Random Hardware topics

[Colif]

After looking at costs and how much I have now, I worked out the main difference between both builds is how much is left on my credit card after I pay most of it off. Not spending all my cash I have, going to keep about 1k for any unseen extras like that extra 300 you had.
and possible custom PSU cables.

Not worried about leaving some on credit, I have spent the last few weeks bringing its balance down to about 200 now. It will be all over the place in the next few weeks.

Worked out I can arrange to pick up the 9800x3d & nvme locally and pay cash for them instead of putting them on credit.
Its the same thing anyway, I would have just paid the charge on my card as soon as it showed up. Might ring them up and confirm they have them there before going out. No point wasting time.

Mum took PC's life into her own hands, she turned it off. I was going to just leave it on, but no... I don't really care if it never starts again.

Need to buy 2 long USB extension cords to attach mums new PC to her mouse and keyboard as she is going to use same table, but my case won't fit in the corner where it is.

just found out my ISP offers 5x my download speed for just $15 extra per month, need to enquire about that after I upgrade. Need to ask if it needs a different modem as not going through that again. They sent last one out and hadn't set up their backend to deal with it. Didn't have internet for a few days. It might use same modem

 

[Colif]

Since I have a credit for some hardware with one company, I sent email to them today asking if I needed to advise them before sending an order to them so they can match it to payment, and I got an auto reply saying they really busy right now and may not reply for a week...
thats nice to know. Could be related to them moving a store next weekend.

I was going to buy half the parts off them, now I might just pick another company - maybe one I got ram off - and use credit to buy something else later... not sure what, maybe another 4tb ssd. 10tb of space might be enough.

Adds $245 onto my bill but I can cope. Just leave that on my credit card, fix up later. I was mostly paying it all off as soon as it hit, so it won't hurt it.

Two days to go before I actually start buying the beast

 

[Colif]

The only parts I haven't ordered so far are the CPU & NVMe.
looking at a route tracker to the local store, it offers me cheapest first... no, not walking 11km
recommended is to drive... who would have guessed. Not having a car does have its disadvantages some times.
most of the routes don't take me anywhere near where I want to go apart from Car. The bus ones are way out.

Guess its just easier to buy online.

wait for my order for

1. Case
2. Motherboard
3. PSU
4. Win 11

to clear before I put more on.

Its almost starting to feel real. Once I get more boxes I will know. Not expecting anything this week anyway.

 

[Colif]

4 slot card, faster than a 4090. Never released.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I asked my wife how much I should spend on her build. She has no idea what she's talking about, so she said, $6000. I said if I do that that I was switching computers with her. She said that was fine because she liked the lights on mine

It's very tempting, but I don't think so. Not going to rip my own wife off. Would be nice to have that 5090 and the 9950x3D. Also, she never pays me back for anything, so the chances are excellent that I'm actually paying for this.

 

[Colif]

All my parts ordered now. Just have to wait.
CPU & Nvme may show up this week.
remainder probably not ship much before Friday.

6k could buy you a nice PC.

My mum probably thinks they cheaper than they are. I not telling her how much I am spending, she would have said no. I learned a long time ago to not tell her. She has no idea how expensive my headphone stuff is, outside of the wiim since she gave it to me for Xmas.

My new PC is no where near 6k though. Maybe if I also bought a GPU it would be closer. I wouldn't be buying it now if I also needed a new GPU for the build.

 

[Zed Clampet]

6k could buy you a nice PC.

TLDR: It would really be my money

\

 

[Colif]

Yeah, I just spent $3066 in the last two days. I get that feeling.
All on credit card but I don't leave much behind. As soon as I charged 1300 onto it yesterday, I immediately paid 1lk off.
Waiting for other half to clear before I pay it tomorrow. Not going to pay anymore extra interest than I need to. The difference won't stay on there long.
Not buying anything else big this year.

So I ordered my ram a week ago and it was only today they turn around and say, oh thats out of stock, do you want these other two sticks instead... but they didn't give me a direct link, just name of the sticks and they have 2 versions of sticks that it could be.
I mistakenly thought Cas Latency meant something

but it really doesn't so I told them that either of the two I found would do.
I don't really want to wait too long for all the parts.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Yeah, I just spent $3066 in the last two days. I get that feeling.
All on credit card but I don't leave much behind. As soon as I charged 1300 onto it yesterday, I immediately paid 1lk off.
Waiting for other half to clear before I pay it tomorrow. Not going to pay anymore extra interest than I need to. The difference won't stay on there long.
Not buying anything else big this year.

