I need to build a new desktop

Prj4MW8iPT3vmFM2rzDc

Prj4MW8iPT3vmFM2rzDc

3loWgSSaSmqFi9qt3ObZDT3cYQ6RuchzVI2nfL7oFwu9c4khPC
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My desktop is nearly 15 years old. Over the years the only thing I've done is upgraded the video cards a couple times and continued to put in more hard drives as I ran out of space. It was a pretty high end build at the time when i first bought/assembled it but now its a clearly dated machine.

I've fallen terribly behind in what is considered "current" in the hardware realm and have no idea what I should aim for in a new build. My current machine is 64 gigs of ram, early i7 cpu, 2x 1080 gtx cards sli'd. I've started looking a little bit into trends now and now there's this ssd that look like ram, people aren't doing the SLI video cards any more, and more stuff looks like its enclosed liquid cooled which i've never really did liquid cooling because i don't like my luck with murphy's law.

Does any one have suggestions for a fairly strong PC build now a days hardware wise? I typically go with intel cpu and nvidia for my gpu. I'm not looking for a bottom budget machine but i'm also not looking to buy a $2000 cpu and some crazy expensive dev gpu type card.

I don't know whats going on in the markets now, if crypto is still destroying the GPU market or not, if there's any shortages like how there was that one time where there was ram/hdd shortages due to shipping or natural disasters, etc.

Any helpful information is greatly appreciated, even if you just drop me a link and point me in the right direction on where i should start reading.
 
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the Ryzen 7 7800X3D is currently the best chip you can get for gaming specifically. it's an extremely solid chip across the board but the 3D cache is an extremely particular type of optimization that benefits extremely specific types of tasks, gaming most notably among them. the 7900 and 7950 are actually worse, this video explains why. its Intel counterpart is the i7 13900K which is comparable in performance but without the 3D cache, so it's gonna be slightly better at general tasks but slightly worse at gaming and other cache-heavy CPU tasks. the Intel is naturally more expensive but the difference isn't huge so just go with whichever you feel is best for you. note that neither of these CPUs come with coolers so you'll have to get your own. water cooling is a meme, don't waste your time or money, just get a nice air cooler, it doesn't need to be anything super elaborate, modern CPUs are pretty heat-efficient unless you're overclocking. make sure you get some high quality thermal paste though.

for memory performance, you need to pay attention to true latency. clock speed and CAS latency interact in an important way, a good RAM kit balances both. as far as capacity, 16 GB is fine unless you're one of those people that has 300 browser tabs open at all times, or you're doing some heavy virtualizing, in which case you'll probably want to go with 32 GB. 64 is certainly overkill. DDR5 is what all the current boards use so that's what you're looking for.

speaking of motherboards, this is probably the most important part to research. mobos vary widely in quality and even the high dollar ones can suck ass. look for one with a high quality VRM (voltage regulator module, the part that regulates power coming from the PSU and sends it to the rest of the board) because a shitty VRM will burn out sooner and limit the lifespan of your board. overclocking especially will exacerbate this, so be careful.

for storage, NVMe drives are non-negotiable. NVMe drives connect directly to the PCI bus which is massively faster than the SATA bus. most boards come with two NVMe slots now; use one drive for your OS, and another for your software. Samsung EVO is the brand to beat. a nice high-capacity SATA SSD works well as a storage drive, you'll want at least one of those. I'm guessing you have some in your current rig which will work just fine, SATA hasn't changed in a long time. HDDs are just about fucking worthless unless you desperately need large amounts of cheap storage, but if you've got one that's still working fine, there's no real reason not to keep it around.

for your video card, nVidia is generally the top dog. the 4070 SUPER, 4070 Ti, or 4070 Ti SUPER are probably where you want to look. the Ti SUPER has more VRAM so it'll likely last you longer, but the regular SUPER is a whole $200 cheaper on Amazon right now. don't worry so much about breaking the bank on this one, graphics are in a good spot right now where you don't really need top of the line hardware to juice your framerate thanks to the improving upscaling algos like DLSS. AMD is kind of whacked in the price department right now but performance-wise, their cards are pretty close to nVidia's, so if you find an insane deal on a 7900 XTX or something, take it. note that if you're a Linux gamer like me, nVidia takes a slight performance hit due to their shit driver support so the gap is even closer.

use this tool to find a power supply. in my experience, Corsair is the brand to beat, but that might not be true anymore. get 80+ Gold or better if you can, this is a power conversion efficiency rating. like with the motherboard VRM, lower efficiency = higher heat waste = more stress on the electrical components = shorter lifespan. also note that NewEgg seldom has the best prices, so once you find a PSU you like, shop around.

finally, this is an often overlooked component, but make sure you get yourself a nice UPS that can handle your computer's power requirements. note that the numbers on the box are not equivalent here, so a 700VA UPS will not support a 700W PSU at peak draw. I find that a good general policy is to just double your PSU's wattage so you don't have to think too hard about the particulars. get something like this and make sure you don't plug any other high power draw devices into the battery side, such as your monitor, or god forbid, a laser printer. the more stress you put on your UPS, the faster the battery will die. btw, when your UPS battery does die, don't throw it out or buy a manufacturer replacement. chances are there's a local electronics place that sells UPS replacement batteries for much cheaper, and they're very simple to replace yourself. if you can't find them locally, Amazon has them, but be careful that you're not buying some cut-rate chinky bullshit.
 
