Off-Topic Thread V3.0

z0oT

Yes - this one.
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X470D4U

There's a more expensive version with 10Gbps LAN too, but 1Gbps is plenty for me.

Cuddlesworth

Its way cheaper to just get SFP+ cards and switches and pick up some DAC cables. 10gig copper is just a waste of money at this point.

Where did you get it from? Was looking at them a while back, but stock in europe was pretty much zero everywhere.

Gumbi

Hi folks, long time no post here.

What's the lowdown on buying from Germany these days? Hardwareversand is long gone, and as I understand it Mindfactory don't ship internationally anymore. (I bought from them maybe 2.5, years ago).

I plan on selling most of my current setup and making a pretty sizable upgrade to a 3800x, new mobo, new ram. Spending that much would justify Germany for me usually, is it a no go these days? Another option aside from Mindfactory?

Amazon UK is great of course, but you can definitely save a few bob going the German route (though I'd be taking a risk with the motherboard in particular in terms of RMA - CPU is much less of a risk and RAM too I'd say).

Thanks for any input in advance!

savemejebus

Gumbi wrote: »

Hi folks, long time no post here.

What's the lowdown on buying from Germany these days? Hardwareversand is long gone, and as I understand it Mindfactory don't ship internationally anymore. (I bought from them maybe 2.5, years ago).

I plan on selling most of my current setup and making a pretty sizable upgrade to a 3800x, new mobo, new ram. Spending that much would justify Germany for me usually, is it a no go these days? Another option aside from Mindfactory?

Amazon UK is great of course, but you can definitely save a few bob going the German route (though I'd be taking a risk with the motherboard in particular in terms of RMA - CPU is much less of a risk and RAM too I'd say).

Thanks for any input in advance!

Amazon.de amazon.it, amazon.fr, amazon.es can fill that need, especially sellers "fulfilled by Amazon". You often get prices that would be comparable to mindfactory and computeruniverse.

Mr Crispy

Yeah, I recently bought parts for a new build, and the majority were from Amazon.de. Seemed like the best split between value and peace of mind.

z0oT

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Its way cheaper to just get SFP+ cards and switches and pick up some DAC cables. 10gig copper is just a waste of money at this point.

Where did you get it from? Was looking at them a while back, but stock in europe was pretty much zero everywhere.

Got it from Amazon.

IPMI really is amazing from my few hours of tinkering, I'm wondering how I ever managed without it. Remotely powering the system up and down over the network is probably the coolest thing.

farna_boy

BloodBath wrote: »

Recently bough a Corsair M65 Elite mouse. Gonna have to send it back after only 2 months as it is now possible to left click with an audable click without it registering the click.

Never buying a mouse from anyone other than logitech again. All my old logitech mice lasted 5+ years and only replaced from wear not breakages.

Tried several mice from other companies now and not 1 has lasted more than 1.5 years.

I have had a Mionix Naos for the last few years and I would highly recommend it if you are looking for alternatives

Cuddlesworth

z0oT wrote: »

Got it from Amazon.

IPMI really is amazing from my few hours of tinkering, I'm wondering how I ever managed without it. Remotely powering the system up and down over the network is probably the coolest thing.

Doesn't that ship via the states though and get hit by customs?

BloodBath

farna_boy wrote: »

I have had a Mionix Naos for the last few years and I would highly recommend it if you are looking for alternatives

I really like the look of the right side finger rests on that as my pinky often rests on the mouse mat with most mice.

I just don't trust going with other companies other than logitech at this stage.

z0oT

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Doesn't that ship via the states though and get hit by customs?

My one came from the UK.

K.O.Kiki

Fine Wine strikes again?

Ultrflat

So question! My living situation is about to take a massive you-turn, I'm going to be looking for shared accommodation, I've a pretty efficient computer. 1700x oc to 3.8 and a 1080ti. But I'm just wondering, how has any one found being a pc gamer and not having your own space Other then you room. Any tips/experiences?

Calvin

Ultrflat wrote: »

So question! My living situation is about to take a massive you-turn, I'm going to be looking for shared accommodation, I've a pretty efficient computer. 1700x oc to 3.8 and a 1080ti. But I'm just wondering, how has any one found being a pc gamer and not having your own space Other then you room. Any tips/experiences?

Be grand. Lived in shared accommodation for my 5 years of college, always had a PC with me. Desk in the room and a decent internet package and you’re sorted. Always used a headset late night to be more considerate of roommates too.

Ultrflat

Calvin Leong wrote: »

Be grand. Lived in shared accommodation for my 5 years of college, always had a PC with me. Desk in the room and a decent internet package and you’re sorted. Always used a headset late night to be more considerate of roommates too.

