Kevin_Walter

I don't think it's necessarily that they were basic, I think they offered a lot of options for people looking to build something that looked nice without spending $250 on a case. NZXT can probably be credited with popularizing things like the PSU shroud and cable management bars that hide the wires being routed from behind the motherboard. They may not have been the first to do things like that, but these features became ubiquitous quickly after they started doing it.

I mean... if you compare the number of ratings on Amazon between any of NZXT's cases to any of the alternatives listed in this thread, NZXT seems to have quite a few more. Specifically, their h510 series of cases have almost 30,000 reviews maintaining a 4.5 star rating. So we can either say that they're botting reviews or something... or maybe they're not as unpopular as you're trying to say they are. Let's be honest. You go over to pretty much any PC showoff subreddit, you'll find an NZXT case within 5 posts. They're popular for a reason. Aesthetically pleasing, have a lot of nice features that makes building in them easy, and they're not extremely expensive (unlike some of NZXT's other products).

Sure, but my R9 390 peaked around 75c in my h500i and that was during stress testing. The 390 was far from a cool card, too. And of course you couldn't get rid of a stockpile of cases you were recommending people not to use. I'm not sure why that would be a surprise. Lol

Maybe it's just me being a total NZXT fanboy, but the hate for NZXT cases is entirely misplaced. I have an h500i, which I bought to replace an S340, and I love it. It's quiet and my Ryzen 7 3800X and Vega 56 stay perfectly cool under load. My CPU only hits about 60c (I have an NZXT Kraken X63 cooling it), and my GPU stays in the 60-65c range. Granted, my Vega 56 is Sapphire's Pulse variant, which had a smaller PCB and a full size heatsink with an open back, and I suspect that's a big reason for the frigid temps. For case fans, I only use the two on my radiator as intakes, and a single 120mm rear exhaust. I use NZXT CAM to control my fans, and I set them for positive pressure. All 3 of my case fans are linked to my CPU temp, and the rear exhaust is off most of the time. It only turns on when my CPU hits 60c. Most of the time, my intakes/rad fans are set to run at 40%, and those get kicked up a few notches at 60c when the rear exhaust turns on as well. This maintains positive pressure, and keeps my case super clean. I rarely dust it out because dust just... doesn't get in there. I pop the filter out, blow it off with some compressed air and that's it. Is the airflow as good as other cases designed specifically to be as full of holes and fan mounts as possible? No. But they're largely fine for the vast majority of people, case snobs and youtubers excluded. EDIT: By the way, I noticed you asked about air cooling specifically. The Kraken X63 is a relatively recent upgrade. I've had the case across two builds (I had my old 6600k and R9 390 in this case (that card could easily hit 70c under load), and I used to use CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo coolers on my processors exclusively. My temps were roughly the same. I generally don't OC my components, and I bought the Kraken cooler for aesthetic purposes.

I have never, and will never own a flagship card anywhere close to release. I bought a Red Devil 6800 XT because they're currently on Amazon for 670 bucks, and that's only $20 more than the MSRP of a reference 6800 XT. Considering I only buy AMD cards and all it takes is another crypto spike to inflate the price and severely decrease availability of AMD cards, I bit the bullet to retire my aging Vega 56. Not to mention, bots/scalpers are inevitably going to be snatching up the next gen cards when they launch anyway, and most people looking to buy them won't realistically be able to get one until next year anyway, likely at inflated prices. I say, if there's something you've had your eye on and it's now at a reasonably (for you) price... Buy it and don't think twice about it.

HDMI.

Nailed it! lol AFAIK, Playstation controllers still require a specific driver to function on PC, while pretty much every Xbox controller made in the last ten years is plug-n-play on all Windows PCs running at least Windows 8. I could be wrong though. I've always hated Playstation controllers.

I've never used the Logitceh F310, but looking at it screams "Mad Catz controller from the early 2000s" to me. Which means it will either break immediately, or last forever. Probably the latter. All Microsoft peripherals have a warranty though. If purchased new, the controllers have 1 year warranty. You can actually register them to your Xbox account and view warranty information at any time on their website, including when it will expire. I have a bunch of Xbox controllers, including the Elite V2. They make really good controllers as long as you baby them, but I will say the 1 year warranty isn't really good enough. The bumpers and/or d-pad on mine always seem to start registering double clicks and missclicks after some time, regardless of whether I've even been using them or not. I will say that the Series controllers are probably their best iteration yet though. As long as you don't get so mad that you start flinging controllers across the room, you should be fine with either in terms of durability.

I just saw this video today and I looked over at my NZXT h500i and thought "nope, this is fine..." NZXT now has "flow" versions of some of their cases, in response to the airflow criticisms. Whenever I inevitably upgrade my case, I'll probably get one of those. I've been a pathetic NZXT fanboy since my first Source 210 that I bought over 10 years ago, and I've been slowly increasing the number of things in my system that are branded by them. I even kinda wish I had one of their motherboards...

If it's a modular PSU, you may be able to get individually sleeved cables that would just replace the ones sent with the unit, or you could use sleeved cable extensions, but that can make cable management a chore and clutters up the back/bottom of your case. Looking at their website, it would seem be quiet makes their own individually sleeved cable replacements that are compatible with both of the PSUs you listed, but they only seem to sell them individually, and they're pretty expensive. That being said, the ugliest and most prominent cables are always the VGA and 24 pin motherboard cables, so if you just replaced those, it would look a lot nicer. Or you could always get a different PSU from a different manufacturer that sells full cable kits...

