At 33yrs old I have joined the PC master race.

[idiwa]

1. Nail scissors. 

[5R7]

@bradigor what @idiwa said, or, a nail clipper.

 

When i got my new system from pc specialist, they had done a great cable tie job...to the point where nothing moved!

 

first thing i did was cut some off so i could put my  ssd's and hdd in there lol

 

As for your drive, it looks like it just screws into the "backside" of the case, its quite common now for 2.5 drives to just kind of be screwed in! you would normally have a sort of rack for your 3.5 drives down the bottom, as, well, they arnt used the much in mainstream systems anymore.

[Siri]

2 hours ago, bradigor said:

2. According to this image, I can add more fans. Are they easy to hook up? I will likely get a better CPU fan down the line too. 

 

Two ways to go about it, you either:

 

Connect a 3 or 4 pin connector from the fan to your motherboard, which supplies the power and signal that dictates how fast the fan should go, OR

 

Connect the fan to a connector that's from your power supply to just supply the power, and place/affix a temperature sensor somewhere in the case so it has an idea when to speed up.

 

The first option tends to be much neater, but you'll need to check your motherboard's manual (or whatever document you can find via the internet) to know how many fan headers are on the board and where they are, and then look at the board to see if any/all are populated so you can buy the right fan.

 

Some fans can be bought which have a connector that lets you piggyback one off of the other after it's connected to the motherboard - I haven't used them personally, as I've always assumed that there's a limited amount of voltage to work with so the fans will spin slower as a result.

 

Actually installing them depends on the case, but it tends to be easy - remove the side panels and the front panel if it's going on the front, line up the fan to the screw holes with one hand (make sure the air direction is correct to match your computer - there's usually arrows on the side to help you!), Screw it in lightly with the other hand, and then fully tighten when the fan is supported. After that, plug in the cable to the header - if you're a neat freak, you can feed the cable behind the motherboard and then back through nearer to the fan header. That should be all, really - the connectors are keyed to only go one way.

[bradigor]

Thanks all, that all really helpful. 

I won't be doing it all at once just getting my head around things. I have a 1TB 2,5" in there at the moment, but want to try and get a bigger one for storage down the line. Fans I'll add later too, I am tempted by a new CPU cooler too, but only if things start to get noisy / hot. 

[strider]

2 minutes ago, bradigor said:

Thanks all, that all really helpful. 

I won't be doing it all at once just getting my head around things. I have a 1TB 2,5" in there at the moment, but want to try and get a bigger one for storage down the line. Fans I'll add later too, I am tempted by a new CPU cooler too, but only if things start to get noisy / hot. 

I don't blame you. I already regret simply having a 1TB SSD in my new build. I've used half of it already and I haven't even started importing my photography pictures yet!

I think I'll just buy an external drive to save opening everything up.

[earlymodernsteve]

Ordered a 240gb SSD for my continuing upgrade project. What's the best way of migrating Windows 10 to it - and how much space will it likely need? Is it easy enough to move games across as and when? 

[Siri]

8 hours ago, earlymodernsteve said:

Ordered a 240gb SSD for my continuing upgrade project. What's the best way of migrating Windows 10 to it - and how much space will it likely need? Is it easy enough to move games across as and when? 

 

To be honest, from my personal experience, it's better to just stick a fresh copy of Windows on it. Provided your previous install is activated to the same account you'll log into (for example, my old Hotmail account that I used for Xbox stuff) and/or it's mostly the same hardware, the fresh install should automatically detect it's had a verified copy of Windows 10 on there before and authorise it. That's with a retail copy, but it should work for OEM keys as well.

 

The install should be something like 15gb. Moving games on Steam is simple these days as it's all built into the program - you go into the game's options and change the install location (by picking between the libraries you would have added to see the installed game again on Steam).

[jonamok]

Do ATX motherboards tend to have enough hookups for me to connect up two separate AIOs? I.e. one on the CPU and one on the GPU?

[PikaStu]

9 hours ago, earlymodernsteve said:

Ordered a 240gb SSD for my continuing upgrade project. What's the best way of migrating Windows 10 to it - and how much space will it likely need? Is it easy enough to move games across as and when? 

Some SSDs come with software that does it for you, and I seem so recall it was super easy. But as Siri says, a clean installation is usually the best option.

[Liamness]

9 hours ago, earlymodernsteve said:

Ordered a 240gb SSD for my continuing upgrade project. What's the best way of migrating Windows 10 to it - and how much space will it likely need? Is it easy enough to move games across as and when? 

