SnowyMus

Yeah, it's a scam. These types of sites have been making the rounds to take advantage of desperate PC gamers and enthusiasts. The domain isn't even that old, being registered about 22 days ago according to the whois database.

Do you mean one PC for gaming and one PC dedicated for streaming? Or is this one PC doing both tasks? The topic sounds like you want the second one, but your post reads a little bit like the first. Oh, and what's your budget? $1000, $1500, and $2000 can get you very different PCs. And what market? Because $2000 can get you different stuff depending on where you live. If you mean the first one and you want a dedicated PC for JUST streaming (so this PC would just do streaming, no gaming whatsoever, and you'd use a capture card for the gaming) this is what I'd do: PCPartPicker Part List CPU: Intel Core i5-10400 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor ($164.99 @ Best Buy) Motherboard: Gigabyte B460M DS3H Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard ($104.99 @ Newegg) Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-2133 CL15 Memory ($51.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Kingston A400 120 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($24.99 @ Amazon) Case: Fractal Design Core 1100 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($47.98 @ Newegg) Power Supply: EVGA BQ 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ($39.88 @ Amazon) Total: $434.82 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-05-29 03:32 EDT-0400 A 6 core i5-10400 (NON-F) build is fairly inexpensive and should be plenty. Considering the maximum quality you can get out of Twitch's bitrate constraints, anything more is overkill, and anything less is a terrible value. You can upgrade the storage if you want to do recording as well. If not, a single 120 GB SSD is fine. Getting anything more than 8 GB of RAM for something that's not running anything except OBS is kinda pointless. (Also, for PCs this cheap, honestly, you might be able to find a better deal with OEMs, but mind the specs if you do this) I'm guessing not. In which case, again, we need a budget.

It'd certainly be a lot better for mining than the MacBook! I still wouldn't recommend buying it if you were only going to mine on it, though. Get it to play games or do work, and mine on the side when you aren't using it maybe. Yes.

Sure! Doing heavily compute-based tasks like mining and folding can be very intensive! Don't expect a lot of things to run very well while you're doing it. Performance will go back to normal when you stop. IIRC the new M1 MacBook Air doesn't have a fan. Take that what you will on how well it'll run. As for longevity, well, probably not too much, but I can't say running something intensive nonstop on an ultrabook form factor laptop is great for it. Your battery will probably hate it. I know Ethereum works based on the article Kilrah linked. You can also use a VM to run other operating systems (but not dual boot iirc), though note that you will only be able to run ARM-based operating systems (which will only be able to run ARM-compatible applications). How much power consumption? A lot. Don't expect your battery to last long. Is it worth the investment? Absolutely not. The article quoted $0.14/day. If a MacBook Air is $999, then it'll take about 20 years before you start making money back. The M1 is a pretty good low-powered SoC for doing lots of things (web browsing, productivity, light gaming, etc.). Mining is not one of those things. If you're really interested in mining, I recommend building or buying a gaming PC. You can use that to play games, and then you can mine when you're not using it. It definitely won't be cheap (especially with shortages) and it will suck quite a bit of power and resources when you're using it to mine, but hey, you get an actual gaming system that may (eventually) pay for itself.

It uses PCIe, so it'd probably work just fine if you had the drivers installed for it, though the latest driver for it is from 2016. If your current card is also an NVIDIA card, you'd probably need to uninstall those drivers, first. I'm pretty certain that card is gen 1 PCIe, so using anything less than a x16 slot would likely significantly hold it back with newer games, assuming it could play those. GeForce 8 only supports up to D3D10 iirc.

What games are you playing? I'm assuming by 2K, you mean 2560x1440 and not 1920x1080 (since it can technically mean both). Also, what is your GPU usage in games? Anyway, at 1440p, I think you'll struggle to find very many recent games that are significantly bottlenecked by the CPU. With games like Cyberpunk 2077 absolutely destroying even Pascal GPUs, I'd personally look into buying something like an RTX 3070.

In most cases, yes, a PSU by a reputable brand will be fine, but even reputable brands have their nukes! For example, EVGA makes the SuperNOVA series of PSUs, and many of them are pretty good, but their NEX lineup isn't amazing, and I wouldn't want their 400 W N1 PSU to occupy the same BUILDING as my PC (which, for a power supply, that dismal two year warranty should've been enough to make you reconsider). I suppose a tier list is a fairly decent way to quickly look up if a PSU is good or not (A/B are good, C is fair if you're building a budget PC, D isn't good, and E is a nuke), but I always recommend looking at a thorough review of any product before you make your PC run off of it.

Of the two choices, I'd get RAM first. You might be able to use that RAM module if you put the 8 GB in one channel and the 2x 4 GB in the other, but there is a chance that the RAM won't be compatible. And, of course, having 16 GB of not very fast RAM is preferable to 8 GB of fast RAM.

According to your motherboard page, yes: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/Z370-A-PRO#support-cpu You have to update to the latest BIOS first: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/Z370-A-PRO

8700K is equivalent to a 10600K which is still going pretty strong. You're fine.

The RX 550 shouldn't have any issues outputting video to the two displays. 16-18-18-36 is fine for 3200 MHz. The factory timings won't really help you that much, but you can tune them yourself if you want to get some additional performance. It's a pretty good SSD. That might be cheaper! If you're okay with buying used, I'd buy a used R9 350, instead. It's complete trash for gaming, so you might be able to get it for pretty cheap on the used market, and it supports 4K output. Yes.

