PC Building/Hardware Help Thread V7 - Intel Memorial Edition - Hardware & Software

PC Building Thread V7 Want to build, upgrade, or ask about those funny noises your computer is making? No problem, this is the place. Discord Previous thread PC Building Resources pcpartpicker.com – A fantastic resource for both comparing prices from many websites and doing some basic compatibility checks. The best part of all is that this site is available in many different regions and countries Here are two excellent guides for the actual assembly of a system. It's actually fairly easy, and following a good guide like one of these, the chances to mess something up are extremely slim. An excellent step-by-step guide using pictures, it is cleanly laid out and easy to follow This is a multi-part Newegg YouTube series that is very long and comprehensive. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 UserBenchmark is an incredible site, and while not scientific, it's a fantastic way to get a vague feel for how different parts compare to each other in a wide variety of synthetic workloads. Make sure to contribute to it as well by downloading and running the benchmark itself! General Building/Component Tips If you get hung up on any details, go ahead and ask. No question is stupid in the realm of blowing $1k on a new system. Watch the quality of your PSU. It's not going to give you any extra performance, but a poor quality PSU can cause unnecessary stress on your component, causing them to age faster. Seasonic and rebrands such as XFX and Rosewill Capstone are excellent buys, as are SuperFlower units (and accompanying rebrand of the EVGA G2 series) and finally Delta units, most commonly they are found in Antec boxes. Check out the Antec HCP if you're in the market for a top notch PSU with high wattage. And please don't get a Corsair CX. Watch out for motherboard compatibility. An 1150/1155 socket motherboard does NOT mean it will work out of the box with every CPU that fits. You need to watch out for refeshes and "ticks" in the architecture. Luckily, the AMD side of things is more forgiving, Ryzen 1000 and 2000 processors will work on any updated 300 or 400 series board, but Ryzen 3000 processors and 500 series boards have some limitations to compatibility. You can find full compatibility information and required BIOS updates on the motherboard manufacturer's website. A good case can make or break a long term build. A good case is a dream to build in, and can both increase airflow and ease the process, while a bad case can bend, and leave some nasty cuts. Don't listen to just one person for your build if you've got time to wait. People have biases, and can miss some nice deals that just dropped. Even Kiwi. Check your motherboard's QVL, especially for Ryzen. This will ensure that your high-frequency RAM will actually be able to hit those advertised clocks. Ryzen 2000 does much better with RAM compatibility than Ryzen 1000 did but there are still snags in the way. Water coolers only make sense in fairly uncommon and unusual situations. Please stop buying them unless you know why you're buying one. Don't forget to please enable XMP/DOCP. Your fancy high-frequency RAM will run at stock 1333 MHz speeds without it.

Any good recommendations for B450 motherboards? I'm aware of Ryzen 2 coming out, but i have to build a computer before it's released.

I think most people recommend the MSI Arsenal Gaming B450 TOMAHAWK. If you can spare an extra USD$40-50 then I personally recommend and prefer the ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4.

Can you JBOD/HBA a bluray drive via LSI megaraid? HDDs work fine, but I'm getting pretty pissed at this bluray drive. Guess I can just connect it to the MB directly but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Pretty sure MSI makes most of the worthwhile B450 boards, motherboard availability is always spotty though so it's really hard to recommend boards since the best board is generally the best board you can get that doesn't suck and/or is on sale. If you're not looking for high end Zen 2 compatibility and you aren't looking to overclock, I'd just recommend whatever you can find the best deal on that isn't low end since none of them are all that expensive. I guess I'll post some of my recent thrifting find, came across a really dirty looking case that I initially passed over that was mixed into in a slew of crap celerons, pentiums and FM2 AMD APUs. My buddy opened it up and oh boy was it filled with some interesting parts. Straight off I saw the big ROG logo on an Asus ROG Crosshair IV Extreme and was hooked trying to figure out what it was since the gpus blocked the name. On it was a Corsair Hydro H70 and two Sapphire Radeon HD6870's(no crossfire bridge...) along with 2x4GB of some G.Skill Ripjaws. It also had a Rosewill Hive 750w modular PSU. Messed around with it at the store, popped the heatsink off to check the cpu, it was a Phenom II 965 which unfortunately wasn't an FX or an X6 but I happen to just have an X6 1100T laying around. Popped the bios battery out and back in and finally it POST, but the bios battery was dead and wouldn't boot unless you cleared CMOS before attempting. $40 as-is seemed like a great deal for something with 8GB of working DDR3 and what's essentially the highest end AM3 board that was really intended for LN2 overclocking! Took it home and cleaned everything inside and out, washed down the board with some CRC QD and did fresh paste everywhere. The Rosewill Hive power supply while being filled with cobwebs had absolutely zero dust inside of it or on the cables unlike the rest of the build so I think it is actually brand new. Along with the spare AM3 parts I had laying around for a buddy's "free" HTPC build we had been planning on doing. It was able to turn it into two whole, working builds with a HD6870 and Corsair CX600 still left over in my parts bin. Stuck the ROG board into my old Antec 900 and a GTX 570 I got in a trade for my old R9 280 for a low power GT 1030 that went into my home server for video encording and simply to make it boot. Also stuck in 2x2gb sticks of Samsung ECC-U that I got as a used $18 3x2gb 1333mhz kit for my X58 stuff. Sorted through all my spare used fans and used the best where I could and tossed out the 4 completely dead fans that came with it. Gave the dirty case a shower and used some bathroom cleaner since it stunk. The non-standard not quite E-ATX motherboard was also installed with tape behind it to prevent it from shorting out on the case, the previous owner had also hacked out part of the drive cage in the back to clear sata cables lol. The Crosshair IV Extreme even has bluetooth, which should be awesome to connect controllers to! It didn't play Doom 2016 to an acceptable standard, nor does it support Vulkan but it played No Man's Sky at 1080p60 low at a far better than console level experience and would even drive CS:GO at 1080p144. I will definitely confirm Fermi causes house fires as it was very useful as a space heater under my desk, unfortunately I didn't find any wood screws though. The 1100T isn't particularly a winner but 4ghz for playing some steam games on the TV and lots of emulators will do great all within AMD Spec. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/144519/20f77f2b-e0a3-4fc2-8afa-4b98874b83f6/20190605_173005.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/144519/0352c822-6f1d-4a23-9584-a316d697e727/20190605_171816.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/144519/f2641fc3-8d48-4b36-a5a4-d4f410e14f44/20190607_192615.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/144519/0bd81536-cce3-4ba4-a89f-6a5e912b586e/20190607_192814.png $45 into all of this and clearing out most of my still useful spare parts that have been sitting in bins upto 7-8 years now. $5 was that I had to buy another AMD backplate since I lost the one for that other board as it used to have a $20 212 LED that's now in my X58 home server. That case even came with a Windows 7 Pro key which very nicely activated into Windows 10 Pro.

So, the time has come to build a new rig, because the old one is falling apart, and it's been five years since I last did anything on the PC building front. So, what's a good, reliable motherboard to build a gaming rig on? I know CPUs are AMD or bust, but what's the recommendation for GPUs?

Is there a way I can force full RGB range via registry on an Intel IGPU? My Surface Go is stuck in limited range after the May update, and I can't install the official control software cause the Surface line has its own version of Intel's driver

oof, the 5700 is $379. Still might get it.

Im trying to find a new case, because my current one is noisy, clunky, and way too big for my liking. The one I have is ~16x8x18 inches, my Mobo is MicroATX, and my GPU is just shy of 10 inches long. Anyone have any recommendations for a smaller case that looks nice and can still fit all my shit in it? I also need a new PSU so I'm not worried about that.