paprikman

Ahhh, u have even more 'vanila' stuff, than me.

It was popular in last sentury, used to make the sound 'wider' or 'fatter', if u will.
Still have a lot of Technics's devices: modern audio tech is better, but technics not bad at all.

Was this on a fresh Windows install or the old one from back when you were using the 2500?

I would agree with you if you were considering using the interface as a primary recording interface, though you suggest you will be using it for voice chat and podcasting (with a dynamic mic that lacks the detail that may be added in a higher end interface), both of which sacrifice the detail and low noise floor you would see in a more expensive interface in favour of high compression ratios in both dynamic compression and file size.

As for that review, I mean, the price difference in the interfaces is massive, absolutely massive to the point where I wouldn't consider it a fair fight. It's no surprise to anyone that the interface costing 6 times less sounds worse and the reviewer did it no favours, noise reduction plugins are standard practice for audio production and they can take that (extremely minimal) hiss right away, when comparing the two using the Slate plugins they were not gain matched, you try playing two sources of different volume through the same effect chain and see if you still get the same sound, like, you just won't. The UM2 also doesn't have dedicated drivers supplied (they are available you just have to go looking and honestly it's not a big deal unless you're trying to record high end audio), the reviewer used Asio4All drivers which while helpful are not at all optimised for this specific interface. Having reasonable expectations for a budget interface, understanding gain staging, using the correct plugins and common sense alleviate most of the issues the reviewer had with the interface. 

Again, if you're looking for a recording interface the minimum I recommend is the UMC202HD, has current dedicated ASIO drivers and sounds damn fine. I personally use its much bigger brother, the UMC1820 and I'm extremely happy with it.
 

No idea if the interface is any good but the mic itself sounds totally fine (for the price) even just plugged into the 3.5mm jack and I've heard good reviews about the audio interface.

Check the link in my signature, there's more resources there in my subreddit. If it's to be a workspace drive and it's going to be filled up often with plenty of writes, you probably want to avoid anything DRAM-less and also drives with QLC or large SLC caches. For the most part that would leave the WD SN750 as the best candidate - this has been <$130 lately at 1TB. E12-based drives would be suitable budget alternative. Again, check my resources.

I would recommend this one.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/BenQ-PD2700U-Monitor-Graphic-Percent/dp/B07GLR6RQF/ref=sr_1_2?crid=39VDHLPKY8ZSC&keywords=colour+accurate+monitor&qid=1573925621&sprefix=colour+accurate+%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-2
 

That board uses a 4 pin RGB header so any selection of the analog series such as this will work:
https://cablemod.com/product/cablemod-widebeam-foam-rgb-led-strip-30cm/
https://www.amazon.com/DEEPCOOL-Controlled-Header-Motherboard-Devices/dp/B07GRHSS1V
 
-Moved to Modding Section-

So my friend came to me because her laptop wasnt really doing it for her, and she wanted something slightly more powerful to run older games on but that didnt break the bank. So we came up with this $550 tower only cost PC
 
AMD R5 2400g (left currently at stock speeds)
Stock cooler
Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3 mATX motherboard
Corsair Vengeance LPS 8GB DDR4 3000mhz Ram (full speed achieved)
Crucial MX500 240GB SSD
Corsair CX450m PSU
Fractal Design Define Mini C TG
Bitfenix Alchemy Purple LED strip (the only company making these purple I guess) 

This photo could probably have been cropped. Oh well. Sue me!
 
Prices were bought at opportune times (the case and PSU for example were on sale for $55 and $30 respectively) and I dont have a price breakdown since I dont actually recall the exact day I had her purchase everything. The motherboard was actually purchased from Micro-center by @Densetsu and had the BIOS flashed using a Ryzen 7 and discrete GPU, since this board does not come with the updated BIOS installed. NOTE if you're using an 2200G or 2400G and you buy a B350 motherboard you are likely going to have to have to either have the retailer you buy it from (best buy or FRY's for example) flash the Bios for you. If you're buying online, get an AMD boot kit from AMD to get the system working with your new APU. Or, just know someone who has spare Ryzen CPU's lying around and have him do it ;D 
 
We are working on trying to see if we can get mass storage from her father who has a bunch of older hard drives he's not using. If not we will get something for a bit more flexibility fir storing files.
 
