*Official Benchmark Thread* - Post it here or it didn't happen :D

[electrosoft]

8 minutes ago, Raiderman said:

What prices did they have?

 

What model(s) are you looking for specifically?

 

From what I saw, they had the Sapphire (both models), Speedster and Nitro in stock for 7900xtx.

$1199.99 is the new official price of the Speedster now.

 

They had the MSI (both models), PNY and Zotac in 4090s in stock.

 

Looks like MC and NE have both trickled their 4090 prices up on some models.

 

BB prices are still the same but they never get much of nothing in stock these days for 4090s or I should say as frequently as MC and NE. I camped out their site for weeks while sick with site check streams going and it was just sad. Lots of regional ghost drops, hardly any country wide drops. BB regional drop system is a blessing (if you get some drops in your region) or a curse (your region gets the short end of the stick). They seem to have a sporadic trickle of 7900xtx's.

 

I haven't seen the air cooled Suprim 4090 listed anywhere recently including BB, NE or MC. Not sure why.

 

These are their stock Newegg prices (not 3rd party scalpers):

 

 

[electrosoft]

First run...

 

Impressions:

 

Monster card. Might be the longest I've seen.

 

Solidly built. I love the basic illuminated XFX logo and industrial design.

 

At stock fans only went to 37% running TimeSpy w/ 56c on GPU and 74c on Hot Spot pulling ~429w. XFX heatsink is a beefy beast.

 

Even with the front glass off while running TS I had to get up and search to find any coil whine. It was barely audible. I was wondering how it would sound with all the horror stories of insane coil whine from 7900xt/xtx cards. I'm glad to report it is one of the quietest cards I've tested.

 

Stock clocks top out at 2667mhz.

 

I plan on keeping it in my case till the 4090 arrives sometime next week and running it through its paces. I already collected some WoW FP data runs on my 32:9 display with my Strix 3080 to kick things off. Using fps monitor to grab fp run averages and other data.

 

Sidebar: I really need some new computer furniture and a room redesign lol. My wife keeps telling me to gut it and go full geek lol.

 

 

[electrosoft]

Like we saw in many reviews, the 7000 series can perform like last gen all the way up to a near 4090 type experience depending on the game. WoW is known for liking Nvidia hardware and it shows.

 

The flight runs were done in Ardenweald which is still one of the most challenging zones in WoW especially for RT effects.

 

Both cards stock settings.

WoW @ Ultra 10 settings, render to 98%, Super Fidelity on.

 

With RT off 7900XTX beats the 3080 10gb (like it should...) 122fps vs 97fps = ~26%.....that is not great but the 1% and .01% lows were better too.

 

 

Both with RT on 7900XTX is about equal (or a touch better) with a Strix 3080 in WoW. That is trash results.

 

 

I did the whole DDU song and dance so that shouldn't be the problem as Timespy is right where it should be. I'm going to throw in a test 128GB M.2 and give it a clean install run to double check but these results are right around the ballpark of the PC 7900XTX on a 4k display so I'm not expecting miracles. I was hoping the hotspot issues we had were going to be partially responsible with a touch of throttling but alas....

 

I'll give Fallout 76 some love later as it is loves AMD hardware.

 

I suspect I'll be returning this card next week. I know the 4090 is going to shatter my 3080 in WoW (in a good way).

 

 

 

 

[ryan]

1 hour ago, electrosoft said:

First run...

 

Impressions:

 

Monster card. Might be the longest I've seen.

 

Solidly built. I love the basic illuminated XFX logo and industrial design.

 

At stock fans only went to 37% running TimeSpy w/ 56c on GPU and 74c on Hot Spot pulling ~429w. XFX heatsink is a beefy beast.

 

Even with the front glass off while running TS I had to get up and search to find any coil whine. It was barely audible. I was wondering how it would sound with all the horror stories of insane coil whine from 7900xt/xtx cards. I'm glad to report it is one of the quietest cards I've tested.

