GPUs & CPUs & Enthusiast hardware: Questions, Discussion and fanboy slap-fights - Nvidia & AMD & Intel - Separe but Equal. Intel rides in the back of the bus.

[Gerelatha]

What would be a relatively cheap mini desktop PC that's all AMD and faster then a Nvidia 1660 super?

the 1660 super is pretty low end these days, wouldn’t be hard to get something that beats it handily, but mini PCs tend to have a premium attached

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

What would be a relatively cheap mini desktop PC that's all AMD and faster then a Nvidia 1660 super?

When I think of relatively cheap, I think of Phoenix/Hawk Point with 780M graphics which are near $300-500 (depending on barebones or not). TechPowerUp is telling me the 1660 Super is 59% faster:

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www.notebookcheck.net

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www.techpowerup.com

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www.techpowerup.com

So now we have to move to Strix Point and 890M graphics, which should also be slower than 1660 Super.

iGPUs are getting better, but unless you opt for Strix Halo (not cheap), they are still relatively slow. Only way we could pretzel twist this is if FSR4 comes to RDNA 3/3.5 and turning that on makes it better than DLSS-less 1660 Super. But that hasn't been announced yet.

I think there are some mini PCs with AMD discrete mobile graphics from Minisforum and others. If you found something with the RX 6600M 8GB, that should be faster than the 1660 Super. I don't know the pricing, it's probably over $600 though.

 

[The Ugly One]

What would be a relatively cheap mini desktop PC that's all AMD and faster then a Nvidia 1660 super?

How mini are we talking? You can stick a 2-slot GPU into a variety of mini-itx cases

 

[Betonhaus]

When I think of relatively cheap, I think of Phoenix/Hawk Point with 780M graphics which are near $300-500 (depending on barebones or not). TechPowerUp is telling me the 1660 Super is 59% faster:

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www.notebookcheck.net

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www.techpowerup.com

Loading…

www.techpowerup.com

So now we have to move to Strix Point and 890M graphics, which should also be slower than 1660 Super.

iGPUs are getting better, but unless you opt for Strix Halo (not cheap), they are still relatively slow. Only way we could pretzel twist this is if FSR4 comes to RDNA 3/3.5 and turning that on makes it better than DLSS-less 1660 Super. But that hasn't been announced yet.

I think there are some mini PCs with AMD discrete mobile graphics from Minisforum and others. If you found something with the RX 6600M 8GB, that should be faster than the 1660 Super. I don't know the pricing, it's probably over $600 though.

are there any that use a laptop GPU on the motherboard, or at least something like the MSI Trident that takes a short but normal GPU and squeezes it into the smallest case possible?

 

[Bogan]

How mini are we talking? You can stick a 2-slot GPU into a variety of mini-itx cases

I think he wants smaller than ITX(?), and ITX is way outside the "relatively cheap" category.

 

[Betonhaus]

idk what I want. I guess I was looking to see what exists first.

 

[Slav Power]

It feels so liberating to have your own little lightweight 14" laptop. I am writing this on a proper physical keyboard under Windows as I'm taking a shit. Quite literally shitposting. It's great.

 

[The Ugly One]

idk what I want. I guess I was looking to see what exists first.

This does a good job showing what you can cram into a mini itx case:

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www.newegg.com

are there any that use a laptop GPU on the motherboard, or at least something like the MSI Trident that takes a short but normal GPU and squeezes it into the smallest case possible?

If AMD has actually made any mobile GPUs, they're nearly impossible to find, and they don't fit into commodity PCIe slots. It's easier to find an Intel mobile GPU than AMD, but a NUC isn't cheap.

 

[Bogan]

This does a good job showing what you can cram into a mini itx case:
View attachment 7374074

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www.newegg.com

Funny enough I bought someone that exact model of case. It looks nice but i absolutely hate the cable management options, and putting a 240mm radiator in it is pure hell. Same with trying to put the USB3.0 cable in. ITX and small mATX cases look cool but are a hell to build in. Gordon was right yet again. SFF builds SUCK. Give me a big ATX tower that takes up 1/3 of my desk space any day.

Also I don't mean to be a pedantic sperg, however that is technically an mATX case.

 

[The Ugly One]

Funny enough I bought someone that exact model of case. It looks nice but i absolutely hate the cable management options, and putting a 240mm radiator in it is pure hell. Same with trying to put the USB3.0 cable in. ITX and small mATX cases look cool but are a hell to build in. Gordon was right yet again. SFF builds SUCK. Give me a big ATX tower that takes up 1/3 of my desk space any day.

Also I don't mean to be a pedantic sperg, however that is technically an mATX case.

It was not easy at all to fit cram my GPU into mine, and it came with the motherboard, fans, and PSU already installed. It is definitely a pain in the ass to remove anything from this box, but I like how it takes up almost no room on my desk. So despite the inconvenience of the build, I doubt I'll ever do a giant tower again. I'm tempted to just get a gaming laptop next time, but the poor build quality of my current one has soured me on the idea. Unfortunately, Intel quit making them and sold the line to ASUS, who dropped the "Extreme" line, which was the only model that fit desktop GPUs, completely.

BTW, it says it fits both mITX and mATX boards.

