"Rate my Rig" thread

[JLTucker]

Got tired of shitty laptops and went for a workstation given my computer habits: emulation, coding, graphic design, and photo editing.

I have the following:

Lenovo Thinkpad P50
Intel Core i7-6700HQ @ 2.60GHz
24GB DDR4 RAM (expanded on my own)
Sandisk SSD 256GB (installed on my own)
Samsung 850 EVO M2 500gb
Nvidia Quadroo 1000M video card

Thoughts? I also have a gaming desktop, but i don't use it much anymore, so no need to post the specs.

[Starglider]

Can a laptop really be a 'workstation', in the sense of a meaningful class of computer? About the best you can say about a laptop is 'desktop replacement' i.e. as good as a mid-range desktop. A 'workstation' is generally something substantially more powerful than a typical desktop, e.g. dual CPU, RAID array, at least 64GB RAM; more components than you could stuff into a laptop.

[TheFeniX]

Lenovo's are pretty top-notch laptops. I would have bought one had I not found my ASUS mislabeled and on sale. Saved about $300.

Workstation doesn't really have a set definition. Way back, maybe so. Even then, some "workstations" were essentially dumb terminals with all the lifting done on the server end. At the time I bought it, my i5 with 8GBs of RAM and a GTX260 could have qualified since it would have been capable of heavy lifting compared to some $300 intro-level Office/Acrobat machine. Maybe some more RAM, but all I did was work with stupidly large (both physical/logical and memory-wise) figures and some graphics editing with Photoshop.

It had better specs than Dell's entry level workstations at about 2/3 the price. Now, you can build some killer workstations from Dell, but there's really no set specs. You don't have to have multiple CPUs or ECC-RAM to qualify. You have to have enough to crunch the numbers on the numbers that need crunching. One of my customers way back talked about their workstations were geared more towards reliability rather than blazing speed since a PSU failing or memory errors cost them a lot more than extra hours spent rendering their stuff. But they offloaded most of the work to a server farm, which likely explains why they had extra hot-swappable stations ready to go in event of a failure. They did old school 3D engineering mock-ups for refineries. Really cool shit. You could click on one pipeline and follow it all around the place to see where it went/connect to. Sorry, rambling.

That Lenovo would be in a class of it's own compared to what most people would get for a work laptop.I wouldn't use it as a rendering PC unless I had to since there's much faster desktop i7s out there. But other than that, thing should run incredibly smooth.

Even my old ASUS has problem running newer games (with the GTX560M), but it has the CPU clocks and RAM to outpace a lot of current desktops. Might catch on fire though.

EDIT: Think it's a 760M actually.

[TheFeniX]

SLI has been pissing me off. I know I've been playing unoptimized heaps, but I'm really tired of seeing 0 GPU utilization on my second card even after beating settings with a hammer. Fallout4 is bad and Ark has no intention of messing with SLI as the Unreal engine does not support it natively and DX12 is supposed to do something with it. But Nvidia has been... shitting the bed lately when it comes to drivers.

Either way, my buddies card is cratering. His old 660 can't keep up with Ark, but I think it's failing outright. I've sent him one of my 970s for a modest price and his old 660 (parts is parts, if it's not actually failing). I then tried putting my other in my brothers ASUS CG1330 with a Phenom, but the computer hard powers down when trying to run Fallout4 with any kind of resolution. Like, "poof, computer dies." WTF? I've found issues relating to old AMD needing the Northbridge voltage increased, but that did nothing. Hell, the game just doesn't play nice with his PC at all. Yes, it's old. But it's a 6 core and my even older i7 can not only run F4 but will also take a 970 without issue. His entire PC was running slower. Whatever, I've got some old parts and I'm going to get him setup later on. I cannot wrap my head around modern AMD shit. I finally put his old HD5750 back in and called it.

First thing is to see if my old board with a P4 dual Core at 3.2Ghz can run anything. If so, he's willing to pay for more RAM to make it game. I can get some money for old hardware as a bonus. Worst case, he has to throw an i3 in there for a hundred bucks or so, but he could have a modern gaming rig for less than a console.

