Hmm doesnt seem to say on the GPU. It doesn’t specify NVMe either (just “gen 4”). Im sure its all fine for my purpose and a significant step up from my current situation (which is still “servicable”).
The thing is, I understand what the various specs mean technically. Im not sure what they mean to me in terms of my experience. Like I want good, smooth graphics. I dont need to differentiate between how the setting sun refracts off water drops being splashed by 5.55mm rounds vs 7.62mm rounds as they strike the morning dew at 120 fps.
Thanks! I went with the 3070, and also new 32GB of 3200 MHz RAM.
I am waffling about getting a 1TB NVMe drive as well. I only have 750GB now, split between two SSD. So usually when I want to install a new game, I have to go back and uninstall one I haven’t played in a while. But that’s not really a big deal; I tend to stick with one or two games for a few months.
Probably going to spend all of Friday/Saturday just loading up every game I’ve played in the last year to see how much I can push them with the new setup 
That effectively confirms NVMe because regular SATA SSD drives aren’t PCIe and thus it wouldn’t make sense to note the PCIe generation. Gen 4 is nice; they could have cheaped out and gone Gen 3. Probably not a huge difference either way, but a nice touch.
A 1 TB NVMe system drive that you also put games on is really quite nice. I definitely recommend it.
My original plan was to get two NVMe drives, one for the operating system and programs, the other for games. Now two years later that just seems like extra unnecessary work. A single one terabyte drive is good enough for the time being. At least until the average game is half a terabyte, anyway.
When doing your performance checks keep an eye out for whether or not your CPU is getting pinned at 100%. I’m curious to see how well balanced a 7700 is with a 3070. I kind of think it won’t be half bad.
EDIT: Wait, does your motherboard even have an M.2 slot to plug in an NVMe drive? I thought M.2 slots only became a thing in the last few years.
Yes it does, it has one in fact. Handles the standard form factor (2280), but the specs on Newegg didn’t mention a generation. I’m assuming Gen 3, because Gen 4 didn’t exist when the board first came out. Can save a couple bucks getting a gen 3 drive. (Samsung 970 Evo Plus is nice, can recommend from experience. 1 TB is $100, 2 TB is $160.)
I was fairly certain it did, checked the product manual and it does. Product manual.
Hadn’t updated the page to see your next response for some reason.
What are the specs for the old computer you’re replacing? (CPU, GPU, RAM.)
I’m really curious to see the FPS improvement for your top handful of favorite games.
In another thread you said it’s supposed to come tomorrow. Is it tomorrow yet? How about now? Now?
Just bought a pre-built as a xmas present for my kids. Haven’t had a desktop for about 8 years so this is perfect for me to get back into pc gaming. My son and I will probably play a lot of Warzone, and I’m still a huge Battlefield guy (despite how bad 2042 was), but this will be a huge change from the usual PS5 gaming we do.
Intel i-7 12700
3070 ti
64gb DDR5
I did get it.
I haven’t had much of a chance to play it and have mostly just been setting up the software and whatnot. But from what I did test, I can actually see FPS improvements without running benchmarking software.
I guess my only complaint is that the case is a lot bigger than I expected.
Old specs for reference
Dell XPS 8920
Intel Core i7-7700 3.6Gz
32 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 1060 6GB
Welcome back to the PC Master Race!
I think you will have a lot of fun with it.
This is no joke, by the way. When I was building mine a couple years ago, the first two cases I fell in love with ended up being huge. Like, ridiculously large. Way too tall, way too deep, and way way way too wide. Thank goodness I happened to look at the case dimensions before buying, because those big ones wouldn’t have fit in the spot I use.
I was lucky that one of the cases I had originally fallen in love with also came in a compact version, which is basically the size computers used to be. So I went with that, and it was perfect. But I could very easily have accidentally bought the most gigantic case ever and been so annoyed. I probably should have mentioned something about that to give you a heads up but it didn’t occur to me.
I think what happened is that air coolers became super tall, forcing cases to become like 2" wider. At that point you’re already giant so you might as well go longer and taller as well.
Tried to record some Raft footage but the game stuttered. Unacceptable! That can only mean one thing: Time to install my 3050 and figure out how to undervolt it to make the fans quiet. Note that if I can figure this out, that means I won’t be getting a 3070, I’ll just keep the 3050. The silent 1050 ti that I love was never a longterm solution, but a near-silent 3050 would be.
So first thing’s first, I need to download and install afterburner. I’ve been seeing a lot of malware warnings about fake msi afterburner downloads that steal your info and mine crypto, so I want to be sure I get the legit version.
