TheGamingPhoenix

Speaking of which, would you recommend eBay as the method I should use to sell this card?

So a while back, I finally made the switch from console to PC and actually built my own system for the first time. And since the GPU driving it all was the GTX 1070 Superclocked by EVGA, I also expressed a desire to upgrade my monitor. My intention was to simply get a second 1080p monitor, though with a 144hz refresh rate. Instead, I'm unexpectedly gifted a brand-new 4K display, the ASUS MG24UQ. Unsurprisingly, I immediately fell in love with it and wouldn't trade it for the world. I was shocked by the difference in image quality even in programs as simply and visually bland as MS Word. However, the shameless graphics whore part of my brain is now in full effect, because now that I've actually seen what games can look like in 4K, playing them in 1080p on my new monitor makes them look annoyingly blurry, and the GTX 1070 has thus far proven incapable of hitting a stable 60fps at 4K even with the settings dialed down massively, and on older games to boot! Both Mass Effect 3 and Alan Wake were basically unplayable when I dialed the resolution up to 4K, and that honestly drives me a bit crazy. So now that Nvidia has released the GTX 1080ti, I've been very seriously considering making the upgrade. However, I can really only justify this upgrade if I sell my current 1070, and since I'm still incredibly new to the whole custom PC/PC Gaming world, I have utterly no idea how to go about this or what kind of price I can reasonably ask. Anyone have any tips/advice to offer?

Thanks for that. I was actually just looking through my drawers to see if I still had the thermal paste I used for my own build, and I do, so I'll be sure to use that instead.

Damn, I forgot how fast people tend to respond here! Thank you all for the replies.

Short version? For a user who will only be using their PC for web-browsing, email, and other assorted low-energy tasks, will the stock Intel CPU cooler be enough? Long version? My mother is a retired teacher, but still does a bunch of babysitting and care-giving work in her neighborhood. For the last several years, she's been orchestrating all of this via email on her phone, and as you may imagine, that brings a fair number of headaches with it. Attachments frequently won't load, she can't directly print out important documents she gets sent, so on and so forth. So to help alleviate those headaches, I offered to build her a new computer since I've recently finished building my own, and did so problem free. We ordered all the parts last night, including a Corsair AIO CPU cooler, but I found out this morning that apparently, the i3 7100 CPU we ordered actually comes with its own stock cooler. This caught me off guard, because I was under the impression that Intel no longer included coolers with their CPUs. Especially since the i7 6700k I bought for my rig a few months ago didn't come with one. Granted, now that I've said that "out loud", I realize that it makes no sense on Intel's part to include a stock cooler on an enthusiast-grade chip, since the user would almost certainly replace it anyway for the sake of overclocking. In any case, my question remains the same. For a user who won't be doing anything other than web-browsing, email, word processing, and document printing, would a stock Intel cooler be sufficient to keep the CPU safely cool?

Oooh, that EVGA board is nice!

So I'm in the process of upgrading my PC and resurrecting it as a streaming/gaming rig, and recently got my i7 6700k to facilitate this. However, my current motherboard is wildly incompatible with my new CPU (my current CPU is an i7 860), and so I'm in the market for a new mobo in the $150ish price range. Any suggestions for a first-time custom PC builder?

I saw this headline elsewhere yesterday morning and it absolutely made my day. I got to play around with the Vive at a friend's house and literally the only negative part of the experience was having to deal with the wires getting snarled up while playing Holopoint. So if this wireless adapter works properly, count me in.

If high temperature numbers bother you, go with the Hybrid. I'll be getting one myself since I've grown quite paranoid about temps after cooking the GPU my original, pre-build system came with. Bad case airflow + constant heavy load = damaged GPU, so I'll probably always go with a Hybrid card simply to further reduce that risk even though my current case has much better airflow. It just helps me sleep better at night.

I don't believe so. I remember that I tried looking for them, but couldn't seem to find anything. Whether that's due to my tech newbie-ness or them not being available at the time this issue arose is anyone's guess.

So I've been dealing with this issue for a while now, and given how surprisingly helpful this community has been so far, I thought I'd make a post about it and see if anyone has had similar experiences and/or has a solution. So, the issue: My headset is a Turtle Beach Z22, and I've had it for probably a couple years now. It works great for me because I can use it with both my PC and my Xbox One. However, when I upgraded my PC to Windows 10 (a pretty much forced upgrade after my PC would no longer function properly with Windows 7), I noticed that a good number of the headsets functions no longer worked. The in-line volume, bass, and treble dials all became useless, and somehow the chat volume dial became the master volume dial. To cap it all off, the headphones will just randomly cut out and go silent anytime the volume of whatever media I'm consuing drops below a certain point. For example, if a song as a quiet fade out, my headphones will simply go dead silent once it fades below a certain point. The only work around I've found for this is to play everything at elevated volumes using the in-app (iTunes, Netflix, YouTube etc.) volume sliders, which is a naturally imperfect solution as I have to turn the volume back down whenever things get louder to avoid damaging my hearing. Is this all because of the Windows 10 upgrade, or could it just be that my headphones are dying and need to be replaced?

Wow! Thank you all for the speedy replies! I was not at all expecting even one response to come in this quickly, let alone four! Additional wows and thank yous for the userbenchmark links. I'm definitely going to be bookmarking that site for future reference. Lol, I think "flog" is a little bit of an understatement given the scores I'm seeing now.

Nothing too complicated here, I don't think. I'm just new to custom PC building and very curious. I'm currently planning out my first personal build (my current PC was built by my best friend), and wanted to know how my current i7 860 would compare to the i7 6700k I'm planning on for my VR/Streaming PC. Like, what kinds of performance increases could I expect and how big of increases would they be?

I think the future of VR depends on how it does on the console market. Right now, VR is basically stuck on both extremes of the spectrum. You have the extremely limited mobile experience with the Samsung Gear VR, and then you have the super-high end, immersive experience with the Rift and the Vive. It has yet to find that real sweet spot between accessibility and quality IMO, and so hasn't gotten much mainstream traction. But if the Playstation VR and/or whatever Microsoft's got cooking do well, then I think we'll see VR start to really take off. Of course, by that same token, if Console VR flops, then I'd say VR is basically dead for the foreseeable future. TL;DR - VR is a very niche thing right now and for it to have a viable future, it needs to go mainstream. And it's best chance to do that is in the console market.

Ah. Thanks for that clarification. And I don't think I'm *that* worried. I just wanted to get additional input and have an actual back and forth about the board as opposed to a one-way reading of reviews. Thanks for your input. And honestly, I'm okay with spending an $80 style premium if the board is solid.