Taking a step back: This is all because my wife told me to quit bitching and spend some money, but I didn't want to drop another $650 for a GTX980ti. Not for the limited gain, until I realized I might flat out lose a gaming friend to bad hardware. But Fry's had 1 ASUS left, open box marked down $130. I picked up another 20FPS in every game I play and there's now none of the choppiness associated with SLI. If my brother doesn't take the old stuff, I might try that 970 as a dedicated Physixs card or just sell it.

Hilarity at my brother-in-law talking to my brother: if you don't want that 970, I'll trade you for a 660ti. I'm fucking sure you would. Holy shit, that guy never ceases to make me risk laughing myself to death.

Anyways, SLI is only going to shine in areas I don't use it, such as spanning multiple displays. I'm done. I consider it worth the experience, but with the way games are going, there's just not enough support and it's likely there never will be.

Real question, what do I do with this GTX260 sitting here?

[TheFeniX]

I finally got my old i7 back from my sister. Her husband was supposed to game, but the thing's been collecting dust and the wife's PC isn't capable of doing a lot of gaming, so I popped my extra 970 in there and I think it would do her just fine.

I'm trying to work out what to do with this ibuypower heap of leftover parts. Finding the bottle-neck is next to impossible where it's at. Here's the basic specs (note, I put this together with old parts I found lying around and $50 on a new CPU):
ASRock Z97 Anniversary
G3258 overclocked to 4.4ghz watercooled (Ha!)
4 GBs of DDR1600 RAM running currently single-channel.
ASUS GTX 660ti
Samsung 250GB 7200RPM HDD
Thermaltake 600W PSU

So, my brother's PC has started to hard-power off when playing Fallout 4 even with his stock PC. I can't troubleshoot it because he "can't afford" to not login to his bullshit P2W browser game in which he runs like 12 bots for. Ugh... but he also won't stop bothering me to help him. I'm considering parting him out the following upgrades and just giving him what I currently have:

I5 4670 (~$230USD)
2x8 GBs of DDR3 1600 RAM (~$100USD)
Samsung 500GB SSD (~$180USD)

I think an i3 would be dead weight because all he wants to play in F4 and even though I doubt the CPU is the bottleneck, I've read the Creation engine 64-bit port loves it some physical cores. But they are substantially cheaper (almost $100USD), but he also wants to run that shitty bot program and it ties to cores mostly from what he's told me about. (he actually wanted an i7 just for that.... oh man..).

I could probably OC it with the watercooling to buy him a few more years off it. The 660ti would be another bottle-neck, but he's getting it for free. The rig has already handled a 970 in it, so if he want's to spend another chunk of change, it's on him. The SSD vs a HDD is completely up to him. The prices will only continue to drop. But the RAM is pretty much a requirement. I gave him the option of 2x4 GBs, but with the understanding that 16GBs at some point is going to become standard. However, he could also just pop another cheap 2x4GB in at any time as the board does have the support. There is also the possibility that his current 8GBs of RAM is compatible, but I don't know.

So, am I (or him, really) throwing good money after bad? I guess since the only part existing is the shitty ASRock board, I could part him something out completely new, but man I don't want to build a whole other rig. That or dig through more "budget gaming PC" articles.

[TheFeniX]

Ghetto Edit: The RAM is actually about half that price. No idea where I got $100.

[The Infidel]

If your brother don't want to turn off some bots in a P2W-game, then he doesn't really need your help.

My computer has this weird thing going. Sometimes, maybe once a week, and usually when I wake it up from hibernation, I get BSOD and it tells me there's something with memory management, or it just reboots without giving a clue. When it happens after hibernation, I don't care too much, because it still enters previous state. I did run memcheck when I got the computer a year ago, and memory seemed fine. Maybe I'll run it a day or two soon, to make sure it's not memory. There is a BIOS update, but I haven't installed it yet.

[Jub]

My current rig is holding up pretty well since I built it in 2013. The only part I've replaced is the PSU and even that was just to get me some overhead to eventually SLI a second graphics card.

