PC Console to PC Questions

Regarding the M2 SSD´s: As a gamer you won´t notice the difference in speed. Maybe when booting the PC. It saves you 2 cables tough, but if you have to pay a lot more than for a SATA one it just isn´t worth it.

And yes i have tested this myself because i hate fkn cables and here the price difference isn´t too much. No difference spotted for loading times. Not even a bit.

 
Holy crap....
I knew I had become ignorant to PC's/technology over the years , but this just proved it beyond comprehension lol.

If I can ask for an opinion, if you were to look at the gaming towers they offer, what would catch your interest? Obviously, the benefit to PC's has always been the ability to constantly upgrade, so finding a decent starting point which I could then progress might be the best route for me. Not only does it provide the immediate upgrade to PC, but that hands on aspect would definitely click my brain into grasping it all again.

Don't have to, but I am curious no doubt. I'll need to do some catching up on it all (yay internet), but for sake of learning, if I ended up, say spending $700, or even $500 on a tower, and plan to upgrade with what you've suggested from that point, is there any concern to size of the housing, or performance issues as far as compatibility with the other components?
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I recently built a PC with my son after "being out of the building game" for 20 years or so (I'm a software developer and primarily using laptops which aren't quite as easy to custom build). ;)

Regardless, I did a bit of studying up (as you mention above) and I ... well kinda fell down an internet rabbit hole for a few months.

It really isn't as crazy as it seems though; the main difference from a couple decades ago is that it's actually *easier* to build a custom computer nowadays than it used to be. Fewer overall components, etc.

Your main choice is going to be Intel vs AMD. (Main difference, *technically* Intel is faster single-core and AMD is faster multi-core. But this is fairly subjective and as you also mentioned somewhere; most people are incredibly biased on that choice. I stand by the single-core/multi-core statement though--and it is especially true of the cheaper CPUs.)

I suggest checking out the Hardware section of Rock, Paper, Shotgun to get an idea what sorts of gaming components are good for what you want.

I'd suggest also taking a look at pcpartpicker. They have some pretty good generic parts lists that fit within various budget categories. These are pretty helpful to compare against prebuilt towers too, for instance you can compare the parts lists to tech specs of the prebuilt system you're looking at and they should be pretty similar.

I'd definitely recommend using pcpartpicker to build out your component list as it definitely helps you avoid any incompatibilities. While it's true the risk of buying incompatible components is fairly low, it's good to reduce that chance as far as possible. And I also find their pricing / purchase comparison links very handy when pulling the trigger to buy everything.

Background Reading:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/category/hardware/

PC Part Picker - "Modest" (~$700) Builds (for Intel / AMD)

https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/t2wrxr/modest-intel-gaming-build

https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/gfZxFT/modest-amd-gaming-build

If you have a bit more to throw at it, I'd recommend a reasonable sized M2 storage drive (instead of, or in addition to one of, the SSDs in those listings).

This is what my son and I built (separated into two phases, the first one was just to get it up and running for software development, the second added a non-integrated GPU and some extra RAM/storage--the software dev I do is heavy on RAM and storage):

Phase 1 (base build): https://pcpartpicker.com/user/tricorius/saved/#view=NRD7TW

Phase 2 (better gaming): https://pcpartpicker.com/user/tricorius/saved/#view=ryGb8d

If you end up buying a prebuilt and expanding it further, be careful what you buy. A lot of the "name brand" PCs take shortcuts which make it a lot harder to upgrade down the line. Also, breaking it open and changing around components typically voids your warranty (which isn't probably a huge problem, as you'd probably be using it "as-is" for a year or two and by then the warranty is usually useless anyway).

With prebuilt PCs you can definitely get something that has a custom chassis or such that doesn't contain the airflow to toss a larger CPU or GPU in it; or doesn't have the space to put a larger fan/all-in-one cooler, etc.

