Other Building a PC?

caid

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I wanna get a second monitor just for every day use, watching a Youtube video while working, film when browsing etc, no gaming or anything, would a monitor like this be ok? https://www.amazon.co.uk/LG-22M38A-inch-Monitor-1920/dp/B01BFH16CM

It's really cheap, but as I want it just for the basics it should be fine, right?
One of the reviews:
"Bought this as a second monitor for twin displays in home recording studio. Alas I failed to do my homework on the difference between TN, VA and IPS panels. This is a TN with poor viewing angles, you really have to be sitting straight on for it to be half decent. Connected to Mac mini or MacBook, the resolution isn't crisp and there is no way to adjust this no matter how much I alter the monitor settings. Sold it and bought an IPS screen."

Most reviews are pretty positive. No one is calling it a great monitor or saying the picture quality is amazing but it seems pretty functional overall.
1080p and a 22inch both sound good. Only has a VGA connection which is ... fine probably (ideally you'd want a HDMI and / or an AVI), might not be an issue for you but i'd say in terms of future proofing it could become annoying at a later point. AVI and HDMI are just more common these days.

You could probably drop the size a bit, having a huge second screen just distracts me personally. I kind of prefer something around the 16 - 18 inch mark but i use it more for reference so ...
 

Olly Gunnar Solskjær

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One of the reviews:
"Bought this as a second monitor for twin displays in home recording studio. Alas I failed to do my homework on the difference between TN, VA and IPS panels. This is a TN with poor viewing angles, you really have to be sitting straight on for it to be half decent. Connected to Mac mini or MacBook, the resolution isn't crisp and there is no way to adjust this no matter how much I alter the monitor settings. Sold it and bought an IPS screen."

Most reviews are pretty positive. No one is calling it a great monitor or saying the picture quality is amazing but it seems pretty functional overall.
1080p and a 22inch both sound good. Only has a VGA connection which is ... fine probably (ideally you'd want a HDMI and / or an AVI), might not be an issue for you but i'd say in terms of future proofing it could become annoying at a later point. AVI and HDMI are just more common these days.

You could probably drop the size a bit, having a huge second screen just distracts me personally. I kind of prefer something around the 16 - 18 inch mark but i use it more for reference so ...
Sorry I forgot to reply as I read this just before going to bed.

Yeah that review made me a bit wary, since I would have it at a slight angle. I think I'll go with this Acer instead, the reviews are better and I get a better feeling from it for some reason :lol:

I'm going for that size as it's what I've got at the moment and having different sizes side by side might bug me :D
 

Ødegaard

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Sorry I forgot to reply as I read this just before going to bed.

Yeah that review made me a bit wary, since I would have it at a slight angle. I think I'll go with this Acer instead, the reviews are better and I get a better feeling from it for some reason :lol:

I'm going for that size as it's what I've got at the moment and having different sizes side by side might bug me :D
Just note that it also is a TN panel.
 

Olly Gunnar Solskjær

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All these different monitor types are too confusing :lol:

Maybe I'll just get it and if it's no good I'll say my computer doesn't have the right connection and send it back or something.
 

caid

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Just note that it also is a TN panel.
Aren't most around that price range? I'd be borderline wary of any that aren't. Some are worse for viewing angles than others, I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be a problem. Depends how much of an angle i guess?

EDIT:
"try not to punch it as its not that durable, but the quality is amazing"

Other one sounds good too and more suitable. Dont know BenQ but has enough reviews that you could be reasonably confident with it
 
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Ødegaard

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Aren't most around that price range? I'd be borderline wary of any that aren't. Some are worse for viewing angles than others, I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be a problem. Depends how much of an angle i guess?
We don't have monitors in that price-range in Norway (that I have noticed), so I wouldn't know.
Cheapest on the biggest tech-site in Norway is 140 euros ish.
You can get a IPS for 170 euros. :p
 

VidaRed

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If you’re not gaming you can even go for something like a Gt 1030 to save a few more bucks. Nice small compact card too.
I was thinking that too but then i figured that since the monitor im getting is 4k i should get the 1050 ti. I figured it would be more future proof aswell. I had actually picked 1060 6gb initially!
 

