OT: Video Games VI

[Drake1588]

Thx for the reply, Drake. On this kinda of stuff on this thread/topic I admit rather ask here rather than the 10 second google from an old school perspective. I do use geforce experience so this makes it easy.

No worries. I'd just be careful going from team red to green or green to red. If I was doing that, then I'd probably uninstall drivers completely before physical installation. Not sure if I'd do any software installation first, like you used to have to do in Windows 95 before you installed your hardware. I don't think that's been a thing for ages, not since they launched plug and play, and it sucked out of the gate.

Anyone recoiling from the price hikes and the EVGA of it all and thinking of leaving nVidia for AMD over nVidia's business practices? I find that I'm surprisingly unmoved and not tempted at all. I thought it would bother me more, but it turns out when a company treats its partners like crap and gives the end consumer what I want... yeah, that's kind of all I care about - which kind of makes me the dick in the room, I guess. I find that I blame AMD more for being so far behind that nVidia thinks it can get away with it (and is probably right).

Maybe it's just that I'm not in a rush to build for another year or two. My 3080 Ti is going to be fine for a long while. It sounds from leaks like the AMD performance of their new top-end card competes very well with the 4080 on the Vulkan API. On other criteria, probably less competitive. AMD's version of DLSS isn't as powerful, and I don't think their ray tracing is up to snuff yet either. In pure rasterization, though, AMD is getting very good.

I wish AMD was going to position its stuff for a more cash-strapped gamer. There's a niche and an opportunity there, and being behind, they should pass on some of their suckitude to the gamer in savings. Being behind is fine if your stuff is cheap, but they want to sell their card for $1000. I remember being 21, right out of college, studio apartment, loans, job and grad school, and needing to build a gaming PC for $700-800. Maybe that's what Intel Arc is for, right now. AMD should be owning that space but I suppose they see themselves as better than that now.

Here's hoping both teams blue and red catch up. For now, nVidia all the way for me (those bastards). Competition in GPUs like there is now with CPUs would be great.

 

[usiel]

I started Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. If there are any old school crpg fans in here, this might be the game for you.

There were so many options at character creation my head was spinning. I hope my build is viable.

I play it in turn based mode and I've only had the extra crusade mode on one time and despised it.

There is always a dude around that can allow you to respec your main or your companions. Below is a decent link for some alt companion builds.

Companions | Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous Wiki

Companions in Pathfinder: WotR are special NPCs that can be recruited to join the player's party. List of all Companions, lore, and guides.

pathfinderwrathoftherighteous.wiki.fextralife.com

I tend to multiclass at least a level in a class that gets a mount like a cavalier or that one monk class that gets one. My current party is around 16th level and running a Rogue (Rowdy)/Fighter (two handed)/Monk with the whole vital strike/sneak attack with a two handed weapon. Lot of insta kills. Having a mount when you win initiative you can charge in and nail the spell casters that generally are towards the back.

One does lose out on base attack and number of attacks a bit. Also if you run into creatures that are immune to sneak attack and have high AC those can be touch but vital strike can help in those situations.

Did 'buy' a custom companion and built him out as a core fighter and went two weapon fighting with bastard swords and the whole weapon focus/specialization (which I generally don't like to do I like being able to use a lot of different weapons) as well as the PA/cleave/cleaving finish/great cleave and its ridiculously effective at the higher levels against some baddies that have super high AC.

Ember and Sosiel are probably the two standard companions I include the most. I tend to make a custom companion rogue if my main isn't one that has trickery. Hexes are great and man you need a healer. Having Sosiel take the brew potion feet is super helpful. Plus there is a mythic feat that allows one to brew up to 6th level spells.

Mythic stuff abundant casting chain is pretty awesome. Also there is one that allows you to bypass creature energy resistance if you have a spell focus feat like for evocation which is super helpful at the higher levels. Spell penetration also.

I've done about all the mythic paths at least a little bit but the trickster one the most since I like offensive melee characters. Dipping one level into barbarian to get rage is a nice buff. There is a mythic feat/power that allows for infinite rage. And there are a few cool items for rage stuff.

Ranged builds are pretty effective..love the monk one that Lann starts out with Arueshalae espionage expert is pretty good also. Underated is going with two weapon fighting with melee ranged/throwing axes is pretty damn cool.

Seelah alt Bard build is helpful at low levels but once your spell casters get up to herowism/greater herowism they get a little meh in the teens.

I've yet to do the mythic Lich path with all those lich only companions that is probably my next playthrough.