If you have questions, toss a few links in here and I'm sure a few will jump in and give our opinions. ;)

 
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Regarding the M2 SSD´s: As a gamer you won´t notice the difference in speed. Maybe when booting the PC. It saves you 2 cables tough, but if you have to pay a lot more than for a SATA one it just isn´t worth it.
And yes i have tested this myself because i hate fkn cables and here the price difference isn´t too much. No difference spotted for loading times. Not even a bit.
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Well I would like 3 M2s to be honest for video encoding and other creative software. The price is decent, at a price of 3TB Sata drives you cannot do much better. I would have 3 12TB drives for my TV and Movie and storage myself along with some 2.5 SSDs for my VMWare Workstation and some Retro Gaming drives as well. I am a hard disk pig, I actually ran out of drive letters on my PC and have to keep some offline because of that.

When I got a backpayment in 2012 I bought 20 3TB hard drives and of course a damn near top of the line PC, a boatload of software I could not afford before as well as a couple of NAS enclosure and eventually went Esata with 4 4bay Icy Docks and a $36,000.00 mobile home bought and payed for cash as well as furniture and appliances galore, of course I pay rent but its cheap rent anyway. I believe it was in 1998 when I was in a hospital and I lost my foot do to their incompetence, so in 2012 I got $125,000.00 and other than my house and everything in it, I blew through most of it in about 5 years, whiskey and whores mostly, just kidding. I did have a couple of cats that I bought everything I could think of for them and the best cat food and snacks you can get, I treated them like they were kings and queens but they were still bored no matter how many cat trees and toys I would buy, so I gave them up because they were just not happy, I miss them but they are probably better off with someone else I guess.

It of course sucks having one foot, my prosthesis broke and I was using a spare and it was almost too painful to walk although the pain pills have been fun for the last month but I ran out last night so I will miss them. It just had to be my right foot too and not my left foot, with it being my right foot it means all of my vehicles need to be converted with a left foot gas petal and renting a car or a moving truck is not possible. Taking a shower and having to put on my prosthesis every morning is also a bummer. I was always good at almost all sports and some better than others so that kind of ruined my sporting days. I tried to play tennis back in 2004 and it was not possible. I have not even tried running since 1998 and I do not know if it will be possible to run anywhere close as fast as I used to be able to run. They did tell me it costs and arm and a leg but that just means I am only half way there.

I have enough credit to build a great new PC but my debt is bad enough now that it would be insane to do. I am paying $900.00 on my credit cards this coming month.

 
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So, I've lost my replies like 3 times now due to being timed out... yay... mobile....

So this round will be shorter/quicker than originally written.

The decision to build or buy a prebuilt is definitely not an easy one. There are many factors to consider, but thankfully it's not like I'm pressed on a time frame.

Have you ever gotten to a point where you had many questions to ask, yet couldn't think of the questions to ask? That's where I'm mentally at lol.

I think the main question to ask myself is what do I really want the PC for? And the majority of that answer indeed goes to gaming. 7D2D, The Long Dark (though I do have it on PS4 and it's been amazing and up to date every time I e went back to it), to other survival games of similar fashion that I simply will never (statistically) get to play if I remain limited to consoles.

I've always been fascinated by RTS, though I'm sure they've changed since the days when I 1st encountered them. I use to see reenactment types, one was Gettysburg, though not sure if the game only dealt with just that battle. Then Civilization, as I absolutely loved Civ2 on PS1. Then to something like Skyrim, mostly because of the ridiculous amount of Mod's that brought aspects to the game that I've always wanted in a game. But for games like GTA? No, but that could also be bias as I've only dealt with Arcade/Console for the most part. So in truth, yeah, gaming would be the main purpose of the PC, though if I did have access to creative outlets, hard to say what I'd do.

The worst part is how many options there are when it comes to selecting components if I built a PC. It's easy to say pick what I want, but that's just it, not sure what I want/need without over spending on an aspect that wouldn't be needed. Like over paying for a graphics card when I'm using a HDTV (though eventually will be a 4k, just not in the near future), so it's not like I'm attempting to have the ultimate supreme system for graphics lol. Besides, almost anything would surpass a console I would assume, but I wouldn't want to be under powered in a sense.

Same with having a Motherboard that would ultimately limit in any future upgrades or whatnot, to the whole debate between AMD vs Intel. Single core, Multi core, slam my head into a wall core lol. Why does one like one over the other? What aspect don't they like about the other?

Hell, then there's the SSD, the DDR4 which I seen there was a DDR5 that's apparently an add on to the DDR4, and claims it excels for gaming? Yeah, I obviously don't know lol. Let alone if I read right, the better the ddr4 is, the better the refresh rate? Was that right or did I mix that up with something else? Yeah, there's been quite a lot of info at once lmao.