It does. The card has 2 8 pin connectors, and I believe my PSU has 4. But you just reminded me that I need to drive an hour back to my parents' place because that's where all my extra cables are. Ugh... EDIT: nevermind, my Vega 56 uses two 8 pins as well, so the new card should be mostly plug and play, I guess.

They're both equally ugly, so I'd go with whichever has the best features/highest ratings.

Yeah, that would probably be helpful, wouldn't it? Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Ryzen 7 3800X paired with an NZXT Kraken X63 G.skill TridentZ RGB 16GB 3200MHz And the usual litany of peripherals. Keyboard, keypad, mouse, 120mm exhaust fan, that 1TB ADATA NVMe ssd that was really popular a year or two ago, a 2TB WD Black, headset... whatever random amount of power all that stuff draws.

I just ordered a PowerColor Red Devil 6800 XT because they're only $20 over reference MSRP on Amazon right now, and it recommends an 850w PSU. I currently have an EVGA SuperNova G2 750w PSU that has served me extremely well for the however many years I've had it (I bought it not too long after the i5 6600k launched, if that dates it easily enough), and was wondering if an upgrade is actually warranted. I don't usually OC my GPUs. I've always had stability issues every time I tried and just don't really feel like fiddling with it. I was loking at NZXT's C850. Any thoughts on those?

One of the best looking ones imo is the Hyper 212 Black Edition, but I've used Hyper 212 Evo before, and while it's undoubtedly one of the best coolers for the money, I wouldn't really say it's in any way aesthetically pleasing. Not as good as just having the pump/block on your CPU and a couple hoses leading to your rad that's tucked out of the way, anyway.

Because all air coolers are big and ugly. They're not clean at all. That's why I'm still using the stock Wraith Prism that came with my CPU. The fan housing hides most of the heatsink, so it looks less ugly than most air coolers.

I don't do much in the way of overclocking, so nearly any cooler is going to work fine. I'm currently using the Wraith Prism that came with my 3800x. As far as what I like... clean design. The cleaner the better. NZXT's coolers are really simple in their physical appearance, and the RGB lighting isn't intrusive. They would be the obvious choice if not for the fact that I kinda hate CAM. If I was able to control them with some other software, it would be great. Cooler Master also has some okay looking coolers, I suppose. Like this one (despite the RGB fans, which are... ick...): https://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-MasterLiquid-Chamber-MLA-D24M-A18PC-R1/dp/B086BYYFG5?ref_=ast_sto_dp&th=1

They make one of the ugliest ones on the market... lol I do appreciate some of the things they're doing though. Like the fan cables being sleeved with the tubing. That's pretty cool.

A 140mm rad makes more sense than 120, yet there are 120s everywhere and 140s are extremely limited. And you can make them look plenty different. NZXT seems to be the only company that really cares to do something different though. All the others are just throwing some RGB behind their logos and calling it a day. I'd rather have something with just a plain, matte black pump cap than most of what's available, but everything has to be all glossy and gamer-y. Where? The only thing they seem to sell to the general public is their retention kits?

NZXT makes the best looking ones, in my opinion, but I don't want to be stuck using their CAM software. I'm actually trying to get away from using it, but I currently need it to control the light strips in my case. But looking at other coolers, they're all ugly as sin. Aren't there any with just plain black pumps or something? Semi-related question... why doesn't anyone seem to make 140mm coolers? They're all either 120mm or dual/triple rads.

Does it go away for a while if you gently push on the cooler? I've had my 3800x for almost a year and while playing Cyberpunk a couple weeks ago, I noticed an odd noise from my system. Sounded to me like a bearing on a fan was starting to die, but the oldest fan in my system is in the PSU, so it had me a little worried. Looking up some issues with Wraith Spire coolers, I heard some saying it's not a fan at all, but the retention bracket that makes the noise, and essentially unlocking the lever and re-attaching the cooler helps resolve the issue. I pushed on the cooler a bit and the noise went away for a couple weeks. Funny that I found this thread just now because it just started making the noise again tonight. I think I may look into getting an AIO or maybe just going back to the good ol' Hyper 212...

Sometimes steady framepacing is more important than a higher framerate if you want a game to run smoothly. Since you don't use a form of adaptive sync, then your framerate bouncing around under your monitor's refresh is going to cause your monitor to be out of sync with your framerate more often than not. This is what v-sync is supposed to cure, but it can cause input latency, which is why locking your framerate to something that your system can more consistently achieve can help to iron out stuttering. As a rule, it doesn't have to be 60fps. It could be 72 or something. So long as it's a consistent number slightly below what your system is capable of maintaining during normal gameplay.

Are you using g-sync, and have you tried limiting your framerate to 60fps with something like RivaTuner, or your GPU's control panel? I know cyberpunk also has a built-in frame limiter.

I don't think you did or didn't do anything. You asked for help diagnosing the problem, and I'm requesting further information so I can try to help you do that. There's a known thing with Cyberpunk specifically that suggests it's only using physical cores on Ryzen CPUs and not logical cores. Some have said this causes some performance issues that can be fixed by editing the game's exe. YMMV, but it's easily reversed and won't hurt anything to try. https://overclock3d.net/reviews/software/cyberpunk_2077_ryzen_hex_edit_tested_-_boosted_amd_performance/1

Those are really CPU-heavy games. Monitor what that is doing when they're stuttering. What framerates are you getting, by the way?