Desktop Computers

Lanx said:

next couple of years, would be tock and a new socket anyway and any system you find now unless you go balls out will be ddr5 16gb, and you'll be stuck w/ older/slower ddr5, you have to pay out the ass for another 16gb ddr5 "somewhere", it's better just to live the good life and have 32gb of readily available and cheap dd4 and open 700chrome windows

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So what's a "better" DDR4? Thought at one point best speed isn't best ram neccesarily, dont know dick about timings etc. Just grab the cheapest Gskill ripsaw 32gb 3600 mhz or?

Ouch. Granted can drop several hundred off assuming I get lucky with the 3080 closer to 12-1400 mark eventually.

Mist said:

PCIe 4.0 NVME SSDs are getting pretty cheap and they go brrrrrrrrrrr.

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NVMe drives are almost commodities now, and in most cases one has to benchmark to see differences. I've run a value Silicon Power 1TB gen 3 drive, 970 Evo+ gen3, and now a 980pro Gen 4 and I doubt I could tell which was which in day-to-day usage. I do agree that PCIe4 NVMe drives are the way to go now though, if only because that hyped direct-streaming feature might be worth something in the future.

Sludig said:

So what's a "better" DDR4? Thought at one point best speed isn't best ram neccesarily, dont know dick about timings etc. Just grab the cheapest Gskill ripsaw 32gb 3600 mhz or?

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CAS Latency (CL) and Speed are the two main specs you want to look for, but this is also changes by capacity. Good 8GB sticks at CL14 are common, but 16GB sticks will probably be CL16 and 32GB sticks CL18 unless you want to pay through the nose. You can find good pricing on 2x8gb 3200 CL14 or 2x16GB 3600 CL 16 - those are probably the sweet spots.

Mist said:

This is extremely good memory. It is pretty much the best binned Samsung B-Die you can get that runs CL14 @ 1.35v. Anything C14 with higher clock speeds than 3200 requires bumping up to 1.45v which really limits your compatibility.

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They have a 2x16gb in case I'm retarded and think i'll actually benefit with my 60 chrome tabs and inneficiently coded Tarkov? Or would I want to run 4x8 though I thought I had read something about sticks being better when it's consolidated into less sticks, or the stick itself being built with bigger memory chips or whatever.

Intel boards historically are good for 2 generations so unless something changes Raptor Lake should use the same socket as Alder Lake. It’s all still back channel rumored, but Raptor Lake is expected to be 10-15% improvement over Alder Lake with double the cache and double the ecores. If I wanted/had to build a gaming pc now i’d go with the 12700k AL and the fastest DDR4 and then start paying attention to tech again around 2024-2025 with Meteor and Lunar Lake, with my eye particularly focused on Gen 15 Lunar Lake.

Either way processors now can run anything and will run just about everything for several years to come and I’m not aware of any groundbreaking games down the pipe, so imo it’s all about how bad do you want a pc now? We’re already half way through Q1 and Q3 is close enough that for me, I’m okay with holding for Raptor. The next biggest gains outside of the 40xx gpu’s will be from better DDR5 timings but I’m not sure we’ll get to that point in time for Q3 this year.

I feel like we’re in an interesting point pc gaming wise where nearly any decision you make will be great and relatively “future proof” but each year we can expect significant gains from something.

So, I decided it's time to finally replace my old desktop. I've been living off a MSI GS63 Stealth laptop for a while which gets the job done for the most part but lately i've stalled out sometimes whiel running 3-4 poker sites / streaming video and or running a mmo on the side. With that said I don't "need" a ton out of a pc and budget is fairly flexible, but I'm thinking given my primary use is online poker + 20 year old MMO's for the most part it isn't as big of a decision as I am making it.


Probably been looking in the $1500 range and hoping to find something that can get built and shipped fairly quickly. Main things I've been hoping to find are essentially a 1TB ssd, been looking at 3060/3060 ti's (just because that's kind of the sweet spot for pricing it looks like currently but open to 3050's if it saves me a bunch of $ as well?). and at least 16gb of ram would prefer 32 (I'm fairly sure my 16gb on my laptop has choked out at various times as well, maybe i'ts just not great ram?) - processor wise I'm completely open to suggestions as well.


Basically anyone have some amazing deals going on currently they can point me toward?

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-ome...-1tb-ssd-shadow-black/6477879.p?skuId=6477879 current frontrunner for reference - cheap enough i can bang off a couple new monitors too lol

quiet would also be a plus - if anyone has any ideas

Sludig said:

Dont put the added voodoo of next gen cards on my mind. In my head im telling myself they will be so expensive both in heat/power supposedly doubling, and prices being even worse than the current situation.

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Voodoo graphics card you say?

Ritley said:

Voodoo graphics card you say?

View attachment 397453

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Member berries

Mist said:

PCIe 4.0 NVME SSDs are getting pretty cheap and they go brrrrrrrrrrr.

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GameStop had a 1 TB Samsung 980 pro with heat sink for $114 which I thought was pretty insane.

Jovec said:

DDR5 hardly matters right now, nor does PCIe5.

Current DDR5 seems to be about 0-3% improvment for the vast majority of use cases. As DDR5 speed and timings improve, this should increase, but remember that the memory controller on Alder Lake is first gen and board makers will likely improve memory traces and timing training in future boards. If you are buying everything top end, of course go DDR5 - but otherwise the money spent on the DDR5 price premium would net better performance with going DDR4 and using that extra cash to step up the CPU, GPU, cooling, etc. to something better.

There is barely any advantage to PCIe 4.0x16 versus 3.0x16 for a gaming system, and that likely won't change much between 5.0 and 4.0. The extra bandwidth does open up possibilities for things like additional GPUs and NVMe drives for VM passthrough on consumer/gaming grade hardware, since x8/x8 Gen 5 will have the same bandwidth as x16/x16 Gen 4, but I think current mobos only wire the one PCIe slot for Gen 5 anyway.

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Depends - in gaming depending on which DDR5 you go with can get anywhere from 1-14% - depends on the titles also - Going 12900k and DDR5 6400 makes it much easier for games to get near or hold 4k120 for me - also depends on title again.

Xexx said:

Depends - in gaming depending on which DDR5 you go with can get anywhere from 1-14% - depends on the titles also - Going 12900k and DDR5 6400 makes it much easier for games to get near or hold 4k120 for me - also depends on title again.

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If you are at that level of CPU/GPU get DDR5 (you don't say, but you are probably at 6900xt/3080/3090/ti tier if you are talking about 4k120). Most of us would benefit from using DDR4 savings towards a higher GPU tier to get better frames.

Jovec said:

If you are at that level of CPU/GPU get DDR5 (you don't say, but you are probably at 6900xt/3080/3090/ti tier if you are talking about 4k120). Most of us would benefit from using DDR4 savings towards a higher GPU tier to get better frames.

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Yeah if i didnt have spare DDR5 id have kept gf PC @ D4 until Raptor Lake or next AMD