Nice thanks, I always use a head set so its all good on that side

mp3guy

Ultrflat wrote: »

So question! My living situation is about to take a massive you-turn, I'm going to be looking for shared accommodation, I've a pretty efficient computer. 1700x oc to 3.8 and a 1080ti. But I'm just wondering, how has any one found being a pc gamer and not having your own space Other then you room. Any tips/experiences?

Used to live in an apartment with 2 others with my PC in the living room. It was fine, more space there for a desk, and it was more social. Plus also better at night when gaming online with voice communication, not disturbing anyone.

100% depends who you are sharing with.

ShadowHearth

Lads, long time no see, but I need a bit of advice.
I have my good old 2500k 8gb ram, Corsair 500r, Corsair 750w psu, 256 SSD , 512, SSD, 1060 6gb PC. I was wondering for how much I could sell this? My friends son would be interested in gaming PC, I am pretty sure this pc would be more then enough for 1080p Fortnight. Might sell without one of ssds and keep it for my next PC.
Not really interested to build my own PC and would like to use some of those places that sell prebuilt PC's with normal parts ( not sell stuff ). Any places you would recommend?

And lastly, I am a bit out of loop as haven't look at hardware for a while. Is 3600/3600x is new 2500k? Are there new CPU and GPU lines coming out this year? As I am thinking of
cpu 3600/ GPU 5700 combo.

TheDoc

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Lads, long time no see, but I need a bit of advice.
I have my good old 2500k 8gb ram, Corsair 500r, Corsair 750w psu, 256 SSD , 512, SSD, 1060 6gb PC. I was wondering for how much I could sell this? My friends son would be interested in gaming PC, I am pretty sure this pc would be more then enough for 1080p Fortnight. Might sell without one of ssds and keep it for my next PC.
Not really interested to build my own PC and would like to use some of those places that sell prebuilt PC's with normal parts ( not sell stuff ). Any places you would recommend?

And lastly, I am a bit out of loop as haven't look at hardware for a while. Is 3600/3600x is new 2500k? Are there new CPU and GPU lines coming out this year? As I am thinking of
cpu 3600/ GPU 5700 combo.

Overclockers.co.uk, who I recommend everytime. Have bought two machines from them myself and just yesterday a friend has his new PC arrive from them from a builder I helped him with.

I just built effectively a new PC before christmas and remembered why I pay overclockers the extra few bob

ShadowHearth

TheDoc wrote: »

Overclockers.co.uk, who I recommend everytime. Have bought two machines from them myself and just yesterday a friend has his new PC arrive from them from a builder I helped him with.

I just built effectively a new PC before christmas and remembered why I pay overclockers the extra few bob

I used overclockers for parts a few times. Always a bit more expensive,but always great service. They do full systems now too?

I used PC specialist for gaming laptop last November and very happy with it, but I feel that they are a bit too expensive when comes to pc desktops.

TitianGerm

TitianGerm wrote: »

The LG GL83A came back into stock on Amazon at £389 earlier so I pulled the trigger. Time to see what a 1440p monitor is all about.

Did I make the right decision getting this over the Pixio PX7?

Was due to be delivered on Wednesday, got pushed to Friday and then Saturday but still no sign of it so got onto customer service.

They don't know where it is and have ordered a replacement for me. Could be up to 6 weeks before it arrives

Look on the bright side. You might get two. :pac:

TitianGerm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Look on the bright side. You might get two. :pac:

I doubt I'd be that lucky. Knowing my luck it'll arrive smashed.

BloodBath

I should probably make a thread for this but hopefully I'll get some answers here.

I changed my mind about my upgrade path. Was going to keep the old sata ssd's for cache drives which meant having to go x570 for all the sata ports but that doesn't make sense. Those old sata ssd's are so slow compared to the nvme and cache want's to be as fast as possible. I'm just going to ditch all of the old drives and use b450 now instead.

Do nvme ssd's make good cache drives? I read something about them being worse for writes than sata controlled ones. Obviously a lot faster for reads. The plan was to partition the 1tb nvme ssd using 2 x 256gb as cache space for 2 x 3tb hdd's leaving 512gb as the C windows drive.

Would I better off getting 2 x 512gb ssd's One sata, 1 nvme for the two M.2 slots.

How badly will using 1 x 1tb nvme ssd as 2 x cache drives, as well as the c drive, affect it's lifespan?

If I use both M.2 slots how many sata ports will still be useable? 4?

Also which b450 atx board to go with? I would like to go to at least 12 cores on the same board down the line so it needs good vrm's and vrm cooling. A decent sound processor would be nice too.

Current parts list. Any improvements to be made? Gonna pull the trigger in a day or 2.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£147.98 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO CPU Cooler (£34.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock B450 Steel Legend ATX AM4 Motherboard (£86.93 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Team T-FORCE DARK Z 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
Storage: Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£103.47 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£80.59 @ Amazon UK)
Case Fan: ARCTIC P14 (5-Pack) 72.8 CFM 140 mm Fans (£27.71 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £481.67
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-03-02 17:26 GMT+0000

Headshot

Guys do you think Half-Life: Alyx will be the making of VR?

