Random Hardware topics

[neogunhero]

New Video card for @Zed Clampet

der8auer uses that same card in his personal rig:

View: https://youtu.be/o21CDqlCSps?si=Xho3aw4tDKji4cVo

---

---

What are your guy's thoughts on PNY brand GPUs? They have always been a bit strange to me. They don't give into any marketing gimmicks, but their cards are well reviewed, if anything they're a bit boring. They provide sufficient enough cooling while not innovating any new cooling techniques. Their website is plain and has no full page ads about how their dies are German Military Grade Engineering or whatever BS other brands fill their pages with. Could this be a case of a company not following market trends and instead focusing on delivering a quality product, or are they just a "good enough" kind of company?

On paper though, their cards seem great. Higher than average clock speeds just from what I've seen, good build quality, and currently it is the only 5060 Ti 16GB I see on Amazon for MSRP. Some other brands have cards with lower max boost speeds, which in the grand scheme of things is pretty incomprehensible for most people, but my thinking is if you're buying cards at that budget and do not want to overclock, you're gonna want the highest speeds you can get.

Where they seem to lack is any other features that make them stand out from the competition. They do have an RGB version of this card, but it's so basic compared to a company like MSI's offerings. They've just been kind of strange to me, almost like comparing a grocery stores own brand of products to the real thing.

 

[Zed Clampet]

der8auer uses that same card in his personal rig:

View: https://youtu.be/o21CDqlCSps?si=Xho3aw4tDKji4cVo

---

---

What are your guy's thoughts on PNY brand GPUs? They have always been a bit strange to me. They don't give into any marketing gimmicks, but their cards are well reviewed, if anything they're a bit boring. They provide sufficient enough cooling while not innovating any new cooling techniques. Their website is plain and has no full page ads about how their dies are German Military Grade Engineering or whatever BS other brands fill their pages with. Could this be a case of a company not following market trends and instead focusing on delivering a quality product, or are they just a "good enough" kind of company?

On paper though, their cards seem great. Higher than average clock speeds just from what I've seen, good build quality, and currently it is the only 5060 Ti 16GB I see on Amazon for MSRP. Some other brands have cards with lower max boost speeds, which in the grand scheme of things is pretty incomprehensible for most people, but my thinking is if you're buying cards at that budget and do not want to overclock, you're gonna want the highest speeds you can get.

Where they seem to lack is any other features that make them stand out from the competition. They do have an RGB version of this card, but it's so basic compared to a company like MSI's offerings. They've just been kind of strange to me, almost like comparing a grocery stores own brand of products to the real thing.

PNY is a great company. They aren't flashy; they just make great GPUs (and other stuff). Most of their business is in making commercial GPUs for data centers as a partner with Nvidia.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I got an 18 percent boost to AI processing by overclocking my 5070 ti. I'm pretty happy with that. And I didn't change the voltage.

 

[Colif]

I don't know of any known GPU maker I would avoid, so I don't really have an opinion on PNY. If I never heard of company before I may question it.
Makers of the cards themselves never really been a thought. They don't actually make the silicon, they just make the wrappers

 

[Colif]

ACM is off on my PC and I never changed its setting. I didn't even think to.
Should set up color management for screen but I suspect I made it too dark on my last pc.

 

[Colif]

It looks like white rays coming up from my air cooler

Is it some kind of pyramid?
Wait, no, its a reflection of my curtains.

Take glass off and only reflection left is on the side of the ram

which is what I was looking for. Shame its hard to see. Having silver coloured heat spreaders makes it hard to line up the ram slots when inserting sticks, as you can see the reflection of the one next to it as you try to line them up.

Indications are I need to dust inside as I see some on GPU. It could just be dirty from last install. It is only old part.

Trying to find colours that work with white. For RGB anyway... Blue gets boring after a while. Currently yellow

sometime next year I will replace the power cables.

 

[Colif]

With these last few parts, the value of my PC seems to be about 5k now? Someone is selling my monitor again, that added to value... My HD600 headphones are also included in cost...

if my GPU existed in the Country, it would add to cost as well.
https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/FyVhJn
I seem to collect GPU you cannot buy soon after release... happened with my 2070 Super as well.
My air cooler is hard to get as well, but I knew that... its why I bought it early to make sure I got the white one. Its the largest item in case, a non colour matched one would have made me essentially chose a Noctua.

 

[Colif]

 

[Zed Clampet]

It looks like white rays coming up from my air cooler

Is it some kind of pyramid?
Wait, no, its a reflection of my curtains.

Take glass off and only reflection left is on the side of the ram

which is what I was looking for. Shame its hard to see. Having silver coloured heat spreaders makes it hard to line up the ram slots when inserting sticks, as you can see the reflection of the one next to it as you try to line them up.

Indications are I need to dust inside as I see some on GPU. It could just be dirty from last install. It is only old part.

Trying to find colours that work with white. For RGB anyway... Blue gets boring after a while. Currently yellow

sometime next year I will replace the power cables.

That air cooler looks like an actual air conditioner.

 

[Colif]

In a way it does. It would need to be larger and having refrigerant in a PC is really expensive, and unlikely to look like that... as storing the coolant near CPU doesn't help in cooling either. Most have the unit away from heat source.
link
but people are working on it

You could in theory just have my cooler attached to back of the case, but attaching it to CPU at same time is potentially risky
The distance between the rear fan on cooler and rear fan on case, basically made me wonder why no one else with the cooler has ever complained about the wind noises.

Its too close, and from looking into it, the only way it works is if both fans are spinning in opposite directions. Otherwise you get turbulence. I probably remove that this weekend.

i like its stealth look. The black one in my old PC is more stealthy though... hard to ignore a white block in an all white case. Hard to see in my old one

the hiding its fans is also a feature I like. Its just a box that sux heat out of PC.

 

[Colif]

Fixing loud fans in a pc is exactly like fixing bottlenecks. As soon as you fix one, you notice another. Its impossible to be completely quiet in a case full of fans but I am getting closer. I can only tell my new ones are on from the temperatures of other things. They came with rubber mounting poles so they are exactly the same in that regard to my Noctuas in the old case.

The max speed on the new fans is lower than old ones, but they do have a zero rpm mode which makes up for it. That and I can't hear them even at 500

Next loudest part was air cooler but it was in performance mode, so I fixed that. I can't hear any individual fans now.

Now its difficult to say where PC noise and house noise meet. I eliminated some fan noises and now its possible only thing I hear is the house.

PC finished finally. Yay. Only took a month.. between initial build and fan install.

using spdif connection for sound is much easier than trying to remember which of the 5 sound connectors I need to connect which cable to on analog. One cable instead of 3.

 

[neogunhero]

Makers of the cards themselves never really been a thought. They don't actually make the silicon, they just make the wrappers

Cooling solutions is really the main differentiator between makers I think. Besides that, the OC versions of these cards from different manufacturers tend to be ever so slightly different, but nothing that a person could ever notice on their own. 2725MHz vs 2750MHz, and sometimes they can be a good $20 different, just makes me laugh lol.

---

---

Considering doing a complete reinstall of Windows 11 when my Win 10 expires in October. Before doing that I'd like to get a really good SSD that will last. I explained here before, but I have one SSD that is DRAM-less and has trouble downloading anything over 5GB, and my other one maxes out at 500MB/s. I also have a SATA SSD at that same speed.

I have seen lots of people defend DRAM-less SSDs. They say the tech has gotten better, it doesn't matter anymore, it's cheaper, but I have not seen anyone specifically tell their experience with downloading a 50GB+ game onto a DRAM-less SSD. So I really have no idea if they are better or not, and I don't really want to take any chances. My issue is (I assume) the cache gets full, and it downloads at a max 10MB/s for maybe 20 seconds, then stop completely for a few minutes, just to come clawing back and download a little more. A 30 minute download takes overnight on that SSD. My download speed maxes at 45MB/s, and on my other two SSD's they can sustain full speed the entire download, never stopping. One workaround is to download to the better SSD then move game folder to the DRAM-less one, but I don't want to keep doing that for every game.

I want a 2TB SSD with all the fixings for under $120. Tall order, its been hard to find one that checks all boxes. I want good 3D NAND, DRAM cache, good durable controller, all while being fast (my mobo maxes at Gen 3 speeds 3500mb/s). Seems I may be a bit late to the SSD buying party since most 2TB drives under that price are considered "budget". Just a year ago I remember seeing high quality SSDs at this price point.

I guess it doesn't need to hit all those boxes, just as long as it is fast, long life-span, and does not give any issues with downloading.

 

[neogunhero]

HP ProBook x360 435 G8 13.3" FHD Touch AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U 16GB 512GB SSD W11P | eBay

HP ProBook x360 435 G8 13.3" FHD Touch AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U 1.9 GHz 16GB DDR4 512GB SSD AMD Radeon Graphics Windows 11 Pro Laptop - 468S4UC-I137. AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U (1.9 GHz base clock, up to 4.4 GHz max boost clock, 16 MB L3 cache, 8 cores) | AMD Radeon Graphics.

www.ebay.com

Got my eye on this. The missus has been complaining about her laptop for a while now, but doesn't want to go full-on gaming laptop yet. She gave me a budget of $300 to see what I can find. After searching around a lot, this seems to be the best bang for buck at this price point.

Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U, 16GB DDR4 3200MHz (single channel), 512GB SSD, Win 11 Pro. Not bad for the price! CPU is no beast, but a huge step in compared to her current laptop with a Ryzen 3700U at 8GB RAM. Here is a video showing some gaming benchmarks, but annoyingly they do not disclose settings used.

For low end budget 1080p gaming at this price point, it's pretty impressive. Weak by every measure, but hard to get anything better at $300 I think (without going full on used in poor condition). We paid $300 for her old one 4 years ago so it balances out in my head. The biggest issue may be that touch screen, some people say it's incredibly glossy, but not a dealbreaker for me.

 

[Colif]

reinstalling windows only takes 20 minutes, its installing everything else and making pc feel right that takes time...
helps to go through install and make sure you have all the programs either written down or a download folder with the installer in it ready for next PC. I have done that the last 2 times. Also helps to have all your documents etc on another hdd so don't need to move it around after, just take ownership of folders