Hardware recommendations general - or how to blow your cooftard bucks

[GHTD]

I'm planning to do a GPU passthrough using my RX 580 and a header 127 kernel patch I found online that seemed to work last time I tried it. What would be a decent card to attach the Linux system to? Would my spare 1050 Ti work well, or should I try another card?

 

[AnOminous]

Specifically I'm just starting this for myself to ask for PC recommendations but it might as well be a general if there's interest.

Just cashed in my Trump coof bucks and am considering blowing about half of them on a new barebones PC. I haven't bought a PC in years or really thought about it, although I have some fairly basic requirements, i.e. capable of at least 32 GB of RAM, having an SSD for fast OS boot, and very little else. I don't want to focus on massively multicore CPU shit since one of the main things I'll probably run on it is Dwarf Fortress, which doesn't even do multicore, and where RAM is the usual bottleneck.

Basically I'd want to start with at least 16GB of RAM, preferably with an empty slot so that I could upgrade by just buying more rather than replacing, 2 or maybe 4 cores, reasonably fast, high quality RAM, a solid board, and don't want to spend much more than $100 on a video card. I'll be providing everything else and basically swapping it in to my current keyboard/monitor/etc.

Specifically I'm interested in board/CPU recommendations and if anyone has a favorite place to just buy a barebones system with nothing on it yet but where they've at least screwed in the board and turned it on so they know it lights up. I'm leaning towards Intel but it seems every couple years someone like AMD leapfrogs ahead of them briefly. Similarly it seems only one good hard drive manufacturer exists at a time and once they get a good reputation they start manufacturing trash and blow their reputation.

 

[thick internet digit web]

I recommend the Z4. It's a bit choppy at times but give it enough time and it can get to the 100th digit of pi, which i have found many convenient uses for. It's great if you are into old school tech.

 

[Maskull]

I recommend the Z4. It's a bit choppy at times but give it enough time and it can get to the 100th digit of pi, which i have found many convenient uses for. It's great if you are into old school tech.
View attachment 1636933

But can it run Crysis?

 

[Kosher Dill]

Basically I'd want to start with at least 16GB of RAM, preferably with an empty slot so that I could upgrade by just buying more rather than replacing,

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can't just "upgrade" anymore, at least not if you plan to be using XMP. Upgrading means buying an entire new set of RAM and tossing out the old.

I found this out myself only after buying 32GB of RAM and saying "I have a billion more RAM slots, no hurry."

 

[Μusk]

You haven't provided nearly enough information to be helped. You'll need to do your own research.
How much is half the coofbux? $500?

You can use this tool to help you:

https://pcpartpicker.com/

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can't just "upgrade" anymore, at least not if you plan to be using XMP. Upgrading means buying an entire new set of RAM and tossing out the old.

I found this out myself only after buying 32GB of RAM and saying "I have a billion more RAM slots, no hurry."

You'll be fine buying a single stick of RAM and using that until you have money to upgrade in the future. Only problem is that you'll be limited to single channel instead of dual channel memory, and it will probably have a performance impact. It would really be a better idea to buy two smaller sticks of RAM and buy another two in the future to populate all four slots.
As for XMP, you could just buy the same kit again, or input the settings manually yourself. If you mix RAM, the CPU will run all of the RAM at the speeds of the slowest module present, so don't buy 3600 RAM now and 3200 in the future, cause you'll fuck yourself if you do. The motherboard will deal with subtimings, you can focus on the primary 4-5 that are advertised along with the module.

 

[AnOminous]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can't just "upgrade" anymore, at least not if you plan to be using XMP. Upgrading means buying an entire new set of RAM and tossing out the old.

I found this out myself only after buying 32GB of RAM and saying "I have a billion more RAM slots, no hurry."

That's a good thing to know. There's always some weird little thing introduced in the last few years you don't know if you've been ignoring tech.

You haven't provided nearly enough information to be helped. You'll need to do your own research.
How much is half the coofbux? $500?

You can use this tool to help you:

https://pcpartpicker.com/

Yeah this is the kind of thing I was thinking of. I used to have a whole set of sites like this. I'm more or less anticipating having to do some work on it unless I decide to buy something like the Intel Skull Canyon NUC. I'm sure I can get something more powerful for less but that's the super easy, lazy option. Coof bucks are $1,200.

That's a pretty good site. Some of the high end builds are like computer porn.