The hybrid classes are kinda meh for the most part for me. Slayer and Warpriest are decent.

Inquisitor can be a beastly class even in the p&p Pathfinder. Have yet to do the kineticist. Magus and its alts classes just don't seem too effective.

On the prestige classes have only don the sorceror/dragon disciple and the assassin (kinda meh).

As far as the whole party for your melee peeps having outflank is pretty great to gang up on the high AC baddies.

Lastly I always love me RPG gold cheats since I like to buy everything and nerf encombrance so for that WeMod is easy to use for this. There are some times/encounters where you stumble into combat with like high level classed monsters who have mythic classes as well and those are party wipes so the infinite hit points are good for those. Not kinda sure why they put those encounters in there other than to humble the player, heh.

 

[usiel]

No worries. I'd just be careful going from team red to green or green to red. If I was doing that, then I'd probably uninstall drivers completely before physical installation. Not sure if I'd do any software installation first, like you used to have to do in Windows 95 before you installed your hardware. I don't think that's been a thing for ages, not since they launched plug and play, and it sucked out of the gate.

Anyone recoiling from the price hikes and the EVGA of it all and thinking of leaving nVidia for AMD over nVidia's business practices? I find that I'm surprisingly unmoved and not tempted at all. I thought it would bother me more, but it turns out when a company treats its partners like crap and gives the end consumer what I want... yeah, that's kind of all I care about - which kind of makes me the dick in the room, I guess. I find that I blame AMD more for being so far behind that nVidia thinks it can get away with it (and is probably right).

Maybe it's just that I'm not in a rush to build for another year or two. My 3080 Ti is going to be fine for a long while. It sounds from leaks like the AMD performance of their new top-end card competes very well with the 4080 on the Vulkan API. On other criteria, probably less competitive. AMD's version of DLSS isn't as powerful, and I don't think their ray tracing is up to snuff yet either. In pure rasterization, though, AMD is getting very good.

I wish AMD was going to position its stuff for a more cash-strapped gamer. There's a niche and an opportunity there, and being behind, they should pass on some of their suckitude to the gamer in savings. Being behind is fine if your stuff is cheap, but they want to sell their card for $1000. I remember being 21, right out of college, studio apartment, loans, job and grad school, and needing to build a gaming PC for $700-800. Maybe that's what Intel Arc is for, right now. AMD should be owning that space but I suppose they see themselves as better than that now.

Here's hoping both teams blue and red catch up. For now, nVidia all the way for me (those bastards). Competition in GPUs like there is now with CPUs would be great.

Re: EVGA I was just pretty said since that was my brand of choice for the nvidia cards. I read one of the big articles and get the decision but did not really see a true counter point response analysis on why nvidia was locking things down.

Drake I think this is probably the first time I have a better video card than you in all these years here, heh.

 

[Drake1588]

Re: EVGA I was just pretty said since that was my brand of choice for the nvidia cards. I read one of the big articles and get the decision but did not really see a true counter point response analysis on why nvidia was locking things down.

Drake I think this is probably the first time I have a better video card than you in all these years here, heh.

At least until I drunkt call Best Buy and wake up in the morning with a 4090 some day.

You know, I think you usually have better GPUs. I usually steer clear of chasing the latest every year, and I usually get one tier lower than the best available when I do buy a card. That's still been true lately. I build or buy a PC every 2-3 years. It was unusual for me to grab a 3080 Ti for my 5800X after getting a 2080 Super for my 9700K. Chalk that up to pandemic restlessness. I'll probably buy a 5080 Super or Ti next fall/winter. My big upgrade this year was a 4K gaming monitor.

Now that I have the 3080 Ti, I've more than enough for almost anything I need unless I want to really dive into Cyberpunk 2077, I guess. Everything else runs fine at 4K. I don't run multiple rigs for farming like you do in EVE. Two good cards is already superfluous. My older multimedia/storage rigs (AMD 3600X and Intel 7700K) are running GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. I think my Razer Blade has a mobile RTX 2070 Max-Q. Embarrassment of riches. Retro PCs are running a GTX 670 (XP), Voodoo4 4500 (W98), and Trident 1MB (486). I've bins with some older ATi and nVidia cards. I need to find a retro PC for my Radeon 9800 Pro.

I keep waiting for games that demand GPU upgrades, like Wing Commander and FPS titles used to do. If Cyberpunk was better, maybe that would be the game.

