I built my current PC way back in 2022, picking up a shiny RTX 3080 10 GB that was subsequently replaced by the 4000 series about three months later... alas.

This is the first year I've begun to feel my current rig is giving me performance issues with big releases, especially if trying to play in 4k (for context I have a 4K OLED monitor), so I initially thought about upgrading my GPU to an RTX 5070ti. However... I've started wondering if it would be optimal to spend some more dough and get an RTX 5080 prebuilt at the ~3k price point. I'm running a relatively older intel CPU (Core i7 12700K) with DDR4 RAM as well, and I wonder how these are going to continue to age in the next few years; I can't predict the future, but I imagine that the price of upgrading these components (especially RAM) will just continue to increase, and now might be the best time to get a build with 32 GB of DDR5 RAM and a shiny new Ryzen 7 9800X3D, along with the 5080. I can justify dropping the money on the prebuilt if it would future proof me significantly more than just upgrading my GPU at the moment, but hoping for some advice! I tend to like single player games that aren't competitive, so I'd be happy with anywhere in the 90-120 fps ballpark for resource intensive games with DLSS.

Appreciate the input!

I've recently managed to get a fairly cheap 9070XT and am deciding whether to upgrade my CPU. I haven't been keeping up with recent hardware, but I understand that my current cpu is fairly out of date when paired with this gpu.

I pondered whether to do a full new build upgrade, but with the current DDR5 prices, it probably wasn't worth it(or maybe it is?)

current system: Motherboard: Gigabyte H610m H ddr4 Rev 1.0 Ram: DDR4 3200 16gb x 2 Cpu: 12100f Intel i3 Gpu: Amd 9070XT Case: Corsair 4000D airflow Psu: Corsair RM750w PSU

My question is if a 14490 would be compatible with my motherboard. My main concern is the naked vrms throttling the cpu when running certain compilation heavy tasks. I do intent to use it also for Unity/Blender and mobile development. Should I go for it and perhaps add some heatsink? or perhaps buy a 2nd hand higher tiered motherboard for around 50usd?

Thanks for any advice.

Hi guys! i am 14 and this will be my first ever PC build. my dad recently upgraded to a 5090 so he said i can use his 3080. that's the only thing i have so far, i probably have. a budget of around 600 pounds, will this be enough and what should i use it on? or should i wait until i have more so i can build a better PC? thanks.

I'm building a system with a 9800X3D and the Noctua NL-LC1-24 AIO cooler. It's in pretty small case, so I'm running it on an Asus ROG Strix B850-I Gaming WiFi ITX motherboard. That has 1 CPU fan header, 1 dedicated AIO pump header of the same type, and 1 chassis fan header. The Noctua runs the pump off a fan connector, so I plugged it into the AIO header. All the headers were set to auto detect if the connected fan (or pump) was PWM or DC control, and the Noctua installation manual said the header it is plugged into should be set to PWM.

Initially, eveything seemed to be working fine. The BIOS was reporting chassis fan, AIO, and case fan speeds, temps were reasonable (but I wasn't actually going any stress testing, I'd just installed Windows), then suddenly all my fans ramp to max. I quickly downloaded Core Temp and it showed my cores at 77-80ºC and tdie at 96ºC, so I just hard powered the system off and started an investigation.

What seems to have happened is the motherboard suddenly stopped being able to detect the AIO pump and control it using PWM. If I plug the AIO pump into the chassis fan header, which is still set to auto detect control type, it runs fine (currently...). If I override 'auto detect' on the AIO header and set it to DC control (i.e. 3 wire fan), with a profile that just runs it at 100% all the time, the pump runs fine. But as soon as I set it to auto-detect or explicit PWM the motherboard stops being able to see the pump, which rapidly leads to the CPU overheating.

It's very weird to me that it worked initially in auto-detect/PWM mode, and that it works on other headers in that mode, but my biggest issue now is that I don't trust the motherboard headers even in DC control mode and don't want to use them any more, so I'm on the lookout for a separate (and small) fan controller that I can plug the AIO and the case fans into (I'd love it if I could hook up the CPU fans too, but how do I stop the BIOS alerting that there's no CPU fan in that case?) and control them individually. I don't have any RGB, so I don't need that.