But regardless, after watching the one video on building a $1000 gaming PC, it definitely helped put things into basic comprehension on building a PC. The various suggested component's also helped in semi understanding what to expect, or perhaps need at a basic level. Though it did lead to more questions lol.

In the end, I do know a PC is definitely in my future. Be it built by me, or prebuilt (with hopefully the ability to upgrade as I want when I learn more), I do thank everyone for their responses as it's helped tremendously.

 
Well I would like 3 M2s to be honest for video encoding and other creative software. The price is decent, at a price of 3TB Sata drives you cannot do much better. I would have 3 12TB drives for my TV and Movie and storage myself along with some 2.5 SSDs for my VMWare Workstation and some Retro Gaming drives as well. I am a hard disk pig, I actually ran out of drive letters on my PC and have to keep some offline because of that.
When I got a backpayment in 2012 I bought 20 3TB hard drives and of course a damn near top of the line PC, a boatload of software I could not afford before as well as a couple of NAS enclosure and eventually went Esata with 4 4bay Icy Docks and a $36,000.00 mobile home bought and payed for cash as well as furniture and appliances galore, of course I pay rent but its cheap rent anyway. I believe it was in 1998 when I was in a hospital and I lost my foot do to their incompetence, so in 2012 I got $125,000.00 and other than my house and everything in it, I blew through most of it in about 5 years, whiskey and whores mostly, just kidding. I did have a couple of cats that I bought everything I could think of for them and the best cat food and snacks you can get, I treated them like they were kings and queens but they were still bored no matter how many cat trees and toys I would buy, so I gave them up because they were just not happy, I miss them but they are probably better off with someone else I guess.

It of course sucks having one foot, my prosthesis broke and I was using a spare and it was almost too painful to walk although the pain pills have been fun for the last month but I ran out last night so I will miss them. It just had to be my right foot too and not my left foot, with it being my right foot it means all of my vehicles need to be converted with a left foot gas petal and renting a car or a moving truck is not possible. Taking a shower and having to put on my prosthesis every morning is also a bummer. I was always good at almost all sports and some better than others so that kind of ruined my sporting days. I tried to play tennis back in 2004 and it was not possible. I have not even tried running since 1998 and I do not know if it will be possible to run anywhere close as fast as I used to be able to run. They did tell me it costs and arm and a leg but that just means I am only half way there.

I have enough credit to build a great new PC but my debt is bad enough now that it would be insane to do. I am paying $900.00 on my credit cards this coming month.
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That old saying, cost an arm and a leg wasn't meant to be taken literally lol. But all joking aside, that really does suck man. Being forced to not participate in things you use to always do no doubt sucks. Have you tried other sports or activities instead? Sometimes what you never thought you'd be interested in, can be intoxicating after you finally try it. Just don't flat out give up on new venues, cause sometimes those end up being amazing.

But good God man, $900 bill on just credit? Yeah, don't even buy a burger on those cards. In fact, burn them. I've never owned a card in my life, never will for that simple reason.

But don't look at your foot as a hindrance, consider it a challenge instead that you know you can overcome. Cause at the end of the day, a person isn't defined by their limbs or any other body part for that matter.

But is there no other way to get a better replacement instead of the one you're using now?

 
But regardless, after watching the one video on building a $1000 gaming PC, it definitely helped put things into basic comprehension on building a PC. The various suggested component's also helped in semi understanding what to expect, or perhaps need at a basic level. Though it did lead to more questions lol.

In the end, I do know a PC is definitely in my future. Be it built by me, or prebuilt (with hopefully the ability to upgrade as I want when I learn more), I do thank everyone for their responses as it's helped tremendously.
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In the end the choices you have aren't that important. Unless you make a basic blunder you are simply talking about 1-2 FPS difference if you don't take the optimal choice. There normally is a sweet spot of how much you have to pay to get a system that plays practically anything on high to highest settings on a typical display (1920x960) and that sweet spot is at about 700-800$. Paying more gives you less and less improvements for more and more money. I would say $1000 is still relatively cost-effective, anything above is luxury or if you want to play at 4k now.

