Well my Dad got sick (cancer). We got a housekeeper, I got a rash on my arms around the same time as that and so did my Dad (his cleared up tho). My memory is hazy but I had that rash for 2 weeks to a month. Then I got a rash on my ears/eyes, and my arms cleared up. I stopped using headphones and that helped a lot. Time passed, my dad died. I got a roomate. I got depressed, didn't clean my room/make my bed/spent a lot of time in my room for like a year. My stuff was getting worse, but I was managing it by taking additional steps (eg: change pillowcase every day). My roomate was feeling bad, she wasn't eating, so she moved back with her mom. We assumed it was her ocd and bulimia not the environment. I started sleeping upstairs in a different bed (it helped), moved my pc into her old room (it was good for the first few months and slowly got worse).

That's where I'm at now.

I'll try it

I actually have a pass through thing that's currently sealed off but I think I could run cables through and put my PC in the rec room. I'll have to get something to make it airtight with the cables.

Thanks for the help so far Setsul, you're a boss

Sorry for your loss.

So yeah, it's complicated.
Could be the housekeeper (I'm guessing that's why you asked her to change products), could be genetic predisposition, triggered by stress, could be just a coincidence and mold turning up at the same time as the cancer. Thanks to OCD and bulimia the rommate doesn't exactly rule out either the house/room or genetics, but the improvement from moving upstairs points towards the house.

The pass through doesn't have to be airtight, all we care about is not having a big box full of fans aka a pc creating a large dust vortex right next to you. The dust is already in the room, keeping it airtight won't change that.

Thanks a lot. So say I were to overclock that i5-9600K to 5 GHz (which is apparently reasonable ?) :
- I'm assuming the Turbo Boost program is going to be disabled automatically, it wouldn't make any sense otherwise ?
- The Be Quiet Pure Rock should still be able to keep it at a safe temperature even at high load for a couple of hours straight ?

It's not a program. If you disable it it will be disabled, if you don't it won't. It's a BIOS setting. It doesn't work with 4.6 as absolutely value though, instead it's baseclock + 1.1, so it won't downclock to 4.6 when attempting to turbo if you increase the baseclock from 3.7. Read an overclocking guide, otherwise you won't get far anyway.

Depends on the voltage. You'll see. Hours or days doesn't matter. Either it'll overheat within minutes or not, it's not like 150W are more difficult to cool after 10 hours than they are to cool after 1 hour.

Just realized there is another concern I might have as to overclocking the i5-9600K to 4.8 or 5 GHz : the motherboard.
Do I need a Z390 ? Or is it just better while not mandatory ? If so, are there any good ones which are affordable as well ? I'm assuming VRMs are the main concern ?
Thanks in advance

Z370 works with a recent enough BIOS.
Gigabyte Z390 M Gaming, Gaming X or Gaming SLI, unless you care about onboard sound, ASRock Z390 Extreme 4, MSI MPG Carbon, MPG Edge AC are usually the cheapest Z390 mobos with decent VRMs.

Thanks. Do you think my Z370 A-Pro would be very limiting here ? It probably would I'm sure but I'm asking just in case it could handle 4.8 or 4.5 GHz fine.

Depends a bit on the chip. It's not going to be very efficient (low end 4 phase VRM) but the VRM heatsinks are good enough that with decent airflow you should be able to get away with it.

Do you mean the actual manufacturing quality of my i5-9600K chip could have a big impact ? Or did you mean an i5-9600K vs an i5-8600K could make a difference for instance ?
As for "not very efficient" I guess you're talking about needing a higher voltage to run a stable overclock on a given clockrate than with a good Z390 ? And higher power consumption overall ?

https://youtu.be/stWvh7e9q4E

Chip quality.

Higher nominal voltage (difference between the set and the actual voltage will be higher), higher actual voltage as well due to more ripple and higher power consumption even at the same voltage due to the VRMs being less efficient. The effect is larger at higher power consumption so not that much at stock but very noticeable with a high oc.
Mostly it means you need more airflow across the VRMs to keep them at a reasonable temperature.

On topic of good airflow in the case, I had a question about one of my fans : my case is a Fractal Design Focus G, and it's got 2 120mm fan slots on top of it. I've had one fan on one of those spots so far on exhaust (the one closest to the rear), and the thing is that there is a dust filter covering both those fan spots. I was wondering if I'd need to remove it to increase airflow or if it would just not be worth it considering I'd have more dust coming in when the fans aren't running. I believe the dust filter is one piece covering both spots and I cannot uncover the two separately.