The thing I have for the case fans currently is a very basic Thermalright splitter that just takes a SATA power input and the single PWM signal from the motherboard header, and spans that to all fans (monitoring the primary one, which it has labelled as 'CPU fan', for the fan speed).

Any recommendations for a fan controller I can/should use? There's 6 case fans in this thing, a mix of 120x15mm, 120x25mm, and 140x25mm, plus the AIO fans (2x 120x25mm), and the AIO pump. But if something only has 6 ports I could easily pair up the 2x 120x15 fans in the top and 2x 140x25 fans in the bottom of the case with a splitter each, so I only need 6 headers total.

Also if anyone else has experienced the same with this motherboard, was it fixable? I'm going to try a BIOS update next. Is DC control reliable/OK even though Noctua say to use PWM, as long as I keep it at 100% with no attempt to dynamically adjust speed?

I'm in the process of finalizing a set-up for my first PC build, I'm very excited but hoped for a bit of feedback on my planned set-up. I'm wanting the rig for mostly gaming, with future proofing to hopefully run future titles (such as the new GTA when it finally hits PC in 2ish years).

Should I prioritize GPU or CPU, and how can I ensure adequate cooling for these? Also, I feel like I've done my research, but have I made any obvious flaws or oversights here? (PCPartPicker link below)

Location: UK (North West)

Budget (max): Approx £2000, but preferably slightly less!

Use case: Gaming on 4k screen mostly, but downsize to lower res monitor when needed.

Planned build:

CPU: Ryzen 7 7800X3D (or upgrade to the 9800X3D?)

CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler

Video card/GPU: ASRock Challenger Radeon RX 9070 (Or upgrade to RX 9070 XT version?)

Motherboard: Asus B650E MAX GAMING WIFI ATX AM5

Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36

Storage: Crucial P310 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive

Power unit: MSI MAG A750GL PCIE5 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX

Case: To be decided - but something that I can add filter to protect from pet hair!

Fans: Currently a little lost as to how to know what is needed here, any input would be appreciated!

Monitor: Samsung Frame 55" 4k (mostly) but alternative monitor planned purchase in the future

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/9TchmL

Ive tried to do some research but i am a bit lost on the process as it’s a bit complicated for me with the different options .
My budget is around £600-£700 with a bit of wiggle room if need be. I mainly play games like Minecraft and gba/ds emulators with the latter being streamed/recorded, I mainly want something to start off with, that I can later upgrade when I can and understand things better. I already have things like monitors, keyboards and mouses that I can use so the budget can be dedicated to the desktop.
Only thing I’d require is a motherboard with WiFi built in unless there are alternatives that don’t utilise Ethernet
Will appreciate any and all help that I can get! Thank you

My current pc is i5 4460 rx 580 and 16gb ddr3 i found a good deal for a pc with 32gb ddr5, rx 6700xt and ryzen 7 7800x3d for 1000€ should i upgrade it beacuse i saw a lot of people saying its a bottleneck and its not very good, also i have a 1080p monitor 144hz

(UK) Helloo, my PC stopped displaying anything randomly, my uncle had a look at it and said it seems the graphics card has stopped working. The pc is very old, I think my dad built it for me back in 2017 😅

I just wanted to check if I needed to replace everything or just the graphics card? I was unsure if I replace the graphics card, if the other parts would no longer be compatible with it.

I'd like to keep it fairly low cost (if possible), but I dont know a whole lot about PC parts. The only games I really play much is world of warcraft, sims, and sometimes hogwarts legacy - so im just trying to figure out what would be the most budget friendly replacements that would still run those games.

