Category: Tech

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Do you really need a high end gaming PC?

How did we get here?

One of the biggest disappointments recently, if you are a PC Gamer is the 50 Series of Graphics Cards from NVidia. Fundamentally, these are the same as the 40 Series with extra features. Improvement is nominal without it, and the only real reason to buy one is if you are rocking a 30 series or older. Don’t get me wrong, there are some performance improvements, but most is a benefit of Frame Generation and DLSS 4.

That is where we get into the debate of poor optimization vs more demanding game titles. Insert Unreal Engine 5 joke here. Do we need the new features because games or more demanding, or because they aren’t done when they release? There are arguments for each.

Another disappointment is the new processor chipset from Intel. No longer do we have the traditional i-series of processors, but a step back named Ultra. Again, poor optimization, but also poor performance. Intel has actually had issues with processors for a few generations with 13900 and 14900 voltage issues. This led to not only poor performance, but ruined consumer hardware.

So, what’s the answer?

I don’t think it’s a bad idea to look for used parts.

Yes, I have a YouTube channel that concentrates on budget and used parts, but deals can be found looking for something like last year’s model at big box stores, or open box items. Previous generation components can often save a lot of money without much performance loss, and lower tier new items can also save a lot.

If you were buying a new dishwasher for your home, chances are you do some research. PCs are no different. If I can but an RTX 4070 Ti for significantly less than a new 5070 Ti, it’s worth considering. Or if you’re gaming and production habits are less than bleeding edge, maybe the parts can be two. I buy parts I need, not the ones that help me keep up with the Jones’. I simply don’t need an RTX 5090.

Not off the hook

I mentioned NVidia and Intel, but AMD is also guilty shady tactics.

They had a great opportunity to separate themself from team green by having clear model numbers and pricing that matches performance. Instead, they turned lemming on us and offer the same model number with different memory layouts. They claim it gives the consumer more options for graphics cards. Don’t be fooled.

Many prebuilts won’t list which graphics card knowing full well they will sell a card with half the memory. NVidia and AMD both have graphics cards with cut down specs, that will certainly be in those builds. It’s like ordering a burger off the menu that has a picture with cheese and not getting it.

So, really, what do we do?

Buy according to your needs. Yes, a brand-new PC will have a warranty and you should be able to rely on it, but more and more, that’s a fantasy. It’s not to say there aren’t great deals, but it may be on last year’s model, or an open box. Or even straight up, used.

I seldom trust a prebuilt without a lot of research, and I have a number of videos on finding used parts on sites like eBay. If you are worried about a site like eBay, try something like Jawa. The guidelines are tighter and many times the deals are better. No, I’m not sponsored.

If you are adventurous enough to use a local market place, use caution, but ask if they have other things they are getting rid of. You may score extras you weren’t expecting. It never hurts to try.

The big corporations won’t stop being shady; we aren’t their target audience anymore. The best we can do is not give in. Don’t pay stupid prices. Buy what you need, not the fancy upsells. Do your research. And if your computer does what you want it to do well, maybe you don’t need to upgrade. Sometimes, good enough is pretty darn good.

Here is my latest, ‘good enough’ build

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Why the RTX5050 won’t be an complete failure

How did we get here?

The RTX5050 will be releasing this month and to most people in the PC community, this will be an abject disaster. At a two Hundred fifty dollar price point, my first reaction is to agree. That is until I start looking at NVidia’s behavior and success of previous budget minded cards. While it’s true that this card doesn’t have a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it may not be the worst thing since the GT1030 DDR4 version.

Since Nvidia’s “current” numbering iteration began around 2009, Team Green has often had a x50 at the bottom of the product stack. Well, they have for most series. There was also a GTS 150, but that was actually, I believe, the top of the 100 series. They have also occasionally mixed in something like the before mentioned 1030, but those don’t come every cycle. The last one being the 1630.

