PC What do you think of this new PC build

[bobrpggamer]

tensor cores

I will say if you're looking at sites like Userbenchmark, you're getting completely horrible information. Going off of benchmarks alone is kind of a red herring. I would look into the 3D cache tech AMD has, I'm almost certain that would be better for productivity. But not 100% sure. I just know that Intel is behind AMD in some areas. If you go productivity, definitely go with NVIDIA for the GPU though.

And yeah, AIO's aren't really that great, they mostly are cosmetic/aesthetics. If you're going to go water cooling IMO it's a complete loop or just go air. And anyone that says AIO's will never leak is lying or not a person of misfortune lol. My rig is all air cooled and rarely does the CPU get much above 70c under full load

My new GPU is a Gigabyte RTX 4070ti, and along with the MSI 850 watt Power Supply that has the cable for the new 40 series cards, I already own.

The only way for a non-geek (like me) to find out the performance is to look at reviews that have benchmarks in gaming and other real world tests like Blender, Vray, and Handbrake etc. I mean I get the basics like the VRAM Frame Buffer, Filtering and Ambient occlusion, but if you were to ask me how Tensor and/or Cuda Cores really work, I would not know. Other than the more the better of course.

I do not pay much attention to places like UserBenchmark, but Toms Hardware and AND tech and similar, do have reputable reviews and benchmarks in gaming and a massive amount of other productivity software like Winrar or 7zip and whatever. I run 3Dmark on every upgrade, but I just do it for kicks and realize the 3D Mark score does not tell a whole lot about performance. For that you need to run your games and/or use the demanding software you bought the new upgrade for in the first place, and if it made some difference then that would be the most important thing to truly gauge if the upgrade was worth it or not.

 

[FinkPloyd]

Every time I think about this, which will hopefully be in November if I am lucky. I spend countless hours screwing around in NewEgg and other hardware sites and it just makes me more frustrated and I have been blessed (cursed) with the patients of a rabid dog.

I recommend the youtube channels 'Hardware Unboxed' (CPU / GPU benchmarks) and 'Gamers Nexus' (case, cooling).

Hardware Unboxed benchmarks with up to 50 games when comparing GPUs / CPUs, in addition to standard productivity tests.

Gamers Nexus does very in-depth testing of hardware, especially cases, coolers and faults (ie an excelent series on nVidia 40 series cable issues and one on  GPU transient power spikes).

 I would look into the 3D cache tech AMD has, I'm almost certain that would be better for productivity. But not 100% sure. I just know that Intel is behind AMD in some areas.

Not according to Hardware Unboxed testing.

Note the 7950x3D is slower due to the system incorrectly 'picking' which CCD to use (as only one CCD chip has the 'extra' 3D cache).

 

[Ananais]

And yeah, AIO's aren't really that great, they mostly are cosmetic/aesthetics. If you're going to go water cooling IMO it's a complete loop or just go air. And anyone that says AIO's will never leak is lying or not a person of misfortune lol. My rig is all air cooled and rarely does the CPU get much above 70c under full load

Ye I would not recommend an AIO, I lost a system due to one springing a leak (2 months outside of warranty!), and honestly it wasn't really any better than an air cooler in the same price bracket.

If I ever had the money, I may go for a full water cooling solution, but it would be for fun/the experience of doing it rather than anything else, and only if I could afford to replace it.

On the HDD front, have you considered building a NAS for the mechanical storage drives instead of hooking everything up to the one system? It is so much easier to find cheap rack cases with 3.5" slots than it is a desktop cases, or you can just use an old tower and stick it away out of sight.

Speeds are mostly limited by the mechanical disk r/w speeds rather than network unless you are running SAS drives or something, but if you have been dealing with USB2 transfer speeds, probably not an issue.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Ye I would not recommend an AIO, I lost a system due to one springing a leak (2 months outside of warranty!), and honestly it wasn't really any better than an air cooler in the same price bracket.

