Any PC Gamers Around?

[Atmo]

Originally Posted by Mr.ac

On thing I would add is go with the M.2 ssd. Get two one small one 100-200gb for boot ups. And another 1tb for storage. That's way faster than 2.5" ssd.
I have a single 1tb M.2 ssd and it takes just 35 seconds from off to watching a YouTube vid.

Oh that ram kit, that CL speed you want something faster than 19. If you can CL 14 speed is the way to go, but 15/16 speeds are better than CL 19. (Lower is better).

This, what I did for boot, storage, and memory. Memory price/performance gets severe below CL 15/16 but there's affordable server 15/16 memory with lifetime warranty that's close enough to 14 for most users.

Samsung SSD's get you full access to their Magician app.

https://www.samsung.com/semiconducto...umer/magician/

I've had liquid and air coolers. Both are effective. Better video card and case fans are very quiet and controllable with MSI Afterburner but I don't stress hardware much beyond F1 2019, Prepar3D and 4K video rendering. I found quality thermal paste properly applied at least as important as cooling hardware.

FS 2020 might be different but it's looking like the heavy lifting will come from the cloud.

[Locky]

Originally Posted by Monkeyleh

I play Witcher 3 but not that often since I'm quite busy with my auto shop.

Played it several times but understood that it is not my type of games. I prefer something like WoW. It is interesting that if someone gets into our social circle but they don't play WoW sooner or later they disappear from our radars. It is quite normal to discuss strategies of accomplishing missions, shops to get gold etc and if the person is not aware of all those things then they can't be a part of our social network. I guess that no other game has similar effect!

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Spuds

I upgraded to an all-in-one water cooler myself about 2.5 years ago so I could start overclock my cpu. Apparently a top-end air cooler is just as good and less expensive, but they are just so ugly IMO. I did have to adapt my drive bay to make it work though. And by that I mean I no longer have a CD drive in my PC.

The PC my son and I built as his undgrad graduation present last June has a water cooler in it, but I'm not sure it's more efficient than a good set of fans, not to mention they have fans anyway.

I agree it looks better and more "hi tech", but as mentioned earlier may computer is usually out of 90% of sight. The way my desk is setup, it sits behind the left of my three monitors.

I also don't typically overclock my computers either. I have done that in the past but in recent years have preferred to just leave well enough alone.

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

The PC my son and I built as his undgrad graduation present last June has a water cooler in it, but I'm not sure it's more efficient than a good set of fans, not to mention they have fans anyway.

I agree it looks better and more "hi tech", but as mentioned earlier may computer is usually out of 90% of sight. The way my desk is setup, it sits behind the left of my three monitors.

I also don't typically overclock my computers either. I have done that in the past but in recent years have preferred to just leave well enough alone.

i'm very similar. though the small advantage that water cooling has is minimizing fan noise. in a quieter setting, it can be preferable to move and/or consolidate the heat to a radiator and a few fans instead of multiple fans to blow on the heatsinks, and multiple fans to direct airflow through the case

i'm not convinced that there's any thermal advantage until one goes into overclocking though.

[Atmo]

Originally Posted by soundman98

i'm very similar. though the small advantage that water cooling has is minimizing fan noise. in a quieter setting, it can be preferable to move and/or consolidate the heat to a radiator and a few fans instead of multiple fans to blow on the heatsinks, and multiple fans to direct airflow through the case

i'm not convinced that there's any thermal advantage until one goes into overclocking though.

My air-cooled Dell XPS desktop has only one large case exhaust fan in the rear and temps under load are always in the green. Clever air ducting there.

The 850W PS has a fan but it's silent.

It also helped lower CPU temp and fan noise when I upgraded to an Nvidia FE card with a ducted fan that dumps hot air out the back of the case instead of inside of it like most other cards do. Apparently there's a tradeoff if the card is OC'd and needs max cooling but I haven't needed to boost default setting for what I do. I can barely hear the card fan under high load, it's far enough away from the desk that it isn't bad.

About my thermal paste comment earlier, it was worth -4ºC at idle, pretty good for an easy job. Others might do better with conductive paste but fearing fire, I went with non-conductive.