 

[Jags]

Anyone recoiling from the price hikes and the EVGA of it all and thinking of leaving nVidia for AMD over nVidia's business practices? I find that I'm surprisingly unmoved and not tempted at all. I thought it would bother me more, but it turns out when a company treats its partners like crap and gives the end consumer what I want... yeah, that's kind of all I care about - which kind of makes me the dick in the room, I guess. I find that I blame AMD more for being so far behind that nVidia thinks it can get away with it (and is probably right).

I like where AMD is positioning themselves, similar to what they do vs. Intel on the processor side. I've been an nVidia snob forever at this point, but the knocks against AMD have become less and less true over the last decade, and especially very recently. The folks overemoting about Catalyst these days are kinda like Mac users belittling Windows bluescreen crashes -- used to be true a long, long time ago, but now not so much.

If they stick where they are pricewise with nVidia's new cards being stupid expensive, they'll be fine. AMD cards have been the better buys since pandemic pricing subsided, and could remain that way if they're smart.

Right now the competition in the marketplace is geared almost 100% toward the "I have money to burn" crowd. The debates over DLSS and ray tracing are still at least a couple years away from being meaningful across the board. The elephant in the room is that the vast majority of PC gamers are still at 1080p, still pretty happily so, only just now flirting with the idea of going bigger.

So long as PC gaming is primarily desk-based, the GPU conversation is going to keep being akin to smartphones -- everyone pretending they need a flagship when something half the price will more than suffice.

And for those of us PC gamers migrating to 4K, getting away from the desk and onto TVs, it's best to let the software and performance dictate our habits. If you've got money to burn, and especially if you don't game competitively, go nuts. As DLSS/FSR and ray tracing get more meaningfully adopted into popular titles and engines, the marriage of 4K visual fidelity and competitive latency will become a fixture of the entire line of each company's offerings, not just the ridiculously-priced options at the bleeding edge.

TL;DR -- Check out Daniel Owen's YouTube channel. Every PC gamer and tech reviewer should be watching what this guy is doing. Side-by-side comparisons of cards across every price tier, smart tweaking of settings to teach the world how to get the most from your card and not overspend, driving the point home that smart GPU shoppers should know that these decisions are about WAY more than frame counts and benchmarks. Lots of great insight on that channel.

 

[Raikkonen]

RTX and big displays will not be a good match for some time still. I dont know how you play single player games but I always seek for 144hz + for my shooters or racing because competitive multiplayer demands that first and foremost. FPS drop after going from 1080p to 1440p in say Tarkov is significant (with good settings). 4k I dont even think about it.

My last AMD gfx card was bought before bitcoin became a thing IIRC. Time to try that again I guess.

 

[Jags]

Yeah, if I end up upgrading this gen I'll be sampling an AMD card for sure. nVidia has been the clear choice forever, but the truth is that AMD was always in the running. It's the software that always held them back, and that reputation has taken far too long to shake.

When you look at Owen's vids and the comparisons he does between manufacturers, going into detail on DLSS and FSR, the current (almost zilch) meaningful adoption of ray tracing, and showing in intricate detail how closely these cards are matched (with AMD coming out on top surprisingly often), the case is clear that it's time to take AMD seriously. He did a couple of very honest videos on his experience switching to AMD and the mixed results he experienced.

But nVidia drove the final nail in their own coffin with the pricing of their new line. Post-pandemic pricing on last-gen cards was already working against them, as AMD had clearly become the better value across the board, and they made it worse by going nuts on the new stuff. You can't blame them too much for being aggressive given the current state of the supply chain and the sheer amount of new architecture hitting right now that will necessitate entirely new builds for PC and gaming enthusiasts.

So if AMD is smart and positions themselves akin to their CPU approach -- solid (sometimes superior) performance for considerably less money -- they have a chance of making inroads in market share.

 

[twabby]

Horizon Forbidden West DLC announced.

Some spoilers for those who haven’t played, so I put it in tags:

Spoiler

 

[Devil Dancer]

The biggest announcement for me yesterday was Hades II.

 

[AlexModvechkin8]

Anyone have a good recap of yesterday? I was traveling for work. Looks like I missed a lot.

 

[Cappy76]

Question for the PC builders in here….

My PCs AIO water cooler is going bad and I’m getting a replacement. How difficult is it for someone who hasn’t ever messed with any of that kinda stuff (me) to replace that?

 

[Hivemind]

Anyone have a good recap of yesterday? I was traveling for work. Looks like I missed a lot.

