Looking to purchase new computer

[Kylie Jaxxon]

Hello all...any advice would help.  Looking to purchase a new computer, any recommendations on make, graphics card, etc...that will see me through for a couple of years?

[cykarushb]

The 4770 is still a decent CPU. So a GPU upgrade is probably a good choice. Though im gonna say right now, its going to be a pain in the butt to work on. The X51R2 being as small and compact as it is.

Pulling the specs off of here: https://www.cnet.com/products/alienware-x51-r2-dt-core-i7-4770-3-4-ghz-8-gb-1-tb-ax51r29300bk/specs/

Heres 8gb of compatible ram, just basic stuff. You need EXACTLY this, has to be 1600mhz 240 pin DDR3 or it wont work with this system. Timings may be different but your memory controller compensates for that. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231636

The GPU is going to suck to work with though, because its on a special bracket and a PCIe riser, and just take this slow and careful. Your guts look a bit like this:

GPU on the right its separate bracket. Now a thing here going to be compatibility, if you have a 760, and this machine originally had a 660, you have a single 6 pin power connector to work with. The card is 140w so its going to be best to stick around that current wattage with cards that only have a single 6 pin required. Looking into modern cards, your best bet is going to be something like a GTX 1060, which is a 120w card, it will fit in well here and will pair well with a 4770. I suggest buying a smaller one just to give it some breathing room, as the OEM card is 9.8" and the 660 in the picture is 9.5". That may cause issues with thermals as these machines are designed for blower cooler cards, they have one intake fan and blow hot air out the back. The small form factor 1060's are not like that and may not perform as well temperature wise.

So i suggest this: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16814500405

Its the 3gb small form factor variant 1060 from zotac. Its a good card, not much to say about it, the 3gb 1060 isnt as powerful as a 6gb 1060 but this will fit, and it will stay cool, and it greatly outperforms your 760.

While youre digging around in the thing, i high suggest replacing the cpu cooler. Those stock coolers in a compact system tend to run very hot, and over time the fans get noisy. Honestly anything thats low profile and will fit on the LGA 1150 socket will do just fine. One of these would be a good choice, its quiet and fits in any lga 115x machine. https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608029

[Lillith Hapmouche]

This, children, is a perfect example why you should not buy so called "gaming" prebuilt machines filled with OEM-ware. 
You'll only run into problems with upgrading later on, there are all sorts of nifty stuff blocking your way and you have to bend over backwards to fix stuff the way you want it.

Instead, get proper parts straight away and pay your neighbourhood geek to set it up for you or something - a much better investment in the long run.

...

In this case, I'm holding back on the advice on simply getting a proper new power supply, simple because I do not know if the mainboard uses some custom power connectors like numerous boards of that kind do. A new PSU would allow you to pick a non-crippled card, one unlike the rip-off GTX 1060 with 3 GB. But not much point in that if the rest of the machine cannot be connected.

Still ... a SSD a la Crucial MX300 or a Samsung 850 EVO, 250 GB or more, for a fresh Windows install and the SL cache would be a fine match for more RAM and a new GPU.

[cykarushb]

If building your own, this right here is a pretty good setup for longevity. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/6FwKf8

R5 1600, 6gb GTX 1060, gold rated PSU, 16gb of DDR4. It will last for quite a bit, handle anything 1080p. And you have room for upgrades.

And if youre looking for prebuilts, anything with a Ryzen 5 + 1060/1070 will be good for quite a while. Dont bother buying into Intel Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake as they have meager performance gains over Skylake, and you can get Skylake stuff for way cheaper.

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Recommendations ... yes, indeed ... do provide more info.

What do you currently have? Max. budget, do you have any equipment you can continue to use (monitor, keyboard, mouse, Windows license...).

[Kylie Jaxxon]

Going with prebuilt.  Now have an Alienware X51 R2, Intel Core i7-4770 CPU, 340 GHz, 8 GB RAM.  Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 ti

I bought this one new a few years ago and ran great, but for the last year or so, has been struggling in SL   Yes, my monitor, etc are all fine...basically just need the tower

[LittleMe Jewell]

Have you looked at just upgrading the memory and graphics card?  The CPU is fine for SL.

[Kylie Jaxxon]

@LittleMe...thanks for the suggestion   I know nothing of these things, so can you recommend how much memory and a graphics card?

 

[cykarushb]

15 minutes ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

In this case, I'm holding back on the advice on simply getting a proper new power supply, simple because I do not know if the mainboard uses some custom power connectors like numerous boards of that kind do.

Nah, 330w external power brick. No internal PSU. You could put a 6gb 1060 in this thing but theres not much point, 3gb is fine for 1080p and the 4770 would struggle in higher res. Even though the 3gb card is weaker otherwise compared to the 6gb one, the performance increase would be minimal with the 4770 in there.

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Define "struggle", please ...

[cykarushb]

32 minutes ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

Define "struggle", please ...

