By request here is a new thread for PC Builders and Aspiring PC Builders to discuss tips and tricks. In the old days I would list several builds that I felt were excellent starting points at different price points to build dedicated gaming PC's. These days those feel unnecessary given the wealth of tools out there that do a great job at highlighting various builds at various prices with even use cases, so rather than focusing on keeping those builds updated I will highlight a few that I like from PC Part Pickers excellent Build Guide.
I no longer recommend a $500 PC Build for gaming.. I think that dollars is better spent on an Xbox One X which will give a great 1080P/quasi 4k gaming experience at ~$450. (I've seen them as low as $399). So many games can be played with a controller that unless you are looking at dedicated PC type games you are better served with a console. That being said PC Part has some excellent budget builds that I approve.
Without further ado here is the site I recommend.
https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/
In the $750 range this is a good option.
https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/gfZxF...
You can't go wrong with a Ryzen 2600 paired with a 1660Ti which will give you strong 1080P performance. I don't love the case choice though and would recommend the excellent Phanteks case below for a few bucks more. Honestly the sub $50 case market isnt all that hot but the Phanteks surprisingly punches above its weight class.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/g2b...
In the $1500 range this is a good build:
https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/qfZxF...
Again you can't go wrong with the latest Ryzen 3 for an all around strong gaming and productivity/streaming system and matched with MSI and Corsair motherboard and memory is a good option.
I would go with a 2080 Super rather than the regular 2080 as for $699 its worth the extra $50-$60 for an entry level 4K gaming GPU with really strong 1440P performance.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/fpb...
I would also swap out the case again as well as the PSU for either Phantek or Corsair: In the $120-$130 range I love the Phanteks Enthoo Pro which is made with fancy RGB lights as well as non flashy versions.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/Tbh...
Slightly more expensive but overall a fantastic case is the Corsair Air 540 (I've lost count how many systems I've built with this case that will last years and years)
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/wgk...
For the Power Supply stick with Corsair, Seasonic, or Silverstone. There are many excellent power supplies to choose from, but at $120 or so go with a Corsair RM 850 and call it a day.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/jtm...
In general I've been buying Silicon Power SSD's and they are rock solid.. far cheaper than Samsung and in general almost as good from a speed and quality. Many of the lesser brands (including HP and Patriot) use the same chipset and silicon as Silicon Power and Inland so save some $$ and go with Silicon Power and/or Inland (your local MicroCenter might have a great deal on Inland)
When money is no object and you want the best 4K gaming currently this build is the way to go.
https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/8B6Mn...
Intel's top CPU for gaming the i9-9900K will still give you the absolute best performance for pure gaming so go with that.. and you will need the 2080Ti to push as many frames as currently possible. SLI/Crossfire is dead.. died with DirectX 11 as DirectX 12 introduced mGPU which should have been the holy grail for multiple GPU gaming but is completely dead from a developer support standpoint, that I've yet to see a single meaningful game get released that supports it.
I don't love the memory choice.. stick with Corsair or G.Skill even though that brand might be using good chips but why change what aint broke.
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/RDm...
Fractal is solid but see my above choice cases.. better overall.
That's it.. happy building!
BTW someone should sticky this.
And yet another peaceful thread transition, without needing to call in the D+D politicos or the FPS Army...
Thanks GameGuru!
I love that new thread smell.
Thanks, Gameguru!
Is this the new home of AIO Liquid cooling vs. Air Cooling?
/ducks
Good job on the image selection 
Is this the new home of AIO Liquid cooling vs. Air Cooling?
/ducks
Oil immersion in a small aquarium or bust.
Thanks, GG.
Very thankful GG. Wonderful resource for us.
Oil immersion in a small aquarium or bust.
Boolean error - think you meant.... AND bust.
Woohoo, thank you, GG!
peanut3141 wrote:Oil immersion in a small aquarium or bust.
Boolean error - think you meant.... AND bust.
Naw, the oil is not electrically conductive. Just make sure you pick one sufficiently thermally conductive or you'll have a bad time.
I wonder if Peanut oil would work? ...asking for a friend...
I wonder if Peanut oil would work? ...asking for a friend...
lol, that would be amazing, right up until it went rancid. I think pure mineral oil is the only viable option, for some definitions of viable.
