Post Your Computer Build

Discussion in 'Geek Cave: Computers, Tablets, HT, Phones, Games' started by The Alchemist, Oct 8, 2015.

  1. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    You are in an entirely different league, with very different needs to mine. And I think you're going to be spending a lot more money!
     
  2. fraggler

    fraggler A Happy & Busy Life

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    Yeah, I might be able to write off part of the build since the 3D rendering and VR simulations are some things I am exploring for work. But I still have to spend the money.
     
  3. FallingObjects

    FallingObjects Pay It Forward

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    [​IMG]

    Bought one of these and spent one day sanding, staining, and re-finishing it, as well as getting myself a dual monitor arm mount off amazon. For the price the Ikea tabletop is nicer than I expected - it's solid wood and you can do a lot with that if you have the time.

    https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/gerton-oddvald-table-beech-black-s29870932

    https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07T4KB7H4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

    Decided to go the more cable management route for a cleaner setup. Not super happy about where the keyboard cable ended up being but anything else looked too janky.

    Pretty damn happy with the result, 5 hours of zip ties, tape, measuring one and cutting twice later I have a fairly clean setup!

    Total cost for the new desk, stain + finish, and the monitor arm ended up being just a touch over $300 CAD after tax.
     
  4. Dash

    Dash Friend

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    I'm selling my budget build and starting a new build on Christmas break (teacher).

    So far I have:
    R2600
    MSI Tomahawk
    32gb (8gb x 4 dimms)
    600w EVGA gold psu
    512 gb m.2

    Need case, GPU and monitor.

    I'm thinking one of the dark series Antec cases and an ultrawide 2560x1080 144 hz Sceptre monitor.

    GPU is where I'm stuck. It seems like nothing is a good deal. I was pretty set on the rx5700 but stuttering/driver issues have me worried. $300 would be my limit. I am having a hard time not snagging a used RX 580 for a $100 and waiting till 3000 series Nvidia hits the market.
     
  5. chakku

    chakku Friend

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    Do you really need 32GB of RAM? I'd drop that to 16GB and pick up a 3600 instead if you can, already see them at $200 on Amazon. Can't comment on the GPU side of things since I haven't had an AMD GPU since the RX 480 but I've had almost non-stop issues with my 1080 Ti and now 2080 Super RMA replacement, especially with DPC latency and drivers being crap so I think you'll find that stuttering/driver issues may be isolated or unavoidable cases for both vendors.
     
  6. Dash

    Dash Friend

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    Thanks for the advice. I already have the 2600. I paid under $100 new.
     
  7. FallingObjects

    FallingObjects Pay It Forward

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    The 1660ti/1660 Super are both very good value for GPU right now if you can't wait for the (unconfirmed) 30XX series in 2020. Unless you're gaming on 1440p/144hz, either of those cards is a solid choice.

    But then you also run into the issue of "well the new ____ is only 8 months away so..." and end up waiting some more.

    Raytracing is a gimmick still and I wouldn't recommend buying any cards on raytracing merits alone until more games start to adopt it, and the technology doesn't hit your performance quite so hard.
     
  8. WhiteNoise

    WhiteNoise Facebook Friend

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    Rig 1: Intel Core i7 7800X @ 4.7GHz / Corsair Hydro Series H115i 280mm / MSI Gaming M7 ACK X299 / CORSAIR Vengeance LED 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 3466 / EVGA GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 iCX / Intel 535 Series 2.5" 480GB SATA // WD Blue 1TB SSD // Radeon R7 240GB SSD // Seagate 1TB, and 4TB storage drives / Creative Sound Blaster ZX / Corsair HX1000i / Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 case / Windows 10

    Rig 2: Intel Core i5 6600K @ 4.6GHz / Corsair Hydo Series H110iGTX / MSI Gaming Z170A GAMING M5 / CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 3000 / EVGA GTX 1080 FE / WD Blue 3D NAND 500GB SATA III 6 Gb/s M.2 2280 SSD / Corsair TX850 / Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 / Win 10

    I have a few other computers:
    i5 2500k / 16GB DDR3 / GTX980 FE / Corsair water loop / 480GB SSD / 4TB HDD
    i5 7400 / 8GB DDR4 / RX560 / 2TB HDD
    One more that I don't remember the specs of but an HP workstation with an i5 in it.
     