This is the legit version, yes?
Second question, I have no idea how to undervolt and can’t seem to find any good beginner guides. I don’t even know where to start, but then again I haven’t even installed afterburner yet. Who knows, maybe it’s really easy and straightforward.
I installed the 3050 again, took some fresh sound readings after resetting my sound meter app to defaults. (I had zeroed it out in a silent location.) All these levels are now 10 decibels higher, pretty consistently.
11 dB with the computer off
12.5 dB with the computer idling
14 dB running raft with the 1050 ti
25 dB running raft with the 3050
I can’t really hear anything below around 15 on this scale. I can hear 25 loud and clear. Within about 20 minutes of playing I started to get a headache from the drone.
Tomorrow I’ll mess with afterburner to try and quiet this thing down.
Apparently afterburner doesn’t work on EVGA cards? Or at least, not on my EVGA card, I don’t think. So now I guess I have to use EVGA Precision instead. I wonder if that’s still officially supported now that EVGA is out of the video card business.
Tried making an adjustment in afterburner, ran raft, no change. The game runs at 99-100%, the fans jump straight to 1500 RPM (loud), then creep up for a minute and a half until they max out at 2000 RPM (very loud.)
Found the “Apply” button, tried that, ran game, same deal.
Saved settings as a profile, selected the profile, ran game, same deal.
EVGA is pissing me off.
(I am also 100% positive that those stupid embossed letters on the fan blades create noise.)
Ok I’ve been meaning to post about how my upgrade is turning out!
So, pretty well. I upgraded from a 1660 Super to a GTX 3070, and 16GB RAM to 32. While I was at it I picked up a Logitech F710 wireless gamepad.
My first test was comparing my results in the 3dMark Time Spy benchmark. I basically doubled my frame rate. With the 1660, I maxed out around 55 fps. With the 3070 I max out around 110. My overall score went from 5962 to 10981. And I’m pleased to note that everything stayed at comfortable temperature throughout.
Then I just kind of played a bunch of games that I own that I wanted to see with the new setup. Some looked really stunning; particularly when I could turn on ray tracing (Shadow of the Tomb Raider). I still can’t run everything at max setting at 1440p (Cyberpunk, Deathloop) with a framerate over 60, but I’m happy with what I have now.
One thing I did notice in a couple of games (Forza 5 in particular) was a lot of screen tear if I didn’t turn on VSync. My monitor is capable of 165 Hz, and I was getting 100+ out of Forza. I had to turn on VSync to get rid of it, and the highest I could lock the framerate with that was 60 fps. Still looked awesome, the landscape is great but the cars are fantastic, but I really wanted to be pumping out 100+. I feel like there’s something I’m missing there.
This is the closest I’ve ever been to having an up-to-date machine. I have always built (and consequently, played games) 5+ years behind because that’s what I could afford. I got a little closer on my previous build, but it’s nice to finally have something that can handle newly released games at pretty high settings.
I have no intention of upgrading this thing for the next 3 or more years unless something breaks.
And it just occurred to me that I never looked at Subnautica. Installing now
Unfortunately I think that means that your monitor is not G-Sync compatible, so you can’t use the Nvidia gsync anti-screen tearing technology that can go above 60 FPS.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Or maybe it is compatible and you just didn’t turn it on in the monitor settings? I think that’s in Windows settings somewhere, or probably more likely the Nvidia control panel thing. Or maybe it’s even on a per-game basis like DLSS. I don’t actually know.
In terms of just the video card, 3 years at least. Maybe more like 5 years.
What you might want to do is have your next upgrade be the system around the video card, keeping the 3070 and then a couple years after that upgrading just the video card.
Hm, well I think you’re right. I looked in my monitor settings, and it is “FreeSync” compatible, but that is for Radeon cards.
My monitor setting for response time was set to “Fast”, so I changed it to “Fastest”…we’ll see if that makes a difference.
Got Subnautica loaded again. Now, the second machine I played Subnautica on had a GTX 960. And I could play Subnautica, but the framerates were low and I couldn’t pump everything up. The first machine I played it on…I don’t wanna talk about it. It was barely playable.
But just now, I maxed everything out and was getting 110+ fps. Night, day, flashlight, whatever. That was cool. One thing I realized during my quick experiment is that having the higher framerate makes grabbing or knifing fish much easier. There was still a lot of pop-in, but my RAM usage was only around 30%, so I’m writing that off as the usual Subnautica issue.
Yeah pop-in is brutal in Subnautica.
So what have we been playing lately? Looking for something to play after I get done reinstalling my Command & Conquer disk.