 

Stock clocks top out at 2667mhz.

 

I plan on keeping it in my case till the 4090 arrives sometime next week and running it through its paces. I already collected some WoW FP data runs on my 32:9 display with my Strix 3080 to kick things off. Using fps monitor to grab fp run averages and other data.

 

Sidebar: I really need some new computer furniture and a room redesign lol. My wife keeps telling me to gut it and go full geek lol.

 

 

 

 

im trying to break 9k lol you broke 30k. um kay. I think theres a disparity between desktop and laptop haha. I want to get a desktop so bad but im invested in this jokebook. I bought it and now i have to just accept it. Im thinking nvidia will screw everyone over in the foreseable future. might jump ship around 6k desktop gpus.

 

gives me time to save up. also I was obviously joking about the guys in black suits.. but im in a giving mood. i get like that sometimes

[1610ftw]

8 minutes ago, ryan said:

 

 

im trying to break 9k lol you broke 30k. um kay. I think theres a disparity between desktop and laptop haha. I want to get a desktop so bad but im invested in this jokebook. I bought it and now i have to just accept it. Im thinking nvidia will screw everyone over in the foreseable future. might jump ship around 6k desktop gpus.

 

Usually one can switch pretty easily between different jokebooks as there are so many of them.

 

If you are happy with 2 sticks of memory and storage each then there is a huge selection out there.

Just saying but it is not like you HAVE to stay with your current one.

 

Next step up would be machines with either socketed GPU or CPU but it is harder to get good deals with them if you want to at least break the 10K Time Spy barrier and last but not least you could get something really nice like a P751/775, P870 or X170. Especially the P751/775 chassis can come up with pretty low prices and it is the most portable, the others less so.

[ryan]

yeah I was thinking of selling this and getting back into a clevo laptop. something with better cooling, like this laptop is ok but nothing like a clevo. its a shame mxm died

 

also im not too concerned. I game at 4k with my tv but im content with 1080p. I can't spot a difference when sitting back, mainly just when its closer i notice 4k. I don't really want a laptop thats 4k and 15-17in. 

[Etern4l]

Just in case someone missed this lol

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

If you're going to go BGA, best to go cheap. It's the only way of getting more than you expected. This one costs less than half what most of these little turdboxes typically sell for at $169 with $30 coupon applied, LOL. Make your TV a PC. https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0BMX9NK6Y

 

[ryan]

23 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

If you're going to go BGA, best to go cheap. It's the only way of getting more than you expected. 

 

 

 

well done video. i was wondering if i should keep my laptop and get a small mini pc for my tv. im in denial about gaming. i dont really game much

[Mr. Fox]

20 minutes ago, ryan said:

well done video. i was wondering if i should keep my laptop and get a small mini pc for my tv. im in denial about gaming. i dont really game much

Thanks. If you already have a monitor or plan to use it on a TV set for audio and video and web browsing, I can't identify a cheaper option for no-frills basic computing. Using something that sucks is less painful when it costs so little. The normal pricing of a NUC is absurd and not a good value. But, for less than $200 including tax it is hard to find  too much to complain about as long as you're not expecting anything amazing.

[ryan]

At that price is does seem tempting, I will be playing chess/pool/grid autosport and thats about it for gaming. As for other tasks I read a bit, NBT, youtube, and disney plus. I think I might buy one, not a big financial risk. I was also just thinking of just using the smart apps on my tv(google STV) and getting a wireless keyboard and mouse. and picking up a tablet.

[Mr. Fox]

1 hour ago, ryan said:

At that price is does seem tempting, I will be playing chess/pool/grid autosport and thats about it for gaming. As for other tasks I read a bit, NBT, youtube, and disney plus. I think I might buy one, not a big financial risk. I was also just thinking of just using the smart apps on my tv(google STV) and getting a wireless keyboard and mouse. and picking up a tablet.