ED E

OSI wrote: »

Most storage hardware (SAN/NAS) offer NVMe cache support so I can’t image it would be detrimental.

But it may not really be beneficial.


Whether you should bother or not depends on the types of workloads you'll run and what caching algorithm is in place. If you're using lots of VMs then put slow booters straight on an NVME. The NVME will be an advantage where you have many OSs hitting the same drive (most of the time they're total overkill).

Cuddlesworth

BloodBath wrote: »

Do nvme ssd's make good cache drives? I read something about them being worse for writes than sata controlled ones. Obviously a lot faster for reads. The plan was to partition the 1tb nvme ssd using 2 x 256gb as cache space for 2 x 3tb hdd's leaving 512gb as the C windows drive.

Would I better off getting 2 x 512gb ssd's One sata, 1 nvme for the two M.2 slots.

How badly will using 1 x 1tb nvme ssd as 2 x cache drives, as well as the c drive, affect it's lifespan?

If I use both M.2 slots how many sata ports will still be useable? 4?

Confused as to what your putting onto the 6TB of drives to cache, versus just putting it directly onto the NVME drive. And what caching program, I guess storeMI due to the board type and 256gb limitation.

BloodBath

Not much in the way of VM's. Mainly 3d rendering, maya, max, substance, quixel, unreal engine, which uses large sized textures hence the need for the 6TB of storage.

3TB of that will be games/storage, the other 3TB for texture storage. That will be added to later. The software will go directly onto the NVME. Caching my most used games and textures would be nice to bump up the speed.

StoreMi was the plan. Would I be better off using something else?

Cuddlesworth

BloodBath wrote: »

Not much in the way of VM's. Mainly 3d rendering, maya, max, substance, quixel, unreal engine, which uses large sized textures hence the need for the 6TB of storage.

3TB of that will be games/storage, the other 3TB for texture storage. That will be added to later. The software will go directly onto the NVME. Caching my most used games and textures would be nice to bump up the speed.

StoreMi was the plan. Would I be better off using something else?

I don't know, I'm not a huge fan of caching programs. The problem with most of them is that you don't really have any control over what they are doing. Does store MI prefer reads over writes, or writes over reads. What's the criteria for cached reads, size/time/freqency? There will be reviews where they show how it speeds everything up. But that's when they are new and empty, over time with varied workloads, you might find it hit and miss as that texture you are working on today is ignored and relegated to the slow platter drive. Especially if your bouncing around large files all the time. And to be honest, SSD's are near parity with platter right now, you could easily pick up 2TB SSD's for pretty cheap, that would slam the Sata 3 interface with max reads/writes for large sequential files. In that case, you know it will be faster.

BloodBath

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I don't know, I'm not a huge fan of caching programs. The problem with most of them is that you don't really have any control over what they are doing. Does store MI prefer reads over writes, or writes over reads. What's the criteria for cached reads, size/time/freqency? There will be reviews where they show how it speeds everything up. But that's when they are new and empty, over time with varied workloads, you might find it hit and miss as that texture you are working on today is ignored and relegated to the slow platter drive. Especially if your bouncing around large files all the time. And to be honest, SSD's are near parity with platter right now, you could easily pick up 2TB SSD's for pretty cheap, that would slam the Sata 3 interface with max reads/writes for large sequential files. In that case, you know it will be faster.

It's just not enough storage. Even the 3TB drives will probably prove to be too small but I'm on a budget atm. Games are pushing 100-150GB these days. A single set of assets can be 10-20 GB's and I have hundreds of them.

Current list after some research. This is supposed to be the best b450 board on the market. By far the best VRM's and VRM cooling. SSD the best budget one too rivalling the much more expensive samsung ones.

So current list is.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£147.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard (£99.95 @ AWD-IT)
Memory: Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£130.16 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Sabrent Rocket Q 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£99.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£81.15 @ Amazon UK)
Case Fan: ARCTIC P14 (5-Pack) 72.8 CFM 140 mm Fans (£28.08 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £587.31
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-03-04 16:21 GMT+0000

ED E

Whats your pooling/parity scheme?


A single spinning rust platter is a bit slow (150MB/s for basic, 220MB/s for higher end) but once you get into multiple disks things get faster. My array of crap disks can read at 900MB/s + when its multiple files. It may be the case that just pooling 4x 4TB into 12TB useable would be a great setup for you. Loading big assets isnt super intensive like a VM or busy DB.

BloodBath

Honestly I haven't set up RAID in donkeys years. Completely out of the loop with it.

I was planning on doing a simple RAID 1 over 2 disks for redundancy and a read speed boost.