PC Gaming Hardware discussion. Rigs, Upgrades, pics, and news.

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So I finally bought my mircophone. I got the Blue Yeti in grey. Its much bigger than I expected, standing at same height as a 1litre coke bottle. I got a foam windshield which is too overprice at 7€. I bought it over a pop filter as my room is very dusty (window is beside the main road) & it could double as a dust shield.

Yes, I know, I probably need some wire management.
D8SVsXS.jpg


Adding more pasteboard to my home studio is the Kanban board. Recently, we has a training in my company on Kanban work process methodology, & I think its amazing, so I adapted it to my workflow, & it has been great so far.

XH2zNWS.jpg

What is Kanban?
 
So I woke up this morning and my computer was turned off. Probably had a power outage for a split second overnight, right? No big deal.

Turn it on, fans rev up, bios doesn't post.

Hit reset a bunch of times and nothing. Have to turn off the power supply to reboot and nothing is showing on the screen. Checked the inputs and cables with other stuff to make sure they were working and that's all good. Fans are running, CPU fan too, and the motherboard RGB is working.....

Came to the conclusion maybe it's the HDMI on the motherboard. Go to the computer store and buy a cheap open-box graphics card (only cards you can return apparently) pop that in and still nothing.

So now I've discovered there's an "Eazy Debug LED" on the motherboard and the CPU one is lit up.

Is my CPU dead? I built this rig in January.... It's an i5 8400, msi Z370 mb and 2x8gb corasair ram, just using on-board graphics atm.

Really unhappy that somethings died on me and it's probably going to cost me.

I'm going to take it in to the PC shop tomorrow and let them figure it out because I have no idea what's going on.

I tried taking the RAM out and putting just one stick in each slot etc to rule out bad RAM or RAM slot.;

Man this really sucks. The only other PC failures I've had were a hard drive and a motherboard but the motherboard was showing signs of going bad. Here I have no idea if it's the CPU or the motherboard.

Time to lose some money!

Hopefully the store I bought it from helps me out, but I have a bad feeling I'm spending another $200-$300 just to have working parts again, only getting 7 months out of it before a failure, booooo!

So far this year my smartphone died, last week my Shure SRH440 headphones adjustment band snapped (had those 10 years) and now a major component failure in my new computer build :(

Feels bad man.
 
So it was the motherboard.

Good thing I took it in to the shop instead of assuming it was the cpu like the mb was telling me. Ended up getting the same MSI mb but this time with a 3 year direct exchange warranty for an extra $20. Wish I had got that the first time (I never get extended warranties, now it's backfired finally, oh well!)

So all in all a couple hundred bucks down the drain and a whole lot of stress :( At least I was able to plan out my cable management better this time.
 
So it was the motherboard.

Good thing I took it in to the shop instead of assuming it was the cpu like the mb was telling me. Ended up getting the same MSI mb but this time with a 3 year direct exchange warranty for an extra $20. Wish I had got that the first time (I never get extended warranties, now it's backfired finally, oh well!)

So all in all a couple hundred bucks down the drain and a whole lot of stress :( At least I was able to plan out my cable management better this time.
My HD on my PC was toasted, & I had to spend about $1200 to recovered the data. So I can feel your pain.
 
My HD on my PC was toasted, & I had to spend about $1200 to recovered the data. So I can feel your pain.

Oh wow that is a lot huh? I had no idea it cost that much to have that done!

I have a massive music collection that I would hate to ever lose so I have a backup HDD in my PC and also an external backup drive that I only hook up every few months to back up my media and then unplug it again. Figure that has me covered. If any of them were to fail I would immediately get another just to make sure I have those 2 extra levels of fail-safe.
 
My HD on my PC was toasted, & I had to spend about $1200 to recovered the data. So I can feel your pain.
what I do every month I do a image to make sure things like this wont happen and upload some to the cloud.
Keep 2 months of your image. I use Clonezilla
 
So I finally bought my mircophone. I got the Blue Yeti in grey. Its much bigger than I expected, standing at same height as a 1litre coke bottle. I got a foam windshield which is too overprice at 7€. I bought it over a pop filter as my room is very dusty (window is beside the main road) & it could double as a dust shield.

Yes, I know, I probably need some wire management.
D8SVsXS.jpg


Adding more pasteboard to my home studio is the Kanban board. Recently, we has a training in my company on Kanban work process methodology, & I think its amazing, so I adapted it to my workflow, & it has been great so far.

XH2zNWS.jpg

What is Kanban?
I love your art tablet. I am getting one this month for sure. It was long overdue and I might need your help to understand how to use it because I have never done a digital drawing. I am a really good artist on paper and that is it.

Just by watching some people it looks like it takes it to another level where an artist can go to a place that couldn't be done on paper
 
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I love your art tablet. I am getting one this month for sure. It was long overdue and I might need your help to understand how to use it because I have never done a digital drawing. I am a really good artist on paper and that is it.

Just by watching some people it looks like it takes it to another level where an artist can go to a place that couldn't be done on paper
Today I am full. I have karate Training after work, & work has been very intense. So I probably too tired to work after. But the next few days, I will try to pass on some info to help you pick a tablet.
 
Preparing the digital Artist

A few key points to think about first.
1) Professional work, or for fun, or a beginner, but maybe hopefully make the leap to Pro/Semi-Pro
2) For what purpose? line art, painting, texturing, digital sculpting, photo editing?
3) Mobility. Do you need to use it out of your home/office?
4) Budget?