The air cooled XPS runs cooler, quieter and better than my former Alienware Aurora with its bunch of fans and water cooling that sounded like a Dyson under load. The case lights were cool though, but I don't really miss them as much as my nephews.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Atmo

My air-cooled Dell XPS desktop has only one large case exhaust fan in the rear and temps under load are always in the green. Clever air ducting there. .

My current primary computer is a Dell XPS 8300 i7-2600 and you are correct it is whisper quiet, even under load. I got a steal of a deal on it in (oh my God I just looked) 2011!

It's had 3 OS upgrades, 3 video card upgrades, and is on it's 3rd power supply (had to upgrade the PSU when I upgraded the video card the first time).

It is just starting to not be able to keep up with modern games, although I did play Just Cause 4 on it with no issues at HD. It might even be able to keep going if I could do a GPU upgrade but it has a BIOS not UEFI so no current card will work with it. I had to buy a specific card last time to get around that, not all worked at that point.

Just goes to show how processor has finally reached a point where it isn't much of a factor. It's all about the GPU.

It's definitely time to move on though. I've never gone more than 3 years with a computer before this one.

[Atmo]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

It's definitely time to move on though. I've never gone more than 3 years with a computer before this one.

That gives me hope that I can continue upgrading my almost 5 year old XPS 8900 i7 6700K for a few more years. Like you, 3 years or less was the usual holding period before this one. It still benchmarks well with all the upgrades I've done and will keep it while Dell SupportAssist pushes free updates.

I get the best deals buying New category recent overstock stuff from the Dell Outlet site with discount coupons. A little too hard to resist at times, can't check there too often or I'll get in trouble with the CFO.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Atmo

I get the best deals buying New category recent overstock stuff from the Dell Outlet site with discount coupons. A little too hard to resist at times, can't check there too often or I'll get in trouble with the CFO.

Yep, when I don't roll my own, I usually get it from the Dell Outlet. The XPS line (which is basically the same as Alienware without the fancy upcharge marketing) is underrated in my opinion.

I go back with Dell to the days they were "PC Limited".

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Yep, when I don't roll my own, I usually get it from the Dell Outlet. The XPS line (which is basically the same as Alienware without the fancy upcharge marketing) is underrated in my opinion.

I go back with Dell to the days they were "PC Limited".

I considered an XPS for my work laptop. All signs pointed to that for a good consumer-grade model. I'm sure a top of the line XPS would have worked, but I wound up going with a Precision because holy crap are they nice.

Edit... Oh you are all still talking desktops... Ignore me

[Cole]

Originally Posted by Spuds

I considered an XPS for my work laptop. All signs pointed to that for a good consumer-grade model. I'm sure a top of the line XPS would have worked, but I wound up going with a Precision because holy crap are they nice.

Edit... Oh you are all still talking desktops... Ignore me

I have an XPS 9570. It’s awesome. But has been collecting dust as of late since I am no longer travelling for work.

I’m now able to spend more time with this big boy.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[soundman98]

Originally Posted by Atmo

My air-cooled Dell XPS desktop has only one large case exhaust fan in the rear and temps under load are always in the green. Clever air ducting there.

i wish more cases did ducting like dell has always done. it's really not hard!

[iLuveKetchup]

Problem with Dell is that their advance settings are locked in BIOS and the generic motherboard.

I want to build a new PC but want to avoid products that are made in China. Which makes it impossible at this point, since most parts are made there.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by iLuveKetchup

Problem with Dell is that their advance settings are locked in BIOS and the generic motherboard.

True. I usually resign myself to not being able to do a lot of tuning to any PC I buy commercially because of that fact. It's a trade-off.

Originally Posted by iLuveKetchup

I want to build a new PC but want to avoid products that are made in China. Which makes it impossible at this point, since most parts are made there.

Yea, the US has absolutely no manufacturing facilities for this type of stuff, which is a real issue. I'm hoping some of the after effects of COVID-19 is you see some of this coming back onshore, but I doubt it, at least not unless we start producing rare earth metals again.

[Captain Snooze]

Doesn't look like as assassin's creed game to me.