Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

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Dr. Zoidberg
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Dr. Zoidberg »

AMD have a change of heart.


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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by pixel »

Wow :whoa: If AMD keeps on this track, X570 boards will be supported for a long while. Looks like my X470 build might get a CPU upgrade in a few years, which means my B450 HTPC will get the hand-me-down 2600X.

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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

Just a little update to say everything is working great. One thing I am really impressed with is the temperatures of the 1660 super. When gaming it only gets around 100f-120f (38c-48c) and it usually is on the lower end of that. I messed around with overclocking it and it can do 2100mhz core and 1900mhz memory which is a fairly decent overclock. I'm leaving it at stock for now since I don't see much of a need to overclock.

I still wonder why in the listing on Newegg for the card it lists the core clock as 1785mhz yet with no overclocking at all it goes up to 1905mhz when running a demanding game. I'd think they would want to advertise the highest clock it achieves.
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

I haven't even bothered trying to overclock the 3600x as I really don't get the point. I see people saying that overclocked it to 4.2ghz on all cores but it boosts around 4.1ghz on all cores anyways. An extra 100mhz is a pretty useless overclock imo. Idk even if you could get 4.4ghz on all cores it just doesn't seem worth it. The difference is not going to be noticeable. The only thing it will achieve it a slightly higher score in Cinebench. Whoopee!
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by melancholy »

So was it worth it then? As long of a road as this has been over the years, I hope the final result met your expectations.

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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

melancholy wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 12:39 pm So was it worth it then? As long of a road as this has been over the years, I hope the final result met your expectations.
Yep I am pretty happy with it. It is nice the X570 is going to be compatible with the next Ryzen 4000 CPUs although I think the 3600x should be more than enough for gaming for quite awhile. The 1660 Super is a very nice improvement over the loud hot R9 290X. It is amazing to me that the 1660 Super stays so cool. I am used to temps in the 190s during gaming while the 1660 Super runs at just over 100F. A 90F degree drop in temps! And for the price it much more powerful than the 290X. I may have mentioned this before but Assassin's Creed Odyssey went from 35FPS average on very high to 70fps with the 1660 Super. Lower power consumption,cooler,quieter and double the frames? Can't complain about that!

So yes I am happy with the build. My old i5-3570k still worked pretty good but it was time to upgrade and I had the extra money so I'm glad I did. It seems I ordered it just in time too as I've heard there is a shortage of motherboards,psus and gpus right now. Looking at Newegg the PSU,CPU,GPU and motherboard I ordered are all out of stock. The only part of my build that is still in stock is the ram.

What are your specs Mel? If you've got a more powerful GPU then maybe I can buy it from you in a few years when you upgrade! :heyhey:
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by melancholy »

Calavera wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 2:02 pm What are your specs Mel? If you've got a more powerful GPU then maybe I can buy it from you in a few years when you upgrade! :heyhey:
Intel i5-9600k
MSI Z390 Gaming Plus Motherboard
MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z
16GB DDR4 3400
Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 as the boot drive

As for my old parts, you’d have to fight my son for them. He gets all my old stuff. His desktop has my old i5-6600 and GTX 1070 in it...for Roblox. :grr:

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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

melancholy wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 3:40 pm As for my old parts, you’d have to fight my son for them. He gets all my old stuff. His desktop has my old i5-6600 and GTX 1070 in it...for Roblox. :grr:
I usually am against fighting children, but if it will get me an RTX 2070 then tell him to bring it on! :olol:
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

melancholy wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 3:40 pm
Intel i5-9600k
MSI Z390 Gaming Plus Motherboard
MSI RTX 2070 Gaming Z
16GB DDR4 3400
Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 as the boot drive
What do you have your 9600k overclocked to? Apparently they can do 5ghz. I didn't look much into it though so idk if that is possible on air. How about the 2070, tried overclocking that any? As for your M.2 drive have you tried installing any games to it? Particularly some that usually have long load times? Just curious how much faster they load for you. I plan on getting an M.2 the next time I have some extra money to spend. Lastly have you ever tried overclocking your ram? Even in the old days when I was big into overclocking that is one thing I never did. When you overclock your CPU or GPU you can actually see the difference. Whether it be something like a video converting faster or gaining a few FPS in games you can actually see that the performance has increased. With RAM is seemed that if you overclock you are not going to notice any difference at all.
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by melancholy »

I have no overclocking on anything. I don’t see the need to. As for the M.2, I have two of them in my PC. The much faster Samsung Evo Plus is only for Windows and install applications. Nothing else is on it. The second drive is some Intel drive. Not sure the model but it was very cheap, and therefore on the low end of M.2 drives, so it’s speed is only a little faster than a SATA SSD.

