sakoki

Thank you both for the replies! It took a while, but here's what I ended up ordering, in case anyone's curious: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G MoBo: ASUS Prime A320M-K RAM: Memoria G.Skill 32GB C15 Aegis GPU: Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6700 XT Storage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB Case: Chieftec Mesh Pro Cube CI-02B I realised I could probably reuse the following parts from my old PC, as I replaced them a few years ago and expect them to function well: PSU: Corsair AX760 CPU Cooler: some Cooler Master Watercooler, I can't find the exact name rn. A cheap-ish CPU AIO set. Not sure about the latter, if it doesn't work (not sure about backwards compatibility between AM4 and AM3), I'll stick with the stock cooler for the moment. In total, this came to 679.33€, which is way less than I was expecting to pay, so I'm very pleased with that. I'm a little concerned about the case, because I've never worked with µATX before and am worried smth won't fit, but as far as I can tell, it should all be fine. I also went with a "poor person's budget board", I'm sure a more expensive board would have some neat features, but I feel like at this price point, if I was gonna spend an extra 90€ on a component, it would be the CPU or GPU, not a M.2 heatsink.

Thank you, that's a really good starting point, and I can actually find some lower prices as well. One question though, what's the benefit of the expensive motherboard? I can get an Asus MoBo for under 60€, what advantage does spending 70€ more give me?

Budget (including currency): 1000€ max I guess? Country: Austria Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Dota 2, CS:GO, Baldur's Gate 3 Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Hi y'all, I'm getting back into PC gaming after a long pause. I built my last PC about 10 years ago, so I'm super out of the loop on PC hardware. My main games are DotA 2 and CS:GO, which are obviously easy to run, but I would like for them to run well. Beyond that, I have some interest in newer games (namely Baldur's Gate 3), but this is really not a priority. Many years ago, I bought some Star Citizen pack, but was never able to play. Frankly, I don't think it's worth it for me to overspend on my PC just to run it, but if that happens to be cheaper than I'm expecting, it'd be nice. Lastly, ray tracing looks cool, so if I can get that it's a nice bonus, but again, not necessary. I'm currently either using two 1080p monitors, or a 4k TV (largely for watching movies). I have peripherals. I don't have a Windows license, back in the day I always used an expired demo version, I don't know if that still works. I would prefer a small-ish case, ideally something that fits into a 33.5cm x 33.5cm shelf. While I set my budget to 1000€, this is neither desireable, nor a hard limit. I would like to spend as little money as possible, while ending up with a PC that can run my games well for a couple of years. I would be super grateful for suggestions that include different options, with an explanation of what I'd be gaining/losing. Also, if someone could tell me if DDR5 RAM is worth it that'd be great, last I bought RAM sticks they were DDR3... Thanks y'all! I heavily relied on these forums when I built my first PC forever ago, and I'm delighted to be back once again.

Thanks a lot! I'll be getting the 3300X over the 3200G, if I go for that price point. And I'll go for something at least slightly better than the GTX 1650. Any further advice, especially in regards to airflow, would be much appreciated.

Budget (including currency): Flexible, about 400 - 900€ Country: Austria Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: CS:GO, DotA 2, DA4, other (upcoming) games at 1440p. Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Hi, I'm in the process of planning a new PC, which I intend to order as soon as possible. Before I do so, however, I have one specific concern, but would also like for someone more knowledgeable to look over my parts list. First, the specific concern, as it may impact which parts I should choose. I have a kallax shelf (from Ikea), in which I would ideally like to place the PC. So far, the only PC case that I've found that seems to fit this shelf very well is the Thermaltake Core V21, as seen here. If anyone has other recommendations, I'd love to hear them, but for now, this is what I'm going with. Obviously, this could present problems in terms of cooling/airflow. The back of the shelf is about 10cm from a wall, so at least the back will get enough airflow, but the sides fit very snugly into the shelf, so there will be virtually no airflow there. Frankly, I have no idea if cooling just from the front & back is enough, and if I should in any way design my parts list around that, so I really need some advice there. Do I need a specific cooler design on the GPU? Can I get away with using the stock CPU cooler? Now onto the general parts list. This is a bit of a mess, because I'm pretty certain I don't need to overspend, but I might still want to. So with that in mind, there are two price points for the CPU and GPU, depending on how much I want to spend. CPU ~100€: i3-9100f/Ryzen 3 3200G. Would welcome any recommendations in terms of which of these is better, or if maybe there's a better option at that price point. I was planning to get the Ryzen 5 1600, but its price has spiked. CPU ~200€: Ryzen 5 3600X GPU <200€: GTX 1650/1650 Super. Is the upgrade to the super worth it? Is there a better GPU under 200€ I should get instead? GPU >300€: RTX 2060/RX 5700. My understanding is that the RX 5700 is better, but the RTX 2060 has ray tracing, which might be nice. Is this correct? RAM: Any 16GB kit, probably from G.Skill since they are cheap. MoBo: I don't really care, any M-ATX board will do. Looking at entry-level ASRock boards rn. PSU: must be modular. I have some brand loyalty towards corsair, so I might go with them. Not really sure how much power this build would need, my assumption was somewhere between 450W - 600W would be fine. Storage: I'lll be getting an M.2 PCIe SSD. Probably ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite. I appreciate any feedback and recommendations. Thanks in advance

