PC Hardware and building thread

[UltraMarginal]

So, over the weekend, my hard drive on booting, and windows after booting said my hard drive is sick and will fail imminently. apparently my urgency to update my machine just got more urgent.

I stalled at picking a case last time. I want something that looks a bit classy, will take a blue ray drive, isn't humungous and has a good air filtering system that is easy to remove and clean without tearing the whole unit apart.

I know I don't want much huh ;-)

I currently have a coolermaster from 2009 that I quite like but the grills aren't particularly fine and removing them requires bending back steel tabs everywhere, a fair pain in the arse.

I was looking at the following, but I'm going to have to revisit:
Enermax Ostrog GT
Fractal Design Define RS Black
Zalman Z9 Neo
Coolermaster Pro 5


I'm stepping the CPU down from the 8700K to the 8700. for all intents and purposes it looks to have nearly the same performance and is $100 cheaper. I'm going to go through the other components and rationalise them as well. maybe save a few hundred dollars more to put towards a decent NAS Box.

[DELTAprime]

The cases from Fractal are huge favourites in the PC building community. Them and NZXT are two big favourites, you might say though they are the "hip" companies. Coolermaster have been around forever and there current Masterbox and Mastercase lineup is well regarded for the most part (they do make a few duds also).

Look at the Fractal first, then Coolermaster.

I'm not overly familiar with cases that have ODD support these days as it's a dying feature that I don't use because I have a USB Blu-ray drive I use on the rare occasion I need to read an optical disk. But those two cases don't look bad.

[UltraMarginal]

great advice, thanks.

looking for a PC case feels a bit like looking for a fridge, there are hundreds of different models that all do essentially the same thing but slightly differently.

[DELTAprime]

In case anyone is worried about buying AMD now that laymen media outlets across the web are saying AMD is doomed, take a look at these videos from actual people that know about this type of thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HxkLlmh4EY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ7H1WTqaeo

Bottom line, the people making these claims are shady at best.

[DELTAprime]

For anyone thats been looking to build a cheap Intel 8th without overclocking the H and B series motherboards are almost here. There are leaks of motherboards from all the big manufactures and reviews will start to come out in the next day or so.

Asus, MSI, Asrock, Gigabyte

Also the Ryzen 2 CPUs are really close. We know the CPU lineup thanks to leaks, pretty much the same model numbers as the 1000 series except there will be no 2800X. Prices are lower than Ryzen 1 started at but higher than Ryzen 1 currently cost. It's thought that there will be a small improvement to IPC as Zen+ (the architecture Ryzen 2 is based on) is a optimisation of Zen from the first Ryzen. But there is a boost to clock speed that is basically confirmed at this point through all the leaks.

I'm going to get a Ryzen 2 CPU, either a 2700 or 2700X depending on reviews and I'm going to probably pair it with the Crosshair VII motherboard cause I need a ton of USB ports. I'm curious about Ryzen 2's power requirements as the Crosshair VII has a 8+4 pin power delivery setup and the MSI X470 Pro Gaming Carbon has an 8+8 pin setup. Normally only super high end CPUs like HEDT parts require more than a single 8 pin.

[DELTAprime]

I did something you should never do and I preordered $1000 worth of AMD Ryzen 2700X CPU and Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero motherboard.

[prjkt]

I did something you should never do and I preordered $1000 worth of AMD Ryzen 2700X CPU and Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero motherboard.

Looking at the new 2700 specs I�m almost regretting buying last year... but I needed to, and it�s smashing everything I need too...

[DELTAprime]

Well I've been running on my 2700X since Friday night. I have one complaint which is the "CPU diode" sensor on the motherboard is broken so I'm seeing incorrect temps in some apps. Apparently it's a really common manufacturing error and is not by itself covered under warranty.

Otherwise it's been incredibly great with actual temps never getting up above 75c in a proper full on stress test. The only games where I've noticed a hit to performance at 1440p are GTA V which is down about 5fps in CPU stress test areas. Sea of Thieves which is down from about 120fps to 110fps in open seas. And Diablo 3 which has a little stuttering now above 144fps.

[DELTAprime]

I've had a run of bad luck with my PC. My memory stopped running at the XMP setting a couple of months back. It's still in the queue to be replaced by Corsair in Taiwan. My Kraken x62's pump finally packed it in, but that's not a huge surprise given how common Asetek pump failures are. And my GTX 1080 needs to be underclocked so it doesn't crash.

So still waiting on Corsair's incredibly slow RMA process.
NZXT is trying to work out something to get me a replacement Kraken without me having to ship the dead one back to America. (I appreciate that.)
And I have to start talking to Asus about getting my 1080 replaced.

[UltraMarginal]

Life has been getting in the way, I think I'm going to go with a ARC Midi R2. case. it's a nice combination of price design and looks like it has well designed filters etc.

I was planning on a complete air cooled build but seeing a lot of case reviews I'm seeing a whole lot of closed loop water cooling setups. is it worth the effort?

I don't know if I'll ever get around to any form of overclocking. but are they noticeably cooler or quieter than a good noctua heat sink solution? it looks like they tend to blow into a case, presumably to provide the coolest air to the radiator. but this in turn blows warm air into the case which the graphics card then sees.

I get a feeling that unless I'm water cooling both the graphics card and CPU it's a bit of a waste of time. And I don't think I want to risk destroying a graphics card for the chance at a half decibel quieter system