Maudima

I didn’t see Madison mentioned so I’m gonna assume she left at some point. Her original vid was one of my favourites ever so I was cheering for her when she started working at LTT. Hope she’s doing well

You probably don't need a specific guide because the display should be plug and play with the right LCD controller board. One thing I would recommend is to thoroughly verify if the board is compatible (e.g. match the connector) with your specific display model. Some are much easier to find than others. Another thing to look out for is that some come without a power adapter so make sure it's included or you have one laying around when you order. 

On 4/13/2022 at 4:04 PM, ExpiredPancake said:

You can swap the Z series motherboard for a less expensive B660 or H670 motherboard since you cannot overclock with your F series CPU. I like This one from ASUS or this one from gigabyte but it honestly doesn't make too much difference, as long as it has the IO you're looking for. Also not worth it going after DDR5 memory since as gamers nexus shows it does not make much difference. DDR4 will do you fine and it's much more affordable. Be sure to get 2 sticks at least so you can operate your memory in dual channel. 

 

Are you planning on upgrading the 1070 sometime down the line? because the 12700F seems like overkill for it. You would probably be just as well off with something like the 12400F. 

I looked at it some more and I'm going with the MSI B660M-A Wifi (best price/quality in my region) and DDR4, the benchmarks and price difference are pretty convincing. Has everything I need and saves me some money! Thanks!

On 4/13/2022 at 4:13 PM, 1sascha said:

850 Watts seem a bit excessive for the kind of CPU/GPU combo you posted - unless you're planning a substantial GPU upgrade. I'd say even with a 3070 you should be more than ok with 750W - perhaps you could even get away with 650.

 

Plus I'll have to ask: Do you really need DDR5? From everything I read and hear, there's currently not much of a performance gap between 4 and 5 (unless you do nothing but compressing or decompressing archive-files?). DDR4 is still way easier to find from all sorts of manufacturers and in all sorts of differently sized kits, whereas the DDR5-market still looks rather empty in comparison. Plus you'd save a bit of cash on both the RAM itself and on the mobo.

 

S.

Good catch! Yeah I'm planning on a big upgrade if I can get my hands on an RTX 40 series card. Your and Pancake's comment convinced me to go DDR4. I looked at the benchmarks and was misinformed because I assumed budget DDR5 wouldn't be too different from expensive DDR5 and boy was I wrong. Budget DDR5 is very similar to DDR4 and much more expensive. Thanks!

Intro

Budget: High end price/performance sweetspot €2K

Country: Netherlands

Used for: AAA Gaming 1440p, digital art, Adobe suite (light), programming and general use

I'm pretty flexible on all the parts but I researched the CPU extensively, choosing a motherboard is my weak spot. The GPU upgrade will probably come at the end of the year and doesn't have to be considered in the budget. The build should have quality parts, be powerful and be relatively silent to function as my personal rig for gaming and creative projects. It should last me a long time. I don't mind paying a bit more now for longevity but it should still make some sense from a value perspective. Prices in the PCPartPicker include tax and shipping. 

PCPartPicker

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700F 2.1 GHz 12-Core Processor  (€353.45) 
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 50.5 CFM CPU Cooler  (€79.90) 
Motherboard: Asus PRIME Z690-P ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (€214.90) 
Memory: Kingston FURY Beast 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR5-5200 CL40 Memory  (€149.00)  (pcpartpicker doesn't have 2x8 in database but that's what I'm purchasing)

Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS GX 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€99.90) 

Total: €897.15

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-04-13 14:15 CEST+0200

Parts I already own or/and plan on reusing:

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8 GB Video Card  
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 ATX Mid Tower Case  
Monitor: LG 27GL850-B 27.0" 2560x1440 144 Hz Monitor  
Storage: Samsung 980 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive 

Storage: Crucial MX500 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive   +  2x2TB 3.5" HDD

Decision making process

CPU: I decided on the 12700F over the 12700k because the K is literally €80 more expensive for minimal gaming benefits and as far as I've seen overclocking makes it guzzle power and raises temps (I've also read about the warping issues). I really don't care about integrated graphics. I also considered the 5900X for €400 because it has 12 full cores but apparently even without E-cores it performs worse in games and would still be more expensive. 

⚠CPU Cooler: I decided on the Dark Rock Pro 4 because it's cheaper and apparently more silent than the Noctua NH-D15. I'd love to know if it comes with mounting hardware for Alder Lake and if it doesn't how long that would take them to ship? Deepcool ak620 is also a cooler I would consider. 

