Time to upgrade the old PC...

[rumble phish]

Without pricing individual components ... still seems too expensive to me. Unless absolutely a requirement to upgrade I'd wait to mid to late April to purchase. At present to many vendors are gouging.

Roughly speaking decent gaming rig:

$700 - an entry level 3080 @MSRP
$300 - an mid range MB
$500 - CPU
$100 - Case
$200 - midrange PSU
$150/TB - m.2 storage
$200 /32gb - 3600 class RAM
$150 - AIO cooler
$100 - misc, fans, etc.

There is some gouging going on to be sure, but the biggest single reason for the recent increase in pricing of "tech" stuff are the tariffs that went into effect in January. Companies are pricing to make up the difference (end consumer getting fucked as usual) and most all of the pre-tariff stocks are sold out. Another big hit is due to labor and raw materiel shortages due to the response to the pandemic.

With Tariffs Back in Place, GPU Vendors EVGA, Zotac Raise Prices on Graphics Cards

EVGA's price increase amounts to paying $70 more for Nvidia RTX 3000 graphics cards, while Zotac price hikes could be up to $300 more.

www.pcmag.com

page 3 bitches!

 

[roadczar]

LAB discount?

PM me what you have in mind.

 

[roadczar]

There is some gouging going on to be sure, but the biggest single reason for the recent increase in pricing of "tech" stuff are the tariffs that went into effect in January. Companies are pricing to make up the difference (end consumer getting fucked as usual) and most all of the pre-tariff stocks are sold out. Another big hit is due to labor and raw materiel shortages due to the response to the pandemic.

With Tariffs Back in Place, GPU Vendors EVGA, Zotac Raise Prices on Graphics Cards

EVGA's price increase amounts to paying $70 more for Nvidia RTX 3000 graphics cards, while Zotac price hikes could be up to $300 more.

www.pcmag.com

page 3 bitches!

Cards selling at over 100% MSRP have little to do with with tariffs.

 

[Anal Disco]

I have over 10 years worth of digital clutter spread across 2 or 3 drives from old computers. Anyone ever tackle this?

It's like opening a storage locker an acre in size, you look at all the dusty shit and just go nahhhh and close the door.

 

[roadczar]

I have over 10 years worth of digital clutter spread across 2 or 3 drives from old computers. Anyone ever tackle this?

It's like opening a storage locker an acre in size, you look at all the dusty shit and just go nahhhh and close the door.

Depends on how much time you want to invest:

 

[Anal Disco]

Depends on how much time you want to invest:

View attachment 56343

I pay for (a small amount of) cloud storage to hold the important shit for safekeeping. I'd like to just keep everything in the cloud so I don't have to juggle multiple backups, but it's the motivation to spend a weekend organizing the crap that has me pushing it off.

 

[roadczar]

I pay for (a small amount of) cloud storage to hold the important shit for safekeeping. I'd like to just keep everything in the cloud so I don't have to juggle multiple backups, but it's the motivation to spend a weekend organizing the crap that has me pushing it off.

You are spending more time backing up than it would take you to buy a $99 / year subscription to Office which comes with 1tb of storage and can be shared with 5 people (each gets a TB). OneDrive will automatically take all the garbage on your attached local storage and replicate it to the cloud.

Done.

 

[CID]

photobucket was 'in the cloud' too .much loved by LOTS o people... then when they jacked up the subscription fees and didn't allow you to multi-batch file downloads so you had a hard time getting back everything all hell broke loose.

It always starts out small....... just a file here and there..you know the important stuff only. it's the bill gates business plan. Shit we'll give it you free or for a very small fee, hey storage is cheap. Then about 10 years later, its all fun and games till the storage vendor puts the shackles on you like some Zimbabwe chain mail crypto thief.

 

[roadczar]

Not worried.

 

[Anal Disco]

You are spending more time backing up than it would take you to buy a $99 / year subscription to Office which comes with 1tb of storage and can be shared with 5 people (each gets a TB). OneDrive will automatically take all the garbage on your attached local storage and replicate it to the cloud.

Done.

Yep, I understand your point and agree - my problem is that I need to organize it before I upload. I don't want 8 separate folders for vacation photos, 6 different music folders and god knows how many "Random cool shit" folders

 

[roadczar]

Yep, I understand your point and agree - my problem is that I need to organize it before I upload. I don't want 8 separate folders for vacation photos, 6 different music folders and god knows how many "Random cool shit" folders

You get rid of manual backups and organize later ... baby steps. Storage is cheap, time is not.

