re: PC Discussion - Gaming, Performance and Enthusiasts

First question I wanna ask is… do you live near a microcenter?

This is honestly not terrible given the pricing environment

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If you can expand your budget a little more. This wouldn’t be bad either
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Are both of those fairly upgradable down the road?

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The more expensive one is better suited to upgrade as it will have a more powerful power supply and already has ddr5 memory which is worth its weight in gold now (I’m serious, look at the price of ddr5 RAM and see how much it’s gone up in less than a year.)

The cheaper PC locks you into a dead end Intel motherboard with not a lot of room for upgrades.

The more expensive PC also a GPU with the 16GB of VRAM which will be way better for gaming at high settings now and into the future. Any GPU with less than 12GB of VRAM means you’re mostly resigned to playing at 1080p and potentially lower settings and texture quality (depending on the game… newer titles are requiring more and more though).

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I agree with everything else in your post, but I think this goes a bit too far. My half decade old 3080 FE 10gb can still very comfortably play damned near anything at 1440p UW. Not that I would necessarily advise someone to buy a 10gb card now that they intended to keep another half decade, but vram requirement inflation hasn’t gone that far yet.

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It really is highly dependent on the game and the resolution, texture quality, RT, Upscaling, FG etc... any combination of these can effect the VRAM usage and how the game looks and runs. The newer titles are starting to gobble RAM like crazy and utilizing features like frame gen also require more VRAM. Once the new console gen comes out, games downstream from that will be programmed with those specs in mind (but with the way the prices are for hardware the PS5 may be the targeted spec for longer than typical).

I see that most everyone here is talking about computer games ... is there room/interest in the community to discuss table top rpgs for us dice rolling/story telling OGs?

I'm looking at getting a gaming laptop to replace my i5 8600k/Titan X pascal HTPC.

Would a laptop rtx 4060/5060 get me pretty similar performance? It'll mostly be used for my golf Sim and 1080p projector, but also gaming every now and then on my 4k TV

Welp, my decision on this was majorly altered by my old work laptop completely shitting itself. It was old and just completely gave up.

Forced my hand into shifting from a desktop search to laptops. I ended up buying a Lenovo Legion 7i with the rtx 5070 8gb vram, 32gb ddr5 and 1 tb hard drive. It was a best buy open box at a rather significant discount (half of what they are going for new).

Fell in love with the build quality on this thing, and it has a number pad which is massive for my daily work. Everything with the 5070 ti that fit what I wanted was WAY out of price range.

This computer has run everything I've thrown at it so far. Build quality feels premium and will hopefully last a while. The OLED screen is gorgeous. For what I need right now, I'm happy with it.

Thanks for the advice, it got me digging deeper and really looking in to graphics cards, past what is advertised.

7700X3D is kinda interesting now that it's $280 on Newegg and Microcenter sneakily raised the 7800X3D back to $340 overnight. I have a 7600X3D but the 7700X3D beat it in efficiency (it's $200 now but I paid $300 for it early last year).

Yeah and it beats my 7600X3D in efficiency too.
It's a Newegg exclusive for now and they're running a $40 off code.
They lowered the price on the re-released 5800X3D from $350 to $300 but that's still too much.

The 7500X3D would be interesting too but that's only available as part of a bundle. Although I guess you can get an OEM one off Ali Express.

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Will we ever see pc parts go down in price? Feels doubtful

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Two possible things could happen that would cause a decrease in prices.

1. AI bubble pops, causing a giant global recession (maybe even depression?)… but the demand for memory and silicon would collapse causing prices to plummet.

2. Manufacturing capacity increases for memory and chips. This is in progress but we won’t see the benefits for years as plants are being built. Also it’s possible that demand outpaces even with expanded capacity.

Realistically, I don’t think we will see meaningful price decreases for at least 3-4 years. Because I am of the opinion the AI “bubble” doesn’t pop, more so it slowly deflates with dominant players ascending and smaller AI businesses being bought out or folding slowly.