If I ever had the money, I may go for a full water cooling solution, but it would be for fun/the experience of doing it rather than anything else, and only if I could afford to replace it.

Exactly like I feel on the water cooling. Man do some of those PCs with water cooling look pretty. With a lot less viewing obstruction to actually see your motherboard without that massive heatsink and fan setup in the way.

On the HDD front, have you considered building a NAS for the mechanical storage drives instead of hooking everything up to the one system? It is so much easier to find cheap rack cases with 3.5" slots than it is a desktop cases, or you can just use an old tower and stick it away out of sight.

Speeds are mostly limited by the mechanical disk r/w speeds rather than network unless you are running SAS drives or something, but if you have been dealing with USB2 transfer speeds, probably not an issue.

I have three USB 3.x four bay and one USB 3.x single bay external enclosure that are holding about 10 3.5" SATA drives. I would love a NAS but they are over $1000.00 because I need it to be at least a 8 bay preferably a 10 bay or 2 six bays and that is way over what I can spend at this point. I still need to replace my gaming PC.

One four bay on a USB 3.x hub is running at USB 2.0 speeds which I think was about 40 Megabytes a second where the other USB 3.0 four bay is running 80-120 Megabytes a second. I need to have a direct connect to that external enclosure with 1 compatible cable and get rid that hub.  I know that hub is the problem.

As of a month ago I have no USB 3.x ports at all, just USB 2. On my old first gen i7 860 on a 1156 motherboard. Which believe it or not this PC is still holding its own, other than gaming. It is still reliable after about 5 years of off and on light use. I fall back on it when my gaming PCs die or I need to do something that requires it.

The optical bluray internal drive on this PC can rip UHD 4k Bluray disks. Which was just plain luck because this optical bluray drive is one of a handful that can rip these disks. Even Bluray XL drives will not show the disk you put in the drive. This is obviously the next form of HDCP that has changed with the sale of UHD blurays. The drive is a HL-DT-ST BD-RE (BH16NS40) and I could sell it for twice what I paid for it because of this.

 

[Ananais]

Oh, ye I was not thinking a pre built NAS, those are very pricey.

You can pick up rack cases fairly cheap though so long as you do not need hot swap bays, something like this. Many of them you can also buy additional cages for more drives if needed. You don't actually need to keep them in a rack either which I know puts a lot of people off as racks are not cheap, just need to make sure they fit a normal ATX PSU and they are otherwise more or less like any other case, though I have used slotted angle bar as a DIY rack in the past, and just stuck some rubber feet on them and sat them on top of one another as well, does not look great but you can stick them away out of sight.

You can then throw in whatever components you happen to have laying around, add in a PCI to SATA card or two if more ports are needed, install a NAS OS, I use Open Media Vault as it will run on pretty much anything and is free, and you are pretty much done.

To be fair, it is not for everyone as it takes a little bit of building and setting up, but as you already have the HDD's, you have the most expensive parts already, so it is worth keeping in mind if nothing else.

 

[Pernicious]

And yeah, AIO's aren't really that great, they mostly are cosmetic/aesthetics. If you're going to go water cooling IMO it's a complete loop or just go air. And anyone that says AIO's will never leak is lying or not a person of misfortune lol. My rig is all air cooled and rarely does the CPU get much above 70c under full load

Hmm. I ran a corsair one for 5 years on an overclocked 3770k. It was my first smaller form factor PC so didn't go custom loop. 

Thermally, it wasn't as good as custom loop, but no leaks. Hated the look of it though, so returned to custom water on my 8086k.

I'm thinking single massive radiator on my next build though, as components are getting really high powered now and I've had to raise fans to audible levels on a 360 build. (8086k + 3080Ti both overclocked). An AIO woild be screaming like a jet engine.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Oh, ye I was not thinking a pre built NAS, those are very pricey.