 

[Austin_F]

 

[Austin_F]

 

[rumble phish]

Yup, those 10th gen Intel cpus are gonna be "on sale" until they can catch up with AMD. Great fucking deal.

 

[Dameon]

I did just upgrade my SAN to 10Gb. I bought an EqualLogic PS6610E with (84) 6TB drives and a couple of PowerConnect N4032F switches (redundancy). I can consolidate my (3) current EqualLogic arrays on to this one. Should save me some rack space and power consumption (and lower BTU output).

 

[Buelldozer]

I need to build TWO new PCs, one for gaming and one for my Son for his Engineering Software but the price of GPUs (Video Cards) is fucking outrageous and I refuse to spend 100% or more of MSRP to get one. Fuck.That.

 

[rumble phish]

I need to build TWO new PCs, one for gaming and one for my Son for his Engineering Software but the price of GPUs (Video Cards) is fucking outrageous and I refuse to spend 100% or more of MSRP to get one. Fuck.That.

Yup. Try sniping on Ebay to get the best deal possible on used cards. Granted, you're not gonna get latest, cutting edge GPU but you can get something decent that'll run most games at ore near 60fps. I just picked up another AMD RX 480, but just the 4gb version, for $150. Since I started this thread I've assembled or upgraded 6 PC's. Two were the SFF HTPC's that I assembled, so no GPU's were needed. One was a "family use" PC that i set up in the kitchen nook area. That one turned out amazingly well for using an ITX board with an older i5 4460 in it. I use it a lot when I'm downstairs. I put 16gb's of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a low profile Gigabyte GTX 1650 (with DDR6 RAM) that runs Fortnite @ 60+ fps @ 1080p with all the bells and whistles turned on/up.

I didn't upgrade my PC as much as I replaced just about every component in it. Running an i7 4790K 4GHz (OC's to 4.7Ghz stable on water), 16gb's of 2133Mhz DDR3 RAM, 1TB SSD, 4TB HDD, and a GTX 1660Ti. I can run Fortnite @ 90+ fps with nearly all the bells and whistles turned up to max @ 1440p. Very happy with it.

Upgraded my son's PC to nearly the same specs (same CPU and RAM), except without the OC (on air only) and with a GTX 1660 Super.

I have one "extra" i7 4790K set up I'm finishing now, with 16gb's of 2133Mhz DDR3, 1 TB SSD and a GTX 1660 Super. haven't run it yet, but I expect it'll OC to at least 4.5Ghz with the cooler I have on it (Noctua NH-U12S with an extra fan)

I have two AMD systems, both with Athlon X4 860K's, both OC'd to 4.2Ghz with one running 16gb's of 1866Mhz DDR3 and the other with 8gb's of 2133Mhz DDR3. The one with 16gb is gonna run the Sapphire Nitro RX 480 and the one with 8gb's is running a Sapphire RX 580 nitro.

Last, but not least I have a spare Intel socket 1150 mortherboard (MSI H81M-P33) with an i5 4430 (3GHz) and 8gb of 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM lying about. I have another set up with the same board and memory, paired with an i5 4460 (3.2GHz) and an old 2GB GTX 960 GPU that I just gave to my son's best friend's brother so that he and his brother don't have to share PC's anymore. You'd think I gave the kid keys to a new car he was so happy

All of this for far less than a new Ryzen system with a new GTX3XXX or even 2XXX card in it, or an RX6XXX card.

 

[Stetson]

.

All of this for far less than a new Ryzen system with a new GTX3XXX or even 2XXX card in it, or an RX6XXX card.

I just bought a new Ryzen system.

 

[rumble phish]

.


I just bought a new Ryzen system.

Think I spent about a grand so far. It's a sickness, I now. But I'm having fun and I ain't hurting anyone so what the hell. What did ya get?

 

[Stetson]

Think I spent about a grand so far. It's a sickness, I now. But I'm having fun and I ain't hurting anyone so what the hell. What did ya get?

Aurora Ryzen edition R10

AMD Ryzen 9 3900 (12-core, 64MB L3 Cache, max boost clock of 4.4GHz)
Nividia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6
32GB Dual channel hyperX(FM) FURY DDR4 XMP at 2934 Mhz
512GB M.2 PCIe VVMe SSD (boot) + 2TB 7200rpm SATA 6Gb/s

I don't know what most of that means, really. It was a "package." I upgraded the 32GB thing, it was 16, and it only came with the SSD drive, so I added the 2TB one because it was pretty cheap. I was feeling spendy with the company card so I got a fancy mechanical keyboard and mouse too. All in, it was about $1500.