Basic blinders would be: Less than 16G RAM, buying hard disk instead of SSD, buying badly matched CPU and GPU, buying outdated tech that nominally still sounds good.

Buying prebuild isn't that bad a choice. If the case is from some known manufacturer you can just google it and often find a review of it. It guarantees that it isn't some special constricted design like you would get when you buy a cheap PC at Dell or HP for example.

It should have enough space inside, especially case width is worth a look so it accepts even tall CPU coolers. With enough space you can put in anything. Modern case designs have the power supply at the bottom and a backplane under the motherboard for the cables, you should prefer those cases if possible.

I built myself a PC recently with AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, 16G RAM, SSD, AMD RX 580 and I'm pretty happy with it. Your mileage may vary. :cocksure:

But good God man, $900 bill on just credit? Yeah, don't even buy a burger on those cards. In fact, burn them. I've never owned a card in my life, never will for that simple reason.
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Good advice. @Bobrpggamer: if you still have money left, pay off that debt immediately, you are burning money. If not, try to get a credit with a sensible interest rate (if at all possible) and pay off the debt. Credit card companies make their money from inflated interest rates. Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card . And get a charge card instead aka a card where you have to prepay.

 
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A couple suggestions based upon reading this discussion -

I recommend a mid tower for most people who are getting into gaming. You don't need a giant tower anymore for storing big clunky drives due to things like SSDs.

Your power supply will hinder your gaming experience if you start off too cheap - Get something with some headroom and the quality of the supply matters - Bronze or better (and personally, I'd recommend an 800 Watt power supply minimal as well as new video cards are demanding more juice these days).

RAM - 16GB minimum with the ability to grow to 64GB. If history is accurate, we double our RAM needs every 10 years. 8GB was the "standard" recommended. You can add more later, but I wouldn't recommend starting with less than 16GB (unless you're only using one stick).

GPU - This is a chunk of your budget. If you are planning on playing on a big screen TV (like I do), it will play on 1080p just fine but I would recommend this being your investment - Not too much so that you're paying a premium, but enough horsepower to run in 4K...would help you to appreciate your TV more. This requires something in the neighborhood of the RTX 2070 Super or the Radeon 5700XT. I just tried the AMD offering recently...and sent it back due to heavy artifacts, most likely due to the need of driver tweaks. I went back to NVidia's offering and ordered it instead, despite having to wait nearly a month for it to ship (should be here within two more weeks. I am currently running a GTX 1070 and it does perform reasonably well...at 1080P on this game. However, it is right on the edge of being able to play 4K (and with a little refining/optimization of the game, would play it great. I personally think $1,000 will get you a great system and definitely do your homework in regard to pricing. Many online retailers are jacking up the price of GPU's. Pricing is all over the map. I found my 2070 Super at B&H Photo for $150 less than what Dell was selling it for. However, Dell price matches (so does Bestbuy) and I had them match the price.

SSD drives - A big fan of the Samsung EVO series. If your motherboard takes an NVMe drive, great - Just don't get less than a 250GB primary drive. They often sell off the shelf systems with a 128GB model...which is just not big enough for an OS and your programs. The pricing is dropping really fast on these drives - I've recently seen a 1TB model for $140 which is great. Bigger equals faster by the way with SSDs.

If you buy an Alienware system or other off-the-shelf computer, you are paying a premium and not what I consider a great or even good value. You are paying for the lack of "hassle". They are easy to put together yourself and you'll end up with a more stable system if you just invest in the right components to make a great gaming computer.

 
Yeah that's why they just increased my MasterCard $1100.00 recently.

Do not buy anything remotely similar to my new backup PC, this ridiculous HP Elite 7100 MT. The good case thing is in effect here, I had a hard time putting a decent power supply and GTX 670 in it, its so cramped in the case I did not think it would actually boot. Also it requires proprietary memory, I tried to fit some compatible memory in it and it would not accept them and had to buy the system ram from some proprietary memory manufacturers.

It is a good Idea to look at SSDs larger than 250gb for OS but if you have a separate games drive you can get by on a 125gb drive but I would definitely go with a recommended 250gb if you can. I have a dual boot Windows 10 and Windows 7 250gb OS drive and my Windows 10 loaded up now is 113gb of 132gb capacity and I have boatloads of software on it other than VMware Workstation which has its own drive plus I have a couple of separate games drives.