Smashin

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If it's not for gaming he doesnt even need a GPU.

Does the software you use prefer Intel?

For that budget i rather go AMD, Ryzen 7 2700X and you get 2 extra cores.
And Ryzen 3 is around the corner.
 

VidaRed

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If it's not for gaming he doesnt even need a GPU.

Does the software you use prefer Intel?

For that budget i rather go AMD, Ryzen 7 2700X and you get 2 extra cores.
And Ryzen 3 is around the corner.
For some odd reason intel cpu's perform better in Photoshop, Lightroom and premiere. I had initially picked ryzen 7 2700.

Intel's single core speed is the deciding factor for most games and applications, most of them dont even utilize all the cores! Maybe in the future with better software optimization amd's processors will march ahead of intel.

For my own build im waiting for ryzen 3rd gen.
 

Smashin

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For some odd reason intel cpu's perform better in Photoshop, Lightroom and premiere. I had initially picked ryzen 7 2700.

Intel's single core speed is the deciding factor for most games and applications, most of them dont even utilize all the cores! Maybe in the future with better software optimization amd's processors will march ahead of intel.

For my own build im waiting for ryzen 3rd gen.
Yea it is true that Intel has higher single core speeds, however the margins are small and the price differences are pretty noticeable.

A r7 2700x is compared with a i7 9700K which is alot more expensive, the extra money could go for some other upgrade.

I went AMD on my last build, competition is awesome for consumers.
But i get your decision by going Intel :)

Btw im not so sure about that Noctua NH-L9i, specially on a mini itx, i doubt you will be able to maintain the 4.6Ghz with Turbo stable.

And from what i gather it's not very silent, unlike the typical Noctua Fans.

OTHER: The Noctua NH-L9i is not one of the quietest coolers you can get. It's one of the quietest coolers in its size. Big difference. I wouldn't recommend it either for an i7-8700 if you care about a reasonably quiet PC. I have a Noctua NH-D14 from EIGHT YEARS? ago and that would be close to what I'd recommend (but probably one of the Cryorig models for the price)
 

VidaRed

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Yea it is true that Intel has higher single core speeds, however the margins are small and the price differences are pretty noticeable.

A r7 2700x is compared with a i7 9700K which is alot more expensive, the extra money could go for some other upgrade.

I went AMD on my last build, competition is awesome for consumers.
But i get your decision by going Intel :)

Btw im not so sure about that Noctua NH-L9i, specially on a mini itx, i doubt you will be able to maintain the 4.6Ghz with Turbo stable.

And from what i gather it's not very silent, unlike the typical Noctua Fans.
I checked the benchmarks, for photo/video editing intel has the lead. Amd takes the lead in multitasking though.

With the case im using i've only got 76mm height for a cpu cooler, so not a lot of options. I might go for the noctua i65 version or i'll go for a aio liquid cooler like corsair h60.
 

The Don

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So I'm thinking of upgrading my build. I have two options.

Just upgrade my CPU/mobo/GPU and incorperate them into my existing build
or
Spend about 1500GBP on a completely new build and sell my old one.

I currently have:

i5 6600k,
MSI Krait gaming x3 z170A,
GTX 1070,
16GB DDR4 1066MHz corsair vengeance LED,
Kingston 120gb ssd,
Segate 2tb hdd,
Fractal design 650 80plus gold semi-modular

So my question(s) would be;
If I'm just upgrading the existing build, what parts should I go for? (willing to spend around 1k)
If I'm selling my existing build, how much would it be worth, roughly? (It hasn't been overused or overclocked as I'm a casual gamer and I switch between console/pc gaming quite regularly)
If spending 1.5k on a new PC what parts should I be going for? (I'm thinking Ryzen/RTX 2080 or even 2070)

EDIT: I for sure want to throw a 970 evo 500gb m.2 in there also.
 

