PC Hardware Talk Megathread

[DoubleK]

Any monitor deals people have their eye on this black Friday?

Looking at a 34" ultra wide or possibly a 32" flat for work and play.

I have a weird requirement. A smaller box is better as it will be travelling with me between Seattle and Scottsdale.

[TorqueDog]

LG Ultragear GX8 32” OLED 4K UHD Gaming Monitor 32GX850A Dual-Mode UHD 165Hz/FHD 330Hz?

[Meelapo]

Kind of a hardware post but not really. It's related to Steam.


I was connected to the Calgary CDN and was getting download speeds of ~250Mbps. I wasn't sure why it wasn't going faster and I found a post on Reddit stating that you should pick a CDN that's in your neighbouring country and not your country. So I picked Seattle and my downloads jumped to ~820Mbps.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Meelapo

Kind of a hardware post but not really. It's related to Steam.


I was connected to the Calgary CDN and was getting download speeds of ~250Mbps. I wasn't sure why it wasn't going faster and I found a post on Reddit stating that you should pick a CDN that's in your neighbouring country and not your country. So I picked Seattle and my downloads jumped to ~820Mbps.

Could be down to a whole host of factors, depending on which ISP you use and which partner Steam uses for their CDN in Calgary. Network routing isn't always as straightforward as sheer physical proximity, Calgary's CDN could have inefficient routing for your ISP relative to Seattle. Not to mention I'd bet that the Seattle CDN is way beefier than the one they'd put here and can handle far greater capacity.

[DoubleK]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

LG Ultragear GX8 32” OLED 4K UHD Gaming Monitor 32GX850A Dual-Mode UHD 165Hz/FHD 330Hz?

If money was no object I would have gotten that. Ended up getting this 27" from Newegg.

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

Any monitor deals people have their eye on this black Friday?

Looking at a 34" ultra wide or possibly a 32" flat for work and play.

I have a weird requirement. A smaller box is better as it will be travelling with me between Seattle and Scottsdale.

I feel like the LG 45" Ultragear (21:9) is the perfect monitor unless one needs an IPS due to OLED concerns

[photon]

Micron shutting down Crucial to "improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments" i.e. make $$ of the AI slop. Can't blame them I guess.

[chemgear]

I wonder how crazy prices will get in the coming months. Hopefully none of it comes to pass.

[DownInFlames]

Will suck a dick for some DDR5.

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by DownInFlames

Will suck a dick for some DDR5.

i bought 32GB last weekend for > $500

Totally makes sense why though.

Being able to run LLMs locally means you probably want > 24GB of VRAM (ideally 96GB or even 192GB) and > 64GB of RAM for partial offload (ideally 128GB or 256GB).

RAM used to go unused, now it's basically the difference between running a small LLM, a medium LLM, or a big one.

I also bought a 5090 so I have 32GB of VRAM and 64GB of RAM which is about the threshold for a quantized medium LLM. I kind of regret not shelling out for a 6000 Blackwell Pro 96GB or 4X Intel Dual B60 (for 192GB) but I am not a corporation here, and that's who is buying up the RAM

[DownInFlames]

But can it run Crysis?

[photon]

I managed to find 32GB for $340 last weekend, if I didn't need it I'd flip it on Facebook for double.

[photon]

Hm, was trying to do a full backup of my main SSD before I do a rebuild and there might be some bad sectors, but rather than just reporting them my whole system goes to a black screen with a storage message and reboots.

Was trying to do a backup using DiskGenius, so I used that to do a full sector scan and it did the same thing, whole system froze mid way through.

Will have to try the Samsung disk scan.. only a few years old so I guess it's under warranty.

Just checked SSD prices and I paid $150 for a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro in 2023.. now it's $450 for a 2TB 9100 Pro!?

[chemgear]

There were 4tb for $300 and 8tb for $660 over Black Friday. Maybe more sales in the coming days.

. . . or not. No idea with this memory thing.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by photon

Just checked SSD prices and I paid $150 for a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro in 2023.. now it's $450 for a 2TB 9100 Pro!?

The PCI-e Gen 5 drives are still extremely expensive. The high-end Gen 4 drives are more expensive than in the past but sometimes deals can still be found. WD's competitor for the Samsung 980 Pro:


https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/WESTERN...e/19XODJUIRT7Q

Will have to try the Samsung disk scan.. only a few years old so I guess it's under warranty.

With Samsung's warranty for solid state drives, you may need to go back to the shop you bought it from.

[photon]

Yeah if I have to get a new one I can wait until boxing dayish sales, the drive seems to be working for normal stuff.

Originally Posted by accord1999

With Samsung's warranty for solid state drives, you may need to go back to the shop you bought it from.

The 990 Pro I have is a replacement for a 980 Pro that I got from Amazon that less than a year of having it it said that it was 99% through its lifespan.. which was crazy, I would have had to have been writing multiple TB a day 24/7 for the length of time I had the drive.

So either the drive was confused or it wasn't new when I got it.

Anyway Samsung said I had to talk to Amazon. Amazon said I had to talk to Samsung. I bounced back and forth a few times before I finally got to talk to someone higher up at Amazon and they said they weren't responsible (despite me having the email from Samsung and showing it to them) but they were just going to give me me a full refund anyway.

EDIT: Ran the full scan a few more times and now it seems to be running fully ok.. I was able to do a full backup as well, so I guess it blocked off the bad sectors or whatever. I guess I'll make sure my backups are working...

[DoubleK]

Is it just DDR5 that is having a price spike or is DDR4 having the same challenges? I can't really tell based of what I've been seeing in the system. FWIW my 4 year old PC can't use DDR5, was hoping to take it to 32GB and get a couple more years out of it.

[photon]

I don't think it's the same extremes as DDR5 but it still seems to be higher.. 32GB for $250 (Canadian) or so still seems more than it used to be.

You could probably find a good deal used though, RAM's one of those things that becomes almost worthless if you're on the trailing edge of the curve.

[TorqueDog]

DDR4 is definitely up.

[PsYcNeT]

The DDR5 price spikes are pretty hilarious tbh; I happened to find my Jan 2024 RAM order in my email (~$700 CAD for a 4x16GB Dominator set) and now the same set is going for ~$1250 :|