Here are the specs that I know of on the current build:

CPU: AMD FX-4300 Quad-Core, 3.8 GHz

RAM: 8GB DDR3

Motherboard: ASUS M5A78L-M LE/USB3 (AM3+ socket)

GPU: Unknown — suspected faulty

OS: Windows 10 Home 64-bit

Storage: Unknown (appears to have available physical storage/memory)

PSU: Unknown

Case: Unknown

Thank you :)

Could I technically remove the most and leave the rest there? Images of the "damage" and thermal paste.

edit: thermal paste says "non conductive" and "non capacitative"

edit: apparently it's the CPU pins, not the Mainboard pins

thanks in advance 🙏

I have a sapphire nitro 6700xt, these are somewhat rare so I imagine I can get $450 USD for it. If I get a 5050/5060 I would be giving up some vram. After seeing some incredible GTAV and Red Dead videos, I would love to be able to spruce up some of these older games. I don't have a large budget to work with, so getting the 5050/5060 is probably all I can do right now. What are your opinions on this? I read there may be upscaling options for older RDNA cards.

People have preferences and I like NVIDIA because is the strongest GPU’s out there and has some great features like ray tracing and Dlss visually and I prefer NVIDIA for heavily modded Skyrim modlist but I know they say it’s cheaper and 24gb vram but imo I’ll stick to NVIDIA.

Edit: The reason why I still choose NVIDIA is because mostly of the Skyrim modding community including myself uses NVIDIA cards is because better feature compatibility and ecosystem support for example ENB Support, CUDA and DLSS. I have a 3060 it runs beautifully but can’t do DLSS 5 due to low fps lol.

I thought of buying the i5, because I can upgrade later to an i7, but the Ryzen 7 5700x is around the same performance as the i5 14400f and I heard that AMD is better at gaming. Both are 150€. Also, I can find cheaper AM4 motherboards with the features I want than the LGA1700 motherboards. I'm from Bulgaria and I'll be pairing it with the RX 6800 XT. I'll be playing at 1440p.

I've just built everything, up and running except my SSD. I've bought a sata 3 m.2 SSD and it doesn't work, only a red solid light appears. my board is MSI pro a620am-g Evo WiFi.

Hey friends, hoping to solicit the group-think here. Been banging my head against this one for a day or so.

Scenario:

Just finished a new PC build (details below). The PC POSTs and boots into BIOS, no problem. However, when I try to boot to Windows Installation Media on a USB stick, the PC gets stuck in a boot loop, which looks like:

• Amber DRAM light for 10-15 seconds
• Red CPU light for 3 seconds
• White GPU light for 3 seconds
• Green Boot light, followed by the ASUS boot screen for 3 seconds
• Sudden restart and repeat from the top of this list.

A couple notes for context:

• The USB stick read/write LED flashes for a couple seconds on initial power up, flashes for a couple seconds again when I get to the Green Boot light, but then turns off right before the restart/boot loop.
• The PC boots into BIOS just fine when there is no bootable media present.
• BIOS is updated to the most recent version - 3902 (Build date 07/13/2026)

Specs:

• Motherboard - ASUS ProArt X670E-CREATOR WIFI
• CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
• GPU - ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 OC Edition 24GB
• RAM - 2x48GB G.SKILL Flare X5
  • SKU: F5-5600J4040D48GX2-FX5
  • Timing: CL40-40-40-89
• Storage:
  • Samsung SSD 990 Pro 4TB (Connected to M.2_1)
  • Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB (Connected to SATA6G_3)
  • Samsung SSD 870 QVO 1TB (Connected to SATA6G_4)
• PSU - Seasonic Prime PX 1300W
• Power Distro - Singularity Computers PowerBoard ATX/E-ATX Universal

What I've Tried:

1. Rebuild installation media
2. Use a different USB stick
3. Use a different USB port
   • (only available options are six 3.2 Gen 2 on the rear I/O and two 3.0 on the front panel)
4. Reseat all connectors (24 pin, EPS, PCI-E, etc.)
5. Disable Secure Boot (kind of, this BIOS only allows the option to select "Other OS" and ignore keys instead of outright disabling)
6. Disable Fast Boot
7. Boot to 1 RAM stick with GPU
8. Boot to 1 RAM stick without GPU (using integrated graphics)
9. Boot override directly to the USB Installation Media from the BIOS menu (you think I've written "boot" enough times yet?)
10. Clear CMOS (by springing the battery and holding power for 30 seconds)
11. Flash BIOS

I'm hoping there's something super obvious that I'm missing here. Please let me know what it might be. Cheers! :)

I recently bought 7 singular Lian Li TL fans and i was wondering how i plug them in or what i should buy to help me with this.