⚠Motherboard: I'm blindly following online recommendations. This is the biggest gap in my knowledge. I really don't know what to choose here so I just watched and read some roundups and reviews and went from there. I'd want for it to handle the CPU and not cook the VRMs, support for slotting in another M.2 SSD with PCIe 4.0 support in the future (DirectStorage) and DDR5 support. Audio chipset is not very important because I use an external Amp + DAC. Keep in mind that pricing for motherboards can be very different per region.  

⚠Memory: 16GB DDR5 is around the same cost to me as 32GB DDR4. I think DDR5 is the smart choice if I plan on using this rig for 5 years+. Here the decision was 4,800 CL38 vs 5,200 CL40. I have no idea what the difference would be and they're only €3 apart. 

PSU: Good reviews, seems like it should have enough juice for this system + a decent Nvidia GPU at the end of the year. I'd consider upgrading to 1000W but that seems overkill? 

Storage: I already own an m.2 Samsung 850 1TB and plan on using that as my OS drive for the foreseeable future. I'd like to be able to slot in a faster PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD for games when DirectStorage becomes a thing.

_{*⚠= main concerns}

It's no secret that high framerate Gsync/Freesync displays are a gamer's monitor of choice nowadays. To optimize the gaming and viewing experience with these displays comes framerate capping and technologies like Nvidia's ultra low latency. This optimizes games to run smoothly on these types of displays. In practice this means enabling Vsync and running games at a framerate that's slightly below the monitors maximum refresh rate to focus on smoothness and prevent tearing. To do this it means using settings that won't have the GPU running at 100%. 

Assuming gamers are following best practices and not running GPUs at 100% I would be pretty interested to see how for example an RTX3080 would compare to an RTX4080 (or any model honestly) in power usage when targeting a realistic framerate. For a title like Cyberpunk this would probably mean 60fps but for competitive games like Apex or Overwatch this would mean 144/140hz. With rumours flying around that the RTX 40 series might be even more power hungry than the RTX 30 series I was wondering if anything like normalized power consumption testing for specific framerate targets has been done by anyone? Of course the headlines will be dominated by 'it's power hungry' but in day to day gaming I actually don't max out my GPU because I try to follow best practices making any claims about 'maximum' power usage useless for most of my gaming. I would be very interested to see these realistic efficiency numbers. 

Thoughts? 

Am I crazy or is the whole tpb mining thing a pretty legit idea for a business model. What if you could get access to extra features on a site if you do x amount of mining for them. Just install, set some times or even manual activation and you'll get premium access to a site. Like x hours of mining for x days of premium access. 

The only thing that could've tempted me was a promotion display. 120hz on a phone, that'd be really great! Now it's just meh.

I am currently running Windows 10 on my 128GB SSD. I'm thinking about buying a bigger one and starting fresh. 
I was wondering what the best SSD caching solution would be to take advantage of my smaller SSD? I have 2 x 2TB HDDs and I would have 1 smaller and 1 bigger SSD. 

Currently I'm thinking about installing Windows on a new 1TB SSD and using the 128GB SSD as a cache for the 2 HDDs with something like PrimoCache. 

Is this the smart way to go about it?

Anyone got specs on the baby?

They really need to plug that ModMic into a cheapo USB soundcard. The reason they don't sound good out of the box is because they're almost always not getting enough juice from the mobo. 

This video was really A+. Seeing @Slick baby the parts and having this lowkey smile of joy the entire video is so fun to watch. Also loved the whimsical editing with the classical music. This might be one of my favourite LTT videos ever. That's one sexy Geodude. 

Unless by worth you mean the seconds you shave off with workflows that handle really big files, probably not. There is something to be said for the space savings and form factor if you want more of that in your life. If you're talking about Windows/game performance, totally not worth the extra cost if you're looking at price/performance. 

Edit: the reason it doesn't make much of a difference is that the extra speed doesn't come in when opening files. The seek time on both is pretty much instant. The benefit is visible when handling files that are multiple times the max read/write.

Just wanted to add my Wendell appreciation post to the thread. Would love to see him more on LTT. Cute how Linus is extra careful not to talk over him out of respect. They seem like the professional wise master and the savy street guy together. 

I expected the Fractal Define cases to be way more popular! The average build is although cookie cutter, pretty baller. Sounds like something that's easy to recommend to someone that isn't pinching pennies. 

