PC Hardware Talk Megathread

[Raekwon]

RTX 3070 starting at $499, available October
RTX 3080 starting at $699, available September 17
RTX 3090 starting at $1499, available September 24

[Mazrim]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

You'll be limited to a SATA 2.5" SSD, as your laptop likely won't have an M.2 slot if you're currently rocking a HDD. Even then, a SATA III SSD is a monumental performance increase over a 7,200 RPM HDD, and most laptop HDDs are 5,400 RPM for packaging / thermal reasons.

But they're the same size, you'll be fine.

Thanks for the info. The laptop has a 256 GB M.2 SSD for the OS and a 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD for the main storage. I just want to swap that HDD with the SSD but wasn't sure how connectivity and fit would be.

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

- Minimum of 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD (smaller SSDs have slower performance, so buy as much storage capacity as you think you'll need here)

Two questions for you based on what you said here:
- I read that M.2's main difference over SATA III is simply in large file transfer, and for gaming it's not a huge difference. Do you agree with that?
- I haven't heard about smaller SSDs having slower performance before. Is 1 TB a sweet spot for speed, then? 2 TB SSD costs are pretty rough IMO.

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by Raekwon

RTX 3070 starting at $499, available October
RTX 3080 starting at $699, available September 17
RTX 3090 starting at $1499, available September 24

Do we know how the 3080 compares to the 2080ti?

At that price it just makes sense to buy a new 3080 instead of a used or new 2080ti.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Do we know how the 3080 compares to the 2080ti?

At that price it just makes sense to buy a new 3080 instead of a used or new 2080ti.

If the Digital Foundry comparison of the 3080 and 2080 are accurate, then the 3080 should be noticeably faster than the 2080 Ti (30-ish% range).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWD01yUQdVA

[Cliche]

Originally Posted by Raekwon

RTX 3070 starting at $499, available October
RTX 3080 starting at $699, available September 17
RTX 3090 starting at $1499, available September 24

3090 and 3080 require minimum 750W PSU, *** on further review, they require these PSU's based on 10900K processor usage, so a lower power using core may use a lesser rated PSU. but if they're already spending 900$ CDN on a graphics card, a power supply that could handle that much power draw would already be in the cards.

3070 requires 650W PSU

3090 350W, 3080 320W, 3070 220W

Not bad... Might wait and see what response AMD has.

YOUTUBES:

Spoiler!

Digital Foundry

Gamer's Nexus

40 minute Nvidia presentation

[photon]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

Two questions for you based on what you said here:
- I read that M.2's main difference over SATA III is simply in large file transfer, and for gaming it's not a huge difference. Do you agree with that?

I think that's a pretty fair generalization. SATA III drives are likely going to be bottlenecked by the interface these days, so they're going to max out at 600MB/s, where an m.2 drive could go much higher depending on the drive and interface (m.2 drives could also be SATA drives in which case they have the same limit, or they could be NVMe drives which can go much higher).

For gaming if a game is loading a bunch of small files then the SSD will be much faster in either case. If the game is loading a large level file say, then it still might benefit from the faster SSD, able to load the file in 2 seconds instaed of 5 or something, it would depend on the game (and I'm sure there's benchmarks out there for load times with SATA vs NVMe). But I don't think the difference would be all that significant vs the huge increase from spinning disk to SSD, and you don't have much choice anyway.

Copying files from NVMe to NVMe drive of course will usually go a lot faster since it'll be bottlenecked by the drives themselves (which might be 4-5 times faster than SATA III or even more)

Originally Posted by Mazrim

I haven't heard about smaller SSDs having slower performance before. Is 1 TB a sweet spot for speed, then? 2 TB SSD costs are pretty rough IMO.

It usually has to do with the amount of nand chips on the drive, the more chips there are the more it can split writes between them to improve performance, and bigger drives usually have more chips.

Not sure if there's a sweet spot, I think it might vary on each drive line, I'd probably just get a size that works and not worry too much about the performance difference.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12674...-evo-nvme-ssds

For example the Samsung 970 EVO the reads are almost the same from 250GB to 2TB. The sequential writes double at each step until 1TB to 2TB. While the pro model has little change from 500GB to 1TB.

You'd probably have to check the tests for the specific model but if you're limited to a SATA III drive then it's not going to matter anyway, just look for good warranty and quality.

[Inferno]

All of a sudden I have buyers remorse for getting a 2070 Super in February after seeing those specs and the prices.

I was going to wait (had nothing to do with the new series coming out because I had no clue) but got talked into buying one by a co-worker who even though he doesn't have ultra-wide claimed he knows people who do and that I would be able to get 144 fps for most games if I got one. I didn't get my monitor until a few months later and found out he had no clue what he was talking about.

85-105 fps is still good (for me anyway) but knowing had I waited I could have got a better one for not much more than what I paid kinda sucks.

[DoubleK]

If anyone has a 1650 they want to sell, I need something to upgrade over my 750 Ti.

Only have a 350w PSU, kinda limits what I can put in. Tryin to eek out one more expansion out of my 9 year old rig.

[Raekwon]

Originally Posted by Inferno

All of a sudden I have buyers remorse for getting a 2070 Super in February after seeing those specs and the prices.

I was going to wait (had nothing to do with the new series coming out because I had no clue) but got talked into buying one by a co-worker who even though he doesn't have ultra-wide claimed he knows people who do and that I would be able to get 144 fps for most games if I got one. I didn't get my monitor until a few months later and found out he had no clue what he was talking about.