 

[rumble phish]

Aurora Ryzen edition R10

AMD Ryzen 9 3900 (12-core, 64MB L3 Cache, max boost clock of 4.4GHz)
Nividia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6
32GB Dual channel hyperX(FM) FURY DDR4 XMP at 2934 Mhz
512GB M.2 PCIe VVMe SSD (boot) + 2TB 7200rpm SATA 6Gb/s

I don't know what most of that means, really. It was a "package." I upgraded the 32GB thing, it was 16, and it only came with the SSD drive, so I added the 2TB one because it was pretty cheap. I was feeling spendy with the company card so I got a fancy mechanical keyboard and mouse too. All in, it was about $1500.

Where did ya get it from, and was it a closeout deal or something? If you truly got it for @ $1500 all in you stole that fucker! Everything I'm seeing for an Aurora R10 Ryzen with those specs is running north of $2 G's.

 

[Stetson]

It was from Alienware. Their little ad on the side said it was $600+ off. It was one of those that had the moving bar under it saying "XX% claimed or sold" or something to indicate they only had a certain number of them.

 

[Austin_F]

XMP is a cool little feature, if you don't know what it is it basically lets you overclock memory safely with just a couple keystrokes in the BIOS. Basically on or off. Can't remember what the X stands for but MP is memory profile.

What Is Intel XMP?
RAM must adhere to standard speeds set by JEDEC, the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council. Even if you buy RAM advertised with specific timings that make it faster than the standard and insert it into an motherboard designed for gamers and other enthusiasts, it won’t immediately run at those advertised speeds. It will instead run at the standard speeds.

However, you no longer have to go into your BIOS and manually set the RAM timings value by value. Instead, the RAM you buy has a small amount of storage on it that provides one or two Intel “Extreme Memory Profiles.” Your BIOS can read these profiles and automatically configure the optimal timings chosen by your RAM’s manufacturer. These will be the RAM’s advertised timings.

If you have an AMD CPU instead, you may be able to enable “AMP”–AMD Memory Profiles. This is AMD’s version of Intel’s XMP.

 

[Stetson]

XMP is a cool little feature, if you don't know what it is it basically lets you overclock memory safely with just a couple keystrokes in the BIOS. Basically on or off. Can't remember what the X stands for but MP is memory profile.

That sounds great, but consider this data point: The last computer I bought was from Staples, I think Windows 95, and had a 2 Gig hard drive. "You won't live long enough to fill that up" I can still remember the salesman saying...

I don't know what overclocking means, or why I'd want to do it. I'll be using (hopefully) a 65" 4K tv for the screen. Will I need to overclock things to run, say, the new MS Flight Simulator?

 

[roadczar]

I need to build TWO new PCs, one for gaming and one for my Son for his Engineering Software but the price of GPUs (Video Cards) is fucking outrageous and I refuse to spend 100% or more of MSRP to get one. Fuck.That.

Don't worry Biden is on it!

PS5, Xbox Series X Component Shortage To Be Investigated, President Biden Says - GameSpot

 

[rumble phish]

XMP is a cool little feature, if you don't know what it is it basically lets you overclock memory safely with just a couple keystrokes in the BIOS. Basically on or off. Can't remember what the X stands for but MP is memory profile.

The "X" in XMP stands for eXtreme, or some say eXtended, but extreme is the official term. Also, the way they market RAM speeds is pretty much just that.. marketing. it's "effective" speeds because it's "DDR" (double data rate). Memory runs on the rise and fall of clock cycles. SDR runs at one signal per clock cycle, whereas DDR runs at two signals per clock cycle. So, really DDR RAM "rated" at 3000Mhz is really running at 1500Mhz, but twice every cycle.


Here's a graphic I snipped on the interwebs to illustrate:

 

[Stetson]

The last PC game I bought was Darryl Gates Police Quest : SWAT.

Let that one sink in....

 

[rumble phish]

I don't know what overclocking means, or why I'd want to do it. I'll be using (hopefully) a 65" 4K tv for the screen. Will I need to overclock things to run, say, the new MS Flight Simulator?

Overclocking is like putting a turbo or a SC on your motor. It's fun, but not always worth the trouble if all you need to do is run to the grocery store once a week.

As for using a 65" 4K UHD TV for a monitor, your GPU can handle it, but it'll be a bit short on graphics memory to take full advantage of UHD. You'd want at least 10 GB, preferably 16 GB to make it look REALLY good at that resolution. Also, if you do decide to run a UHD TV as a monitor make sure you have one that has a true refresh rate of 120Hz. Most (nearly all) are limited to 60Hz, and just have fancy marketing speak about "Tru Motion 240" or some shit like that. I use a 32" LG 2K monitor that has a true refresh rate of 144Hz, and yes, it makes a BIG difference when gaming. Not so much for work or watching videos.