Curently I'm running an 4.1Ghz 3850, 8 gigs of ram, a 7970 ghz edition graphics card, and 3TB of platter HDDs. Planned upgrades are an SD and either a second 7970 or a completely new graphics card, leaning towards a second 7970 as newer cards are eit her expensive or not much of an upgrade.

[biostem]

My current rig is holding up pretty well since I built it in 2013. The only part I've replaced is the PSU and even that was just to get me some overhead to eventually SLI a second graphics card.

Curently I'm running an 4.1Ghz 3850, 8 gigs of ram, a 7970 ghz edition graphics card, and 3TB of platter HDDs. Planned upgrades are an SD and either a second 7970 or a completely new graphics card, leaning towards a second 7970 as newer cards are eit her expensive or not much of an upgrade.

It was a huge improvement to go from a regular hard drive to an SSD. My only advice regarding getting an SSD is to stick to the bigger name manufacturers, (I like OCZ, but my friends have recommended Intel and Samsung), and to get the largest capacity drive you can afford.

[Jub]

My current rig is holding up pretty well since I built it in 2013. The only part I've replaced is the PSU and even that was just to get me some overhead to eventually SLI a second graphics card.

Curently I'm running an 4.1Ghz 3850, 8 gigs of ram, a 7970 ghz edition graphics card, and 3TB of platter HDDs. Planned upgrades are an SD and either a second 7970 or a completely new graphics card, leaning towards a second 7970 as newer cards are eit her expensive or not much of an upgrade.

It was a huge improvement to go from a regular hard drive to an SSD. My only advice regarding getting an SSD is to stick to the bigger name manufacturers, (I like OCZ, but my friends have recommended Intel and Samsung), and to get the largest capacity drive you can afford.

Yeah, I'll probably save up for a large high quality SSD so I don't need to worry overly much about space constraints or drive failure. All the important stuff stays on a physical drive and gets backed up to cloud storage.

[Zaune]

Been thinking about a GPU upgrade lately, because my GTX 480 is starting to show its age and won't be receiving official driver updates much longer. I'm leaning towards a 760, but I have heard that ATI's performance issues have been addressed in the newest Linux kernel updates. Is it worth looking at their nearest equivalent?

[Dominus Atheos]

I don't know about the amd's Linux performance, but an nvidia 760 is barely an improvement over a 480 (maybe 33%), so unless you are getting it for free from a friend or something, don't bother spending money on it.

[Zaune]

Hmmm. Okay, what about a 960, if I can find one for £100 or less?

[Dominus Atheos]

Uh, I don't know. Sorry, but it's a really difficult question, "what can I buy for 100 quid to replace the graphics card I currently have that came out for 400+ quid 6 years ago?"

According to this website, the Nvidia GTX 960 is 50% faster than the GTX 480. I honestly don't know what to recommend in this situation. I don't think I'd pay ~$150 dollars for that, but you may be forced to replace it if Nvidia drops driver support,

[Zaune]

Point taken. And to think I only paid about £70 for it a couple of years ago!

[TheFeniX]

According to this website, the Nvidia GTX 960 is 50% faster than the GTX 480. I honestly don't know what to recommend in this situation. I don't think I'd pay ~$150 dollars for that, but you may be forced to replace it if Nvidia drops driver support,

But even then, you'd still be able to play pretty much anything the card is capable of rendering. Man, looks like I missed out on the 480. Seems to keep up with my 560ti (that I still have in a PC somewhere), except it runs at 50,000C. If you ran DX9 games, seems like it spanks most anything.

The improvement of the 960 is going to be very noticeably in newer games. Any DX11 game should run considerably better on it. Really depends on what you're playing if it's worth the upgrade.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

Wait until you can spend a bit more and pick up the upcoming AMD RX 480. GTX 980 / R9 390X performance at 150W for $200 (don't know what the GBP price will be though). Failing that, an R9 380 is probably the best current bang-for-buck.