  9. Dash

    Dash Friend

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    Quick update on R2600 build

    I snagged a Vega 56 for a stupid cheap on Reddit.

    Looks my budgetish 1080p 100+frames build is done.
     
  10. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    After assembling 8 desktop PCs over the past 15 years, I am done. It's no longer any fun. I will never go back to assembling my own PCs again.

    When I started there was incredible value of taking off the shelf parts and assembling your own PC for a fraction of what it would cost from a pre-built manufacturer. Not only could you control what parts to pick, but you also had more options when it came to overclocking. More performance, more cash savings. All one needs to know is how to plug in some cables, screw in the motherboard and CPU cooler, and whatever other components. The simplicity made it an easy suggestion for those that wanted to assemble a good gaming PC while not spending a fortune.

    But I'm no longer the DIY-zealot I used to be.

    I'm not sure what happened to the market, maybe its still reeling in the aftermath of the bitcoin mining craze which sent GPU prices thru the roof. But if you can find one during a holiday sale with some employer discounts, you can get a pre-built with similar specs at the same cost of DIY or a little less. It's very competitive now.

    It's honestly a huge relief. The fact I no longer have to spend weeks "researching" various components and the best brands, what works with what, benchmarking, dealing with DOA parts, and all that crap. These pre-built companies outsource OEM parts from various places like MSI, ASUS, etc.

    But the fact I can just select a few options from a pre-built site, have it delivered to my door already assembled and all I have to do is unbox it, plug a power cord in and other accessories, I'm up in running in no time at all.

    I just love that convenience and the hassle of DIY just doesn't make it worth it anymore.

    I can still overclock CPU, RAM and GPU to whatever I want. You don't get a full range of options in the BIOS, but I never used most of them anyway.

    Everything has been running smoothly without a hiccup. Windows 10 ain't a bad OS, certainly an upgrade from Windows 7.

    Something you guys who might get tired of assembling your PCs to consider.
     
  11. chakku

    chakku Friend

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    Prebuilts have come a long way, but you still need to be careful with who you buy them from. There are a whole heap of corners to be cut with prebuilt systems (PSUs, motherboards, low speed memory, using low quality - often times worse than reference card - blower fan GPUs, cheap cooling solutions particularly when advertising liquid cooling, etc) but if you can find the right one at the right price the additional cost for the convenience is definitely hard to beat.

    You can often feel more comfortable with a PC you haven't built because you don't know what potential problems there could be and haven't been through the troubleshooting steps, especially when overclocking. It's nice to have a 'clean slate' where you can go and install software and set the OS up how you like without the worry of something potentially not working because of an unstable memory overclock.

    While it is possible to overclock a lot of these prebuilts (unless they give you an Intel motherboard with a chipset that locks the multiplier) I'm not sure many prebuilt vendors will provide warranty or cover for overclocking yourself.

    I would argue that you still need to do some research on components to ensure you get your moneys worth and have good compatibility with the things you're wanting to do with the computer, like if certain video games you play run better with a certain GPU vendor, if you're very worried about security vulnerabilities maybe avoiding Intel processors, etc.
     
  12. penguins

    penguins Friend, formerly known as fp627

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    Will SBAF be able to shed light on this issue? Built own computer Dec 2018/Jan 2019:

    - AMD 2700x overclocked to about 3.7Ghz (12%). Voltages and other settings adjusted accordingly but never raised to anything that would damage transistors as far as I know (stayed under 1.4V IIRC, which AMD themselves have said you can raise voltage to w/o issue, currently around 1.33-1.34V).
    - 32GB Ram Overclocked to 3200Mhz (per rating on box, yes I clocked according to insturctions for that particular die and timings are slower than rating on box).
    - Computer works fine at all times. 24 hours straight of Prime 95 for 3 separate runs, multiple passes of memtest, and furmark for 2 hours. No issues on any test at "stable" setting. Temperature peaks at 80C on CPU during stress testing (85 max per AMD), peaked at 73C with P95, idles at 38-39C in the middle of summer, closer to 36C right now in winter, average when I play games or do something intensive is about 50-55C (I don't play anything super new + taxing).