You'd likely see the CPU bottleneck show up if you paired the 4770 with some gpu suited for 1440p, which a 1060 6gb would be recommended for. Non k i series stuff is similar to how ULV laptop dual cores are. The difference between an i5 4460 and an i7 4770 is very small in real world cpu performance.

Basically pairing it with more than a 3gb 1060 and you're better off upgrading to a whole new platform anyway.

[Kylie Jaxxon]

Thank you, Cyka, for taking the time to show such detail in your answer...greatly appreciated.

@Lillith, thank you too.  The conversations between you & Cyka are mostly greek to me, sadly.   Although having someone build one for me, is a possible option and makes a lot of sense from what you say.  Will look into it.

I do have a horrible problem with this one in terms of the fan whining at a high pitch, overheating

 

[cykarushb]

55 minutes ago, Kylie Jaxxon said:

I do have a horrible problem with this one in terms of the fan whining at a high pitch, overheating

As I said, if you're going to dig around in there you should probably replace the cooler (or at least the fan on it). If you notice in the picture of the system, the fan on the cooler is actually backwards. Computer fans blow air in the direction of the side with the supports and motor, so that fan is sucking air from inside the case and blowing it out. The air inside the case is generally going to be warmer.

I presume the fan in the back is set up as an intake to suck in air for the gpu.

Measure the fan, because I can't find out what it actually is, computer fans are all measures in MM, it looks like its probably an 80mm fan on the heatsink. Pick up any decent 80mm fan with a 4 pin cpu fan controller header (little itty bitty thing, they also come in Molex which is a large white trapezoid connector).

Replacing the fan and having it blow air into the case should improve temps, and if its a nicer fan it should be much quieter.

And That's an easy thing to replace too, its just held in by 4 screws and you plug it into the 4 pin connector next to the heatsink that says "cpu fan".

Even if the screws don't fit you can honestly stick the thing on with hot glue or double sided tape, that might actually reduce vibration even, lmao.

[Nalates Urriah]

I've updated my hardware articles to cover the Intel 8th gen CPU's, Hardware. The latest information on viewer threading from Monty Linden is included.

[Lillith Hapmouche]

The good thing: at least you do acknowledge AMD's existence. Althought the "to go" CPUs for an average user are the Ryzen 5 1600 and 1600x, perhaps even the smaller ones for a tight budget. 

But on the other hand... some statements are flat out wrong or at least questionable.
The "Intel is way ahead on overclocking." for example... I don't argue that Intel is mostly ahead in terms of IPC / "single core" performance, even though the gap has significantly decreased. Coffee Lake is certainly better off than Heiz-well, Skylake and Kabylake in terms of temperature during OC. They still rely on grease thermal compound, unlike the Ryzens. An average 1600x clocks to 3.8 to 3.9 GHz with no real hassle and don't melt away at those specs.  

The main speed advantage these days seems to lay in the realms of fast timed RAM. So the "The max memory speed is spec’d at 2666MHz. Word is that can be pushed faster, a lot. " part .. well, that'll need elaboration. 2666 MHz is the "better be safe" configuration. The real speed boost comes with 3000+ MHz and low latencies. 
In the case of a Ryzen CPU, it is also important that the RAM uses chips made by Samsung, which are typically featured in G.Skill Flare X and Trident Z 3200 MHz CL 14 kits. 

[Madelaine McMasters]

Although I've never tried this upgrade myself, a friend of mine claims he can achieve an apparent 50% speed boost in his PC by drinking three beers. You might try wine.

Edited October 25, 2017 by Madelaine McMasters

[cykarushb]

 

3 hours ago, Lillith Hapmouche said:

The good thing: at least you do acknowledge AMD's existence. Althought the "to go" CPUs for an average user are the Ryzen 5 1600 and 1600x, perhaps even the smaller ones for a tight budget. 

But on the other hand... some statements are flat out wrong or at least questionable.
The "Intel is way ahead on overclocking." for example... I don't argue that Intel is mostly ahead in terms of IPC / "single core" performance, even though the gap has significantly decreased. Coffee Lake is certainly better off than Heiz-well, Skylake and Kabylake in terms of temperature during OC. They still rely on grease thermal compound, unlike the Ryzens. An average 1600x clocks to 3.8 to 3.9 GHz with no real hassle and don't melt away at those specs.  

The main speed advantage these days seems to lay in the realms of fast timed RAM. So the "The max memory speed is spec’d at 2666MHz. Word is that can be pushed faster, a lot. " part .. well, that'll need elaboration. 2666 MHz is the "better be safe" configuration. The real speed boost comes with 3000+ MHz and low latencies. 
In the case of a Ryzen CPU, it is also important that the RAM uses chips made by Samsung, which are typically featured in G.Skill Flare X and Trident Z 3200 MHz CL 14 kits. 

Im gonna add onto this as well, I'm on my phone so editing is not going to be easy so I'm just gonna leave that whole quote uncut.

