I got through amazon prime. Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro (version without WiFi). You can get it with WiFi too.
So far it’s rock solid and doing well at 5.1 GHz, but I’m still early on in OC testing. I need to make sure the system isn’t being artificially throttled, it’s been a long time since I’ve done this so have to do more research. But, so far it’s been smooth as glass.
Also, having this boot in just a couple seconds is weird. Not used to a cold boot being that fast.
Thanks. 9th Gen CPU? Which seller partner?
No seller partner. It’s just sold by Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-Z390-AORUS-LGA1151-Motherboard/dp/B07HRZRBRJ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541552000&sr=8-1&keywords=Gigabyte%2Bz390&dpID=51W757mV7aL&preST=SX300_QL70&dpSrc=srch&th=1
I’m using 9700k.
You don’t think overclocking is overkill with a 9700k?
I’ve been told the Gigabyte Z370 BIOS is “horrible”, whatever that means. I assume the UI is just wacky or something, and that they’re not talking about bugs, etc.
Amazon is shipping my 9700K. That was what, a week? So they seem to have decent availability.
Umm, I guess I should order the rest so I don’t just have a video card and CPU sitting on my shelf.
It’s not bad. Not buggy at all. I guess it could look nicer? Not really any different than my old Asus bios.
@Alistair - no, I need the speed. Planet Coaster runs like crap once you get a large park and a big part of that is its crappy multi core support. You can park the camera in the corner looking at nothing and be in the FPS teens. Core clock speed is really important. Same for Rimworld late-game, Warhammer 2, Kerbal space program with complex rockets. All these titles depend on the highest clock speed possible since they haven’t gotten with the multi-core times.
Any random thoughts on this parts list?
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/LrNPcY
Only things locked in are the CPU and video card. In general I’m after simple, boring-looking components, which seem to be hard to find these days. (Even this RAM is bugging me.)
I also need a new mouse but I’m worn out already trying to pick from so many damn components.
Yea, it bugs me how much money is wasted on development and engineering on led lighting and junk. All that cost gets rolled into all the parts gamers need and I’m sure it’s driven it up more than a little. Seems like half of Corsair’s software development goes into coloring as their link software is more about lighting than system control.
As to your list it looks really good. But can’t you get a 1080 for just a tiny bit more? That seems highish? for a 1070.
Oh looks like I never updated the video card I ended up with. I grabbed an EVGA for $410. (Oh, that reminds me there’s a $20 rebate too.) When I did a spot check on price a couple weeks ago, the 1080s were all up near $500 and going out of stock.
My plan is to stick with this until the 3070 comes out.
My wife went back to work after a year layoff in 2013 so I built myself an i7-4770k system when we started getting 2 paychecks. It’s still a great chip and a great system able to handle anything you throw at it. But hey, this is a hobby and I’ve never gotten a chance to play with M.2 drives or DDR4 RAM.
She promptly got laid off again in 2015 and then we had a child, so she’s been home 3 years. She just went back to work and again I’m not the sole breadwinner, so despite a lot of dirty looks - this is what I purchased this week. Everything has arrived but the CPU, which will get here Friday and make for a nice weekend project. And the kid can use the 4770K when he’s a bit older.
Caveat: I’m not buying a video card just yet. Since the 1080 TI’s have stopped production, they are outrageously overpriced. $1000+. And I can’t justify paying $800+ for an RTX 2080, so I’ll hold off for a sale. I’ve currently got a 1070 which gives me so so frames on a 3440 x 1440 100Hz monitor, so I’ll just hold off a couple months for the GPU.
For my fastest SSD drive… should I use that as my windows boot drive or should I use it for games that are HD intensive? Trying to find the best way to make my games run fastest. I don’t care so much about windows speed, but i know having fastest swap cache on the windows boot drive might make games faster as well.
I run everything on my SSD. Spinning disks are for mass storage, like pictures and videos and music and the like.
Welp, my third new motherboard* will be arriving tomorrow (went with the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro despite the wacky BIOS UI).
Just in case, I’m going to hold onto the ASRock, with both the manufacturer RMA & the Amazon return options in reserve, until the system is actually up and running. That way if somethings’s wrong with this one, I’ll have options. Also ordered a second fan for the Noctua CPU cooler, which should fit on the other side of that heat sink.
* First one couldn’t handle some of the component changes I’d made mid-stream, second one had the old-not-9th-gen-compatible BIOS
Yup, mine has one on each side. And when I had a case fan die a few years ago, I bought one to replace it too.
The question wasn’t about mechanical drive, but I have a new Samsung M.2 evo 970, and a bunch of slower, older SSD’s. I’m just wondering where the M2 should be. Should it be boot drive with windows and maybe a game or two, or should it be a gaming drive with an older, slightly slower SSD as my windows drive?
Unless the new drive is too small, there isn’t any reason to NOT use the fastest SSD drive for everything possible.
It’s way too small. It’s only 500 Gig and I have like 3 TB of stuff. I play a lot of different games at once and have tons of shit in docs etc. So that’s why my central question ism use the fastest SSD as windows boot drive, or keep it strictly for the most demanding games that do HD data streaming?
My main SSD is 512GB and I put everything on it. OS, my games, all that stuff. I have a 1TB drive extra for storing my large files on, like a backup of my documents and the like. 512 is plenty of space for the OS and several games. I have Odyssey, Pathfinder, Pillars 2, and half a dozen indie games all installed with Windows 10 and have over 200GB of free space. If you have 3TB of stuff (I don’t even understand how someone could have that much data, personally).
Whatever you want to run fast, put on the fastest drive. If you want Windows to boot faster, put it on the new SSD. Any games you wan to reduce load time with, put on the new SSD. I wouldn’t put documents on there, you won’t notice much difference opening a spreadsheet on spinning platter vs. SSD anyway.
I mod most of my games and I don’t like messing with their installs after I get them set. Sometimes I have 6 different builds of the same game (kerbal space program) to swap between incompatible combos. Since I also “mod” mods, I can’t just redownload Steam modest or they’d get overwritten.
I can’t fit all my “core” games on one 500 Gig drive that has windows on it too, hence my hesitation as to whether the speed boost of it being win boot plus page-swap is worth it.
—edit—
Sorry for the thread derail. I’ll use the Samsung as system drive, redirect documents and downloads to a mechanical drive, and keep it as clean as possible for remaining games I can fit on it. Then divvy up other games to other SSD’s, and games that do t need speed also go on mechanical HD.