New PC Build Questions?

[BNB 100]

I built many PC's in the 90's,  Now I have no idea...

This was on slickdeals, and I was told this was a good deal, I got this from EVGA:

http://www.evga.com/products/featured-bundles.aspx

Z370 Class + 650 GP + CLC 240

• EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G1+, 80 Plus Gold 650W, Fully Modular, FDB Fan, 10 Year Warranty, Includes Power ON Self Tester, Power Supply 120-GP-0650-X1
  120-GP-0650-X1

  • Total Watts: 650 Watts
  • +12v Rail: 54A Total
  • 100% Modular
  • Energy Rating: 80 Plus Gold

• EVGA Z370 Classified K, 134-KS-E379-KR, LGA 1151, Intel Z370, HDMI 2.0, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.1, USB 3.0, ATX, Intel Motherboard
  134-KS-E379-KR

  • Intel Z370 Chipset
  • Supports Intel Socket LGA1151 Coffee Lake-S Processors
  • Dual Channel DDR4
  • Form Factor – ATX
  • SLI – 2-Way SLI + PhysX

• EVGA CLC 240 Liquid / Water CPU Cooler, RGB LED Cooling 400-HY-CL24-V1
  400-HY-CL24-V1

  • Premium Retention parts for Intel LGA2066/2011/2011-v3/1150/1151/1155/1156/1366 and upcoming variants
  • AMD retention ring for supporting AM2/AM3/AM4/FM1/FM2/TR4 and upcoming variants
  • Fully controllable RGB LED
  • Fan Size: 120 x 120 x 25mm (x2)

 

Motherboard, Power Supply, and CPU Cooler.

I need:

Intel CPU - I understand I want an i7

Case - What is the difference between a $30 and a $100+?  Any recommendations?

Ram - What speed do I want?  Any idea where the best is to get this and the CPU? New Egg?

Graphics Card - GTX 1070?

I've read up on GPU's.  I understand Nvidia has a surplus and bitcoin is down, so I need to wait a few weeks to a month..

Thanks,

BNB

Edited July 8, 2018 by BNB

[RowdyVic 106]

Newegg, amazon, microcenter, tigerdirect

Sent from my SM-J727T using Tapatalk

[BillyBadAss 189]

Difference in better cases will be better airflow, generally; better cord management; and convenience. A good case will make it easy to install and get to shit. Good cases now also often have dust filters. 

No real comment on that particular deal, but read up on water-cooling. I hear it can be a PITA, especially when not using high end setups. No personal experience though,  and I don't know anything about  that particular setup. 

If you're planning to build a gaming system I'd just read some current build guides for budget, high end, extreme builds to get a feel for where various components fall and go from there. 

I'd think the new i5s would be plenty enough for a gaming build. A gtx1070 will be pretty good for 1080p graphics. If you want/have a higher resolution monitor look at a gtx1080 instead. Nvidia is going to announce the next gen cards soon so possible the prices will drop.. 

 

Edited July 9, 2018 by BillyBadAss

[BNB 100]

Thanks Billy.

I ordered an i7.  16bg of Gskill ram and just a $140 dollar GTX 1040 graphics card for now.  I will upgrade the video card later when prices come down.  I think that is the best move.

 

Thanks..

[BNB 100]

Wow a 70 dollar case is nice, no edges that cut you and its no screws so far putting in all the drives.  Very nice.

Evga is late, so I'm waiting on the Motherboard, because of weather.  I can't wait to have my first fast PC.  I've always bought the cheapest new components.

 

I had a 4tb drive that I never put in my Unraid server, so I just took out a 1.5tb and put that in to take me to a 17tb media server.  I think 8 Hard drives.  

I'm going to throw away or donate my old hdd's.  38gb - 800gb, most 500gb.  

 

[Eastwood 4394]

Case won't matter too much if you are water cooling and have a modular PSU. If your case doesn't have any view ports on it, you won't get to see any of the RGB you are paying for on the water cooler.

