New computer first world problems

[Evoex]

I built a fairly expensive computer in late 2013. It was like $2500-3000 at the time (i7 3770, gtx780), but it's been solid ever since. I can run all my racing games for the simulator on my triple monitors at 5760x1080 and keep around 75fps no problem.

I keep thinking about upgrading but haven't really needed to. I want to switch to all SSD storage so I might use that as an excuse to build another.

The problem is my gaming was competitive, FPS and then MMO's. You need to squeeze every frame out so you`re constantly upgrading components. Think i bought my first SSD in 2009 or something, the cost was ridiculous but the load times gave me an edge. /shrug

 

[48Connor]

The problem is my gaming was competitive, FPS and then MMO's. You need to squeeze every frame out so you`re constantly upgrading components. Think i bought my first SSD in 2009 or something, the cost was ridiculous but the load times gave me an edge. /shrug

Yeah I was better with the stick than the mouse, so I usually stuck with console. I tried COD4 on PC for a bit but sucked at it.

I remember thinking I got a steal of a deal on an SSD at $1/gb back in 2012/3. Now a 1TB M.2 is like $350.

Somewhat related, the first SD card I bought was 1GB and was on a boxing day for $60, down from $100. At the time it was a great deal, but when you look bad its just sad haha

 

[DJM]

Slightly sketchy. Ebay account since 2002 (good), 5 feedbacks in last year (ok), all feedback is for buying items (bad), no pics of actual cards (bad), sold 10 today (bad). My money is on hacked account.

Thanks for the heads up, almost pulled the trigger.

Trying to put together a budget gaming computer for my mate's young son. Divorce left them skint, so trying to help out.

 

[daught]

Does it even matter is it's scetchy? eBay buyer protection is good, no?

 

[GreyGhost]

Does it even matter is it's scetchy? eBay buyer protection is good, no?

Sometimes. There are ways to game the system. In the past, sellers would open a complaint against the buyer. Ebay system only allowed a single complaint so that prevented buyers from opening a complaint when they got scammed. I havent used ebay in many years so im not sure if the system has improved.

 

[Baggsy]

Middle son got a job. He's going with a full AMD setup.

 

[GreyGhost]

Middle son got a job. He's going with a full AMD setup.

Does the job require the computer or fund the computer? Looks like decent choices.

 

[Baggsy]

Does the job require the computer or fund the computer? Looks like decent choices.

Fund the computer.

We put most of the hardware together yesterday.

Spent an hour troubleshooting the video today, before she'd boot up and take an O.S.
Then we went out and bought a wireless NIC, since he hadn't anticipated how he'd connect.
Still haven't sorted out the fan lights, since the connectors don't seem compatible with the motherboard.

 

[Xhumeka]

the wraith prism LED cpu cooler that comes with the ryzen's sure are purrrrrdy... I get mesmerized starting at those funky colours!!!

 

[TwistedKestrel]

the wraith prism LED cpu cooler that comes with the ryzen's sure are purrrrrdy... I get mesmerized starting at those funky colours!!!

Top tip: you have more control over the blinky lights if you use a USB header for the LED connection than if you use an RGB header on the motherboard

 

[jc100]

Been a while since I got a new laptop and my surface pro 3 has crap battery life right now. Reviews seem to be all over the place. What's the lightest laptop with a digital pen and touchscreen with nice long battery life that you can get these days? not an Apple, since they don’t have touchscreens and digitizers. Use will mostly be for presentations but I will also need to manipulate images and perhaps video too. Small chance I’ll need to use some decent processor power for scientific molecular modelling at times too. I don’t really care about screen size, as long as it’s not a postage stamp.

Bonus marks if the laptop doesn’t come with a mass of useless bloatware.

I've had a Lenovo business model before (5y ago?) and that had a lovely keyboard and was impressive but weighed a lot.

 

[Relax]

Life was simple when my son was on consoles, then he discovered PC gaming and it's been a struggle to keep up on a budget. Seems every time we upgrade, it's just a matter of time until he asks for something else. I started him on an i5-6400 / 1TB HDD / 8GB RAM / Windows 10 and added a small SSD boot drive and a GTX950. About a year ago, I upgraded it to a Gigabyte GTX1080 Turbo OC along with an EVGA 750W power supply to power it. This Christmas I got him an Asus VG248QG 24" 165Hz 1ms GTG TN LED G-Sync gaming monitor. At least every step of the way he said there was a noticeable improvement. But now he's asking to upgrade the CPU to an i7. He's playing Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p, not sure how maxed out the settings are. I see frame rates as low as in the 70's, but as high as 130 depending on what's going on. Is there any tuning I can do to take better advantage of what we have, or is CPU the bottleneck now? I did see some Dell sales during boxing day with the following configuration for $900:

i7 9700
Windows 10 Home
Intel UHD Graphics 630 with shared graphics memory
256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
12GB, DDR4, 2666MHz

to which we would transfer the GTX, power supply, and HDD. But I'd rather not spend $900 if it's not going to make a huge difference.

