Eastman51

If you think going from an ancient 4 core to a modern 6 core won't feel like a world of a difference, you're kidding yourself. Even modern 4 core CPUs are leagues better than older ones; and that's on top of the fact that games won't even utilize more than 3-4 cores at best. And yes, the 3600 is quite close the the 9700k. Stock, the 9700k might get 10-15fps more than the 3600; which for $150 more is definitely not worth it by any means. And then you have to consider that Intel motherboards are also going to be $50 more for similar features to a B450 board. With the better RAM you get from saving money, and with a decent cooler, you can easily overclock that 3600 to match the 9700k at stock clocks (remember, that's the same performance as a $300 CPU for ~$50 less). B450 boards are likely to already be shipping with updated BIOS. 3rd gen has been out for quite some time now, most old stock is going to be about dried up. It might be possible to do it under $600 where you guys live or with some special coupons/promotions, but I cannot configure such a system for under $600 in my area and with my findings.

There's no definitive answer on when 10th gen will release. It could be next month, it could be next year. From what I can find, there's no way you can fit a 9700k, a decent motherboard, a DRP4, and good RAM under $600. I see no reason not to go with a 3600, decent motherboard, a not overkill cooler, and high quality RAM for barely over $400. The 3600 isn't that much slower than the 9700k in games, which the gap can be easily made up with some light overclocking. And you may not even have to touch the CPU clocks to do so, as 3rd gen Ryzen can achieve some interesting gains solely with RAM overclocks. You don't really need a DRP4 unless you are doing some heavy overclocking, there are cheaper alternatives that will net you lower temps at stock clocks and allow you to do some light OC without issues. Personally, this is a great upgrade right here, and there's no reason to spend $150 more on a 9700k that won't net you that much more fps. PCPartPicker Part List Type Item Price CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor $185.99 @ Amazon CPU Cooler Noctua NH-U12S 55 CFM CPU Cooler $59.95 @ Amazon Motherboard Asus ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard $104.99 @ Amazon Memory G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory $59.99 @ Newegg Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total $410.92 Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-30 01:00 EST-0500 and that $190 you save can be automatically put towards a GPU upgrade.

Since you only have $500-600, the CPUs you listed are likely out of your budget. You won't just be buying a CPU, you'll need a new motherboard and RAM too. I would suggest the Ryzen 5 3600 with a 3200Mhz kit of 2x8GB RAM and a B450 motherboard.

I've been running a system with a Ryzen 5 2600x, Asus ROG Strix B350-F motherboard, and 4x8 kit of RAM for quite some time now. I noticed while glancing through Amazon that the Asus Prime X470 board is on a pretty decent discount. I know that board is quite good, and I'm thinking about upgrading to it, but I'm not sure if it would be worth it. I know that my RAM is currently not performing its best; I'm not sure if this is a motherboard limitation, RAM limitation, or if I just haven't set my clocks properly. I know my RAM is all 3000Mhz capable, and I used to run at 3000Mhz; but one day it decided to quit running at that speed. I have the AMD equivalent of XMP enabled now, and it's got my RAM set for 2933Mhz. I'd like to get my RAM to 3000Mhz, because 2nd gen Ryzen is still fairly memory speed limited; but I don't know if it's something I can fix or if I do need a better chipset. I also have no idea if I'm making use of some of Zen+'s features (i.e. XFR2, PB2, etc). I can't find anywhere online to confirm if these are motherboard/chipset dependant, or if it's all handled by the CPU regardless of board. I also wonder if my board's VRMs are holding me back? All in all, it's probably not a big deal; we might be talking 3-4 fps in games, and I don't play many FPS games nor do I play competitively in any of my games, so I don't think it really matters that much. Last thing that's got me interested in an upgrade is PCIe lanes. Currently, my NVMe SSD is being bottlenecked by my current setup. As far as speeds go, it's still faster than SATA, but nowhere near as fast as advertised speeds (it seems to be affecting games somehow, but I'm not sure if it's related to the drive's speed or something else). Currently I have my GPU in the top x16 slot, my sound card in the 3rd x1 slot, and my NVMe expansion card in the 3rd x16 slot. My NVMe is running at PCIe 2.0 x2, from what I can tell. I only have this NVMe expansion card because of the motherboard's SATA setup; 2 SATA ports are disabled when you use the M.2 slot, and I have 5 SATA drives. I'm wondering if the X470 would fix my RAM clocks, help my PCIe/SATA config, and potentially gain a reasonable amount of performance out of the CPU from better VRMs/other features. I'm not really looking for overclocking my CPU (hence the 2600x and not 2600), and my FPS/temps are pretty decent; I have an overkill CPU cooler. I wonder if getting a SATA PCIe expansion card for one of my SATA drives so I can run the NVMe SSD on the motherboard's M.2 would be a better solution to the drive setup; it would also cost about $70-80 less than a new motherboard. But this won't affect my RAM clocks. But maybe my RAM clocks are fine and I'm just being paranoid; or maybe I just don't know how to manually OC my RAM, which is why I can't hold 3000Mhz. I'm hearing conflicting suggestions from everyone I've asked on Discord, and I still don't know which option would be best.