The x50’s were once reasonably priced entry level cards. The 3050, however, broke that and was confusing. It had a 8GB version that needed external power and a 6GB version that didn’t. Both had the same exact name. On purpose, and shady. The RTX5050 will be priced too high as well, at 300USD, but there is a possible bright spot.

What Bright Spot?

Someone going from a GTX 1650, which was a solid card, saw an improvement going to a 3050, even with the 6GB, no external power version. Oh, that one. But that was a different card with the same name, that doesn’t count. I’m not done.

Yes, the RTX3050 6GB should have been called the 3040 or even 3030, but it had some advantages. AMD and Intel failed to take capitalize. AMD’s budget offering was the RX6400 with 4GB of VRAM and no encoder, and Intel insisted on Resizable Bar. Both of these completely impeded any use in an older system that was trying to hang on for a few more years. Check out the blog on the RTX 3050, here.

Offering a 6GB version that took no external power, meant saving thousands of old office PCs from landfills. A twelve year old playing Fortnite doesn’t need a high end Gaming PC to play online with friends. He or she needs something affordable that won’t quit on them. NVidia is reliable.

Yeah, but the RTX5050?

There are other forgotten bright spots from the x50 cards. Anyone remember the 750Ti, or the 1050Ti? Icons. No one can argue that although the 50 base model was decent, but the Ti version far exceeded it’s sibling. Although the 1650 didn’t have a Ti, it had a Super version as a step up. That could be this cards saving grace. An RTX 5050Ti makes sense.

If NVidia has the vision enough to make a 5050Ti, I think it can very easily regain some of the respect that has tarnished this series of cards. The 3050 6Gb did have the advantage of coming in a single slot, that could save older Optiplexes, but with Window10 reaching end of support, that might not be the “go to” it was a year or two ago. A 12GB 5050Ti with a faster clock and more cores, though, could absolutely reign as a budget king. Well, unless Team Green gets greedy again and marks it up to a stupid price. They would never do that, would they? Of course they will.

I’m not sure if I’ll spring for one of these base models, but if I do, it will be on the YouTube channel, here.

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Build it like I’m starting something new

How did I get here?

First, I need to explain myself. The purpose was to find out how well a PC from when I started my YouTube Channel would do now. That would be 2018, so I gathered my parts. My actual build still existed in one form, but it had upgrades, so I needed to make adjustments.

When I began my channel in 2018, I had a Ryzen 7 1700x, an X470 Asus motherboard, 16GB of DDR4 running at 2400MTS, a 1TB HDD, and an RX480, all in a Lepa 502 case. (below). Strangely, I do have all of the components, but they are spread out or put away.

lepa case
Lepa 502

What I DID have on hand, were most of the pieces and instead of the RX480, a GTX 1070 graphics card. I did have to make some changes. I no longer use the HDD as a boot drive, but this was a test to see how well the old system would hold up to modern gaming. The games were also on SSD.

So, I put everything back together, including the 600W EVGA power supply. I was so proud, as I clicked the power button. Nothing. Oh, I got power and the fans ramped up, but it didn’t post. Then I remembered why. I knew all of the components worked, but there was an issue with the motherboard.

Big Problems?

The AM4 platform has been around for ten years now, but some of the early motherboards abandoned support for older Ryzens with a BIOS update. The eprom didn’t have enough memory for every series. I have updated the BIOS on that X470 more than once for 3000 series, and for 5000. It wouldn’t post with a 1700X without another flash.

I had two solutions. I could reflash the BIOS to an earlier version, or use the next generation CPU. It was time for the Zen 2 processor. In this case, a six core, twelve thread 3600X. I do have a 3700X, but I wanted to keep this more of a mainstream experiment and the Ryzen 5 would be fine. I swapped in the 3600X and she came right up.

Another odd thing about this PC is that it runs on Windows 10 Education Edition. This is more of an enterprise version, and for quite a while it didn’t automatically upgrade to 11. It will also most likely be support past October of this year.

So, now what?

