The PC Build Thread

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UrBaN963 said:
Kak stories man.

Some games MIGHT see a benefit from 32GB, but not many. You don't NEED more than 16GB right now, though it is nice to have.

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I used to have 16 GB RAM, and playing Warzone, it maxed out my RAM, causing instability. Mainly because Windows eats up a lot of memory.

So going to 32 GB gave me headroom, although few games actually use 16 GB.
 
ponder said:
There are scenarios where it makes a HUGE difference, like big datasets and high iops requirements, launching word or baldurs gate 3 not so much.
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Oh yeah, I mean it has helped with my 1tb DB, but for my games I can't tell the difference between the SATA one or the NVME, maybe 2ms?
 
Lupus said:
Oh yeah, I mean it has helped with my 1tb DB, but for my games I can't tell the difference between the SATA one or the NVME, maybe 2ms?
Click to expand...

From what I've seen on YT benchmarks ~1-2 seconds on average, not something you'll notice unless you sit there with a stopwatch.

I'd rather go for more size than absolute speed.
 
Pretty big difference in games that support DirectStorage but not too many of them around yet.
 
ponder said:
From what I've seen on YT benchmarks ~1-2 seconds on average, not something you'll notice unless you sit there with a stopwatch.

I'd rather go for more size than absolute speed.
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Though checking some games do benefit now, like Ratchet and Clank so guess it's coming.
 
AntennaMan said:
I used to have 16 GB RAM, and playing Warzone, it maxed out my RAM, causing instability. Mainly because Windows eats up a lot of memory.

So going to 32 GB gave me headroom, although few games actually use 16 GB.
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Yea like I said there are a few scenarios where that's the case, but it isn't correct to recommend a RAM upgrade where the biggest bottleneck in the system isn't the RAM.

It's like recommending a turbo to a guy with bald tyres.

For instance:
Chrome
Steam
Starfield
Task Manager
GOG
GeForce Experience
1696586692076.png
 
ponder said:
From what I've seen on YT benchmarks ~1-2 seconds on average, not something you'll notice unless you sit there with a stopwatch.

I'd rather go for more size than absolute speed.
Click to expand...

I think you're on the money there, let me be the guinea pig then... So I finally got my new components in yesterday (i5-13600kf + 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe KC3000) replacing my i5-12400. I'm on a 'Gigabyte GA-B660M-DS3H-DDR4 B660M DS3H DDR4 Intel B660 Alder Lake LGA1700 Micro-ATX Desktop Motherboard'

The new CPU increased my Cyberpunk benchmark score from 127 (v2.0) to 133 (v2.01), there was a small patch yesterday (I would have liked to have tested on the exact same version of the game). Then moving the game from my old 2.5" SATA3 SSD to the new M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD made zero difference to the benchmark score.

Something else to mention, earlier in this thread I mentioned being bottlenecked by my i5-12400 for COD MW2 and Cyberpunk. A few weeks ago when I finally updated my BIOS in preparation for the upgrade to 13th gen intel CPU, I ran benchmarks on the aforementioned games and noticed big improvements already (previously Warzone in COD used to really struggle and busy parts of Cyberpunk also were problematic). Now I hadn't played these games for a long time so I am not sure if the improvements were also in part due to optimisation to the games themselves, or whether my big issue all this time was my old BIOS version F5 (Jan 20, 2022) and updating to F24 (Jul 28, 2023) resolved the situation.

What should the rule of thumb be for BIOS updates? Update somewhat regularly, or only if one suspects there may be performance issues with the current version that one is on?
 
StrontiumDog said:
I think you're on the money there, let me be the guinea pig then... So I finally got my new components in yesterday (i5-13600kf + 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe KC3000) replacing my i5-12400. I'm on a 'Gigabyte GA-B660M-DS3H-DDR4 B660M DS3H DDR4 Intel B660 Alder Lake LGA1700 Micro-ATX Desktop Motherboard'

The new CPU increased my Cyberpunk benchmark score from 127 (v2.0) to 133 (v2.01), there was a small patch yesterday (I would have liked to have tested on the exact same version of the game). Then moving the game from my old 2.5" SATA3 SSD to the new M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD made zero difference to the benchmark score.

