MrWhy

It has been awhile since I've posted but I recently came into some money and have the opportunity to do some system upgrades. I'm very happy with my CPU at the moment but my monitor while still in great shape I feel is handicapping my system. Every option below is well within the price range for the upgrade but its a one or the other scenario currently. My question is what would you do? Upgrade to a newer monitor or is there another part of my system that you think would benefit more from a parts upgrade? For reference I'm usually playing AAA games a few years behind what is currently on release (Except for new upcoming releases like Starfield) so I'm not sure if a panel upgrade makes sense when I'm not too concerned with competitive play. I don't have the option to really see the difference between OLED & VA panels but I feel like I could be getting more out of my current GPU with an upgrade. Current Display: Samsung LS34E790C (NS/ZA) Looking to upgrade (Either Or): //Monitor(s): -Alienware AW3423DWF - SAMSUNG Odyssey Neo G8 //GPU: -Gigabyte Gaming OC 4090 Any opinions on where to push for an upgrade are welcomed.

I'd like to switch over to running M.2's exclusively at some point in the near future, and I do enjoy doing custom hard-line cooling so when I do these upgrades every few years I try to buy boards that will last for a few years as well as look aesthetically pleasing. I enjoy the building just as much as I appreciate the price and the lower price boards just grate me a bit more than I'd like to admit when it comes to looks.

Compared to what you can pay for AM4 X570 Right now picking up the Maximus for $279.00 is pretty much on par considering you can spend $300 for having all the bells and whistles for X570. But I never did think about looking for an 8700k from what I saw the 3700X was still beating that in everything but single core performance on certain titles by plus or minus the same margin as the 9700k.

I'll apologize if the title of the post is a little click baity but I'll jump right into it. Going to upgrading and I've been set on picking up a 3700X. In particular the build from new-egg will be as follows.... 3700X-$329.99 Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro Wifi- $269.99 G. Skill Trident Z (2x8 16 GB 3600 speed)- $99.99 Total W/Tax for my region will be- $741.97 However I can put together an Intel upgrade for the following parts as of right now before the new-egg "fantastech" sale ends for the price below.... 9700k- $349.99 ASUS Maximus XI Hero- $279.99 Corsair Vengeance (2x8 16 GB 3000 speed)- $99.99 Total W/Tax for my Region will ALSO be- $741.97 I'm totally fine with being an early adopter w/ X570 and paying the same amount $200+ for a decent X470 board at this point would be stupid IMO. This rig will be used mostly for gaming at 1440p and general video recording. It will be custom water cooled and I'll just be reusing my Gigabyte AORUS 2080 GPU. The biggest problem is the availability of 3700X Chips right now. I know they smash 9700k out of the park right now when it comes to anything multi threaded but I'm not rendering 8k Red footage or even 4k footage for that matter. Finding a 3700X for the next few months will be difficult I think (I don't have time w/work to jump on things as soon as they come back into stock before being wiped out) without paying the premium scalper's price. For my use case here and by the numbers I feel as though I'm actually getting a better deal for the money with Intel here..... Am I missing something really obvious or does my napkin math really seem to work out in my favor here? (Solely interested in Gaming performance with streaming and light mod creation being a secondary issue)

In my experience you'd see a drop in fps long before you'd see any kind of screen micro-stutter or tearing. Thats assuming you're not trying to push 144+ Hz at a lower resolution. With nvidia finally unlocking adaptive refresh rate even people trying those kinds of things should be okay (ish) I would assume but I haven't had a chance to mess around with the implemtation and see how well it is working at the moment.

At 1080p 144Hz you might see a pretty decent slow-down b/c of the IPC of the older Haswell Chips but honestly once you go beyond that up to 1440p and 4k if there is any slowdown its going to only be at a maximum 10-15 fps which if you ask me is pretty negligable considering your going to be running most titles in the upper 90s and above depending on the game. People place way to much emphasis on a CPU "Bottle-neck". Personally I start to consider that a problem when your looking at a difference of 30+ fps which is where my eye at least starts to notice a difference.

The thing I'm struggling with is you have roughly speaking comparable pricing but the 1080ti has way more VRAM and it looks like thats what helping the card remain such a value in terms of price per dollar and performance. But on the flip side I don't think we've come anywhere close to driver optimization for the 20 series cards yet so I'm left kinda wondering what the performance delta will be a year from now when the drivers have matured a bit. As for the 4770K there seems to be a ton of numbers posted on the CPU Overclocking data base in the CPU Forum which is where I started as a baseline for my OC awhile ago. I'm running an extremly conservative OC on my 4790k @ 4.6Mhz. From what I've seen really you should be able to get close to 4.8-4.9 depending on your luck and cooling solution without too much hastle.

So this is very much going to be an opinion piece. But its one that I'd like (Taking a deep breath and hoping) people to consider somewhat seriously. I'm currently running a GTX 1080 FE (With EK Waterblock so yes its OC'd) and I'm looking to upgrade (This will be the last GPU upgrade for this system's usable life span and will most likely be installed in my next build +/- 3 years from now). I'm torn between buying a used 1080ti and slapping another EK block on it and calling it a day, or just saying to heck with it and picking up an AORUS RTX 2080 Waterforce with the waterblock already installed (This seems to be cheaper relatively speaking). I'd like to hear some opinions if anyone knows anyone with the AORUS card about how it runs (Or what its made of because I can't find much on the block construction itself other than it might be a 3rd party block from Ek?), and just in general which route people would go and why? For aditional reference I do light video editing (College work & Streaming), and use a 1440p Ultra-wide as my daily driver monitior, the card will be paired with an i7-4790k (OC'd @ 4.7) and 32 GB of ram so bottlenecking isn't a major concern here.

Oh I'm aware I just wanted to see what it would do for fun. and its an XFX.

So I've had my newest build up and running for about a year now and I am pretty happy with it. Using Asus's dynamic overclocking suite for kicks my 4690k is running at a healthy and stable 4.6-4.7 OC and I haven't run into any problems as far as power goes with my 750 Watt bronze rated PSU. My question is though that with the overclock in mind and 4 EK Vardar fans+the D5 pump for my loop is there much juice left for OC'ing my 1080? I don't expect to get a ton of miliage obviously but does anyone think it is honestly prudent to upgrade the psu just for what I presume would be little gain? My napkin math says I can push a little more from it. But I don't know if I'm leaving performance on the table by not increasing the PSU. Any thoughts are welcome!

Went with the Samsung, I trust it more over the LG and with a little correction (If its even needed) I'll get nicer colors out of it.

Just not sure if its worth doing haha I'm tied between these two choices right now and this idea was my crazy third to put the other 2 in perspective! 1.) LG Electronics 34UC87C 2.) Samsung S34E790C

Had no idea that he did, I must have missed it.

So I'm in the Market for a new Monitor to go with my pretty high caliber PC. I know its going to sound stupid but my idea seems to pose a pretty compelling argument. I was looking at curved ultrawide 1440p monitors when the thought hit me "Why not just use VR". I had always planned on getting some sort of VR set and this might be the best of both worlds. My main question is t hat if I pick up a vive, is it possible to use the headset as a monitor? I know I'd be dropping some resolution but I think that it would bring some imersivity to not only my gaming expereince but my normal operating experince as well. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? If so I'd love to hear them.

Don't let anyone BS you....FE cards have on avg if not overall the best OC potential so far (Pretty sure NV are binning the chips but they haven't said anything yet) and thermals beat some AIB cards out there RN.