I have not tested streaming with Steam games, but I will. I suspect it will work as well as, or probably  much better than, a Steam Link or NVIDIA Shield (both of which are utterly anemic products in terms of computing power). So, you shoud be able to use it fine for remote-play gaming in that manner, even with more demanding AAA titles, as long as the host PC is powerful and you have a strong network connection.

 

I have this for use with the TV and it is also a really good option that costs very little, especially with the 20% off code. The entire top surface is metal and it feels solid and heavy. It is a much better product than the similar Logitech keyboard+touchpad it replaced. The Logitech device was flimsy plastic garbage. I hate using a touchpad, but for the limited scenarios like punching in a password using a TV it is way better than pressing buttons on a remote a bazillion time to navigate an idiotic on-screen keyboard.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FSKZVRG

  

6 hours ago, electrosoft said:

That looks really nice. I have liked that case since the first time I saw it. It looks great. The only thing that holds me back from buying one is the limited space at the top. I have been tempted multiple times, but I remind myself that I have the same issue with the 5000D Airflow.

 

I do not understand why the stupid people that design enthusiast and gamer focused PC cases cannot see how detrimental it is to limit that space in such an idiotic way. If someone is worried about it being "too big" they would not be looking at a full tower case. I find that not being able to install a fat 360mm+ radiator under the top panel sandwiched between fans in push/pull and still having plenty of space for reaching in to connect fan, RGB and EPS cables with ease is just inexcusable from a design standpoint. But, it seems to be a very common lack of intelligence among many brands and models.

[1610ftw]

10 hours ago, electrosoft said:

 

 

We are officially in the end game in regards to true DTRs being a thing of the past.

 

Everything is BGA and we feel "lucky" when we can change or upgrade the memory and storage now. Apple set the standard, companies see their crazy profits and follow suit.

 

I'm just accepting of the fact most users (and I do mean most) do not want to crack open their laptops and get under the hood. They just want to open and use it. When it fails they get it repaired. When it gets too slow they just toss/sell/hand it down and get another newer model and keep it moving. They want them light as possible too.

 

Me? I don't mind a large body laptop as long as I can get in there and tweak/tune/optimize and hand pick components as I see fit. the X170 series is so far the last in the line to allow that with the NH55 close behind since it has a subpar cooling system for the CPU and a BGA GPU but it is miles better than everything else out there for user upgradability.

 

We've also officially reached a point that with all the tinkering and self upgrades in the world these new laptops, even locked down and hindered, are going to bury all the older true DTRs in performance both CPU and GPU.

 

Yep, looks like the end game is over actually.

 

Companies like MSI and Asus could give us a platform with a socketed CPU if they wanted as they also do motherboards and updating micro codes should be possible for them across generations if they do not choose unsuitable chipsets.

 

Clearly they do not want to do that and Clevo apparently cannot do it but what imo really kills any DTR from a performance perspective is the GPU side, not the CPUs.

 

Looking at the last generation I can get over 24.5K on several stock laptops with the 12900/12950HX over 10 minutes on Cinebench and I can get over 26K in one run with a whole bunch of them, not too bad. That is not too far off from a stock 12900K. It is not the same but given the form factor it is actually reasonably close when comparing air cooled to air cooled even with some overclocking/undervolting, not a whole different ballgame. And then there would always be the option to go socketed of course, it is not like it would depend that much on Intel to help out as clearly the socketed CPUs are freely available. The performance difference from BGA laptop to LGA desktop may increase a little bit with this generation but the 13900HX will probably be not that far behind the 13900K as long as we again compare air cooled systems.

 

On the GPU side on the other hand Nvidia has gone down a path where the GPUs are so gimped that it does not really matter if they are soldered or MXM based any more as they are so far behind that it now is questionable if the top laptop GPU can even bench more than half as well as the top desktop CPU in a number of benchmarks and real world applications and games will suffer, too.