Something else to mention, earlier in this thread I mentioned being bottlenecked by my i5-12400 for COD MW2 and Cyberpunk. A few weeks ago when I finally updated my BIOS in preparation for the upgrade to 13th gen intel CPU, I ran benchmarks on the aforementioned games and noticed big improvements already (previously Warzone in COD used to really struggle and busy parts of Cyberpunk also were problematic). Now I hadn't played these games for a long time so I am not sure if the improvements were also in part due to optimisation to the games themselves, or whether my big issue all this time was my old BIOS version F5 (Jan 20, 2022) and updating to F24 (Jul 28, 2023) resolved the situation.

What should the rule of thumb be for BIOS updates? Update somewhat regularly, or only if one suspects there may be performance issues with the current version that one is on?
Click to expand...
 
GPU's - is there any real difference between Palit, Asus, Zotac etc.?
 
saor said:
GPU's - is there any real difference between Palit, Asus, Zotac etc.?
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Not really - except for price. ASUS will always be the most expensive along with Gigabyte - especially in our country. Palit will be the cheapest, followed 2nd by Zotac :)
 
StoneCold said:
Not really - except for price. ASUS will always be the most expensive along with Gigabyte - especially in our country. Palit will be the cheapest, followed 2nd by Zotac :)
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Yeah, there's not really much of a difference. I have a Zotac currently. It's my 3rd one and I've never had issues with any of them.
 
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UrBaN963 said:
Kak stories man.

Some games MIGHT see a benefit from 32GB, but not many. You don't NEED more than 16GB right now, though it is nice to have.

Click to expand...
I have an issue with this, and the way every benchmark is run.

Who plays games on a fresh install of Windows? Be honest, every time you play a new game do you reload Windows and NOTHING else other than required drivers? None of the following?

Steam
Uplay
Epic Games Launcher
Team Viewer
Skype
Teams
Zoom
YouTube
iCUE
MSI Afterburner
Plex
A Linux distro downloader of choice
Streaming software
etc etc etc?

If you have any of the above (or anything else installed), do you also close EVERYTHING before launching a game?

I don't know anyone who uses a computer that way, and therefore I don't find videos like the above or even most (all) benchmarks to be of much relevance unless all you want is a side-by-side performance comparison in a best case scenario.

I'm sitting at 13.1GB RAM usage right now - mostly Chrome and Photoshop, along with Skype/iCUE/Sound Blaster control panel/Afterburner/Outlook/printer utilities/Hamachi/Plex/Google Drive running in the background. I'm not closing anything before firing up a game. How happy do you think most games will be with less than 3GB free memory?
 
Progenix Oj101 said:
I have an issue with this, and the way every benchmark is run.

Who plays games on a fresh install of Windows? Be honest, every time you play a new game do you reload Windows and NOTHING else other than required drivers? None of the following?

Steam
Uplay
Epic Games Launcher
Team Viewer
Skype
Teams
Zoom
YouTube
iCUE
MSI Afterburner
Plex
A Linux distro downloader of choice
Streaming software
etc etc etc?

If you have any of the above (or anything else installed), do you also close EVERYTHING before launching a game?

I don't know anyone who uses a computer that way, and therefore I don't find videos like the above or even most (all) benchmarks to be of much relevance unless all you want is a side-by-side performance comparison in a best case scenario.

I'm sitting at 13.1GB RAM usage right now - mostly Chrome and Photoshop, along with Skype/iCUE/Sound Blaster control panel/Afterburner/Outlook/printer utilities/Hamachi/Plex/Google Drive running in the background. I'm not closing anything before firing up a game. How happy do you think most games will be with less than 3GB free memory?
Click to expand...

100%, I mostly kill Outlook, Slack and Teams when I game but for the most part I hang around 12GB before even launching a game.

Grabbing a new PC build on a budget sure, grab a single 16GB stick to expand later to 32GB but dont mess around with this 2x8GB nonsense.

1696854402899.png
 
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