PC Build Advice/Review II: 5090 or Bust.

[synistar]

I remember switching 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppys to play Carmen Sandiego.

[Nitsuki]

Doom 2 took 5 whole 3 1/2” floppies to install. Yup

I to started on a commodore 64 with 5 1/4” floppies and data cassette.

[Prothescar]

back in my day we played tic tac toe with smoke signals

Not necessarily a PC part, but still fits in with the general PC theme of the thread: the new nvidia driver feature is pretty good. Basically, if you are lucky enough to have an RTX GPU, it allows you to do a 2.25x upscale at next to no performance cost that looks about the same as a 4x downscale. This is achieved by leveraging you GPU's tensor cores, similar to DLSS (not the same technique though, and this works for practically every directX enabled game, not just ones with trained AI like DLSS). It isn't perfect, the AI fucks some stuff up and you do lose some fine details (that you probably have to screenshot, zoom, and squint to see anyway) in some games and scenes but a general performance bonus of 30~100% (yes, it varies a lot based on the game). Overall though, a very, very nice feature that has worked great in every non-DLSS game that I've tried it on, and is great to have along with that upscaler they added a couple of months ago (not at the same time of course, the upscaler is more for non RTX and cheaper GPUs).

[Boyiee]

back in my day we played tic tac toe with smoke signals

Not necessarily a PC part, but still fits in with the general PC theme of the thread: the new nvidia driver feature is pretty good. Basically, if you are lucky enough to have an RTX GPU, it allows you to do a 2.25x upscale at next to no performance cost that looks about the same as a 4x downscale. This is achieved by leveraging you GPU's tensor cores, similar to DLSS (not the same technique though, and this works for practically every directX enabled game, not just ones with trained AI like DLSS). It isn't perfect, the AI fucks some stuff up and you do lose some fine details (that you probably have to screenshot, zoom, and squint to see anyway) in some games and scenes but a general performance bonus of 30~100% (yes, it varies a lot based on the game). Overall though, a very, very nice feature that has worked great in every non-DLSS game that I've tried it on, and is great to have along with that upscaler they added a couple of months ago (not at the same time of course, the upscaler is more for non RTX and cheaper GPUs).

What's the feature called how do I enable it which games does it work on?

[Krandor]

It's under the same menu in the NVIDIA control panel that you would previously enable DSR

[Prothescar]

It's in NVCP, under DSR. "DL mode" DSR. It works in any game that has a full screen mode. If you don't already downscale (i.e., tell he game to render at a higher res than your monitor, then have your GPU bring it back down to your display res) it means nothing to you, essentially its main purpose is to reduce the overhead of a 4x resolution (or 2xish) visual bump. Very, very nice for 1080p and 1440p screens, wouldn't say it's something you want to use if you're already at 4k native unless you're willing to fudge the system so you can render at 1080p and DLDSR back up to 4k for a big fps boost.

Basically it's modern day supersampling which I adore for any game without DLSS as an AA method cause fxaa and taa are too blurry for me.

[Boyiee]

Interesting. I run 3440x1440 ultrawide on a 3080 and 1440p on a 3070 mobile.

[Prothescar]

Yeah I use it mostly on my laptop to boost the smaller ultrawide in my bedroom. On lighter demand games I have tried it on my main 3090 PC as well and it works fine @ 8k(ish) but I probably wouldn't bother in any more demanding games. Not that it matters, DLSS exists in basically all of those anyway. Like I said there's also a way to fudge it so that you can fool your PC into thinking it's rendering at 1080p during games while retaining your normal res on the desktop, effectively allowing you to go 1080p -> 4k with DLDSR for big gains, but it's a little more of an involved process. Effectively you end up creating the world's most bootleg DLSS that way.

[The Stig]

I don't think I've historically done this before, but on CPUs with no integrated GPUs, lets assuming 100% fresh install from scratch. When booting up with a GPU I installed prior to booting, I assume basic windows drivers would be used to make it display, right? And then once I download drivers for it, the full potential is unlocked (disregarding the monitor specs).

I was planning my build and realised that this is the first time I've gotten a CPU with no integrated GPU!

