1080 is the high end card of the old architecture that came out a while ago. The 1660 is an entry level card built on the same architecture as the new 20 series but with the fancy ray tracing removed.

muzzy you need a 2080ti

Well if you're going to get a 2080Ti you might as well get an expensive monitor.

And at that point 2080ti ia only like 700 more so may as well

The arc of DS is something incredible.

acemuzzy wrote:

So I'm thinking of getting a new PC (a slight overreaction to windows crashing I appreciated, but my current one was built in 2010 so I feel I'm owed...) Probably gonna stick with my existing monitor etc., so just the main PC I'm interested in.  Also keen to know what kinda e.g. speed improvement I'm likely to be looking at - old model was a GTX690 (the one bit that's newer than 2010), and an i7 (but obviously quite an old one...). Other requirement is "it has to look nice".  Per the wife.   In terms of self-building, I'm a total noob basically.  But willing to do so if the price is right.  What's a good site to dive into & start mucking about with?  Do a bit of home coding as well as gaming, so I'm guessing a chunk of RAM, new-ish mobo & multi-core CPU, and a nice graphics card while I'm at it.  What'd be the best way to chuck say a grand at that??

Alright then let's sort something out. By the sounds of it £1000ish seems to be your budget, and you are probably wanting a new case for maximum pretty, what is the PSU on the old machine? You might want to reuse it if it's still decent.

10 years is good innings for a system, and I think you'll notice a pretty decent speed upgrade with modern processors. You can certainly cram in a lot more cores for less now which I think can help with code compilation if that's something you wait around for often, I think a fast SSD is a boon in that area also.

acemuzzy wrote:

£200 more ... https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/acemuzzy/saved/#view=T8Gj23 Hmmmm

This is a pretty solid build, not much I would change here, you can skip the Hyper 212 cooler as the stock AMD cooler is good enough, if you really want much better cooling and for it to be quieter then I would pick something from Noctua or Be Quiet.

The BIOS warning thing you saw relates to the latest gen of Ryzen processors, such as that 3700X working on motherboards that released for the second or first generation of Ryzen. The B450 mobo chipset came out for the 2nd 2000 gen, and if the BIOS is not already pre-updated then they likely won't boot up with a 3000 series CPU installed. Many mobo manufacturers will add a button on the IO shield that will allow it to be updated without a CPU installed, with a USB drive with BIOS files onboard, otherwise you would have to get an older CPU from somewhere or get AMD to loan you an old Athlon to sort it out.

I'm not sure if that Asus motherboard has a BIOS Flashback (the above little button and USB stick feature) function, so the safest bet would be to get a board that definitely has a newer BIOS preinstalled, such as MSI's 'MAX' boards - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/jcYQzy/msi-b450-tomahawk-max-atx-am4-motherboard-b450-tomahawk-max  I generally recommend that Tomahawk or the m-ATX Mortar as they have some of the best VRMs on a B450 to handle the 12 or 16 core chips if you want to upgrade down the line. If a lot of storage and PCIE devices is a priority though then you may want to look at an X470 or X570 board, but for just a few drives and one graphics card and not a huge amount of USB devices B450 will be fine.

If you just need the one PCIE slot then you may want to consider going for the "MSI B450M MORTAR MAX" - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/h7WBD3/msi-b450m-mortar-max-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-b450m-mortar-max As that is a bit cheaper, has more USB ports, and is the smaller micro-ATX form factor which you can stick in a shorter case such as the Fractal Meshify C Mini.

I would perhaps recommend that you go for an NVME drive such as the Samsung 970 Evo for a main boot drive. The difference between SATA SSD and NVME is not massively noticeable in everyday use, but there are some applications that can really benefit from incredibly fast storage, I believe code compilation is one of them. Also I get the strong feeling that it will become more important for gaming soon, the new consoles will have NVME drives as standard and you can bet game devs will be fully leveraging that for asset streaming. Already for things like Star Citizen (kind of a big tech demo really) I think NVME storage can be necessary for a smooth experience, and I haven't properly tested but I think moving Kingdom Come Deliverance to my NVME drive made a difference in reducing stutters. It's not a big deal right now though, but switching boot drives is a pain if it comes to it which is why it might be a good idea to 'future proof' just a little.

You should sell the old kit if it's not needed to get some monies back, let me know if you want a hand in that as I've done a fair bit of used parts selling before. The GTX 690 for example was a bit of a beast back in the day, might still be desirable for some people to mess about with - (link broke but search GTX 690 on ebay and tick sold listings).

I generally prefer face-to-face like with Gumtree or whatever the local popular equivalent is, ebay is shit and the 10% cut is a pisstake.

Yeah it should be fine, you can double check compatibility on the manufacturer's websites, e.g. - https://www.fractal-design.com/products/cases/define/define-mini-c/black/

"315 mm in length with front fans mounted"

That probably includes VAT.

That case is the bigger normal ATX one, you want the mini version - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/JsKcCJ/fractal-design-meshify-c-mini-dark-tg-microatx-mini-tower-case-fd-ca-mesh-c-mini-bko-tgd A micro ATX board will fit into a full ATX case, there's just be a bit of unused space for the PCIE slots, makes sense to pair micro to micro. You can see Speedhaak's build in that case a couple pages back.

No sorry the stock cooler will be included in the box with the processor, should be the Wraith Prism which is particularly nice for a bundled cooler -



Yeah ignore the BIOS warning, the MAX versions all have updated BIOSes and will work out of the box. It's worth updating to the latest BIOS when you get it all set up anyway though.

And how hard are these to actually build?!? So I need antistatic shizzle? No soldering right?!!

Dead easy to build, I'll go over some basics later. An antistatic wrist strap can be handy to allay worry about it.

I stick my bare foot on the radiator.

Pro wiring tips.

Red to red.

Black to black.


Blue to bits.

LivDiv wrote:

I am colourblind though

Me too.  Makes home electrics much more exciting.