You can pick up rack cases fairly cheap though so long as you do not need hot swap bays, something like this. Many of them you can also buy additional cages for more drives if needed. You don't actually need to keep them in a rack either which I know puts a lot of people off as racks are not cheap, just need to make sure they fit a normal ATX PSU and they are otherwise more or less like any other case, though I have used slotted angle bar as a DIY rack in the past, and just stuck some rubber feet on them and sat them on top of one another as well, does not look great but you can stick them away out of sight.

You can then throw in whatever components you happen to have laying around, add in a PCI to SATA card or two if more ports are needed, install a NAS OS, I use Open Media Vault as it will run on pretty much anything and is free, and you are pretty much done.

To be fair, it is not for everyone as it takes a little bit of building and setting up, but as you already have the HDD's, you have the most expensive parts already, so it is worth keeping in mind if nothing else.

Well I get the idea now after editing this post 5 times. Build a PC in a rackmount case. I would love a rackmount server but for a gaming PC I want the case to have a somewhat aesthetic look. I don't overboard with RGB like most guys but I do want it to look nice at least.

I guess I could build another PC in a rackmount case with a Micro ATX motherboard and bare-bone hardware with nothing but controller cards and onboard video, and have some NAS software running. Thank you for the Idea.

 

[bobrpggamer]

I will say if you're looking at sites like Userbenchmark, you're getting completely horrible information. Going off of benchmarks alone is kind of a red herring. I would look into the 3D cache tech AMD has, I'm almost certain that would be better for productivity. But not 100% sure. I just know that Intel is behind AMD in some areas. If you go productivity, definitely go with NVIDIA for the GPU though.

And yeah, AIO's aren't really that great, they mostly are cosmetic/aesthetics. If you're going to go water cooling IMO it's a complete loop or just go air. And anyone that says AIO's will never leak is lying or not a person of misfortune lol. My rig is all air cooled and rarely does the CPU get much above 70c under full load

Ye I would not recommend an AIO, I lost a system due to one springing a leak (2 months outside of warranty!), and honestly it wasn't really any better than an air cooler in the same price bracket.

Found this on you tube by accident (no pun intended):

This is just waiting to happen to me after spending $1000s on hardware.

 

[Ananais]

Well I get the idea now after editing this post 5 times. Build a PC in a rackmount case. I would love a rackmount server but for a gaming PC I want the case to have a somewhat aesthetic look. I don't overboard with RGB like most guys but I do want it to look nice at least.

I guess I could build another PC in a rackmount case with a Micro ATX motherboard and bare-bone hardware with nothing but controller cards and onboard video, and have some NAS software running. Thank you for the Idea.

Aye, that is pretty much it. I have a corsair air 540 on the desk, which is on the big side, but I like it as it is not too fancy looking and you can hide most of the cables in the side chamber with the PSU, which looks nice and neat as well as giving you really good airflow for the main chamber. Then have all the NAS and server stuff stuck away under the stairs out of the way.

I would love to have a proper rack setup, but the price and space needed just makes it unrealistic for me, hence the DIY approach

 

[bobrpggamer]

Aye, that is pretty much it. I have a corsair air 540 on the desk, which is on the big side, but I like it as it is not too fancy looking and you can hide most of the cables in the side chamber with the PSU, which looks nice and neat as well as giving you really good airflow for the main chamber. Then have all the NAS and server stuff stuck away under the stairs out of the way.

I would love to have a proper rack setup, but the price and space needed just makes it unrealistic for me, hence the DIY approach

Yeah my dreams of a rackmount PC was a 20u rackmount case with a window on the front and using the U's for all kinds of not necessary hardware. Like massive UPS and even a firewall appliance among other things most people with that kind of money would not conceive to have in their PC room.

I guess it is not much more than people who wish they had ferraris'  and lamborghini's. Too each their own I suppose.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@bobrpggamer You should never be a "brand"guy when it comes to hardware. Simply not worth it.

I had several combinations of Intel and AMD CPU´s with Nvidia/Radeon/AMD GPU´s (Forgot what the brand was i had in the 90´s tough ) switiching around over the last 30 years.