Edit : I might me able to uncover one spot separately. Would it be worth it still ?

Planning on getting a Noctua NH-U12S to cool the i5-9600K, on keeping the Z370 A-Pro and on aiming for 4.8 GHz. Does it seem reasonable ?
Just to add to the airflow topic I have two intake fans in front (original Fractal Design ones) and two Be Quiet Pure Wings 120mm PWM on exhaust, one at the rear and one on top near the rear as I said.

A good dust filter won't make much of a difference. Getting enough airflow on the intake is more difficult than on the exhaust, it'll get pushed out by positive pressure anyway even if the exhaust fans were struggling.

You could even fit an NH-U14S. A cheaper dual tower cooler might be louder but better for temperatures. It should be doable but there won't be much headroom.

Which fans exactly? Either way use the more powerful pair as intake fans.

Fans are Silent Series LL 120mm White with 41.8 CFM, whereas the Be Quiet! Pure Wings 2 120mm PWM have a max of 51.4 CFM. Should I get a replacement for those two anyway instead of swapping ?

Any ideas for the cheaper dual tower cooler ? For that or either the NH-U14S I'm assuming I'd have to move my GPU down to the next PCI-E slot on my Z370 A-Pro ? Would it fit with the RAM (which is on the slots farthest away from the CPU, separated by one empty slot obviously) ?

No, move the Be Quiet to the intake and everything should be fine.

TC14PE is a classic, Dark Rock Pro 3 or 4. Cheaper as in one of the cheaper dual towers, not cheaper than the NH-U12S, but in the same ballpark as the NH-U14S, unlike e.g. the NH-D15.
Le Grand Macho RT is also an option. Single tower, but with the volume of a dual tower. Obviously quieter than a dual tower with twice the fans and still pretty good cooling. At the same loudness actually a bit cooler than the NH-U14S, it just tops out at 1300 rpm instead of 1500 rpm like most others so at 100% the U14S gets marginally lower temps.

The Z370-A Pro doesn't actually use the first PCIe slot allowed in the ATX spec. They've put an M.2 slot there and the 2nd out of the 7 ATX PCIe slot positions is where the actual first slot is on the mobo. That means it'll be spaced out by one slot no matter what. Never put the GPU in anything but the top x16 slot, all others are significantly slower. I'm assuming that means the RAM is in slots 2 and 4 counting from the CPU, as it should be. At most the NH-U14S should overhand the first slot and even then it's tall enough to fit 32mm RAM beneath it. So any RAM will fit and if you need all 4 slots just don't buy anything with ridiculous extra high heat spreaders.

Hello Setsul and friends!

One of my friends is looking to build a computer for her work in graphical design. Her budget is $500 but she flexible on it if needed. Thank you in advanced :)

Zen 2 launches July 7th. Even if it is out of budget the last gen CPUs should go on sale. Just wait if you can.

#3288
How flexible?
What's the goal/requirements?
When does she want to build it?

#3289
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that a 500$ isn't all that interesting on a 500$ budget.
Unless she doesn't want a GPU even 200$ isn't happening. So none of the SKUs launching 7/7 are relevant to her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWKEgiuOtkU

Last years 300$ SKUs still won't fit in the budget even on sale.
If she wants a decent GPU we're looking at ~100$ for the CPU. Intel doesn't drop prices and the effect of new 200$ SKUs is marginal in that price range. Any regular sale with 10-20$ off will matter way more. If she's fine with an APU the effect will be even less.

The point is it's not worth waiting for 7/7 in this case. If she wants to build now it doesn't matter if she can wait she should wait for something in her price range to be released.

I just got a response back, the budget is 500-600 dollars and she’s mainly using large files of photoshop and illustrator. She also can wait a few weeks.

Would a 500GB SSD be enough?
I think 500$ is only realistic without a discrete GPU and that's probably going to be very noticeable. GPU acceleration with Intel drivers is a gamble but even a 2400G will be a bit slower on the CPU side.

I don't know how good the support for AMD iGPUs is in Photoshop/Illustrator nowadays so I'm not sure if I should recommend it.

