Question New components, Black Friday

[Daddygamer4000]

Hi,

Bought below PC 4 years ago - haven't had any major issues, though GPU fans has started to go crazy for a few secs on-and-off in games and recently seen some micro stuttering in Apex (seems to only be Apex though). Regardless, with Black Friday coming up, made me think there might be some components that were worth upgrading, any of below that could be considered weak points and worthy of an upgrade (mainly playing modern FPS and aim for best frames possible)?

PC:

- Intel Core i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz

- ASUS NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

- Corsair 2x8GB DDR4 DRAM 3000MHz

- PRIME Z370-P

- Samsung SSD 970 EVO 500GB (For Windows+Games)
- TOSHIBA HDWD110 1TB - non-SSD - for stuff

Monitor:

- ROG PG279Q

 

[Why_Me]

Looks to be a decent set up. What's your budget?

 

[Karadjgne]

Honestly? Replace the OS drive with a 1Tb NVMe, use the 500Gb as a scratch-disk/downloads/pagefile to extend life/usefulness of the OS drive and replace the HDD with a 2Tb Sata SSD like an 870 EVO (not the qvo version)

Everything else (of those stats) is peachy. Might get a new case or cooling or replace a fan or 3, but hardware wise, you are as good as it gets for 8thGen gaming platform, unless you replace the Whole platform, cpu and ram and motherboard.

 

[Daddygamer4000]

Perfect, thanks a lot for the replies!
Is 32gb RAM still overkill?

And any recommendation on which 1Tb NVMe , seems PC gamer likes the WD Black SN850 1 tb?

 

[Lafong]

Perfect, thanks a lot for the replies!
Is 32gb RAM still overkill?

And any recommendation on which 1Tb NVMe , seems PC gamer likes the WD Black SN850 1 tb?

WD Black SN 850 is fine as far as I know. It is a PCIe 4.0 drive and I think your motherboard supports that speed.

32 RAM overkill? That might be an overstatement, but you might never or very rarely notice the difference from 16. If you actually have a legit use for 32 now or later, better to buy 32 now rather than 16 now and 16 more later. Maybe go with 16 if budget a bit tight and you have a better idea on where to spend that extra money.

 

[hang-the-9]

Perfect, thanks a lot for the replies!
Is 32gb RAM still overkill?

And any recommendation on which 1Tb NVMe , seems PC gamer likes the WD Black SN850 1 tb?

Look at your RAM usage in task manager, will tell you if you are getting to your max and may need more.
You did not list the power supply you have, that may be a good place to do an upgrade after 4 years if the one you have is not a good quality one. That is usually were people try to get the cheapest one when building a system vs a good quality one.

 

[Daddygamer4000]

Look at your RAM usage in task manager, will tell you if you are getting to your max and may need more.
You did not list the power supply you have, that may be a good place to do an upgrade after 4 years if the one you have is not a good quality one. That is usually were people try to get the cheapest one when building a system vs a good quality one.

I got a Corsair TX650M, was a pre-built PC so not sure if that was a cheap alternative or good quality

 

[Karadjgne]

VS, CX-M, CX, CV, RM, TXM, RMx, HXi, AXi
Anything RM+ is considered Gamer Class, CV- is considered Office Class.

Pre-built pc's are HP, Dell, Lenovo etc. They don't use aftermarket brand psus, their psus are built by the same OEMs however, like Seasonic, Delta, CWT, Great Wall etc, same as the Brand names.

If your pc came with a TXM, it's a boutique or quasi-boutique pc, a pre-built but custom built to order. Boutiques will use all brand names, like Asus, MSI, Seasonic, Corsair, aftermarket parts. In many ways a boutique build is a step up from a pre-built as many of the parts are built to a higher standard, but that can also depend on the choices. The best part about boutique builds is aftermarket use, it means a non-proprietary build, unlike Dell and HP and Lenovo, who don't want you to upgrade, they want you to buy a whole new pc.

Ibuypower and CyberPower PC are quasi-boutique, they have full boutique possibilities, but will often just flood the market with builds not custom ordered, but company ordered, by ppl like Walmart.

 

[Daddygamer4000]

Great, I'll stick with the power supply for now then and will see what sales there might be on a WD Black SN850 1 tb and perhaps 16gb more of Corsair Vengeance LPX, thanks a lot for the help!