    Issue: Sometimes this happens 3-4x in 1-2 hours, sometimes this won't happen for a few months. Use computer, anything from idle in windows to browsing SBAF to playing a game or listening to music. Computer will suddenly and completely freeze, doesn't respond to ANY commands.

    Do I need to dial back overclocking in CPU and RAM (especially timing and settings)? Or is it something else?
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2019
  13. penguins

    penguins Friend, formerly known as fp627

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    On different note have a 27" ASUS monitor, model MG28UQ. A little less than 1 year later already have a dead pixel middle of screen. Dreading warranty replacement on this due to last experience. Wouldn't be surprised if a-holes decide to leave me with no monitor for 2 weeks:

    Had a crappy experience with ASUS support last time I needed the video card changed for a hardware defect. Took 1 month from beginning to end when I finally received a new card (all parts purchased at Micro Center):
    - No phone number for support (like WTF????? SERIOUSLY???).
    - Took them 2 weeks of back and forth emails to authorize RMA because their system didn't tie the emails together for the different support people they had handling my case. They asked the same basic questions over and over like shipping info, name, and basic description of issue. Would take them 1 business day AFTER to respond to my answers each time. 2 weeks before one of them finally forwarded to an engineer and engineer immediately authorized RMA for obvious HW issue. Keep in mind if they had a phone number this whole issue would have been resolved in 5 minutes.
    - 4 days to ship to them with slow shipping pre-paid, 4-5 days to replace, 4 days to ship back (again with slow shipping), would not ship a new card in advance after issue confirmed despite issue confirmed on $500+ item.
    - Refused to put me through to a manager and continued with email chain. This is the first time I've ever had to ask for a manager with a general service issue like this but spending $500 to be left without a usable PC for a month through this whole process is utter BS.
    - Whole process reeked of penny pinching.

    The only reason I still consider ASUS products after this is because on average, I have found that their products perform a little better vs competitors for the same/similar pricing. Would not be first choice though
     
  14. m17xr2b

    m17xr2b Friend

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    Had my gaming pc since 2016.
    6700K on Z390 MB
    32GB 2400 ram CL14
    SLI 1070
    HX750i PSU
    BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 3
    512 NVME, 512 Sata SSD, 3TB HDD
    many LEDs
    Corsair 400C case

    Most of my gaming comprises of Heroes 3, Disciples 2,Diablo 2,Warcraft 3, not exactly frame killers.

    The recent need for a workstation capable of running an enterprise server had me reuse my PC and had a chat with Santa for an early gift.
    I didn't really care to follow the developments of the market but I've been pleasantly surprised by the enhancements one can get now.

    New workstation pc from the ashes of my old one:
    AMD 3900X 12 cores/24 threads on Aorus X570 Elite(12+2 phase VRM)
    64GB 3200 CL16 ram
    Single 1070
    HX750i PSU
    Stock AMD cooler(waiting for the adaptor bits for the BeQuiet)
    256NVME boot, 1TB NVME Samsung 970 for VM, 1TB sandisk and 512 samsung pro SSD, 7TB + 3TB HDD
    Corsair 400C case
    still many LEDs, the most hilarious colourful workstation
    [​IMG]

    The main VM using VMWare is running 20 cores and 50GB Ram, the compile times have reduces to almost nothing, much more snappy, it's hard to believe a quad core is ancient technology now.

    So happy to be back on AMD, my previous one was a Duron. The stock cooler can barely keep the temps down and is always ramping up, quite noisy and not ideal with MySphere. The Dark Rock Pro 3 can handle 250W TDP, more than enough for the 3900X. I don't plan on any overclocking but will increase the power and temperature targets to let the standard processes push the CPU as far as it can.
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2019
  15. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    You're wrong about the liquid cooling. They pretty much come from one manufacturer:

    https://www.asetek.com/gamingenthusiasts/diy-partners
    https://www.asetek.com/gamingenthusiasts/prebuilt-pc-partners

    When it comes to PSUs, take a look at this list:

    http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/PSUReviewDatabase.html

    Click on each brand to see who the OEM is. I strictly bought Seasonic or Seasonic-rebranded PSUs as they had good warranties and were pretty reliable, except as soon as the warranty expired, the PSUs went bad and started taking out all the components with it.