As stated in the update, I've eliminated a GPU driver issue which could supposedly cause problems similar to mine, but the crashes and freezes remain. I've also checked the ASUS GPU tweak logs for any irregularities, and found none. I would really appreciate any and all further advice.

I've now applied new thermal paste, since that was the easiest cause to test. When I tried to play to test my PC, it still crashed, and could not be turned on again. After connecting it to a different power grid, it started up again, but still crashed my game twice and the entire computer once within a span of maybe half an hour. Still, it could be turned on again even after crashing completely, so that felt like an improvement, but also confused me further. I've checked whether it crashes when my RAM usage goes above 50% (since I figured that maybe one of the RAM sticks could be defective), but nope, it remains fully operational above 50% RAM usage as well. I've come to believe that the three issues (game crashing, PC freezing, PC crashing) are connected, since it really feels like they happen almost interchangeably now. This further complicates matters, as I cannot imagine a faulty PSU causing my game to close. (That shouldn't happen, right?) Edit: Oh, I've also checked the power connectors, and they seem to all be in place. Is there some way I can check the functionality of my PSU (that doesn't require a second system or PSU)?

Sadly not really. Could the freezing also be caused by power issues? And could the problem be with my power grid, rather than the PSU? It's rather new, and I haven't had any problems with corsair PSUs before.

Thanks guys, that's really helpful (not being sarcastic!). If either of you know whether the other ports could support 60 Hz, or where I could find out, please let me know!

It's connected via HDMI. Unfortunately, the TV is made by a small Austrian brand, so I doubt a model number will be of any use to anyone here, but just in case, here it is: https://nogis.at/produkt/nogis-one-55-2?v=1 Where would I find my GPU display control settings? I'm using an ASUS DirectCU II OC R9 290x

Update: I've been told that my GPU might not support 4k 60 Hz at all, or at least not via HDMI. If anyone has experience with this card, please let me know! Hello everyone, I recently purchased what is effectively a 4k monitor (though I believe it's technically a modified TV) to use with my PC. Unfortunately, I've had some issues with the resolution and the refresh rate. Essentially: when setting it to 4k, the refresh rate is capped at 30 Hz (rather than the 60 Hz it's capable of). I originally feared this was an issue with the device, but soon discovered that this cap was set by windows (I'm still using windows 7). Any options above 30 Hz are greyed out and cannot be selected. when setting it to 1080p, the image is kinda "zoomed in", with the edges being invisible. This happens both when I duplicate the output of my 1080p monitor and when I set it to display its own image. As you can imagine, not being able to fully utilize my monitor in either resolution is quite frustrating, so I'd be thankful for any ideas you might have. Edit: The TV is connected to my GPU via HDMI Edit 2: The GPU is an ASUS DirectCU II OC R9 290x

