Help Rausch switch to PC
 

I don't have the time, knowledge, or patience to build my own.

I selected the parts and compared cyberpowerpc, CLX, maingear, AVAdirect, Digitalstorm, and VRLA.

I ended up about $350 over what I wanted to spend but...eh.

So since I've been a Mac guy my whole life and never built a PC help me out. Don't hesitate to point out anything I missed or part conflicts. Suggestions and advice appreciated.

Pic of specs in 1st post...

Here's what I put together...

pretty nice system, should do whatever you want for the most part. Later on you can update GPU and have a rockin system

Good luck finding a decent GPU. Bot scalpers have destroyed the market. I almost feel like it might be better to just buy a premade if you're set on getting one now

And with the chip shortages, it’s going to like this for the next 12-18 months.

I’m not a gamer and needed a decent graphics card but had to pay more than double the price from just a year ago.

$179 for a GeForce 1030 is insane but that’s the cheapest I could find.

It sucks.

That's what I'm doing I'm just paying extra to tweak it...

Get 32 GB RAM

And welcome to the Master Race.

I think your liquid CPU cooler is a waste of money considering your case and case fans. If you want to shave some cost, that would be a good candidate.

I just use my phone to post on CP..:LOL:

Whatcha going to be using this device for?

That's some useful info to help determine requirements. ;)

I refuse to assist you in making your computing life more frustrating. Sorry.

Shit time to buy right now. Depending on your demands, a gaming laptop might be an option for you. You don't sound like a man who is terribly interested in swapping internal components every year or two for the latest and greatest. I sell my gaming laptops roughly every 2 years and keep about 60% of the value.

The plan was to buy up in the cheap stuff like RAM, MB, SSD, etc and just wait on a high end CPU and GPU for now.

I have no problem upgrading it piece by piece down the road. Well, I'll probably have someone else replace the processor and cooler. I'd prefer an air cooler myself but they didn't have one worth a damn on the site.

I'm essentially building a super console/streaming/media box that I can also use as my main PC in the living room. No, I really don't need more than 1080p right now so a top of the line GPU isn't needed. If I can get a better CPU I will.

Apple's new OS and insane pricing did that. Plus gaming on there is still a PITA...

Yeah skip the water cooling. That is enthusiast nonsense.

Standard HSF will be fine.

Wrong, that case requires water cooling to get the proper use out of it.

You could do air cooling, but its not great in that case, as it was specifically designed with water in mind. It also has a really slim main chamber since the PSU mounts on the back side, and air coolers of any decent height will not fit. Ultimately, not having any kind of front intake requires use of extra fans tog et proper airflow. You can prob get away with 4-5 total fans with water cooling, need 8-9 on air cooling to get similar thermal results, albeit with considerably more noise.

5900x performance is directly tied to cooling, might as well do it right. If you wanted to switch to air, it would be best to switch cases as well.

What are you doing with it?

"baitin."

...

I'm going to use my TV in the living room and bed room for the monitor. And yes, I know I'll lose a ton of resolution and overall quality. It doesn't matter because unless I sit 2 feet from the monitor I can't see the shit anyway.

I want the gaming options of steam and pc gaming but I'll be using a game pad and doing it in the living room like a console. I'm not a big FPS or competitive gaming guy and most of my online play is a PS4 ARK 3 map cluster on Gportal. I've become an Ark addict but the console is painfully limiting.

I think I'm going with Maingear or CLX. I'm right now looking at a prebuilt from CLX (out of Kansas) with a R7 5800x and a 1660 super (because almost all the low range AMD cards are sold out.) CLX has fewer customer service and return issues than the other big SI's like iBuypower, Alienware, or Cyberpower.

My biggest complaint is how prebuilt/SI's stuff you into these "tiers" where you have limited options based on price range instead of you picking what you want and them charging you a rate for the build.

No.

My 2011 iMac is doing just fine for that purpose...

Oh, and after having Mac's for 20 years I want this thing to be upgradeable. I want a larger tower, I plan to spend a little up on the motherboard, and I want the fans in there as I upgrade later. I don't want to have to pull everything out - I want to plug and go.

Even my dumb ass can replace a GPU, SSD, or ram. And I do plan to spend up on an air cooler (I'm not a fan of liquid cooling) after I buy the thing. I'd get something like the Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro but CLX doesn't sell them and they pretty much force you to go liquid. Whatever, they at least have good build quality a very low return rate.

Consider what HomeTeam told you about the cooler for that case though.

