Desktop Computers

Mist_sl said:

Pretty sure DDR3 ram speeds over 1866 do basically nothing.

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Why is that? What would be the point of making ram faster at all then?

My DDR3 is cruising along at 2400.

Its the engineer in me wanting more megahertz

Mist_sl said:

Pretty sure DDR3 ram speeds over 1866 do basically nothing.

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...in gaming

Faster RAM can definitely make a difference in many business/productivity uses, but does mostly nothing for gaming. That's why no one is too excited about DDR4, it does almost nothing for games(yet)

I've seen benchmarks where 3D rendering with Maya can increase performance more than 20% by moving from 1333mhz DDR3 to 2400mhz DDR3, same with a few mundane things like Winrar.

But gaming...does basically nothing, as stated here already

I was waiting for the "gaming" disclaimer. Because yes, I process batch files in Photoshop and for damn sure it makes a difference. Not everyone only uses their PCs for gaming.

Is the price difference between 1600 and 2133 even that big? I do more than gaming myself as well so that's why I try to go for the upper end.

Noodlemod_sl said:

Is the price difference between 1600 and 2133 even that big? I do more than gaming myself as well so that's why I try to go for the upper end.

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No, anywhere from $5-$20 difference for 16GB of DDR3 1600 to 2133.

Noodlemod_sl said:

Is the price difference between 1600 and 2133 even that big? I do more than gaming myself as well so that's why I try to go for the upper end.

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You have to look at both the speed, and the latency

1600 mhz 7-7-7-18 might be the same price as 2400mhz 11-13-13-31, but if you want 2400mhz with the lowest latency possible, it's going to cost you. A lot.

On Newegg, for example, the lowest latency 2400mhz 16GB of ram is 9-11-11-31 and it's $269, whereas you can get 11-13-13-31 for around $100. 16gb of 1600mhz DDR3 tends to run in th $75-$150 range depending on the quality/latency.

So yeah, on the poor end of the latency spectrum, not much difference in price ($75 vs maybe $90), but if you want the best latency possible, you're going to see huge price differences. Lower latency gets harder and harder to do, the faster you go. Hell, old ass original DDR memory at like 400mhz was something like 2.5-3-3-5 latency on a 512mb chip, lol.

All that being said, the odds of overlocking your RAM are better, the lower latency your base speed is. There's a decent chance that you could overlock 1600mhz RAM that comes at a really low stock latency to a better latency 1866mhz than just buying mid-range 1866 outright.

It's definitely a balancing act. Honestly, I just shoot for the middle of the latency range when I'm buying RAM, paying a premium for super low latency doesn't do much for you, but I don't want some wonky high-latency RAM that is barely stable at the speed in which it's running.

I agree with the latency point, but you can also make the argument that the lowest latency 1600 ram costs you a premium too vs the larger latency 1600 chips.

As you said, it is all about a balancing act for cost. If you feel confident overclocking, you can save quite a lot by upping your own ram clocks and tweaking voltage to keep the latency down. As always, YMMV.

Mist_sl said:

SeaSonic Snow Silent-1050 1050W ATX12V EPS12V 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply - Newegg.com

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Mmmmm derp on my part. I did like... a 30 second search. That seems like the better deal. I think my draw is going to be juuuust under 800W so having a little bit more wiggle room if I add stuff would be smarter with the 1050 as opposed to mine. Plus... more megahertz for the same price. Makes sense.

For power supplies I think having more than a little wiggle room is a good idea. Your PSU isn't something you want to push like other components. Give a good bit of headroom and it'll work better/longer if/when efficiency lessens over time, plus compensate for spikes and expansion room, etc. Also keep in mind what a video card company will say is required is also over-estimating. I can't recall the exact draw from my i7/gtx780 setup through my battery backup, but it's nowhere near anything stated. So you'd probably be fine, but why not budget in some piece of mind?

So I built my brother in laws computer over the weekend. It turned on the first time and everything, although I did forget to plug in a fan case, so no real issue after that was plugged in. I hadn't built a PC in like 16 years or something crazy, but I didn't tell him that.

He's 21 but still lives at home. Apparently right before I showed up he got in big trouble because his parents didn't know he had spent ~$1500 on a new PC (I forget how much now). Lot of yelling and shit.

