Sleeper PC Build: Geeks gather

[Scooter]

Good luck on a GPU. I've got a 3070 on its way. Paid $220 over MSRP for it. The market is absolutely fucking stupid.

I thought you were holding out until spring?

 

[Provience]

He's better off saving his money and trying to add to the stash. We're talking 4k gaming here, there will be no perceivable difference in upgrading on his existing platform unless hes dropping something like a 1080ti in there, in which he will still struggle due to the CPU bottleneck. Save some pennies, wait for the big Intel refresh in Q3 2021 and then upgrade to the now defunct 1200 socket. The amount of CPU and VRam usage in these newer games is astounding. I can remember arguing with nerds on [H] years ago that more VRam was going to be the wave of the future, here we are.

I'm literally in the same boat, but am capable of decent 4k performance with my 1070SC which saves me $$$ on my upgrade. I have a 1200 socket upgrade priced at $775 which gets me into a 10850k, new mobo, and 16gb DDR4. Waiting a bit to see what the Rocket Lake release does to the market as well as see if supply picks up eventually. Also not afraid to snag a 3080 IF I see one pop up in stock right now

it's a big part of why last year I went through and did "cheap" upgrades to my 10 year old system. i'm still happy with them, but shopping at the time people were saying AM4 would be phased out potentially this year or next, so I figured i'd stick with AM3 and bottleneck a bit of stuff, so that when AM5 or whatever comes around, I could go to entry level stuff there and reuse a bunch of the thing I have currently bottlenecked now.

$500 then and $500 later for something that works better in the meantime and will be decent in the future, without having to shell out $1k all at once and deal with complete sluggishness for the 2-5 years in between

I fully understand where you are coming from and generally agree, but I polish turds and wheel used parts on Toyota axles, so...yaknow. hey, at least i'm better than all the sami guys after selling my tracker

 

[Alpine4x4]

it's a big part of why last year I went through and did "cheap" upgrades to my 10 year old system. i'm still happy with them, but shopping at the time people were saying AM4 would be phased out potentially this year or next, so I figured i'd stick with AM3 and bottleneck a bit of stuff, so that when AM5 or whatever comes around, I could go to entry level stuff there and reuse a bunch of the thing I have currently bottlenecked now.

$500 then and $500 later for something that works better in the meantime and will be decent in the future, without having to shell out $1k all at once and deal with complete sluggishness for the 2-5 years in between

I fully understand where you are coming from and generally agree, but I polish turds and wheel used parts on Toyota axles, so...yaknow. hey, at least i'm better than all the sami guys after selling my tracker

I'm all for polishing turds, but at some point you gotta pay to play

The 1070 was my "cheap" upgrade for my system, bought it from my brother in 2019 for $200 to replace a 560ti. It has made it way more enjoyable to play games and has allowed me to actually utilize 4k resolutions. If games werent so CPU intensive now I'd just stay on the same path, but seeing the benchmarks on Cyber Punk and my own experience with intense FPS drops in GTA V have me in the position of doing the mobo/cpu/RAM upgrade and utilizing the 1070 until a new gen card comes into stock. Difference is this time instead of buying middle of the road I'll be dropping coin on nearly the best to help future proof a little longer. My system is 10yrs old and has stood up to quite a bit!

 

[woods]

I thought you were holding out until spring?

I was. Someone posted a link. 3070 for sale for $721. Said fuggit. They didn't accept paypal, so I had to go upstairs to grab the wallet. I figured by the time I got back down, they'd be sold out. They were still in stock so I wen through with it. I really wanted to hold out for a 3080, but FOMO has a decent grasp on me. I figured I can always build another PC if I wanted to.

3070 should hold up to my needs just fine.

 

[Motorcharge]

fuck uesrbenchmark. Bunch of anti-red team bullshit on their site.

No, the site is just geared towards gaming performance and Intel is still significantly better for it.

Ryzen has made some giant leaps forward, but it still has a ways to go. Clock speeds aren't there to match Intel yet, and that makes more difference than anything with gaming. Manual overclocks on Ryzen lead to worse performance than the AI boost built in. There's also still other issues like chip degradation due to the AI overvolting the hell out of the chips when boosting.

Last gen AMD GPUs suffered massive driver issues and were only built to compete with Nvidia's mid range cards. Too early to tell with the current gen if they've fixed the driver problems or not, but there's still issues there. Most notably that the new 6800 XT performs worse than the regular 6800 in a number of titles.

I'm no Intel fanboy and it's exciting to see AMD becoming relevant again, but most people aren't realistic with where the company is compared to Intel and Nvidia.