By the way, the games are installed on the HDD, not the SSD. I always thought it wouldn't make a difference during gameplay, and only for load times, or is that only on the consoles? Also, my son wants to live stream using openbroadcaster(?). My internet connection is only 70 down / 10 up. Would this be sufficient?

 

[GreyGhost]

Life was simple when my son was on consoles, then he discovered PC gaming and it's been a struggle to keep up on a budget. Seems every time we upgrade, it's just a matter of time until he asks for something else. I started him on an i5-6400 / 1TB HDD / 8GB RAM / Windows 10 and added a small SSD boot drive and a GTX950. About a year ago, I upgraded it to a Gigabyte GTX1080 Turbo OC along with an EVGA 750W power supply to power it. This Christmas I got him an Asus VG248QG 24" 165Hz 1ms GTG TN LED G-Sync gaming monitor. At least every step of the way he said there was a noticeable improvement. But now he's asking to upgrade the CPU to an i7. He's playing Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p, not sure how maxed out the settings are. I see frame rates as low as in the 70's, but as high as 130 depending on what's going on. Is there any tuning I can do to take better advantage of what we have, or is CPU the bottleneck now? I did see some Dell sales during boxing day with the following configuration for $900:

i7 9700
Windows 10 Home
Intel UHD Graphics 630 with shared graphics memory
256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
12GB, DDR4, 2666MHz

to which we would transfer the GTX, power supply, and HDD. But I'd rather not spend $900 if it's not going to make a huge difference.

By the way, the games are installed on the HDD, not the SSD. I always thought it wouldn't make a difference during gameplay, and only for load times, or is that only on the consoles? Also, my son wants to live stream using openbroadcaster(?). My internet connection is only 70 down / 10 up. Would this be sufficient?

Watch your cpu/gpu usage graphs during games. If the CPU is not spending most of the time at 100%, that is probably not your bottleneck (this should work fine for an i5, but it isn't that simple as the core count of processors continues to climb).

 

[Baggsy]

the wraith prism LED cpu cooler that comes with the ryzen's sure are purrrrrdy... I get mesmerized starting at those funky colours!!!

Shh, if you look closely at the picture, we replaced it with a plain hyper 212 Evo.

 

[Baggsy]

Life was simple when my son was on consoles, then he discovered PC gaming and it's been a struggle to keep up on a budget. Seems every time we upgrade, it's just a matter of time until he asks for something else. I started him on an i5-6400 / 1TB HDD / 8GB RAM / Windows 10 and added a small SSD boot drive and a GTX950. About a year ago, I upgraded it to a Gigabyte GTX1080 Turbo OC along with an EVGA 750W power supply to power it. This Christmas I got him an Asus VG248QG 24" 165Hz 1ms GTG TN LED G-Sync gaming monitor. At least every step of the way he said there was a noticeable improvement. But now he's asking to upgrade the CPU to an i7. He's playing Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p, not sure how maxed out the settings are. I see frame rates as low as in the 70's, but as high as 130 depending on what's going on. Is there any tuning I can do to take better advantage of what we have, or is CPU the bottleneck now? I did see some Dell sales during boxing day with the following configuration for $900:

i7 9700
Windows 10 Home
Intel UHD Graphics 630 with shared graphics memory
256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
12GB, DDR4, 2666MHz

to which we would transfer the GTX, power supply, and HDD. But I'd rather not spend $900 if it's not going to make a huge difference.

By the way, the games are installed on the HDD, not the SSD. I always thought it wouldn't make a difference during gameplay, and only for load times, or is that only on the consoles? Also, my son wants to live stream using openbroadcaster(?). My internet connection is only 70 down / 10 up. Would this be sufficient?

I'll ask my kid how games were on my spare computer that he was using. It has a really, really, really old CPU, but a 1060 Ti GPU and not much ram.

In the meantime, wait and see if 油井緋色 comments.

 

[TwistedKestrel]

Shh, if you look closely at the picture, we replaced it with a plain hyper 212 Evo.

I have a strong distaste for the 212 Evo when you consider they've been making it for about a decade and it still retails for over $40. Plus the Wraith Prism performs pretty much the same!

Edit: I definitely already said this in the thread, sorry

 

[GreyGhost]

I have a strong distaste for the 212 Evo when you consider they've been making it for about a decade and it still retails for over $40. Plus the Wraith Prism performs pretty much the same!

Edit: I definitely already said this in the thread, sorry

I wanted the spire to work on my 1700 (and it did for stock clocks), but for overclocking I had to get something better to keep temps under control and get the speed up a bit. With current Ryzen basically running as fast as possible out of the box, I will probably try stock cooler again on the next build before I give Noctua more money.