If I was into high performance GPUs (which I am not) I would never want to pay a premium for a card that maybe can keep up with the 4070 Ti but not more but then I predict that there will not be a lot of talk about this which is unfortunate as Nvidia could have done a lot better with this generation of mobile GPUs.

 

And yes it is even sadder that even the best of the older DTR's cannot be properly upgraded so they are falling behind a lot first on CPU with the last generation and now with this generation also on the GPU front unless some third party company will again produce MXM modules that could possibly be used in our DTRs.

 

 

[ryan]

I would like to add the 4090 for laptops is a beast. its not nearly as castrated, just the name is. its the same chip as the 4080 with just slower clocks. its 8 percent behind a 3090ti desktop. and it looks like with a mobile 13900 and 4090 laptops will be viable option again as they once were with pascal. Im not jumping ship quite yet. but for the love of god nvidia and intel stop forcing BGA. its as about as appealing as eating nails.

This puts it up there with the fastest desktop graphics cards from the RTX 30 series, including the desktop RTX 3090, beating it by a slim but still noteworthy 2.4% margin. The RTX 4090 mobile also would appear to do well against the desktop RTX 3090 Ti, undershooting it by 8%.

https://www.techspot.com/news/97134-nvidia-rtx-4090-mobile-gpu-looks-seriously-quick.html

[Ashtrix]

RTX 4080 12GB - Rebrand a.k.a RTX 4070Ti is getting some flak which is not surprising because overall financials around the planet. I'm glad that some of these reviewers are calling the BS out otherwise they were fine with extreme Nvidia price rises for that 4090 - Full die 3090Ti is costing $1000, while the cut die 4090 at $1500+, while price matching to the outdated mining priced overpriced rubbish 3090 (which is 100% price increase over 3080 for less than 20% gain) is not accurate, nobody mentions this in 4090 and they say it's 3090 mining price and good value BS.

 

Now that's out of way, basically the die size of 4070Ti is very small for it's price bump, they are raking in profits, it's just 294,5 mm² compare to old gen 392 mm² 3070Ti 8GB (which is priced still higher at $700+ AIB) higher performing RX 6800 16GB is 520 mm² is way less around $600 but unfortunately AMD stopped production for RDNA2 as the AIB cards are MIA, really unfortunate as AMD cut the supply a month and half before, as Ampere is also getting dried up pretty fast too.

 

Nvidia is charging the MSRP $800 which is fake because this one does not have FE variant so it's up for grabs by ASUS, MSI, GB which start from $900. Yeah they gave it a memory bump to 12GB from 8GB but the needle is not moving. You can get 3090/Ti  24GB performing around SAME mark or more for literally SAME value, yeah DLSS3 but it's FAKE FPS booster. And for $100 more you can get an RX 7900XTX 24GB that will destroy this card outright for good and in the future it will be a bloodbath. No wonder Nvidia rebranded it and adjusted price by $100.

 

Performance to put it straight, it gets knocked by 7900XT 20GB by a large amount in many titles, sometimes it beats and trades blows with 3090Ti 24GB (which is commendable). But there's an important factor to think here, the VRAM buffer is just lower, so scaling in the future titles might be challenging, because we are at the transition of the Old Gen Xbox One X / PS4 Pro -> XSX / PS5 so new textures and new unoptimization policy of AAA, it will eat up the VRAM fast and esp when enabling RT the VRAM will choke fast which is why on 4K it loses out to 3090Ti just because of sheer bandwidth advantage of 384Bit bus 24GB vs 192Bit bus 12GB. And 7900XT which has 20GB memory buffer and higher Rasterization power.

 

Anyways it will be interesting if it's going to be selling like 4080 or 4090. That is going to decide a lot. Once AMD's new xx50 and Nvidia's Ti / Super launches maybe the price cuts might happen also 2023 crash doomsday plays a role.