[gyroprotagonist 2592]

never done a water cooled CPU.  But normally you will want some thermal grease between the CPU and the heatsink.  Arctic Silver is what i remember using last time i built one.

If you are not overclocking your CPU you probably don't need the water cooling.  I used to work for AMD way back in the day and the promotion/tradeshow guys would use water cooling to overclock the hell out of the display systems.

[Bigpoppapump 529]

If it's an out of the box water cooler, it's the exact same as any other heatsink, like stated above.  If you are building a one yourself, it's quite fun but also a PITA.  I've done both and currently have one of the Corsair OOB models.  I've had my i5-3570k overclocked to 4.2ghz for like 5 years now with no issues.

[BNB 100]

Furk..  I've never had this happen on any delivery.  One would think there is a snow storm going on.  I called UPS.  They said call tomorrow.. Still a weather delay for 3 DAYS! I was hoping to put it all together this weekend.  Oh well..

07/12/2018	3:00 P.M.	Severe weather conditions have delayed delivery.
	07/11/2018	10:01 A.M.	Severe weather conditions have delayed delivery.
Anaheim,  CA,  United States	07/10/2018	12:19 A.M.	Departure Scan
Anaheim,  CA,  United States	07/09/2018	9:25 P.M.	Origin Scan
United States	07/09/2018	5:06 P.M.	Order Processed: Ready for UPS

Edited July 13, 2018 by BNB

[Dahobbs 17522]

On 7/9/2018 at 8:36 AM, BNB said:

Thanks Billy.

I ordered an i7.  16bg of Gskill ram and just a $140 dollar GTX 1040 graphics card for now.  I will upgrade the video card later when prices come down.  I think that is the best move.

 

Thanks..

which i7? It is a generic term meaning a high end processor in its class, but does not tell you much more. Hopefully it was at least a 8700 and not a older model like the 7700k. Pretty huge difference (50% more cores in the newer model)

[BNB 100]

Finally got everything last night.  Must of been a hell of a storm in CA.  

It is a i7-8700.

Everything was so easy to put together, compared to 10+ years ago.  

Waiting for updates to download now.  Then installing geforce sw, so I can play the games on my Shield TV also.

 

Very excited.  this thing is super fast.

[Dahobbs 17522]

5 hours ago, BNB said:

Finally got everything last night.  Must of been a hell of a storm in CA.  

It is a i7-8700.

Everything was so easy to put together, compared to 10+ years ago.  

Waiting for updates to download now.  Then installing geforce sw, so I can play the games on my Shield TV also.

 

Very excited.  this thing is super fast.

I have an 8700 as well. You can't officially overclock, but if your board supports multicore enhancement you can kick it up to 4.4 ghz all-core. And you can undervolt it to keep it quiet and cool. I have my set to 1.185v, and it runs super quiet and cool even with a cheap $30 air cooler. 

[Austinvines 316]

Halp!

Son got a new video card for his PC build that is a few years old. Had a 430w EVGA and upgraded to a 1000w 80gold EVGA. We’ve now tried 3 EVGAs and have now switched to a Corsair. While the testers either worked or we could use a paper clip to ensure that the fans would spin, we cannot get the MB to start, even with only the psu connected to the 24
Pin MB, the 8pin cpu and the hard drive connect to the MB - even by jumping the 2
Pin power with a screw driver.

Most aggravating is that we can use the old PSU in this set up and it starts fine. Also used the old psu on his brother’s cpu and it started fine but a new psu had the same issue - pressing power button or jumping from the pins worked on old psu but not four seemingly operational PSUs.

The MB is a Gigabyte ga-z97x-gaming 3 with an i5 chip. Only dealing with an old 5.1 setup with multiple inputs and no access has been more frustrating than this.

[Eastwood 4394]

Head over to reddit.com/r/buildapc and post the question. The wealth of knowledge over there is amazing.

[elfenix 34223]

this may be dumb but since you listed out what was connected to the power supply: did you plug the graphics card into the PSU?