Right now there are 3 optimal choices for low, mid and high end gaming machines on both AMD and Intel (before you go into more money than sense territory, or broke destitute low end). Low end being a Ryzen 3 1200, or Pentium G4560. Mid tier being the R5 1600x or i5 7600k. High end being the R7 1700x or i7 7700k.

R5 1600x of course becomes the best overall, it is the best price to performance chip and will suit any single GPU system up to a 1080ti with no problems. Once you get into sli/crossfire or whatever, you should opt for a better cpu.

Intel being ahead on overclocking is laughable. Along with the issue with poor quality tim, causing users to rename Skylake "delidlake", Intel really screws over the buyer when it comes to OC potential. You need a K series unlocked processor, and you can only overclock on specific Z series chipsets. You can totally put a 7700k on B250, cant OC. Or a 7700 on Z270, cant oc. Has to be a 7700k on Z720 to OC, and even then its gonna thermal throttle even with decent cooling.

AMD having the "if it fits in the socket it will OC" ideology is way better for this. Right now the only chipset that can't overclock is A320. The ultra low end. Even then manufacturers have unofficial updates that let you OC on A320. B350 and X370 both OC any AM4 processor from the APU's to the Athlon to the Ryzen 3/5/7's.

Same for previous generations as well, FX was trash but you could OC just about anything.

Id also like to add that related to CPU generations from intel, the intel buyer is being ripped off. Gotta buy that newest high end i7, gotta buy the new chipset motherboard for it, etc etc

There is next to no base performance difference between a 4790k, 6700k (and in most cases the 4790k actually beats the 6700k) and the 7700k.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp[]=2275&cmp[]=2565&cmp[]=2874

The 8700k is a performance jump but only because it has 2 more cores. It costs 380-390$ and requires the Z370 chipset. Unlike going from the 6700k to the 7700k, you cant use your previous LGA 1151 motherboard even though its the same socket. Its funny because Intel doesnt need to do anything at all for an 8700k to run on Z270 or even Z170. Its entirely to get you to buy a new motherboard. Both ASUS and Asrock have said that no, it doesnt work, but theres no reason it shouldnt, and they were both able to use their existing z170 and z270 motherboards with 8700k's with custom design bios's. Intel will not let them distribute that bios.

Edited October 25, 2017 by cykarushb

[Nalates Urriah]

The AMD vs Intel debate continues...

I suggest anyone trying to decide on AMD vs Intel Google the reviews and benchmarks for AMD and Intel. Reviewers are publishing their test numbers to support their calls.

Don't think one or the other company is out to grab your money or did things just to force you to buy additional equipment and the other brand isn't. BOTH are for profit companies. Shop price and performance.

This morning Google provided me a list of reviews. The first one's I look at show the i5-8400 as being proclaimed the best gaming performance per dollar and AMD being second. I could repeat that tomorrow and possibly get a different result. But, the proclaimed winner, an i5-8400 (US$199) is limited to 2.8GHz. The i5-8600k ($280) can be overclocked to 5GHz from a base of 3.6GHz. For an SL user that additional speed is probably worth the $80 even if you do not overclock.

The Rysen 5-1500 ($189) at 3.6GHz in a simple speed and price comparison beats the i5-8400. In a for profit world one should consider why one is priced lower and offering more apparent performance. There is a lot of ad hype and the devil is in the details. And consider what the reviewers are testing and how it applies to SL.

Since no one tests for Second Life, we have to understand where the SL Viewer bottlenecks, that big render thread. Then we each are left to make a call for what we think will work best. It isn't easy. Read the information on how the test machines for benchmark comparisons are set up. To test a CPU the motherboard, memory chips, cooling, disk storage speeds, bus and chip types all affect performance. And performance for any specific game may be better on one brand of CPU than the competing brand.

In SL we have VERY FEW people that bother to run objective comparisons or provide the information sufficient for basing objective comparisons. There are plenty of people in SL to voice strong personal opinions based on very little. Most everyone's information, including mine, is incomplete. My hardware articles show my preference for Intel, little AMD data. 

Also, it a choice that is based on tech criteria that constantly changes... A US$10 price change can totally change the performance per dollar evaluations and review results. So, if someone is selling an i5-8400 for $50 off... or A Ryzen 5-1500 for $50 off... It may change your whole purchase or upgrade strategy. 

 

[Lillith Hapmouche]

Ryzen!

You aren't seriously endorsing the idea of putting a non-OC i5-8400 on the brand new and shiny ... err ... Z370 only mainboards? That combo is simply a stupid setup choice as of the moment. 

But anyway... I would also love to see proper reviews of AMD's Raven Ridge APU, Ryzen 5 2500U and 2700U, and the performance in SL. 
Not having great hope, though.

[Nalates Urriah]

Yeah there is little hope of a good test of hardware with SL.

Read the CPU reviews. 

[Lillith Hapmouche]

8 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

Read the CPU reviews. 

In the same tone: get off your Intel high horse.

I'm reading and watching reviews and benchmarks upon release and continiously keep comparing in order to maintain my recommended system configurations.