[Zaune]

But even then, you'd still be able to play pretty much anything the card is capable of rendering. Man, looks like I missed out on the 480. Seems to keep up with my 560ti (that I still have in a PC somewhere), except it runs at 50,000C. If you ran DX9 games, seems like it spanks most anything.

The improvement of the 960 is going to be very noticeably in newer games. Any DX11 game should run considerably better on it. Really depends on what you're playing if it's worth the upgrade.

Heh. DirectX isn't terribly relevant to me; I don't even have a Windows partition on my desktop. But it's been officially confirmed that Nvidia won't be updating the 480's drivers to add Vulkan support, and that likely means it won't be much longer before they discontinue updates entirely. And the open-source drivers are something of a mess right now, though I suppose there's a very faint hope Nvidia will release some source code once they discontinue official support.

[The Infidel]

AMD RX 460 and 470 was announced today, and seems to be very affordable. If you can wait a few weeks, that is. I assume the nVidia 1080 and 1070 are too pricey, but with these cards on the marked, expect to see prices fall on older cards. I wonder what the price of a used 970 will be in August.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I had assumed that the RX 480 would be the sweet spot, since it's rare to see a decent card under $250 as usually the $199 offering is hideously gimped. Looking at the rumors and hoping they are true, the RX 470 might actually be the one to get. $150 with 70-80% of the RX 480's performance, which would place it on par with a GTX 970. Yes please! I think this would be the first time in over decade that a GPU manufacturer will release a $150 card that's actually worth a damn, the last time being maybe the Radeon 9600 XT?

[Zaune]

Well, my 480GTX just bit the big one. I was sort of hoping this could wait a few months while I saved up, but oh well.

[lordroel]

Searching for a new computer, got my first offer, my budget is 900 euro, would like to know if it is good for gaming.

1,00 PC712 Intel Core i5-4460 649,00 649,00

CoolerMaster MiniTower Elite 342 Black

600 W voeding B600 / Coolermaster

Asus moederbord B85M-G

VGA/DVD-D/HDMI

Intel Core i5-4460 / S1150

8 GB DDR3 HyperX geheugen / Kingston

1.0 TB hdd SATA3 / Seagate

DVD-RW

Microsoft Windows 10 64bit / oem 2 jaar garantie

1,00 740617232479 240 GB SSD HyperX Fury/ Kingston 99,50 99,50

1,00 649528754295 Bracket SSD 3.5" 8,50 8,50

1,00 4716659682271 2 GB nVidia GeForce GTX750TI-PH-2GD5 / Asus 159,00 159,00

[Starglider]

GTX750 is the weak link, it's getting a bit long in the tooth now. It can't even manage 60 FPS at 1080p at more than medium settings, and that's in fairly old games. 2GB VRAM rules out high quality settings on the newest games anyway. You can get a Radeon RX460 with 4GB VRAM for that price, which is two years newer, roughly twice as powerful, and will serve you much longer.

[lordroel]

After some searching i bought this one.

Highscreen Gamer Elite

AMD FX 6300 3.5 GhZ Six-Core.

8 GB DDR 3 1600 MhZ.

1 TB HDD Gigabyte + 120 SSD disk.

AMD R9 380 4GB DDRS.

All-in-One Watercooling.

[Rogue 9]

So I'm running into a problem, with the original Dawn of War of all things. I run the Ultimate Apocalypse mod these days, which adds in a LOT of stuff, but it's still a twelve year old game, and... it spikes the fourth core of my processor (but not the first three) and crashes in larger games.

This is what my system looks like currently.



To be clear, I'm not intending to upgrade my system to handle Dawn of War, but am I/is it doing something wrong? I've been keeping the resource monitor open so I can see what it's been doing after a crash, and of the processor cores (which it numbers 0 through 3) it spikes 3, uses 20-40% of 1, and virtually ignores 0 and 2 (I close everything else I possibly can) and if it's overwhelming my graphics card I am fucking shocked.

Running the game unmodded (*shudder*) results in no problems at all; the computer just breezes through it.