 

If you connect both the new and existing drive internally, you can then boot into some sort of Linux distribution on a USB stick. Because neither of the drives are actually being booted into it's then very safe to clone the contents from one into the other. My favourite way to do this is to boot into Ubuntu and do with this GParted, which is a relatively slick GUI tool, but something like Clonezilla should also work. Might be difficult if the existing drive has more than 240GB of data on it.

 

I don't think there is any justification for a clean installation if the only part that is being changed is the storage, and the system is otherwise working well.

 

9 hours ago, earlymodernsteve said:

Is it easy enough to move games across as and when? 

 

Yes, this is very easy, particularly with Steam.

 

16 minutes ago, jonamok said:

Do ATX motherboards tend to have enough hookups for me to connect up two separate AIOs? I.e. one on the CPU and one on the GPU?

 

This has almost nothing to do with the motherboard, and everything to do with the case. But yes, a typical ATX tower will have room for two radiators. Whether it has the mounting points is a different question. Also AIOs for GPUs are pretty rare - more typical are aftermarket waterblocks which are intended to be used with a custom loop. Although that's still pretty esoteric.

[jonamok]

12 minutes ago, Liamness said:

This has almost nothing to do with the motherboard, and everything to do with the case. But yes, a typical ATX tower will have room for two radiators. Whether it has the mounting points is a different question. Also AIOs for GPUs are pretty rare - more typical are aftermarket waterblocks which are intended to be used with a custom loop. Although that's still pretty esoteric.

I assumed AIOs took power from a connection to the MB (and I would therefore need 2 such connections). Are you saying they all routinely have those hookups?

 

Also NZXT at least do a mounting kit for connecting one of their AIOs to a stripped down graphics card. Though I agree a custom loop with GPU/CPU blocks is likely a nicer route.

[Liamness]

An AIO for a CPU will plug into the motherboard's CPU fan header, but it will probably also take power from the PSU. Googling this (never dabbled in water cooling in my life) that seems to usually take the form of a SATA connection. Probably difficult to generalise about GPU AIOs because they're relatively rare, and will have to be specifically adapted to the GPU in question.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

The last two AIO coolers I have used have required a single fan header and a USB header for the RGB stuff.

[earlymodernsteve]

Thanks guys. If I do a fresh install or clone, do I need to clean up the Windows files on the old HDD? I'll set the SSD as the boot drive in the Bios but would want to keep the rest of my data on the larger drive. 

[Siri]

1 hour ago, earlymodernsteve said:

Thanks guys. If I do a fresh install or clone, do I need to clean up the Windows files on the old HDD? I'll set the SSD as the boot drive in the Bios but would want to keep the rest of my data on the larger drive. 

You'd probably have to do some cleanup eventually, as Windows tends to think that there's two installs and brings up a boot menu before it loads up. I know there's a way to get rid of it in case it happens, but I honestly can't remember it after this long ago!

For the first time around though, you might want to leave it on if you fresh install - during the authentication stuff, windows looks for anything that resembles an previously authorised copy of windows, including installed hard drives. Once the new copy of windows knows it's a legit copy, you can futz with the bootloader so it knows that's the only copy of windows you intend to use.

[milko]

13 hours ago, strider said:

I don't blame you. I already regret simply having a 1TB SSD in my new build. I've used half of it already and I haven't even started importing my photography pictures yet!

I think I'll just buy an external drive to save opening everything up.

 

For photos a fast-ish external drive or bog standard regular internal drive (either SSD or not) is fine, you maybe don't want to fill up your main disk with that stuff anyway.

[strider]

1 hour ago, milko said:

 

For photos a fast-ish external drive or bog standard regular internal drive (either SSD or not) is fine, you maybe don't want to fill up your main disk with that stuff anyway.

Cheers I will look at doing that then

[iknowgungfu]

10 hours ago, Liamness said:

 

This has almost nothing to do with the motherboard, and everything to do with the case. But yes, a typical ATX tower will have room for two radiators. Whether it has the mounting points is a different question. Also AIOs for GPUs are pretty rare - more typical are aftermarket waterblocks which are intended to be used with a custom loop. Although that's still pretty esoteric.

Just watch out for the size of the radiator. I've made an error in my meshify C case with a CPU cooler which can't fit due to the height of my RAM heatsinks!  Would never have even thought about that.

[Kryptonian]

On 27/06/2020 at 10:52, Siri said:

there's another 10 dudes blowing them up with little more than an office PC with a 750ti jerry rigged to it , or cheaper.