For what it is worth, you can get some good performance out of an old rig, while still stockpiling decent components for when the prices drop again.
My current computer is a sleeper and you wouldn't really notice it from just looking at it, outside of the extra fan hold I cut in the side of the case to pull heat off of the 1080ti.
I am running a HP Elite 8300. Yeah, thats fuckin right... an office space computer haha.
It has an 3770 i7 @ 3.4 Ghz, 32 GB of typical DDR3 memory, 3 SSDs and 2 spindle storage drives and a 1080ti GPU. I added a secondary 800W PSU which is turned on through a secondary stand-off relay board. This secondary unit powers the hard drives and the GPU while the stock 320W power supply takes care of the Mobo and such.
Everything I do is in 4k and most of the games I can play on medium to high graphics. The Processor/mobo is definitely a bottleneck but it works great regardless. My long term goal is to build up some 10th gen intel monster and swap my drives, PSU and GPU over to the build. I think I am in it about $500 since everything was used. The most expensive was the GPU.

You're better off going with 9th gen. 10th gen was kind of a bullshit launch just to have something to show at CES when Zen 3 launched. There was basically no IPC improvement over 9th gen. Coffee Lake got officially discontinued a couple weeks ago and prices got cut in half across the line. You can get a 9900K for ~$300 now. You're looking at double the cost for a 10900K for about a 4% increase in performance.

Go on newegg, grab an off lease dell t5810 or HP 440 with the 6 core 3.5ghz base clock Xeon e5-1650 V3 and 32gb ddr4 for $350ish and slap in whatever videocard you can round up and a decent sized SSD.

I'd highly suggest avoiding Newegg. They got bought out by the Chinese 3-4 years ago and started letting Chinese scammers sell on the site. Their customer service is basically non-existent now to the point that they'll just ban your account if you ask for refunds or try to RMA through their site.

while I don't disagree with your post, I did say that the current motherboard will bottleneck the GPU but you can still max out the board with a newer cheap GPU, and the CPU up there is about the highest performing one that you could get in ~2011 and maxes out the AM3 socket.

it was more of a "if you max out your current motherboard, it will cost you $400 and perform better than what you've got, but worse than anything more modern" type of post.

I know what you said, but the argument doesn't hold water. He's going to spend $400 to do that and have zero upgrade path to anything in the future and get barely any noticeable performance out of that money with how bottlenecked he will be.

No offense, but your advice reads like you were into PCs a decade ago but are completely lost on what's developed in the last 10 years. Hell, just what has changed in the last 2-3 years makes what people knew 5 years ago horribly out of date.

I was in the same boat when I got back into PC gaming a few years ago and I wasted a lot of money thinking older HW would still be ok because the leap from gen to gen back when I was into it before wasn't that big. It was baby steps on improvements back in the late 00s. It went from leaps to rocketships on improvements in the last few years.

Input lag will depend on brand. Good input lag values are below 15ms and many TV's on the market today have input lag around 10ms. My TCL is tested around 11ms input lag, thats as good as the old 21" Acer monitors I used to competitively game on...

Yeah, there are TV's on the market that work for PC gaming now, but they're still shit compared to even low end gaming monitors. Nevermind that the TVs you're talking about cost an arm and a leg. 10ms isn't exactly good and you're not getting 10ms on anything affordable in 4k because of the upscaling.

 

[TatonkaII]

I'm no longer into PC's like I use to, but I have a dumb question.

What exactly is a sleeper PC?

I know what a sleeper drag car is.....

 

[Alpine4x4]

Yeah, there are TV's on the market that work for PC gaming now, but they're still shit compared to even low end gaming monitors. Nevermind that the TVs you're talking about cost an arm and a leg. 10ms isn't exactly good and you're not getting 10ms on anything affordable in 4k because of the upscaling.

Are you confusing input lag with response time? Many gaming monitors run the same input lag as my TCL at ~11ms. At 60hz its on par with the BenQ Zowie... Its also only a 60hz monitor so its marginally high response time of 8ms is irrelevant. Even still input lag below 15-20ms is 100% acceptable so its irrelevant. My TV was $600, price has spiked to $900 now, but definitely not expensive by TV standards.

 

[Rerock]

I'm no longer into PC's like I use to, but I have a dumb question.

What exactly is a sleeper PC?

I know what a sleeper drag car is.....

AFAIK it's flashy parts inside of an old case to not draw attention.

Only shitty part about that is ventilation in the old cases can suck, and mounting radiators and whatnot requires customization/fabrication.

You spend four figures on parts, why not just spend another $100ish and get a new case...

 

[Motorcharge]

Are you confusing input lag with response time? Many gaming monitors run the same input lag as my TCL at ~11ms. At 60hz its on par with the BenQ Zowie... Its also only a 60hz monitor so its marginally high response time of 8ms is irrelevant. Even still input lag below 15-20ms is 100% acceptable so its irrelevant. My TV was $600, price has spiked to $900 now, but definitely not expensive by TV standards.

Yeah I am, my bad.

But still, you're talking a tv that's 100%+ of his budget. You can get 144hz 5 ms IPS panels now for like $250-300. Monitor tech has gotten really cheap until you get into the super high end stuff.

 

[Provience]

Yeah I am, my bad.

