PC Need advise for pc please

Well there are 2 companies i bought custom pc from. One is cyberpower pc. The other one was ibuypower. Note i am suggestion the custom ones not the prebuilt ones. With the custom ones you pick what parts and brands. It has been years since i bought a cyberpower pc as i kept that pc for long time. Around a month ago i bought my current pc which is an ibuypower one. I am very happy with my ibuypower. The price on the custom ones are pretty close to the same price as building it yourself.

 
Well the first one has 120mm intake fans in the front. I'm not sure about the second one though.
Doesn't matter how many fans it has... if there's no holes to allow the air through, how is it supposed to work?

EDIT: After closer inspection, the fans are on the sides... but such tiny holes for venting. I can't imagine much air getting through those gaps.

 
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A few things.

This game can be more memory intensive. Might be a memory leak, but I'm not entirely sure of that. I have seen it hit 16GB used. I would recommend a minimum of 16GB but more is definitely better. If you go with an AMD processor make sure the speed is as high as you can get it. The AMD cpus are heavily reliant on the memory speed. If you go pre-built make sure that you can see that it actually utilizes the dual channel memory bandwidth. Sometimes the companies will simply populate a single memory slot. That would hurt your performance too.

For the cpu, AMD is best when it comes to cost to performance. Intel technically has the top gaming cpu, but just barely. Intel doesn't have the infinity fabric so memory speed isn't as important, but slow memory always stinks so take that how you will.

Another option is to head to a Microcenter, or just as good their custom pc builder on their website. You can part it out, they'll build it, and then they'll ship it to you. This is dependent on where you are though. I haven't seen if you mentioned where you are. Microcenter would provide the best customer service and they stand behind their builds.

Eh, just checked and it might be in-store pickup only. Damn, best options are always limited.

 
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Great specs and decent prices... but how the hell do both those cases vent any heat at all? Our comes the drill I guess. Worst thing is these useless case designs are everywhere... nearly all of them are like this now. Do these case manufacturers not even care anymore?
The first one vents heat out the back side and the top. The intake would be the front, but that is choked off. The air vents in the front are on the right side of the bezel. Unfortunately this a common design. The second one looks like the bezel is either a fine mesh or they hit the intakes and exhaust. Looks nice but might or might not have heat issues.

On Ibuypower and Cyberpower, I've never heard good things about their pre-builts. Rather the contrary. They tend to put bad power supplies into their pre-builts and customer support leaves much to be desired. Never had one myself, but like I said I've never heard anything good about their pre-builts.

 
Could you elaborate? Because I am all AMD user (both CPU and GPU) and they both work just fine.
Radeon graphics cards have a reputation for driver issues and often times game support issues, especially with this game. You'll often see ppl complain about weird visual glitches in the forums here (which often requires some control panel setting changes or driver changes or the devs need to step in to fix something, etc), all relating to AMD GPUs. Doesn't happen to everyone as obviously different GPUs / driver versions means random chance... but it's enough to discourage my interest in their GPUs. The hardware itself is fine, just like nvidia cards, but their software leaves much to be desired. For the extra few dollars it costs for much less hassle, there's not really a reason to not go with nvidia.

 
Radeon graphics cards have a reputation for driver issues and often times game support issues, especially with this game. You'll often see ppl complain about weird visual glitches in the forums here (which often requires some control panel setting changes or driver changes or the devs need to step in to fix something, etc), all relating to AMD GPUs. Doesn't happen to everyone as obviously different GPUs / driver versions means random chance... but it's enough to discourage my interest in their GPUs. The hardware itself is fine, just like nvidia cards, but their software leaves much to be desired. For the extra few dollars it costs for much less hassle, there's not really a reason to not go with nvidia.
As a user of AMD GPU Radeon RX Vega 56, I can say that I didn't know about any of these 7 days to die issues on AMD GPUs you're referring to at the time of purchase, I simply wanted my PC to be all AMD for better compatibility between individual components.

