The PC Building Thread

I got a case with a window. Not because I wanted the window. Not because I look inside. Just because that was the best case given all other aspects. Mostly it is from the same company that made the cooler I wanted, so I felt safe that it would fit properly. The cooler also has ridiculous LEDs, and software to control them, but I disabled all of them. The only LED I can’t control and disable is one in the GPU.

Well more people would care about the look of their engine bay if many of the nice cars came with clear hoods.

Where my case sits I can always look inside and see the glowy bits. It’s always a bit satisfying in some way to look in there and contemplate all the little electrons or faeries or smoke gnomes or whatever it is in those chips moving about.

I think the fad has enabled a culture where the aesthetic of the components will mostly always be important at least for the performance parts. That said I think the aesthetic tastes will change in time to things besides aggro all-RGB-everything. But the same impulse to display some form of taste via how clean your rig is and how epic your parts are and how ridiculous your cooling loop is will remain. Especially as we get more and more ridiculous chips like the Intel 28 Cores @ 5Ghz insanity, and the use of advanced cooling takes more of a share.

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I kinda like having the option to turn on a few lights in my case and / or have status indicating lights but I don’t go out of my way to mess with any of that in my personal machines anymore. My next case is probably going to be just a specialized desk drawer.

At work we have 4 identical workstations stacked up in a rack and I have each one set up with different colored LEDs. It’s kind of stupid but since they’re basically gaming machines the lights were built into the boards and look good when we have clients in the office.

My cpu fan and ram are RGB things, but they spend most of their time living inside my blackout case. I occasionally think the glowy bits are kinda nice, but my aesthetic is more obsidian monolith.

If I could get a build that was blacked out obsidian monilith that actually looked cohesive and nice I’d go for it. It’s a cool look.

I think if NZXT made a version of their windowed case but with a super tinted glass panel so even with RGB on it’s barely visible… I bet they would sell a lot to the “monilith” crowd.

I’m sure it would not be a major project to cut out your own tinted panel and swap it.

Cutting tempered glass is not so easy but replacing with poly could work. Also looks like it’s easy enough to just apply car window tint so, I’m actually considering it.

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Intel vs. NVidia is going down just like I said it would.

Oh no, they realized they could charge more and did it!

I seem to have picked the right time to become entirely dis-interested in PC gaming. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I wonder if a 2080 will SLI with my 1080

I don’t now, but I feel like if you got a 2080, you can just sell the 1080 and you won’t notice a difference.

Either that, or just make two computers.

I’ve gone the opposite and am only interested in PC gaming :wink:

Well, that and tabletop.

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Doubtful. Even if Nvidia did SLI across different cards - which I don’t remember that they do, I remember that being an AMD thing, but I might be wrong - it’s almost certainly a different chipset, so it likely wouldn’t be supported out of the box.

There are different modes to SLI.

  1. 2 identical cards doing the same rendering job.
  2. 2 different cards doing the same rendering job, with not as great performances.
  3. 2 different/ identical cards, 1 rendering, the other computing Physx.

Now, virtually no game I’m aware of even utitlises Physx. However, the new how shit seems to be ray tracing.

With deiver support, it may be theoretically possible to supplement the ray tracing onto 1 of the other cards.

More = more

What game/s will I even play that would need this amount of GPU power? Frick knows.

If I do get a 2080, I could just build a second PC for video/ CAD rendering purposes only, using my 1080.

I’m wondering if the value of my 1080 is enough to justify selling for an upgrade, or maybe just get a soon-to-be-cheaper second 1080. Curious what the actual performance delta between the 2080 and 1080 SLI will be.

1080s are now going for about $450 which is about $130 under what I payed in late 2016. I’m seeing the same card being sold on eBay for $350 buy it nows all day. Probably most are used mining rig cards tho.

In any case, the jump from anything pre-10 to a a 10 series is already high. The jump from 10 to 20 isn’t looking nearly as great as Nvidia wants to make us think, based on the numbers coming down. I don’t see any real compelling reason to spend much money on going from a 1080 to 2080 yet.

Have seen some claims that the new tech in a 2080 is just way more efficient or whatever, but does that actually matter for most of us?

$450 for a card that can easily push most games to the limits already if you aren’t 4k, and still does many games justice at 4k, is clearly a great option.

I bought my 1060 just before the height of coin hysteria and paid over 300 for it. Oh well. My question is is it worth buying the cards used for mining?

It’s not like a video card wears out like a pair of shoes. If the person who was using it for mining didn’t damage it via overheating or physical/electrical abuse, or fucking up the fan, then it should be as good as new. If you need a GPU, and you can get a powerful used one in good shape, I don’t see a reason not to.

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