I don't think most air coolers will fit in the Lian Li. I think that quote was from AVAdirect and was using it mostly to gauge components and price range. I don't think CLX even sells that case.

It's a bad place to be right now if you're looking to build or buy. If you use an SI you only have so many options and they're usually very limited. Even if I wanted to build my own you can't buy a GPU on your own.

It's a frustrating game of trade offs.

Which case do you think is better able to air cool down the road?

Talos P1 Mid Tower or Evolv X Mid Tower?

Talos probably?

Here's what I ended up getting.

Hope the Evolv X works out for you. Not known for having the best thermals. I've seen plenty of reviewers who ended up removing the side panel to bring down temperatures.

There's a common theme when it comes to airflow and thats a mesh front panel.

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I checked that website and they do have the P400 available and to me it looks more stylish than your typical airflow focused case so if maximum airflow was what you were after I would have gone with that case. But it seems just from looking at this thread and all the cases you have mentioned that looks were more important than having the best airflow.

Actually I watched his review on that case which convinced me to buy it. It doesn't have the best air flow but with added fans (which I did) it was neither terrible or great. It was middle of the road in his opinion.

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And if you take the front bridge off all it is is a giant screened front. That front has some but minimal impact on air flow. I guess previous models had that bridge pushed way back blocking a lot of the air.

It'll have 7 fans, liquid radiator cooled, and hopefully good flow. I just wish I could intake air from the bottom and vent out the top.

Guys, thank you for the advice. I haven't worked on a PC since 03-04 and haven't bought one since I think 2012. That's mostly why I went prebuilt.

And since I did go with an SI what'ya say we meet back here in 5 weeks to help Rausch troubleshoot the inevitable problems?....:rolleyes:

Ok, with my CPU being infamous for running hot I would like to under çlock it Any experienced under clocker advice? I'm still looking at about two weeks before it gets here.

That's a ridiculous solution that probably wouldn't have that much of an effect. Add fans. Improve airflow. Upgrade your case.

Under clock? Wut?

One effect would be it running cooler.

It's not really that simple. Besides, by default your CPU already throttles itself a great deal when it's not crunching something serious. What you're asking is silly.

Undervolting. Not underclocking.

No, it's not. It's an infamously hot cpu and I don't need the full juice because I'll mostly be 1080p gaming. The cooler it is the more stable it may run, live longer, and still run very close to the same speed. High temps are the cause of a ton of performance problems.

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Rausch I’m all for you here bud. But I’ve never once heard of under clocking. I’ve only been building for 5 years so will defer to the masters but why would you want to down grade performance?

Undervolting.

I'll leave my misstep instead of editing it.

The wife has been a bit pissy lately...

I understand some people tweak their voltage to allow for overclocking and such. Yes it can slightly lower your temp in some cases. But you haven't even booted this machine yet, and you're already talking about neutering it. Lowering voltage should be one of the last fixes for high temps. Tweak it a bit and test it before you go throttling yourself...

If it's not exceeding 85 Celsius, I wouldn't worry. 85 is where it will start clocking down for you and initiate issues.

Honestly unless you live in an extremely hot house your CPU will be fine. I mean you're talking hotter then 90-95C. That's what those chips maximum rating is

Hold her, ask what she needs, do it for her.

I'd imagine a watercooled 5800x will shred any task you throw at it.

You might be under estimating the power of your CPU.

It might get hot when stressed out, but you'd be surprised what it takes to stress them out.

Congrats on the awesome system. My worthless internet advice would be fire it up and throw everything you've got at it. See what happens. Then think about tweaking settings.

This.

Let's not perform surgery until we know there's a problem.

Geeks

Suckers.

:evil:

https://external-content.duckduckgo....gif&f=1&nofb=1

I got a friend from an old job coming over to look at it if/when it arrives to check for basic installation issues and anything that could be sketchy. We'll make sure the Ram's slotted right and the fans face the right way and then do some heavy lifting...

Ok, new PC came in at 4pm today. Turned it on, everything connected correctly and running great, I just need to sign in to my microsoft account.

I don't remember my hotmail password. It's been over a decade since I changed it. I'm now sitting on customer support chat with Taiwo trying to get my password reset because the password reset screen won't load on my 8 year old version of Safari.

Nice new PC sitting in the next room, on step 2 of setting up windows, I can't log in to...

I recently had to wait a week while they processed a service ticket to change my email associated to my Microsoft account. They closed the ticket yet my email (that I no longer have) remains the same. Good luck.