With the system up and running I started testing. Just how well a six year old system holds up was a pleasant surprise. Games ran smooth and benchmarks were consistent those run with the GTX 1070 and a modern CPU. Yes, modern CPUs run better and more efficiently, but this build is still solid.

The case, all be it large and with a plexiglass side panel, still has great airflow and a lot of room for larger video cards should someone choose to still use it. I don’t still have the original fans, but it does have room for 120mm or 140mm and room for an All in One liquid cooler. This thing holds up.

I then started comparing to PCs that were five or six years before this. Intel had the 4000 series, which were great, but AMD had the FX series. There were huge differences between the processors from 2013 to 2019, and AMD in particular looks to have made a lightyear scale jump.

Overall, this was a good little trip back, and except for the BIOS issue, I realized most of these components are interchangeable with brand new ones from today. CPUs are still being made on the AM4 platform and applications like FSR and XESS can make older Nvidia cards perform at very playable levels. I wonder if we will be able to say the same about current releases six years from now.

I will be posting the YouTube video soon, the link to it is here. If you like, there is a blog about another older build with a Xeon, here.

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Turning a dozen bad things into one great donation.

How did we get here?

The donation in this case, is a half dozen Optiplex PCs. I acquired these at a yard sale for the whopping sum of just ten bucks, and was convinced I could make something of them. Unknown at the time, there were going to be several factors that would keep most of that from happening. There is a link to the original blog, here.

I made progress in some areas, but soon found out why these machines ended up abandoned. The first issue is that they are very old by PC standards. In an age where consumer PCs work on 16 or 32 cores or threads, most of these had two. I also discovered that these were a BTX design instead of the now standard ATX. This means that the board was an inverted design, and the case was as well.

I couldn’t use the cases for anything else, and the PCs worked off of a nearly twenty year old design. Even trying to create a custom sleeper PC would be very difficult. Still, I managed to salvage a couple for upgrade and began repairing others by cannibalizing. It wasn’t what I was looking to do, but it got several working. It was then that the thought of a donation came to mind.

How did you fix them?

To answer that, I have to explain a bit about some of the actual issues. None had drives in them, but I got HDDs at the same yard sale. Several had bad power supplies and were missing memory, and still one other had a bad memory module. A bad stick of DDR2 tied me up for an extra hour or so of troubleshooting, but the donor PCs had plenty.

I also learned that older PCs are finicky about which port SATA cables are plugged in, and the Bios is not helpful at all. It seems that these older systems want you to plug things in in order. I couldn’t use SATA port 0 and 2 for instance, I had to use 0 and 1. That meant some cables weren’t long enough. Some had floppies, some didn’t. This was going to take a while.

I methodically moved through several steps including new batteries and testing SATA cables, until I got a PC working for every good HDD. That meant six working PCs, all with working drives, and all with a copy of windows 10. I wanted to use an older OS, but don’t have a copy of Win7 or XP to use, and they can always change it. The important part was to get everything working together and gut as few as possible.

It was long, and tedious, but by the end of a day and a half, I had six machines. All of them worked, all had good parts, and all were in good shape, even if they were old. The most important part in my case, was that all of them were off my shelves. I also had one PC that was a donor, but it cleared a lot of room.

You said a donation?

I did. Partially for selfish reasons, but it was also practical. They were taking up space, as were a lot of clothes. For that matter until this morning, so were a lot of boxes and packing material. The boxes, etc. could be recycled, but so couldn’t the PCs and clothes?

I determined last week, that one of the things that would happen in my mini break form work would be catching up on the stuff lying around. The pile of PCs ranked high on that list, so did the mail on my dining room table, and some other stuff, but that’s a different blog.

In the end, I had six working PCs, one that didn’t, and a box of clothes. There is also a Salvation Army donation center not far away. I loaded the car, drove down and I hope helped more than just myself. My goal is not to shift my burden, but to benefit someone besides myself. These are still useable and someone will get a decent computer to check email, or web games or file their taxes. The can’t serve that purpose for me.