As for the drivers, with the latest Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 everything works well. I never really had any driver issues with this game on this GPU on default settings of the driver or even when using gaming preset that enhances gaming experience in general. A whole different story is when someone is overclocking and they do it wrong, that's what usually introduces various graphical glitches, not only in this game but in any game they play. That's not really a problem of the GPU, the game itself or even the driver. The problem is the user who's messing with things they don't really understand in the first place. This could happen on Nvidia GPUs as well, if the user is actually officially able to overclock the GPU through the official driver panel, but from what I understood, to overclock Nvidia GPU, people usually have to use third party software which can bring reliability of the results to even lower levels, simply because third party software makers are not testing all kinds of different GPU models of the same brand, that's not in their power. In AMD driver, there is a warning that overclocking may damage your hardware if you don't really know what you're doing and unfortunately many people simply don't bother to read or don't care and still try and then they complain when something goes wrong...

Anyway, AMD updates their GPU drivers pretty often lately. Recently I was on version 20.1.2, last software update check notified me that there is version 20.1.3 available and when I clicked to check again, there was already even newer version 20.1.4 available, so I actually skipped one version when updating and even that was like a week or two since the last time I updated it, so that's how frequently they update it. As for what's new in the updates, usually release notes for new versions are full of various fixes and performance improvements for games.

 
We really have no idea how to build one
It's basically adult legos at this point, find a user group or hunt up build a pc on youtube, it's not hard and they'll be yours.

both computers to run on good graphics (we are not really needing ultra settings im guessing?) I estimate roughly 3-5k for both?
1500 each can get you well into beast territory.

Go to pcpartpicker.com and hunt up their "modest amd gaming build", that's ~$850 last I looked (nope, down around $750 now) and will get you a damn nice midrange, more than just good enough for what you're describing. I'd sub in a 1600 AF for the 2600 if you can get it, and a 5600 XT for the 1660 Ti, AMD have been just killing it lately.

That will give you an idea what kind of deals you're looking at if you go the prebuilt route. I saw a really sweet deal on newegg when I got my rig 7 years ago, that got me to pull the trigger, it's still holding up and I've only had to replace the dogmeat ram and upgrade to a 1060 3gb when that came out to stay happy, I paid maybe $100 extra to go the prebuilt route, not sorry I did.

 
As for the AMD drivers, the frequent updates is a large part of the issue. ATI had a tendency to not fully test drivers before release. they were pretty hot and fast with the code. AMD has held onto that tradition since purchasing ATI. AMD is also the only chipset that consistently has issues with the UE4 engine. So much so that some games are almost unplayable on AMD without caveats.

@Stranded_Napkin, with the introduction of the 9th gen chipset, Intel lost the speed/performance battle. AMD CPU's have been toasting Intel since then, and the 10th gen chip is a complete joke.

The iBuyPower pre-builts I listed have Thermaltake PSU's in them. I've had good experience with that manufacturer. If you buy a low-end unit, your mileage may vary though. I didn't list any low-end units for recommendations.

 
As for the AMD drivers, the frequent updates is a large part of the issue. ATI had a tendency to not fully test drivers before release. they were pretty hot and fast with the code. AMD has held onto that tradition since purchasing ATI. AMD is also the only chipset that consistently has issues with the UE4 engine. So much so that some games are almost unplayable on AMD without caveats.
Oh, so this is how it is, so Nvidia fans now say that frequent driver updates is a problem, but it's not that far to the past when it was actually Nvidia users who bragged that Nvidia drivers may have some bugs, but Nvidia releases driver updates more frequently than AMD, so that they also fix the problems very quickly and that was ultimately one of the main reasons why they chose Nvidia instead of AMD. So when AMD catches up and does something better than it used to do before, it's not a good thing anymore? Well, probably not good for Nvidia as AMD's direct competitor, but good for AMD users is all I can say. And that's from my own personal experience with AMD products...