Here's an interesting/educational link about 4k TV's and refresh rate...

4K and 8K TV refresh rates from 60hz to 120Hz: Everything you should know

Many of today's TVs are all marketed with "motion," "action" and "clear" numbers from 60 to 240 and higher, but they're mostly made up. We'll tell you the real story.

www.cnet.com

 

[Stetson]

Thank you for taking the time to explain this. I doubt I've even seen anything 4K on that tv before, all that's hooked to it is an Xbox One and that Chromebox, which is probably 5 years old. I don't have satellite or cable.

 

[RobBase]

All of us spoiled, circa 2021, computer users......................look back and remember the good old days.

My daughters HD died. Bought her a Seagate 2TB and while she installed it, she couldn't get to show up until I initialized it for her. Started
to tell her and my son how good they have it compared to back in the '90's when I first got into computers.
Told them about signing onto the internet, with the old phone modem, connecting through AOL then listening to the funny sounds as it dialed up.....
Clicking on a picture, then laying my head on the desk for the next 3-4 minutes while it slowly downloaded the pic, pixel by pixel....
Told them about my dream computer back and how I'd stare at the Circuit City ad for a Packard Bell stare of the art home PC and it's specs.......
They didn't believe me when I told them there were no gigabytes of anything, let alone terabytes.......

 

[Wretch]

My first PC was this one:

In total cost me around $2800.00 but I was living in Alaska at the time and everything was more expensive.
Pretty sure gasoline was $1.76/gallon back then.

 

[tinhead]

That sounds great, but consider this data point: The last computer I bought was from Staples, I think Windows 95, and had a 2 Gig hard drive. "You won't live long enough to fill that up" I can still remember the salesman saying...

I don't know what overclocking means, or why I'd want to do it. I'll be using (hopefully) a 65" 4K tv for the screen. Will I need to overclock things to run, say, the new MS Flight Simulator?

We just want to open the fridge door and grab a cold beer. The geeks and nerds are discussing the finer points of thermodynamics.

The not wasting quarters in an arcade deal for the video gamers seems to add at least two thousand dollars to a system price at home.

 

[roadczar]

...
I don't know what overclocking means, or why I'd want to do it. I'll be using (hopefully) a 65" 4K tv for the screen. Will I need to overclock things to run, say, the new MS Flight Simulator?

RTX 3060 Ti will have issues running MS flight sim at 4k / higher settings regardless of overclock. Most of the "horsepower" for gaming comes from the video card. 3060 would be absolute minimum. You'll have to dummy it down quite a bit.

 

[rumble phish]

RTX 3060 Ti will have issues running MS flight sim at 4k / higher settings regardless of overclock. Most of the "horsepower" for gaming comes from the video card. 3060 would be absolute minimum. You'll have to dummy it down quite a bit.

Here's a vid of MSFS 2020 running on a very similar system to yours at different resolutions. You'll be getting in the range of 25-30 FPS @ 4K with the right settings. I think the sweet spot for the 3060 will be at medium settings @ 1440p, or high settings @ 1080p.

 

[roadczar]

From my point of view anything under 60fps is unworthy.

 

[Mr Lucky]

From my point of view anything under 60fps is unworthy.

^ this...

 

[rumble phish]

From my point of view anything under 60fps is unworthy.

^ this...

I can agree with that statement, for someone who is looking for more performance than casual gaming/sim'ing. However, most LCD TV's are setup to view movies/television, and don't make the best "gaming" monitors. For that you want a dedicated, high refresh rate monitor. Hell, most consoles played on HDTV/UHDTV's are only running at 30 frames per second. He'll probably be pretty happy running MSFS at 1440P and getting 45+ eFPS. Run it at 1080p and you're at your 60+ eFPS sweet spot.

 

[Stetson]

All of us spoiled, circa 2021, computer users......................look back and remember the good old days.
...
Told them about signing onto the internet, with the old phone modem, connecting through AOL then listening to the funny sounds as it dialed up.....
Clicking on a picture, then laying my head on the desk for the next 3-4 minutes while it slowly downloaded the pic, pixel by pixel....

Way back when, I got a brand new, 56K modem, and would send random bike pics to my supervisor, who had a 14.4 at home. He'd try to open one, get pissed, go mix a drink and go out on the deck for a cigarette while he waited for it....

 

[Buelldozer]

You guys with your fancy DOS machines were late to the party. This was the first computer I owned.