So he had no monitor purchased yet, and just had one of those tiny wireless keyboard/mouse pairs from Logitech, the really cheap shitty ones. Since he got in trouble he didn't want to buy a gaming mouse/keyboard or a monitor. He had to hook it up to his shitty, really old Vizio TV that has lines going across it from some damage. Loaded up Command and Conquer 3 (the first game he wanted to play) and couldn't be any happier.

Felt like such a waste of money. At least it was his money I guess.. he paid me by buying me a pack of cookies, and he took back the ones I didn't finish. Cheapskate to the extreme.

Now my father is having me build him one this coming week. He was looking to spend $1500 at best buy for a machine that he only uses to check the internet and listen to music - so I put together a $700 build for him. I should charge for this.

Noodlemod_sl said:

Felt like such a waste of money. At least it was his money I guess.. he paid me by buying me a pack of cookies, and he took back the ones I didn't finish. Cheapskate to the extreme.

Now my father is having me build him one this coming week. He was looking to spend $1500 at best buy for a machine that he only uses to check the internet and listen to music - so I put together a $700 build for him. I should charge for this.

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Yes. Or at least, buy from Superbiiz and do their $35 assembly. They do a beautiful job, and you dont have to worry about DOAs.

Noodlemod_sl said:

Now my father is having me build him one this coming week. He was looking to spend $1500 at best buy for a machine that he only uses to check the internet and listen to music - so I put together a $700 build for him. I should charge for this.

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Still way overspent. You can buy an Intel NUC for about half of that price. I use one as a Home Theater Kodi box and it is amazing. If he is truly only using it for internet and music it would still be a huge overkill.

Amazon.com : Intel Next Unit of Computing Kit with Dual HDMI, Gigabit LAN, Core i3-3217U DC3217IYE (No Power Cord) : Desktop Computer Barebones Systems : Computers Accessories= $250
Amazon.com: Crucial 8GB Kit (4GBx2) DDR3 1600 MT/s (PC3 - 12800) CL11 SODIMM Notebook Memory Modules CT2KIT51264BF160B / CT2CP51264BF160B: Computers Accessories= $28 (or $56 for the 8GB kit)
Amazon.com: Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB M.2 SSD (MZ-N5E250BW): Electronics= $120

My mom loves the ASUS transformer book I got her last year. She's a techno dummy, so had to set up the metro screen for her and show her how to do things a few times before she understood it. But she's running netflix through it to the tv, using it for email and browser games, hooks it up to the tv or speakers for music. She loves it and thinks it's a 'real' computer, because for her purposes it is. I was impressed enough with it and its versatility I'd consider getting one if I were still in school or doing a lot of word processing and spread sheets and shit on the go. They're good options if you can talk someone into accepting new tech and out of the comfort of a tower.

Ok I wasn't clear with this in my post. My dad is one of those Tim Allen type dudes with PC's. MORE POWER! He bought a brand new laptop and said it was a slow piece of shit. A tablet is absolutely out of the question. The only problem with him is he doesn't understand technology.. he's just got money to throw around and wants something with crazy power.

He wanted something beefy so I built him something beefy. He'll do absolutely nothing taxing with it, but it will get him off my back with his constant hardware problems in his 12 year old PC.

He's a weird dude.

I actually built him the same PC I just built minus monitor, video card, and SSD.

Like I said, if you can talk someone into new technology and out of the comfort of a tower. And you were the one that introduced the discussion, and you're not the only one that reads the thread. If someone can learn from your family tech situation, to be as kind as I can be, that's good.

People definitely get weird about tech, though. My GF's grandpa paid me 100 bucks to buy and turn on a shitty 600 pre-built Dell. It's shit, but he wouldn't let me build one. Would let me install an SSD. Would consider anything but a tower (despite the fact that tower basically has fully soldered laptop parts in it). Didn't want me to uninstall any of the 15 programs of bloatware for fear it wouldn't run properly or would invalidate the warranty. I could have simply put a Transformer book inside of it and they wouldn't have known the difference, or it could have actually been faster and more stable. They still try to pay me to come over to 'fix' their computer because 'internet escape' keeps crashing while trying to load Charter home page. Can't help some people.