BlameItOnThe_

All prices in the post are in Canadian Sheckles, will include approximate Freedom Dollar prices in brackets. TLDR: I spent $266.50 ($199) on the following build: MSI B85I Intel i7 4770 Kingston Hyperx Blu 2x8GB DDR3 Samsung 850 Evo 120GB Antec NEO ECO 450C WD Blue 1TB Deepcool Matraexx 30 Zotac GTX 1050Ti _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This journey inadvertently started back in October of last year when I picked up a GTX 1070 for $250 ($185) as an upgrade to my GTX 1060 6GB. After a couple months of low-ball offers and no serious inquiries, I started to think about ways I could re-purpose my 1060 as it looked like I was going to be stuck with it. I ended up on the idea of a HTPC that could also do some console emulation. Figured I could probably throw something together for ~$500 ($375) as I was only aiming for an older i5 or maybe a first gen Ryzen CPU if the price was right. So I start casually browsing Facebook and Kijiji to see what pops up. First purchase came in early January, posting was for: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H Intel i7 4790k + Hyper 212 Evo G.skill Ripjaws 2x8GB DDR3 $250 ($185) When I went to pick it up it turned out it was part of a complete system and he was actually looking to get rid of the rest of it as well. Ended up tossing the rest of the parts in for an extra $50 ($37): Samsung 850 Evo 120GB Corsair CX750M Fractal Design Define R5 with 3 140mm fans Total Spent: $550 ($410) *including the cost of buying the new graphics card Now these parts weren't exactly ideal for what my plan was, but the price was too good to pass up IMO and I figured I could probably flip the parts I didn't need to recoup most of my cost. My friend had been experiencing some pretty noticeable bottlenecking from his i5 4460 in games and in CAD programs he needed to use for school. He took the 4790k off my hands for: Intel i7 4790k + Hyper 212 Evo $100 ($75) + Intel i5 4460 + stock cooler I'd say he was definitely the winner in that deal, but I was happy with the price and happier that I was able to help him breathe new life back into his system. My running total was now $450 ($335) and I had a complete system ready to go, but since I was set on having an mATX build there were two issues: 1) I needed to get an mATX case 2) I needed to swap out the full ATX board I had for an mATX or smaller one Solution 1) picked up a Deepcool Matrexx 30 from my local Canada Computers for $56.50 ($42) after taxes Solution 2) Instead of buying a used mATX board off of eBay like a reasonable person I went full boar and picked up this instead: MSI B85I Intel i7 4770 Kingston Hyperx Blu 2x8GB DDR3 $220 ($165) Completely blowing past my original budget I was now sitting at $726.50 ($540) spent and being seriously all in on reselling other parts to make back some money. The upgrade to the i7, plus the motherboard seemed like it would be worth the gamble. To make myself feel better I put together to rig to feel like I accomplished something more than just giving into impulsive spending habits. Specs: MSI B85I Intel i7 4770 Kingston Hyperx Blu 2x8GB DDR3 Samsung 850 Evo 120GB Corsair CX750M WD Blue 1TB (already owned) Deepcool Matraexx 30 PNY GTX 1060 XLR8 Money spent on parts: $526.50 ($393) So I managed to get pretty close to my original budget when just looking at parts used, but I still had and extra $200 ($150) spent on parts I wasn't using. It took a few weeks, but I got lucky and ended up getting rid of the extra parts for: G.skill Ripjaws 2x8GB DDR3 $60 ($45) Fractal Design Define R5 + 1 140mm fan (this things was in ROUGH shape) $30 ($22) Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H Intel i5 4460 + stock cooler $130 ($95) Actually making $20 ($15) off of the extra parts brought me right in line with my original budget! Now you'd think that the story would end here as I accomplished what I set out to do, but no! I still had one very first world problem that I was looking to solve. The case I got has a glass side panel and the 1060 I had in it has non-addressable LEDs (white or red depending on fan speed) on it which were quite annoying when trying to watch movies in the dark. So I put the card back up for sale, but this time included that I was open to trades for lower end cards with some cash making up the value difference. I had a couple offers, but the one that stuck was a guy who was looking to upgrade his 1050Ti. He wasn't sure if the single step up would really end up being worth it and the conversation kinda died there. A couple days later I messaged him back offering up my 1070 that I got all those months ago. He was much more interested in that offer and we came to an agreement on price. We met at my place so we could test both cards and he wanted to bring his tower just to see everything set up and running in it before he left. He seemed newer to the scene of buying and selling used computer stuff and was definitely a little nervous about the situations so I was more than happy to accommodate where I could to ease any of his concerns. I was glad he decided to bring his case because it turned out his power supply only had a single 6-pin power coming off of it (1070 needs 8-pin) and I would have felt really bad if we found that out after the fact. I told him he had a couple options in terms of different adapters he could buy and asked if he still wanted to go through with the trade. He asked if I'd be willing to trade power supplies as well as he wouldn't mind upgrading his 450W unit. I was into the offer as I really didn't need a 750W PSU so we came to the final agreement of: Zotac GTX 1070 $200 ($150) + Zotac 1050Ti Corsair CX750M $40 ($30) + Antec NEO ECO 450C With this I had to downgrade my main rig back to a 1060 from a 1070, but TBH the 1060 is still more than fine for the 1080p 60fps gaming that I do so I'm not bothered. The final cost of my HTPC ended at $266.50 ($199). Mearly half of my original budget! Final Specs: MSI B85I Intel i7 4770 Kingston Hyperx Blu 2x8GB DDR3 Samsung 850 Evo 120GB Antec NEO ECO 450C WD Blue 1TB Deepcool Matraexx 30 Zotac GTX 1050Ti I also salvaged a WiFi/bluetooth card from an old laptop I had lying around so I didn't have to buy a USB dongle for it. IDK if anyone will find this interesting as it's really not an impressive build in terms of raw power, but I've always enjoyed this kind of hustle. She ain't the prettiest thing, but she'll perform! (Included pictures of the janky "cable management" I had to do. If anyone has suggestions to clean it up a bit please let me know) If you've somehow made it through this entire post I hope you've found some entertainment in it and thanks for reading :)