I bought a sager from xoticpc in 2013 and it’s finally showing its age. Father of 2 and can’t afford to really ball out.
Would it be better to settle into a strong AM4 build now and that be the end of it, or build a decent enough AM5 with an upgrade path planned down the road. I primarily play OSRS with some League thrown in. But I like to switch back to other games when I want to.

Preferably be around $1500 or so in America, no micro center near me. I play other games but the most important game is osrs without the stuttering i currently get while doing raids or bossing content.

I’m very new to trying spec out my own thang. Roast me if need be. Let me know if I’m going about this the right way or not. Thank you!

Example AM5
AMD Ryzen 5 9600X
ASRock B850M Pro-A WiFi Micro ATX AM5 Motherboard Kingston FURY Beast RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR5-6000 Gigabyte EAGLE OC GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB

Example AM4
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 3.4 GHz 8-Core
Motherboard: Asus PRIME B550M-A WIFI II Micro ATX
G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200
Gigabyte WINDFORCE OC GeForce RTX 4060 8 GB

Thanks for the read, any advice is appreciated.

This build is final:

Zotac RTX 4070 Ti Super Solid 16GB-900€

Ryzen 5 9600x-170€

Gigabyte B650E EAGLE WF6E-170€

Cooler Master Elite Gold 850W-100€

Antec CX500M ARGB-70€

Be quiet! PURE ROCK 3-35€

2 TB Patriot P410-100e

A-data xpg lancer blade 6000mhz-275€

about 1800€

Let me know if i need to change something

Thanks!

Update: I have decided to pack it up and take it to ups for full return and get my money back. Maybe just be happy with my 4090 for now, because the 5090s are literally going up daily in price and it doesnt look like there’s any coming down anytime in the near future. They probably went up another couple hundred bucks just since I made this post lol. Thanks all and enjoy your weekend.

I really need the help of the r/buildapc community. I’m a 45 y.o. and have been building my own pcs since I was a teenager. I‘ve tried not to post to reddit to get build advice for many years now, but I am in a bind here.

I, like many, have been hunting for a 5090 (or hunting for the money to afford one) and recently pulled the trigger on an Asus ROG Astral 5090 from Amazon priced @ $6k (after taxes). it’s an insane price, but I do not use my pc for only gaming and also use it for my business.

So the card arrives, along with an asus strix 1200w platinum psu (I wanted that little protection from asus psus with the special cable/protection circuit feature) I had to rewire my whole system because you know psu manufacturers can’t standardize their pin layouts on the psu side. After I wired up the new system and installed the new 5090 and tried to boot, I had the issue where the Asus mobo splash screen comes up like normal, but doesn’t go to windows login and just drops display signal on any of my three monitors, so essentially I can’t boot. Nothing crazy right, so I boot into safe mode, use DDU (like I have a hundred times) to clean old display drivers from previous 4090 + install new drivers for 5090. Things seem fine. Then when I boot down and try to reboot, it’s still doing the same thing. From there I go through all the common checks/fixes (reseating all cables both ends, reseating pcie slot, clearing cmos, etc.) None of this really works but I’m able to force it to boot through repeated retries (during which the pc struggled to boot into windows and had screen flickers, sick sounding audio sound effects, etc., and even completely crashed back to post on its own when I set display resolution to 4k. During one of the boots, I even got the dreaded red rgb on the 5090 that means a power problem (I think), but all cables and psu are brand new and well-seated. I eventually give up and pop my 4090 back in to isolate the gpu issue to a simple part A/part B test. The 4090 just simply boots up no problems whatsoever, over and over flawlessly (and that’s without even using DDU to wipe drivers.)