Didn't actually watch, but the stuff I noticed or care about:

Diablo IV release date (6.6.23)
Judas announced (new game from Bioshock developer - Bioshock in space)
Hades 2 announced
New trailer for Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
TLOU Part 1 PC release date
New Hide N Seek mode for Among Us
Returnal coming to PC
New trailer for Space Marine 2
New Cyberpunk 2077 DLC featuring Idris Elba
Some kid jumped on stage with the Elden Ring dudes and created a scene

 

[AlexModvechkin8]

Didn't actually watch, but the stuff I noticed or care about:

Diablo IV release date (6.6.23)
Judas announced (new game from Bioshock developer - Bioshock in space)
Hades 2 announced
New trailer for Star Wars: Jedi Survivor
TLOU Part 1 PC release date
New Hide N Seek mode for Among Us
Returnal coming to PC
New trailer for Space Marine 2
New Cyberpunk 2077 DLC featuring Idris Elba
Some kid jumped on stage with the Elden Ring dudes and created a scene

Is Cyberpunk still a disaster or did they fix everything? I was looking forward to it but the reviews were awful and it read like the game was borderline unplayable because of all of the issues.

 

[Hivemind]

Is Cyberpunk still a disaster or did they fix everything? I was looking forward to it but the reviews were awful and it read like the game was borderline unplayable because of all of the issues.

In terms of PCs, it depends on how far you wanna push your settings. It still requires top end hardware if you're trying to play with ray tracing at 4K. But there are much more manageable levels you can run it at.

No clue if the issues with "last gen" consoles were ever corrected.

 

[Devil Dancer]

Is Cyberpunk still a disaster or did they fix everything? I was looking forward to it but the reviews were awful and it read like the game was borderline unplayable because of all of the issues.

Most of the biggest bugs have been fixed, at least on Xbox Series. I still got a few smaller bugs here and there when I played it with the next gen patch, but it's a helluva lot better than it was at launch, when I played it on PC.

If you're interested at all, you should try it. It often goes on deep sale and I think it's a lot of fun.

 

[usiel]

Did pickup cyberpunk yesterday since it was on sale for $30. Still on the RTX 3080 though will try and swap out for the 4080 this weekend.

 

[Jags]

Question for the PC builders in here….

My PCs AIO water cooler is going bad and I’m getting a replacement. How difficult is it for someone who hasn’t ever messed with any of that kinda stuff (me) to replace that?

It depends on the new cooler. The first thing I'd suggest is avoid a water cooler if you can. If you're not overclocking, a tower air cooler is plenty and very easy to install. You can also get a good one for cheap. I've been using this one on builds for the last few years without any issues.

If you want to stick with water, just search it on YouTube, watch a few popular videos (there'll be tons) and see if you're up to it. It's not hard; there's just potentially a lot of disassembly involved that might feel intimidating. If you have a standard ATX case it really shouldn't be an issue. If you have a proprietary, prefab nightmare case from one of the major brands, it can be a real pain in the ass.

Can you maybe give us a rundown on what you have? It'd probably help us give you better advice.

 

[Cappy76]

It depends on the new cooler. The first thing I'd suggest is avoid a water cooler if you can. If you're not overclocking, a tower air cooler is plenty and very easy to install. You can also get a good one for cheap. I've been using this one on builds for the last few years without any issues.

If you want to stick with water, just search it on YouTube, watch a few popular videos (there'll be tons) and see if you're up to it. It's not hard; there's just potentially a lot of disassembly involved that might feel intimidating. If you have a standard ATX case it really shouldn't be an issue. If you have a proprietary, prefab nightmare case from one of the major brands, it can be a real pain in the ass.

Can you maybe give us a rundown on what you have? It'd probably help us give you better advice.

I’m honestly not 100% sure what I have basically had someone else tell me what I needed and then had it prebuilt before it shipped to me. What do you need to know?

 

[Jags]

I’m honestly not 100% sure what I have basically had someone else tell me what I needed and then had it prebuilt before it shipped to me. What do you need to know?

If you could pop the side panel off and post a picture or two, that might do it. Do you know which CPU you have? Do you know if it's overclocked?

 

[Cappy76]

If you could pop the side panel off and post a picture or two, that might do it. Do you know which CPU you have? Do you know if it's overclocked?

Ryzen 7 3800x don’t believe it’s over clocked

 

[Jags]

Yeah, if you're not overclocking, I'd stick an air cooler in there. The only concern would be measuring the clearance from the surface of the motherboard to the side panel to make sure the new cooler isn't too tall. If you have the brand/model of the case, you can look up their official clearance height or just measure it yourself.