Basically: https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=49040&width=800&height=800
So Intel iGPU will be kind of mediocre with some occurences of absolutely shit https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=49036&width=800&height=800
But the AMD drivers seem to have some quirks too: https://www.pugetsystems.com/pic_disp.php?id=49039&width=800&height=800
Notice how the faster AMD GPUs actually take longer.

On the other hand even 600$ would only buy her a low-end GPU.
So if she wants to save money <500$, 2400G build, if she thinks she's better of with a discrete nVidia GPU it'd be 600$ but even then only with a GTX 1050.

Not sure if the BenQ XL2411P is still really good, worth the price, etc., but it's currently $200 on Amazon if anyone was thinking of a new monitor

So should I tell her to up her budget to $600-$700 for better experience and power

No, I'm asking if she needs it. Since it's for work she might not want to put up with any driver weirdness (Intel) or zooming or whatever being slow because an iGPU just isn't quite enough.

What is she upgrading from?

If she's not sure my recommendation is to get a <500$ 2400G build and add a GPU when she can afford a good one, if it turns out she needs one and possibly even upgrade the CPU after that.

hello all, first time posting in this thread. i wish to purchase new parts, from scratch. i'll be selling everything i currently have (outdated mostly).
i currently have:

• i7-3770 @3.4ghz
  
• nvidia GTX 770, 2gb
  
• 12gb RAM

this has been sufficient to run a game like The Witcher III without any problems, but the pc has come a long way and is starting to suffer from several minor issues. with Cyberpunk 2077 coming, i decided it was a good time to upgrade my entire computer to be able to play the game .i've looked at the specs of the computer they used for the gameplay demo at E3 last year and decided to base my picks on those. here's what I came up with.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9jP2XP
i know next to nothing about pc building. how retarded is this? i've got someone in my family who's good at building pcs and i've been told these picks look realistically ok, but i want a second opinion.
this is around the budget i have. i'm ready to go up a hundred or two higher, but if i can lower the total cost without cutting down on anything i would greatly appreciate some help towards that.
thank you for reading.

New Ryzen CPUs are out next month and could be a good shout, they haven't been independently benchmarked yet though. I'd say it might be good to wait at least a few weeks until they're out before commiting to anything.

I'd change the cooler (single fan all-in-one liquid coolers are especially terrible) and the PSU, other than that it looks reasonable.
I'm assuming the 1080 is on sale or used, otherwise get an RTX 2070 or maybe RX 5700 XT if you can wait for that.

Generally summer is launch season so newer/cheaper/better CPUs and GPUs are coming if you're not in a hurry.
I mean Cyberpunk 2077 won't be out for another 10 months so it's not like you're in a hurry.

If you are then here's some minor adjustments: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/sLzKWD
Could get a better SSD if you want, it's obviously well within budget.

on the topic of coolers: i have no idea what i am doing. my cousin is a PC nut and is the one who built my computer for me when i was a kiddo. he said i should be getting a corsair cooler, and he seems to like liquid/fan coolers. give me reasons why he could be wrong, please, i like a second opinion.

i am definitely not in a hurry, as i have 10 months. i will heed your and 3299's advice and bide my time for price decreases with cpus and gpus.

on the topic of psus: my current PC has a 650W psu (corsair cx650). am i cutting it too short if i decide to keep it and not purchase a new one? i've been told i should get extra wattage, but i'm assuming a 3-ish year old psu might not perform 100% with a more demanding pc.

as for storage, i don't need a bigger ssd. i already have a spare 1tb hdd i ripped out of my college laptop that i'm going to use for mundane data. my current pc runs on a 100 gb ssd for windows and important shit. 1tb is luxury compared to what i've had to deal with...

thank you for replying to both of you.

https://www.teamfortress.tv/12714/pc-build-thread/?page=19#557
Also buying by brand instead of by reviews is dumb. For Corsair Aios it makes even less sense because they aren't even built by Corsair, just rebranded.

The part list will obviously change because there will be new CPUs and GPUs, but you can just post here again. By September most launches should be done or at least it'll be known what's coming in October and if that's relevant to you.

Three years is nothing for a PSU and 650W is more than enough.
Afaik the CX series from 2015 is actually better than the one from 2017 you picked for the new build and cheaper. Ye olde bait and switch.

Not bigger, faster.