The hardware I showed you was kind of enthusiast parts and not necessary but it will stand the test of time like my PC now. The more I think about it the more the standing the test of time is important. CPUs are likely not going over 5ghz any time soon, so a good CPU will more than likely be good for 5 or so years, its the GPUs that seem to get more powerful but anything GTX 1070 and above will last a good 2 or 3 years and motherboards that are worth anything will expand to 64gb of ram so that is not a problem either. If you invest in a good CPU and motherboard the chances of still being worth anything in 5 or so years is possible, the GPU and RAM is always the easiest thing to upgrade and is done more often, not as much as 10 years ago but still can add life to your PC without needing to swap out your motherboard and CPU.

 
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Ok, so here's a serious question. And I understand the potential for some to be bias with their choice, I'm perfectly fine with this. What I would like is the hear why you like it, and why you dislike the other.

I'm referring to the preference of AMD vs Intel brand.

What exactly is better (in your opinion) over the other?

Question 2 would be the start of a build, the Motherboard. I've seen prices all over the place lol, but curious how do you know what's mid range or top tier aside from the pricing?

I'm really trying to narrow down the little specifics and feel like I may be over analyzing everything at this point. Which obviously makes what should be rather simple, very complicated lol.

My fear would be that I'll end up over paying in areas I shouldnt, or buying a component that I should've put a little extra into.

That said, I know I want a mid range Motherboard at minimum. One that enables me my options and not limit's me to upgrades down the road.

I do know I would put a little extra in the ddr4, perhaps a 32gb version. If my understanding is right on its function, the bigger the better lol. Though additional question would be in regards to what I've see, and ddr5? That it's an add on to a ddr4? And claims that it improves gaming? Anyone know anything about that or experience with it?

A good SSD is a must.

I definitely want good cooling fans along with power supply so there's never a concern.

I'm not after ultimate 4k experience, but I don't want Atari either lol. So something that will exceed basic standards, but not the cost of a house either lol.

If I can build one for $1000, that's be cool, if I end up having to hold off for a short time to spends another hundred or two, I'm patient enough for that.

 
I've been in the I.T. business 30+ years. My personal business aside, I see many more NVidia cards in systems in general. Are you buying for today or are you buying a video card for the next five years? If it is for today, The Radeon 5700XT is a great value that will play all games that I know at reasonable settings. However, be aware that their current drivers could use a bit of work according to my personal experience. I sent one back recently because although it was a great card in specs, in 7 Days...it was not a good experience. On the NVidia side of the fence, the RTX Super series is a great bang for the buck on the high end. The drivers are more mature, but barely considering Ray Tracing is still being refined. If you want a video card that is going to play games for the next five years at great settings, better look at the higher end of things (2070 Super or basically any of the Super series) if you are even considering 4K for the future.

AMD has been the underdog for quite a while now, but are definitely trying to make a move to be a value oriented option which is where I think they shined in the past.

So, if you ask me today, I'm recommending NVidia. Wait six months...and it may be a different story.

Budget is always a factor. I'm willing to pay $500+ for a video card that will last. That's the high end of my budget for a video card, but I think it's currently worth it. Your budget is always going to be the limiting factor in today's video card race. The hardware side of things is not keeping up with what the software developers are shoving out there in my opinion. With SLI being phased out, two cards on the newest offerings is not a good strategy. The question becomes, what is the single card that will do what I need/want? Is it frame rates with average settings or Ultra and 4K? If it's former, I'd go with a 2060 Super or a Radeon 5700 XT. If it's the later, I personally think you're into a NVidia 2070 Super...or even higher.

 
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I've been in the I.T. business 30+ years. My personal business aside, I see many more NVidia cards in systems in general. Are you buying for today or are you buying a video card for the next five years? If it is for today, The Radeon 5700XT is a great value that will play all games that I know at reasonable settings. However, be aware that their current drivers could use a bit of work according to my personal experience. I sent one back recently because although it was a great card in specs, in 7 Days...it was not a good experience. On the NVidia side of the fence, the RTX Super series is a great bang for the buck on the high end. The drivers are more mature, but barely considering Ray Tracing is still being refined. If you want a video card that is going to play games for the next five years at great settings, better look at the higher end of things (2070 Super or basically any of the Super series) if you are even considering 4K for the future.
AMD has been the underdog for quite a while now, but are definitely trying to make a move to be a value oriented option which is where I think they shined in the past.