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Prj4MW8iPT3vmFM2rzDc said:
Does any one have suggestions for a fairly strong PC build now a days hardware wise? I typically go with intel cpu and nvidia for my gpu. I'm not looking for a bottom budget machine but i'm also not looking to buy a $2000 cpu and some crazy expensive dev gpu type card.
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What do you wanna use it for? If you game, at what resolution and refresh, and which type of games?
You don't need to go watercooling unless you really wanna get the latest i9 from Intel and the sort, and even then good air cooling will work fine for gaming (not so much for encoding and rendering).
As a generic machine that's to last you for years, I'd probably go with an Intel CPU if you're more about production/work, with an iGPU you could use for Premiere Pro. For pure gaming, just get the AMD 7800x3D. As for a videocard, something with 16GB of VRAM to last you a while, and from Nvidia cause DLSS looks better than FSR and when your PC gets old you'll have to upscale. So probably a 4070ti Super.
32GB RAM are a must. And a half decent mobo with good VRMs in case you'll OC. Should fit in the 2K budget. Might need to reuse some stuff, like case, keyboard/mouse, monitor. But it's best to invest the most in core components, and then you can add as you go. You don't need to go nuts with a 4TB NVMe SSD for example, just get a boot drive on 1TB and you'll have your active games there, rest can stay on a HDD until you find more money to buy shit like drives, cooling, new peripherals and the sort.
 
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Ask Tech Jesus. That site has very decent information in all current trends, but if you are too lazy to read and just want a summary of CPU's, GPU's, cases, etc, just check their lists for each component and that's about it. Since they do a compilation of all their info each year, this month is probably the best one to give it a look because most info is still fresh enough.

In general:

Intel has been dropping the ball, a lot, they got too confident and fucked up several times, AMD picked up on this and made some decent products.

Nvidia is a bigger piece of shit because they will empty your wallet and sell you beans, at first due to crypto now just because they can, people are already dropping them tho so this might change in the next few years.

Liquid cooling is nice and all but if you simply don't want to risk turning your pc into a washing machine, there are some very decent traditional cooling options with a few changes, like the noctua cooler that has no fans at all so its super silent, or the thermal pads that replace the thermal paste, etc. For those already smashing the reply button: Yes, liquid cooling is still more efficient at its job and probably best cost effective, all I'm saying is that it's not 100% necessary to have one and that there are many other options to choose from that are also acceptable.
 
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64 GB of RAM is a ton even by today’s standards, but you want to make sure you have DDR5 RAM. The slower DDR4 will likely be phased out within the next couple years, and if you started back in 2009, you might even still be on DDR3. Also, whatever motherboard you get will only support a certain generation of RAM, so be careful not to get the wrong one.
Rozzy said:
A SSD is essential for the system drive, a conventional hard drive should only be used for file storage or backup.
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Adding on to this, I have a 2TB SSD for my system drive and a 4TB HDD for general storage. I have a lot of games, so my rationale is that 2TB gives plenty of space for programs and other C drive-related things, plus any newer games that would benefit from an SSD, while other media can be played off the HDD. You could probably get by fine with a 1TB SSD if gaming isn’t your focus, but a 2TB doesn’t cost that much more, so just do it.
 
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I'm Retarded? said:
for your video card, nVidia is generally the top dog. the 4070 SUPER, 4070 Ti, or 4070 Ti SUPER are probably where you want to look. the Ti SUPER has more VRAM so it'll likely last you longer, but the regular SUPER is a whole $200 cheaper on Amazon right now. don't worry so much about breaking the bank on this one, graphics are in a good spot right now where you don't really need top of the line hardware to juice your framerate thanks to the improving upscaling algos like DLSS. AMD is kind of whacked in the price department right now but performance-wise, their cards are pretty close to nVidia's, so if you find an insane deal on a 7900 XTX or something, take it. note that if you're a Linux gamer like me, nVidia takes a slight performance hit due to their shit driver support so the gap is even closer.
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This is especially true if you're interested in messing with AI image gen or running LLMs (ex. ChatGPT) locally. Nvidia is king for AI and the most expensive, AMD is workable depending on the card but usually more affordable than Nvidia, and I don't know how well AI runs on Intel GPUs but they have have the most cost-friendly cards. You'll want 8GB VRAM as a minimum, but 16GB VRAM is enough to comfortably run and train your own Stable Diffusion models without issue. If you want LLMs, I would recommend stepping up to 32GB minimum of system RAM to be able to run high quality models with a high VRAM GPU. Any modern Nvidia GPU is supported for AI, and here's a list of supported AMD GPUs for Windows and Linux. You can get unsupported GPUs to run, but it will take a bit of work.