So I ordered my ram a week ago and it was only today they turn around and say, oh thats out of stock, do you want these other two sticks instead... but they didn't give me a direct link, just name of the sticks and they have 2 versions of sticks that it could be.
I mistakenly thought Cas Latency meant something

but it really doesn't so I told them that either of the two I found would do.
I don't really want to wait too long for all the parts.

What do your reliable sources say about Skytech prebuilts?

I'm thinking about just getting my wife this PC.

They advertise that it's capable of running Fortnite

 

[Colif]

Oh look, rainbow puke colour scheme. I haven't thought about rgb on new PC yet. It wasn't a priority. only ram and GPU will have any, MB lighting is meant to be subtle. Since new case doesn't have dark tinted glass and almost everything inside is all white, I should see inside it better than the black hole my PC internals would be without RGB.

I dislike listings that don't show what motherboard it has.
ones with that case and CPU mainly come with 5070 on their site:

https://skytechgaming.com/product-category/pre-built-pcs/o11-vision/

Fans: 8
Motherboard: B650
RAM: 32G DDR5 6000MHZ RGB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
Primary Hard Drive: 1 TB NVMe Gen4
Power Supply: 850W GOLD
Networking: 802.11 ac

No mention of who makes motherboard, Ram, GPU (apart from it being a 5070 TI), Nvme or PSU
Essentially, trust us bro

I expect you need to ask them at time of purchase what MB it will have. This seems familiar to your PC recently.

Also no clue who makes the AIO

8 fans... 2 exhaust fans on the back aren't necessary... but hey, more RGB. That PC is screaming at me... go away. You not the audience for this. It looks pretty... that is the point. AIO as intake and 3 fans on its floor mean no heat has any chance of staying in case for long. The second fan is just for looks.

Buy a New PC in 2025 and only get Wifi 5 on it. 802.11 ac is what my current board has, ac only 11 years old. But hey. IEEE 802.11be is the latest standard.

That entire PC is sort of the opposite of what I would want if buying a prebuilt/custom. I want to know all the parts before I pay for them so I know they should be good.
Not being in dark about whats inside the box... though for many that is fine. They don't care. They are the audience of these PC. All they want is the GPU, everything else doesn't matter... which is far from the truth.

O11 Vision

Operating System: Windows 11 HomeCPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3DCase: O11 Vision BlackCPU Cooler: 360mm AIOFans: 8Motherboard: B650RAM: 32G DDR5 6000MHZ RGBGraphics:

skytechgaming.com

No idea about recently
This was 2 years ago:

Don't accidentally buy a Skynet PC instead

 

[Zed Clampet]

Oh look, rainbow puke colour scheme. I haven't thought about rgb on new PC yet. It wasn't a priority. only ram and GPU will have any, MB lighting is meant to be subtle. Since new case doesn't have dark tinted glass and almost everything inside is all white, I should see inside it better than the black hole my PC internals would be without RGB.

I dislike listings that don't show what motherboard it has.
ones with that case and CPU mainly come with 5070 on their site:

https://skytechgaming.com/product-category/pre-built-pcs/o11-vision/

No mention of who makes motherboard, Ram, GPU (apart from it being a 5070 TI), Nvme or PSU
Essentially, trust us bro

I expect you need to ask them at time of purchase what MB it will have. This seems familiar to your PC recently.

Also no clue who makes the AIO

8 fans... 2 exhaust fans on the back aren't necessary... but hey, more RGB. That PC is screaming at me... go away. You not the audience for this. It looks pretty... that is the point. AIO as intake and 3 fans on its floor mean no heat has any chance of staying in case for long. The second fan is just for looks.

Buy a New PC in 2025 and only get Wifi 5 on it. 802.11 ac is what my current board has, ac only 11 years old. But hey. IEEE 802.11be is the latest standard.

That entire PC is sort of the opposite of what I would want if buying a prebuilt/custom. I want to know all the parts before I pay for them so I know they should be good.
Not being in dark about whats inside the box... though for many that is fine. They don't care. They are the audience of these PC. All they want is the GPU, everything else doesn't matter... which is far from the truth.

O11 Vision

Operating System: Windows 11 HomeCPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3DCase: O11 Vision BlackCPU Cooler: 360mm AIOFans: 8Motherboard: B650RAM: 32G DDR5 6000MHZ RGBGraphics:

skytechgaming.com

No idea about recently
This was 2 years ago:

Don't accidentally buy a Skynet PC instead

I can email them and find out who makes what and what the motherboard is, but I found a post on reddit that said the hardware was a mixture of gigabyte and msi.

Not sure where you got Wifi 5? This has 802.11

None of the prebuilts on Amazon list the motherboard, and only the one I bought earlier and sucked listed the manufacturer of the other one. I think this looks like a pretty good deal for my wife. got the 9800X3D and the 9070 XT. It's got enough RAM and enough SSD space. My wife will like the color scheme, although it says in the ad that this may be different on the actual PC.