 

This is me - I was interested in what you could get for a minimal outlay and spent £90 on an i5-4570 with 4gb last August. I spent another £50 on a GTX 750 and 4gb more memory but then didn't do much with it due to life getting in the way etc. I'm going to be made redundant in September so funds are tight but am looking to upgrade it a bit and actually start using it. I must've registered for steam years ago as when I tried to recently my email address was in use so I had to go through some convoluted reset process where I had to name some games that were in my library. I hadn't actually bought anything so was struggling and I think the customer service guy must've just taken pity on me - when I got my account back it just had half-life/blue shift/opposing force and then it came back to me that I had typed in the product key some time back in the early 2000s so I didn't have to keep track of the CDs...

 

I have since bought a couple of games (and not played them).

 

So, I want to upgrade my GPU. From reading this it sounds like new cards are due later on in the year but I'm not interested/can't afford to be at the cutting edge and my monitor is only 1920x1200 anyway. It seems that the 1650 Super would be a decent upgrade, more so as I won't be buying a new monitor. Does this sound about right? £150 would be my max budget. £100 would be ideal but I don't think that's realistic? I have tried to understand the naming convention of the GeForce cards but it appears to be total horseshit - I thought a previous gen card (1050? 1080?) would be loads cheaper but apparently not.

 

I had considered upping the memory from 8gb to 16gb but it seems daft buying DDR3 memory as if for some reason I could upgrade the motherboard/cpu next year or the year after it would just be a waste as I would then need DDR4 so the GPU has jumped to the top of the list for the time being. 

 

Any advice appreciated - apart from spending hundreds on a proper PC...

[Siri]

Naming convention went weird with NVidia because of how hard they wanted to push ray tracing as the next best thing when it was actually pretty garbage. But basically:

10 Series - Pascal (Before RTX)
16 Series - Turing without Ray-Tracing stuff (After RTX, confusingly)
20 Series - Turing with Ray-Tracing stuff (RTX)

The problem with the 10 Series is that because it's the previous series of cards and they came out after the current generation of consoles, they're still extremely relevant even four years on - roughly, a 1650 Super beats out a 1060 by 15%, which can mean anything from 5-10fps for anything that's not CSGO, so you'll probably find both around the same price depending on model.

Anyway, a 1650 Super should be pretty good for 1080p if you can stretch the money (I've seen it for £150 on Amazon w/ Prime, tenner more on ebuyer but you should be able to shop around) - I'm currently using the next tier up from the previous generation, a 1070 (About 30%), and it's barely breaking a sweat on 1080p resolutions.

The closest thing on the AMD side of things is the RX 580, which has slightly less performance and uses slightly more power for around the , so for buying new NVidia is appropriate choice - However, AMD cards have devalued a lot because of how many flooded the market after Bitcoin Mining, so you might find a bargain second-hand.

For £100, you're embarrasingly close to new graphics cards that have the same grunt as the 750 non-ti in your computer - the RX550 is £80, but you'll get 10% more FPS out of it. Which is up to about 10 fps, if that. the GT1030 is 70-80 quid, but is also worse than a 750. the 1050ti is a big jump, however, and can be had for about £120 new and slaps right in between the middle of them both in terms of performance. As it's quite popular, you should be able to find a deal on it or get a nice second-hand card. Also, in comes in a variety of power-sipping variants like the 1650, including low profile if you're using a small form factor computer that pulls power from the PCI-E slot.

TL;DR @Kryptonian: The 1050ti is still very good for that £100-150 bracket. 1650 Super pushes that bracket even with discounts, but it's probably worth it for the money.

However, as I always like to recommend, go on youtube and search for these cards along with the games you would like to play (Say for example "Doom Eternal 1050ti"). You'll usually find some dude showing it on a computer similar to yours. and then do the same thing, but with a 750, and compare and contrast to see if it's even worth it for that money. At the end of the day, if you're tight on money, there would be nothing worse than spending a chunk of money and not feeling the benefit from the games you play immediately. And you'd be surprised how good a 750 still is in 2020!

[Kryptonian]

That’s really useful @Siri, thanks and it sounds like I must’ve made sense of what I was reading  

 

Psychologically I was/am having a hard time choosing a 1050ti over a 1650s just down to the age of it but that obviously doesn’t matter as much as I thought or at all? I’ll do some more research like you said  

[earlymodernsteve]

I'm running a 1050ti (although looking to upgrade soon) and it's still a solid card. Just played Outer Worlds on High settings with only a few framerate stutters when autosaving (admittedly with new CPU and 16gb Ram). There are videos of people getting good results in Death Stranding. I'd be happy enough keeping mine but I'm mainly reviewing PC games nowadays so upgrading is part of continuing that (small) income stream. 

