I can’t speak to the current model, but my Acer Predator has no bleed.
For the first time in years my PC sleep and “monitor off” functions work. Holy cow have I missed that. Not having to reboot 8x to see all my hard drives is just gravy.
Yeah, neither does my old HP ZR24w. A lot depends on the design.
I think I’ll return it for the hell of it. Do I need to speak with a customer service rep or just go through the standard return process?
Just a (probably useless) thought, but what brightness do you have your monitor set at?
I ask because 6 years ago when I bought my totally awesome IPS Viewsonic VP2770-LED, when I first unpacked it and fired it up, the backlight bleed was noticeable, but not as bad as yours appears to be. I was ready to exchange it until I read on a monitor review site that my model came factory pre-set at 100% brightness, which is far too bright. They recommended 18%. I tried that, and not only did my eyes no longer hurt when I looked at it, but it also totally eliminated the backlight bleed. I’m still using the monitor at 18%, and it still looks awesome, and still shows no backlight bleed.
I mention this in case it’s something you haven’t yet tried. Not the 18% though; that was specific to my model and brand.
@TimJames This is an excellent point that I’d forgotten about. When I first got my 279Q and booted it up it was way too bright, and was actually washing out my colors and crushing the hell out of the blacks. I reigned it in going with some suggested settings on a few different reviews and found that not only did the image quality improve a lot, what back light bleed I did have was diminished (to where it is now).
Worth a look, maybe.
I have mine set at Brightness 60, Contrast 45, and Color Tone is set to Warm. That’s the sweet spot when I do color calibration and brightness/contrast testing. I notch my Windows system gamma down just a bit, for a little extra color vibrancy and blacker blacks, as well.
I also turned off Over Clocking. I can’t explain it, but something feels wrong about it being on, and 144hz is plenty fast for me.
Yeah I always jack my brightness way down. It’s currently at 7, similar to my last monitor.
It also eliminated the eye strain I got from looking at the monitor. At first I thought 1440p was too small for my eyes! Now it’s all good.
Years ago there was a website that purported to help color calibration without using a separate device. I remember it had a series of checkerboard patterns of colors. I can’t seem to find it now. This monitor looks radically different from my old one, which has an ugly yellowish tint. I wonder if it faded, or maybe the color tones are different.
This reminded me - my previous primary display, now my secondary display, is a Dell Ultrasharp 27" 1440p and it actually has just slightly better colors than the PG279Q - or so I thought. I found that lowering the Blue in the g-sync display straightened things out and now they look about the same.
For anyone that wants just a gorgeous display and doesn’t care about going above 60fps - I can’t recommend the Dell Ultrasharp enough. It’s SO pretty.
Quite fancy an all in one for something different. Shame about the 1050 but getting there.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13610/asus-launches-zen-aio-27-z272sd-4k-six-core-cpu
I’m thinking about upgrading my ancient PC, any advice is more than welcome. I’m mainly interested in playing the upcoming WoW classic and possibly Warcraft 3: Reforged. Also, I’d like to spend as little as possible.
My current setup:
Motherboard: Asus P8H61-M
CPU: i5-2320 (3 GHz)
RAM: 8 (2x4) GB DDR3-1333
GPU: Geforce 210
PSU: Cooler Master GX650
A new video card is mandatory, I’m looking at either the GTX 1050 or GTX 1050 Ti. But should I also replace the PSU? I think I probably should.
Also, would 16 GB of RAM make sense? The newer MBs all support DDR4 so I’m thinking it might not be a wise investment at this point.
Naturally, I could start from scratch as well, but it’s the last option I’d take.
No need to upgrade the PSU or RAM on that machine. Just get a vid card good enough to run those games and save the rest of your dough for your next rig.
Thanks for the fast reply.
I think I’ll keep this second one. Obvious improvements in all 4 corners. I don’t think this panel can do much better without a lot of returns. Only slight annoyance is the worst corner is probably the lower left, which is always the most noticeable to me. (Lower right has the worst IPS glow I assume due to some sort of panel polarization or filter thing I can’t even fathom.)
Bring on the Steam sale. I’m ready.
That’s a huge difference. Very nice.
I just piggybacked in this thread rather than making my own. Here’s the final parts roundup after various changes due to availability, etc.
https://pcpartpicker.com/user/tjames975/saved/Mp6mqs
I love action gaming and shooters at 100+ fps now, which is kind of scary since I’ll need to keep upgrading to maintain that.