Looks like a go for me so long as the motherboard is okay, but they may give me a range of motherboards, not sure.

Edit: Found someone who said their motherboard was a Gigabyte B650, but I don't know which model they have The ad says "additional ports may vary" so I'm guessing they won't give me a specific answer, but if it's a Gigabyte that supports the CPU then I'm in. She's not a gamer. She doesn't need to know any of that, just that it's probably reliable.

 

[Colif]

Not sure where you got Wifi 5? This has 802.11

The standard has been retroactively labelled as Wi-Fi 5 by Wi-Fi Alliance.

IEEE 802.11ac-2013 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

that is Wifi 5

they all have a version of 802.11, it gets updated over the years. Wifi 7 is 802.11be

If you going to buy one, ask them about all the mystery parts before you hand cash over. It might help.
I wouldn't buy a Prebuilt off Amazon then if they don't tell you whats inside.

 

[Zed Clampet]

IEEE 802.11ac-2013 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

that is Wifi 5

they all have a version of 802.11, it gets updated over the years. Wifi 7 is 802.11be

If you going to buy one, ask them about all the mystery parts before you hand cash over. It might help.
I wouldn't buy a Prebuilt off Amazon then if they don't tell you whats inside.

Ah, I see. Well she won't be downloading games, so it should be sufficient.

 

[Colif]

i thought the CPU box would be bigger, the 5800x3d came in a larger one. It didn't include a cooler either.

 

[Colif]

So I can't get the ram I ordered, and the only alternative they offered was a set of intel ram that doesn't work with my motherboard.

So I am cancelling that order and have had to make do with 32gb of ram for the time being.

It sure is pretty though

not my case, just an example of the bling lol

So much for subtle.
I didn't really want my sticks to stand out as its bad enough I can only use two now.
Might look good on my motherboard though.

F5-6000J2836G16GX2-TR5NS - Overview - G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd.

Trident Z5 Royal Neo is the luxury-class of extreme overclock performance DDR5 memory designed for AMD AM5 platforms, featuring a crown jewel design with a crystalline light bar for a magnificent display of customizable RGB lighting and electroplated aluminum heatspreaders with a mirrored finish...

www.gskill.com

I might get it this week based on order progress. Just need motherboard to plug everything into then... and the case to contain it, and the PSU to power it. They all due next week. Hopefully.

 

[Colif]

Kind of a waste of time buying latest Intel and a PCIe 5 drive if you wanted to get max speed.
It is bottlenecked and max speed you can get is 12, not 14

Intel Arrow Lake processors bottleneck PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs by 16%, limiting peak speeds to 12GB/s instead of 14GB/s

Thankfully, the issue does not impact PCIe M.2 add-in cards

www.tomshardware.com

Sux to find out afterwards

AMD can run max speed.

 

[Zed Clampet]

Kind of a waste of time buying latest Intel and a PCIe 5 drive if you wanted to get max speed.
It is bottlenecked and max speed you can get is 12, not 14

Intel Arrow Lake processors bottleneck PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs by 16%, limiting peak speeds to 12GB/s instead of 14GB/s

Thankfully, the issue does not impact PCIe M.2 add-in cards

www.tomshardware.com

Sux to find out afterwards

AMD can run max speed.

fanboy tryhard

 

[Colif]

it is facts. You can choose not to believe them all you want.

Latency issues surrounding Intel's Core 200S series CPUs affect M.2 storage ports on LGA 1851 motherboards, leading to reduced performance. The SSD review reports that Arrow Lake CPUs have a bottleneck on the PCIe lanes dedicated to motherboard M.2 slots, causing a (roughly) 2GB/s bandwidth reduction compared to previous-gen motherboards when using the fastest and Best SSDs available.

The storage-focused review outlet initially discovered the flaw during testing when a 14GB/s-capable PCIe 5.0 SSD only achieved 12GB/s in an Arrow-Lake-based test rig. After reaching out to board makers and Intel, it was found that the issue is Arrow Lake-specific. The review outlet has been unable to confirm any Z890 motherboards operating PCIe 5.0 SSDs at speeds beyond 14GB/s, whereas previous-gen Z790 boards have no problem hitting the maximum speeds.

its a regression, their previous CPU on older boards could run them at 14.

 

[Zed Clampet]

it is facts. You can choose not to believe them all you want.


its a regression, their previous CPU on older boards could run them at 14.

I didn't say it wasn't a fact. I was just pointing out another fact.

 

[neogunhero]

Windowshopping again. This time for a 2TB SSD. I'd like to get one for my upcoming Win 11 install, but finding one with all the features I want seems to be a bit harder than I thought. There are just so many SSD's out there, and sites like Amazon and Newegg don't do the best job of explaining all the specific details.

