Question Intel Build for NVIDIA RTX 3070

[Oussebon]

This thread has been hijacked so many times it doesn't even know which country it's from

@Lucasi_F I suggest making your own topic because what advice is being given and who to is already confused as hell in this topic.

If you've a high refresh rate 1440 (120hz/144hz/165hz etc) the a 3070 would probably perform great in everything out now and for awhile to come. If you have a 60hz monitor then the 3070 is almost undoubtedly overkill. But you'd always have room to upgrade monitor later if that's the case.

Agreed, though I always say it's never worth upgrading the GPU for a monitor upgrade that's far away - because by the time you have a monitor that 'unlocks' your GPU's performance, newer and better GPUs will be out and you could have just got one of them instead.

 

[TheRoonDogg]

This thread has been hijacked so many times it doesn't even know which country it's from

@Lucasi_F I suggest making your own topic because what advice is being given and who to is already confused as hell in this topic.

Agreed, though I always say it's never worth upgrading the GPU for a monitor upgrade that's far away - because by the time you have a monitor that 'unlocks' your GPU's performance, newer and better GPUs will be out and you could have just got one of them instead.

I'm w/ ya on the validity of that point, but alas, said point is always valid unless you upgrade nearly everything unilaterly each time. Get a great GPU but still using an old CPU? Bottleneck. New monitor but older GPU, wasted smoothness (potentially). New CPU but old motherboard, like trying to fit the square peg into the round hole. It's an endless cycle.

 

[andrewmac]

buy a 4k monitor, not 1080.

indeed

 

[Oussebon]

but alas, said point is always valid unless you upgrade nearly everything unilaterly each time

Not really.

If one goes to 4k the limitation will likely still be the GPU anyway in many cases. Or at 1440p high refresh / 1440p ultrawide even if there is some limitation from the older CPU relative to whatever top of the line CPU is current, it may not be so very much in most cases - far, far smaller than the bottleneck imposed on the GPU by an inadequate monitor.

Edit: And on the other hand, if the GPU is indeed bottlenecked seven ways to Sunday by the CPU and you know it will be before you buy the GPU.. well, it sounds like you shouldn't buy that GPU until you really are in a position to upgrade the other parts required to let it deliver the performance you're paying for. Otherwise you're not getting what you're paying for, just as with a 3080 and a 1080p 60hz monitor.

 

[ShadowTiger]

Chalk up one more vote for a larger SSD rather than an expansive HDD. If you're storing files, an external drive is nice. I got a 10 Terabyte External drive from Staples for $160 last year. Costco sometimes has a 5 TB portable USB 3.0 external for $90 on sale. Of course, this is always a case of "All your eggs in one basket" so multiple cheaper 2 TB drives might be better. I work in a data recovery center and I hear all the sob stories. Better to have half your data than no data.

An HDD can be slow to do what you need to do. I built a beefy PC in 2017 and after doing enough in SkyrimSE with 100 mods, my quicksave took 25 seconds, up from about 2 seconds when I first started. I can only imagine how much faster that would be on an NVMe M.2 SSD.

Besides, who has dozens and dozens of large games installed all at once? I'm never happy when I do. It creates discipline to finish a game then install another. I'm saying that as a gaming addict that never uninstalls their games and keeps getting bored in one game and installing another.

 

[Oussebon]

Of course, this is always a case of "All your eggs in one basket" so multiple cheaper 2 TB drives might be better.

That's not really a good strategy for a home user either though as you just have more points of failure; also it's significantly more hassle to juggle things between multiple smaller drives. Or so I found it.

The best solution is to back up the data. e.g to cloud storage or to a NAS or an external drive. And/or some kind of RAID array though that's pushing the boat out a bit for home users (sure is for me).

Internal drives can also be less vulnerable as they're physically protected inside a (usually) steel case, and the cooling is better; large and fast external drives can run relatively hot. Also, USB devices can be disconnected more easily e.g. physical accident or a problem with Windows/drivers that causes USB devices to disconnect and reconnect.

Better to have half your data than no data.

But best to have all your data - because you backed it up!

Obviously a lot of people don't back up their data but that shouldn't be a concern here because we're able to advise the person to back up their stuff.

Besides, who has dozens and dozens of large games installed all at once? I'm never happy when I do.

Quite a few people actually. I'm one of them

Well, not dozens, because you don't need dozens of modern large games to fill up even a large SSD, given how many GBs they weigh in at these days. And I don't even have Warzone installed!

I also use a large HDD to have backups of my games to avoid redownloading, as some of my larger titles will take several days to redownload over our slow broadband connection.