 
Oh, so this is how it is, so Nvidia fans now say that frequent driver updates is a problem, but it's not that far to the past when it was actually Nvidia users who bragged that Nvidia drivers may have some bugs, but Nvidia releases driver updates more frequently than AMD, so that they also fix the problems very quickly and that was ultimately one of the main reasons why they chose Nvidia instead of AMD. So when AMD catches up and does something better than it used to do before, it's not a good thing anymore? Well, probably not good for Nvidia as AMD's direct competitor, but good for AMD users is all I can say. And that's from my own personal experience with AMD products...
The difference is that Nvidia puts more effort into compatibility testing their driver releases. Having an issue with an Nvidia driver package is a one-off thing. Having an issue with an AMD driver package is almost an expected result. There is actually some pretty good documentation on this, and an explanation of why AMD/ATI's core driver architecture is so bad.

 
If you want a budget option take a look at xeons, ready built (just need a gfx card to complete) and rock solid. Some can even be massively overclocked. A lot cheaper in the U.S. than here in the UK . Linus did a few of these and i copied one a few years ago which i still use for the game. An old hpz400 24gb ram and a 6gb video card, which still runs things no problem. Can even double the ram relatively cheaply. An hours research could save you a fortune.

Considering the big companies regularly replace these systems, its surprisingly easy to find fully built bargains. Theres a wealth of info on what to buy and what to avoid. google ebay and youtube will supply all you need to find the best price/performance for your budget.

 
The difference is that Nvidia puts more effort into compatibility testing their driver releases. Having an issue with an Nvidia driver package is a one-off thing. Having an issue with an AMD driver package is almost an expected result. There is actually some pretty good documentation on this, and an explanation of why AMD/ATI's core driver architecture is so bad.
Do you realize AMD is not ATI and the architecture of both hardware and software is changing, getting better to catch up with the competition?

If you're an Nvidia user, of course you have to rely on the information given by others, so all you can really do is speculate, but I'm not speculating here when I say that I've played many games on this AMD GPU with no issues whatsoever.

I was an Nvidia user before this AMD build and I can tell you that was a horror. Particularly with driver issues on the laptop. Every new driver they released fixed one thing, but broke something else. Another Nvidia GPU, this time in a desktop PC simply broke, because it got too hot and its fan wasn't able to cool it down enough, so the GPU had to be replaced because it was not useable anymore and the list goes on, I had my own negative experience with Nvidia and always admired what AMD users can do in their driver settings that were honestly always much easier to understand and navigate through, even for new users.

As for the documentation that's supposedly somewhere out there to prove that AMD is a worse option, here's some other sort of documentation which doesn't make Nvidia look so good at all either - here and here...

Funny, your argument was the compatibility with Unreal Engine 4 and yet my own experience with it was pretty satisfying on this AMD GPU. Why should OP pay more to achieve the same results? Especially if he's interested particularly in this one game which runs on Unity engine and not Unreal Engine 4 which in itself is a whole different story?

But ultimately, it's up to him to decide which GPU to buy...

 
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If you want my opinion....read what Fox has written in this thread.

At one time, Intel fanboys had good points...but now the shoe is on the other foot.

Ryzen.

-Morloc

 
Do you realize AMD is not ATI and the architecture of both hardware and software is changing, getting better to catch up with the competition?
If you're an Nvidia user, of course you have to rely on the information given by others, so all you can really do is speculate, but I'm not speculating here when I say that I've played many games on this AMD GPU with no issues whatsoever.

I was an Nvidia user before this AMD build and I can tell you that was a horror. Particularly with driver issues on the laptop. Every new driver they released fixed one thing, but broke something else. Another Nvidia GPU, this time in a desktop PC simply broke, because it got too hot and its fan wasn't able to cool it down enough, so the GPU had to be replaced because it was not useable anymore and the list goes on, I had my own negative experience with Nvidia and always admired what AMD users can do in their driver settings that were honestly always much easier to understand and navigate through, even for new users.