Chipper

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Glad this got bumped. Thinking of doing a budget new build with room for future improvements adding bit by bit. I game but I'm not hardcore or anything and think it's time to change things up. Currently got an AMD FX 8350, 1050 ti card and 16GB of DDR3 under the hood.

What I'm really looking for is cpu and motherboard socket recommendations. I want a combination that has some more budget orientated cpu options that will give me a bit of a boost over what I currently have for gaming but at the same time has higher end cpu options that I might well buy at a later date when I have more spare cash or when the prices drop. I also want to move to DDR4 RAM but for now will be keeping my GPU, I'll upgrade that at a later date too. AMD or Intel, I don't mind.

That's essentially how I ended up with my current machine. It started off with an FX4130, 8GB of RAM and a HD7850 card.
 

Ødegaard

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So I'm thinking of upgrading my build. I have two options.

Just upgrade my CPU/mobo/GPU and incorperate them into my existing build
or
Spend about 1500GBP on a completely new build and sell my old one.

I currently have:

i5 6600k,
MSI Krait gaming x3 z170A,
GTX 1070,
16GB DDR4 1066MHz corsair vengeance LED,
Kingston 120gb ssd,
Segate 2tb hdd,
Fractal design 650 80plus gold semi-modular

So my question(s) would be;
If I'm just upgrading the existing build, what parts should I go for? (willing to spend around 1k)
If I'm selling my existing build, how much would it be worth, roughly? (It hasn't been overused or overclocked as I'm a casual gamer and I switch between console/pc gaming quite regularly)
If spending 1.5k on a new PC what parts should I be going for? (I'm thinking Ryzen/RTX 2080 or even 2070)

EDIT: I for sure want to throw a 970 evo 500gb m.2 in there also.
Are you sure you've read right on the ram-speed?
I'd switch that out for faster ram, your motherboard supports up to 3600Mhz, 2800 or 3200 should be fine at 16gb.
I'd also upgrade the ssd for your system-disc. A 500gb system ssd would improve user-experience quite a bit I believe.

That said, for 1500 euros or pounds you should get a quite decent desktop if you want to just upgrade it.
As an example of what I see on Norwegian sites (mind our prices might be a bit high, and I'm even talking pre-built here) that you can get for around that price:

3 year warranty
ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X (6 cores, 12 threads, 3,6GHz)
GeForce 2070 (increase % of 35% over 1070)
16GB 2666MHz ram
500GB M.2 SSD
2TB HDD (not included in the package, but you can add the drive yourself within the price-range)


You should consider how much money you really want to spend right now. Truth be told doing minor or no upgrades for a little while could be the better solution as AMD might start pushing even harder to take on Nvidia & Intel in the coming year or two, but on paper you get a lot of upgrade for the cash on hand, especially if you manage to get a decent price for your current rig.
 

The Don

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Are you sure you've read right on the ram-speed?
I'd switch that out for faster ram, your motherboard supports up to 3600Mhz, 2800 or 3200 should be fine at 16gb.
I'd also upgrade the ssd for your system-disc. A 500gb system ssd would improve user-experience quite a bit I believe.

That said, for 1500 euros or pounds you should get a quite decent desktop if you want to just upgrade it.
As an example of what I see on Norwegian sites (mind our prices might be a bit high, and I'm even talking pre-built here) that you can get for around that price:

3 year warranty
ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X (6 cores, 12 threads, 3,6GHz)
GeForce 2070 (increase % of 35% over 1070)
16GB 2666MHz ram
500GB M.2 SSD
2TB HDD (not included in the package, but you can add the drive yourself within the price-range)


You should consider how much money you really want to spend right now. Truth be told doing minor or no upgrades for a little while could be the better solution as AMD might start pushing even harder to take on Nvidia & Intel in the coming year or two, but on paper you get a lot of upgrade for the cash on hand, especially if you manage to get a decent price for your current rig.
Good advice. Thanks. I'm not sure what I could get for my current setup but even if I'm just going to keep it and replace some parts, I could probably go to around 1100/1200 gbp for upgrading.
 