And i never had any major issues. Why? Because i was never an early adopter and because i simply researched what is the best bang for the buck while beeing stable and bug free.

Beeing a brand guy is just costing you extra money usually.

 

[SylenThunder]

Ye I would not recommend an AIO, I lost a system due to one springing a leak (2 months outside of warranty!), and honestly it wasn't really any better than an air cooler in the same price bracket.

I always refer to this video...

 

[bobrpggamer]

@bobrpggamer You should never be a "brand"guy when it comes to hardware. Simply not worth it.

I had several combinations of Intel and AMD CPU´s with Nvidia/Radeon/AMD GPU´s (Forgot what the brand was i had in the 90´s tough ) switiching around over the last 30 years.

And i never had any major issues. Why? Because i was never an early adopter and because i simply researched what is the best bang for the buck while beeing stable and bug free.

Beeing a brand guy is just costing you extra money usually.

I do not know what you mean. I have had almost half as many AMD CPUs as Intel. The whole AMD vs Intel is based on performance not brand. If AMD had a CPU that blew Intel i7 and Intel i9 out of the water I would be looking at AMD for a new PC.

A lot of the reason I am picking socket 1700 for Intel 13th Gen CPUs is that I cannot find a AM5 socket motherboard that I like. Then again I can only find 2 socket 1700 that I like.

Perfect Intel Socket 1700.

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813162086?Item=N82E16813162086

Good Intel Socket 1700:

https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813145417?quicklink=true

That's it for motherboards. I am looking for at least 3 M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4, at least 6 Sata ports and al least 1 PCIe 1x for my sound card. The ASrock has 4 M.2 ports, 8 Sata ports and 1 PCIe 1x slots. The Gigabyte has almost all of these and both have good ratings.

I am building (hopefully) a PC around motherboards not CPUs. Although I do like the 13th gen i7 more than the AMD Ryzen 7000. That is due to the Intel being the best price / performance. Intel Core i7-13700K runs at $ 415. The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X is $430 and they are comparable in benchmarks. I know its a $15 difference but then the Socket 1700 motherboards are way better in features and they are cheaper too IMO. The best Socket AM5 that I like is $300 whereas the perfect Socket 1700 is less than $200.

 

[Ananais]

I always refer to this video...

To be honest, I mostly went with it at the time for aesthetics rather than performance, first and last time I made that mistake!

Yeah my dreams of a rackmount PC was a 20u rackmount case with a window on the front and using the U's for all kinds of not necessary hardware. Like massive UPS and even a firewall appliance among other things most people with that kind of money would not conceive to have in their PC room.

I guess it is not much more than people who wish they had ferraris'  and lamborghini's. Too each their own I suppose.

Hah, yep, I would be the same. I was actually offered a full size rack which was being decommissioned from a data centre back in the early 2000's, which was what started me thinking that I could really use one in the house, all I had to do was go pick it up. My wife used some infuriating logic such as "It literally will not fit through our doors" to put an end to that scheme though

 

[Ananais]

That's it for motherboards. I am looking for at least 3 M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4, at least 6 Sata ports and al least 1 PCIe 1x for my sound card. The ASrock has 4 M.2 ports, 8 Sata ports and 1 PCIe 1x slots. The Gigabyte has almost all of these and both have good ratings.

I am building (hopefully) a PC around motherboards not CPUs. Although I do like the 13th gen i7 more than the AMD Ryzen 7000. That is due to the Intel being the best price / performance. Intel Core i7-13700K runs at $ 415. The AMD Ryzen 9 7900X is $430 and they are comparable in benchmarks. I know its a $15 difference but then the Socket 1700 motherboards are way better in features and they are cheaper too IMO. The best Socket AM5 that I like is $300 whereas the perfect Socket 1700 is less than $200.

I have to qualify this by stating that I am not up to date with the last few generations of technology, but I do fully agree with building around the motherboard. I would just add that it would be worth confirming that the boards have enough PCIe lanes to run all of the listed ports at full speed.

