Computer General Discussion Thread

[Zanera]

I have some externals to do the drastics with, and there's signs of "you need a new shits cuz this computers getting old", but I think I could still boot up EAW: Thrawn's Revenge and play it fine ('fine' being heavily relative with this computer). Just, all the bugs seem to be catching up to my computer simultaneously I think.

Only after 5-10 years is when I consider a new computer. I am not sure if this is asked before, but what is the model and year of manufacture?

I'll see about it. I'll probably edit this post with it.

[Minoa]

Graphics card prices are so insane thanks to Bitcoin. Those ridiculous prices pose serious problems for the artists who depend on them for realising top-notch graphics design with programs that work only on Windows at present. Unacceptable.

[Imperializt Russia]

Czechanada cobbled together this recommended parts list about two years ago for me.
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/GDCygL
I'm tempted to bite the bullet and just buy it already, since it's still plenty powerful and capable as a build.
Any dissenting view?

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Czechanada cobbled together this recommended parts list about two years ago for me.
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/GDCygL
I'm tempted to bite the bullet and just buy it already, since it's still plenty powerful and capable as a build.
Any dissenting view?

Is your budget at this time 400 dollars, or can you go a bit higher than that? Or is 400 roo tight?

In other words, how much are you willing to spend for a build today as opposed to two years ago?

[Imperializt Russia]

Czechanada cobbled together this recommended parts list about two years ago for me.
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/GDCygL
I'm tempted to bite the bullet and just buy it already, since it's still plenty powerful and capable as a build.
Any dissenting view?

Is your budget at this time 400 dollars, or can you go a bit higher than that? Or is 400 roo tight?

In other words, how much are you willing to spend for a build today as opposed to two years ago?

Note the tower case and graphics card are unpriced on that list.

This build is meant as a "cheap" starter build and is powerful enough to run almost all the games I own decently or well.
I'm open to suggestions on anything - I have the money to pay for it, I just can't afford it

For what it's worth, the Sapphire RX 460 simply doesn't exist anymore and does need replacing. The 550 series seems to be the up-to-date model, but is less powerful than the Sapphire variant.

[Corvus Metallum]

For what it's worth, the Sapphire RX 460 simply doesn't exist anymore and does need replacing. The 550 series seems to be the up-to-date model, but is less powerful than the Sapphire variant.

Because the 550 is a less powerful card in general. Go with the RX 560 if you're looking for a direct replacent for the 460.

[Imperializt Russia]

Update - I've found every part (RX 460 Sapphire replaced with a Asus RX 560) save for a hard drive and peripherals, which is totalling £480

Might see if anyone I know is willing to donate spares since literally all I have in terms of PC things is an iMac mouse with one mouse button and no scroll wheel, and the keyboard for that same iMac.

[Imperializt Russia]

Is it worth getting an SSD? Thought I'd do the meme thing of putting the OS and a couple choice games on it, but it'd add another fifty quid onto the price for a 120 gigger.

[Immoren]

Is it worth getting an SSD? Thought I'd do the meme thing of putting the OS and a couple choice games on it, but it'd add another fifty quid onto the price for a 120 gigger.

I am personally glad that I got one for myself.
Albeit it was 500gig one.

[The Corparation]

Is it worth getting an SSD? Thought I'd do the meme thing of putting the OS and a couple choice games on it, but it'd add another fifty quid onto the price for a 120 gigger.

Yes. SSD plus a regular drive for storage is the way to go. It might be a meme but its a good meme.

[Minoa]

Is it worth getting an SSD? Thought I'd do the meme thing of putting the OS and a couple choice games on it, but it'd add another fifty quid onto the price for a 120 gigger.

As a system drive, a Crucial MX300 525 GB is about £121, and thus it is worth it in the context of faster boot up times.

You can configure My Documents and the Steam Library to use an alternative mechanical drive, at a time when an 1 TB SSD would set you back at least £200.

Meanwhile, someone should have used a password manager (and there are non-cloud alternatives like KeePass) to retract that missile alert faster.

Plus, the prices of graphics cards are so messed up by Bitcoin that Nvidia has asked firms to restrict sales of graphics cards. When will this cryptocurrency madness end, so that I can get a decent graphics card at a decent price, on the next time that I build another computer?

[Imperializt Russia]

A friend has a 500GB SSD and I'm sat here like wat wy

I'm looking at a 2TB HDD as the "main" drive", I didn't think I'd need much more than 120GB. But that's £40-50 so if this friend is willing to let a barely-used drive go for a little over that, I guess that just means I can have more fast-loading games on it.

Posted on Facebook asking friends for advice and if they had spares, I got recommendations to just suck it up, up the budget to ~£700 minimum and build a contemporary good PC rather than a good-two-years-ago build.
I did justify it with "well, I've got a ton of games I've never played yet, not fussed about new releases, and this will run a lot of good games well", but they make a valid point - do I want to spend ~£900 total when all is said and done though?

Hella no, but still.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

A friend has a 500GB SSD and I'm sat here like wat wy

I'm looking at a 2TB HDD as the "main" drive", I didn't think I'd need much more than 120GB. But that's £40-50 so if this friend is willing to let a barely-used drive go for a little over that, I guess that just means I can have more fast-loading games on it.

Posted on Facebook asking friends for advice and if they had spares, I got recommendations to just suck it up, up the budget to ~£700 minimum and build a contemporary good PC rather than a good-two-years-ago build.
I did justify it with "well, I've got a ton of games I've never played yet, not fussed about new releases, and this will run a lot of good games well", but they make a valid point - do I want to spend ~£900 total when all is said and done though?

Hella no, but still.