[Melena]

Yeah, that's what should happen. Windows should slap a generic PnP driver if your version of Windows doesn't have at least an out of date driver built in.

[synistar]

google says that a discrete GPU should function without drivers for a windows setup. Just make sure you're plugging into the GPU HDMI/DisplayPort and not the motherboard.

[The Stig]

Cheers guys, just wanted to triple check. And yup I will of course plug into GPU only! hehe

[Cantih]

So where things are in my PC build saga.

Got almost all the components, have all the critical ones except the case.
(Side story: The $30 HDD I ordered will probably not arrive, and I have to wait until March until I can claim a refund from Amazon. But I don't NEED it to get started, so eh.)

So since looking at the price history on PCPartPicker and CamelCamelCamel, I realize the case I settled on, the be quiet Pure Base 600 wasn't likely to go on sale. So I get it for $90, tracking shows it going to the shipping hub outside Chicago, and then it just disappears.
Due date passes, Amazon automatically refunds, and I try again, though the case is now $100. This time the tracking shows it in New Jersey, never comes out.
I'm due for a refund tomorrow.

So, I'm looking into other cases. Between my budget and preferences, I do not have many options.
FUCK GLASS SIDE PANELS.
I just want a roomy case that's easy to work in/cable manage, won't collect all the dust, and has decent temps.
And they could exist, but the prime candidates, the Corsair 4000D Airflow, and be quiet 500DX, ONLY COME IN GLASS. There's also the Corsair 275R Airflow, but I can't find a solid review of it's thermals and noise, and again, it ONLY FUCKING COMES IN GLASS!

The only things that don't come in glass, either steel or acrylic, are various configurations of Corsair 270/5 R/Q. And all the stuff I see about them is essentially bitching about their airflow/temps.

[Cyn]

FUCK GLASS SIDE PANELS.
500DX, ONLY COME IN GLASS.
ONLY FUCKING COMES IN GLASS!

The fuck did glass do to you?

[Melena]

So where things are in my PC build saga.

Got almost all the components, have all the critical ones except the case.
(Side story: The $30 HDD I ordered will probably not arrive, and I have to wait until March until I can claim a refund from Amazon. But I don't NEED it to get started, so eh.)

So since looking at the price history on PCPartPicker and CamelCamelCamel, I realize the case I settled on, the be quiet Pure Base 600 wasn't likely to go on sale. So I get it for $90, tracking shows it going to the shipping hub outside Chicago, and then it just disappears.
Due date passes, Amazon automatically refunds, and I try again, though the case is now $100. This time the tracking shows it in New Jersey, never comes out.
I'm due for a refund tomorrow.

So, I'm looking into other cases. Between my budget and preferences, I do not have many options.
FUCK GLASS SIDE PANELS.
I just want a roomy case that's easy to work in/cable manage, won't collect all the dust, and has decent temps.
And they could exist, but the prime candidates, the Corsair 4000D Airflow, and be quiet 500DX, ONLY COME IN GLASS. There's also the Corsair 275R Airflow, but I can't find a solid review of it's thermals and noise, and again, it ONLY FUCKING COMES IN GLASS!

The only things that don't come in glass, either steel or acrylic, are various configurations of Corsair 270/5 R/Q. And all the stuff I see about them is essentially bitching about their airflow/temps.

You're going to be hard pressed to find a good case without a glass side panel. That said, I have the RGB version of the 4000D and that case is great. I'm just waiting on Corsair to get more of the airflow front panels in stock so I can swap out the glass front panel for the vented one.

[synistar]

I just checked Tustin Microcenter's inventory on their site. Of the 100 some odd case models they have in stock, like all but 6 have tempered glass. 3 of them were SFF, 1 a cryptominer rack, and 2 benchtop setups.

[Cantih]

The fuck did glass do to you?

IT SHATTERS.
Also, it goes hand in hand with RGB bullshit.

[Prothescar]

in all my years of building PCs I've never once managed to break a side panel

[Melena]

IT SHATTERS.
Also, it goes hand in hand with RGB bullshit.

Also just don't enable the RGB

[Jamison]

I don't really do RGB but I love having a little ambient light inside the case to see the components. (The one exception is my RAM which has lights, so I set those act like a thermometer tracking CPU and GPU temps.)