I actually had my friend do a good majority of the installations, for example the CPU and RAM, but I took care of cable management and wiring and installation of the motherboard into the case. This way she can say she did the more important portions to make sure the system POSTed. I snuck the Bitfenix LED strip in without her really noticing because she was busy going on about people we know from high school.

 
Notes about the build I took exception to:
The AMD Stock cooler is awesome. I've known this from friends and reviewers, as well as seeing pictures and benchmarks, but I didnt have a real appreciation for how good this stock cooler is over the intel ones provided. It's so much beefier and the 92mm fans doesnt look like it's made out of paper. It idled around 1500RPM in the BIOS and I couldnt even hear it. It's one thing to be told how good it is but it's another to experience it in person
I didnt OC because A, haven't much experience with OCing let alone on Ryzen and B, it was getting late and I'd rather not hastily throw settings in and have the system be unstable for a week. I know the R5 2400 G should be able to hit 3.8ghz no problem, but it was getting late and I have work in the morning. Rather focus on it when I have more time. The Bitfenix cable strip is.... Less impressive than the Cablemod variation. I used their Wide beam strips on the Blue Build Post Here which were A, available in longer sizes (60cm vs 30) and were brighter. Noticeably so. The previous build I used two 60cm strips to run almost all the way around the perimeter of the S340, and had to buy a few separate pieces to allow the strips to Dim. This time the LED's werent as bright, so while that wasnt necessary, it gives me more appreciation for the WideBeams. The only other thing to directly compare is the fact that Bitfenix is still using a molex connector instead of a SATA power connector, which means I had to use an entire Molex ribbon of cables just to power one device. Since this is a modular PSU, it would have been nice to omit that and keep the cable clutter down further. Other than those minor things, the LED strip was otherwise solid; it's the standard 4 pin design so it will work with any 4 pin connector you plug it into, it has a sticky backing thats magnetic and holds really well, and the cables are long enough to route through the case to the back but not too long where I had more than I knew what to do with, though, this being a semi-small mATX case, that doesnt bode well for anyone using a larger mid tower or full tower case. Plus it was the only one that I could find that was purple and actually designed for this application rather than general use LED's from amazon. I finally got to work with a Fractal Design case....
and I Fucking love it!!!   These cases are everything I wanted them to be. The thumb screws feel nice, all the thumbs screws are captive where appropriate, the PSU bracket is easy to use, the option between closed top and dust filters are easy to change out, the PSU filter from the front is ah-mazing, the chamfer along the PSU basement (the angle cut) looks really good and stands out against more very sharp filleted edged PSU basements of other cases, the included GP-12 fans are great case fans, there's foam on all panels including vibration foam edges on the TG panel, and of course, LEGENDARY CABLE MANAGEMENT. People have said in the past "Wow Tom You do such a good job with cable management" Yeah well, it's easy when your case does 95% of the work for you and you put a bit of effort into the last 5%. The S340 is good, But I think the Fractal approach beats the S340's design mostly due to velcro straps being more effective than the plastic clips. They're otherwise very similar and experience was the same when finding good cable paths. There are three (very minor) things that I noted as weakness in my eyes, but these are 100% opinion and to others these types of things might not matter. The first that I noticed was that the Stand offs are not pre installed. Fractal does give you all the ones you need and a nice adapter to screw them in, but this is the first case where I've installed them myself. Both of the previous cases I worked in were ATX, and so I dont know if it''s common for mATX cases to not install their stand offs or if this is a Fractal Design choice. I would have assumed everyone using this case would put in a mATX board, maybe mITX (which IIRC uses the same top left, top middle and middle left standoffs anyways). Dislike #2 and 3 both have to do with the PSU shroud, and both of these come from my experience with the S340. The first being that it has no SSD mounts on it to show off your storage. I do really like the version that has the SSD facing the front of the PSU rather than the top. I think that looks really slick and wish it was on more cases. Top mounts are good too, so I wouldnt have been too upset. But it's just nice to be able to show off the storage you have in your system since HDD's are ugly, and no one will see SSD's behind the mobo tray. This mounting method is very effective and space efficient, and for people who DONT want to show off their SSD's it can be convenient for cable management especially. The last is irrelevant to this build today, but there's no PCI-E power hole for GPU's. You can of course, use the lower vertical grommet on the motherboard tray or feed it through the removable PSU basement cover used for installing larger rads in the front (which actually would work pretty well on this case considering most GPU's will have the power connector hovering right above where that PCI-E Power opening would be anyways, unlike longer cases like the Enthoo Pro M TG which has the opening further away from where that connector would be, hence why they added a one of these openings) Again, these are very opinionated and had no real impacts on the build overall.
 