Depends. How long do you see yourself using that computer with the parts you'll pick before you need/want to upgrade?

If it is 5 years or more, go with the 900, if you see yourself replacing and upgrading parts within the next 5 years, go with the cheaper build. It'll last well enough until you have to make a new upgrade to something.

As for SSD vs. HDD, I will say this: I'm a fan of HDDs because they're cheap and fast enough for what I use them at home, including gaming, but if you are going for speed on your build, do get the SSD, it's worth it.

[Imperializt Russia]

I mean, I was saying to the guys I can see "2-3 years" out of the build as-is.
They just make the point that if I throw up another £200 now, I'll get another 2 years out of it.

I've already gone down the rabbithole of watching suspiciously low bids for CPUs on eBay.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Plus, the prices of graphics cards are so messed up by Bitcoin that Nvidia has asked firms to restrict sales of graphics cards. When will this cryptocurrency madness end, so that I can get a decent graphics card at a decent price, on the next time that I build another computer?

I saw this the other day.

I was lucky I could get my audio and video setup before the bitcoin mining craze. I'm still not going to get into bitcoin either. There's too many negatives with it.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

I mean, I was saying to the guys I can see "2-3 years" out of the build as-is.
They just make the point that if I throw up another £200 now, I'll get another 2 years out of it.

I've already gone down the rabbithole of watching suspiciously low bids for CPUs on eBay.

At that point just get yourself a cheap Dell OptiPlex and slap a graphics card and a cheap PCI audio card in it.

Is it ideal? No, but if we're going for suspiciously low bids on CPUs it's better than getting sub-par parts....

[Imperializt Russia]

Plus, the prices of graphics cards are so messed up by Bitcoin that Nvidia has asked firms to restrict sales of graphics cards. When will this cryptocurrency madness end, so that I can get a decent graphics card at a decent price, on the next time that I build another computer?

Pictured: first world privilege.

A warehouse full of high-power computing equipment to generate money.

[Imperializt Russia]

I mean, I was saying to the guys I can see "2-3 years" out of the build as-is.
They just make the point that if I throw up another £200 now, I'll get another 2 years out of it.

I've already gone down the rabbithole of watching suspiciously low bids for CPUs on eBay.

At that point just get yourself a cheap Dell OptiPlex and slap a graphics card and a cheap PCI audio card in it.

Is it ideal? No, but if we're going for suspiciously low bids on CPUs it's better than getting sub-par parts....

By suspiciously low, I mean very few bids - everyone's sniping I'm sure. i5-6500, looks good in the pics and well-cared for, starting price is like a third of the retail price. Obviously gonna go up.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

At that point just get yourself a cheap Dell OptiPlex and slap a graphics card and a cheap PCI audio card in it.

Is it ideal? No, but if we're going for suspiciously low bids on CPUs it's better than getting sub-par parts....

By suspiciously low, I mean very few bids - everyone's sniping I'm sure. i5-6500, looks good in the pics and well-cared for, starting price is like a third of the retail price. Obviously gonna go up.

Yea, they're very much sniping that one.

I don't tend to bid on ebay tho, I prefer to buy on buy it now terms. It's more expensive, but it is also cheaper than retail. When my dad was selling computer parts on eBay back in the day we also made things available on a "buy it now" basis.

I got my Cisco equipment from eBay (4 old routers, 5WIC cards, and 6 switches with 2 of them being L3 switches) for around 400 dollars, which is frankly far less expensive than if I had gotten new equipment for doing networking labs which would have costed me thousands of dollars.

[Salandriagado]

Plus, the prices of graphics cards are so messed up by Bitcoin that Nvidia has asked firms to restrict sales of graphics cards. When will this cryptocurrency madness end, so that I can get a decent graphics card at a decent price, on the next time that I build another computer?

I saw this the other day.

I was lucky I could get my audio and video setup before the bitcoin mining craze. I'm still not going to get into bitcoin either. There's too many negatives with it.

Yeah, I (quite by accident) timed my PC build perfectly: I bought the core system a week before RAM prices doubled, and the GPU a couple of weeks before the GPU prices went silly.

[Imperializt Russia]

I saw this the other day.

I was lucky I could get my audio and video setup before the bitcoin mining craze. I'm still not going to get into bitcoin either. There's too many negatives with it.

Yeah, I (quite by accident) timed my PC build perfectly: I bought the core system a week before RAM prices doubled, and the GPU a couple of weeks before the GPU prices went silly.

RAM is stupidly expensive at the mo too, I wondered why that was affected.

[Salandriagado]

Yeah, I (quite by accident) timed my PC build perfectly: I bought the core system a week before RAM prices doubled, and the GPU a couple of weeks before the GPU prices went silly.

RAM is stupidly expensive at the mo too, I wondered why that was affected.

Basically, smartphones moved onto the same type of RAM as desktops, production actually fell, and the manufacturers have an agreement to not compete with each other.

[Imperializt Russia]

RAM is stupidly expensive at the mo too, I wondered why that was affected.

Basically, smartphones moved onto the same type of RAM as desktops, production actually fell, and the manufacturers have an agreement to not compete with each other.

Praise capitalism!

[Sugrastan]

Eh, just posting here to get opinions on a build I'm planning for my friend. No need to reply about better prices with some other GPU or RAM or whatever, as we both live in Finland where the prices are way different.
The partlist

[Imperializt Russia]

Looks like a good build to me - looks to be exactly the same sort of spec as the one I was throwing together, just swapping out Intel/AMD for AMD/Nvidia.

I am confused tho as to why the AMD Ryzen 3 1200 is exactly as powerful as the Intel i5-6500 yet is basically 70% of the price, especially since the Ryzen is two years newer.