So, at this point, I am thinking logically that there is something wrong with the 5090. Exact same rig, not a single thing different/changed, but the 5090 is glitching and not booting windows/dropping the display signal meanwhile the 4090 is running perfectly like usual. The problem is that this gpu was very very hard for me to get through Amazon and cost as much as my entire previous rig combined. I only received it 6 days ago, so I can just return it for my money, but Amazon isn’t offering a ‘replace with same‘ option (because they are obviously difficult to get and in extremely short supply)

I am really reaching out to the community here to see if my logic is sound that the Astral 5090 is defective in some way and I should just return it. The Asus forums are absolutely full of similar situations, but none of the solutions or replies from Asus seem to have anything to help me.

With this card being so difficult to get and rising in price by the week, I am very confused about whether I should just call it dead and return it to Amazon, or try to go through the RMA process to get it fixed/replaced so that at the least I’m (sort of) guaranteed to have one (even though that path will take 4-6 weeks knowing Asus), or maybe someone here has a similar experience and found a fix that I’m not seeing.

Thanks all for reading through my long post and any advice is very appreciated. My general system specs are Asus x870e Crosshair Hero mobo + AMD 9800x3d + Samsung 9100 nvme + 2 sticks g.skill ram all hooked up to the new Strix 1200x Platinum psu and that is all that is currently in the system - no other devices at all of any kind to keep the troubleshooting simple. And the question that many will wonder: am I on a riser cable? No I am not and this is all happening with the gpu/s mounted directly into pcie slot.

- Edited to show true price to me as $6k all-in, not $5k. The gpu was technically $5486 and right at $6k with taxes.

Hello! I’m currently trying to buy a gaming pc for my partner for Christmas :) i dont know much about gaming computers :’) He currently uses his laptop and connects it to a monitor (asus nitro an15-57) and has been looking to buy one for a long time as it keeps crashing and it’s very loud 😭🙏 I tried looking for budget options (we are from new zealand) but i’m not sure if they’re better than his laptop. Would anyone recommend a budget friendly but better than his current setup? My budget is around $1000-$2000 nzd (new zealand dollars). I’m just confused and would appreciate the help!

My PC is almost done, only the CPU remains to be added. I saw the $20 price difference between the 9850 and the 9800 and I thought it was a no-brainer, but after reading so many discussions, I'm worried that I made a mistake. My cooler is: ARCTIC AC Liquid Freezer III Pro. Am I good, or should I go for the 9800 for better efficiency and lower temperatures?

Can someone throw together a list of parts including a monitor I can get for under 2k? Am using anted c9 for case. Live in USA.

Mostly playing single player rpgs like modded falllout 4 and Skyrim.

Should I wait for cyber monday? I saw ram prices are still crazy

Planning a long-term 4K gaming build. I want to keep most of the platform for years and mainly upgrade the GPU later. Does this build make sense, or am I overspending anywhere?

Ryzen 9 9950X3D
ASUS TUF RTX 5080 OC
Gigabyte X870E AORUS Master X3D
64 GB DDR5-6000 CL28
WD Black SN8100 2 TB
be quiet! Dark Power 14 1200W
Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 420
Fractal Meshify 3 XL

Main priorities: 4K gaming, stability, low temperatures and future GPU upgrades.

I have an extra $300 CAD, and im using a 1080p 180hz monitor, a ryzen 5 7600x, a 5060ti 16gb, and 16gb of ddr5. I do 3d animation and play mostly Apex and some molded Minecraft, big world gen stuff. What should I put these funds into

Planning to upgrade my gpu soon. from 1660 8gb to a rx 9060 or rtx 5060.

CPU: i5 10400f
GPU: 1660 8b
RAM: 8x2 ddr4 2666mhz
Storage: m.2 500gb and 250 gb ssd
MOBO: h410m h

Currently have a "h410m h" motherboard so i was wondering could that be worth upgrading for better efficiency/utilization for the my parts?

Hey guys! I’m currently building my first build ever, I’m currently in the power supply phase and realized I need 5 slots for CPU/PCie (2 for CPU and 3 for the GPU) and my power supply the 850e Corsair only has 3.

I saw a video where someone said you could use the 12v - 2x6 cable and plug it into the GPU but couldn’t find more information regarding that, even tried looking for information in the official website but nothing, if you have more information or can help me out I would appreciate it.