So, if you ask me today, I'm recommending NVidia. Wait six months...and it may be a different story.

Budget is always a factor. I'm willing to pay $500+ for a video card that will last. That's the high end of my budget for a video card, but I think it's currently worth it. Your budget is always going to be the limiting factor in today's video card race. The hardware side of things is not keeping up with what the software developers are shoving out there in my opinion. With SLI being phased out, two cards on the newest offerings is not a good strategy. The question becomes, what is the single card that will do what I need/want? Is it frame rates with average settings or Ultra and 4K? If it's former, I'd go with a 2060 Super or a Radeon 5700 XT. If it's the later, I personally think you're into a NVidia 2070 Super...or even higher.
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My only concern is that for $500, that might just over shoot a reasonable budget overall in mind. Though I'm still waiting on my damn car to be fixed... so I'm forced to wait and see how much that'll cost me until I can figure out a PC budget.

I don't know if I'll need the PC to be in Ultra settings, let alone 4k. But the option to eventually utilize that aspect would be still quite some time down the road.

Of course wanting the game(s) to look smooth and good is important, and having great FPS/stability is equally important to me.

I guess the main issue is I definitely want something that will still be relevant years from now, as well as upgrade as I go when I see fit.

 
Working on a budget now and being able to upgrade later I'd not go nuts on a GPU now. Spend the cash on CPU. Especially for 7dtd it's important. I run a NVidia 1050TI and usually stay in the 40-50 fps range but I only have an old weak I7 860 2.8 ghz CPU. A better CPU would benefit me far more than a better GPU. My 2c for what it's worth.

PS. My video card only ran me $169. :)

 
Working on a budget now and being able to upgrade later I'd not go nuts on a GPU now. Spend the cash on CPU. Especially for 7dtd it's important. I run a NVidia 1050TI and usually stay in the 40-50 fps range but I only have an old weak I7 860 2.8 ghz CPU. A better CPU would benefit me far more than a better GPU. My 2c for what it's worth.
PS. My video card only ran me $169. :)
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I have the same CPU and I had to overclock it to 3.3ghz to play any recent games. I have a GTX 1080 which is not a good pair and I think there is a bottleneck with the aging CPU, I get some bad frame rates in the cities even on mid or so settings. So I agree that the CPU in 7 Days is most important due to the voxel engine and calculations left to the CPU, unlike Physx which is utilizing the GPU more leaving less load on the CPU. I would go with the 32Gb ram just because its something that can be picked up for a lot less than a $700.00 video card if you go for 2133 or lower clock speeds. https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N82E16820231788 this would be a quad channel type package if your motherboard supports it otherwise you could just get 2 16gb sticks I guess. I remember this being a price for a 128mb stick of PC 133.

I would not worry about DDR 5, this will more than likely be on the newest and priciest motherboards in the future, the GPUs are the only ones using this speed.

Would anyone agree that the 1151 (300) series would be mid range in the motherboard CPU area? The problem with this setup is that the coffee lake and some other CPUs that use this socket have this max 16 lane PCI express thing going on, leaving an M2 slot SSD to run at less than its potential when you add a 16x PCI Express video card and the M2 wants to run at 4x. I am not sure about this but I have read that the M2 runs slower and a lot of guys were pissed off at the the manufacturer due to the less than advertised M2 performance.

Hey Ti2xGr, what do you mean SLI is being faded out? I figure if you were well off enough to buy a pair of RTX 2080ti in SLI you would have 22gb of vram (or whatever you want to call it) which would be great for a lot of commercial creative software out there and if your game does not scale well then disable it for that game. I did make the mistake of buying a $1000.00 GTX 690 when it came out and a lot of games just did not like it and I had to turn of Multi GPU for them but for 4K and some of the newer games can it really be that bad of a setup if you have the money for it? I am curious because the only SLI I have ever had was the GTX 690 which was really not that great if I remember correctly. I do agree completely that SLI in 7 Days would be a useless feature for just that one game but lets face it people have other games and SLI could be turned off in windows so other than the expense for guys that buy the best of the best in PC hardware and drive a used Honda Accord that need a paint job and a trip to the junkyard soon, there would have to be some sort of boost in gaming and 3D rendering such as Iray, Mental Ray, Vray and other real time rendering engines. I do think the Cuda Core thing is in fact being phased out and Nvida is turning towards a new system for multi-core type GPU processing with a RTX Ops or something, so a Titan that has over 3000 Cuda Cores is something In the past when the RTX came along. I don't know much about it but If I upgrade some day I will definitely read up on it.