 

[TwistedKestrel]

Wraith Stealth < Wraith Spire < Wraith Prism. If you're comparing the Evo 212 to a Wraith Spire, then I would say the 212 is substantially better

 

[KLR Junkie]

Life was simple when my son was on consoles, then he discovered PC gaming and it's been a struggle to keep up on a budget. Seems every time we upgrade, it's just a matter of time until he asks for something else. I started him on an i5-6400 / 1TB HDD / 8GB RAM / Windows 10 and added a small SSD boot drive and a GTX950. About a year ago, I upgraded it to a Gigabyte GTX1080 Turbo OC along with an EVGA 750W power supply to power it. This Christmas I got him an Asus VG248QG 24" 165Hz 1ms GTG TN LED G-Sync gaming monitor. At least every step of the way he said there was a noticeable improvement. But now he's asking to upgrade the CPU to an i7. He's playing Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p, not sure how maxed out the settings are. I see frame rates as low as in the 70's, but as high as 130 depending on what's going on. Is there any tuning I can do to take better advantage of what we have, or is CPU the bottleneck now? I did see some Dell sales during boxing day with the following configuration for $900:

i7 9700
Windows 10 Home
Intel UHD Graphics 630 with shared graphics memory
256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
12GB, DDR4, 2666MHz

to which we would transfer the GTX, power supply, and HDD. But I'd rather not spend $900 if it's not going to make a huge difference.

By the way, the games are installed on the HDD, not the SSD. I always thought it wouldn't make a difference during gameplay, and only for load times, or is that only on the consoles? Also, my son wants to live stream using openbroadcaster(?). My internet connection is only 70 down / 10 up. Would this be sufficient?

As has been suggested, check your performance graphs to see where the bottleneck is during gameplay. It shouldn't be the graphics card. A 1080 should be more than sufficient for 1080p gaming for at least another couple of years. FWIW, 70fps is extremely playable and it might not be worth spending several hundred dollars to get to 144+ fps.

If you do want to upgrade, and if it is the CPU that requires upgrading, you can do a lot better than that Dell system. You're best bet is to just replace the components that need replacing. The i5-6400 uses the LGA 1151 socket motherboard, which severely limits your upgrade choices. Since you have to get a new motherboard, you may be better off checking out AMD. For about $400 CDN, you could get a new motherboard, a Ryzen 5 3600 and 16gb of 3200mhz RAM. The 3600 is a huge upgrade over the i5-6400 (CPU benchmark scores of 19853 and 6755 respectively). Also, these 3 components combined are about the same price as just the i7 9700 CPU, to which you would still need to add a new motherboard and ram.

You almost certainly won't notice any difference between a decent SATA ssd and an M.2 drive, so save your money and just re-use the current boot drive.

Good luck and have fun.

edit: In case you were wondering, the CPU benchmark score for the 9700 is 15963. Passmark scores don't always tell the whole story, but they are useful for comparing CPUs. For gaming, the 9700 IS better than the Ryzen 5 3600, but probably not $150 better.

 

[sburns]

Life was simple when my son was on consoles, then he discovered PC gaming and it's been a struggle to keep up on a budget. Seems every time we upgrade, it's just a matter of time until he asks for something else. I started him on an i5-6400 / 1TB HDD / 8GB RAM / Windows 10 and added a small SSD boot drive and a GTX950. About a year ago, I upgraded it to a Gigabyte GTX1080 Turbo OC along with an EVGA 750W power supply to power it. This Christmas I got him an Asus VG248QG 24" 165Hz 1ms GTG TN LED G-Sync gaming monitor. At least every step of the way he said there was a noticeable improvement. But now he's asking to upgrade the CPU to an i7. He's playing Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p, not sure how maxed out the settings are. I see frame rates as low as in the 70's, but as high as 130 depending on what's going on. Is there any tuning I can do to take better advantage of what we have, or is CPU the bottleneck now? I did see some Dell sales during boxing day with the following configuration for $900:

i7 9700
Windows 10 Home
Intel UHD Graphics 630 with shared graphics memory
256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive
12GB, DDR4, 2666MHz

to which we would transfer the GTX, power supply, and HDD. But I'd rather not spend $900 if it's not going to make a huge difference.

By the way, the games are installed on the HDD, not the SSD. I always thought it wouldn't make a difference during gameplay, and only for load times, or is that only on the consoles? Also, my son wants to live stream using openbroadcaster(?). My internet connection is only 70 down / 10 up. Would this be sufficient?

Yeah as mentioend check out the GPU and CPU loads and see whats up. Most times for gaming it should be the GPU which needs upgrading, as CPUs haven't provided much improvements in performance in the last few years.
I'm still on a Haswell CPU i7 4770K. 2 years older then yours. I checked my CPU load while playing something and it was just under 50%.
To compare It has a slightly higher clock speed but I doubt it will make much overall difference.
My GPU on the other had was at 99% (Nvidia GeForce 970) So I am due for a update soon.
Your 1080 isn't much beefier in speed department but the extra RAM should help it out, and judging by the FPS you are quoting seems decent.
For streaming I believe there are PCI cards you can add in to help that. At least in terms of capturing and creating the video to transfer, which will offload from the CPU to do it, but not with how fast it will upload to the internet.