Great, thanks! And no preference on the case.
Exactly.
When I built my machine I went with a 1 TB system drive for Windows and programs (and games, initially), and a 2 TB data drive for documents and media.
It was kind of a pain in the ass to move my user files from the default C: drive location over to my D: drive. I do admit it was much easier on Windows 10 than it was back in 2013 when I did it on my old Windows 7 machine, but it still wasn’t particularly pleasant.
You should look into refurbished remarketed business laptops. I used to work for HP and we had a zillion of the things in a warehouse that our financial services organization was trying to off-load. 3-year-old top-end business laptops for like $500. I’m sure Dell and Lenovo had similar programs. It’s the best option for a low budget. A high-grade one is basically flawless.
I’m not finding any $500 pre-builts with 16 GB RAM and 2 TB total storage. They keep having 8 GB RAM and 500 GB storage. Despite my skepticism about that CPU, I don’t seem to be able to beat it for the price.
I could probably come up with a nice build your own for $600, but you’re not looking for that.
The issue will probably setting up your document folder to be on the D:. It would be on the C: by default and it’s not terribly difficult to put it on the D: but you have to know to do it.
You could also create a folder on d drive for doc an pics and whatever, the a short cut to those folders in you documents folders. Then its just an extra click to save files in the d drive folders
Thanks for looking anyway. What processor(s) would you recommend?
Yeah, I keep an eye out for deals on refurbs. I’d prefer a desktop due to my current setup, but I could make a laptop work using my large monitor.
i3 12100
Re: fans
Yeah. Just wait a few years until you are super-older you and even the cheap fans will be super-quiet.
I’m not super-older but my hearing turned to shiite around 10 years ago. I have hearing aids that help a lot but I remember reading people complaining about fan noise on reddit (or somewhere) and I thought, what noise? – my computer is almost silent!
I’d much prefer to be bothered by fan noise than not hear very well.
Well, hmmm. If I’m waiting till after Christmas, I think it only makes sense to wait another few weeks for the super cards to come out. Who knows; maybe the 4070 super is what I should get instead of the 4070. Or maybe the regular 4070 prices will drop once the supers come out. Either way, it’s looking like early January might not be the smartest time to buy.
So I open Mrs. Cad’s computer that is 10 years old to do the upgrades and realize I’m a complete idiot. The 1000W PSU is 10 years old too and in no way is appropriate to hook up to component 8 generations in advancement.
Ordered a new 850W PSU from Newegg today.
Turns out I was completely wrong. So wrong I became the Mayor of Wrongtown.
The Dark Rock Pro 4 that I was complaining about being obsolete will be superseded by the Dark Rock Pro 5, which will be the quiet model. And then they will also introduce the Dark Rock Elite, which will be the performance model. Both will feature buttons on them that allow you to switch between quiet mode and performance mode. The elite will offer the better cooling of the two while the pro 5 will offer the quieter quiet mode.
And when I say “will” I mean “did,” as both were released back in October. Woohoo!
The price finally dropped. The 4070 super was released in late January but prices on the regular 4070 I had my eye on stayed high until yesterday, when it dropped to $570. ($600 with a $30 promo code.) So I went ahead and pulled the trigger, ordering it just now to be delivered on Wednesday. Woohoo!
This is the bad boy I can’t wait to get my hands on:
Is it Wednesday yet? What about now? Still not Wednesday?..
This is indeed my experience. The PRC teams can’t get A100s or H100s so they have to make do with commercial grade.
Took a little longer than I would have thought, but good on you! Happy Gaming!
New card came and works great. So happy! Forgive me some self-indulgence…
The 4070 (Gigabyte Gaming OC) is bigger and better than the 3050 (EVGA XC Black) in every way. Here’s what my old 3050 looked like:
And now, bam!
You can see the cool little sag brace, which I ordered separately from Amazon for like $7. And the card is pretty much the perfect size in terms of leaving enough room between it and the intake fans in the front of the case, as opposed to the MSI Gaming X Trio I was originally looking at which would only have had 1 mm of clearance.