 

[Kikkoman]

Besides the intel NUC chassis there are some other options. Personally im leaning towards an asrock deskmini for something similar.
Intel 8th/9th gen

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-deskmini-310w/p/N82E16856158062

A 10th gen one has been anounced but i cant find it for sale yet, Its called the deskmini h470
AMD

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-deskmini-a300w/p/N82E16856158064

The only odd drawback ive noticed on these is that the The m.2 ssd slots only support NVME drives.

 

[A Cardboard Box]

i7 10700KA, it is the same as the K but is generally 1-5% cheaper and comes in a faggy Avengers box with a code for the game. Overclocked with adequate cooling it can match an i9 10900. Get an RTX3080, best card value. Get whatever mobo you feel like getting, preferably one with an integrated sound card if you give a fuck about that kind of stuff. I generally go a full ATX build because there's literally no reason to go smaller. You can go mATX if you want a slightly smaller board and don't intend on using all your PCIE slots (i.e if you don't want a 3090, Titan, or don't intend on using Crossfire/SLI). Water cooler system is like $100 for a decent drop in. You can, despite what some believe, achieve LC performance with a traditional heatsink/fan but the coolers that put that kind of performance up are more expensive than the LC kits. Don't bother filling RAM slots 3/4 if you don't intend on graphic design or something extremely RAM intensive. Due to a combination of hardware, software, and driver limitations virtually no games can actually pull from those slots, so if your main focus is gaming it is best to get a 2x16GB (or 2x32GB if you aren't a faggot) RAM set and just leave slots 3/4 open. If you do decide to use a smaller board, it won't matter because it will come with only 2 RAM slots anyway.

Any questions I can answer for you?

Edit: AMD is shit and there is nothing redeeming about their CPUs or GPUs. If you really are on a budget, get an i5 9600K. It is $200 and performs better than AMDs 3900X in every gaming benchmark. The i5 9600K is objectively the best budget CPU for gaming. With GPUs, there is literally no reason to not buy at the minimum a 3070. I cannot stress this enough, the RTX 3000 line is the biggest breakthrough in GPUs in two decades. It's massive. I know it sounds gay and is more than you want to spend, but buy a fucking 3070 at the bare minimum. By benchmarks the 3080 is technically the best value, but for like, half the MSRP, you can get 2080ti performance with the 3070. So that's my """budget""" recommendation: an i5 9600K (OC'd with water cooling) and a 3070.

 

[AmpleApricots]

I got one of the new Ryzen APUs, the Pro version because after bad experiences I always go for ECC memory if I can. (Only Pro APUs can do ECC) It's been tremendous value for the 200 bucks I paid for the CPU. It's very power efficent (~11W when browsing and doing general work and media consumption, 25W when playing something like Rimworld - important because electricity is very expensive where I live and will probably only get more expensive in the future) and fast and the inbuilt GPU is impressive for what it is and quite enough for many games if you don't have high demands, which I don't. I first wanted to go with the aforementioned deskmini but you pay for every single extra thing and the deskminis mainboard is also electrically not able to utilize ECC RAM. I ended up going with a normal and somewhat feature-richer ITX board and a small ITX case and a big 2 TB NVMe SSD. Best buy I did in years, with the noctua low profile heatsink and some generous undervolting and disabling of turboboost the fan doesn't even spin up noticeably under heavy load and the computer is noiseless which was also a high priority for me. Good combination of low-power consumption but able to deliver quite good CPU performance when needed. The more memory speed you can provide the better, as it is tradition with APUs and not really surprising considering GPU and CPU use the same memory. ECC isn't optimal there but I rather take the additional stability. Very happy with the build although it's certainly no gamer PC.

 

[DNA_JACKED]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you can't just "upgrade" anymore, at least not if you plan to be using XMP. Upgrading means buying an entire new set of RAM and tossing out the old.

I found this out myself only after buying 32GB of RAM and saying "I have a billion more RAM slots, no hurry."

XMP is just memory timings. You can easily buy two different RAM sets and manually set the timings to XMP timings and it will work properly.

 

[REGENDarySumanai]

I would wait until the new line of AMD CPUs are released. I would also recommend getting 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 3080, but that would burn a huge hole in your wallet and you want something under $100.

 

[garakfan69]

and a 3080, but that would burn a huge hole in your wallet and you want something under $100.

Yes, definitely get a 3080. You haven't played DF until you played it with real-time raytracing.

 

[A Cardboard Box]

I would wait until the new line of AMD CPUs are released. I would also recommend getting 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 3080, but that would burn a huge hole in your wallet and you want something under $100.