Chipper

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Glad this got bumped. Thinking of doing a budget new build with room for future improvements adding bit by bit. I game but I'm not hardcore or anything and think it's time to change things up. Currently got an AMD FX 8350, 1050 ti card and 16GB of DDR3 under the hood.

What I'm really looking for is cpu and motherboard socket recommendations. I want a combination that has some more budget orientated cpu options that will give me a bit of a boost over what I currently have for gaming but at the same time has higher end cpu options that I might well buy at a later date when I have more spare cash or when the prices drop. I also want to move to DDR4 RAM but for now will be keeping my GPU, I'll upgrade that at a later date too. AMD or Intel, I don't mind.

That's essentially how I ended up with my current machine. It started off with an FX4130, 8GB of RAM and a HD7850 card.
Been doing a bit of reasearch on this - looking at a Ryzen 2600 on a zen/AM4 mobo, any good? The 2700/2700x is a bit pricey for me at the moment. There's also a 3000 series coming out soon which uses the same socket as far as I can tell so I could maybe upgrade to one of those in the future without having to buy another motherboard.
 

The Don

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Been doing a bit of reasearch on this - looking at a Ryzen 2600 on a zen/AM4 mobo, any good? The 2700/2700x is a bit pricey for me at the moment. There's also a 3000 series coming out soon which uses the same socket as far as I can tell so I could maybe upgrade to one of those in the future without having to buy another motherboard.
From what I've just read, the ryzen 7 2700x won't give you any better gaming performance than the r5 2600x.

I was going to go for the r7 myself until I read that.
 

Chipper

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From what I've just read, the ryzen 7 2700x won't give you any better gaming performance than the r5 2600x.

I was going to go for the r7 myself until I read that.
Thanks, and there's £100 difference between the two. Not worth it then even if I did have a bigger budget by the sounds of it.

The 1600/x actually doesn't look too bad straight out of the box in comparison to the 2600/x but it's not much cheaper at all. Thinking the 2600x is the way to go. I have a cooler already, if I didn't I'd be tempted by the non x version just to trim the budget a little more. I don't overclock and the wraith fan seems ok if you don't. As it is I'll go for the 'x' and whack on my Hyper Evo 212.

Edit: Wait, it's late and I'm confusing myself of what has a fan and what doesn't. 1600 does, 1600x doesn't, both 2600s do. Whatever, 2600x it is.
 
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Kaos

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Just built my new rig over the weekend.

Intel i7 9700k
16 gb Corsair 2400mhz ddr4 ram
EVGA NVidia RTX 2080
Aorus Pro Z390 motherboard
500gb Samsung 970 M.2 ssd

Also bought an MSI 144hz monitor to pair it with.

My wallets screaming at me but oh those frames :drool:
 

Dante

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Just built my new rig over the weekend.

Intel i7 9700k
16 gb Corsair 2400mhz ddr4 ram
EVGA NVidia RTX 2080
Aorus Pro Z390 motherboard
500gb Samsung 970 M.2 ssd

Also bought an MSI 144hz monitor to pair it with.

My wallets screaming at me but oh those frames :drool:
Nice. I'm aiming for something similar in the next month or two.

I've not played videogames to any real degree for about a decade. But I still fancy building a gaming rig for the kudos of it.

I'm flitting between the idea of a 2080 or a 2080 TI. Both total overkill, but I want to live my childhood fantasies, dammit.

One thing I definitely want to do is liquid cool botht the CPU and GPU on a single loop. I've never done it before, so I'm a little bit apprehensive.
 

