maizenblue

I think AMD did a good job of competing with Nvidia with their 6000 series GPU's, and the reference model prices are perfectly fine, but the AIB card prices have been ridiculous. What's going on? Does AMD take a loss on their in house built reference model and charge AIBs a higher price? Why would the AIBs like Powercolor and Asrock price them so high? I was at a Microcenter recently and the shelves were full of overpriced AMD cards no one wants, while all the Nvidia cards sell out the second they come into stock. 
 
It seems like either AMD or their board partners are shooting themselves in the foot. Either that or these AMD cards cost a lot more to produce than Nvidia cards and they have no choice but to price them so high if they want to make any profit.
 
 

Theres an Atari 800XL somewhere in my moms basement. Yes you read that right. Google it if you want to see what 80s stylePC gaming was like.
 
One of my oldest memories was seeing my dad sitting at a card table in front of the TV after a shift at the factory, with his Atari 800xl with a big mass of cables and disk drives and a big red handled joystick mounted on a square box, playing a game called oils well. The graphics were atrocious by todays standards, and even at the time I don't exactly remember being impressed by them. Then came Nintendo and everything changed.

That solved that. Well done lads. 

Yes there is.

You can plug to any CHA connector.
 

2 cables is better even if you could get by with only 1. It can in theory handle the 300w figure specified by PCIe standards but the cable will be quite warm.
 
EVGA 3070 FTW3 Ultra has upped that to 270w stock and 300w max.

It depends on the quality of your PSU cables. If they're good quality then that means they'll withstand the daisy chaining and not overheat when the cable has to transport enough energy for the two connectors. If they're of a lesser production quality then it's better to use two cables.
Just look up the gauge of your PCI-E cables and you'll find if it's thick enough for daisy chaining.

2 cables. One connector is only rated for 150w, and if the cable can't do more than that, you can only pull 225w from the gpu.

just please, i am 100,000,000% recommending that you put a different cpu in, i know it might be a pain in the a**, but that is most likely your problem, you described it like how i would for my problem. if you dont have one, ok, try your other parts, but if you do, i could 99.999% gaurantee thats your problem, it might have burnt out, thats what happened to my ryzen 5 1400

The Asus Tuf 3070 is now like 30 dollars more then that. I just managed to score an EVGA FTW Ultra 3070 for 680. Which is about as good a price as you can get now for a quality 3070. I'm actually relieved because EVGA is probably gonna do another price hike soon to catch up with the others, and the FTW ultra is probably the best 3070 you can score looking at reviews. I'd also rather deal with EVGA over Asus or anyone else if something isnt right. 

Have a look at the reviews from Harware Unboxed. They test GPU, VRAM, VRM temps with every graphics card they can get their hands on. They already tested several reference cards aswell. Just go to their Youtube channel and type "3080 review" into the search bar.

I didn't exactly specify who was doing the stealing

Very cool rig. My set up will be similar except I dont have any top case fans and a top fan blowing directly at the CPU cooler as the Corsair 450D's top front has spots for drives and such.
 
If I see a huge difference in temps I might buy a lancool 2 mesh case since my 450D is 7 years old now and the front fans are getting noisy, plus I cant fit a second fan I bought for my noctua because of ram clearance issues, which wont be a problem with the lancool because its wider.
 
I would have preferred to go with a 3080 but I hesitated at the moment of truth and balked at the $880 price of an EVGA FTW ULTRA that was amazingly in stock at microcenter, plus the 850W PSU to go with it. Which I kinda regret since that EVGA was such a bad@ss card and probably  worth the extra $ over the $650 3070.

I moved from an XFX RX 5700XT RAW II to the ASUS TUF RTX 3080 OC.
 
I didn't notice any increase in CPU temps that I saw, but I may not have been looking.
 
While gaming my CPU has been as hot as 75c with very CPU intensive games like AC or CP though, which is kind of high? I guess for a delidded CPU with liquid metal. However it is running at 5ghz with a 1.38v vcore, so those temperatuers aren't too unexpected.
 