[Grimas 669]

Bumping this thread as it's been dead for awhile.  I haven't built a PC since I did a HTPC 10+ years ago and now all the firesticks/smart TV's do what I used the PC for back then when not using my Ipad or work laptop... 

Kids headed off to college and have asked for gaming PC's to take with them and to use for school.  (I've gotten them decent used laptops for high school that work fine with Office apps but one had an Xbox die and was asking to go the gaming PC route and their school network won't allow anything but Roku on their network.)

Picked up one of these off Amazon and wiped and re-installed a fresh version of W11 (used Rufus).  Got a few weeks until I can return to Amazon but it seemed a pretty good deal with plans to install Stremio with a Real Debride account as well as Kodi (with a VPN, of course).  Seems most kids would rather have their nose buried on their phones than gaming so I figured this was a good option for school apps, streaming and occasional gaming.  Thoughts? Can upgrade HD to a 2.5 SSD to get to 2TB.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9J69KH8?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

 

[ztejas 43411]

12 minutes ago, Grimas said:

Bumping this thread as it's been dead for awhile.  I haven't built a PC since I did a HTPC 10+ years ago and now all the firesticks/smart TV's do what I used the PC for back then when not using my Ipad or work laptop... 

Kids headed off to college and have asked for gaming PC's to take with them and to use for school.  (I've gotten them decent used laptops for high school that work fine with Office apps but one had an Xbox die and was asking to go the gaming PC route and their school network won't allow anything but Roku on their network.)

Picked up one of these off Amazon and wiped and re-installed a fresh version of W11 (used Rufus).  Got a few weeks until I can return to Amazon but it seemed a pretty good deal with plans to install Stremio with a Real Debride account as well as Kodi (with a VPN, of course).  Seems most kids would rather have their nose buried on their phones than gaming so I figured this was a good option for school apps, streaming and occasional gaming.  Thoughts? Can upgrade HD to a 2.5 SSD to get to 2TB.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9J69KH8?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

 

That's probably a good value for streaming/browsing/doing school stuff but that doesn't have a GPU so you aren't going to get any gaming out of it. 

What games are they trying to play? Would be my first question. 

You should be able to get something for around or under $1k that gets decent 1080p framerate on most titles. 

[Grimas 669]

PC games? Youtube and ticktock mostly like most kids unfortunately besides what they've played on Xbox for past 10 years.  But with one Xbox supposedly having issues and most recent releases sucking, I'm thinking I can get one of the Xbox PC passes to allow them to keep playing what they were before on it rather than Xbox versions...  (I know PC versions of games are better than what Xbox has now but my point of reference is the last PC-based game I played too damn long ago - CounterStrike on Stream.) Everything since then has been on Xbox so I have nothing to compare against( and they aren't getting a 70" 12K screen in their  dorm... Want something better kid? Get a job and build your own box like we used to do...

Edited June 5 by Grimas

[immamac 42835]

1 hour ago, Grimas said:

Bumping this thread as it's been dead for awhile.  I haven't built a PC since I did a HTPC 10+ years ago and now all the firesticks/smart TV's do what I used the PC for back then when not using my Ipad or work laptop... 

Kids headed off to college and have asked for gaming PC's to take with them and to use for school.  (I've gotten them decent used laptops for high school that work fine with Office apps but one had an Xbox die and was asking to go the gaming PC route and their school network won't allow anything but Roku on their network.)

Picked up one of these off Amazon and wiped and re-installed a fresh version of W11 (used Rufus).  Got a few weeks until I can return to Amazon but it seemed a pretty good deal with plans to install Stremio with a Real Debride account as well as Kodi (with a VPN, of course).  Seems most kids would rather have their nose buried on their phones than gaming so I figured this was a good option for school apps, streaming and occasional gaming.  Thoughts? Can upgrade HD to a 2.5 SSD to get to 2TB.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9J69KH8?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

 

return that and buy one of these: Amazon.com: MINISFORUM Venus Series UM790 Pro Mini PC AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS DDR5 32GB 512GB PCIe4.0 SSD Personal Computer, 2xHDMI(4K) 2X USB4(DP|8K) Outputs, Radeon 780M Graphics : Electronics

The 780M is an incredible iGPU and these are on sale right now for a really great deal. This is a crazy computer that can game and do the shit out of school work + future proof with peripherals with USB4 and latest connectivity

If you want a discrete GPU you can also go with the H99 from minisforum although unless he's gaming on a 1440p or 4k monitor that won't matter at all. 