You can also see all the dust if you zoom in. I haven’t ever really cleaned this thing. I sort of half-heartedly blew some compressed air in it once, and after the first six months I stopped checking the dust filters since there was never any dust in them. Now three years in looks like it could use some love…
I didn’t have the time or inclination to do an exhaustive benchmark comparison between the two cards, but I did do a quick check of raft, god of war and rdr2. Raft mainly because it performs so poorly, the other two because I expected the biggest improvement from games like them.
All games set to ultra/max settings running 1920x1080:
| Game | 3050 | 4070 |
|---|---|---|
| Raft | 65 | 95 |
| God of War | 35 | 99 |
| God of War (DLSS) | 40 | 110 |
| RDR2 | 49 | 130 |
| RDR2 (DLSS) | 49 | 140 |
Yeah, raft. Not entirely sure what’s going on there, but I assume it’s cpu bound because I’m rocking a 10400. RTSS reports 34% CPU usage and 49% GPU usage, so at least it runs nice and cool?
God of War and RDR2 show a much reasonable improvement of around +170%, a little higher than userbenchmark’s claim of +154%. (I know people shit on userbenchmark, but all of my experience comparing my various video cards has it being pretty accurate.) Not sure why DLSS didn’t see any improvement in RDR2 with the 3050, but it wasn’t a proper benchmark. I just loaded my current games and ran around for 30 seconds and watched the fps, then wrote down what seemed like the average.
Here’s the craziest thing: I can (sort of) hear the video card, but it doesn’t bother me. That is not something I would have ever predicted. The fan noise is both very quiet and very low. A much deeper sound than the 3050’s higher-pitched whirring. So for the time being I’m just letting it run stock without bothering to tweak it with afterburner. Couple that with the proper performance improvement I was expecting as listed in GoW and RDR2 above, this new card is actually better than perfect: Everything I wanted and then some. Yay!
My sights are now set on mid/late next year to upgrade the rest of the system around it. Essentially, this 4070 is the video card for my next computer; I just bought it early.
Great info , I am looking around for upgrades in a semi serious way. My I7 3770k , 16gb ram, 1060 6gb graphics card and a Corsair H120 water cooler is in need of some up grades.
The system hard drive is a couple of years old SSD so that is good and I just had to replace the PSU and went with a Corsair RMX 850x with future power needs in mind. The cables it came with helped me clean up a mess of old cables inside the case. The case is a Nanoxia deep silent 5 that is huge, lots of fans slots and lined with sound absorbing material. The side panels are pretty hefty when you take them off and it will likely outlive me.
A new processor will need a new motherboard and new RAM , and then the limitations will be the 1060 , and upping the graphic card without the processor and everything else may not get me much. Better start saying or get a paper round .
I used to use it for work as well as fun, lots of big data sets of time based data and matlab. Now it is mostly fun ( elite KSP2) , general home stuff and I do a bit of messing around in matlab with the datasets from Elite Dangerous for visualization, mapping and other data exploration. Unfortunately I’d have to pay more for an add on of matlab that had the the multiprocess stuff useful with tall arrays and I can’t use my work license.
Anyway that’s my rig, I’ve been keeping an eye on the Graphics card thread as well.
Set up here. Desk goes to standing , 3 monitors with a switch to go between my work lap top or the home system. The big box under the desk is the Nanoxis case, the smaller one is the base speaker that goes with the sound bar .
I seem to have forgotten how to post imagur links
Very swish and tidy !
Nice! Looks good.
The 4070 is a great card. It’s the point in the 40xx series where the performance and price actually match up. 4080s are literally double the price and more for maybe 50% better performance. That might be worth it for some people, but that person ain’t me.
Sweet!
But can it play Crysis? 
(Inside joke for the PC Masterrace…a 15+ year old game that still somehow makes video cards cry.)
Enjoy! I suspect you have a fun weekend ahead of you gaming.