PC Hardware Talk Megathread

[White Out 403]

So.

Is this monitor 100 dollars better?

Yeah. It's early, and I was quick to praise the MSI until I saw something I didn't like, so I will praise this monitor with a bit more reservation and carefully.

edit 1: I would say that it has better colour , way better viewing angles, so far.
edit 2: shoulda just listened to cp and not bothered with the msi.

[photon]

I think it's still worth the time and effort. Regardless of which way you'd went you'd either have proven to yourself that it wasn't worth the extra cost, or that it was, and in either case you won't wonder about if you made the right choice.

[White Out 403]

anything i should know about a racing wheel? i think im going to buy one and i can pass it off with my wife so that my 4 year old can play racing games with me.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

The thing to know about racing wheels is that they're kind of garbage unless you're spending an absurd sum of money. I priced out a sim setup one time and it was about 3k. I wasn't even going for the top of the line stuff.

But then there's the logitech thing that's frequently on sale for about 250, so if you just want something that vaguely approximates a steering wheel, get that.

[White Out 403]

Selling my laptop tomorrow. Considered using the proceeds to pay for half of a new rig, then, sell my old computer to cover all but a couple hundred at most of a new machine.

Still mulling it over but I've done no research and I'm not sure it's money well spent right now. Apparently Linus says to buy now but that seems to always be the trend with PC's.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

I'm not sure why he would say that when the new AMD stuff just came out recently and we're waiting on the next gen video cards, which, one assumes, will decrease the price on the currently overpriced RTX cards. I was thinking my next step is an eGPU but I'm not paying 1500 bucks for a 2080ti.

[White Out 403]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I'm not sure why he would say that when the new AMD stuff just came out recently and we're waiting on the next gen video cards, which, one assumes, will decrease the price on the currently overpriced RTX cards. I was thinking my next step is an eGPU but I'm not paying 1500 bucks for a 2080ti.

Seems like the video was two months old and he was worrying about stock and inventory

What I decided to do was get a nice chair, pocket the rest and put away 30 bucks a pay cheque until black Friday and do a build then.

[FlameOn]

Originally Posted by White Out 403

Seems like the video was two months old and he was worrying about stock and inventory

What I decided to do was get a nice chair, pocket the rest and put away 30 bucks a pay cheque until black Friday and do a build then.

He was saying all the pricing for computer stuff was going to go through the roof because of inventory and supply chain problems for manufacturers because of the Chinese COVID-19 factory shutdowns. I don't think pricing increases really materialized because after the initial surge in work from home demand, consumer spending on that stuff kinda dropped off big time so pricing has been pretty flat.

Supply is definitely going to be down for almost all electronics and computer parts for the rest of the year, will demand is harder to figure out. Guess it really depends on how bad the regular consumer gets hit, how much layoffs there are, and how much economic stimulus we get from the government. All of the electronics that goes on sale around Black Friday is built right around when the Chinese shutdown happened though.

[White Out 403]

Man I really love having a home PC setup again. I forgot how much effort I put into my computer build last time. It's really satisfying to have this thing 3.5 years later still perform at such a high level

[White Out 403]

So I'm in a pickle

I noticed that a couple times now my refresh rate was sagging to 144 from 165, and, there was a weird aliasing effect around text. I turned off my monitor and it went away.

So i chatted asus and they walked me thru factory resetting it which I'm sure wont do much.

BB doesn't have any in stock online or in any stores. I'm going to go there tomorrow and ask them what they suggest. I love this monitor but it may be a lemon. I can't swap it out for another one cuz there are none.. so do I buy the extended warranty and let it die? Do I ask them to let me swap when one becomes available? Weird weird stuff.

Or I guess the factory reset maybe fixes it who knows

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

165 may be an overclock, in which case it could be a software thing? I dunno man I think you're going to be pretty rarely exceeding 144fps in anything, what the heck are you playing / what card are you using?

[White Out 403]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

165 may be an overclock, in which case it could be a software thing? I dunno man I think you're going to be pretty rarely exceeding 144fps in anything, what the heck are you playing / what card are you using?