85-105 fps is still good (for me anyway) but knowing had I waited I could have got a better one for not much more than what I paid kinda sucks.

Yeah seeing how much better the 3000 series is for the price makes me feel bad about the 2070 Super I bought this year, only good news is I will roll that to my kid to replace his 1070 and I will probably end up with the 3080.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Mazrim

Thanks for the info. The laptop has a 256 GB M.2 SSD for the OS and a 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD for the main storage. I just want to swap that HDD with the SSD but wasn't sure how connectivity and fit would be.

Oh, good stuff then. You can just slap in a SATA III 2.5" SSD in place of the HDD and you'll be good to go.

Originally Posted by Mazrim

Two questions for you based on what you said here:
- I read that M.2's main difference over SATA III is simply in large file transfer, and for gaming it's not a huge difference. Do you agree with that?
- I haven't heard about smaller SSDs having slower performance before. Is 1 TB a sweet spot for speed, then? 2 TB SSD costs are pretty rough IMO.

On the second point, what Photon said.

I picked up a 2 TB WD SN750 NVMe drive for $499 on NewEgg.ca when building my rig. Performance reviews were pretty favourable and it was cheaper than what Samsung was asking for any of their EVO or PRO SSDs. I felt it was a reasonable investment.

To the first question, I will add that the impact on gaming depends on what games you're playing. GTA V and FS2020 load times benefit greatly from the improved throughput because they load a ton of data when you're transitioning from various game modes or loading in general.

[MarchHare]

I've been due to upgrade my 2016 vintage GTX 1080 for a while now, and the new Microsoft Flight Simulator in particular is really making my PC cry out for a new GPU. After seeing the preliminary benchmarks, I'm glad I skipped the 2080 series and waited for a 3080 instead. Does anyone know if Memory Express does pre-orders, or will I just have to show up in person after work on the 17th and hope they still have stock left when I get there?

[photon]

Very impressed with the size of the 3080 PCB, will be interested to see how 3rd party vendors do it or if they'll go with a more traditionally sized PCB.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I've been due to upgrade my 2016 vintage GTX 1080 for a while now, and the new Microsoft Flight Simulator in particular is really making my PC cry out for a new GPU.

Don't be so sure of that. If you're running MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner, turn on the On-Screen Display and take a look at what your GPU Usage % is.

My GPU utilization sits around 50% at 1440p on a GTX 1080ti, and I'm still getting sub-50 fps most of the time, while my CPU usage (Ryzen 5 3600) is roughly the same. I believe the problem is really down to optimization of the game, because neither my GPU or CPU are showing as being taxed by any particular aspect of the game.

But I am also looking at the RTX 3080 card as my next choice. Ampere is the real deal, Turing sucked.

[CroFlames]

What would be a good 1440p ultrawide monitor to pair with a 3080 build? And when I say ultrawide, I mean 34".

I'd use it almost purely for gaming and basic home applications like browsing, pictures, light spreadsheet use etc.

[Inferno]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

What would be a good 1440p ultrawide monitor to pair with a 3080 build? And when I say ultrawide, I mean 34".

I'd use it almost purely for gaming and basic home applications like browsing, pictures, light spreadsheet use etc.

I have this one and I'm happy with it. It's only HDR400 but I didn't buy it for HDR and it still looks pretty good depending on the game.

https://pcmonitors.info/reviews/lg-34gk950f/

I know there's probably better models but they were too much for my price range. This one was voted one of the best on multiple sites last year and earlier this year before I finally bought it.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

Don't be so sure of that. If you're running MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner, turn on the On-Screen Display and take a look at what your GPU Usage % is.

My GPU utilization sits around 50% at 1440p on a GTX 1080ti, and I'm still getting sub-50 fps most of the time, while my CPU usage (Ryzen 5 3600) is roughly the same. I believe the problem is really down to optimization of the game, because neither my GPU or CPU are showing as being taxed by any particular aspect of the game.

But I am also looking at the RTX 3080 card as my next choice. Ampere is the real deal, Turing sucked.

I’ve read that RAM is one of the biggest bottlenecks. I’m going to grab another 16GB to see if it has an effect.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

I’ve read that RAM is one of the biggest bottlenecks. I’m going to grab another 16GB to see if it has an effect.

Good call -- I have 32 GB of DDR4-3200 and yeah, my RAM usage goes to like 24 GB consumed when in-flight.

[DownInFlames]

Anyone have any recommendations for an X570 motherboard to pair with an AMD 3900X?
I'm leaning towards the GIGABYTE X570 AORUS PRO WIFI but are there any features of the midrange mobos I should consider?

[zamler]

That board gave me nothing but trouble, maybe the cold boot problem has been fixed by now. This was at the beginning of the year could not solve it, got another one same issue, remove power wait a bit would not boot right away, wait....wait.....wait.....goes into the BIOS, save and exit then boot.

Think it was/is a memory training problem. A friend of mine has this board no issues. Just thought I'd toss that out there.

On another note, someone recommend me a large monitor for a visually impaired person. 32" is what they have now, maybe the same but sharper, or a bigger monitor. Their vision is quite poor.

[Esoteric]

Oh man, I screwed up royally last week. Bought a M2 SSD, and when installing it, I clearly did not have the right screws. Wasn't paying attention and when tightening the screw I had, broke it right off in the 2280 standoff.

Ended up buying this adapter for $30 to rectify the situation - https://amzn.to/2Fck28O. Seems to be working great so far, with no impact to speed.

I now just have a M2 slot with a 2280 standoff I can't use, without trying to pry it out (I believe it's glued in).