 
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They're actually phasing out support for SLI on all the new NVidia cards. Most of the cards now are being shipped without it. It was getting much better with GTX 10 series so I'm a bit disappointed.

I've got an RTX 2070 Super on order. There's like five games that take advantage of it now. I'm curious how games will be designed when they will get to play with "real" lighting and how it will affect stealth games and such.

 
I guess the main issue is I definitely want something that will still be relevant years from now, as well as upgrade as I go when I see fit.
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The cheaper option, buy a decent machine now and upgrade later. Hint: Getting an AMD CPU is better in this scenario because you usually can keep the motherboard if you upgrade the CPU while Intel switches CPU sockets like their underwear.

Every 4 years (or when necessary because of 4k or a specific game) you buy a GPU from the same price bracket as the first one. And in ~5 years you buy a new CPU to get maybe 8-10 years out of it until your motherboard+RAM+CPU really has to be replaced.

Or you buy a monster machine now that allows you to play on 4k from the start, that machine will last you 6-7 years without upgrade. The only possible upgrade is another expensive top-level GPU after 4-5 years, but the CPU/motherboard might be a bit underpowered for that GPU. Upgrading the CPU makes no sense you simply build/buy a new PC.

 
They're actually phasing out support for SLI on all the new NVidia cards. Most of the cards now are being shipped without it. It was getting much better with GTX 10 series so I'm a bit disappointed.
I've got an RTX 2070 Super on order. There's like five games that take advantage of it now. I'm curious how games will be designed when they will get to play with "real" lighting and how it will affect stealth games and such.
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Well they have Quake 2 I know of know of, if you are a gamer from that era it might be a fun game to play again with the added Ray Tracing. A lot of guys were pissed off at the launch of the RTX about there not being enough games available yet that utilized the Ray Tracing feature but that changing seeing how 70% or more people go with Nvidia including me and the RTX is maturing and it being more cost effective with the Super Series.

I always dreamed about real-time Ray Tracing since the Amiga days and it has been quite some time since then. I was hoping for a flight sim with that feature.

 
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A flight sim would be amazing with RTX. Great call. So many games could take full advantage of it. Me and my son just got Doom 2, Command and Conquer Red Alert going again recently, so yeah. I'm from the Quake era. I wonder what they could do with a HL2 remake with RTX support. That might be interesting as well.

 
The cheaper option, buy a decent machine now and upgrade later. Hint: Getting an AMD CPU is better in this scenario because you usually can keep the motherboard if you upgrade the CPU while Intel switches CPU sockets like their underwear. Every 4 years (or when necessary because of 4k or a specific game) you buy a GPU from the same price bracket as the first one. And in ~5 years you buy a new CPU to get maybe 8-10 years out of it until your motherboard+RAM+CPU really has to be replaced.

Or you buy a monster machine now that allows you to play on 4k from the start, that machine will last you 6-7 years without upgrade. The only possible upgrade is another expensive top-level GPU after 4-5 years, but the CPU/motherboard might be a bit underpowered for that GPU. Upgrading the CPU makes no sense you simply build/buy a new PC.
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Good call on the AMD vs. Intel upgrade path. Intel has been spitting out minimal CPU upgrades these days but switching out sockets like people giving out Halloween candy these days. AMD's recent offerings have been significant and has really thrown Intel off their game temporarily. We may yet see a significant CPU jump and are overdue. We've been regurgitating the same I3, I5, and I7 die for way too long.

 
Haven't read the thread, don't care about what others may say, but:

Intel chip (go for GHz not core count, so i5 is fine)

Nvidia card (never ati/amd)

Min 8gb ram (that can be expanded to 16+)

Don't skimp on the PSU.

...the rest is garbage talk.

:)

 
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