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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

melancholy wrote: Tue Jun 02, 2020 10:56 pm I have no overclocking on anything. I don’t see the need to.
I don't blame you. I was more into overclocking in my younger days I guess. Getting my 5400+ to run a 3.2.ghz instead of the stock 2.8 was pretty cool to me back then. Even though that extra 400mhz probably isn't going to make any real noticeable difference. I never really tried overclocking my 290x except just to run a few benchmarks. I can't remember how much it oc'ed but I want to say it wasn't much. Plus that card ran hot enough at stock speeds.

The 1660 Super overclocks decently but I feel like I will cause it to "wear out" running it at higher clocks all the time even though I know that isn't true at all!

Here is a Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark I did with everything maxed out except for anisotropic filtering which was at 8x instead of 16x. But I doubt that would make much difference anyways.

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An extra 7fps isn't too bad. In this case there isn't much reason to do so but if the difference was 53fps stock vs 60fps overclocked then it would totally be worth it. For now though I'll probably just leave it at stock. Maybe I'll run it at the higher clocks if I'm playing a really demanding game.

Honestly though nowadays I can't even notice much difference between medium settings and ultra settings. The main difference I notice is the large drop in FPS! I remember when those settings made a HUGE difference! In the early 2000s in PC games the difference between low and highest was almost like PS1 to Dreamcast. The difference was huge. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but in most games that seems to be the case.
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

I don't think I mentioned this before but the 1660 Super is the first Nvidia video card I've bought since back in either 2000 or 2001. The first 3D video card I ever had was a Voodoo3 2000 that my brother added to the 500mhz HP computer we had. After that I had a Gateway PC that came with a Geforce 2 GTS 32MB AGP card. It wasn't long before that was outdated. Next was an ATI 9850. If you got lucky you could unlock extra pipelines to make it into a 9870 and mine unlocked just fine with no artifacts! After that I believe my next card was a Radeon X1950 Pro. Next was the HD 3850 AGP. Not long after that I built a new PC and sold the AGP card and bought a PCI-E HD 3870. The next card was a HD 6850 which I remember almost nothing about for some reason. Then came the R9 290X which I replaced with the GTX 1660 Super.

So actually I have never even purchased an Nvidia card on its own before. The Geforce2 GTS came preinstalled in the Gateway. So this is actually the first time in my life I have bought an Nvidia card! I would have went with the RTX 2060 for this build but it was more than I was wanting to spend.

So there is my personal history of graphic cards. Very interesting isn't it? :olol: What made me want to write this post is finding some old 3DMark results in an old backup folder. Here they are if anybody is interested in having a look into the past!

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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

Here are some benchmarks from Hitman 2. Just for anyone who is curious or may happen upon this thread while looking for 1660 Super benchmarks.


Hitman 2 All Ultra Settings at 1660 Super Stock Clocks
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Hitman 2 All Ultra Settings at 2100mhz clock 7600mhz(1900mhz) memory
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Hitman 2 All settings with an Ultra option were changed to high. Still at OC'ed clocks
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Hitman 2 All settings low except 16x Anisotropic filtering still at OC'ed clocks
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Dr. Zoidberg
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Dr. Zoidberg »

Nice.

Do you have PC Building Simulator, Cal?

You build, fix and test PCs. You can even use 3D Mark in it.

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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

Dr. Zoidberg wrote: Wed Jun 10, 2020 3:59 pm Nice.

Do you have PC Building Simulator, Cal?

You build, fix and test PCs. You can even use 3D Mark in it.
I've actually never heard of it before. I had a quick look a some screenshots and a video and I might have to give it a try.

I know I've mentioned before about buying my PC at just the right time because everything went out of stock like the next day. Well I was just looking and it seems the motherboard I have is nearly impossible to get at the original price anymore. Ebay looks like the only place that has it and they are regularly selling for around $300! Sometimes even more! :oshocked: And I thought $199.99 was expensive for it!

