The 'Look What the Postman Brought Me' Thread - Technology Edition

[Alan]

Just get a bigger 16:9/16:10 and letterbox it when you want ultrawide :p

[Drarok]

I'm with Mantis on this one, I feel like 27" 1440p is the sweet spot; The pixels look much smaller than 27" 1080, it's not too taxing a resolution to run most any games at with a decent card and a bit of settings fiddling, and I have tried and do not like curved or monster-wide screens. Windows support for 4K is infuriatingly bad and my eyes aren't good enough to benefit anyway.

I already have a second monitor so I've loads of real estate, but I prefer to have other stuff open and visible like Discord or a video. Is doing that on a single monitor even possible on Windows when also running a game? Gaming in a window can be fraught with issues…

[Alan]

I mean, the game is full screen. You just get extra peripheral view. You’d still want another screen for things like that.

[Mantis]

Did a bit more research and I think my plan now will be to go for a 4070 or 4070 Ti around the end of the year and then look to getting a nice g-sync 27" 1440p screen at some point next year. That should do for another decade I imagine.

Have you considered a super-wide screen Dave? They really are an immense step-change from a standard monitor and prices are much more affordable these days. Samsung have some nice ones (I have used Samsung kit for years and swear by it).

They're one of those things I've never really been all that enamoured to be honest, mate. I'm not that keen on the idea of having to turn my neck to look from one side of the screen to the other as I'd be crammed right in up to it due to how much of a squeeze my office space is. Plus whenever I hear about people having issues with getting their display to work properly with some games it's always because they're running a super wide setup, it seems like quite a faff at times.

That said, it'd probably be very helpful for my workflow with both my art stuff and my music production bits if I did have all that extra space on either side. It would depend heavily on the price to tempt me over to one I think as I'm quite keen on getting a high refresh 1440p g sync IPS or OLED screen and that's already quite the premium in and of itself.

[Snowy]

Fair enough - if you are pressed up against it then I agree it probably wouldn't work.

Mine is, I would estimate, 2.5 feet from me so all I need to move to see side to side is my eyes. The extra real estate is a huge boon for gaming and home working, but only if you have a setup that works for it.

In terms of some of the other concerns raised, I have very few issues with compatibility. Occasionally you get a title, usually indie, that doesn't support 3440x1440 (my native resolution) but this is much less common these days. I can't recall the last game I played that didn't support it.

Also in terms of a second screen, if you want to you can partition the screen and have multiple displays that way.

But! Was only a suggestion, get what works for you

[Mantis]

So today was going to be new build day. Took the case apart for the old rig and gave it all a thorough clean, stripped out the CPU cooler and GPU ready to unscrew the motherboard when I'd put the parts onto the new one. Made a start on putting all the new bits onto the new mobo and then realised that my CPU cooler screw configuration doesn't line up with the new board. Doh.

I guess AMD compatible motherboards don't have quite the same layout as Intel ones. Or maybe it's just that designs have moved on since 11 years ago. Promptly put the old rig back together. Now I just need to buy a new cooler for the processor!

[Drarok]

Ah yeah, AMD and Intel cooler mounting has been different for ages now. If it's a universal cooler it'll come with come changeable brackets for each.

[Mantis]

It may have been, but the box with the spare parts is probably 10 years long gone by now.

[Hatredsheart]

What cooler is it? You might be able to pick up a amd compatible bracket for pennies from the manufacturer. Failing that there's always eBay.

[DjchunKfunK]

Really glad I spent £400 on a 3060ti in January only for Nvidia to can it five months later

At least the 4060ti isn't massively better. Reviews have been fairly mid, the 8GB VRAM is pretty shocking.

[Wrathbone]

I watched LTT's review of it and astonishingly the 3060ti outperforms it in some areas.

[Sly Boots]

Really glad I spent £400 on a 3060ti in January only for Nvidia to can it five months later

At least the 4060ti isn't massively better. Reviews have been fairly mid, the 8GB VRAM is pretty shocking.

Yeah, have been reading that over the past couple of days, sounds like it's a really minor improvement, if any. I guess if I'd known it would essentially be the same price I might have waited, but at least the FOMO isn't too bad

[Sly Boots]

Really glad I spent £400 on a 3060ti in January only for Nvidia to can it five months later

At least the 4060ti isn't massively better. Reviews have been fairly mid, the 8GB VRAM is pretty shocking.

Seems like the card is flopping pretty badly:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing ... x-4060-ti/

One retailer was slashing its price FOUR hours after launch

[Raid]

So I've done a CPU refresh. I moved from AMD to Intel, so I also did a motherboard refresh. I then had to upgrade my RAM because DDR3 is just so passé. I'd long since grown tired of my NZXT case that I've had for ten years, and wanted something that wasn't too ugly to sit on my desk, so that's new too (I have motorised sit/stand setup and sticking the case underneath presents cable management issues).

So, here's my almost entirely new PC.




And behind the old case for a size comparison:


CPU: i5 13600kF
Motherboard: ROG Strix B760-I Gaming WiFi DDR5 Mini-ITX Buzzword Buster Ultra Gaming Pro Over-9000 X
Case: Cooler Master NR200P MAX
RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 5200MHz... AMD (I genuinely hadn't noticed it had AMD in the name before posting this)
New secondary storage: WD Black SN770 2TB SSD M.2

And from the old machine:
GPU: MSI GEFORCE RTX 3080 GAMING X TRIO 10G
Boot drive: Sabrent Rocket Q 2TB NVMe PCIe M.2

It's my first small form factor machine, and while it's pretty fiddly getting the motherboard cables plugged in because of how tightly it's all packed in, it's a relative doddle to build. You can actually fully detach half of the back panel, attach that to the GPU before installing it, then you just slot it back into place and clip on the PCI-E riser cable. The case comes with its own AIO for the processor as well as an 850w SFX PSU, which from reviews are apparently both pretty good, as well as the gen 4 riser cable. It's an extremely expensive case at £350, but you'd be spending most of that on the included components anyway. With the AIO and PSU being bundled, it all comes pre-cable managed, and intelligently too, with everything having just enough length to reach where it'll sit on the motherboard. It does also come with a tempered-glass side panel, but I honestly don't want to see that god-awful, overdesigned "let's make our GPU look like an F-117 stealth fighter" cooler, so I'm sticking with the ventilated one that's obviously going to be better for getting air to the GPU given that it's less than an inch away.

I actually don't have any extra fans in there, it's just the two 140mm ones from the AIO, and it's both whisper-quiet (my GPU turns the fans off fully when it's idling) and cooler-running than my old machine (which had twice as many fans, but probably half as many as it needed). A quick benchmark in Cyberpunk, with everything dialled up to 11, had the CPU averaging about 76 - warmer than I'd perhaps like, but cooler than the old one and significantly quieter. It idles a whopping 15-20 degrees cooler than my old machine, which admittedly was using AMD's stock, albeit higher-end cooler. And this is on the hottest day of the year so far.

[Pew-Pew]

Nice to see someone else join the SFF club. I built my sister's PC in the normal version of the NR200, it's a lovely little case that is just big enough at 18 L or so to not really be a hassle to build in.

I built my current system last year in a Dan A4 H2O case, which is quite a bit smaller. Definitely at the point where it becomes a bit of a ball ache if you don't have custom cables! It did make moving it across the world a hell of a lot easier though, just took out the GPU and chucked it in a suitcase with some padding.