 

[alceryes]

How about trying to figure out where the stuttering is coming from? Run HWiNFO64 in the background (sensors only, logging on) while you game and heat up your system (at least 30 mins). Make notes of the approx. times that you experience stuttering and GPU fan ramp up.
Also note, stuttering can't be diagnosed with online games as latency can always be a factor.

Also, get a can of air and completely clean out all dust. It can take some time to get dust out of a tight fin stacks but that may be why your GPU fan is ramping up.

 

[Daddygamer4000]

Good point - I did manage to find a solution to the micro stutter in Apex Legends, basically due to the GPU temp running high and fan revving up on and off I installed ASUS GPU Tweak after talking with their support for the GPU and sending them logs. In an older version I was running on Silent mode and it helped on the temp/fan, but after an update to GPU Tweak, even though I still ran on silent mode it seems to have caused the micro stutter as it disappears whenever I close down the software.

I have tried to clean out the fan with a can of air as well as with a qtip but without much luck (probably I am too cautious) and nowadays the GPU temp/fan goes wild even with the Silent mode on - I did run a 40 min log in HWiNFO64 while playing Apex Legends which I would be thrilled if anyone would like to take a look at - though I don't really see an "attach file" option?

 

[Daddygamer4000]

WD Black SN 850 is fine as far as I know. It is a PCIe 4.0 drive and I think your motherboard supports that speed.

32 RAM overkill? That might be an overstatement, but you might never or very rarely notice the difference from 16. If you actually have a legit use for 32 now or later, better to buy 32 now rather than 16 now and 16 more later. Maybe go with 16 if budget a bit tight and you have a better idea on where to spend that extra money.

Hm, as I read it the PRIME Z370-P only supports PCIe 3.0, so guess I'll have to find another 1Tb NVMe than the WD Black SN 850 :/

 

[Karadjgne]

Pcie is backwards compatible. So a pcie4.0 ssd operating at pcie3.0 speeds will have zero issues maximizing the Full capacity of pcie3.0. Whereas a pcie3.0 drive will be at maximum, so can have issues reaching the full pcie3.0 capacity.

It's like cars. If the speed limit is 70mph and your car does a maximum of 70mph, the gas pedal is on the floor, the tachometer reads high rpm, and going up a hill will drop you to 60mph. It's an issue. If your car did 130mph maximum, doing 70mph is relatively easy to accomplish and hills wouldn't bother you a bit.

So using a pcie4.0 capable ssd is often better at pcie3.0 than using a pcie3.0 ssd can be. Pcie4.0 ssds are also built to handle the pressure of pcie4.0 data transfers, so pcie3.0 is childsplay whereas the controllers in a pcie3.0 ssd are built to handle pcie3.0 traffic.

Using that WD SN850 isn't going to hurt you in the slightest, it'll basically be for all intents and purposes a heavy duty ssd.

 

[Daddygamer4000]

Pcie is backwards compatible. So a pcie4.0 ssd operating at pcie3.0 speeds will have zero issues maximizing the Full capacity of pcie3.0. Whereas a pcie3.0 drive will be at maximum, so can have issues reaching the full pcie3.0 capacity.

It's like cars. If the speed limit is 70mph and your car does a maximum of 70mph, the gas pedal is on the floor, the tachometer reads high rpm, and going up a hill will drop you to 60mph. It's an issue. If your car did 130mph maximum, doing 70mph is relatively easy to accomplish and hills wouldn't bother you a bit.

So using a pcie4.0 capable ssd is often better at pcie3.0 than using a pcie3.0 ssd can be. Pcie4.0 ssds are also built to handle the pressure of pcie4.0 data transfers, so pcie3.0 is childsplay whereas the controllers in a pcie3.0 ssd are built to handle pcie3.0 traffic.

Using that WD SN850 isn't going to hurt you in the slightest, it'll basically be for all intents and purposes a heavy duty ssd.

Fantastic, thanks a lot for the info, WD SN850 is back on the Black Friday menu then, seems it comes in a heatsink and non-heatsink version, is the heatsink pure marketing or worth paying for?

 

[Karadjgne]

Depends. Pcie4.0 gets hot enough during such high data transfers that it requires a heatsink.

WD got smart, offering the ssd in both versions, since many motherboards, especially the high end ones, come with built-in heatsinking on the board, so the ssd doesn't require its own. That means WD gets to sell the ssd at a cheaper price because there's no loss by including the price of the heatsink.

If you don't have a heatsink covering the ssd, you'll need the more expensive option with included heatsink. If your mobo has heatsinking already, you'll get the cheaper option