The details of this recap may not be accurate due to me not looking inside for a while, but I believe this is what is going on in my setup:

Currently, I have two M2 SSDs and a SATA SSD. One M2 is inside of a M2-to-SATA enclosure, due to not being able to fit in one of the M2 slots (second slot is shorter and slower Gen2, and SSD didn’t fit with no extra screw hole in mobo to mount it). So I have my fastest 2500MB/s in the M2 slot, and both SSDs connected via SATA are running at 500MB/s. Speed is not much of an issue to me, everything still loads just fine, but my main SSD has an issue: it’s DRAMless which causes downloads to be incredibly slow to it. So really I’m stuck downloading and playing games on the slower SSDs because they download games at full speed and I don’t want to move them, the DRAMless one has issues keeping up read/write speeds during downloads and copying larger files. Playing games on it isn’t an issue but downloading is.

SO, I want to replace main M2 slot with a durable SSD. It’s only Gen3, so it maxes at 3500MB/s which is fine to me. I want a 2TB SSD with good cache, good DRAM, good 3D NAND, all the bells and whistles so it doesn’t give me any issues, at a reasonable price preferably below $120. I think I can move my current main drive to the shorter slot and reduce its speed to a max 1500MB/s which is still faster than SATA, and keep both SATA drives for backups.

 

[Colif]

I would look at a Samsung 980 if you can get them still. Maybe a pro model.
They have dram buffer and high quality nand flash
They backwards compatible so will run on the slot, just at 3500mb max. Max is actually 7 but it gives room to grow.
I wouldn't think they cost much where you are.

2TB SSD 980 PRO PCle 4.0 NVMe M.2 | Samsung Australia

Explore Samsung Memory & Storage (MZ-V8P2T0BW) - The 2TB SSD 980 PRO PCle 4.0 NVMe M.2 offers Intelligent TurboWrite. Contact Samsung Australia today.

samsung.com

All the parts I am waiting for, with my PC, are in the mail. Should get them in the next few days.
Yay

 

[Zed Clampet]

I've got a 2TB Samsung 990 EVO Plus someone (only you two) can have for the cost of shipping. I changed my mind and got the 4 TB version and have no room for this. It's currently sitting next to me on the nightstand for some reason.

 

[Colif]

The shipping costs for me would exceed cost of me buying one locally... so there is one off the list.

I think I should be fine for storage for a while. I may still buy a 4tb ssd to add to PC, I have a credit I can use for half its cost... just waiting to see if I need credit for other things. Unknown costs. Might need to replace fans in new Case, some people reported problems with them.. but only some.

990 EVO Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD MZ-V9S1T0BW | Samsung Australia

990 EVO Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD (MZ-V9S1T0BW) - See the benefits and full features of this product. Learn more and find the best Memory&Storage for you at Samsung Australia.

www.samsung.com

thats a hybrid drive, it can either be PCIe 4/4 lanes or PCIe 5/2 lanes
I thought about it myself but decided on 990 Pro for some reason.
If I wanted PCIe5 I would have ordered a 9100 Pro but I don't care about PCIe5, too much heat. Can't really see the speed difference outside of benchmarks. Or if you move massive files around.

It doesn't have dram buffer, it uses system memory

Cache Memory
HMB(Host Memory Buffer)

All about Host Memory Buffer, the tech that's making SSDs cheaper

HMB, or Host Memory Buffer simply means the SSD uses memory from your computing device instead on the drive itself for write caching. This means lower prices with only a small performance hit.

www.pcworld.com

Maybe that was why I got the 990 Pro.

 

[Colif]

I may not need many screws to construct this PC
case is all toolless, the fans are preinstalled so I don't need to touch them besides attaching hub to motherboard and power.

1. 4 screws to hold PSU in
2. stand offs for CPU cooler maybe (can't recall)
3. 4 screws to attach CPU cooler. it won't stay on otherwise
4. Obviously the mounting screws for the Motherboard to the case.
5. two or three screws to hold GPU in (I had forgotten bracket).

not sure I missed anything?

Nvme slots on motherboard are all tool less, no need for a screwdriver to remove the heatsink covers or attach nvme themselves.
no ssd or hdd so no need for those screws. They can stay in the plastic screw box that comes with case.

I may get all the parts before the weekend but I have things I have to do before I can contemplate making it. So no real rush.
At least I can make most of it without taking gpu out of this, so I can use this until I swap that over. CPU has radeon graphics though not amazing, good enough to build using.

 

[Zed Clampet]

CPU has radeon graphics though not amazing

Amateur. @BeardyHat could play Stalker 2 on that.