I’m currently stuck playing PS3 emulated games, so it might take me a week to get going in this. I plan to start this prior to Divinity: Original Sin 2 so I don’t get too sucked into that one!
I wish Kingdom Come had a dedicated benchmark mode, by the way. This is the only game where I’m not sure of my settings yet. I found good settings for Monster Hunter World, and I don’t own any other games that will really push the system right now.
The other silly issue I have is that I went with the Cherry Red switches and I definitely have the issue people warned about where I sometimes rest my fingers on the keys and don’t realize I’m pressing one of them down since the pressure is so light. This has seriously confused me at least 3 times now.
That’s a damn fine machine. 100fps is insane target though :) I am glad I play on 60hz TV only.
KCD’s benchmark is standing in a square of the starting village. If you can get 60fps there, you can get it in majority of the game :)
Although Rattay is a bit more demanding still.
I’m once again at that point where I don’t understand how building your own is cheaper. I would get if it was break even, but you pick great parts. But build your own now just seems to be considerably more expensive than buying an on-sale pre-built.
Like that’s $1,000 more than this: Amazon.com
I know that it has a nominally better CPU, but it has a worse GPU. The limited additional peripherals don’t seem to make up for $1,000 price difference? On top of which, I’m not even factoring in the labor of having it already assembled.
What am I missing?
P.S. Tim, sorry, not trying to dump on your purchase - I’m more just thinking about getting one myself, and am really confused this time around by pricing, options, etc. Everyone seems to love building their own, but I really am struggling to see how it is not a huge economic hit to do so.
Some of it (at least for me) is finer control over individual parts. I’ll probably never find a pre-built PC with all the parts I’ve picked/researched for one thing. But a bigger part of it is the fun of assembling everything yourself. I mean, one doesn’t buy a pre-built Tank model, right?
There is a satisfaction to it, to building something yourself and getting everything working. It’s not always about price, especially this time of year.
I also feel there is a fundamental flaw with pre-builds, because the parts are coming from where I don’t know - are they as high quality as the parts I buy from the manufacturer direct? Does a place like CyberpowerPC get a rebate buying in bulk and if so, how is anyone making money on that if the parts aren’t maybe less than perfect? Who is the manufacturer of that 2080 GTX? Is it EVGA? Because I want an EVGA card in case something goes wrong. Who is making that RAM? Corsair? Or some company I’ve never heard of? What about the power supply? Did they skimp on that? NEVER skimp on your power supply! It has a 1 year warranty for parts, but I don’t know anything about those parts. I didn’t select them, order them, and install them. The video card alone should have a 3 year warranty, but only has 1 year as part of this pre-build.
That stuff makes me a bit nervous.
Also note that PCPart picker isn’t necessarily showing the best prices. Some of those things on Tim’s list are possibly cheaper (or were cheaper when he bought them). And his list contains items not included in the pre-build you linked, stuff like a nice Monitor for $650. Which is a huge chunk of the $700 price difference between the two.
So guys I am at a PC crossroads and not sure what to do today. I want to upgrade my tired i7 4770 (non K) CPU and slow DDR3 RAM to something new. Part of the motivation is to better run applications that rely on single core performance (gaming + work in mind), but I will also get use out of great multicore performance as I do video editing/encoding and often run many programs at once.
I seem to have 3 options:
- Ryzen 2700x
- i7 9700k
- Wait for Zen 2
Ryzen 2700x has so many things going for it right now, it’s very reasonably priced (especially with the current deals), it’s a straight doubling of cores/threads to my old CPU, and I like market competition so I will feel good not buying another intel. But I am worried about what kind of single core improvement I would even see over my current CPU, which is really the main reason I want a new one.
The 9700k is priced higher now than at release, even though it might be the only thing giving me the performance I want, Intel’s pricing and supply issues piss me off. It doesn’t even include a cooler in the box, whereas Ryzen includes the Wraith which is apparently pretty good.
It is possible to wait for Zen 2 if it is true that it’s coming out around March or April next year, maybe that will give me the value/multicore of the current Ryzens but with some extra single core performance to make it worthwhile.
Decisions, decisions… If anyone has any advice (perhaps you faced a similar decision and went one way) would be happy to read it. By the way, I have read alot of this thread, it’s not that I lack the motivation to do research, just still can’t make a decision despite that.
The $650 monitor!
But you don’t have to guess. Part out that pre-built at the website I linked and see how much it costs. It takes 5 minutes.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a pre-built PC. Do what works for you. You’re not missing that much.