    It would be nice to see who the OEM is for pre-built.

    Regardless, it makes zero sense for any pre-built manufacturer to take risks on using garbage parts because the failure rates would be too high and it would show. Especially on PSUs which are critical. I think people see a few failures and assume the parts in the pre-builts are no good, when they do not take into account the volume of how many of them are sold. How many thousands of laptops have been sold in the same line but maybe 15 of them went up in smoke?

    And you need to consider the reputation. If there is a widespread failure rate, that can severely damage the reputation of the brand in the eyes of consumers. Remember OCZ SSDs? They had such a high failure rate, nobody ever trusted them again (we are talking over 50% in returns on certain models!).

    "Cut corners" how? People say this a lot when it comes to pre-builts but they never have any evidence to back it up. Motherboards come from OEMs like MSI or ASUS. You can select high speed memory (with good timings) at checkout. This is where companies like Dell can make their money because you can't swap out memory sticks without having the same RAM timings, which is usually custom per brand spec.

    The blower GPU situation is mostly the fault of Nvidia's chips that are getting wayyyy too hot for blowers. It's the same shit with Intels chips. They just keep getting hotter and hotter every generation. It's crazy that Nvidia keeps using blowers for their reference cards when they are bottlenecking performance. And how many of those founder edition cards have nothing but issues down the road due to the amount of heat?

    Depends, if they offer an unlocked chip, they should provide the software for overclocking that even a dummy can do it and a warranty to cover it. But it's not like you can go nuts overclocking without running into instant instability issues.

    The only thing I did with my pre-built was a fresh clean re-install of Windows 10, downloaded Intel XTU for overclocking memory/CPU, Afterburner for GPU, etc. Most of the pre-built software is trash but thankfully you don't need it.

    Lol you like having a rave in your room?
     
  16. LetMeBeFrank

    LetMeBeFrank Won't tell anyone my name is actually Francis

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    Wife bought me a new cooler for the 3700X, should be much quieter and cooler than the stock wraith prism. I bought her a SSD for her 7 year old Asus laptop, which has an i7, and other than being gimped by a HDD is still excellent for her needs.

    [​IMG]
     
  17. elmoe

    elmoe Friend

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    If you can run Prime 95 for 24+h and not consistently repeat the issue it's unlikely to be related to the OCing. More likely to be a faulty contact somewhere that causes it when a particularly bad vibration / movement messes things up. Take everything apart, clean all dust and grime, put it all back together, see if it happens again.

    If it does, the best way to troubleshoot is to remove all but the barebone components/peripherals and add them back in one at a time until the issue comes back. In your case since it isn't consistent I would instead remove components one at a time until you can no longer reproduce, starting with RAM sticks.
     
  18. wormcycle

    wormcycle Friend

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    The only problem I had with every pre-built is the noise level. Maybe they improved the stock fans and CPU coolers but in every PC I bought so far I would change fans and CPU cooler sooner or later. And PSU most of the time.
     
  19. RobS

    RobS RobS? More like RobDiarrhea.

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    I hear ya on the fans. Even with the liquid cooling AIO, the fans do get loud under serious load. Then if you have a blower card, more fan noise on top of that. The PC builds I've done, they can be whisper quiet all the way up to jet engine-like if I crank the speeds.

    But I haven't bought a pre-built PC in over 15 years, so maybe things have significantly improved since then. I dunno.

    Swapping out the PSU is a good idea if you are going a multi-card route or just want more assurance knowing what's under the hood.
     
  20. abisai2

    abisai2 Friend

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    Whelp, decided I would use the better part of yesterday and today replacing the enclosure for my PC and upgrade the cooling solution at the same time. Here is the end result.

    Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic XL - White
    Asus Crosshair Hero VI
    AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
    64GB G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4-3000
    NVidia RTX2080 Founders Edition
    NVMe Samsung 950 Pro 256GB (boot/system), Samsung 850 Pro 512GB, Samsung 860 EVO 500GB, Crucial MX300 750GB x 2
    Hitachi 4TB, Toshiba 4TB
    Cooler Master Masterliquid ML360r RGB
    Corsair LL120 x 6
    Corsair Commander Pro

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     

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