Noctua NH-D15 Dark Rock Pro 4 Cryorig R1 Ultimate Zalman CNPS9900MAX Best of the best in dual tower heatsinks. I have the Noctua on my Ryzen machine, and I have the Zalman on my 130W TDP i7.

I just use Twitch to search up mods to easily download and install mods. Twitch owns CurseForge, so any mod on Curse is in the Twitch launcher (for the most part, there's probably some exceptions). Personally, I'd stick with 1.12.2 since it has more mods than 1.14 (afaik), but its up to you.

Yep. Whenever the CPU loads things off the RAM, the RAM is physically closer (so less travel time for electrons) and the RAM is faster, so the CPU hardly has to do anything for the program to open. When the CPU loads a program that isn't in the RAM, it has to contact the disk, which then has to locate the files, then read them, and wait for the files to move to the memory. It requires more CPU cycles to retrieve data off a disk than to retrieve straight from memory.

I'd wait for a little while. AMD will be releasing new CPUs and GPUs in the coming months, and if you could save up some extra cash in the meantime you could just build a fully new system instead of just a couple upgrades.

I've only ever run Asus GPUs, the lights are normal. They will stay on as long as the system has power, even when it is shutdown; the only way to turn them off is to unplug from power or flip the PSU switch. (For reference, I have these Asus GPUs: 960 Turbo, 970 Turbo, 1070 Strix, 2080 Strix) Also, as an FYI, those lights will turn red if the card does not have PCIe power cables plugged in while the system is plugged in and has power. Handy feature for people who tend to forget to plug in some cables.

It's most likely caused by the CPU spiking in usage as it loads the program off the SSD/HDD. When you close and reopen it immediately, the program hasn't left the RAM yet, so the CPU doesn't need to do much work to reload it. And when you wait awhile, the program has left memory, so the CPU has to drag files of the storage drive again, which temporarily spikes the CPU usage. Most other temperature monitoring programs do similar things.

hmmmm Try reseating the GPU, or even trying a different PCIe slot altogether. Also double check seating on the PCIe power cables, you could try running your old GPU just to make sure no slots or cables are busted. If the old setup works fine and none of these other troubleshooting steps work, you may have to RMA the new GPU because it might be faulty

The 9600k is basically a cheaper 8700k with no hyper-threading. In gaming, they will perform almost identically; because games usually leverage single core performance rather than multi-core performance. If you're video editing (or any other task defined as "productivity") the 8700k will perform better; because productivity tasks more often than not benefit greatly from more cores. A friend of mine wanted to get the 8700k, but I talked him into getting a 9600k instead, because all he does on his PC is game. He's happy with the $100+ he saved.

If you will have a need to have a computer in the classroom for any reason (taking notes, doing online work, etc), a convertible tablet/laptop (like the Microsoft Surface) is an excellent choice because they serve multiple purposes for being a generic computer and a useful device for school. Then you could get an external GPU dock for Thunderbolt 3 and get some good gaming horsepower for when you have free time. If you have no need for a computer in the classroom, a cheap desktop (ITX or mATX if you're going to be moving it around often) is going to provide a better gaming experience. As a college student myself, I have a cheap gaming laptop and an Android tablet that I take to class with me everyday. The tablet I use for note taking in OneNote, which can then be accessed later on the laptop (or my desktop at home) to reference for doing homework. I commute to the campus, and occasionally I'll fire up a game if I have a few hour gap between classes and no homework to do or friends to meet up with. The laptop was cheap, and isn't very powerful, but can easily handle 1080p medium at 60fps. Just my two cents. Edit: I have a quite expensive gaming desktop at home that I primarily do my gaming on, so I didn't need an expensive or fancy laptop. Though I do think a Surface would be better for me than my current tablet + clamshell laptop combo, but I'm too cheap to bother upgrading since both devices work just fine.