As for the documentation that's supposedly somewhere out there to prove that AMD is a worse option, here's some other sort of documentation which doesn't make Nvidia look so good at all either - here and here...

Funny, your argument was the compatibility with Unreal Engine 4 and yet my own experience with it was pretty satisfying on this AMD GPU. Why should OP pay more to achieve the same results? Especially if he's interested particularly in this one game which runs on Unity engine and not Unreal Engine 4 which in itself is a whole different story?

But ultimately, it's up to him to decide which GPU to buy...
Proof:

GamersNexus:

7D2D forums:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?133539-List-of-GPU-with-performance-problems

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?140215-Screen-freezes-but-gameplay-continues

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?128820-White-flickering-dots-on-ground-textures-and-stones

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?125210-Radeon-RX-5700-XT-Graphic-Artifacts

I know for a fact that there's a lot more topics relating to issues with AMD GPUs in the forums, but the search engine makes them frustrating to find, so I'll just leave it at 3 links for now.

Both LinusTechTips and JayzTwoCents have also mentioned Radeon's constant driver issues in videos as well though never really focused on the matter like GamersNexus did so I won't bother wasting your time and referencing their channels.

Also, your provided links is just rumors of drama and nonsense that no one cares about... and ALL large companies have these issues whether the ones you linked are true or not. Don't go rogue and try to veer away from the topic at hand with possible fake news relating to drama.

 
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Do you realize AMD is not ATI and the architecture of both hardware and software is changing, getting better to catch up with the competition?.
Actually the way it goes is that ATI is now AMD. AMD bought ATI.

Hardware doesn't make a whole lot of difference when you have the software driver developers using poor design, and just tacking on change after change without updating the core structure for the driver package in almost 20 years.

Hardware between the two is nearly equivalent.

Also, just one case in point regarding AMD compatibility issues.

https://forums.funcom.com/t/amd-workarounds-thread/939

 
Proof:
GamersNexus:

Claims of some Youtuber who says he had issues with AMD drivers versus my claim that AMD drivers work just fine. Oh look! We have a tie!

As for the users here on 7 Days to Die forum, one lists AMD RX Vega 56 as a GPU with poor performance. I disagree, because I have the same model and it performs as expected. Another guy says he upgraded his PC from Nvidia to AMD and he has some graphical issues. The question is - did he actually uninstall his previous Nvidia drivers correctly before claiming that his new GPU is the culprit? I'm asking because it wasn't mentioned anywhere in his original post. It is very important step when changing a GPU to first uninstall the old GPU driver to prevent all kinds of issues. Display Driver Uninstaller is a very useful tool that does this for you whether you have Nvidia or AMD GPU. It is capable of cleaning every last bit of the GPU driver file to make sure there will be no conflicts.

As for the articles I mentioned - Rumors and drama you say? You clearly didn't really take time to read those articles, because the author in one of those articles actually mentions that he talked with Nvidia and that Nvidia stated that "all OEMs are free to leave the program anytime they want." - If it was just a rumor, wouldn't Nvidia disprove the existence of such controversial partner program in the first place? And if that program does exist, it's only logical that partners who like the benefits from Nvidia will not really want to leave the program, because well that would mean they lose the benefits, so they would be motivated to not only avoid any kind of suspicion of them being a part of something like this, but they would probably want to make sure it won't get publicly exposed just so they won't lose the benefits. Obviously your statement that no one cares about this is wrong - I do care. AMD did care enough to investigate, author of that article cared enough to write about it and last but not least, readers cared to read (unlike some people who try to dismiss this as a hoax), but why do you care so much to make this matter look like it's actually something unimportant? Do you work for Nvidia or are you partnered with Nvidia in any way? That would explain quite the effort that you're showing here. But even if you're directly working for Nvidia or if you are their partner, you cannot disprove my own experience with both brands - Nvidia was a horror show for me while AMD was finally a satisfying gaming experience with not much to worry about. Sorry, to hurt your feelings, but that's just my own experience. I am not paid to write this, I'm just a gamer who finally gave a chance to something less conventional for a change after long long years of using Intel and Nvidia and guess what! It works surprisingly well and I am happy with this all AMD build.