It is pretty much the same situation with the GPU. The triple fan model Gigabyte 1660 Super I have seems almost impossible to find, even on Ebay. There are 109 results for Gigabyte 1660 Super and only 3 of them are for the triple fan model I have and they seem sketchy. The prices are $367.90,$392.59 and $448.61. It would make no sense to pay extra even if it is hard to find since the 5600 XT is still in stock. Maybe in the future it would be more valuable then other 1660 Super cards. That would be nice when I want to upgrade! :olol:
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

Everything has been going good with my most recent build. I find that even though I keep wanting to upgrade to bigger and better video cards that I really don't game that much. Still it is nice on the few games I do get into that I can run them with no problem. Anyways recently I've thought about getting a new case. Nothing fancy just something different. My current case is fine, I've had it for almost 8 years now. When it comes to cases I'm not really into the "fancy" cases. I don't need an RGB light show!

This is my current case
Rosewill ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, Blue LED Fan
and this is the case I am looking at

DIYPC DIY-F2-W White SPCC Micro ATX Mini Tower Computer Case

As you can see it is nothing fancy either. I could really do without the window on the side. I am wanting a white case or possibly even some other color besides all black. I'd like to find a new case with a little color, good ventilation, usb 3/3.1 ports and audio out on the front. If I could find one with no side window that would be nice as well. I'm going to keep looking but just thought I'd post about it in my old upgrade thread.

Oh and just something I found interesting while looking at cases it seem most cases don't even have bays for optical drives anymore. I didn't realize that a CD/DVD/BR drive on a PC was such an outdated thing. Though to be honest I haven't had an optical drive hooked up in my PC in many years. I've never even owned a Blu-Ray drive. What with flash media being so cheap there really isn't a need for one. Just about a week ago I picked up a 32GB flash drive for $10. Sure it was a cheap "ONN" brand from Wal-Mart but it does the job.
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by Calavera »

I still haven't decided on a case. My current case Rosewill ATX Mid Tower Computer Case, Blue LED Fan is a little crowded inside. The triple fan 1660 Super kind of blocks the hard drive bays. I currently have 1 SSD as my system drive then two 3GB drives and a 4GB drive that should be arriving today. It is going to be kind of tricky to get the new drive in there correctly. The next step up in size would be a full tower but those things are huge! Even so I think I might like to have a big ole honkin' full tower. I've been thinking about this one Rosewill Gaming ATX Full Tower Computer Case White Edition, Supports Up to E-ATX / XL-ATX, Comes with Four Fans - THOR V2-W

The only thing stopping me from ordering it right now is the price. If it was $79.99 I think I'd go ahead and order it but alas I'm a cheap bastard :olol: Even if it was just $100 I'd consider but $120 is pretty pricey for a PC case.

I don't really need a full tower but I've been looking around at cases and it is hard to tell if one if going to have enough room.

This is the motherboard I have MSI MPG X570 GAMING EDGE WIFI Gaming Motherboard AMD AM4 SATA 6Gb/s M.2 USB 3.2 Gen 2 HDMI ATX

This is the GPU GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER DirectX 12 GV-N166SGAMING-6GD 6GB 192-Bit GDDR6 PCI Express 3.0 x16 ATX Video Card

So what I'd like is a case that can easily fit that motherboard and GPU and also have the space and mounting bays for 3 HDDs (preferably 4 just in case I add another drive in the future)

I did an advanced search on Newegg for cases with 4 Internal 3.5" Drive Bays and this is what most of them end up looking like Example Case

Looking at the inside of that case it looks to me like the only 3.5" drive bay is at the very top. The rest of it is literally just open space with no place to mount any HDDs.

Maybe I just somehow don't get it :dontknow" after all it has been nearly 8 years since I last ordered a case!

If anyone is bored and feels like looking through cases to see if they can find one like I'm looking for I'd appreciate it. I know looking at cases for Calavera isn't too exciting so only do so if you are really really bored!
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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by melancholy »

Calavera wrote: Fri Jan 08, 2021 8:52 pmI currently have 1 SSD as my system drive then two 3GB drives and a 4GB drive that should be arriving today.
I know you love the 80’s and 90’s, but you might want to consider getting some more modern drives Cal. They make far larger drives nowadays that can fit thousands of gigabytes!

Jokes aside, since it looks like you don’t want some LED lightshow with a clear panel, how about the Antec 302? Very similar to the case you have, only the bays are turned sideways so they are far easier to access. And nearly half the cost of that Rosewill one you linked to.

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Re: Its that time again, Calavera computer upgrade advice thread!

Post by melancholy »

I took you up on your case-hunting challenge and you don’t even have the decency to respond? How rude.

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