The GPU you want also depends at what resolution you want to game at. Let us know if you're planning to do 1080p gaming, 1440p gaming, or 4k gaming. In my opinion, 4k gaming is a bit of a meme and isn't worth the extra cost. 1440p is a nice step up from 1080p, but you're going to get diminshing returns past that. 1080p gaming is still great and is the standard for a reason.
 
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Stalphos Johnson said:
The GPU you want also depends at what resolution you want to game at. Let us know if you're planning to do 1080p gaming, 1440p gaming, or 4k gaming. In my opinion, 4k gaming is a bit of a meme and isn't worth the extra cost. 1440p is a nice step up from 1080p, but you're going to get diminshing returns past that. 1080p gaming is still great and is the standard for a reason.
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definitely. 1440p/144Hz is really where the hardware is comfortable at right now. for the record, I have a Radeon 6900 XT which does reasonably well at 1440 (90-120 FPS on max settings in most games), and that's pretty underpowered by current standards; a 4070 with the 7800X3D should absolutely scream at 1440.
 
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I second the Ryzen 7 7800X3D, but you have to think what applications you care about the performance for the most. Make sure you have a good quality motherboard and as said before, the VRMs are one of the most important components in your system. If you get 64 GiB of RAM you can run pretty good quality local LLMs, so that might be worth getting a used GPU for.
 
Stalphos Johnson said:
This is especially true if you're interested in messing with AI image gen or running LLMs (ex. ChatGPT) locally. Nvidia is king for AI and the most expensive, AMD is workable depending on the card but usually more affordable than Nvidia, and I don't know how well AI runs on Intel GPUs but they have have the most cost-friendly cards. You'll want 8GB VRAM as a minimum, but 16GB VRAM is enough to comfortably run and train your own Stable Diffusion models without issue. If you want LLMs, I would recommend stepping up to 32GB minimum of system RAM to be able to run high quality models with a high VRAM GPU. Any modern Nvidia GPU is supported for AI, and here's a list of supported AMD GPUs for Windows and Linux. You can get unsupported GPUs to run, but it will take a bit of work.

The GPU you want also depends at what resolution you want to game at. Let us know if you're planning to do 1080p gaming, 1440p gaming, or 4k gaming. In my opinion, 4k gaming is a bit of a meme and isn't worth the extra cost. 1440p is a nice step up from 1080p, but you're going to get diminshing returns past that. 1080p gaming is still great and is the standard for a reason.
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I'm running stable diffusion and ollama on my current desktop that's old as shit. This will lean me more towards nvidia again using what you've said.

As far as resolution, I have 3 ultra wide screens, 2 run at 1920x1080 and one is running at 2560x1080

AgendaPoster said:
What do you wanna use it for? If you game, at what resolution and refresh, and which type of games?
You don't need to go watercooling unless you really wanna get the latest i9 from Intel and the sort, and even then good air cooling will work fine for gaming (not so much for encoding and rendering).
As a generic machine that's to last you for years, I'd probably go with an Intel CPU if you're more about production/work, with an iGPU you could use for Premiere Pro. For pure gaming, just get the AMD 7800x3D. As for a videocard, something with 16GB of VRAM to last you a while, and from Nvidia cause DLSS looks better than FSR and when your PC gets old you'll have to upscale. So probably a 4070ti Super.
32GB RAM are a must. And a half decent mobo with good VRMs in case you'll OC. Should fit in the 2K budget. Might need to reuse some stuff, like case, keyboard/mouse, monitor. But it's best to invest the most in core components, and then you can add as you go. You don't need to go nuts with a 4TB NVMe SSD for example, just get a boot drive on 1TB and you'll have your active games there, rest can stay on a HDD until you find more money to buy shit like drives, cooling, new peripherals and the sort.
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I use my home machine for gaming, software development, i run VMs on it, i play around with AI on it, use it as a media center/file server, host dedicated game servers for friends, etc.

I think the newest game I currently play on it is AC6.
 
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Prj4MW8iPT3vmFM2rzDc said:
I'm running stable diffusion and ollama on my current desktop that's old as shit. This will lean me more towards nvidia again using what you've said.

As far as resolution, I have 3 ultra wide screens, 2 run at 1920x1080 and one is running at 2560x1080
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Yeah, a 4070ti super should be good. It just got released so expect to spend 800-900 dollars. It might be worth considering an used 3090 like @9gfuwegw9j9 said, which is about the same price on ebay. Most cryptomining moved to specialized ASIC cards, so you won't have to worry as much about that.
 
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