Okay, so a weird question: due to some tendonitis in my left hand, I’m having more trouble playing mouse-and-keyboard games lately. I’m looking to get a controller–but it appears that the Steam Controller isn’t for sale. Does anyone have a recommendation for a controller, for someone who hasn’t used one for gaming in about 35 years?
Honestly I have found a good Xbox controller works well and is easy to use.
Pretty much, yeah. Unlike the other Forza titles, Horizon games allow you to explore the game world, enter races, and do stunts. Last night, I played volcanologist: drove up an active volcano, took a water sample, set up a seismometer, and raced back down.
BTW: Horizon 4 is also on PC now.
I enthusiastically recommend an Xbox Wireless Controller. I went with Carbon Black.
The name of the model is “Xbox Wireless Controller”, as opposed to Xbox One or whatever. “Xbox Wireless” is also the name of Microsoft’s wireless technology, like Bluetooth. The Xbox Wireless Controller can connect via Bluetooth, Xbox Wireless, or by plugging in with a USB-C cable. I recommend USB-C cable.
It’s the perfect size and weight, and feels great in your hands. Being Microsoft, Xbox controllers are natively supported by Windows.
It’s probably a heck-of-a-lot cheaper to get 4. Is it any good?
5 has a bigger, busier map. 4 is set in Britain, 5 in Mexico. Gameplay is more or less identical. Can be very traditional and straightforward, or it can get GTA V-crazy (minus the artillery).
Currently $59.95 on Steam. I’ve been waiting for a sale on Forza Horizon 4 pretty much since I built my computer last winter. Still no joy. I remember it going on sale only once for like 20% off.
It is a good game but a slight departure from previous Horizons in that you now have all four seasons present rather than just racing in summer. I found the seasons in 4 to be too short; haven’t played enough of 5 yet.
5 has a neat feature which I believe is new: players can give cars out of their collection to complete strangers. For example: I sent some new player an extra Corvette I had and some other player sent me a Forza-edition '53 'Vette.
I also have an Xbox wireless controller (though it’s usually connected via USB-C) and recommend it. Nice weight, solid build quality and it’s going to be the standard for PC controllers. I have significantly more issues with games not recognizing or stick function on my Logitech “PC” game controllers than I do with my Xbox controller. In fact, that’s why I bought the Xbox controller, because I’d use my Logitech and it would want to call the direction pad the left stick and vice versa because most PC games just assume that, if you’re using a controller, it’s the Xbox controller.
There’s also an Elite model that several friends swear by but it’s a couple pounds heavier so it may not be suitable if you have nerve issues going on. I’ve never used it to make a hard statement.
As for Forza 5, racing games aren’t really my thing but, God damn, most of my friends are currently obsessed with it and give it a million stars out of five.
(Replying to other thread to bring it into its proper home in this thread)
I wouldn’t worry about the HDD right now since you have a 500GB NVMe drive as well. If you have a favorite, drive-intensive game then put it on the SSD. Other stuff can go on the HDD and it’ll be fine.
You’re probably fine with 16GB. I come up close to that in select games with some background stuff running (Discord, Steam, Firefox, etc) but I haven’t seen myself go over. And Windows will reallocate as it needs. If you see a great sale on some RAM then by all means go for it (I have 32GB myself) but, again, it’s not anything to need to worry about right now or think you’re playing at some disability this afternoon. If you’re curious, you can download something like HWMonitor and see what your RAM usage is like under normal circumstances: in a game with a some background processes.
Thank you. I think I am going to make the plunge soon and get a 4k monitor with at least a 120hz refresh rate. They’re just so expensive!
It’s funny, I ran one of those “rate my pc” tools last night and it rated me at 99% and told me the only thing holding me back is my video card. LOL, that old thing, that 3070…
From that other thread…
You don’t really need to, no. I was thinking it would have come down in price, but after googling, adding more memory for you would probably be a three digit number. That is more expensive than I would have bothered recommending. For like $85, sure, but at $150? Probably not worth it.
Logic dictates all DDR4 memory like yours and mine is and/or will be dropping in price since DDR5 memory is now a thing in the world that you can buy. With that in mind, I would track down the exact identifying info on your ram and just check prices on PCPartPicker once a month or so. If it drops to a two-digit number, grab it then.
The listing says 16 GB (2x8 GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB 3600, but it doesn’t say what the latency is. Lower is faster. A quick check showed the CL18 version cost $85, CL16 $120, and CL 14 $150. For context, my $65 gskill ripjaws 5 budget memory is 3200 CL16.
Depending on location and proximity to a Micro Center, I’d just get this 2x16 kit for $115 and either sell the other 16 or run at 48GB and feel like a baller 
Edit to add that you’re not going to notice the difference between 3200 and 3600, especially on an Intel chip.
And hey, that linked RAM is CL16. CL14 would be great but CL16 is good. (I’m guessing he has CL16 in his machine right now.)
As for buying 2x16 and running all 48, can you run two different RAM speeds at the same time?
You can use different speed sticks and the faster one will just run at the slower speed. Won’t hurt anything.
For standard use, you’re not going to notice the difference between 3200 and 3600 or CL14 vs CL16. If you spend all day rendering video or decoding satellite signals or some other intensive task then you’ll perhaps get some net cumulative benefit where the 16 hours of rendering only took 14h40m. For playing Battlefield, you’ll maybe get an extra 2-3fps. Not worth worrying about.
Edit: Here’s a video comparing CL14 & CL16 in gaming. You can skip to the end of each segment and see how the overall averages shake out. They’re virtually identical.
I think I have this RAM here. And for only $105 for 16 more GB? Seems worth it.
I live 25 minutes from a Micro Center. I love that place!
If that’s the memory you actually have (the C18 part in the model number is the latency) then that’s CL18, which means it’s only like $89 on Newegg.
Check this out on @Newegg: CORSAIR Vengeance RGB Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Intel XMP 2.0 Desktop Memory Model CMW16GX4M2D3600C18 CORSAIR Vengeance RGB Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Desktop Memory Model CMW16GX4M2D3600C18 - Newegg.com
If that’s the memory you have, then this is exactly what I was thinking of. For $89, it might be kind of fun to have 32 GB of memory.
With the i9-10900k, your 3070 is probably technically the bottleneck. But that doesn’t mean much to your overall performance, just that if something was max pegging both the CPU and GPU, the GPU would be the first to cap out. So the 3070 is “holding you back” but not actually hurting you in any practical way.