iRacing with Skippies…
anyone cursing playing occasionally dota2?
I just love this case. Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL is my favorite. The 3090 FE just looks amazing in it with a watercooler for the CPU.
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Still waiting for Asus Strix 3080 OC Reviews. The TUF OC is currently my favorite.
I like the smaller cases more.
I have a Ncase M1 with a i7 6700k and a GTX 1080 ti in the 13 liters it occupies.
To contribute to the discussion perhaps more on the “frugality” side (meh, as much as possible 
), I propose to any new buyer the following tips for a more mustachian experience:
- Invest on the GPU only, 3080 is a very good performance/price value proposition, let’s see the 3070
- Go for low- or mid-tier CPU, most games are GPU limited
- Ryzen 5 3600 for value, PCIe 4 and X570 only if you look for upward compatibility < 2y
- Air cooling is cheaper and has no significant performance difference
- PSU <= 700w (prob. can work also <650w)
- Screen does not need to go to 4k nor to 120Hz, when you target 60fps which are enough
Or… buy used from all the upgraders out there, not that I would know any… 
AND you can also play yesterday’s games for free courtesy of Epic Games, I think by now they must have given away 50 titles or so. Steam / GOG sales are for the rest (never spend > 10eur !). Perhaps splurge on one good title per year.
Where do you guys find the time anyway 
?
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Right, nowadays I’m busy watching „The Boys“, great avatar btw 
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No no no, you are the real heroes! 
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Btw guys, can you give me your experience on the following. I bought my last and only gaming PC in late 2008, so 12 years ago (!), it was in time for the premiere of GTA IV. I think that PC cost me something like 1000 CHF and the gpu was a GTX 260. The problem was that each new game I tried would send my PC into “Boeing mode” with all fans roaring at max speed and the coil whine from the GPU was unbearable (high frequency whistle).
I have to say, that was a very unpleasant gaming experience. Has anything changed since then, or are gaming PCs still power hungry noise machines? Oh and before you ask: I hate to wear headphones.
It’s gotten much, much better. Some brands have better cooling solutions than others. I’m a fan of the MSI Gaming X series. The cooler on my overclocked 1070ti never exceeds 1400 rpm, typically stays around 1000-1200rpm.
Overclocking always seemed to me like a poor man’s performance upgrade. You get a slightly better performance at the cost of higher heat and noise. My GTX 260 was a factory overclocked MSI card and it would overheat quite a bit. Anyway, I wish they made some apple-like gaming PCs, or console-like. Where you don’t have to pick all the stuff yourself and where it’s all optimized. But anyway Intel processors are crap and far behind ARM on energy efficiency. I wonder when we get a decent performance from a passively cooled gaming rig.
No you don’t. You get performance proportional to any clock increase you achieve, unless you increase the voltage in which case the generated heat is a function voltage squared (P=U^2/R).
Increasing memory frequency carries very little power/heat penalty, and on some models, especially the ones with limited memory bus bandwidth generates expotential performance increase with no penalties.
It is also possible to overclock while under-volting, in which case you get more performance and less heat/noise at the same time.
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Then why would they not sell it with this frequency? You are probably sacrificing on reliability or longevity.
Great, and why does the manufacturer not set it as default, if it’s better?
They do. Plenty of manufactureres are happy to charge you extra for factory overclocked “editions”.
Because the card is designed for a variety of working conditions, including locations with 30+C ambient temperatures, poorly ventited computer cases or low quality power supply units. Also, the silicon quality of the GPU varies largely, and noone will go through the effort of trimming each and single unit individualy therefore “worst case” is the base case.
Then to elaborate, both Nvidia and AMD provide reference board designs optimized to a cost. Several manufacturers go to great lenghts in optimizing the PCB layout, power supply/filter quality and cooling solutions. It’s up to you to utlize those features. Tuning/Overclocking is a hot topic in the PC community.
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Interesting. This shows how important it is to control your whole product from A to Z. If you provide your own motherboard, cpu, gpu etc then you can push all these components to their limits. Then you as a customer can forget about overclocking stuff yourself.
Overclocking requires proper knowledge, testing, trial and error, putting some good thermal paste. All this seems too much DIY for my taste. I used to be into this but now when I think how many hours it cost me, I think it’s a “poor man’s hobby” 
In the end you can say: look, I only paid $1200, sat on it over the weekend and now it runs with the performance of a $1500 rig!
You can buy top-of-the-range and still have room for overclocking. Still a poor man’s game? You usually want peak performance at your given price point.
To give you an example, when I bought my gpu ~2years ago, a fat finger incident caused me to win both a GTX 1070ti and a GTX 1080 on ricardo, both from MSI.
The GTX 1070ti running at default clocks, as Nvidia did not allow oems to make O/C versions of this card.
The GTX 1080 came with factory boosted clocks.
I went on with my usual geeky testing and overclocking and surprisingly found out that my GTX 1070ti was a far better sample, as it overclocked higher while runnig cooler (and quieter) than the GTX 1080. The performance of both was within 5% of eachother so it was a no brainer. Sold the GTX 1080 and even managed to make 50 Sfr in the process.
You are right, you need to know what and how to do it to end up with a stable system. For me, this is my fun time, not my work time. I have probably always enjoyed tweaking my PC more than gaming on it.
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Sure, I get it. Didn’t mean to depreciate a hobby. I meant it just in the context of saving money instead buying an higher end model.
I bought my last PC in 2013 with the Intel 4770K CPU and Nvidia GTX770. Upgraded to the GTX1070 in 2017. I hope to do the same now. 2020 completely new PC with 5900X and 3080 and then replace the GPU in 2024 so that my PC should last till 2027/2028.
I get it, but things don’t always scale so well at top of the range (i.e. pay 50% more and get 20% more performance). Then again, being able to afford it is not a good enough reason to buy it :-).
Check my linked purchase list for Digitec. The Fractial Design R5 case I have makes the 1080Ti unnoticable. Never had such a greatly dimmed case.