If you don't have any other slots and you want to use that SSD, then I suppose that would be why you'd put a PCIe 3.0 SSD in a PCIe 4.0 slot.

The 2500K would be better, but $80 sounds a bit high. Where are you buying it from?

Oh yeah, definitely stay away from nukes. In that case, I'd maybe get the S12III of those suggestions. It shouldn't blow up your PC with these components, but that's all I can really say. You may be limited on upgrading to anything that consumes more power than this.

It shouldn't blow up. It probably won't blow up. It shouldn't blow up. If you're getting the gray CX500 and not the green one, it'll most likely be fine with this build, but the 500 watts is limiting here on future upgradability. If you're getting the green one, well, it probably won't blow up, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the magic smoke evacuates the power supply when you run Furmark. It shouldn't blow up.

I'd say its best use case is for a SFF PC case such as a Fractal Design Node 202 or a Silverstone ML08, since you can't fit a full-sized cooler in those. It's not ideal for a full desktop cooler, but yeah, it does look nice. I know the Hyper 212 EVO is a meme cooler, but even that would be a bit better (and cheaper!). But, even so, yes, the NH-L9A is better than stock.

I looked for some reviews on the L9a and found something that may answer your question: I do think you can do better for the price, but yes, it will perform better. EDIT: Seems DoctorNick ninja'd me on that

My response was to this question: but I'll edit my post to include that

In single core workloads, unlikely. In multi core workloads, probably! These CPUs tend to boost higher when they are at a cooler temperature. The Wraith Spire isn't a bad cooler and will allow your CPU to perform within its rated specifications without overheating, but I've found my Ryzen 5 2600 can get as hot as 84 °C with it when doing a heavy multicore workload. This isn't hot enough to thermal throttle, but it isn't going to boost as high as an identical CPU at, say, 50 °C. For gaming, this is fine. But if you're going to do any sort of heavy multi threaded workloads such as encoding or rendering, spending a little extra on an air cooler isn't a bad idea.

So the first point is pretty clear: Your board may need a BIOS update. Second one refers to the USB Type-C port. Your board does not have enough headers for it (it has 1 - you need 2), thus that port will not be usable. If you don't plan on using it, it probably isn't a big deal, but here's a board that has sufficient headers: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/3Mxbt6/msi-mag-b550-tomahawk-atx-am4-motherboard-mag-b550-tomahawk. It'll cost a little extra, but it does also have a nice feature where you can update the BIOS without a CPU. Its predecessor, the B450 Tomahawk, was very popular partly because of this. Third one refers to the mounting hardware for putting the CPU in. If your CPU cooler doesn't come with an AM4 bracket, you can request one from Noctua. See this page for more information: https://noctua.at/en/nm-am4-mounting-kit. It might come with a bracket, so don't request one until you've received your cooler. Fourth one is just a disclaimer that it doesn't know everything about your parts. However, you're using low-profile RAM, so you shouldn't have to worry about compatibility regarding the RAM and cooler.

GamersNexus did a review on the P500A here and compared it to the P400A: https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3601-phanteks-p500a-case-review-thermals-noise-quality The P500A is definitely the superior option, but a couple degrees isn't likely to make a significant difference with your use case. You also get more fans on the P400A digital than the base P500 or P400 if we're looking at this with a value perspective. The P500A digital is a little costly where you live, so you'd want to get a third 140 mm fan if you wanted three fans, though there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to adding fans.

Here are a few I can think of off the top of my head: P300A. It's a bit cheaper than the P500A, and while you don't get a type-C port, you still get plenty of options for cooling, and the airflow is still very good. https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/crqBD3/phanteks-eclipse-p300a-mesh-atx-mid-tower-case-ph-ec300atg_bk01 4000D Airflow. It's also a bit cheaper than the P500A, but unlike the P300A, you get a type-C port. The window is also tinted, giving it a darker overall look. https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/bCYQzy/corsair-4000d-airflow-atx-mid-tower-case-cc-9011200-ww NR600P. It's more expensive than a P500A, but it has no window, and it's got a lot of room in it when you take out the drives. https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/jwQfrH/cooler-master-masterbox-nr600p-atx-mid-tower-case-mcb-nr600p-knnn-s00 P500A is a fine choice, though. Also, there are a couple things I think of that you can (optionally) do to save a little money: Swap the GA for a 650 W G3. Besides the poor OPP which probably won't matter with your PC, it's a very good power supply that costs less than the GA in your region. https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/y88H99/evga-supernova-g3-650w-80-gold-certified-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-220-g3-0650 Get a slightly cheaper air cooler, like an NH-U14S. It is a lot bulkier than an AiO, but it's still a very good performing cooler that should be way more than enough for your CPU. Up to you on this one - that AiO is actually really good especially for the price. https://pcpartpicker.com/product/DMjG3C/noctua-cpu-cooler-nhu14s EDIT: Or you could not get a CPU cooler and use the box cooler instead. Then cry when your CPU reaches 90 degrees.

You don't need to upgrade your board. PCIe is backwards/forwards compatible with itself. What will happen is the cards will run in PCIe gen 3 mode instead of gen 4. This means the bandwidth from the GPU to the CPU will be effectively halved. However, the speed of the GPU, itself, will be the same. You might see some performance loss in tasks that utilize a lot of bandwidth, such as transferring large amounts of massive textures to the GPU, but it's unlikely to affect current games in any significant, meaningful way, and by the time it does, you'd probably be long due for a CPU or GPU replacement anyway.

I think it's unlikely you've actually damaged anything.