I meant refresh rate

ASUS has a setting in the monitor settings for overclocking to get 165 refresh

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Yeah but refresh rate is meaningless unless you have the FPS to support it, all refresh rate is is a maximum ceiling for the FPS your system can display. If you're playing games that you can consistently get above 144 fps, maybe those extra 21hz are helpful, depending on your eyes (some people notice that sort of thing, some people can't see any meaningful difference between 120 and 240 FPS). But if everything you're running never breaks, say, 120fps anyway, it literally does not matter.

[White Out 403]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Yeah but refresh rate is meaningless unless you have the FPS to support it, all refresh rate is is a maximum ceiling for the FPS your system can display. If you're playing games that you can consistently get above 144 fps, maybe those extra 21hz are helpful, depending on your eyes (some people notice that sort of thing, some people can't see any meaningful difference between 120 and 240 FPS). But if everything you're running never breaks, say, 120fps anyway, it literally does not matter.

So should I not be overclocking then? I play some Siege, mostly Civ 6, maybe some xcom, etc

[PsYcNeT]

I had my XB270HU die earlier this year (144hz @ 2K), so i bought a XB271HU which is an identical model, but with 165hz on the overclock.

I notice no difference at all.

[White Out 403]

Yeah Im just going to leave OC off

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by White Out 403

So should I not be overclocking then? I play some Siege, mostly Civ 6, maybe some xcom, etc

Depends. Are you using MSI afterburner? What are your usual FPS numbers? I.E. average, max, 1% low?

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by White Out 403

So should I not be overclocking then? I play some Siege, mostly Civ 6, maybe some xcom, etc

Turn off OC and if you don't see any issues with it off, then consider the OC being a future extra feature that maybe you can benefit from. Otherwise, consider going with some other hardware.

Not directly related, but I sometimes found that if not all things were updated or compatible from the hardware/software side, funny things happen. For instance, you'd want to ensure the monitor drivers, the monitor software for OCing, the video card and video card management software are all the latest. Otherwise funny things might happen. Heck, sometimes even the OS can contribute to something weird. It can be onerous and annoying to deal with.

I've had issues before where certain monitors were acting kinda funky (more black bar things that resolved if you restarted a computer) but not for reasons of OC. Most times, if you cant find a solution within an hour or two, you likely will never find a solution.

In my situation, I ended up so mad I just replaced the monitor after spending 5-6 hours tweaking/researching things and finding no solution. Mine was a work situation, not home situation though. $200-300 in new hardware that works straight out of the box is better than losing even 2-3 hours of valuable work time (I was tinkering with it during our down times though).

[White Out 403]

Originally Posted by DoubleF

Turn off OC and if you don't see any issues with it off, then consider the OC being a future extra feature that maybe you can benefit from. Otherwise, consider going with some other hardware.

Not directly related, but I sometimes found that if not all things were updated or compatible from the hardware/software side, funny things happen. For instance, you'd want to ensure the monitor drivers, the monitor software for OCing, the video card and video card management software are all the latest. Otherwise funny things might happen. Heck, sometimes even the OS can contribute to something weird. It can be onerous and annoying to deal with.

I've had issues before where certain monitors were acting kinda funky (more black bar things that resolved if you restarted a computer) but not for reasons of OC. Most times, if you cant find a solution within an hour or two, you likely will never find a solution.

In my situation, I ended up so mad I just replaced the monitor after spending 5-6 hours tweaking/researching things and finding no solution. Mine was a work situation, not home situation though. $200-300 in new hardware that works straight out of the box is better than losing even 2-3 hours of valuable work time (I was tinkering with it during our down times though).

I love this monitor and don't want to go with another kind. I turned off OC and I'm at 144 refresh rate and I can't tell the difference.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Obviously you're the one looking at it so what you notice is what really matters at the end of the day. I just don't know why you wouldn't check your FPS and see if it is even making a difference objectively speaking. If nothing else you could try to get it as close as possible to 144 by trial and error with settings.