AMD is shit. I'm not even being a fanboy. The problem with AMD is that their singlethread performance is ass and they bank on their multicore/multithread performance. Single thread/single core performance is literally the only CPU metric that matters for gaming. This is why in actual benchmarks (as opposed to virtual benchmarks, which is what most "benchmark" comparisons online use) the i5 9600K (OC'd, of course) takes a nasty shit on the Ryzen 9 3900X.

He specifically mentioned DF, which is literally hard coded to disallow multithread. Games simply don't use multithreads. I recommend AMD to creative types that plan on doing actual work with their PCs, like graphic design or soundmixing. Photoshop, GIMP, Frootyloops (now FL Studio to sound less gay) all are optimized for multithreading and the use of those 3/4 RAM slots we talked about. If your goal is productivity, AMD, gaming, Intel.

Good combination of low-power consumption but able to deliver quite good CPU performance when needed.

Power consumption is, quite frankly, a worthless metric. Electricity is retard cheap. Powering your mom's Toshiba laptop vs an $8000 i9/Titan rig might amount to $30 a year, if that. PSUs are cheap. Going from a 350W PSU to a 650W PSU (which would have no problem with a 3070 + 9600K) is like, less than $50. Your shit should be sufficiently cooled with either liquid or conventional cooling regardless of power output.

"Power consumption" is a metric only for businesses that plan on running hundreds of units.

 

[Kosher Dill]

As for XMP, you could just buy the same kit again, or input the settings manually yourself. If you mix RAM, the CPU will run all of the RAM at the speeds of the slowest module present

I've seen conflicting stories about the whole "mixing RAMs" thing on the internet though - everything ranging from "Works fine" to "Unstable".
Of course, this being the internet, a lot of these people may also be fanatic overclockers pushing things past the limit.

 

[DNA_JACKED]

I've seen conflicting stories about the whole "mixing RAMs" thing on the internet though - everything ranging from "Works fine" to "Unstable".
Of course, this being the internet, a lot of these people may also be fanatic overclockers pushing things past the limit.

RAM is a lowest common denominator thing. EG if you have 2x8GB 3200mhz CL15 and 2x8GB 3200mhz CL17, then you will be able to run all stick as 4x8GB 3200mhz CL17 without issue unless you have some garbage tier motherboard that cant tolerate RAM. All the rigs I ran growing up had mixed ram without issue.

My first board had a 256MB 266mhz chi, two 1GB 400mhz chips, and a 512MB 333 mhz chip, running as a combined 2.75GB 266 mhz.

When OCing its usually better to have the same brand if you want to go for some insane timings. Personally I've never had issues. Even now I have two different sets of RAM running together to give me 32GB 4000mhz memory.

 

[A Cardboard Box]

I've seen conflicting stories about the whole "mixing RAMs" thing on the internet though - everything ranging from "Works fine" to "Unstable".
Of course, this being the internet, a lot of these people may also be fanatic overclockers pushing things past the limit.

It's about optimization. You get diminishing returns if you add shit at lower clock speeds. Moreover in order for more than 2 sticks to actually matter, you need to make sure you have a quad channel capable mobo and CPU.

Virtually no CPUs in his price range, even the CPU I suggested which is slightly above it, are quad channel capable.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

Just look on https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/ for what you're willing to spend, consider AMD vs Intel as explained above, and buy the parts. Save the part list so you can explore various upgrades and so you know what you have in case you want to change things out or add things and need to know if it'll actually fit.

 

[cjöcker]

@AnOminous

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ZdC3cq

I made a part list should fit your needs, if that's what you're looking for. It doesn't have a dedicated GPU since the APU on the chip should be good enough if you're not doing anything super intense and its just for casual browsing and maybe playing a light game every once in a while. The 3200G should fit your use case.

 

[AnOminous]

Just look on https://pcpartpicker.com/guide/ for what you're willing to spend, consider AMD vs Intel as explained above, and buy the parts. Save the part list so you can explore various upgrades and so you know what you have in case you want to change things out or add things and need to know if it'll actually fit.

@AnOminous

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ZdC3cq

I made a part list should fit your needs, if that's what you're looking for. It doesn't have a dedicated GPU since the APU on the chip should be good enough if you're not doing anything super intense and its just for casual browsing and maybe playing a light game every once in a while. The 3200G should fit your use case.

This site is definitely a good recommendation. Even their not particularly sexy builds look pretty well chosen and I might just start with one of those and bump a couple things up a notch.