Computer thread!!!

[MrBurgundy]

Man, I love that build

Air cool FOR LYFE

[Nader393]

Made this a few years ago to run Oculus Rift VR. 9 cooling fans. Kinda noisy...

[roguetoaster]

After reading the folding thread I'm thinking it's time to finally replace the laptop that will not die (6+yr old XPS w/ i5 2410m ~2.3-2.9 dual core, 8gb DDR3, and an old GT525M), and continues to handle light gaming, mostly R6 at 30ish.

Ended up somewhat cheaping out considering the insanity that is current component pricing/availibility. Just (pre) ordered up an 11400 (instead of the comparable Zen2 chip for $50 more) -$184, ASRock H570M $125, the standard 2x8 GSkill kit $72, and the cheapest new case possible, a Rosewill SRM-01B with a sketchy 450w PSU $38. Will reuse an EVGA 970, a WD 1TB SSD and a couple of not too old Dell TN panels.

Here's hoping that the direct cost of $249 to me (Amazon gift card covered the CPU) won't result in a disappointing every day sort of build.

[R3Z3N]

^I felt less ripped off paying 127% of MSRP for the 3090 vs 228% of MSRP for the 3080.... The video card was the only unexpected part, purchased on a whim via FB Marketplace in Beverly Hills, coming from Santa Barbara about 3 hours away. At least I should get a good chunk of change back selling the old rig or just the 1070 EVGA FTW2.... even old cards are going for good $$$

I seriously wish I could have put this in a üATX case instead like the last one. However I do plan on adding a 10Gb or faster network card. Unseen in the pic is a newer 12 Gig 8x SAS/SATA HBA Raid card, that really needs to have active cooling. I wanted to splurge on custom water cooling, but the prices of the AIOs just can't be beat, along with build time. Also this AIO has a fill port and comes with extra liquid, so expect 4 years out of it.

[roguetoaster]

Well if you aren't happy with that, I don't know what to tell you haha

I could see being unhappy with the price.

[Northern]

Well if you aren't happy with that, I don't know what to tell you haha

[R3Z3N]

New on the left, old on the right.
Fractal Define 7 (The case is a mix of 2 Define 7s to customize the black/white) The other was used for a NAS build to backup Cx data ~6mo
AMD 5600x (temporary till my 5950x ships)
Nvidia RTX3090 FE
Asus VIII Crosshair Hero X570 Motherboard
128GB RAM
1TB 980 Pro Boot
2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus (Cache for Resolve Proxy Media)
4 500GB Samnsung 850 Evo SATA SSDs for 4K footage/steam Raid 0
6x10TB Exos HDDs Raid 10 (~30TB) for general storage
Antec 1000w Platinum PSU
All backed up to Backblaze and another in house solution.

Should be ~$400-$500/year for energy usage as it's on 24/7. I still need to make the BMW VMs/ISOs available to DL from here to all, especially as NewTIS is shut down.

[R3Z3N]

Just did an upgrade 6X10TB Seagate Exos drives in Raid 10, and happy with the performance using a cheap $140 Highpoint raid card from 10 years ago. Looking forward to Zen 3 next month when I do a whole new build, but keep the Raid setup. Too bad I can't find an MicroATX case that 6+ drives.

[Blackout]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eACEHVceYl0

[roguetoaster]

Hadn't thought about slightly nerfing the processor in favor of a better board for Z3 and a planned upgrade. You guys seem to be thinking pretty much the same thing, and the rest of what I'm reading in to 550 says about the same. Also saw that a couple of other midrange AM4 550 boards may be coming later in the month, and more choices are almost always great.

[Northern]

Check how the 2600 compares pricewise to the 1600 -AF sku because they ninja updated the 1600 to 12nm and just changed the sku.
Performance is nearly identical as far as I know, and at least north of the border, there's a bit of a price difference.

I have the 3600 on an MSI B450 A-Pro and it works great but I think I'd update the mobo if I went zen3 just for overall improvements. Mostly thinking out of box CPU capability without a gimped bios, extra m.2 slots (and PCIe ones at that), whatever VRM improvements.

Probably will remain on the 3600 though. Realistically it's fine for anything I do. hardly hits 50% usage in games, and nothing else is that crazy.
Hardly doing any CAD or anything this term, mostly staring at spreadsheets/PDFs/Video calls, so extra monitors are the biggest QOL computer improvement for corona times IMO.

I think a GTX 970 will do just fine on 1080p with almost anything modern.

[roguetoaster]

Looking at it a few different ways, and it looks like going from 450/Z2 to 550/Z3 is about a $70 difference in the mid level performance space. In any case, 550 seems reasonable, and a 3600 is a perfectly reasonable upgrade.

[bmwman91]

I'm with E30 Wagen...go with the chipset that already at least has publicly stated that it will work with next-gen Zen CPUs. It's worth the incremental cost increase for sure. In my experience, any time I've had to "just" upgrade the motherboard, I ended up getting faster RAM, a new GPU and sometimes building a whole new PC lol. If I had had the option to simply pop in th elatest & greatest CPU, I'd definitely have done that and not replaced other stuff.

[roguetoaster]

^ Only thing I would suggest is to get a b550 chipset motherboard in case down the road you want to upgrade to a Zen 3 cpu or pcie gen 4 interface.

That's fair, I know MSI indicated that they would provide a BIOS update to allow for Zen 3 on B450, but I don't specifically know if other mobo manufacturers will, although my assumption would be that they will do so. Also, with backwards compatibility being implemented by mobo makers I would have thought that 550 would be listed as compatible with all Zen+ and Zen2, yet it is not, although it probably falls in with those other recent AM4 compatibility issues. Will have to look in to it further.

[E30 Wagen]

^ Only thing I would suggest is to get a b550 chipset motherboard in case down the road you want to upgrade to a Zen 3 cpu or pcie gen 4 interface.