Definitely an easier install and less to worry about. Good tower coolers aren't quite as effective, but high-end water coolers are completely unnecessary unless you're overclocking.

I'm using the air cooler I linked above on 2 systems here, both on Ryzen processors, and they never get near 80. And there's no performance throttling until you hit around 95, so it's plenty of cooling.

Removing the AIO is pretty straightforward but you'll still want to watch a couple videos to get comfortable first. You know to be careful with the hosing, so the only other pro tip they might not mention is when you separate the cooler head from the CPU, gently twist it back and forth until you feel the thermal paste let go. Just pulling straight up can damage the CPU/socket/board.

One trick that isn't necessary but does help is to fire the PC up and run a benchmark or something that'll give the CPU a workout, then switch it off, unplug it, and remove the cooler head while the CPU still has some heat on it and the paste is loose.

 

[Drake1588]

Good advice all around. Water cooling used to be incredibly complex because it was all bespoke; today AIOs simplify an awful lot of what used to be a nightmare. Still, if it's something you're not used to, then it can be intimidating.

An AIO is really designed to provide sufficient cooling for the top-of-the-line CPUs, and today that means the very hot 12th gen/13th gen from Intel like 12900K or 13900K. On the AMD side, that would mean the 7900X or 7950X. Coolers today are meant to cope with serious heat and also give you some overclocking headroom. With a 3000 series CPU from AMD, heat wasn't as much of an issue, and because it's a 3800X instead of a 3900X, one or two steps down from the top end, it doesn't run that hot. This means your cooling needs aren't enormous. The stock AMD Wraith coolers, designed for 3600X, might even work with that (barely).

Water cooling, even with an AIO, gives you better temperatures, but you probably don't strictly speaking need one because of your CPU. With AIOs, you accept more possible points of failure in your cooling solution and 2x to 6x higher cost, depending on the size of the radiator.

While you lose a little cooling, the benefits of an air cooler include lower cost and extreme durability/endurance. The heatsink is essentially comprised of some heat pipes to draw heat away from the CPU die, coupled with a large chunk of metal arrayed in fins to maximize surface area for heat dissipation. It has no mechanical parts to fail, so the heatsink will essentially last forever. The only point of failure is the fan, and those are easy to replace without needing to remove the heatsink on your CPU. Fans should last a good 10 years and heatsinks much longer. The only limit on its relevance is the introduction of new mounts and the manufacturer's willingness to provide later solutions to mount the heatsink on newer motherboards. It will work on an AM4 motherboard for decades, though. I currently have a machine with a 2600K and an air cooler running fine after building it 10+ years ago. Incredibly reliable performance out of that thing.

An AIO, by contrast, is often considered to have a shelf life of about six years. Some of the better ones allow you to fill them and can extend that lifespan, but they can also die at any time for any number of possible reasons.

You're going to want to clean your CPU of the caked-on paste, and then apply new paste. If you do a lot of building, it's not a bad idea to keep some wipes and 99.9% isopropyl alcohol on hand to really clean the CPU surface well. Since you're likely not doing this more than the one time, just make sure to clean the CPU's surface really well before applying new paste. Some just use a paper towel, but that can leave fibers behind; a microfiber cloth is probably better. You can buy thermal compound/paste cheaply on Newegg or Amazon for $5-10, but there might be some paste included with your cooler. There are lots of brands and methods out there insisting that this or that is the One True material/approach, but really it doesn't matter much. Lots of practical testing has borne this out. You can apply a dab of thermal compound in the middle, or on five points of the CPU, or use an applicator to spread it evenly across the surface. The difference in cooling will be negligible. Just make sure you use some paste and you're good. I usually apply a small pea-sized dot in the middle and the pressure of screwing in the heatsink distributes it just fine. Sometimes I've used an applicator that comes with packs of paste to spread it.

Lots of brands and no-name brands are out there for air coolers. I like BeQuiet but many of them will get the job done. Expect to spend $25-$90 and understand that performance will vary. Roughly speaking, the larger the heatsink, the better the performance because of the greater surface area across all the fins. Some air coolers are passive (no fan), and some include one fan. The bigger ones cost $100+ and include two fans. They give you performance that is comparable to an AIO that uses a 240mm radiator, but they are massive and pretty pricey.

The point of CPU fan(s) is to forcibly move hot air away from the heatsink as heat dissipation occurs, right into the path of the rear case fan, which pulls the hot air out of the case.