This may not be an issue anymore? but when I was a bit more up to date, manufacturers would often list off ports and speeds without mentioning that you did not actually have enough lanes to run them all concurrently, at least not at full speed (especially when SLI was still a thing).

 

[bobrpggamer]

Hah, yep, I would be the same. I was actually offered a full size rack which was being decommissioned from a data centre back in the early 2000's, which was what started me thinking that I could really use one in the house, all I had to do was go pick it up. My wife used some infuriating logic such as "It literally will not fit through our doors" to put an end to that scheme though

Ah, the old "wife ploy". Makes me glad I am not married, but then I would not have someone to assist me in a multiplayer game. I have seen a lot of wife and husband vs the zombies in a coop game and I am jealous of it.

I have to qualify this by stating that I am not up to date with the last few generations of technology, but I do fully agree with building around the motherboard. I would just add that it would be worth confirming that the boards have enough PCIe lanes to run all of the listed ports at full speed.

This may not be an issue anymore? but when I was a bit more up to date, manufacturers would often list off ports and speeds without mentioning that you did not actually have enough lanes to run them all concurrently, at least not at full speed (especially when SLI was still a thing).

What usually happens now is a motherboard will state it has this and that but if you read the manual, it will state that you can only one or the other. Such as the most usual thing is to swap a M.2 port for 2 SATA ports which is Gigabyte motherboard thing. So if you have 6 SATA ports, you can either have 4 M.2 drive and 4 SATA ports or 6 SATA ports and 3 M.2 ports. As far as PCIe, you will find that an M.2 shares the same bandwidth as a PCIe lane so have to chose whether you want a a full on PCIe x4 extra slot or a M.2 and no extra PCIx lanes for a PCIe 4x card.

The ASrock motherboard I like has all of what I want and no compromises. The Gigabute has 1 compromise but it is worth it on that board. both are cheaper than a lot of other boards that have a lot of compromises.

Now that I am seeing that the 13th gen i7 and i9s run so hot that the board throttles down the MHz a lot, is one reason I would think about going with AMD. Some guy using air cooling was seeing a lot of problems that would throttle the CPU down on the turbo boost (or whatever it is called now). So he was getting different benchmarks results in cinebench scores on the same setup just different air cooling CPU Fan/Heatsinks, which has some of his cores run at 100c and would not allow for the extra boost. So different scores based only on cooling, which really should not happen on a home PC. I mean as far as I can tell you do NEED water cooling for these chips. So whatever reason Intel is making this happen is strange to me. I can see overclocking and getting these results, but just the chip running at stock speeds and not being able to achieve what Intel states their CPUs will achieve, does not seem quite right.

Here's the video:


Spoiler

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

I mean you literally said "I am an Intel guy since Core2duo" Anyways, if the pcie slots are the deceiding part, it doesn´t matter anyways if only intel has Mobos that fit you.

If you go for air cooling i would go Noctua. They usually are top performers for cooling, silent and you get mounting kits for free if you change your CPU platform. No matter if 2 or 10 years later. If looks matter you gotta pay extra for the black one though.

AIO´s usually don´t fail very often, but you won´t get better cooling with them anyways unless you go with a 360 or 420mm radiator.

For significant better temperatures you would have to go custom water cooling. Wich is a whole new level. I wouldn´t ever do that unless i can easily rebuy any part i might mess up with my first attempt at custom water cooling. Also it is a lot more expensive. And needs maintenance.

With all those videos like the one you posted,  you can get a bit of a wrong picture of what those coolers are capable off. They force artifical workloads on the CPU that you will never have using your PC normally. I assume you don´t rely only on that video, but posted it as an example.

A good airflow case is a must these days, propably the factor that matters most for cooling i would say. Gamers Nexus on YT has really good indepth case reviews.

 

[bobrpggamer]

I mean you literally said "I am an Intel guy since Core2duo" Anyways, if the pcie slots are the deceiding part, it doesn´t matter anyways if only intel has Mobos that fit you.

