JonDoh

I am moving into a new room. I have the space to set up a 5.1 system but I am having trouble figuring out what components I need and what is compatible with the output from my machine. I built my PC a few years ago. It does not have a dedicated sound card but the MB does have an SPDIF port. The board is Asus Prime x370-pro (From the MB manufacturer: Refined Audio: Realtek ALC1220 codec provides pristine and powerful audio quality) Can someone help me figure out what components I need to get a 5.1 system running? I would like it to sound comparable to my mid-range headphones. I am not shooting for top of the line stuff but somewhere from mid range to the 80% solution. I am looking at something like the Klipsch Reference Theater pack, but I don't know if I need an amp and/or receiver in between my PC and the speakers. I am really a full noob when it comes to audio so any info down to the wires/connections/adapters I will need is appreciated.

Thanks all for the replies. I won't get all the fans I was thinking of. But I guess it won't hurt to get an extra fan or two and play around with it.

I am hoping to get some feedback on what I am thinking in terms of my cooling strategy for a new build. I am also trying to double check if I will need any additional power adapters or extensions, so I can make sure to order all the parts that I will need. It would be very valuable to me if anyone wants to walk me through specifically how you would expect to power the fans, either through the motherboard or directly off the power supply. I am interested in what connections, extensions, or adapters you would need to do that which I will need to order. I am new to building PCs so this is as much about learning how to do it as it is about getting better performance. I understand that some of what I am doing may be over-thinking a fairly basic build but I want to learn what I can at the same time as I try to make things a little bit better. I value silence highly, though I understand that I will need to put up with more noise than I would wish. I also value performance. I do plan to learn to overclock with this machine so that may factor in as well. I do not care at all about RGB lighting and would prefer not to deal with it. A matching color scheme to the components is also irrelevant to me. The new build I am working on is here: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/qRHgVY I already have the Case, Power Supply, Optical Drive, and Keyboard. I have already placed an order for the GPU, RAM, and Motherboard. I am in the process of building my final orders with retailers trying to make sure I get the number of fans and any additional wires I need correct to save on headaches and shipping. I am new to shopping for parts, so am not very familiar with brands or the level of quality they represent. A lot of the reviewers I have been watching seem to favor Noctua for performance, but I am open to other brands as well. I have been watching some videos to become familiar with concepts like positive pressure, and static pressure vs airflow. I am going to shoot for positive pressure in my system. The case I picked out has 2x 120mm fans that came with it; one is on the front as an intake, the other at the rear as exhaust. I was planning to leave them in place. The front panel has filtering on it, so I was going to add another 120mm fan with good static pressure on the front even though it will be somewhat obstructed by the drive shelves behind it. So that would be 2x 120mm fans on the front for intake. Then the open side panel has ventilation and places to install fans so I was going to install 2 more fans (140mm) there as intake with a filter in front of them. I was thinking going for static pressure fans for those as well. Then the top of the case has a lot of ventilation cut into it with room for more fans. I was thinking of just using one 140mm high-airflow fan on top at the rear without a filter for exhaust. So I would end up getting 3x 140mm and 1x 120mm fans, plus the 2x 120mm fans the case came with. I would be pulling air in from the side and from the front, and pushing out the back and top. There is more ventilation on the top, back, and bottom where I hope the positive pressure will be pushing air out. The fans from the GPU seem a little odd to work around without creating a bunch of turbulence but it seems to me like the GPU fans won't conflict with the setup and will help push some air out the bottom of the case. The PSU is on the bottom but seems isolated by the walls of the PSU, except for what may come back in through the bottom of the case; but I think the positive pressure with some help from the GPU fans should take care of that. The ventilation in the side panel starts near the top. It looks like it would set the intake fans next to the CPU cooler. I am not 100% sure the top one would fit with the CPU cooler installed. Another thing I may consider is trying to rotate the CPU cooler to push air up instead of towards the back of the case, if the mounting system will allow for that. With all of these fans (I realize it may be a bit overkill) I will expect to have the 2x 3pin connectors from the fans that came with the case, plus another 4x 4pin connectors from the additional fans to plug in. I am having trouble telling exactly how many fan connectors there are on the Asus motherboard. I also don't know if I will need anything extra to plug some of the fans into the PSU. There is a "Peripheral" cable that came with the PSU which has 4pin connections that seems promising, but that seems like it would be female to female connections, unless the needed parts are included with the fans. Obviously I don't know what that cable is really supposed to be used with. Any help or insight is appreciated. I will continue doing research into the fans and trying to figure out the pins, cables, and connections. -JD

I am considering a build with a Ryzen 7 1700. I am planning on replacing the stock CPU cooler with a Noctua unit. The question is: could there be a way to reuse the stock CPU cooler somewhere else in the build? Perhaps this would not include the heat-sink fin assembly or whatever, but perhaps just the fan itself could be hooked up somewhere else just for a little extra airflow.