[Siri]

53 minutes ago, Kryptonian said:

That’s really useful @Siri, thanks and it sounds like I must’ve made sense of what I was reading  

 

Psychologically I was/am having a hard time choosing a 1050ti over a 1650s just down to the age of it but that obviously doesn’t matter as much as I thought or at all? I’ll do some more research like you said  

 

It might well be the difference between a solid 60fps at that price bracket, which might be the bigger issue - OTOH, if you've been on a 750 for this long, you're probably more inclined to playing with stuff like Shadow quality to squeeze performance anyway.

 

Shop around, too - check any valid deals on HUKD and so on. I've been having a mull over recommending used stuff and checking prices on CEX, only to find a still active record for: an RX570 for £125, which would edge out a bog standard 1650 or a 1060 for about a tenner less. It's also a big step from the likes of the 1050ti, provided your system has the space and power supply/connections for it. My original post on budget specs did bang on about ex-office PCs, which are notorious for having the exact amount of cables it requires to run without a graphics card, which is a clear problem when you want to do just that.

 

One more note, mind - please be aware that future proofing is a fool's errand, especially this close to a new console generation! Again, look at the games you want to play right now, and make your decision based on that.

[Kryptonian]

26 minutes ago, Siri said:

My original post on budget specs did bang on about ex-office PCs, which are notorious for having the exact amount of cables it requires to run without a graphics card, which is a clear problem when you want to do just that.

Oh, I did put a Corsair 550w power supply in it last year too that I forgot to mention  

 

It does seem funny with most people in here spending loads on all the latest stuff and I’m years behind eeking our performance and looking for bargains

 

Thanks again!

[earlymodernsteve]

I've always been on the low spec side of things, forever getting games to run on systems under the minimum. There's a real joy in that but it's not tenable when needing to cover and review new games. I had a 1gb Radeon GPU for ages that punched above its weight. 

[Kryptonian]

5 minutes ago, earlymodernsteve said:

I've always been on the low spec side of things, forever getting games to run on systems under the minimum. There's a real joy in that but it's not tenable when needing to cover and review new games. I had a 1gb Radeon GPU for ages that punched above its weight. 

I do think part of me gets as much enjoyment from the research and putting the stuff together as I do playing the games

This is my case:

 

 

...

 

[Siri]

It honestly just depends what you get out of PC gaming - talking about RTX cards and being able to run Control at 4K using DLSS means bob-all if you turn it off after 10 minutes to go play another 10 hours of Slay The Spire.

Likewise, you'd be surprised at what passes for graphics presets these days - a lot of 2019 and 2020's gaming selection has shifted towards very resource heavy options for lighting and anti-ailiasing methods to future proof their work, which in turn means that 'Maximum' preset is no longer attainable at a stable framerate. Yet, amusingly, dialing down a couple of those settings would see no tangible impact to your gameplay experience, but would make the framerate jump by about 20%.

It also doesn't help that NVidia really starts neglecting legacy cards about 2 generations after production stops, if not sooner. Things like DLSS is understandable because it requires the AI Processors on RTX Cards, but then you see shit like Integer Scaling and G-Sync over HDMI not being supported on 10 Series cards, you do have to wonder if they have interest in a customer's previous investments.

Cards like the RX570 might be an old-ass card architecturally due to Polaris, but it's only being produced and sold to this very day BECAUSE they're still supported in terms of drivers and relative performance to price. 

[bradigor]

I've always been on low spec previously. Right to the point it makes more sense to game on a console over PC. I just got very, VERY lucky recently. Hoping I can stay mid-range with some well timed upgrades moving forward. 

[bradigor]

Ok first of all, I just had a HOLY SHIT moment...

 

Got two monitors a 24 and a 27" both 1920x1080 75hz with Freesync. So have them set up so I can have a game running on one and OBS on the other when streaming. Anyway, decided to try out Nvidia's surround option for a giggle. Tried it with Project Cars 2 and despite both monitors being different physical sizes, it matched up quite well. So did a race and even with the bezel down the middle it was an amazing experience. I mean, it really made a huge difference to judging the corners and the space around me. It blew me away. 

 

Now, I know a triple setup with help with the bezel down the middle issue, so my question is thus. 

Can I run a triple monitor setup of a single RTX 2060? It has a single HDMI and Display Port, plus the other HDMI via the motherboard. What additional stuff would I need? This is a no rush thing and will only be done well down the line if I happen across another super cheap 1920x1080 75hz. 

[layten]

25 minutes ago, bradigor said:

Can I run a triple monitor setup of a single RTX 2060? It has a single HDMI and Display Port, plus the other HDMI via the motherboard. What additional stuff would I need? This is a no rush thing and will only be done well down the line if I happen across another super cheap 1920x1080 75hz. 

A 2060 should have 2 display ports 1 HDMI 1 DVI-D and a USB Type C connector. You do not want to be using the HDMI port on the motherboard.