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Never heard of that before, did you check the frame times? That's the most important part if you want smooth gameplay.

Yeah I was just asking whether powercolor and sapphire were still the go-to for AMD cards. Are there any brands to avoid when it comes to 3080s? Back when amd vega cards were a thing, the Asus cards were subpar for example.

Oh a fellow simracer! That's great info, thanks! Isn't FSR available on nvidia gpus too? Can't you just use FSR to get around the latency issues of DLSS then? I thought this is as low as the prices would go honestly. Do the new regulations for mining apply starting from next year? I can't really see 3080s dropping lower than the 500€ point.

@_Omega_ @CommanderAlex @brentward thanks for the replies guys, much appreciated! So all the cards seem to be fine for the job. What about the price difference between 6800xt and 6900xt? In the used market 6900xt's go for about 100€ higher. That comes with increased TDP and maybe 5% increase in performance, at least according to the latest GN 7900 review vid. 6800xt seems to be the better choice between the two value-wise, or am I missing something? Btw are there any aftermarket brands to avoid with these cards? I'm guessing powercolor/sapphire are still the go-to for team red.

Hi guys! I was going to go with the new amd line up but they are all over 1100€ in germany lol so currently debating between these cards. What would you go for if you were in my place? I'm willing to go second hand. I'm kinda worried about the VRAM of 3080 cutting it a bit close with 10 gigs. This is strictly for gaming btw and RT is nice and all but it's not a deal breaker for me. Is there much difference between the power draw of these cards? I did look up the TDPs but that doesn't always match the real-world results with undervolting and all. Any advice would be much appreciated!

lol I just discovered that fine tuning option after months of tinkering with the software. Gonna give that a try, thanks.

Hey, is there a way to use afterburner just for controlling the fans, without it messing with voltages, clocks etc.? I tried setting up just a fan curve but it ends up reverting my voltages to default values on Adrenaline and undervolting goes out the window. I basically have to reapply my Radeon profile at every start-up. Reason I want to use afterburner for the fan control is basically the AMD solution is buggy atm. It ramps up fans randomly to rpms way above what i set in the software. This is with a Vega 64 Nitro.

So I'm kinda getting overwhelmed with all the choices out there. Could you guys recommend a 4TB CMR drive that'd be suitable for mass game storage and is also quiet (important, I hate HDD noise), fairly reliable? I'll occasionally play games off of it but mostly use it to store games as I don't have the fastest internet to delete and redownload. Btw. does drive rpm still matter these days?

Nicely explained, thanks for the info!

So the data recovery thing is useless, thanks for clarifying that - one less thing to consider. What drive would you recommend disregarding the ones I listed on the OP considering my use case? I'm really sensitive to noise when it comes to PC-Hardware so that's good to know.

Hmm that's a 7200rpm drive isn't it? I see you have one on your sig. How's the noise/vibration? Thanks for the recommendation, appreciate it!

Hi! My current Seagate HDD is throwing some errors on S.M.A.R.T. so I'm gonna get a new one. The primary purpose of the drive is mass game storage. I got a WD Black and my OS SSD for my fav games. So I'm currently trying to decide between these two: WD Blue 4TB (CMR) - 88€ Seagate Ironwolf 4TB (also CMR) - 102€. The reason I'm not simply going with the blue is the Ironwolf has a 3 year warranty as opposed to Blue's 2 and it also comes with a 3 year free data recovery service. Would there be any downsides to using a NAS drive like the Ironwolf in a normal desktop PC environment? Which one would you guys go for considering my use case? FYI, I decided on a CMR drive cause I'll be moving a big chunk of data from my dying drive to the new one and the SMR drives apparently are really slow for that purpose. Feel free to correct me if that's not the case though. I could go for a 6TB SMR drive as well if that's the case. Thanks in advance!

Thanks for replying! So an SMR drive is basically ok for mass game storage, which is going to be my use case, right? Just making sure before I pull the trigger I move frequently played games to my WD Black 1TB and the most favorite one to my OS SSD.

@Electronics Wizardy, @Archer42 Another question if you guys don't mind: Would an SMR drive be ok if I'm going to move all the data from the dying drive to the new one or would it take too long compared to a CMR drive? I did some digging and apparently games do mostly reading from the drive and SMR is ok for that. And I can get a 6TB SMR drive for the price of a 4TB CMR drive so that's also something to consider. Also please excuse my ignorance on the matter as I'm not really well versed in terms of HDD tech.

Thank you, will do some research and grab one that's not SMR.

Right, thanks. Gonna pick up a new drive ASAP. Any recommendations for a drive that I'll mostly be gaming on?

Okay, I'll definitely pick up a drive then as I don't have any backups of this drive. I just don't have the space for it. So would the wd blue be the best choice for my use cases? I'll store mostly games on the drive will be gaming off of it. Budget is also around the price of that drive.

Thanks! What's the difference between cmr and smr? Could you also take a look at the errors thrown? Are those serious enough to consider a new drive? Is there a chance that those errors simply go away after wiping the drive? I mean could the drive become usable after that?

Hey everyone, I'm looking to swap out my current aging storage HDD for a newer one as it started throwing errors on S.M.A.R.T. So here's the list of drives (4TB) I'm interested in: https://geizhals.de/?cat=hde7s&xf=1541_6000~958_4000&asuch=&bpmin=&bpmax=&v=e&hloc=at&hloc=de&plz=&dist=&mail=&bl1_id=30&sort=p#productlist It's in german but it doesn't really make a difference in this case. Would really appreciate if you guys could give me some advice on what drive I should go with. Currently leaning towards the WD Blue 4TB on top of that list. Would there be any advantages to go with WD Red for about 10€ more if I'm just going to use it in a normal PC? (ie. not a server) Thanks in advance!

Thanks everyone for the help, much appreciated!

Alright, thanks. I think I'm gonna follow @Action_Johnson s advice and just reformat the boot drive. Just don't want any leftover stuff causing issues in the future, you know start with a clean slate. That's really informative, thanks.

Yeah I guess I gotta rediscover all the games as I have steam itself installed on my boot drive... So I just reformat the boot drive during windows installation and I'm good to go, right?

Thanks. Do I just boot into the bootable USB to install windows? The windows installer then just reformats the boot drive right? I mean it doesn't touch the other drivers unless I explicitly tell it to do so?

Hi guys, finally switching from a 2600k to a 3600 and was wondering if I should reinstall windows. So reinstalling would just erase everything on my boot drive and all the other drives would be fine? Would my files/games on the other drives get corrupted somehow since the registry entries will be gone after wiping the boot drive?

Np, you're welcome!