The bigger air coolers are high performance but are more expensive (like a Noctua NH-D15, BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 4). They also take up a lot of room, truly most of the available space between your top case fans, rear case fan, the top of your GPU, and your RAM. So you'll want to think about your cable management before getting everything in there if you opt for a larger one. Note that a larger air cooler can interfere with tall RAM, which might require you to mount your heatsink fan slightly higher. A smaller air cooler might fit your situation best.

A gamer's comfort level for termperatures will vary from person to person. This latest generation of CPUs (since fall 2022) is evidently designed to run around 95C, which seems insane to me but is apparently the case. Some builders want idling temperatures in the 30s and low 40s, and operating temps under load that peak in the 60s. Your tolerance for heat will determine the cooling solution you choose, the investment, and the size of the cooler/radiator you select for your system.

 

[usiel]

This reminds me I have still a perfectly viable midtower with a 1070 that needs a water cooling replaced. That was my first water cooled system so not thrilled its failed versus air cooling. Thx Drake for the swap workflow.

 

[Jags]

Yeah, excellent overview, Drake. In thinking about Cappy's situation, the only other couple thoughts I had were...

1) To make sure he knows the builder and his buddy that put the parts list together didn't overdo it by having him buy a more expensive cooling solution. They had to allow for the possibility that he'd overclock (even though he could still get away with a good air cooler). Didn't want him thinking he'd been burned, but I'm sure he knows that already.​

​

2) That he shouldn't have to do anything but replace the AIO with the air cooler. So long as his front and rear fans are good, he shouldn't need to put any top fans in place of the radiator. A little more intake might help a bit if his temps feel a bit lackluster, but that's unlikely. There's a tendency for new system builders to put a fan wherever there's a space for one, and that can do more harm than good.​

​

With his GPU essentially blowing itself (ba dum bum), the linear, front-to-back airflow he'll have should be fine for what he's got.​

 

[Drake1588]

Yeah, airflow is its own little subculture in PC building. We just got out of a nutty era where manufacturers were selling glass cases everywhere they could, with only modest allowances for air to enter the case. They work but your temps suffer if the air has to go around corners to get into your case and over your components.

These days, airflow-focused cases are back in vogue. Essentially, this means that the front panel is largely perforated, often with a built-in dust filter, allowing you to bring in cool air through the front and directly over your components.

As far as the flow of air, there are different case designs but the standard idea is that you want to intake air through the front, with two or three 120mm or 140mm fans. You want to exhaust air out the back and often but not necessarily exhaust out the top. An AIO will have either one 120mm fan and radiator in the rear fan slot, or a 2-3 fan and radiator solution. This can go in front, intaking cool outside air over your radiator (for better CPU temps, but expelling warm air over your GPU). Else, it can go in the top of the case, which is better for your GPU but leads to warmer CPU temps because it intakes the warm air inside the case over your radiator. There is a difference, but only of a few degrees.

In a case, the pressure will want to equalize. Ideally, you want a positive pressure situation, where you are intaking more air than you are trying to exhaust. Internal air pressure will want to force air out of your case. If you have negative pressure, by adding too many exhausting fans and not enough air intake, then the case will start trying to bring air and dust into your case through cracks and crevices. That leads to more and more dust.

Note that simply counting fans isn't the best way to determine your pressure situation. Different fans that spin at different RPMs and that may have different diameters factor into that calculus... and many motherboards/software now allow you to adjust fan spin rates to lower noise. You can adjust RPM to give yourself positive pressure, or at least equal pressure.

Yet if you normalize for simplicity and use all the same brand and diameter and model of fans, all spinning at the same RPM, it can create negative pressure to have two intake fans in front and three exhausting fans arrayed at the top/rear. In that scenario, you might want to remove one exhausting fan. I might use one rear fan and one exhaust at the top back of the case, with an air cooler situation.

In one recent build, I personally have four fans in a push-pull configuration with a front-mounted radiator. I have two exhaust fans on top and one exhausting in the rear. Four intakes, three exhausts, all 120mm and all spinning at max RPM (1300, I think) to stress performance rather than low noise, as I game with headphones. I can't use three front fans because I'm a dinosaur and install an optical drive that takes up the top of the case. This also limits my AIO to a 240mm length in a mid tower.

In another case, I have two 140mm fans in the front, a top-mounted 240mm AIO to cool the CPU, and a rear 140mm exhaust. I normalize for positive pressure using software to control RPMs.