 

[rumble phish]

You guys with your fancy DOS machines were late to the party. This was the first computer I owned.

Same here, as I posted earlier. I actually considerd getting one for old times sake but thought "what the hell would I do with it?"

 

[Wretch]

Well, the first one I got to play with was an Altair in the mid 70's.

I still have an 8088 in the basement.

Dad was working for Rockwell/Texas Instruments and brought home a neat little calculator that you could program with magnetic strips.
Similar to the strip on your CC or even DL now.
It had a red LED display and there were games you could play on them.
Only numbers displayed and you had to read a legend card to understand what was happening.
Of course, Star Trek was my favorite game.

 

[Buelldozer]

Same here, as I posted earlier. I actually considerd getting one for old times sake but thought "what the hell would I do with it?"

I think I have one of every Commodore released in the United States with the exception of a PET 2000. Last year I bought one of Retro Games full sized "TheC64" units too. It's a fun toy to play with on occasion. I'm getting ready to start a rebuilt of a C128 that I picked up, it needs the plastics retrobrighted and I'm going to install additional memory as well as the video upgrade. It came with a pair of 1571s drives that need retrobrighted and serviced. Its nerdy but it keeps me out of the bars at night.

 

[Stetson]

RTX 3060 Ti will have issues running MS flight sim at 4k / higher settings regardless of overclock. Most of the "horsepower" for gaming comes from the video card. 3060 would be absolute minimum. You'll have to dummy it down quite a bit.

But if I've never even seen 4K on my tv, and am used to the mighty 1080P my Xbox One puts out, I can run it in a setting at less than 4k and likely be completely happy?

 

[rumble phish]

But if I've never even seen 4K on my tv, and am used to the mighty 1080P my Xbox One puts out, I can run it in a setting at less than 4k and likely be completely happy?

Yes

 

[roadczar]

But if I've never even seen 4K on my tv, and am used to the mighty 1080P my Xbox One puts out, I can run it in a setting at less than 4k and likely be completely happy?

Only you will know. I would not be.
On a large TV screen at 1080P things will look fuzzy. Not sure how readable gauges will be in MS sim. Also, if your TV has a slower refresh rate then you may see ghosting when you more around. In the past when I tried using 55" 4k TV as a monitor I'd get a headache due to slower refresh rate. Other than that, if esthetics do not bother you, then you should be fine.

 

[luckystrike]

You are spending more time backing up than it would take you to buy a $99 / year subscription to Office which comes with 1tb of storage and can be shared with 5 people (each gets a TB). OneDrive will automatically take all the garbage on your attached local storage and replicate it to the cloud.

Done.

^ This

And be sure to sign up with Microsoft and not Google's gDrive

94% of Google earnings are from advertising. No matter what their privacy t&c's are, they're using your data...somewhere somehow

Microsoft is a (mostly) pure tech company, so the incentive and probability they're using your junk is far less

Google is also a den of woke liberal progressive rat fucks. So the chances of them seizing your shit or cutting you off should you be found storing content that violates their woke doctrines are much higher


Yesterday Amazon announced they will cease selling books deemed 'offensive' ...whatever that means

I recognize the right of a private/public company to sell whatever they want. I also recognize my right to take my business elsewhere

Fuck Amazon

Fuck Google

 

[luckystrike]

Take your shit and move it into OneDrive

Don't get hung up on organizing your shit so it's searchable



The built in search engines are so good now, you'll wonder why you spent so much time sorting your junk

Yes...photos and videos still need to be labeled to be searchable...

But documents are easily found by doing a search on your cloud drive just like you do using any of the web search engines

 

[roadczar]

I set my 80 year-old parents with cloud storage about 10 years ago.
I'm in a different sate and I just got them a couple new laptops. They were concerned about losing all the pictures and other documents. I set everything up remotely and when they received their new hardware things looked exactly like their old machines. It took less than 30 minutes for both laptops.

 

[tinhead]

The more lucky strike rants about Google and women, the more of a feeling I get that Google hired a woman instead of him a few years ago.

Microsoft not making money from selling users data. :rotfl:

 

[luckystrike]

I set my 80 year-old parents with cloud storage about 10 years ago.
I'm in a different sate and I just got them a couple new laptops. They were concerned about losing all the pictures and other documents. I set everything up remotely and when they received their new hardware things looked exactly like their old machines. It took less than 30 minutes for both laptops.

Did the same for my folks

My dad used to have all sorts of back up gear, UPS, etc. and spending so much time configuring and managing media

Today they have OneDrive running across 3 laptops, one iPad and one iPhone. They think it's a miracle their photos are available across everything...lol