My old computer is an ancient Dell machine I bought in 2007. It is still running windows XP, with Ubuntu as my go-to OS. It is long past time for me to completely replace this ancient old machine. This is my first build. I am not aiming for the best of the best. I want to get solid performance for a reasonable price. Keeping options open for upgrading later is great but I expect to entirely replace this first build within a few years. I want to use this machine I am building to get my feet wet in the tech world. I am learning a whole lot and this machine is going to be a part of that. I want to be able to try out a wide range of things, so I want at least enough power to not be severely handicapped by the machine. I expect to know more about how I want to specialize by the next machine, a few years from now. For now, I just want a machine that will let me try out things like programming, content creation, rendering and other tasks I may get into in the course of my learning progress. I do enjoy gaming and am looking forward to having a machine that can run decent titles again, but I am not upset if I am missing out on a few frames. Part of the learning for me will be overclocking. I want to learn to overclock all the things with this build. I hope it will give me a some extra performance, but a big part of the reason I want to overclock is simply for the experience of learning how to do it. The style of the build is of very little consequence to me. I do not want RGB lighting and am not interested in any particular visual theme. I care about price to performance. I do care about noise levels, but I am not expecting miracles from my machine. However, I would spend a little extra for a little better noise levels. I don't mind paying a few extra bucks for quality products as well. I am not very familiar with brands and manufacturers, so I only know what I have picked up from doing research for this build. I don't want to pay extra to have some hip logo printed on a part, but I don't mind paying a bit more for higher quality parts. PC Parts Picker Link: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/gkgyGf CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1700 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-U12S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive Video Card: Gigabyte - Radeon RX 580 8GB Gaming 8G Video Card Case: Corsair - 200R ATX Mid Tower Case Power Supply: Corsair - CXM 550W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply Optical Drive: Asus - DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 8.1 Pro OEM 64-bit I already have the Case, Power Supply, and Optical Drive. I intend to run in Linux primarily. I have considered not getting Windows at all. I do not want to put Windows 10 on this machine for sure. I am thinking of running a duel boot to Windows 8.1 just because some programs I may want to use are a pain to run in wine. I hope by the time Windows 8 stops working for me I will either not need Windows at all or Windows 10 will have been improved a whole lot. (Hopefully I don't derail my own thread with this.) I am thinking the Ryzen 7 1700 over the Intel chips because I don't mind being a few frames behind for games, and I want the extra threads/cores for other tasks I want to explore. For the Video Card I am looking at the RX 580 because I want to go Freesync for the monitor. I am not stuck on the brand of card, I just selected the cheapest one from what seemed like a quality manufacturer. I would appreciate any suggestions for what upgrades would make the most noticeable difference for this build. If there is anywhere I can cut cost without cutting performance I am interested in that. And I am interested in any observations that may help me reduce noise levels. Again, I want the build to be able to handle at least an intro to a wide range of tasks as I learn and explore tech related pursuits. I do expect to play games, but I don't mind not using ultimate settings all the time. I will probably play a lot of shooters, and MMOs. A game I have enjoyed in the past, and expect to get into again, is Eve Online. It would be sweet if I could PvP with multiple accounts open, which I have heard is a CPU intensive situation. Thanks in advance for any advice. -JD

To clarify, the term "crappy" is the subjective term I was referring to. Without offering some objective criteria to measure the "crappyness" of a computer the term "crappy" will remain subjective.

So then every computer qualifies as a crappy computer. So you may as well not even use the word "crappy" then because you are unable to make it mean something useful. Subjective terms require an ability to use some judgment in order to be useful.

#ROGRigReboot The Hero Machine This is my entry for the ROG reboot contest. Thanks to both LinusTechTips and ASUS ROG for providing this opportunity. Winning this event would mean a whole lot to me. It would be an epic quality of life improvement in the gaming department. It would also help me a lot with learning to program and having access to a good content creation machine. The specs for the machine can be seen in the last few frames of the video. Cinebench is displaying them from XP point of view, and I have the Ubuntu "details" readout in the corner there. The HD has about 200 more GB than what Ubuntu sees. The other partition is what Windows XP is running on. I did find the order confirmation from when I bought the machine but couldn't find a good way to display it in the video. Either the text was too small or the list was too large. The ways of splitting it up I tried were all really janky. The whole thing including monitor, peripherals, and surge protector cost me $1631.13 back in 2007. The order does not mention the motherboard at all. Processor: Intel Core2 Duo Processor E6400 (2.13GHz, 1066 FSB) Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533 MHz - 2 DIMMS (I salvaged 2 sticks of RAM out of a computer in a dumpster at a job site. Some internal parts are probably going bad. Ubuntu reads 3.8GB of RAM XP reads only 3GB.) Video Card: 256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro Monitor: 19 inch Ultrasharp 1907FP Digital Flat Panel HD: 320 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200 RPM) w/DataBurst Cache Dual optical drives: 16X DVD ROM and 48X CD-RW/DVD Combo (I unplugged one of the optical drives after it failed.) Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic Some of the other fun entries on the order form: “No Floppy Drive Included” “Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0” “6 Months of America Online Membership Included” “Windows Vista Capable” I had a lot of fun delving into the history of the old Hero Machine. Thanks again for providing this competition and good luck to all the contestants. -JD

I am confidant I can be a strong contender for this event. I have a harrowing story to tell of how my ancient machine has kept me gaming against all odds. The specs alone should put me well ahead of the majority of entries I have seen so far. I plan to go full try-hard mode. It will probably take me a few days to get the entry together because I am going to need to learn how to use the primitive tools available to me, to do some things I have never done before, to make the kind of entry I want create. Winning this event would have a massive effect for me, so I want to give it my best shot. @CPotter I would appreciate some clarification on a few things if any of the staff see this. 1) How strict is the time limit? If I need an extra 5 or 10 seconds to really make the entry excellent; am I hurting my chances more by cutting a few seconds out or leaving it a little too long? 2) Are you considering any information that is not communicated in the video itself? Can I help my chances by writing out an extra paragraph (or essay) to post on the forum along with the video entry? Thank you for running this promotion event. Good luck to all the contestants! -JD