Computational Device Technological Discussion Thread

[JPolen01]

Appreciate the ideas! I'll see what happens this week. I'm not sure how pressing this is any more on his list of things to do in order to keep the business running smooth at this point.

[RawrImAMonster]

I finally got around to overclocking my PC (5 years old at this point) since it was starting to show it's age a little. I was running a stock i5-4670k at 3.7ghz with a mostly pointless Hyper 212 Evo for cooling. So last week I finally decided to put that to use.

The Asus BIOS I have has everything named weird, but I eventually figured it out with help from the internets. It seems like I have a pretty solid chip and I could probably push it a little more without any issues, but I just shot for my initial goal and left it at that. Here's what I ended up with:

4.5 Ghz @ 1.23 vCore

Temps were in the mid 80's range under stress testing so I could probably go a little higher if I wanted, but I'm fine with 4.5 Ghz. This should be a solid reliable overclock that won't put much stress on my older machine.

Next piece I upgrade will definitely be the video card. I'm a few generations behind at this point and will probably try to pickup a used 1070ti or 1080 to replace my aging 770. After that, I'm guessing this setup will be able to handle most games maxed out at 1080p. Not too bad for a PC I built in 2013.

As it currently sets:

i5-4670k @ 4.5 ghz
16 GB ram
Nvidia 770 GTX

[WRXtranceformed]

How much $ do you have to throw at a PC build (from the ground up, including a good monitor) to have a somewhat 3-4 year future proof rig with top end specs? $3-4G?

[RawrImAMonster]

No not nearly that much. You can have a VERY solid gaming setup for 1500 easily. I think the build I have above that still runs everything well as it sets was around 1400. The nice thing about PC gaming these days is that the processors aren't really getting that much better performance wise. In 3-4 years when new games start to not run quite as well, all you have to do is upgrade your video card and maybe ram and the rest of the PC should be good.

[CaptainHenreh]

this is also relevant to my interests.

I haven't had a gaming PC in a long time but I want to build one before CP:2077 drops.

[WRXtranceformed]

No not nearly that much.  You can have a VERY solid gaming setup for 1500 easily.  I think the build I have above that still runs everything well as it sets was around 1400.  The nice thing about PC gaming these days is that the processors aren't really getting that much better performance wise.  In 3-4 years when new games start to not run quite as well, all you have to do is upgrade your video card and maybe ram and the rest of the PC should be good.

Really?  That ain't bad.  I've seen monitors that cost that much so I was assuming it would be a lot more with the case, hard drive, cooling hardware, etc. etc.

[rherold9]

Are you guys looking at gaming at 1080, 1440, or 4k? 60fps or 144fps? Are you doing AAA titles or not as intensive titles like Destiny or WoW or others?

[RawrImAMonster]

I just quickly put together this for $1500. You could definitely go cheaper on a lot of the parts. I just kind of picked the first thing looked fine in the category.

If you wait a few months the new 2080/70 rtx video cards will probably come down in prices a little, but they're not that much better for the price they're at now.

This is just the PC itself. Monitors you can spend as much or as little as you want on. My $200 24" 1080p monitor has been working fine for everything I need. Speakers again spend as much or as little as you want. Anything in the $75-150 range will be good. A good mouse would be in the $50 range. Keyboard doesn't really matter that much. Just don't get some off brand junk that won't let you press more than a 2 keys at once.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/hQ2YbX

[rherold9]

I just quickly put together this for $1500.  You could definitely go cheaper on a lot of the parts.  I just kind of picked the first thing looked fine in the category.

If you wait a few months the new 2080/70 rtx video cards will probably come down in prices a little, but they're not that much better for the price they're at now.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/hQ2YbX

That'll do it for the next few years 1080@60fps. May not be able to run max settings on all games if graphics get better and better in 2-3 years but you can step down one setting and it should run them

[RawrImAMonster]

I just quickly put together this for $1500.  You could definitely go cheaper on a lot of the parts.  I just kind of picked the first thing looked fine in the category.

If you wait a few months the new 2080/70 rtx video cards will probably come down in prices a little, but they're not that much better for the price they're at now.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/hQ2YbX

That'll do it for the next few years 1080@60fps. May not be able to run max settings on all games if graphics get better and better in 2-3 years but you can step down one setting and it should run them

Or just bump up to a newer video card and overclock the processor.  I got an extra 20-30 fps on battlefield 1 just by overclocking the processor.  Granted that's a really processor heavy game.

If you want to go to 1440 or 4k, things get a lot more expensive and in my opinion it's not really worth it with a typical sized monitor.  One thing that is worth it is a 144hz monitor if you have extra cash to burn on it and a nicer video card.

The other thing for you all to keep in mind is a PC on medium settings at 60fps is going to look better than a console running the same game.

[WRXtranceformed]

Yeah I feel like if you're going to do it at this point you may as well build for 4k. Not that I'm trying to get into PC gaming again I was just curious

Our new Roku allows 4k streaming and with Amazon Prime Video and a few others offering legitimate 4k shows, I've been debating upgrading our TVs too.