Hi, a while back I ran into an issue where my PC would sometimes be connected to my LAN, but not the internet, despite the internet working on other devices. I paid no further attention to this because it was a minor inconvenience that could be fixed by simply restarting the PC. About a month later, my PC started occasionally freezing when in DotA 2 (a video game), ceasing to react to any input. I had to force shut it down, then after restarting, I often had no internet, so I had to restart again. I still don't know if these two issues are connected, but since they often occur together, I thought I'd mention that. These freezes became more common, and were joined by two further issues. First, DotA 2 would sometimes just close down, seemingly without impacting the PC in any way. However, this would typically soon be followed by a freeze or, after a while, the PC crashing. This would look as though the power was turned off - no bluescreen, no freezing, just the PC being instantly shut down. I continued to use it like this for a while, until eventually, my PC shut down (in the manner described above), but when I tried to restart, it immediately shut down again, before anything could even appear on the monitor. I observed the motherboard and noticed the CPU_LED flashing red once as I pressed the power button, and once more when the PC crashed immediately after. I after trying this for a few times, I left the PC untouched for the day. The next day it worked again. Since then, I've been using my PC sparingly, only attempting to play two times. Both times it worked for a while before crashing. Once it crashed after CS:GO (another video game), once after DotA 2, in both cases immediately after a game had ended (as I was loading out of the map and back to the main menu). In summary, my issues are: DotA 2 closing down randomly (something that didn't happen before the other issues emerged). My PC freezing during a game of DotA 2 My PC crashing during, or more commonly right after a game of CS:GO or DotA 2 My PC connecting to LAN but not the internet, typically after being crashing or being force shut down, or after extended periods of it being shut down Please note that these issues may not be limited to DotA 2 (and CS:GO), I simply almost exclusively played DotA 2, so that's where the issues occured. I've considered a few causes, but none of them make much sense to me: CPU thermals seem unlikely, since they shouldn't cause my game to randomly close down (right?) PSU issues seem unlikely, because - again, they shouldn't cause my game to randomly close down RAM issues seem unlikely, because the problems seem to escalate over multiple shut downs. Unless maybe it's RAM thermals? Is that a thing? Something of note is that I'm suspecting voltage fluctuations may have occured in my power grid (this suspicion is based on issues with a TV), though I haven't been able to verify this yet, and it also doesn't seem like a great explanation for my issues. My specs are: GPU: ASUS DirectCU II OC R9 290x MoBo: ASUS M5 A97 R2.0 CPU: AMD FX-8350 RAM: G.Skill RipJawsX 2x4 PSU: Corsair AX760 Although I am thankful for any and all advice, my main focus is on fixing the freezes/crashes. The network issue, if unconnected to the others, is just a minor inconvenience. Update: I've taken a few measures which I thought might fix these issues, but to no avail: I've cleaned my CPU and applied new thermal paste in hopes that it might be a thermals issue. I found some errors pertaining to my GPU in the windows event log, and even found a lot of people complaining about similar crashes associated with these errors. However, when I updated my drivers (which was said to fix the issue), the errors disappeared but the problems remained. I've plugged the PC into a different power grid in case voltage fluctuations were the issue, still no change. I'm really at a loss...

Hello everyone, I'm currently struggling with getting Artifact (a Valve game) to run on my laptop. I also suck at using Ubuntu. Essentially, Artifact only runs on Vulkan - as opposed to the rest of my steam library, and when I try to open it, I get the following error message: "Failed to initialize Vulkan. Please make sure your driver and GPU support Vulkan." Can someone please help me install Vulkan and get this game to run? I'm using a Lenovo Ideapad 720s with an i5-7200U, so graphics should be Intel HD 620 (right?). I'm running Ubuntu 18.04.1. Please keep in mind that I really, really don't know how to use Ubuntu. I just installed it cause I couldn't stand Windows 10. I have been told that I just need to get mesa something something. As far as I can tell, I have done that. There is a good chance I may have messed something up, but I have no clue, so if you have any ideas, please explain them like you would to someone who has never used anything other than Windows, cause that basically applies to me.

Hello, my R9 290x seems to have died, and so I am looking for a replacement/upgrade. The problem is that I don't really have a massive budget and certainly don't want to pay the ridiculous prices GPUs are selling for right now. So what can I get that will: 1) not under-perform compared to my old GPU (cause that would really suck) 2) last for at least a year or two without being completely outdated (I don't feel like just getting another R9 290x tbh) 3) cost as little as possible, or preferably below 400€ (give or take) I'm also hoping to run Star Citizen, so while that shouldn't be a problem for a card fitting my criteria, I guess it's something to keep in mind. P. S. I have an AMD FX-8350 CPU, so that's fairly old, in cases there's any compatibility issues (though there shouldn't be, right?)

Yes, the cables are connected properly and the LEDs indicate sufficient power supply. I don't have any spare hardware to experiment with, but I did have the GPU (along with most other hardware) tested a month or two ago and nothing was found (though I cannot attest to the expertise of the company checking my PC).