan design is quieter than the 2-fan equivalent.

I was undecided between the 6650 or a more expensive 6700 that suddenly seemed more affordable given the option to pay in 5 installments, but in the end I realized I'm not seeing myself getting into 1440 gaming any time soon so I would be spending extra for capabilities I wasn't going to enjoy. Still, the 12 Gb video Ram were very very tempting.

So the wait begins, hope to report how it handles itself when it gets here!

Edit:typo

Ended up going for the nicest 1440p screen I could afford and was available for me, and got this: LG 27GP850.

It's like wearing my glasses for the first time again. The difference is astounding. Even Mrs Sorb can tell the difference!

This popped up in my feed. Nvidia has a connector issue, AMD has a vapor chamber issue. Intel has driver issues. I think I am going to skip this generation.

Computer upgrade woes cont'd

In upgrading my computer, I had installed a new SSD (2 TB), PSU (700W) and GPU (Radeon 6700XT) installed.

Many crashes and general system instability resulted, so I switched out the GPU (down to a Radeon 6700) and brought it home. It also appeared the SSD was improperly installed or a bit of dust got in the connections. Brought it home, and it worked fine, until I tried to play Destiny 2, at which point in time instant crash to bluescreen.

My friend who did the install is 45 minutes away, so I decided to go to my local (5 minute walk) IT shop, where I found out the following that might (alone or together) be causing the issues

1 - The SSD was set up as part of a RAID array. I don't have a RAID array.

2 - SSD was installed without using the little standoff thingy. So instead of being perfectly horizontal, it was angled a little bit, which might have caused issues with the contacts between the SSD and the motherboard.

mudbunny wrote:

Computer upgrade woes cont'd

In upgrading my computer, I had installed a new SSD (2 TB), PSU (700W) and GPU (Radeon 6700XT) installed.

Many crashes and general system instability resulted, so I switched out the GPU (down to a Radeon 6700) and brought it home. It also appeared the SSD was improperly installed or a bit of dust got in the connections. Brought it home, and it worked fine, until I tried to play Destiny 2, at which point in time instant crash to bluescreen.

My friend who did the install is 45 minutes away, so I decided to go to my local (5 minute walk) IT shop, where I found out the following that might (alone or together) be causing the issues

1 - The SSD was set up as part of a RAID array. I don't have a RAID array.

2 - SSD was installed without using the little standoff thingy. So instead of being perfectly horizontal, it was angled a little bit, which might have caused issues with the contacts between the SSD and the motherboard.

Your friend secretly hates you? : p

I'm guessing friend got confused and unluckily for you and your peace of mind committed two "rookie"mistakes setting up your system, but I wonder about the Raid error, you have to get into the nitty gritty drive management part of the BIOS to set a drive as RAID.

And if you use a drive that was setup with RAID, and you don't setup the same RAID configuration, I am not sure that it would even boot. Though my experience with RAID is striping, not mirroring so I don't know if that holds up for all RAID configuration.

I wonder if it was set up as RAID to make life easier when he imaged one drive to the other? (non-IT guy guessing randomly here)

mudbunny wrote:

I wonder if it was set up as RAID to make life easier when he imaged one drive to the other? (non-IT guy guessing randomly here)

Could be? it makes sense, changing the configuration for it to act as a regular drive should'nt be problematic for the IT guy, but I really can't say as I have literal zero experience with RAID configs, I'm surprised you could boot up after removing the original drive.

Still, the standoff faux pas merits retribution from your friend, I'd say beers at least.

The phony RTX 4080 has officially been relaunched as the RTX 4070 ti.

Specs are unchanged, and MSRP has dropped $100 to $799.

And as for the value proposition, GN's video title doesn't mince words:

I dropped by the IT shop before it closed. The guy tried 2 or 3 different methods to connect the SSD so he could image it over to the 2 TB HDD I had previously. None worked, none of them would recognize the SSD. Ended up having to connect it via USB, which is taking forever, so he is letting it run overnight.

He said he tried two different types of cards you can plug an SSD into to connect it through the MB, and none worked.

Once that is done, he will try starting up the PC with just the old HDD (which should work, as it is the HDD I originally had) and we will go from there.

*Legion* wrote:

The phony RTX 4080 has officially been relaunched as the RTX 4070 ti.

Specs are unchanged, and MSRP has dropped $100 to $799.

And as for the value proposition, GN's video title doesn't mince words:

Eviscerated them, rightly so.

Hi all, just looking for some quick advice since I'm out of the loop when it comes to tech.

I built this PC about 5 years ago, and I usually like to wait a little bit longer for a larger upgrade. However, I want to have a smoother experience in VR and have a new 144p 144hz monitor.

I was already having some minor quibbles with my current setup, but own a PS5 so do most of my higher-end gaming there currently. I'm very sensitive to frame drops and would love to make use of the higher refresh rate on this monitor! I lean more towards indies and emulation than I do AAA, but do like playing things on PC over console if I can due to the cheaper prices, mods, etc.

I'm wondering how this setup will hold out for 2023 and beyond. Just looking for general advice and opinions on hardware prices to benefit from upgrading.