The Don

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So I've just this minute ordered new parts off amazon. Might have went a wee bit over budget and I completely ignored my own advice in this thread. Still, cant wait till it all comes. Love the case. Found it by accident and fell in love.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor (£277.98 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair - H100i RGB PLATINUM SE 63 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£151.49 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus - ROG STRIX X470-F Gaming ATX AM4 Motherboard (£176.17 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£128.48 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£106.98 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce RTX 2080 8 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card (£749.99 @ Box Limited)
Case: Lian-Li - PC-O11 Dynamic (White) ATX Full Tower Case (£115.00 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Thermaltake - Smart Pro RGB 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£76.66)
Case Fan: Corsair - LL120 RGB White with Lighting Node PRO 63 CFM 120mm Fans (£81.48 @ Amazon UK)
Case Fan: Corsair - LL120 RGB White with Lighting Node PRO 63 CFM 120mm Fans (£81.48 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1945.71
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-03-22 01:01 GMT+0000
 

George Owen

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So I've just this minute ordered new parts off amazon. Might have went a wee bit over budget and I completely ignored my own advice in this thread. Still, cant wait till it all comes. Love the case. Found it by accident and fell in love.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor (£277.98 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: Corsair - H100i RGB PLATINUM SE 63 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (£151.49 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: Asus - ROG STRIX X470-F Gaming ATX AM4 Motherboard (£176.17 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£128.48 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£106.98 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce RTX 2080 8 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card (£749.99 @ Box Limited)
Case: Lian-Li - PC-O11 Dynamic (White) ATX Full Tower Case (£115.00 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Thermaltake - Smart Pro RGB 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£76.66)
Case Fan: Corsair - LL120 RGB White with Lighting Node PRO 63 CFM 120mm Fans (£81.48 @ Amazon UK)
Case Fan: Corsair - LL120 RGB White with Lighting Node PRO 63 CFM 120mm Fans (£81.48 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1945.71
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-03-22 01:01 GMT+0000
Awesone. Nice machine you got there.

Monitor?
 

George Owen

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Thanks. No monitor. Run my pc through the TV, for gaming at 4k. I know 60fps isn't ideal but I'm not a competetive/online gamer. Prefer story based single player games. Much nicer in 4k/ultra settings.
Fair enough. I also play single player games these days (back in the day I used to play Starcraft online).

What game are you planning to play first? The last game i played was Alien: Isolation... Amazing, almost gave me a few heart attacks.
 

The Don

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Fair enough. I also play single player games these days (back in the day I used to play Starcraft online).

What game are you planning to play first? The last game i played was Alien: Isolation... Amazing, almost gave me a few heart attacks.
Alien Isolation! That game nearly killed me, I swear. I had to stop playing it. I dunno what I'll play first, tbh. The GFX card comes with Anthem, Battlefield V and Metro Exodus afaik and the CPU comes with The Division 2.
I've played exodus already and the rest aren't on the top of my most wanted list but i'll give them a go.

I guess I'll play Crysis 3 to see if my rig can handle it. :p
 

Olly Gunnar Solskjær

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Your PWR cable linking from the buttons on your case front panels to your motherboard might be loose. That’s where I’d start.
I checked those but the button has been funny for a while, needed to be pressed lots before it'd come on etc.

I just saw a tutorial about connecting the pins on the motherboard which I've done, so I'm up for now.
 

VidaRed

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Just built my new rig over the weekend.

Intel i7 9700k
16 gb Corsair 2400mhz ddr4 ram
EVGA NVidia RTX 2080
Aorus Pro Z390 motherboard
500gb Samsung 970 M.2 ssd

Also bought an MSI 144hz monitor to pair it with.

My wallets screaming at me but oh those frames :drool:
Counter strike ?

Which monitor is that and does it have g-sync ?
 

Steerpike

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Patiently waiting for Ryzen 3rd gen. :angel:
I'll most likely do a new build towards the end of this year - current rig is coming up to 10 years old - and am considering going down the Ryzen route rather than Intel. Sounds like I'd better do some more reading on what's coming down the pipe.