Conclusion:
 
Bad-ass. 10/10 Would recommend.
 

Thanks, but I've already ordered the define mini C (tg version).

I'll add in Meshify Mini-C, very nice and compact-ish case.

I've never actually heard of that shotgun test!
Thanks, you made my day with that video.

I have had a few fractal cases, their huge Define XL shotgun proof (seriously, the side panel took a shotgun blast without puncturing), a corsair 350d, my server lives in a 750d, I run a Fractal S2 now for my main rig. Anyways, yes, the corsair stuff is not as beefy as fractal. That is true. That said, I wouldn't be worried about the 350d breaking by putting your legs on it. It was solid. Not literally bullet proof like fractal.... but still totally fine. I ran a 280 60mm rad up on top of it which put a lot of weight up top, and even when I carried it around it felt "fine".
 

I ran a corsair 350d in my last build and liked it. Its not a super small mATX case, but its not half bad! I liked it.

Define Mini C?

I went with the A3 and enjoy them. Got it imported in white.  I am not sure if the pushing for the A4 would be worth it for the higher bit rate with high/low gain selection.  Both are only powered by usb.

You can get a proper 144hz for this setup. I've been looking for a new monitor recently, so I've tested many of them in the stores.
I really liked higher refresh rate over higher resolution.
Idk if this gpu can handle 1440p@144hz.
There is a budget acer nitro ips panel that is 1440p@144hz (it is about 400-500$). Build quality is not perfect and there is noticeable lightbleed, but for me it would be fine for that money.

You don't need to spend that much cash to power that headphone at all a topping d10  or a khadas tone board and a JDs labs atom combo will sound cleaner. Or just as clean generally you don't want to depend that much money on a dac amp compared to how much you spent on your headphones

I don't know modhhouse Argons are supposed to be really good

I heard the t60rp are the best t50 mod. but I don't own either to conficently say they are an upgrade or anything IMO your just going from one mid range planar to another mid range planar. so probably more of a sound signature difference if anything. he 400 i might be good because they are at least open back so its a different experience.  I would say probably the closest upgrade my be a monolith m1060c or the modhouse argon

Well you're really going to limit yourself as to the quality and features of each monitor, but if you're fine with 1080p 60Hz monitors, the ones you linked above should work fine.

Keep in mind that you can scale windows ui if it is too small

Then OSX or your Linux window manager of choice probably has scaling options for HiDPI displays.
 
Here's a screenshot of a 1440p monitor, not mine, but someone's.

Well, you can't really do anything right now, just wait for some minor patches, maybe they will fix this. I usually try to make a dump of my system before any updates or serious hassle. Or maybe you can rollback somehow?
 
P.S. don't throw rocks at me, but I've migrated to linux not only for work, but also for gaming - having some 'install and forgive' experience.

If you're buying last gen (8700/8700k) you need to buy on the used market, not new.
I would pick an 8700 over a 2700 any day, especially for gaming or programming.