Budget would be under $2000 AUD ($1362.60 USD).

Specs

Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 Ghz
GTX 1070 Ti 8GB
16 Gb RAM (3000Mhz)
SSD main with HDD storage.

Main games I want to be playing with high FPS

League of Legends (varies between 90 - 125 on this system)
Total War: Warhammer 2 and 3 (Always been choppy, CPU doesn't seem good enough)
Elden Ring (Mostly fine with some stutters)
Baldurs Gate 3 (Haven't tried yet, but want to max it out on release)
Warhammer 40k Darktide (Runs like butt on my system currently. Almost unplayable)

VR

Half Life Alyx (choppy, but mostly fine)
Into the Radius (Fairly good)
No Man's Sky (Base game chugged so I know this would be a mess in VR)
Boneworks
Blade and Sorcery (Fine on lower settings)
Misc. VR stuff - really need a consistently high FPS because I get motion sick otherwise.

Any advice? 1440p 144hz is all brand new to me so I'm not sure how taxing it is going to be on my GPU. Though, I gotta say, even playing League of Legends at the mixed 90 - 125 FPS, it's silky smooth so it's an upgrade regardless of whether or not I hit the consistent 144

tl;dr new 1440p 144hz monitor with a GTX1070ti. Upgrade now or later?

You should aim for at least an RX 6700 for about 400-500 USD on the AMD side to move that new monitor properly, the 1070 will have a hard time keeping up, moreso if you are allergic to framerate drops. How well will that couple with your Ryzen 5 2600 I'm not sure, but I don't think it should be a problem.

Actually I think you'll be able to save most of your budget for maybe also upgrading your CPU as well, it depends on what board you have on that rig.

You'd see the biggest increase from upgrading the GPU, especially for VR. The rest of the parts are fine, maybe plop an upgraded CPU, but I'd put most/all of your budget towards a GPU. A 4080 would be within range if you could find one at MSRP, and would be quite the jump from a 1070ti.

I'm a bit spotty on the hardware stuff, CPU-Z says I'm running a B350M Mortar Arctic (MS7A37).

I was thinking of buying a whole new PC because I don't want to build it myself again (found it entirely too stressful, but I'm glad I did it at least once).

So I guess the followup question is: would it be wise to just buy a CPU and GPU instead of a whole new PC? I'd probably pay a local shop to slot them in for me.

Feeank wrote:

You should aim for at least an RX 6700 for about 400-500 USD on the AMD side to move that new monitor properly, the 1070 will have a hard time keeping up, moreso if you are allergic to framerate drops. How well will that couple with your Ryzen 5 2600 I'm not sure, but I don't think it should be a problem.

Actually I think you'll be able to save most of your budget for maybe also upgrading your CPU as well, it depends on what board you have on that rig.

Is there much of a difference between Nvidia and AMD? I've only ever gone with Nvidia out of familiarity. Would I have any issues swapping over on my current pc?

Of course this is subjective but I feel like, in your case, a whole new PC is just not worth the money.

I'd definitely get a new graphics card. Swapping between nVidia and AMD is not an issue at all. You would just need to uninstall the nVidia drivers first, and then install the AMD drivers.

Then, I'd consider maybe swapping the CPU although I'm not sure that's a necessity. The trick there is that you'll need to update your BIOS first (while using your current CPU), and then swap the CPU. If you did that, your motherboard would be compatible with 5th-gen Ryzen processors. I don't really know how much of a difference that would make purely for gaming, though. Also, this is a more painful process but if you have a reliable shop that would do it for you maybe that's an option. Frankly, 5 or 10 years ago I would have been much more of a DIY fundamentalist but now I totally get how you feel about it.

Quote is not edit.

WizKid wrote:

You'd see the biggest increase from upgrading the GPU, especially for VR.

Second this. For VR, you need as much raster performance as you can possibly get. I don't think I saw a mention of which VR headset, but generally speaking you're talking about pushing more pixels than 4K, especially once you add in supersampling to compensate for lens distortion. There's a whole heap of rendering techniques in VR to try and compensate for the demandingly high pixel counts, but the more rendering power you can feed the beast, the better. There is no such thing as an overkill GPU for VR.

Thanks guys, this is really helpful.

It definitely sounds like a few new parts would be much better than getting a whole new PC. I'll likely drop back in later when my casual work picks up again in Feb and I can afford to buy something.

The only thing I'm particularly worried about is my PSU. With the new range of GPUs, I don't think 600w would cut it? Not that I'm necessarily aiming for the latest and greatest, but I'm seeing a lot of 650w+ recommendations. Is there much wiggle room with those sorts of things?

*Legion* wrote:

The phony RTX 4080 has officially been relaunched as the RTX 4070 ti.

Specs are unchanged, and MSRP has dropped $100 to $799.

And as for the value proposition, GN's video title doesn't mince words:

It's not just GN. That card is getting universally panned. Frowns angry sad faces and harsh words in every thumbnail and video title for a review of the card.