When switching graphics cards I've always uninstalled and reinstalled graphics drivers, but do you do you need to do this when switching between cards of the same series (i.e. 1050 --> 1060)? Mostly curious because the drivers from Nvidia are downloaded with the same file name "442.19-desktop-win10-64bit-international-dch-whql" and I don't know if this is just a file labeling thing or if it's actually just the same file and works for both (or all) cards since they're in the same generation.

Thanks, sorry for being "that guy" that only read half way though the post before asking an already answered question. Oops, my bad.

Bit of an odd question. Does anyone know if it needs to be a DP output to a DP input to meet the requirements or if it just needs to be the output? I have an Acer KG241Q 75Hz FreeSync monitor that only has a VGA and 2 HDMI inputs and I was curious if a DP to HDMI cable would work.

I have the chance to swap my r7 1700 and MSI B350 Tomahawk for an i5 8400 and an Asus H370 Plus and was curious what other people thought about it. I mainly game so the i5 would be more optimal for my situation, but I was also thinking about upgrading to a 3000 series ryzen chip when they came out.

I'm looking into upgrading a friend's MacBook with an SSD to breathe some new life into it, but I have no experience with Macs and had a couple questions I'm having trouble finding answers to. Biggest question is is there a way to clone a Mac drive to a new one through Win10? When I googled it I found multiple ways to do it through macOS, but would have to use an external case for the new drive and with only USB 2.0 ports that sounds painfully slow. I have used Macrium Reflect to clone other Windows drives before and don't know if it would work? The other question I had was if it matters what SSD is used for the upgrade, I know Macs have tight hardware restrictions and don't know if that extends to storage as well. Thanks

No worries, I appreciate you trying. This just seems to be a really strange situation...

All of this was done without XMP. I tried XMP just to see if it would work since I was having no luck with the CPU, but disabled it after I confirmed it was working. I haven't tried a manual overclock on the memory yet.

The stock speed is 3.2 GHz, I had set it to 3.7 in the BIOS. I should have specified that in the previous post, sorry.

They survive the reboot, they just don't seem to take effect. So I set the overclock in the BIOS, save and load into windows, open CPU-Z, HWMonitor, and run cinebench. The multiplier in CPU-Z reads 32 and the clock speed read by HWMonitor is 3.2 GHz. I restart and go back into the BIOS and all the overclock setting are still saved, so it's not failing to save them.

I am on the 2nd most recent, there have apparently been some issues with the most recent version where it has killed some motherboards.

I've set the multiplier in the BIOS higher (x37), but when I save and restart to get into Windows the multiplier only reads at x32 in CPU-Z. I have not, I am trying it out now though.

Mobo: GA-AB350 Gaming (F7a) CPU - R5 1600 RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000 MHz I can't get my CPU to overclock at all, the clock speed just won't change no matter what it's set to in the BIOS. I have followed Gigabyte's overclocking guide and even found a youtube video of someone overclocking with the same mobo/CPU (links below). I can enable XMP to get my RAM to clock to 2933 MHz with no issues. I have even tried underclocking the CPU just to try and register any change in clock speed, but CPU-Z and HWMonitor both show a consistent 3200 GHz when under load. Anyone have any idea what is happening here? Am I just missing something? Gigabyte Guide: https://view.joomag.com/gigabyte-am4-overclocking-guide/0517370001491902144 Youtube guide: