Random Hardware topics

[neogunhero]

Yeah I'm not affected for now since I have a 9000 series card now but it's still a pretty messed up business decision, especially since Nvidia still supports cards older than RDNA 1 and now that just today AMD has posted record profits with gaming still extremely strong for them. Business wise it makes sense, keep pushing the new hardware to make more profit, but terrible for consumers. If Nvidia dropped support of my RTX 2060 I may have been forced to buy a new GPU before I was ready to. Let's just hope the backlash has AMD thinking twice before shafting their consumers in the future.

 

[neogunhero]

I got my card at the perfect time. It was $369.99 on sale before tax when I bought it, not even a week later it's shot up to $419.99. Saved $50 which is almost how much shipping fees and tax were. The XFX Swift model went to $399.99 too, so I'm very happy I got the higher end Mercury model. This thing is a beast at cooling, barely hitting 50c in Oblivion Remastered, but then again I'm only playing at 1080p 60fps so that helps with temps too.

Looking to buy a very, very specific, maybe even niche configuration of monitor. I've found a few that check my boxes but still searching around.

This is what I want: 27 inches, 1080p, 75Hz, sub-5ms repsonse times, FreeSync, good brightness and color.

This is my reasoning: For now my card can handle pretty much any game at 1080p 60fps, most games can hit above that. I plan on holding onto this card for a long time like my last one.

I don't want to keep switching monitor settings per each game I play. Maybe one game can easily hit 1440p 120fps, the next game can only do 1440p 60fps, the next can only do 1080p 60fps. I would hate to play one game at full ultra settings 1440p 120fps but the next one I play I have to downgrade the resolution to hit a good frame rate.

So my thought process is that if I just force myself to 1080p 75hz, I won't ever get disappointed when a game doesn't run well at 1440p or whatever. This way I can reliably know most games I play will hit the full 1080p 75fps instead of having to switching around to find the sweetspot.

Does this make any sense? Would I just be better getting like a 1080p 120hz monitor and capping FPS in more intensive games?

My specifications are extremely specific, so it's hard finding good monitors with all of those features at a decent price. There are a couple options around $100, but others are much higher, which at that point does not make any sense. That's another thing, if I were to get a monitor exactly like that, $100 is pretty much the max I'd want to spend.

What's strange to me is that I know 75hz was a popular choice maybe ~5-ish years ago, so where are all of those monitors at? Besides Amazon, Newegg and Bestbuy, I can't seem to find like a monitor clearance store with actually reasonable prices.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

I got my card at the perfect time. It was $369.99 on sale before tax when I bought it, not even a week later it's shot up to $419.99. Saved $50 which is almost how much shipping fees and tax were. The XFX Swift model went to $399.99 too, so I'm very happy I got the higher end Mercury model. This thing is a beast at cooling, barely hitting 50c in Oblivion Remastered, but then again I'm only playing at 1080p 60fps so that helps with temps too.

Looking to buy a very, very specific, maybe even niche configuration of monitor. I've found a few that check my boxes but still searching around.

This is what I want: 27 inches, 1080p, 75Hz, sub-5ms repsonse times, FreeSync, good brightness and color.

This is my reasoning: For now my card can handle pretty much any game at 1080p 60fps, most games can hit above that. I plan on holding onto this card for a long time like my last one.

I don't want to keep switching monitor settings per each game I play. Maybe one game can easily hit 1440p 120fps, the next game can only do 1440p 60fps, the next can only do 1080p 60fps. I would hate to play one game at full ultra settings 1440p 120fps but the next one I play I have to downgrade the resolution to hit a good frame rate.

So my thought process is that if I just force myself to 1080p 75hz, I won't ever get disappointed when a game doesn't run well at 1440p or whatever. This way I can reliably know most games I play will hit the full 1080p 75fps instead of having to switching around to find the sweetspot.

Does this make any sense? Would I just be better getting like a 1080p 120hz monitor and capping FPS in more intensive games?

My specifications are extremely specific, so it's hard finding good monitors with all of those features at a decent price. There are a couple options around $100, but others are much higher, which at that point does not make any sense. That's another thing, if I were to get a monitor exactly like that, $100 is pretty much the max I'd want to spend.

What's strange to me is that I know 75hz was a popular choice maybe ~5-ish years ago, so where are all of those monitors at? Besides Amazon, Newegg and Bestbuy, I can't seem to find like a monitor clearance store with actually reasonable prices.

No offense man but that sounds like youre over thinking it. With Freesync it wont matter what framerate your hitting it will just sync with the monitor as long as your minimums are over 40 or 48 or whatever the monitor you picks low end is. Vsync or a cap will make sure it doesnt go over the top.

With the high end now doing crazy numbers, 144hz is at the lower end these days for new gaming monitors. Just get a 1440p monitor and alter the graphic settings as required. I'd bet your card will do 1440 high or more in most stuff comfortably for a few years, especially when you can just enable FSR.

I had a 5700XT until last year, not much faster than your 2060 and getting a decent frame rate wasnt much work in any game.

 

[neogunhero]

No offense man but that sounds like youre over thinking it. With Freesync it wont matter what framerate your hitting it will just sync with the monitor as long as your minimums are over 40 or 48 or whatever the monitor you picks low end is. Vsync or a cap will make sure it doesnt go over the top.

With the high end now doing crazy numbers, 144hz is at the lower end these days for new gaming monitors. Just get a 1440p monitor and alter the graphic settings as required. I'd bet your card will do 1440 high or more in most stuff comfortably for a few years, especially when you can just enable FSR.

I had a 5700XT until last year, not much faster than your 2060 and getting a decent frame rate wasnt much work in any game.

You're totally right, I was letting the extremely minor inconvenience of having to alter my monitor settings get in the way of just picking up a decent monitor lol. I'm still wanting to get something fairly cheap so I'll be waiting until around Black Friday sales to really consider one. It honestly doesn't make sense to force myself to lock into 75hz. In my head it did since all I'm used to right now is 1080p 60 so it technically would be an upgrade but really I need to let my graphics card do its thing and go full 1440p 144hz. I can always dial it back for more intense games, but the ones that can hit that full spec, I'll sure be happy that I have a monitor to support it.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

And in 10 years it will be much nicer to have 1440p 144hz (for example) with whatever GPUs are around at that stage.

I keep a FPS counter on in Steam just out of habit, I doubt I could tell you the difference between 80-90 FPS and 144 which is my monitors max.

I'd forgotten you have a negative opinion of upscaling sorry to bring it up again there, I get it to a point because early on FSR especially wasnt great in some games. Personally I think it works quite well now and I use it a fair bit. In my experience games look better with quality upscaling at Ultra than at, say, medium without any but some of thats going to be subjective in several ways. Either way I think we'll all have to get used to it eventually.

 

[neogunhero]

And in 10 years it will be much nicer to have 1440p 144hz (for example) with whatever GPUs are around at that stage.

I keep a FPS counter on in Steam just out of habit, I doubt I could tell you the difference between 80-90 FPS and 144 which is my monitors max.

I'd forgotten you have a negative opinion of upscaling sorry to bring it up again there, I get it to a point because early on FSR especially wasnt great in some games. Personally I think it works quite well now and I use it a fair bit. In my experience games look better with quality upscaling at Ultra than at, say, medium without any but some of thats going to be subjective in several ways. Either way I think we'll all have to get used to it eventually.

My negative opinion mostly came from the fact that the RTX 2060 couldn't utilize DLSS properly and old school ways of thinking that hardware doesn't need AI upscaling to make them run good. However now I have a new card and am able to use FSR4, I will say that it's vastly superior to what I experienced with the 2060. I don't notice any blurriness, any smudged textures, textures popping in from turning too fast, FSR4 looks just as good as native raster at least in Oblivion Remastered. The only issue I have now is lack of FreeSync which causes terrible screen tearing, forcing me to turn off FSR so I can use Vsync.

I've also heard that at 1440p, medium-high quality upscaling settings still looks great, and at 1080p the lower quality settings are much more notably impacted.

 

[Colif]

You got a new GPU? I may have missed that?

You need to change the monitor size you want as there will come a time they stop making 1080p monitors.

And in 10 years it will be much nicer to have 1440p 144hz (for example) with whatever GPUs are around at that stage.

finding 1440p monitors now that match what you want is also hard. 10 years time you need to alter expectations up, more likely a 4k monitor and that isn't if 8k becomes more of a thing in the next 10 years

Only frame counter I have is in the drivers. I haven't played many games to compare.

 

[neogunhero]

You got a new GPU? I may have missed that?

I talked about it on a general games discussion thread and forgot to post about it here. I have it listed on my signature now.

You need to change the monitor size you want as there will come a time they stop making 1080p monitors.

finding 1440p monitors now that match what you want is also hard. 10 years time you need to alter expectations up, more likely a 4k monitor and that isn't if 8k becomes more of a thing in the next 10 years

Kaamos convinced me it's best just to get the 1440p monitor. I'm finding a bunch with 144hz and fast response rates for around $150USD but a lot of reviews complain about brightness and colors. It has to be better than what I currently have though, so as long as I can get a good brightness then colors/lack of HDR does not bother me as much. I started looking at OLEDs and man... they're so damn nice but crazy expensive. For the money I could upgrade to AM5 and DDR5 RAM... actually maybe not the RAM these days.

 

[Colif]

I had a 4k monitor 10 years ago, so I would hope they are the expected size in 10 years time. One thing remains the same, you need a good GPU to run them ... 10 years ago 60hz was a problem for most GPU, now its 480hz ... I don't know future but I hope my next GPU can run it at a reasonable speed - I haven't looked seriously as I don't really need one yet.

Oled burn in is enough to make me wonder if I would risk it.

PC seemed louder tonight, it was really thefact I hadn't adjusted its fan curve for warmer temps and it was all trying to fight reality. I guess I be doing this for the rest of summer until its right. I hadn't noticed in recent weeks as I been playing a game (for a change)

Could also be dusty as well. Stops talking about fans

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Oh man theres a Philips QD OLED on sale here for a price that's tempting. Especially when I can sell mine for a couple hundred still.

I think 1440p will stay relevant, 4k is pretty useless on 27inch screens. 8k and over are going to be pointless for desktop, youre going to need a 50 inch screen on the desk for it to make a difference. Competitive players are still buying 1080p and its been around for 20 years, We'll still have a range, but 4k will be more common as long as GPUs actually improve any more after a gen or two.

 

[neogunhero]

Still need to get a GPU stand. The one included was too short, made for more modern cases with a PSU shroud or mATX cases. My case is pretty old school, just a large open square inside, no metal shroud covering the PSU. Nearly all vertical GPU mounts I can find only go up to about 4-5 inches, I think I need a good 6-7 at least. It's a mid tower case but without that shroud there's so much room under the GPU. I have the included stand sitting on top of a pill bottle which works fine but of course not ideal.

I've seen some on Amazon that screw into the PCI bracket holes, holding the GPU horizontally. I think I'll go with that because it seems a bit sturdier than the vertical mounts. The thing I don't like about a lot of those vertical mounts is that it's held by a thumbscrew that just sits flush against the metal pole. No notch or indentation to secure the thumbscrew in place, so I wonder if it'll become loose over time and I don't notice it. My PC sits under my desk and again with my old school case I don't have a glass/plastic side panel so I couldn't tell. A horizontal mount would give me more peace of mind because I could personally ensure the screws are tight.

We all know Newegg has gone downhill in the past 10 years but they're selling horizontal mounts for nearly $50. Just insane. They must be eating the tariffs from China then passing it to consumers. The one on Amazon I saw was only $14.

With the size of this card a stand is absolutely mandatory. Apparently it's the largest of all the RX 9060 SKUs and I believe it. It's nearly double the size of the old two fan RTX 2060.

Speaking of that GPU... my wife has a co-worker with an 11-year-old son who wants me to build a gaming PC for him. It will be almost exclusively for Fortnite and Roblox apparently. I have a few things I need: RTX 2060 6GB, Ryzen 1600X, 16GB DDR4 RAM. I just need a mobo, PSU, case, CPU cooler and some fans. Added up in my shopping cart I'm coming up with $220. I think all together I can sell it for $450. That's on the low end but for a kids first PC I'm willing to do it. We all remember our first PC, so here's to hoping I'll convert him to a lifelong PC gamer lol. I'm not building it to sell on Marketplace or eBay, if I were then I'd probably start closer to $600. The RAM and GPU alone could net me $200+ on eBay, so $450 seems reasonable to me. I'll throw in some rainbow RGB fans, the kids love that crap.

Then after that, I've got a buddy who wants me to replace his PSU. If you recall the last time I did something for this guy, his PC is absolutely nasty. Completely covered in weed resin, blunt guts and cigarette build up. This dude lives like an absolute slob, but he pays me nicely. This is a prebuilt Walmart PC but it's got pretty decent components. His PC shorted and the PSU is clicking. Clear identification that it needs to be replaced but why did it short out like that? I'm thinking there may be a lack of mobo standoffs. If I have to rip out his mobo and put in standoffs I'm charging him extra. Luckily I have little box of PC building hardware so I've got plenty of standoffs, it's even got those old school insulated washers so I may put some on for a laugh since it's not every day you're installing motherboard standoffs. Let's just hope nothing else in the PC is fried.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Still need to get a GPU stand. The one included was too short, made for more modern cases with a PSU shroud or mATX cases. My case is pretty old school, just a large open square inside, no metal shroud covering the PSU. Nearly all vertical GPU mounts I can find only go up to about 4-5 inches, I think I need a good 6-7 at least. It's a mid tower case but without that shroud there's so much room under the GPU. I have the included stand sitting on top of a pill bottle which works fine but of course not ideal.

I've seen some on Amazon that screw into the PCI bracket holes, holding the GPU horizontally. I think I'll go with that because it seems a bit sturdier than the vertical mounts. The thing I don't like about a lot of those vertical mounts is that it's held by a thumbscrew that just sits flush against the metal pole. No notch or indentation to secure the thumbscrew in place, so I wonder if it'll become loose over time and I don't notice it. My PC sits under my desk and again with my old school case I don't have a glass/plastic side panel so I couldn't tell. A horizontal mount would give me more peace of mind because I could personally ensure the screws are tight.

We all know Newegg has gone downhill in the past 10 years but they're selling horizontal mounts for nearly $50. Just insane. They must be eating the tariffs from China then passing it to consumers. The one on Amazon I saw was only $14.

Chopstick, blu tack?

 

[neogunhero]

Chopstick, blu tack?

Got the chopstick, not the blue tack. Honestly I could just got to Home Depot and pick up a thin wood dowel and cut it to size. Maybe even bore a small hole and insert a cheap magnet in there. $14 for a piece of metal is a bit ridiculous.

 

[Colif]

Most vertical gpu stands are made for Nvidia cards or for thinner cards than my gpu. If I had a 3 slot or less card I would have a vertical mount now as they make one for my case.'

The idea of using one in my case did cross my mind but finding one that matches card was difficult. Lian li make a universal gpu mount which I almost bought

Best I can use is the stand that came with my gpu, it luckily fits in my case and can stand next to my bottom fans

timing: After taking above screen shot with case glass off and putting side back on, I hear this really high pitched noise and think, I haven't heard that before from the PC and only after I had opened it up and tried to isolate noise did I notice noise was actually from outside my room and my brother was watching a video about the alarm a dam plays when they about to open flood gates.

More noises from outside or just other rooms will occur in coming months since its almost summer here

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Got the chopstick, not the blue tack. Honestly I could just got to Home Depot and pick up a thin wood dowel and cut it to size. Maybe even bore a small hole and insert a cheap magnet in there. $14 for a piece of metal is a bit ridiculous.

I had a chopstick under my GPUs for quite a few years because nothing else was really available and it worked just as well as the stand I have now.

Most vertical gpu stands are made for Nvidia cards or for thinner cards than my gpu. If I had a 3 slot or less card I would have a vertical mount now as they make one for my case.'

The idea of using one in my case did cross my mind but finding one that matches card was difficult. Lian li make a universal gpu mount which I almost bought

Best I can use is the stand that came with my gpu, it luckily fits in my case and can stand next to my bottom fans

timing: After taking above screen shot with case glass off and putting side back on, I hear this really high pitched noise and think, I haven't heard that before from the PC and only after I had opened it up and tried to isolate noise did I notice noise was actually from outside my room and my brother was watching a video about the alarm a dam plays when they about to open flood gates.

More noises from outside or just other rooms will occur in coming months since its almost summer here

Never been tempted to try a riser kit, I dont even have a window on my case anymore so it would be even more pointless now lol

 

[Colif]

Never been tempted to try a riser kit, I dont even have a window on my case anymore so it would be even more pointless now lol

Yes, it would be without glass.

Its possible the vertical mount could have better airflow but it does depend on the case. If it is deep enough to allow the card to be mounted upright and far enough away from side panel to avoid it being an obstruction then t could work - many cases from this year are designed for vertical mount but most of those don't come without glass side panels.

Its unlikely it wouldn't help in an old case as they not deep enough but there are always exceptions.

Is vertically mounting a GPU bad for thermals?

Vertically mounting a GPU looks cool, but is it actually cool?

www.corsair.com

Article mentions angle I hadn't thought of, some Nvidia GPU designed to work better horizontally because of using a vapour chamber.

main reason I had to do it was see the front of card for a change but either way I would miss out on RGB as card has it on the front - where fans are - as well as along the top edge - which is what faces me in the horizontal layout. So I would see fans but lose side.

My GPU probably better off the way it is since the two fans underneath blow directly into it, I still wonder if its fans have been needed in a game yet.

They mostly for people who have friends who might see the PC and be impressed. No one outside of forum posters will see my PC. So it something like my PSU cable replacements I might get, its only to make it look better for me. And after 6 months of owning PC I have stopped looking at it all the time... as it doesn't change that much.

Finding a normal GPU stand that wasn't a riser still proved a struggle. Its why I use the one that came with GPU.

 

[neogunhero]

Still very impressed with the temps I'm getting on my new GPU.

Played Oblivion Remastered last night for a good 2 hours straight with MSI Afterburner on the whole time monitoring temps. It said it hit a max temp of 49c, that's pretty insane. The RTX 2060 would hit 60-70c in almost every game I played. Then again it's not a great comparison because that was a two fan card, this one is a three fan. The three fans plus XFX's design is really doing wonders with keepings temps down.

In turn my CPU has been pretty cool also. I think with the old card producing as much heat as it did, the heat would rise and get caught in the CPU heatsinks, causing it to be warmer plus ambient temps inside the case in general would be hotter. Now it's doing the same as the GPU and barely hitting 50c in this game.

I do have some settings turned down so it's not playing the game at absolute max, but that's a fault with the game I'm certain. Player discussions constantly bring up poor optimization, but that's what happens when you run a game on two engines at once I suppose. All settings turned to Ultra besides Shadows, Global Illumination, and Foliage Quality all set to High, and Hardware Lumen is turned off, Software Lumen set to Low. The game honestly still looks fantastic with these settings and I hit a constant 60FPS in all areas of the game.

Still looking at monitors. I'm pretty certain if I had a 1440p monitor with FreeSync, I could turn on FSR4 and run the game at even higher frames than I am now even at the higher resolution. Frame Gen is also an option for me now, though input latency doesn't seem like a good tradeoff if it's really bad. Again, without FreeSync, FSR causes terrible screen tearing for me. I don't think I had that issue with DLSS as I remember using it in many games, so this is just a AMD thing.

I'm seeing some 1440p monitors in my budget that have HDR 10. Some monitors say "HDR compatible" but I looked that up and it just means it can receive a HDR signal but doesn't have the tech to actually output it in HDR. Some have actual HDR 10 support, though at the same time they are also IPS screens which have bad contrast. Would HDR 10 on a screen like that make colors look a bit better? I know it's considered on the low end of the countless HDR specifications but I wonder if it will be better than without it.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Afaik which isnt all that far, HDR on PC kind of depends on the specific game implementation whether it looks good or not. I believe that high contrast helps but I havent looked into the latest specs beyond HDR10 being kind of a minimum level, with the HDR 400 and so on not doing much like you said.

My monitor is IPS and so has bad contrast but does apparently do HDR10, the couple of times Ive turned it on it doesnt look quite right so I just put it off. Our TV has HDR10+ but its also a VA screen and does look pretty good for movies, thats about teh range of my experience with it.

 

[neogunhero]

Afaik which isnt all that far, HDR on PC kind of depends on the specific game implementation whether it looks good or not. I believe that high contrast helps but I havent looked into the latest specs beyond HDR10 being kind of a minimum level, with the HDR 400 and so on not doing much like you said.

My monitor is IPS and so has bad contrast but does apparently do HDR10, the couple of times Ive turned it on it doesnt look quite right so I just put it off. Our TV has HDR10+ but its also a VA screen and does look pretty good for movies, thats about teh range of my experience with it.

Just from my limited research, HDR10 is one of the lowest/cheapest applications of HDR, and coupled with an IPS panel it may not look great. HDR is all about getting better colors, so low contrast wouldn't help much. Not like I'm really picky about these things, I game on a 13 year old TV for crying out loud. It's 1080p and 32 inches, so even just going to 1440p at 27 inches will be a MASSIVE improvement to me. Much higher pixel density would be the biggest improvement. HDR would be a nice to have even if I don't use it in games, but I won't pay extra just to have it.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Fair enough, a few years ago I seem to remember people saying that HDR10 was the minimum worth having, but isnt it also to do with brightness somehow too?

People seemed to be pretty excited about HDR when it came to consoles, but for PCs not so much that Ive heard about. Not sure if thats to do with consoles doing it better, Tvs having better contrast in general, or marketing.

 

[neogunhero]

Fair enough, a few years ago I seem to remember people saying that HDR10 was the minimum worth having, but isnt it also to do with brightness somehow too?

People seemed to be pretty excited about HDR when it came to consoles, but for PCs not so much that Ive heard about. Not sure if thats to do with consoles doing it better, Tvs having better contrast in general, or marketing.

I believe brightness does have a large part to do with how well HDR looks. Not worth it if the screen is too dim and can't show how vibrant the colors are. I have no idea how to test how bright my current set up is rated for, but I do know that 250nit is considered the average though on the lower end. Again this is just from looking stuff up online, but I've read 300nit and above is ideal for gaming. The monitor I'm looking at, KTC 27 inch 1440p, has HDR 10 and 300nit brightness and seems pretty good for the price. I've not heard of KTC before and I'm wary of getting monitors from unknown brands, but lots of reviews and Reddit posts say they're a good value brand.