*Despicable Me meme* >has sale >blocks people for buying lots of games >doesn't have shopping cart so users can buy lots of games at once >doesn't have shopping cart so users can buy lots of games at once In all seriousness tho, I've been wondering why teh fuc the Epic Game Store never had a shopping cart. And this just makes the Epic Game Store so much more of a meme. Instances like this are why Steam still looks like a more refined platform.

I've never heard of that tool before, and I can't seem to find it with a simple google search. Whatever that tool did, it wasn't quite what the name might suggest. I'd reinstall Windows in case it put any malware/spyware on your machine, but its up to you. Instead of that tool however, you need to use DDU (display driver uninstaller). It totally nukes the driver into the ether, and when you next boot your system you'll find yourself with the basic Microsoft VGA driver (disconnect from the internet so Windows doesn't grab an out of date driver from its repository). Then you can install the latest driver fresh and clean.

I have an Asus VS247H-P monitor that has started to straight up not work. It will display output, but only a static image. I've tried using different cables (HDMI to Displayport, HDMI to HDMI, HDMI to DVI) and different ports on the GPU, but it always shows a static image. The mouse can scroll across it, but nothing displayed on screen can be interacted with. I've also tried the Win+Ctrl+Shift+B combo to refresh the display drivers, but that doesn't do anything either. My Nvidia drivers are completely up to date, Windows has one of those "seeker" updates that I'm going to try out, and I've tried every possible port and cable combo I can (I have an Asus Strix 2080, so no DVI or VGA ports; and I don't have DVI to DP or VGA to HDMI/DP, or USB C adapters for displays). If Windows update/a reboot don't fix the issue, I'll try a DDU and clean install of my drivers. If that doesn't work, I'm going to assume its the display; if this is the case, is it fixable? If so, how complicated of a repair is it? Or do I just have to get a new monitor? Edit: After the Windows update the monitor seems to be working fine. I believe this has happened in the past (on different driver and Windows versions), so it may start to become a recurring issue. I brought my PC out of sleep mode when I got home today, and I think that the other occurrence(s) of this also involved sleep mode.

Newegg shows these laptops in the top results: TUF https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834235196&Description=gtx 1660ti laptop&cm_re=gtx_1660ti_laptop-_-34-235-196-_-Product GL73 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834155159&Description=gtx 1660ti laptop&cm_re=gtx_1660ti_laptop-_-34-155-159-_-Product Aero 15 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834233259&Description=gtx 1660ti laptop&cm_re=gtx_1660ti_laptop-_-34-233-259-_-Product GL63 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834155161&Description=gtx 1660ti laptop&cm_re=gtx_1660ti_laptop-_-34-155-161-_-Product Aorus 15 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834725062&Description=gtx 1660ti laptop&cm_re=gtx_1660ti_laptop-_-34-725-062-_-Product Mech 15 https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA8S19768283&Description=gtx 1660ti laptop&cm_re=gtx_1660ti_laptop-_-2WC-000M-00144-_-Product

I was able to find all the models listed on Nvidia's website by searching "1660Ti laptop" on Newegg. I also found a couple of models not listed on Nvidia's page.

16 Series laptops are quite new. I'm surprised there's even that many already up for sale. If you want more options, you're going to have to wait a while as manufacturers begin rolling out their new laptop lineups.

I know I played on a modded server (using an FTB pack from Twitch) with Jake and a mod (probably some other people as well) over on the LTT Discord. iirc the server was hosted on the LTT network, but its been a while since this happened.

Noctua NH-D15 beQuiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 Cryorig R1 Ultimate Zalman CNPS9900MAX These are the best of the best in dual tower air coolers (afaik). All 4 should perform within a few degrees of each other. I have the Noctua and the Zalman and can speak to their performance. The Zalman in particular is nice because it is quite cheap, at $25 USD on Amazon. Edit: PSA: The Zalman does not ship with an AM4 bracket. You can send an RMA request to Zalman about the AM4 bracket and they will send you one. However, as of right now, Zalman is temporarily out of stock of AM4 brackets for these coolers.

I wouldn't trust it.

$10 difference. IMO, DDR3 is hyper inflated. Local is your best bet for actual deals.

Pretty sure 4800Mhz DDR4 exists, so I wouldn't be surprised if 3000Mhz DDR3 exists. But unlike newer CPUs and DDR4, such speed on DDR3 probably wouldn't result in as big of gains anyways (not to mention the diminishing returns)

DDR3 is still expensive, even used. 2x8 kits of DDR3 on ebay are barely any cheaper than 2x8 3000Mhz CL15 DDR4 (like $10-15 at best).