I am very surprised you guys didn't include a privacy disclaimer! I can imagine some folks getting sketched out over this video! Maybe it'd be good to include one in the description or something. 

Anyway, great vid! I'd like to see something like this every few months but maybe only if something changes. A benchmark of the system that rolls out would be pretty cool too! Almost a must.. 

21 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

After some digging around (this website's sorting mechanics are rubbish and made this process a lot more harder than I expected), I found this ITX motherboard: https://azerty.nl/8-6462-910661/msi-h110i-pro-moederbord.html

 

If you can spare an extra €10, get it and everything should now be compatible.

 

 

Thanks! Yeah the site is a bitch. 

15 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

No, this is not a good idea... Eh, this is weird. i3's stutter, that's another problem which doesn't show up in FPS benchmarks. Two hyperthreaded cores make the games stutter unlike four, full cores. You might get more average FPS than with an FX-6350, but it will stutter and the overall gaming impression will be worse because it would run smoother on another CPU.

 

Thanks for telling me this. I found this DigitalFoundry video which stresses the importance of faster Memory. I'd rather go that way to squeeze the most out of the i3 instead of downgrading the GPU. 

3 minutes ago, Morgan MLGman said:

The RX 480 is a good choice, but the i3 will bottleneck it in CPU heavier games. I recommend an i5-6500 for that.

3 minutes ago, Kevinhkn said:

not sure about the i3, pretty sure you need a 4 core i5 or something like that, maybe i5 6500?

The reason I went for the i3 was budget and because no cpu heavy games are going to be played on this pc. I also checked out some benchmarks and as long as it can hit 60 it's good enough. The only way I could stretch the CPU up would be to get a lower tier GPU, I don't know if that would be worth it unless there are benchmarks that show another story!

11 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

The motherboard is mATX. Won't fit in the case.

 

If the GTX 1060 6GB is cheaper, get that. DirectX12 and Vulkan adoption isn't going to be immediate so I'd rather get better performance now instead of maybe getting it later.

 

 

 

Wow thanks! The site I made the list on doesn't have a compatibility filter. Do you have a suggestion for a mobo/ case combo that would fit the same budget? Doesn't even have to be itx but would be nice. Now I think about it, would the GPU even fit?

1 minute ago, HKZeroFive said:

The motherboard is mATX. Won't fit in the case.

 

If the GTX 1060 6GB is cheaper, get that. DirectX12 and Vulkan adoption isn't going to be immediate so I'd rather get better performance now instead of maybe getting it later.

 

It actually was a 3GB 1060, would that change your view? 

Just now, Starelementpoke said:

What's the PSU? Picture isn't working for me since on school wifi.

Corsair CX450M

I'm building this for someone else but I'm wondering if this build is balanced and compatible? It will mostly be used for playing action/fps triple A games. I had a 1060 in there previously which was about €20 cheaper but I like the gains the rx 480 is showing in dx12 and Vulkan.

Is it possible to overclock the 480 with this build? 

All parts will be ordered from https://azerty.nl 

Maybe it's the mobile implementation of Gsync? That persists through a drive format. 

14 hours ago, watt said:

Did you read the source? Vsync is off, windows is preventing the tearing. I only pasted what was listed in the chart.

 

• Windowed V-Sync:

It is possible to completely bypass control panel and in-game V-Sync options to utilize Windows’ native V-Sync implementation, which is also triple-buffered. By running the game in a window or borderless window, Windows handles the vertical synchronization, which can lead to smoother gameplay and lower input lag. Make sure you disable V-Sync in all other areas before doing so.

The article you linked doesn't provide a source. I'd love to know if anyone has any technical insight on the matter. I read somewhere Microsoft started forcing Vsync on all apps from Windows 8 forward? Windows 7 didn't do this as far as I know? Questions... But I'm probably going too far off-topic. 

I'm thinking about starting another thread when I feel like looking up and chewing through some documentation. There's a lot of conflicting information around. 

10 minutes ago, watt said:

Vsync on = 102ms

Windowed vsync = 81ms

Vsync off = 61ms

 

I hope we get to play with this new feature soon.

 

 

Vsync doesn't work in windowed. 

14 minutes ago, agent_x007 said:

Kinda is... 
Difference is that triple buffering can't 100% kill tearing (since it buffers every frame rendered, regardless of it's status), and Fast Sync (in theory) - can.

I've never experienced tearing in windowed mode when the DWM applies tripple buffering. Though I have read about people who don't share that experience which is odd to me. 

Edit: This post contains a technical error, scroll down for correction!