There's also this next gen one that is mac mini like with latest gen stuff Beelink SER8 AMD Ryzen™ 7 8845HS MINI PC 8 Cores/16 Threads Frequency (bee-link.com)

[MonkeyDoughnut 10227]

Man minis have come a long way. I need to grab one of these Ryzen ones ...

[Chips O'Toole 1322]

I'm interested in getting something for my son to play with.  He'll play Minecraft and such but isn't a heavy gamer.  I want him to be able to practice coding and explore a bit outside of just a tablet or chromebook.  I could go for a raspberry pi, but these are not that much more and seem like it would be able to do a lot more.

Without getting too deep in the weeds researching this, I though this system was a good starting point and he would be able to use it for a while as a secondary machine even if he outgrows it in a few years:

https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-S12-Pro-Generation-Intel/dp/B0BW8JSQCH#customerReviews

Thoughts?

[immamac 42835]

1 hour ago, Chips O'Toole said:

I'm interested in getting something for my son to play with.  He'll play Minecraft and such but isn't a heavy gamer.  I want him to be able to practice coding and explore a bit outside of just a tablet or chromebook.  I could go for a raspberry pi, but these are not that much more and seem like it would be able to do a lot more.

Without getting too deep in the weeds researching this, I though this system was a good starting point and he would be able to use it for a while as a secondary machine even if he outgrows it in a few years:

https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-S12-Pro-Generation-Intel/dp/B0BW8JSQCH#customerReviews

Thoughts?

N100 is great. That's a great little box. 

[thunderlounge 7813]

On 6/4/2024 at 10:26 PM, immamac said:

return that and buy one of these: Amazon.com: MINISFORUM Venus Series UM790 Pro Mini PC AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS DDR5 32GB 512GB PCIe4.0 SSD Personal Computer, 2xHDMI(4K) 2X USB4(DP|8K) Outputs, Radeon 780M Graphics : Electronics

The 780M is an incredible iGPU and these are on sale right now for a really great deal. This is a crazy computer that can game and do the shit out of school work + future proof with peripherals with USB4 and latest connectivity

If you want a discrete GPU you can also go with the H99 from minisforum although unless he's gaming on a 1440p or 4k monitor that won't matter at all. 

There's also this next gen one that is mac mini like with latest gen stuff Beelink SER8 AMD Ryzen™ 7 8845HS MINI PC 8 Cores/16 Threads Frequency (bee-link.com)

Funny you mentioned this. Was just looking at that exact model to use as a mini vm server for Home Assistant.

 

[immamac 42835]

1 minute ago, thunderlounge said:

Funny you mentioned this. Was just looking at that exact model to use as a mini vm server for Home Assistant.

 

I would get the ms-01 if you are gonna do nerd shit with it. You are gonna have a way better time and you can put a 75W single slot A380 in to have a full transcoding and AI/ML acceleration.

https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-01

 

[thunderlounge 7813]

1 hour ago, immamac said:

I would get the ms-01 if you are gonna do nerd shit with it. You are gonna have a way better time and you can put a 75W single slot A380 in to have a full transcoding and AI/ML acceleration.

https://store.minisforum.com/products/minisforum-ms-01

 

Well…..

2 sfp+ ports, and 2 2.5GbE? 
 

fuck yeah. 
 

That would fit in perfect on my internal backbone. Thanks!