I'm not sure I've ever seen quite this universally negative feedback on a new graphics card. Maybe the that GeForce series before the 680 came out, whatever the numbers were on that, it was pretty laughable.

People were down on the 4080 because of pricing... but here they're just going hey yo this thing's a piece of sh*t nobody should ever buy.

I mean good on'em, I hope they keep raking them over the coals, but it's still surprising me a little.

A_Unicycle wrote:

Thanks guys, this is really helpful.

It definitely sounds like a few new parts would be much better than getting a whole new PC. I'll likely drop back in later when my casual work picks up again in Feb and I can afford to buy something.

The only thing I'm particularly worried about is my PSU. With the new range of GPUs, I don't think 600w would cut it? Not that I'm necessarily aiming for the latest and greatest, but I'm seeing a lot of 650w+ recommendations. Is there much wiggle room with those sorts of things?

Unless you go for a top of tier / 4K capable behemoth card, you should be ok with that PSU, given that you don't have a bunch of drives, dvd/blueray bay(??) or 20 fans in your case.

For the GPU I would compare what cards handle 1440 better, AMD Rx 6700 is supposed to be in the sweet spot of performance / price, on the NVidia side I'm not really that sure, I would guess the RTX 3060ti is the best alternative for now. Which one draws more power should be important in this case, I would lean towards the less taxing on the PSU just for safety.

As for the CPU I would check if there is a more recent compatible option that your MOBO can use without having to update the Bios and save the rest of your budget for a bicycle with TWO wheels, how's that for progress? : )

A 6700xt is 50W more power and 60% or more rasterization. Plus, while not as good as nvidia, the 6700xt does support raytracing acceleration. Oh and more VRAM.

I would say though that it isn't a bad idea to get a bigger PSU. It seems that even low end GPUs will be 250W TDPs going forward. (aside from the ones designed for OEM that no one should ever buy because they are barely keeping up with an 8 year old GPU)

Thin_J wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

The phony RTX 4080 has officially been relaunched as the RTX 4070 ti.
Specs are unchanged, and MSRP has dropped $100 to $799.
And as for the value proposition, GN's video title doesn't mince words:

It's not just GN. That card is getting universally panned. Frowns angry sad faces and harsh words in every thumbnail and video title for a review of the card.

At this point, it seems like, unless you have a need for and a budget for a 4090, you are better off sticking with a 30x0 or waiting until the next gen.

I got lucky and snagged a 7900XTX for $999 (retail) so I'm going to upgrade my main Gaming PC and leave the other 2 alone for this generation.. I agree unless you want to spend $1700+ for the 4090 none of these current GPU's seem that big of an upgrade if you are sitting on a 3080/3090/ti or 6950XT. The jump from a 6800XT to 7900XTX seems worthwhile especially if you can flip your old 6800XT for $300-$400 or so.

If you have a 3080Ti or 3090Ti and you don't fret sunk cost.. you can probably get close to $800-$1000 for that card if you find a buyer and thus make the 4090 purchase more reasonable.

I have a 2080Ti that I'm still using in my HTPC and I'd love to go to a 4090 there but its just never going to work because despite having one of the larger HTPC cases that still fits neatly into my TV cabinet theres no way the gigantic 4090 is ever going into there... I'm starting to get worried about the future of GPU's if they keep scaling up physically the way they are going.. at some point they will need to move to external enclosures with their own dedicated power supply.

4090 won't even fit in my current case lol

I will probably be replacing my case next time I upgrade my computer, but my current case is housing a 3080ti and there is still 2 inches of space available. It is a huge case though. I would love to keep it or get an updated version but Corsair stopped making it and it doesn't support newer standards like USB 3 or USB-C.

Corsair Air-740

Oh, that was a great case.

mudbunny wrote:

Once that is done, he will try starting up the PC with just the old HDD (which should work, as it is the HDD I originally had) and we will go from there.

So it appears the SSD was the issue. It starts up fine with just the HDD and everything that crashes it before doesn’t crash it now.

The tech tried a couple other programs, and the SSD was always “not recognized.” I have my PC over the weekend, and I will be dropping it off on Monday to get a 3.5 SSD installed and the image copied over, for the SSD to be the OS/main gaming drive.

AMD to replace defective 7900 XTX cards.

So it appears the SSD was the issue.

Yah, I am dealing with that now. I thought my gpu had failed because I ruled out the cable and monitor and I couldn't even see the bios or cmos on boot up.

It turns out that the sata cable for my boot SSD is loose/wiggly and causing it not to be read/boot. Which I have no idea how that cause the monitor to get no signal. But I unplug the cable and the screen magically comes to life and tries to boot off my other drives.

So I thought that there may be a problem with the SSD but I am more leaning to the cable. So tonight I am going to swap the cables from the SSD and one of the other drives to see if it then boots without issue. I was able to reseat the SSD cable and get it to boot. But as soon as I try and put the cover back on the case, the screen goes black again.

So I don't know what I am going to do since there is nothing wrong with my month old 6650 and I just got a 6800 (non xt) to see if the 6650 was defective. Should I keep them both? Should I try and sell the 6650 (250$)? Should I return the 6800 ($500)?