The problem with mineral oil is that it creeps out along the cables and gets absolutely everywhere. It will creep up the *insides* of the cables, too. You need an exceptionally well-sealed system to make this work for any length of time.
Yay new thread! Thanks Gameguru!
Robear wrote:I wonder if Peanut oil would work? ...asking for a friend...
lol, that would be amazing, right up until it went rancid. I think pure mineral oil is the only viable option, for some definitions of viable.
Silicone oil should work, too. People use it to fill digital watches like G-Shocks.
So... With a sealed-loop water cooling system, how do you know if the water has slowly evaporated. I'm not seeing temp changes on the CPU, just curious...
So... With a sealed-loop water cooling system, how do you know if the water has slowly evaporated. I'm not seeing temp changes on the CPU, just curious...
I would guess the motor and pump will fail before the liquid (which isn’t “water”) evaporates.
It's not water? Huh. I sincerely thought it was.
It's not water? Huh. I sincerely thought it was.
Ethylene and propylene glycol are the most commonly used in AIO coolers.
I'm sure the custom loop crowd get up to all sorts of coolant hijinks.
Propylene glycol? Won't have to worry about ice formation, then...
When I was making my own loops, lo these many years ago, I just used water, and it had a real evaporation problem. It would slowly escape from that early tubing, so I had to be topping it up all the time. You also needed to dose the heck out of the water with some substance to kill off bacteria, or you'd end up with a horrible mess.
Propylene glycol sounds a ton better.
Why did we move to a new thread? Why was there a possibility of politics shenanigans?
I was joking about the politics. As to why we moved, well, Gameguru didn't want to maintain the old one, so I figured I'd try to put together a new one, but I wanted to find out whether people were into it, and then GG started up the new one, so.... Yay!
But since GG created the new one, isn't he the one that will have to maintain it?
Hey, I just tell the stories, I don't make them up.
I lost my second Enermax AIO Cooler for my AMD ThreadRipper system over the weekend. This was their newer LiqTech TR4 II 360.. I had the previous version as well and that died in a similar fashion. The pump or tubes fail/clog to the point where it can't cool effectively and the system shutdowns from CPU thermal overheating.
It's a shame because in theory Enermax makes many of the designs that other companies rebadge as their own but both myself and others on the interweb have had similar failures with the TR4 specific AIO coolers. I've never had a single failure from Corsair on any of my AMD or Intel setups so this particular design seems to have issues.
I might try CoolerMaster but reviews are similarly bad on their TR4 AIO with all sorts of problems with cheap plastic parts used to mount the pump to poor performance.
The lack of good cooling options on the TR4 platform make me question waiting for the 3rd Gen upgrade from AMD unless they update the platform so motherboard makers can do something different as well. The few air coolers that you can buy all have problems either blocking PCIe ports and/or blocking memory slots so there aren't good options there. The physical size of the CPU mount and how close it is to the 8 memory slots and first PCIe slot across all the X399 motherboards on the market are a huge problem.
The market isnt big enough for someone like Corsair to make a dedicated TR4 AIO and I couldnt get good cooling out of the mount that Corsair offers to make their H100 or H115 "work" with TR4.
I think the upcoming 3950X might be a better option for those of us looking for a ton of cores to run multiple VM's affordably. The downside is AM4 stops at 64GB of ram whereas TR4 goes to 128GB.
>The few air coolers that you can buy all have problems either blocking PCIe ports and/or blocking memory slots
The air coolers I've used that block the RAM slots have only done so for high-profile DIMMs, making them impossible to use. But it's normally possible to extract and insert regular-height DIMMs, which is the actual spec for how tall a DIMM should be. (the big-finned ones are outside their assigned space limits). Adding and removing low-profile DIMMs is more painful than doing it without the cooler, but normally possible. I avoid high-profile DIMMs as a direct consequence.
Fooling with RAM is something I hardly ever do anymore, normally only on initial system install, so I don't think of it as a major problem. An extra annoying ten minutes of maintenance work once every three or four years strikes me as well worth it to be sure that the CPU cooler won't fail.
Blocking PCIe slots, though, that's really bad. That's an area I do mess with a lot. And TR4 boards take a lot more RAM, so you're much more likely to be visiting that area for expansion. If it's ten minutes of extra pain every six months, rather than every three or four years, many of us would, I think, find that less acceptable. And if you've got a big investment in double-height RAM, then that won't work, either.
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