[elfenix 34223]

On 6/4/2024 at 10:26 PM, immamac said:

return that and buy one of these: Amazon.com: MINISFORUM Venus Series UM790 Pro Mini PC AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS DDR5 32GB 512GB PCIe4.0 SSD Personal Computer, 2xHDMI(4K) 2X USB4(DP|8K) Outputs, Radeon 780M Graphics : Electronics

The 780M is an incredible iGPU and these are on sale right now for a really great deal. This is a crazy computer that can game and do the shit out of school work + future proof with peripherals with USB4 and latest connectivity

If you want a discrete GPU you can also go with the H99 from minisforum although unless he's gaming on a 1440p or 4k monitor that won't matter at all. 

There's also this next gen one that is mac mini like with latest gen stuff Beelink SER8 AMD Ryzen™ 7 8845HS MINI PC 8 Cores/16 Threads Frequency (bee-link.com)

keep in mind AMD is releasing next gen Zen 5 based chips at the end of july so there's likely to be revisions to any AMD based products shortly. 

[immamac 42835]

Just now, elfenix said:

keep in mind AMD is releasing next gen Zen 5 based chips at the end of july so there's likely to be revisions to any AMD based products shortly. 

Not for the mobile segment. That's 2025ish they are doing strix point they announced the AI 300 line but it won't be shipping for a while in volume. The CPU cores aren't really the big driver for why these are awesome it's the RDNA 3 on the iGPU and that won't go to 4 and is likely not much of a real gain unless you care about the npu. 

Lunar lake xe2 is gonna be insane from Intel and I get thatbteyebyo volume quicker. 

[elfenix 34223]

On 6/9/2024 at 12:40 PM, immamac said:

Not for the mobile segment. That's 2025ish they are doing strix point they announced the AI 300 line but it won't be shipping for a while in volume. The CPU cores aren't really the big driver for why these are awesome it's the RDNA 3 on the iGPU and that won't go to 4 and is likely not much of a real gain unless you care about the npu. 

Lunar lake xe2 is gonna be insane from Intel and I get thatbteyebyo volume quicker. 

seems like it'll be available in stores on july 15 (while the desktop parts launch 2 weeks later) and offers a big step up in graphics.  not sure how long it will take for minisforum to update but the big OEMs should have plenty of parts.

[immamac 42835]

23 minutes ago, elfenix said:

seems like it'll be available in stores on july 15 (while the desktop parts launch 2 weeks later) and offers a big step up in graphics.  not sure how long it will take for minisforum to update but the big OEMs should have plenty of parts.

They won't, this isn't how silicon ramp works these days. Volume won't be until late this year at the earliest most likely early next year. 

Meteor lake shipped in September, didn't get to volume till February and that was aggressive. It also got a substantial BIOS update in early January that made it actually usable. Similar to how the 890M benchmarks are hit or miss because optimization isn't there. 

They are trying to beat lunar lake to market to say they did. Waiting till 2025 is the right move because everything will be awesome then. This year is the year of ramp and kink fixing. Regardless it's pretty exciting, and minisforum/ASRock/Asus etc are pretty large scale oems at this point. Dell/HPE/Lenovo are still the kings, but it's not like they have the demand or are hogging all the wafer capacity 

[Bevo 13560]

11 hours ago, immamac said:

They won't, this isn't how silicon ramp works these days. Volume won't be until late this year at the earliest most likely early next year. 

Meteor lake shipped in September, didn't get to volume till February and that was aggressive. It also got a substantial BIOS update in early January that made it actually usable. Similar to how the 890M benchmarks are hit or miss because optimization isn't there. 

They are trying to beat lunar lake to market to say they did. Waiting till 2025 is the right move because everything will be awesome then. This year is the year of ramp and kink fixing. Regardless it's pretty exciting, and minisforum/ASRock/Asus etc are pretty large scale oems at this point. Dell/HPE/Lenovo are still the kings, but it's not like they have the demand or are hogging all the wafer capacity 

 

I have a RTX 3070Ti for a graphics intensive application. Are the onboard graphics on the next gen Intel or AMD desktop or laptop CPUs going to come close to that performance or is a separate GPU always going to be better? It would be nice to use a mini pc like you posted above because they don't take up any workspace.

