BF2S Forums What tech did you buy today?

i had a midi tower in my last build and, now i look at it next to the mini-ITX, i'm kind of astonished i just stayed with 'regular' desktops for so long. the thing is huge and it's 60% empty space/dust collection. couple that with something like double the number of case fans, as well, and they're just so much noisier.

i can mount an SSD tray inside my case technically, but it will affect airflow, plus the extra heat output from more drives, etc. not a route i want to go down.

anyway the X570 mobo you've bought is for sure the enthusiast grade and the best option. my only caveat there is that the ryzen CPUs don't overclock like intel ones do. all the extra VRM capacity and promised stability won't really be used. i guess it's just up to the individual consumer and their needs. i don't think i've ever bought a premium CPU in the higher-end 'overclockable' spectrum over just the more standard mid-range options. i don't render and i'm not an overclocking enthusiast. games are still disappointingly weak at using multi-core. the CPU in all of my builds since, like, early 2000s have just been parts that serve out their life without becoming impediments.

the other big thing is ports and input/output. i went with mini-ITX because i need relatively little. the biggest weakness in pretty much all windows motherboards for me, at this point, is lack of thunderbolt support. you have to spend so much to get that technology, and it's buggy as hell. i don't really need 12x USB 3 ports, or 2x PCI-e 16x, or 8 SATA-2 or whatever that comes on beefy full-size mobos. a lot of monitors come with their own USB hubs thesedays.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-12 05:06:12)

overclocking definitely confers benefits and does not damage your components unless you are really inept and pushing it. you are not going to fry your CPU by OC'ing it +5-10% and leaving the voltages well alone. these things are designed to safely operate within those margins, anyway. i would highly recommend you overclock your 3600 to 3600X levels, especially considering you've just bought a motherboard that encourages it. it's basically the exact same hardware only with perhaps slightly better binning. the 3600X is like 200Mhz faster stock clock. that is a really trivial overclock and makes all the more sense if you have 3600Mhz-4000Mhz RAM.

i said it earlier but spending the same on a mobo as a CPU is dubious. high-end mobos are packed with features and components really to support CPUs in the $500+ bracket. putting a mid-range consumer 3600 in an overclocker enthusiast board involves quite a lot of waste, future proofing plans aside. only you can know if you're really interested in picking up a 4xxxx.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-12 05:20:23)

bluescreens can be caused by anything, especially on ageing hardware. pointless to speculate until you look at your event logs and get some error codes. could have been power-supply related (common death knells for any system); could have been an innocuous windows driver update that didn't play nice.

overheating shutdowns will be due to BIOS-related failsafe limits rather than the hardware literally baking itself. there will be mobo speaker alarms or an automatic shutdown a long time before anything gets to harmful levels.

Feel like you got a dud, newbie. I've been using an ASUS VG248QE for about 6 years now and have nothing but good things to say. Getting old now, but still no issues. My friends also use the same monitor just because it's decent for FPS, and they've also not had any issues. Thing has been taken to at least a dozen all night sweaty LANs, often in the back seat of a cab, and it's still going strong.

Driver support is another thing. That shit's annoying.

If you're looking for other high-end monitor brands, a couple buddies have BenQ monitors and they're really really nice. Definitely going to get one next. They also tell me their customer support is A+, so if you have an issue at least there's that fall-back. Buddy broke a port while high about 3 months back and BenQ dealt with it. That's quality.

I actually had my eye on a similar model. I'm thinking I'm going to wait for my next non-FPS binge game to come out before I make the buy. Currently my heart is set on Age of Empires 4, but I could be waiting until the heat death of the universe at the current (known) progress rate. Want to see the game specs to try and optimize hardware a little. If AOE4 is of the quality of 2, or hell, even 3, I'm more than happy to upgrade the rig around it.

To make use of a higher res BenQ I'm probably in for at least a new GPU and CPU given how demanding RTS' are. I fully expect I'm in for a $1k bill to make it happen.

Those little quality of life things really set apart the good brands from the great. Sure it comes at greater cost, but those little, almost impossible to quantify, things are where the money goes. The bezel that feels just a little more solid. The button that has a certain click and response to it. The cable that gives just a little more confidence it isn't going to fail after the 100th time you unplug it.

Tbh, now that I'm home all day I'd do with an auto-brightness feature on this old ASUS. Sat next to a window, so 3pm is a horror show around these parts.

Pochsy wrote:

If you're looking for other high-end monitor brands, a couple buddies have BenQ monitors and they're really really nice. Definitely going to get one next. They also tell me their customer support is A+, so if you have an issue at least there's that fall-back. Buddy broke a port while high about 3 months back and BenQ dealt with it. That's quality.

BenQ and Dell would be my first considerations at this point. But I'm satisfied with the large LG I currently have running (don't judge me, I needed a replacement quickly ).

MSI afterburner is well known. i don't use it because my GPU manufacturer have their own custom BIOS and their own control software. my 5700XT is the highest-tuned after-market version from Aorus, rather than MSI.

i find having several overclocking/monitoring/tuning programs installed at once can cause major issues with profiles overlapping, erratic fan cooling, unstable clock speeds, etc. so i just do away with it.

every single AMD card has a stock AMD driver suite that includes in-game monitoring and stats. or you can use a suite like CPU-Z/HW Monitor if you want to track your various stats and sensors.

Last edited by uziq (2020-04-12 18:16:38)

B&O are in the same category as apple really. you pay a brand premium for well-designed, quality products and they will cover you if it fucks up.

not the 'raw performance' choice but stuff that is generally a joy to use.

totally. even just the small piece of mind that I can call them for support and get fair help is worth the marginal price increase. Had I gone for the Sennheisers or Klipsch I doubt I'd have had the same experience, and the price point really isn't all that much higher.

RTHKI wrote:

I'd really like to upgrade my 970 but nothing seems worth it yet for a decent price. Most of its hard use comes from VR simracing. Rfactor2 is the ugiest yet most taxing game I've played.

You should spend a minimum of $450 for 8 GBs of VRAM.