But still, you're talking a tv that's 100%+ of his budget. You can get 144hz 5 ms IPS panels now for like $250-300. Monitor tech has gotten really cheap until you get into the super high end stuff.

my tv was ~$2k and my monitor ~$2C, monitor looks way better

 

[[486]]

Are you confusing input lag with response time? Many gaming monitors run the same input lag as my TCL at ~11ms. At 60hz its on par with the BenQ Zowie... Its also only a 60hz monitor so its marginally high response time of 8ms is irrelevant. Even still input lag below 15-20ms is 100% acceptable so its irrelevant. My TV was $600, price has spiked to $900 now, but definitely not expensive by TV standards.

man, I love my CRT, 120hz and it was fuckin' free

 

[Wolfe_Man]

I'd highly suggest avoiding Newegg. They got bought out by the Chinese 3-4 years ago and started letting Chinese scammers sell on the site. Their customer service is basically non-existent now to the point that they'll just ban your account if you ask for refunds or try to RMA through their site.
.

I've purchased 1000's of PC's (used/new) monitors and peripherals from newegg over the last 5 or so years and not once run into an issue with scams or RMA'S.
The worst that happened is something changed in the ad (RAM and video card IIRC) from the time I looked it up till the time the PO was placed because they sold out of the original item.

 

[Alpine4x4]

Yeah I am, my bad.

But still, you're talking a tv that's 100%+ of his budget. You can get 144hz 5 ms IPS panels now for like $250-300. Monitor tech has gotten really cheap until you get into the super high end stuff.

He says he has a 65" 4k Samsung though, so recommending a monitor is increasing his budget beyond what is needed since he plans on running it on his TV. That being said, attempting to run games at 1080p on a 65" 4k display is going to produce less than desirable images, he'll want to run at 4k so it looks decent, which means $$$ in hardware. At minimum 1440p...

 

[Alpine4x4]

;n291441]

man, I love my CRT, 120hz and it was fuckin' free

Back in the good ole days

 

[Poopyface]

Ignore 100% of this.

Do not, do not, do not upgrade on your current platform. AM3 is more than a decade old and you're not going to see any real improvement staying on it. Any remotely modern GPU is going to be a waste of money on that platform as well, you're going to completely bottleneck and choke the performance. You likely can't meet power needs with that board and your current power supply either and that's if a newer card will even work on PCI slots that old.

GPUBoss is a joke. They're an adfarm site and have worse information than The Verge does. :rolleyes:

If you want to compare parts, use https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/

For that budget you're basically looking for used last gen or 2 gen ago parts, but frankly you'd be better off getting a new console. But you could walk into Best Buy or somewhere similar and buy literally any tower off the shelf and be leaps and bounds better off than you are now on a PC that's basically 7+ generations old

If you really want another PC, wait a few months until current gen inventory gets back to normal and pricing normalizes and start looking for last gen parts for cheap.
If you have a Micro Center anywhere near you, go there and tell them what you're looking for and they'll walk you through putting parts together. Their staff is knowledgeable unlike most retail stores.

But right now is a really bad time to build a PC in general. Demand is through the roofs and parts are scarce. Production can't keep up and it's not just big stuff like CPUs and GPUs, but everything from cases to power supplies. Power supplies especially are crazy expensive due to the shortage.


With that budget, this is what I would do:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wY4PcT

$591 ^

At least that AMD chipset will allow you to upgrade to current gen Ryzen later if you want to.
That CPU is probably 4-5 times or more the performance of your current CPU. The on board Vega graphics will let you run modern games at low-med settings with a decent refresh rate and you can save the leftover money for a dedicated GPU. I've seen 1080 Ti used as low as $200 lately. You can get a regular 5700 new for like $400 if you want.

M.2 drive for the OS is going to blow you away with how much faster it is than booting off a mechanical drive. The mechanical drive will give you a ton of storage for games and whatnot.

Not the best gaming PC in the world, but infinitely better than what you have now and it gives you a realistic upgrade path into current hardware later.

I'd also look into getting a decent monitor. You're not outputting 4k on what you've got, and certainly not doing it with this. TVs don't process in real time anyway, most upscale to 4k and have god awful input lag. Nothing you'd notice watching movies, but if you plan on playing anything competitive online at all you're seeing things well after they happen.

What about the Ryzen 5 3600 6 core 12 thread instead of Ryzen 3?

 

[Motorcharge]

What about the Ryzen 5 3600 6 core 12 thread instead of Ryzen 3?

It's significantly better, problem is within your budget is most Ryzen chips don't have integrated graphics like the G chips do. If you don't mind adjusting your budget some, there's def better options but that G chip would get you going leaps and bounds over where you over now and leave you an upgrade path.

You could pair a 3600 with a 5700 or 1650 Ti for not a lot more (~$400) but you'll have a hard time getting your hands on one right now.

 

[D_JEEPER]

AFAIK it's flashy parts inside of an old case to not draw attention.

Only shitty part about that is ventilation in the old cases can suck, and mounting radiators and whatnot requires customization/fabrication.

You spend four figures on parts, why not just spend another $100ish and get a new case...

Because niche hobbies like "sleeper builds" take pride in shoehorning a LS6 into a geo metro. Sure it does not make sense all the time, but it is fun to do haha