[ryangreen1]

For reference: I spent around $1100 on my pc in late 2014 or early 2015 with an overclocked i5 (4690k i think?) and gtx 960. Coulda gone cheaper on the motherboard on skimped on the ssd and got it below 1k. It still runs anything I want at 1080p 60fps, but I haven't bought a AAA game in years. Runs WoW on max settings no sweat, and ARMA 3 on high settings just fine.
My graphics card has been on the fritz and crashed a couple times recently but I'm holding out for a gtx 2050/60 to hopefully upgrade.

[D_Eclipse9916]

Pre-built computers are cheaper nowadays. Mine was less than $1k out the door after black friday/dell friends and family discount. 1070 and all....

[rherold9]

Yeah I feel like if you're going to do it at this point you may as well build for 4k.  Not that I'm trying to get into PC gaming again I was just curious

Our new Roku allows 4k streaming and with Amazon Prime Video and a few others offering legitimate 4k shows, I've been debating upgrading our TVs too.

If you want a 4k gaming system @60fps for the next 3-5 years there isn't one. Graphics cards aren't up to the par yet. Now you can probably get away with a 6 core i7 for the next 4-5 years at 4k resolution. Only thing needed to be upgraded is the graphics card.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Wv9BxG

[RawrImAMonster]

Pretty much the same price really. This one has a cheaper video card, but better processor than I picked out. As I said, you can definitely go cheaper than the parts I picked too.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a...6883102375

[HAULN-SS]

I also run a system i built originally in 2011. Intel 2700k overclocked for about a year now at 4.2ghz. I bought a rx580 too how's the card. It runs all games i play fine. I also upped the ram to 32gb. Not counting 4k monitors and the new card the original build was $1100. I think most of the unlocked K cards are above to be overclocked

[Evan]

some commentary on the market:

• RAM prices have been in shortage (slash pricefixing) for the last 2 years and are just now starting to come down in price.  The longer you can wait to buy ram the better.
  
• SSDs are dirty cheap now.  Make sure to get a m.2 NVMe drive.
  
• used geforce 1080s and 1070s are getting dumped on the market thanks to the crypto crash.  Id try to pick one of those up for relatively cheap as a holdover until the next gen cards come out and settle in price.
  
• ryzens are kicking ass.   thats my next build
  

[RawrImAMonster]

I ended up picking up a slightly used GTX 1070 pretty cheap off craigslist. You can find them for 250-300 easily at the moment. The guy said he's only had it a few months and it definitely looks brand new.

When I first installed it, I thought it wasn't working right because I was getting like 35 fps in Battlefield 1 on ultra at 1080p. Turns out I just didn't have DirectX 12 turned on. After turning that on, I'm now getting 80-100fps on ultra at 1080p. Between this card and overclocking my cpu recently, Battlefield is running more smoothly than ever. Definitely can't complain for a PC I originally built in 2013.

[Ken]

So, for the past couple of years I had been using the following. Made up by a purchase on Ebay for $250 of an old Dell T5500 workstation, an NVIDIA 750ti GPU that i had purchased previously, and whole mess of stuff left over at my office that my team let me grab:

T5500
Dual Xeon X5570 Processors (4c, 2.93GHz ea)
128 Crucial SSD
500GB HDD
2TB HDD
NVIDIA 750ti
72GB DDR3 RAM

That, combined with an 8TB Synology NAS, configuration's only job really was to run my Plex environment that I and about 20ish friends and family access. Problem was, it was huge and with a 900W power supply was using a lot more power than i wanted to daily.

Other day my company ordered one of those Intel NUC's to run (3) 38in curved monitors. Curious, i looked up that CPU it was running which was the 8th Gen (Kaby Lake) i7 8705G. Since Plex uses Passmark as their rule of thumb i compared those, my current setup was about 10K, whereas that 8705g CPU just by itself was just shy of 11K. Since having such a huge workstation was growing old due to space and power, i went ahead and ordered it.

What i bought:
Intel NUCi7HNK
Samsung 970 EVO 250GB NVMe SSD
Corsair Memory Kit 16GB DDR4
$18 W10 Pro License off of Ebay

All said and done, about 1K.

Set-up was pretty easy - minus trying to find the right graphics driver. Intel recommends a BETA driver for some reason that the latest release of Windows does not like at all. 

What's pretty impressive, is that in this relatively tiny box, they get the AMD RX Vega GL graphics which scores comparatively to an NVIDIA 1050 GPU. My intent wasn't really for gaming, but this just might get me back into it a bit. My friends got me hooked on Rocket League over the weekend and then I downloaded the Forza Horizon 4 Demo out of curiosity and both look amazing on this thing connected to my LG OLED. I'll be moving soon and my work let me grab a Dell U3417W monitor so i can WFH more often (curved 34in) - can't wait to see how it looks on that. 

Pretty good win overall in my mind, get much more space back, less power draw and better performance (for my needs, anyway.) My buddy is just starting to get into some design work is going to take the old workstation so i'm sure it will get more appropriate use.

[Senor_Taylor]

I understood some of that.

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