Wait, why do you have to sign in to start the PC up?

You don't. It's bypassable.

Don't bother signing in with your Microsoft account. Click where it says "Create offline account instead."

I'd already hooked it up with wifi. It wouldn't let me go back and skip the sign in until I killed my router and restarted.

Finally. 30 minutes later I'm on my new desktop. So far not a bunch of bloat. It's directing me to a BBB review. I think I'll drop a chiefsplanet.com in my review...

Ok nerds I'll be bugging you tomorrow. I'll probably need bios updates and drivers and steam recommendations (Daddy can game now!)

Oh, and I need to check and make sure my ram is set to the right speed.

Steam summer sale is coming up as well

Got my steam set up last night (rausch35.) I'll be honest - I didn't find much I wanted to d/load immediately. Valheim, ARK eventually, and then...eh.

Alright, I'm going to try this again. Last night was supposed to be me farting around on steam and finding cheap games I want to try. About two hours after I get home this super **** you thunderstorm comes through and two hours later no power. I can say the case I picked looks really good when backlit by candles.

So I'll be on steam today and if anyone has a good single player, PVE, or not FPS recommendation I'd appreciate it. Oh, and bonus points if it works well with an XBox/PS4 controller.

Also, download epic game store and grab the free games they give away.

Are they as much of a pain in the ass as I've been hearing? No ratings, you HAVE to be connected to play, etc?

Buy yourself a UPS so you have time to shut down during a power outage. It will save much wear and tear on your system. It doesn't need to be anything extravagant just enough to give you 5-10 minutes to shut down proper.

Sounds like a good rig and you can get one for about $40.

Yeah, I need to talk with Clx. I could swear I got a cheap hybrid one (looked a lot like a really fat power strip) with lan, cable, and 8 plug surge protection. I think it was a 5 or 10 minute supply. It didn't ship with it though and it doesn't appear on my shipping list. I probably need to take a trip to wally world today for one of those and and xbox controller.

If I do should I get current gen or can I get last gen? Is there a big trade off? I was hoping I could use my PS4 for controller compatible games...

Things I'm already noticing: my internet speed is actually insane good. 11 year old hardware was most of the problem before (2011 iMac.) Browsing the internet (including sites like steam, youtube, and graphics heavy stuff) loads instantly. Like I'm loading a document. Hell, there are no start up times on applications. Like NONE. An M.2 is the way to go. Two days ago I was typing on CP, watching trailers on steam, ordering a pizza on a 3rd browser (Opera any good?) and there was no wait between any of it.

I can't wait to game on this. CLX sent some "game test specs" on the desktop but I really don't know what they mean or if they're to be believed.

Oh, and my TV was recognized immediately and the output catered to. There's no fuzziness or blurring around text and everything is sharp. I'm sure I'll have to change the TV's settings for gaming to get frames later but as far as desktop computing everything looks great.

Be sure you have your monitor settings at optimum level.

The only advice I can offer here is there's a lot of games that transitioned from console to PC where the control doesn't transcend well. Dying Light comes to mind.

Since the two thumb joysticks were added I can't use them well at all so I avoid games that require them to work well. You'll have to pick a different brain then mine on that subject. I'm way to integrated on PC.

As far as internet speed, yes, an 11 year old computer isn't going to be able to take advantage of new TCP/IP, UDP and various telecom protocols. You're in for a treat.

I believe the TV's max is 60hrtz/60 fps. It's set to that. I have to switch TV/MOVIES and gaming because of TV's 20 or 30 fps standard.

I know I'm taking frames off the table but they're frames I won't miss because I've never played much on a monitor so I won't notice the difference in that only the difference between PS4 on TV and PC (with 3060) on TV.

A new gaming-friendly TV is probably 2 or 3 years down the road...

Got Valheim and played about 3 hours with a friend tonight. Yeah, that's addictive and just as much of a grinding time eater as Ark. Fun though.

D'loaded the Nvidia update for my graphics card to help optimize it for newer games. I do like how it stores specific game profiles.

And this came on the desktop. No idea of this is legit or blowing smoke up my ass...

It's legit. My MSI laptop has something similar. Dragon Center.

Didn’t catch that you were using a TV. I’ve seen stories of people having a fast monitor and not adjusting for optimal frame rates for a year. If your experience is currently good, good on you.

Doom Eternal is on sale with the steam summer sale right now. Highly recommend and would fly on your new rig!

I thought it was over.

Lemmechek...