 
Actually the way it goes is that ATI is now AMD. AMD bought ATI.Hardware doesn't make a whole lot of difference when you have the software driver developers using poor design, and just tacking on change after change without updating the core structure for the driver package in almost 20 years.

Hardware between the two is nearly equivalent.

Also, just one case in point regarding AMD compatibility issues.

https://forums.funcom.com/t/amd-workarounds-thread/939
AMD bought ATI, true. But people come and go, so do the architectures of both hardware and software. Claiming that it haven't changed over 20 years is just pure ignorance of the facts.

 
Anyway, I'm out of this topic, because arguing wasn't my intention. OP said he has a limited budget for both computers AND that he is interested in just this game, meaning a game based on Unity engine which works well on both brands, not any other game engine, therefore I see no reason to pay more for the same results, but hey good luck to him if he choses Nvidia over AMD, especially on the budget part, because paying more for one component always results in compromises elsewhere...

 
Claims of some Youtuber who says he had issues with AMD drivers versus my claim that AMD drivers work just fine. Oh look! We have a tie!
As for the users here on 7 Days to Die forum, one lists AMD RX Vega 56 as a GPU with poor performance. I disagree, because I have the same model and it performs as expected. Another guy says he upgraded his PC from Nvidia to AMD and he has some graphical issues. The question is - did he actually uninstall his previous Nvidia drivers correctly before claiming that his new GPU is the culprit? I'm asking because it wasn't mentioned anywhere in his original post. It is very important step when changing a GPU to first uninstall the old GPU driver to prevent all kinds of issues. Display Driver Uninstaller is a very useful tool that does this for you whether you have Nvidia or AMD GPU. It is capable of cleaning every last bit of the GPU driver file to make sure there will be no conflicts.

As for the articles I mentioned - Rumors and drama you say? You clearly didn't really take time to read those articles, because the author in one of those articles actually mentions that he talked with Nvidia and that Nvidia stated that "all OEMs are free to leave the program anytime they want." - If it was just a rumor, wouldn't Nvidia disprove the existence of such controversial partner program in the first place? And if that program does exist, it's only logical that partners who like the benefits from Nvidia will not really want to leave the program, because well that would mean they lose the benefits, so they would be motivated to not only avoid any kind of suspicion of them being a part of something like this, but they would probably want to make sure it won't get publicly exposed just so they won't lose the benefits. Obviously your statement that no one cares about this is wrong - I do care. AMD did care enough to investigate, author of that article cared enough to write about it and last but not least, readers cared to read (unlike some people who try to dismiss this as a hoax), but why do you care so much to make this matter look like it's actually something unimportant? Do you work for Nvidia or are you partnered with Nvidia in any way? That would explain quite the effort that you're showing here. But even if you're directly working for Nvidia or if you are their partner, you cannot disprove my own experience with both brands - Nvidia was a horror show for me while AMD was finally a satisfying gaming experience with not much to worry about. Sorry, to hurt your feelings, but that's just my own experience. I am not paid to write this, I'm just a gamer who finally gave a chance to something less conventional for a change after long long years of using Intel and Nvidia and guess what! It works surprisingly well and I am happy with this all AMD build.
So, the fact that AMD themselves admits to their driver issues and several links to topics relating to driver issues is considered a tie to your 1 vote of not having driver issues? Clearly someone is delusional and cannot be convinced of anything. With that said, I'm not even going to read the rest of your post.

Also, I don't read fake news articles which wccftech are known for.

 
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