I still do have a couple of the PCs. One, upgraded (in a way), one got turned into a sleeper build, video here, and at least two will be for an experiment. If the experiment succeeds, I’ll write about it. I also imagine there will be pics on the custom build page and at least one YouTube video. Speaking of that, here it the link to this story. Enjoy.

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When ‘sold broken’ turns out to be great.

How did we get here?

Part of this started when I managed to snag a Dell Optiplex for less than fifty bucks listed as not working on eBay. I could clearly see the issue from the pictures in the description, and grabbed it. As it turns out, this wasn’t hitting the lottery, this is quite common. Items, especially tech, are listed if someone lacks the skill, resources, or time to test or repair them.

In this case, the pictures showed that the PC itself worked, but it was missing a drive for the operating system. Knowing it would be a simple fix, I ordered the PC, added an SSD, and opened the door to a whole different adventure. I entered the Realm of Broken and Untested. My buying habits haven’t been the same since.

This obviously hasn’t always been successful. Graphics cards in particular, have turned out to be a loss, but each only cost about forty dollars and I’m not ready to declare defeat on both, yet. There has been much better success with cases, motherboards, and full PCs. Most items have cost forty five bucks or less.

Any hidden Gems?

Actually, there have been two of them, both DDR5 motherboards. The first was a B760 for sale as not working with what looked like very minor damage on one corner. The seller had several pictures of the motherboard and box, which was helpful. It looked like it got dropped on the corner during shipping, but wasn’t damaged badly. Some very careful work to gently push things back into place, a full load of tests with a known working CPU, and everything checked out well. A video containing my used parts adventure is here.

The second motherboard was a swing for the fences. Bent pins were clearly visible in the socket, and it was cheap. I had fixed bent pins before, but this was much more.

My own carelessness had prepared me for the attempt, but that was on an older socket with a lot fewer pins. It was also my own fault. I didn’t secure the CPU heatsink after removing the processor, and the predictable happened. An effort to save me five minutes cost me nearly three hours, but it prepared me for the next attempt.

I was ready to be adventurous and sat down with a few tools, a good flashlight and a lot of patience. After doing what I thought was a pretty good job, I took a break to regroup, then went back to finish. I should have looked at other sockets, though. (That parts coming). With the socket square, I dropped in the budget CPU and some test RAM and started it. A few minutes later it posted and I remembered to breathe.

What happened then?

At this point, I felt good about myself and didn’t bother checking the rest of the board. (I told you I would get to this part.) I slapped it all in a case, and set up to start running tests. This is where being in a hurry bit me again. I have my games on a portable drive that I tried to plug into the front panel. I say tried because it reset the PC. This is the part where I kick myself for not looking at everything.

Two pins on the USB3 connector were bent all of the way down, and needed repair. Very patiently I put them in order and tried again. It reset again. I checked the connection and the same thing happened. Ready to chalk it up to a forty dollar motherboard, I gave up. I should say I was ready to give up, because when I went to go remove the USB plug to the external drive I noticed the reset pin pushed all of the way in. Seriously?

Yes, seriously. Somewhere during my haste to test, I didn’t notice the reset button pushed in, and each time I put pressure on the front of the case, it reset. I was so careful with the CPU socket this time and confident that I knew what I was doing, that I forgot the basics. In my defense, though, I wouldn’t have expected multiple issues with both a motherboard and a case. And it gives me something to laugh about.

What about the testing?

Oh yeah, the testing went great! I found that the 7500F compares very well against the 5800X I currently use, and beats it in most tests. I’m debating between that CPU and a small upgrade to completely swap out systems, and couldn’t be happier. I’ve done all of my testing and let it sit idle overnight making sure there were no unexpected resets. She’s working great and I’m very happy. That video is here, and pics of the build are here.

Oh, and I did give it a once over to make sure everything else was good on both motherboard and case. I learned my lesson. Okay, that’s not a true statement, but I learned something. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to conquer at least one broken GPU.