[immamac 42835]

9 minutes ago, Bevo said:

 

I have a RTX 3070Ti for a graphics intensive application. Are the onboard graphics on the next gen Intel or AMD desktop or laptop CPUs going to come close to that performance or is a separate GPU always going to be better? It would be nice to use a mini pc like you posted above because they don't take up any workspace.

Next gen will be close to a regular 3070 probably not the TI. The cool thing about these minis is you can do 1 of 2 things for actually using your existing 3070Ti.

Some have an oculink port which is like an external pcie native port. This will have the best performance, but isn't hot swappable/pluggable and relies on external power. 

Some has USB or Thunderbolt 4 which allows you to plug in an external GPU with a single cable to do power delivery and data, however some come with an external power cord too. 

https://egpu.io/best-egpu-buyers-guide/

Here's a link with a list of these external enclosures. So you can use the minipc and one of these and poof you have yourself a crazy powerful rig that's basically the size of the graphics card + 1/2L

 

[Bevo 13560]

1 minute ago, immamac said:

Next gen will be close to a regular 3070 probably not the TI. The cool thing about these minis is you can do 1 of 2 things for actually using your existing 3070Ti.

Some have an oculink port which is like an external pcie native port. This will have the best performance, but isn't hot swappable/pluggable and relies on external power. 

Some has USB or Thunderbolt 4 which allows you to plug in an external GPU with a single cable to do power delivery and data, however some come with an external power cord too. 

https://egpu.io/best-egpu-buyers-guide/

Here's a link with a list of these external enclosures. So you can use the minipc and one of these and poof you have yourself a crazy powerful rig that's basically the size of the graphics card + 1/2L

 

I'm sure a 3070 equivalent CPU is fine. AMD or Intel? Are we looking at somewhere around March 2025?

[immamac 42835]

4 minutes ago, Bevo said:

I'm sure a 3070 equivalent CPU is fine. AMD or Intel? Are we looking at somewhere around March 2025?

Probably this time next year or so. If your 3070Ti isnt pegged above 85% during your workload you can buy either a lunar lake or Ryzen AI 9 and give it a go. 

Gaming performance is different than most other stuff like CAD or video rendering, and these iGPUs will be able to handle that significantly better since you won't notice some of the drops like you do in a game with screen tearing or frame drops. In CAD your render will just take milliseconds longer to finish or stutter briefly in the middle but since it's not an animation it doesn't really matter if that makes sense. 

Stuff that uses the real math/vector engines in a non dynamic way is gonna be awesome on these. Video encoding is a monster in the Intel based ones because of all the decade+ of optimization built in to both the CPU and GPU acceleration for these workflows. 

[Bevo 13560]

12 minutes ago, immamac said:

Probably this time next year or so. If your 3070Ti isnt pegged above 85% during your workload you can buy either a lunar lake or Ryzen AI 9 and give it a go. 

Gaming performance is different than most other stuff like CAD or video rendering, and these iGPUs will be able to handle that significantly better since you won't notice some of the drops like you do in a game with screen tearing or frame drops. In CAD your render will just take milliseconds longer to finish or stutter briefly in the middle but since it's not an animation it doesn't really matter if that makes sense. 

Stuff that uses the real math/vector engines in a non dynamic way is gonna be awesome on these. Video encoding is a monster in the Intel based ones because of all the decade+ of optimization built in to both the CPU and GPU acceleration for these workflows. 

 

I'm not an expert in this stuff but it would be either CAD/Video rendering and/or real math/vector engines. The program takes 100s of still images per second and stitches them together and removes the noise to create an exact 3D replica of an image.

Secondarily, that .stl image can be sent to CAD and then 3D printed to create either that product or something that fits into that product.

[immamac 42835]

1 minute ago, Bevo said:

 

I'm not an expert in this stuff but it would be either CAD/Video rendering and/or real math/vector engines. The program takes 100s of still images per second and stitches them together and removes the noise to create an exact 3D replica of an image.

Secondarily, that .stl image can be sent to CAD and then 3D printed to create either that product or something that fits into that product.

These would be great at that. That's raw compute and the output is a file not a real time rendering.