 

[Bogan]

It was not easy at all to fit cram my GPU into mine, and it came with the motherboard, fans, and PSU already installed. It is definitely a pain in the ass to remove anything from this box, but I like how it takes up almost no room on my desk. So despite the inconvenience of the build, I doubt I'll ever do a giant tower again. I'm tempted to just get a gaming laptop next time, but the poor build quality of my current one has soured me on the idea. Unfortunately, Intel quit making them and sold the line to ASUS, who dropped the "Extreme" line, which was the only model that fit desktop GPUs, completely.

It took me a while to do the assembly, the tray the radiator screws onto took a couple minutes to figure out. And I nearly destroyed the USB3.0 cable. I thought the radiator would bend the EPS12V cables to death. Personally I had very small ATX cases until recently when I went for a Fractal North XL, which isn't even huge for an ATX tower anymore. Previously I had a Cooler Master TD500.

BTW, it says it fits both mITX and mATX boards.

Yeah, I just say ITX cases are cases that can only fit ITX motherboards. SFF is probably the better term for small builds in general.

 

[The Ugly One]

This CPU (i9-12900) should get me at least another 4-5 years, so I won't have to do much with the guts of a PC for a while. I will probably try to get a barebones PC again, because I really don't want to do it from scratch.

Sort of related, I found some really goofy-looking machines with laptop GPUs in them:

 

[Bogan]

This CPU (i9-12900)

I had a 12900 non-K, it's fine. But switching to a K CPU gave a noticeable performance increase so it was definitely holding my GPU back.

Apparently new games are becoming far more CPU bound than ever before? But how many games with the budget to push hardware to its limits that come out now are worth buying?

 

[DavidS877]

Give me a big ATX tower that takes up 1/3 of my desk space any day.

Those are rookie numbers.
Get a case that needs its own desk.

I got it so I could do 2 GPUs at the same time without a riser. Sadly most of these kind of cases are also made for a ton of drives, there's enough space in there to build an entire second system. This was also one of the few that had not-fucking-glass-sides as an option. Seems there are a few other smaller ones that might have worked now that I'm looking again, but oh well.

 

[The Ugly One]

I had a 12900 non-K, it's fine. But switching to a K CPU gave a noticeable performance increase so it was definitely holding my GPU back.

I don't try to run games at 100+ fps, not sure I have any games I play right now that are CPU-bound except HOI4 (except wait, I don't play that because it sucks). On top of that, I also soft-limited the max CPU speed to 4 GHz instead of 5 to help it stay cool.

Apparently new games are becoming far more CPU bound than ever before? But how many games with the budget to push hardware to its limits that come out now are worth buying?

New games are designed to achieve 60 fps on a Ryzen 7 3700U, aka "the PS5's CPU."

 

[Fcret]

Apparently new games are becoming far more CPU bound than ever before? But how many games with the budget to push hardware to its limits that come out now are worth buying?

Games aren't especially CPU bound these days. I'd say the biggest shift is that everything baselines around Zen2/Comet Lake nowadays and that's a shift from the 2010s where if you'd bought a first or second-gen i7, you were set until like 2020. So five year-old CPU baseline instead of 10+ year-old CPU baseline.

 

[ZMOT]

I got it so I could do 2 GPUs at the same time without a riser. Sadly most of these kind of cases are also made for a ton of drives, there's enough space in there to build an entire second system. This was also one of the few that had not-fucking-glass-sides as an option. Seems there are a few other smaller ones that might have worked now that I'm looking again, but oh well.

well there's this:

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www.fractal-design.com

there's also a tower if you need to compensate.
meshify and some of the other cases are also smaller than the default define and afaik all come with a solid panel option.

still looking for a define 7 myself now that they dropped a bit in price, but I don't know if fractal simply focuses on design cases/chairs from now on or with my luck unveil the 8 right after I bought the 7...

We all know AMD is going to change their naming scheme with their next GPUs, probably their CPUs too. They're just that shit at naming products.

can't really blame them when niggercattle simply goes "higher number = faster" instead of looking at actual numbers or other features (like rusting CPUs).
goes all the way back when they adopted pentium numbers.

 

[The Ugly One]

I'd say the biggest shift is that everything baselines around Zen2/Comet Lake nowadays

2024 is probably the last year where the majority of major releases support the PS4, since Sony is winding down PS4 support this year. Still might be a few releases this year that run fine on decade-old hardware, so that'd be a 5th gen Core and a GTX 970. But it's about time to upgrade if that's your rig. Also, Windows 10 support ends this year, so expect to see games come out in 2026 or 2027 that require Windows 11.

 

[Fcret]

But it's about time to upgrade if that's your rig. Also, Windows 10 support ends this year, so expect to see games come out in 2026 or 2027 that require Windows 11.

Nah I'm on a 7950X for my main gaming rig and an M2 Max MBP for my laptop.

I fully expect Windows 11 to become mandatory this year unless MS pushes back the EOL date. Even if stuff still runs on Windows 10, I would be wary of running an OS that's not receiving security updates.

 

[The Ugly One]

Nah I'm on a 7950X for my main gaming rig and an M2 Max MBP for my laptop.

I mean the generic, "You, the dear reader of this thread."

I fully expect Windows 11 to become mandatory this year unless MS pushes back the EOL date.

Historically, software publishers start requring a new version of Windows about 2 years past EOL of the old one, since that's about the shortest development cycle on any new software, and their own machines are going to change over this year. I am expecting an update to Steam in 2027 or 2028 that requires Win 11.