I also have some decent airflow
 

I went from an MSI 980 to an EVGA 3080 XC3 UG.
The fins on the 980 ran the length of the card and allowed it to exhaust some of the air out the back of the case.
The fins on the 3080 run the width of the card and the opening of the back plate is pretty blocked so most of the air stays in the case.
The cooler/fins on the 3080 stick out a bit past the PCB but not as much as some other cards
 
The difference in CPU temps have been 1-3c higher at idle and ~5c higher at load.
I think this has more to do with how much more power the 3080 uses than with the cooler design vs the 980.
 
My case is a Corsair C70 with 3 intake fans and 2 exhaust.
CPU is an i7 5820k OC'd with a Noctua D15s.

True, I've never had to deal with them before, I've mainly stuck with EVGA for their amazing customer support. I'd still try to reach out to them and see if they can offer another solution that I can't think of. 

I was amazed at the dramatic difference in image quality going from 1080p to 1440p, but whether its worth it depends on your financial situation. 

BB drops are usually on Tuesdays.
 
EVGA 3080 FTW3 was $809. 
 
5900x was going for $599, but I was only allowed to purchase one card or one processor, not both.  

I was able to successfully snag a 3080 FTW3 at the Cincinnati Microcenter location last Thursday after a two hour wait in the cold.  They had over 60 cards come in that day, plus a ton of the Ryzen 5000 processors.
 
There was also a massive drop on Best Buy today where I was able to get multiple 3090s and 3070s.
 
They are obtainable without bots and without much effort.

If you live near a microcenter u have lots of options. 9900k for 300-just keep in mind u need a really good cooler for this one. Then theres the 9700k for 200. Not future proof but for that price u could sell it a year later for no loss and it crushes games out now. You need a z390 for either tho so make sure u can get a decent priced one. 
 
10700k might be a little over 300 after the holidays. Between 3700x and 10600k i would probably go 3700x for the future proofing 2 extra cores gives and 4 threads gives. Theres the 5600x as well. Intels 11th gen shoukd drop in a couple months so thats an option plus could push prices down more. 
 
Great times for cpu buying. 

If you live near a microcenter u have lots of options. 9900k for 300-just keep in mind u need a really good cooler for this one. Then theres the 9700k for 200. Not future proof but for that price u could sell it a year later for no loss and it crushes games out now. You need a z390 for either tho so make sure u can get a decent priced one. 
 
10700k might be a little over 300 after the holidays. Between 3700x and 10600k i would probably go 3700x for the future proofing 2 extra cores gives and 4 threads gives. Theres the 5600x as well. Intels 11th gen shoukd drop in a couple months so thats an option plus could push prices down more. 
 
Great times for cpu buying. 

If you live near a microcenter u have lots of options. 9900k for 300-just keep in mind u need a really good cooler for this one. Then theres the 9700k for 200. Not future proof but for that price u could sell it a year later for no loss and it crushes games out now. You need a z390 for either tho so make sure u can get a decent priced one. 
 
10700k might be a little over 300 after the holidays. Between 3700x and 10600k i would probably go 3700x for the future proofing 2 extra cores gives and 4 threads gives. Theres the 5600x as well. Intels 11th gen shoukd drop in a couple months so thats an option plus could push prices down more. 
 
Great times for cpu buying. 

Not that hard if you don't care what aib card you want. Managed to get a 3070 on release day. Cards like 3080 strix and tuf very rarely restock and when they do it lasts may be 5 seconds on newegg. Newegg has been dropping at 4pm pst but they're forcing people to buy bundles now. I used the distill chrome plugin to track Newegg's site
 
Zotac was dropping cards on their site at usually around 6:35 pm pst, not sure if they're still doing that
There were some 3060tis up for several minutes on Newegg last week, haven't been looking much lately since I'm waiting for the rumored 3080ti now

I haven't got one because I don't want them. But on stock radar it shows that yesterday the 3060 ti came into stock 55 times. So if you wan't to get anything right now download discord and join stock radar. 

A couple things stand out. Theres evidence that zen 3 performs a lot better with 8gbx4 memory than 16gbx2. Also id go for 3600mhz with tighter timings, say 16-16-16-36 if it doesnt blow up your budget too badly. Gamers Nexus did a video on it. 
 
Memory matters for Ryzen.