PC Building Guide and Discussion #14

[cphabs]

My 5900x and 7900xtx Nitro+ are doing just fine at 2k 240hz. If I wanted to? With this setup? I could easily go 4K.

 

[Mikeaveli]

I haven't done much gaming since upgrading my CPU but the difference in general responsiveness is surprisingly noticeable. Even programs like Visual Studio which are notoriously slow to start now open nearly instantly lol. Ableton Live still takes a few seconds but it's definitely faster than before. Overall I'm impressed.

 

[PeteWorrell]

Gamers Nexus released a mammoth video about the impact of tariffs on the industry interviewing representatives from multiple companies like Corsair.

 

[Osprey]

I upgraded the major components of my PC (GPU, CPU, MB and RAM) last month. I didn't really need to, especially since I play more older games than newer ones, but I wanted to do it while things were still relatively cheap and for peace of mind. I should be set now for the next 4 years. That said, prices may not go up quite as much as initially expected, since a few exceptions for computer parts were announced last week (and maybe not factored into the GN video), but I'm still glad that I don't have to worry about them going up even a little and regretting not buying beforehand.

 

[RandV]

Man it's kind of a mess trying to sort through video cards. My PC is about 6 years old (and I just realized that surprisingly nothings ever broken on it), an AMD Ryzen 5 2600 CPU with 8 GB of RAM, but I cheaped out on the GPU at the time and got GTX 1050 TI 4GB card. That's now bottle necking me as I'm trying to play Clair Obscur, which has a minimum of requirement of: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB / AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB / Intel Arc A380 6 GB, and recommended of: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB / AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT 16 GB.

I search for the GTX 1060 on Amazon (not really digging into Newegg/Memory Express just yet) and they go for about $240-$280 Cdn. I'm looking at what I can find for 8GB cards which opens up a much wider price range.

The cheapest one I see is this RX 580, but at $215 that just seems off. This ASUS GeForce RTX 3050 at $350 I'm thinking maybe as that's about as high as I want to go, but I notice this is the single fan version and there's the dual fan for $520 and something they call TUF Gaming for $460. I'm wondering how much of a difference all this makes, and where does this ASUS card fall into the above Clair Obscur requirements? Or rather than an 8GB single would I be better off with a 6GB dual if the price is similar? I should note that I do have a poor airflow issue for my desktop with no way around it.

It's a long time ago by now but I really miss the old days before crypto currency and now AI.

Edit: Just looking a bit more but I'm wondering about the QoL vs performance of something like this 'Low-Profile' RTX 3050 6GB card for $300. Something that's quiet and doesn't run hot has more value to me then getting some extra framerates.