Time for a PC Upgrade

[DjchunKfunK]

I've never had a single issue with my Fury X AIO, nor the one I had on my old Intel CPU. Both of them were/are 5 years old by this point. That being said, having moved from a CPU AIO to a standard heatsink/fan arrangement, I can't say the noise increase has been hugely noticeable.

The 3080 release has been a shitshow of no stock. I'm only really interested in Nvidia's own founders edition card as it's fairly obvious that third parties are just sticking on the same coolers they used for the 20 series cards. Either Nvidia had barely any stock produced, or bots immediately bought the lot. I never even got to see a "Buy Now" button and I was waiting at the 2pm release time. Everyone on Reddit seemingly had the same issue, and not just in the UK. Cards are already selling for £900 on ebay.

I think you will be lucky to get one this side of Christmas unfortunately, Founders cards tend to be out of stock for a while after release and the hype around the 3080 has been larger than normal.

[Drarok]

Heard third-hand from a couple of places that got stock. One place received literally four cards, and the other got 25. People had been queueing from 06:00 to get those 25.

[Raid]

Yeah, I'm putting today down to my lack of experience with buying new GPUs on launch day; what idiot would have thought that a product would actually be available on release day.

I am at least reconsidering my stance on other manufacturers' cards; there are a few that are the same price as the FE card and that have reviewed well, although they're obviously all out of stock too. At least there may be a few more options over the next few months.

[Hatredsheart]

Yeah, I'm putting today down to my lack of experience with buying new GPUs on launch day; what idiot would have thought that a product would actually be available on release day.

I am at least reconsidering my stance on other manufacturers' cards; there are a few that are the same price as the FE card and that have reviewed well, although they're obviously all out of stock too. At least there may be a few more options over the next few months.

I'm planning to get a 3070 but I don't expect to be able to find one in stock until mid to late November, and I won't bother if non founder models have a ridiculous mark-up.

[Raid]

So I decided to buy myself a 2TB nvme gen 3 SSD. I was going to buy a gen 4 version, but I've decided to wait until prices come down, and my motherboard can accommodate two so I can just slot the new one in later.

My machine currently has a 256gb SATA SSD as the boot drive, a 2TB magnetic drive as basic file storage (on which a handful of older games are installed), and a 480gb SATA SSD that most of my games are installed on. I reckon I only need to keep about 500gb of stuff from the storage drive, so everything ought to fit on the one drive. I intend to keep the 480gb drive just as a backup drive for my Lightroom collection, but the other two are going. The new drive will have six times the transfer rate as the fastest of the old ones.

What's the best way of going about starting afresh? I'm pretty sure the last clean install of Windows I had was six years ago, which has been upgraded twice to 8 and then 10, so I think this is a good time to start over. Am I right in thinking your Windows license is tied to your Microsoft account these days so I don't need to try and find my ancient Windows 7 key? Is there a way of just copying installed games from old drives onto the new one once it has Windows on it, are installs still tied into the registry?

[Maturin]

So I decided to buy myself a 2TB nvme gen 3 SSD. I was going to buy a gen 4 version, but I've decided to wait until prices come down, and my motherboard can accommodate two so I can just slot the new one in later.

I think unless you're doing really intense video editing or giant file transfers I don't think you'd tell much difference between the two nvme gens in general PC/gaming usage. Wise to save the money.

I can't remember all the stuff about W10 keys, there's probably some guides on Google (I'm sure there was a way in command prompt to find the current key). But all you need to get going is a USB stick with the latest W10 install media to boot from.

[Raid]

When I bought this thing, I wasn't expecting the physical installation to be the difficult part. The PCI-E gen 3 NVME slot on my motherboard is directly underneath my GPU, so I needed to remove said GPU. The trouble is I forgot that PCI-E cards have a little catch that locks the card in when you insert it. I pulled the card half-out... and then couldn't move it. I couldn't get it out, I couldn't get it back in. There was barely enough room to even get a finger to the catch because it's so close to the CPU cooler, and I certainly couldn't actually budge the thing. The catch required so much torque to get off that I couldn't find anything thin enough and non-metallic that wasn't also too flimsy, so I had to resort to jabbing at the thing with a metal spudger, terrified that one slip would slice into my motherboard. Urgh. Thankfully I hadn't thrown out the tiny little bag of screws that came with the motherboard, as unlike in every single guide I watched for installing these things, they didn't come pre-installed.

Installing windows was an absolute doddle by comparison.

[Hatredsheart]

When I bought this thing, I wasn't expecting the physical installation to be the difficult part. The PCI-E gen 3 NVME slot on my motherboard is directly underneath my GPU, so I needed to remove said GPU. The trouble is I forgot that PCI-E cards have a little catch that locks the card in when you insert it. I pulled the card half-out... and then couldn't move it. I couldn't get it out, I couldn't get it back in. There was barely enough room to even get a finger to the catch because it's so close to the CPU cooler, and I certainly couldn't actually budge the thing. The catch required so much torque to get off that I couldn't find anything thin enough and non-metallic that wasn't also too flimsy, so I had to resort to jabbing at the thing with a metal spudger, terrified that one slip would slice into my motherboard. Urgh. Thankfully I hadn't thrown out the tiny little bag of screws that came with the motherboard, as unlike in every single guide I watched for installing these things, they didn't come pre-installed.

Installing windows was an absolute doddle by comparison.

Same here, my prob was big fingers and a bloody great big cpu cooler. Luckily I keep a wooden chopstick for this very purpose, I didn't want to risk using a screwdriver.

[Rossell]

What do you guys think of the below? I think this is the best setup I can find so far:

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/3xs-gam ... ssd-win-10

[DjchunKfunK]

Is it specifically an Intel CPU that you want?

[Rossell]

Yeah. Haven't gone for amd in quite some time.

[Drarok]

Yeah. Haven't gone for amd in quite some time.

Any particular reason to avoid them? They're cheaper and faster these days!

I'd probably hold on until you can pick up a 30xx card instead of the 20xx ones. The older ones are more expensive and substantially less good than the brand-new ones, though the new ones are hard to come by.

[Rossell]

Oh my bad. Nothing wrong with them, it was just air of the familiar because my current cpu is an i7 (a ten year old i7 mind). What amd would you recommend?

[Drarok]

If you're happy to wait for the 30xx GPUs, you could also wait on the just-announced new AMD CPUs, the 5000 series. They're due out on the 5th November

The current best bang-for-buck is the Ryzen 9 3900X I think. Of the new line-up the Ryzen 9 5900X will be the matching one.

[DjchunKfunK]

If you're happy to wait for the 30xx GPUs, you could also wait on the just-announced new AMD CPUs, the 5000 series. They're due out on the 5th November

The current best bang-for-buck is the Ryzen 9 3900X I think. Of the new line-up the Ryzen 9 5900X will be the matching one.

The 3900X is the top AMD processor, but not the best bang for buck, that would be the 3600X but that is on the low end when compared to the Intel chip listed in the PC linked. The CPU that is similar in power is probably the 3800X or 3800XT.

GPU wise you could step up to a 3070 but you might be looking at next year before you can reliably get one. The 5000 series of AMD CPUs are worth waiting for IMO as they are due in less than a month and boast a large increase in power, but they are also slightly more expensive price wise.