Oh yeah, I certainly agree. I made sure when I chose my current Dell XPS15 laptop to get an SSD drive, boots up and into Windows in about 7 seconds.

Instinctively I go for the upper 2/3 of the current tech tree, I guess. I mean, if I'm going to spend money, I want to make sure I don't have any regrets.

Your feedback has been super helpful! I really think you are right, there's no need to reach for the high end. I mean, if you had not stepped in, I would be building a super computer :)

Seems like you're right, I keep seeing build videos and the AMD 5 is what they reach for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9-x3jRSQvQ

Ha! The Rules of the Universe will only allow that to happen 91 days after I buy my system.

Hmmm... is there a chance this could happen? :arrgh!:

^ I seem to remember Gary ( GT182 ) built an 8 core AMD Ryzen unit fairly cheaply and liked it very much. He had said it would run anything he was doing and anything that he would anticipate in the future.

That may be the way to go and put more money into a higher end video card and Ram to better enjoy your simulations.

Notice anything funny about that case in the video you posted, Neal?

It doesn't have any front panel slots anymore. I know I bought one.

https://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggIm...46-285-V08.jpg

Lucky I had an external USB DVD player, plus mine doesn't have enough fans

Make sure your case has enough fans ... for my budget I went with AMD CPU and AMD video card ... AMD makes a CPU that has the video on it which is great if your video card goes bad.

Good luck :up: it is a learning curve in today's market ... read the reviews and try out the reviews on newegg too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9-x...ature=emb_logo

Neal, I used to live this stuff. Actually, I used to be an EE/EET with the degree and everything.

I hate seeing people over-commit and over-buy tech hardware.

It always comes down to "what some guy said".

What guy?
"Dunno. I think it was a review I read."

Do they work for Intel or AMD? Sometimes they goof with people to get a better quarterly bonus.

"*Shrug*"


:yep:


This hobby is famous for this stuff. Remember reading about sticking video cards in a 300 degree oven to "remelt the solder" and make them faster? :haha:

Yeah, I didn't think of that, that these build videos were likely to be sponsored.

And what is the deal with no front drive bays? I was joking about not having DVDs since my XPS15 did not have a dvd player but I see all mid tower cases are missing front drive bays..?

https://www.pcmag.com/picks/the-best-pc-tower-cases

I do like the move to clean and elegant designs over the mech warrior cases. :shucks:

I just had to re-install Win 10 with some programs since my boot 'disk', a six-year-old Kingston SSD with 240 Gb, died.
I prefer those solid state disks meanwhile, they seem to work as long as normal HDs, but are way faster. They are also more expensive, but.. depends:
Bought a 500 Gb Samsung Evo for 80 Euros, also much faster than the old Kingston. Booting up Win 10 with all bells and whistles takes 10-12 seconds, shutdown appx. the same. I put all sim games on the SSD, and they runs smooth as silk.

Still have an older 4-core i4 working, at 3,8 GHz and with 16 Gb ram, with an old Nvidia.
Indeed i will rather get a faster graphics card than a new PC ..

Still use a normal mechanical HD for data, photos, correspondence and the like, and an external one via USB3 for backups. The latter one is easier in case than using the off-room NAS.

Go for a fast processor (3.8 to 4.7 GHz), the number of cores is not (yet) mandatory; few programs and games can use more than 2 anyway.
And use a good/fast graphic card.

If you use HighTec 3d-building things like Solidworks it will still do fast enough.

Yeah, I'm still researching. ET2SN and Quatro have been really helpful, probably talked me off the ledge of getting too much computer (I never thought there was such a thing).

Here's a nice case Neal for only $50 notice that it has plenty of fans and two front slots mine in post #23 is made more for water cooling which I don't trust or have. This one is sold out at newegg, but maybe you can get it somewhere else.

https://www.newegg.com/white-fractal...82E16811352067

https://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggIm...52-067-V01.jpg

Yeah, that's what I', looking for, especially like the white. Looks like a lot of components are out of stock, PSUs especially. :k_confused:

Hi Onkel Neal heres another thought on upgrading with a lot of new hardware coming out this summer maybe its a good idea to wait a while until late September then all the prices of the older Cpu's Gpu's M/b's Ram ect comes down in price.
Theres nothing worse than spending $1500-$2000 of your hard earned money on a new rig in May/June this year then by August same Rigs $1250-$1500 that would leave a bitter taste in ones mouth for sure also to get rid of the old stock giving you a freebie a good gaming keyboard and mouse.

If you plan for a PC-bound VR set, you need to invest seriously to have performance reserves. You want these reserves in VR.

I know that Oculus Quest does not depend on and link up to PC like Rift did, but its range of titles is more limited and it cannot do some of the stuff you find for the Rift. Oculus runs some strange policies there, banning some Rift titles that have good reputation from being tested on Quest, although the developers say they are ready and have working versions. Also, no Google Earth+Streetview on Quest. Which is an absolute KO criterion, at least for me. Also, its all sold out currently.

i7 8700K is good stuff. I bought this one myself in autumn 2017. It eats everything I throw at it both in VR and 2D, but you need very good and huge air cooler (I have, it can be done, silently), or water cooling.

Thanks guys.

Once again I am leaning toward a simple prebuilt solution, like this
https://deals.dell.com/en-us/productdetail/4jnv

It's simple and easy and takes any worry of issues, mistakes building, and compatibility out of the equation. Plus half the components I look up are out of stock. When nothing goes wrong, building a PC is simple lego block building. I'm sure it's satisfying. But if I make a mistake, or there's BIOS issues, or anything else goes sideways, I have to figure it out.

Or maybe this, quieter with wc
https://deals.dell.com/en-us/productdetail/4ioh

Water cooling kinda died down after the "big horse power"/bit coin mining thing died out.

Think about it, would you put a fish tank on top of your TV and stereo? In case anything goes wrong, it will go wrong in very big way. :timeout:

Silicon, electricity, and water still don't mix. :up:

Even a fully sealed water cooling set up will require maint. after a while. :03:

True, I'll probably regret that at some point, but it should be a quieter rig.

Done. Based on my XPS15 laptop being 4 years old and still more than enough PC, this desktop PC should be viable until 2030.

Now... the wait :haha:

Thanks so much for your feedback and help.

Just asking: is there any new alternative to air coolers, good air coolers? I know these can work well since I use a good (and BIG one) myself (Noctua ND15), still there are two or three games that can out the temps to dangerous maximums bove 90°C that you do not want to run as default temps without wanting to shorten the lifespan of your CPUs, it happens even easier in VR.

Too late for me to jump in, but here are a few comments for others:
1) AMD Ryzen 3600 is king at this point. It may loose a few FPS compared to Intel, but at a MUCH lower cost. If you wan to overclock Intel makes it impressivly difficult for you as you have to buy a specific line of CPU and MB.
2) The AMD MB to get should be ASUS and with the new 550 chipset to support PCI express 4. Asrock has recently seen poor quality.
3) Cooling, this has been tested extensively on various channels, BUT the fact of the matter is that closed loop water cooling is only better if you simply dont like big coolers like the Noctua ones. Aircooling using Noctua 15 is still just as good as the best watercooled ones.

The setup I have in mind for my next build:
mATX (because I dont need a build in CD/DVD drive)

ASUS PRIME B550M-A motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X Wraith Spire CPU
Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4
ASUS Radeon RX 5700 XT ROG STRIX OC - 8GB GDDR6 RAM
Fractal design meshify C tower mini (because it looks amazing!)

Add MEM, disks, PSU etc as you need.