But first Software:

Photo editing: Only 2 good choices, Photoshop & Affinity Photo. The latter cost a lot less, & is my recommendation. A lot of Artist uses Photoshop as a painting tool. I have done that for years, & still do, & like Affinity Photo, is one size fit all solution. I haven't put a lot of mileage in Affinity Photo, but I think it is as capable as Photoshop& have some features not found in Photoshop. At $13 per month (minimal for Photoshop) vs $50 (less when on sales) for Affinity Photo, its a no-brainer, unless you have a deep pocket.

Both allow converting to many picture format & settings.

So then why do we need an alternative or additional software? Well, Software like clip art studio pro ($50) & I believed painter (never used before) has more drawing/line art, painting tools that are more dedicated to painting & feel more natural. My own experience is, making linework is far better in CLip art pro than Photoshop. Though the latest update with smoothing (long overdue) to photoshop making linework much better.

Many Manga Artist uses Clip Art Studio pro (previously known as Manga Studio). Oh & Clip Art Studio pro has built-in posabnlöe 3D Mannequins & some basic 3D geometry for use as a reference.

I believed all 3 of Photoshop/Affinity Photo & Clip Art Pro has a demo version, so try it yourself.
My recommendation is Clipart Pro+ Affinity photo combo.

So which type is better, the one with screen included or the ones without? The ones with a screen where you can draw/paint directly are objectively better, but of course, they are more expensive.

The reason they are better is 1:1 (or close) replication on the screen where you want to paint/draw. On external Tablet, you to deal with poor replication due to scale (a 1inch circle on a tablet can be 2 inch on screen), Aspect (if your tablet is not same aspect ratio as a monitor, a square can become a rectangle), & not able to trace the pen when drawing (YOu have to look at the screen).

However having said that, the difference is more severe, if you want to do a lot fo line art. For paint, photo editing, & Texturing, it is less of a problem as you required less precision.

Obviously, if you need mobility, on-screen tablet (there must be a name for them) are the only choices. surface pro & IPAD Pro are good choices, but they are not dedicated drawing tablet like say the Walcom ones.

If budget allows getting a one with a screen. But you can get a normal one (like the one I have) as a start as it is much cheaper, & you can upgrade when you think you outgrow it.

A quick guide to tablet can be found here.
 
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So the next round of GPUs from Nvidia (2080 and the 2080 Ti) are rumored to be somewhat disappointing in terms of performance leaps from the 1080 and 1080ti.
 
I'll wait until next gen for a GPU upgrade. I skip every other gen.

Need to get to upgrading my CPU though.
 
Reddit has been having a field day with it. I'm interested in a lot of the tech in the new chip (especially after seeing some the more in-depth stuff after nVidias editor day) but the cards aren't really there yet, imo.



Still, if you don't really intend to game at high res with the RTX features, they're obviously a great card.
 
The dust gets thick on my PC.
Id rather play modern games on my consoles.

Might return in 2020/21ish when a real jump in power happens and hopefully HDR is fixed.
 
Reddit has been having a field day with it. I'm interested in a lot of the tech in the new chip (especially after seeing some the more in-depth stuff after nVidias editor day) but the cards aren't really there yet, imo.



Still, if you don't really intend to game at high res with the RTX features, they're obviously a great card.

I get well over 60 fps with my 1080ti 4K/HDR that list is inaccurate.

 
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I think I'm doing a full pass on the new RTX cards. The performance gains don't seem in line with the cost increase.
 
Well, I finally put a GPU in thanks to Black Friday sales. $509 for this EVGA 1070ti was too hard to pass up (I'm in Canada btw, I'm sure they're way cheaper in the US) It works, fits and my system is nice and cool which was my big worry with my HTPC case. Temps are great and airflow does not seem a probelm.

JJs4r37.jpg


Now to figure out what to play, but I really just want to play RDR2 on Xbox not gonna lie. I'd like to try out the Witcher 3 on my PC but feel like I just don't have time for that right now because of RD being all I want to play.

Any suggestions for games to try out and see what my system can do?

Also, first time using imgur, will it actually work........ :)
 
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Looks very clean.

Hey thanks I appreciate that! Was able to get pretty much all the cable clutter into one corner of the case and not in the way of the fan. It's clean enough for me that's for sure. modular PSU and m2 ssd make a big difference for cable clutter.

I'm completely new to PC gaming even though I've built my own PC's for decades, so I'm overwhelmed just trying to figure everything out right now as far as software. Kind of need to take a break actually.

Decided to try the FH4 pc demo and see what it's like compared to my og Xbox One.
 
If you want to put your system through its paces I recommend a few games:

Doom (2016) - Nothing like running this game at high res and high frames
Witcher 3 - I know you said you don't have the time but when you get some it will be well worth it.
Warframe- Its an entirely different beast on the PC. Graphically very impressive.
 
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Got a spare $2,500?

NVIDIA officially unveils its flagship Titan RTX GPU
Shortly after teasing it, NVIDIA has officially unveiled the its top-end GPU, the Titan RTX. As expected, it has 72 Turing RT and 4,608 CUDA cores, up from 68 and 4,352, respectively, over the RTX 2080 Ti. However, this isn't so much a consumer card (unlike last year's Titan XP), but more in the family of the Titan V compute GPU. As such, it comes with a whopping 24GB of GDDR6 VRAM and packs a $2,500 price tag, both more than double that of the RTX 2080 Ti.


Got a spare $5,000?

Should that not do the job, you can get the $80 Titan RTX NVLink Bridge (below), letting you join two Titan RTX cards together with double the VRAM and 100 GB/s of total bandwidth.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/03/nvidia-officially-unveils-its-flagship-titan-rtx-gpu/

Pretty obviously not a consumer card, but will be interesting to see some of the SLi results that you just know some of the sites are going to put these through.
 
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