Jon Jon

My buddy is still running an X99 platform rig. I believe is he running a 5820K at 4.5ghz and just upgraded his 980ti to an RTX 2080ti because he bought a 4K TV. Funny enough, he tells me that even with that card, it still struggles with handling Minecraft with shaders.

@Zando Bob, I get you, I am the same. I still have my $1800 2005 beast gaming rig that is dead at my uncle's house, as well as a shuttle I built as well that was a good HTPC for the time. I also have my Core i5-3570 build from 2012 still hanging around because I have my ASUS Xonar Essence ST in there, so that is my primary music listening rig. Now I have my current rig, which will ultimately become a Plex/Streaming box when the time comes that I want to build a new rig that is exclusively for gaming. It's why I mention getting a Quadro when the time comes. That thing will chew threw both Plex and Streaming tasks without breaking a sweat, and my Ryzen 7 will be able to pick up anything additional without any issues. I have a Be Quiet Silent Case that this is all in and my Noctua D15, really the only thing you can ever hear in the case remotely is my graphics card, but the STRIX 5700XT is way quieter than my Red Dragon RX 580 ever was. I could just save and put the two RX 580s I own into it, but I am also pretty tempted to eventually migrate them into my i5-3570 build and turn that box into a premiere Windows 7 gaming PC, for the titles that actually supported Crossfire. Eventually, those games won't run well on modern OS, similar to what I've seen with many XP games (which I plan to resurrect my high school machine for).

@Zando Bob, test the settings for yourself when it comes to streaming with the Radeon VII. I honestly thought my RX 580 put out decent enough quality. When you pump out higher bitrate, it becomes good enough. I don't think a side grade is worth it JUST for that. Though I really like the Turing NVENC, for the price, you could just build a second rig for streaming and get far better performance. I am actually tempted, to do that. My current rig will probably become a dedicated streaming/plex server when I am ready for a new build. At that point, I'd be getting a Quadro. I think it is a great idea for you to do some walkthroughs / guides. Really, 1080P is plenty for stuff like that.

Ah you are young! Makes me think of my buddy's kid brother (He and I have been close since kindergaren, so I've known his brother his whole life, he is 21 now) and he just got into this stuff. Stuff today is just so bullet proof. He is constantly investing in his PC, his Rift, audio mixing equipment, etc. It wasn't uncommon back then to get product that was DOA. The only stuff that was bullet proof were CPUs. Not uncommon to have to boot into memtest via CD and see memory failed fresh from packaging. Same for hard drives. Same for motherboards. Power Supplies were pretty bullet proof back then IF you bought from a reputable manufacturer, but even then, not like today. I think your 4K idea is a great one. I actually own an Elgato HD60 Pro and love it, the 4K one is apparently amazing. Honestly, I think an RTX card would save you on compute since the Turing NVENC is so good that you can leverage that to give your 5960X a break. I am finding that with my OC Ryzen 7 1700 that I am starting to see FPS impact when streaming exclusively with CPU when playing modern AAA titles. This wasn't the case two years ago. You can easily clone a display to the HDMI out into a 4K capture card, or just daisy chain out to the same monitor, at the cost of adaptive sync.

Maybe I am showing my age (30), but I remember a time when I was a teenager and static electricity frying things was an actual problem. Just force of habit at this point!

On the carpet...living dangerously I see.