If you go for air cooling i would go Noctua. They usually are top performers for cooling, silent and you get mounting kits for free if you change your CPU platform. No matter if 2 or 10 years later. If looks matter you gotta pay extra for the black one though.

AIO´s usually don´t fail very often, but you won´t get better cooling with them anyways unless you go with a 360 or 420mm radiator.

For significant better temperatures you would have to go custom water cooling. Wich is a whole new level. I wouldn´t ever do that unless i can easily rebuy any part i might mess up with my first attempt at custom water cooling. Also it is a lot more expensive. And needs maintenance.

With all those videos like the one you posted,  you can get a bit of a wrong picture of what those coolers are capable off. They force artifical workloads on the CPU that you will never have using your PC normally. I assume you don´t rely only on that video, but posted it as an example.

A good airflow case is a must these days, propably the factor that matters most for cooling i would say. Gamers Nexus on YT has really good indepth case reviews.

Yeah was just an example I guess, but I have seen boatloads of videos just like that one. So after you see 10 or more videos with the same problem it makes you start to think

Here is the CPU Heatsink/fan I am looking at I already have the fans and they have been used for only a couple of hours.

https://www.newegg.com/p/13C-0005-002Y5?Item=9SIAADYA5G6361

https://www.newegg.com/noctua-nf-f12-ippc-3000-pwm/p/N82E16835608052?Item=9SIB932GZX5422

The 5 case fans:

https://www.newegg.com/noctua-nf-a14-ippc-2000-pwm-case-fan/p/N82E16835608047?Item=9SIAADY4P65808

Man it sucks to constantly look at the hardware I need and know I have to wait for about six months to get them.

 

[Ananais]

Ah, the old "wife ploy". Makes me glad I am not married, but then I would not have someone to assist me in a multiplayer game. I have seen a lot of wife and husband vs the zombies in a coop game and I am jealous of it.

I have to admit though, that she was (As bloody usual) absolutely correct, she looked up the measurements of the cabinet and it was indeed wider than the doors in our tiny little house. Then there was also the small point of having nowhere inside the house to put it even if I had managed to get it inside 

That video was interesting; I had read that the newer AMD chips could clock themselves past their stated boost speed if sufficient power and cooling was available to them, which I was not sure was a feature I would have liked; but thermal throttling within rated boost speeds? I think that would the deciding factor for me to avoid those Intel's, though in fairness it may just be that I need to adjust my thinking as to how recent CPU's function, I generally prefer to have my systems to be on the quiet, power efficient and cool side of things, rather than overclocked and squeezing every bit of power I can from them.

 

[SylenThunder]

I generally prefer to have my systems to be on the quiet, power efficient and cool side of things, rather than overclocked and squeezing every bit of power I can from them.

Proper setup and you can have both. 

I'm using a Cooler Master MasterBox MB511 with a full suite of fans. I believe I'm using the Cooler Master SickleFlow 120 V2 fans in the rest of the case because they appropriately matched was included in the front. Four fans blow in, three and the GPU blows out, which sets me up with a modest positive pressure setup. CPU cooler is an EVO 212 with dual fans that is nearly as efficient as the Nuctua 12 for about a third of the cost.
Both my R9 3900x and the RX 6800XT are moderately overclocked as well. The CPU is "golden" so I'm able to OC it a bit more than most. For the 3900x the stock speed is 3.8, and it will run stable with a base clock of 4.44. I currently keep it clocked at 4.325GHz base, and it rarely gets above 62C. Same for the 6800XT Gaming Z with a stock overclock of 2065 MHz base and 2310 MHz boost. (Vanilla is 1825 MHz and 2250 MHz on boost.) When I'm playing games, I run it at 2476 MHz. I should also note that a lot of the stuff I'm playing lately is 7680x1440. Temps aren't much different than the CPU. 

It is extremely rare that the fans get loud enough that I can hear them, and my case is literally in arms reach. Ambient room temp is around 76-78F year-round.