 

 

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

3 hours ago, Ashtrix said:

RTX 4080 12GB - Rebrand a.k.a RTX 4070Ti is getting some flak which is not surprising because overall financials around the planet. I'm glad that some of these reviewers are calling the BS out otherwise they were fine with extreme Nvidia price rises for that 4090 - Full die 3090Ti is costing $1000, while the cut die 4090 at $1500+, while price matching to the outdated mining priced overpriced rubbish 3090 (which is 100% price increase over 3080 for less than 20% gain) is not accurate, nobody mentions this in 4090 and they say it's 3090 mining price and good value BS.

 

Now that's out of way, basically the die size of 4070Ti is very small for it's price bump, they are raking in profits, it's just 294,5 mm² compare to old gen 392 mm² 3070Ti 8GB (which is priced still higher at $700+ AIB) higher performing RX 6800 16GB is 520 mm² is way less around $600 but unfortunately AMD stopped production for RDNA2 as the AIB cards are MIA, really unfortunate as AMD cut the supply a month and half before, as Ampere is also getting dried up pretty fast too.

 

Nvidia is charging the MSRP $800 which is fake because this one does not have FE variant so it's up for grabs by ASUS, MSI, GB which start from $900. Yeah they gave it a memory bump to 12GB from 8GB but the needle is not moving. You can get 3090/Ti  24GB performing around SAME mark or more for literally SAME value, yeah DLSS3 but it's FAKE FPS booster. And for $100 more you can get an RX 7900XTX 24GB that will destroy this card outright for good and in the future it will be a bloodbath. No wonder Nvidia rebranded it and adjusted price by $100.

 

Performance to put it straight, it gets knocked by 7900XT 20GB by a large amount in many titles, sometimes it beats and trades blows with 3090Ti 24GB (which is commendable). But there's an important factor to think here, the VRAM buffer is just lower, so scaling in the future titles might be challenging, because we are at the transition of the Old Gen Xbox One X / PS4 Pro -> XSX / PS5 so new textures and new unoptimization policy of AAA, it will eat up the VRAM fast and esp when enabling RT the VRAM will choke fast which is why on 4K it loses out to 3090Ti just because of sheer bandwidth advantage of 384Bit bus 24GB vs 192Bit bus 12GB. And 7900XT which has 20GB memory buffer and higher Rasterization power.

 

Anyways it will be interesting if it's going to be selling like 4080 or 4090. That is going to decide a lot. Once AMD's new xx50 and Nvidia's Ti / Super launches maybe the price cuts might happen also 2023 crash doomsday plays a role.

 

 

 

 

One more added to the list... based on the benchmarks, at least in this video, the 7900 XTX doesn't really offer much benefit over the 7900 XT (in some cases less to offer) and the 4070 Ti appears to be a closer match to the 7900 XT/XTX performance than the 7900XT/XTX is to matching the 4080 FE.

 

It is interesting that we don't see comparisons to 3090 because the difference between 3090 and 3090 Ti is too small to matter and the 3090 Ti is/was nearly irrelevant in terms of market share. The bottom line is, if you own a 3090 or 3090 Ti, there is no point in spending any money whatsoever on a GPU upgrade for gaming. There is nothing to be gained from it for gaming. Gaining 10 or 15 FPS when you are already north of 100 FPS for $800 to $1000 is truly idiotic.

 

If you want to run benchmarks and legitimately feel like you are benefitting from spending a buttload of money, then the only real option for a 3090/3090Ti owner is to blow a significant portion of your monthly income (more than what is disposable income for most people) on a 4090.

 

If you own something less than a 3080, then any of these GPUs are a legit but overpriced upgrade.

 

It is unfortunate that we don't see any AIB options for NVIDIA GPUs with 3 or 4 of the legacy 8-pin power connectors. I don't want an AMD GPU, but I like the fact that they did not adopt the new 12-pin cable.

 

[Papusan]

4 hours ago, Ashtrix said:

RTX 4080 12GB - Rebrand a.k.a RTX 4070Ti is getting some flak which is not surprising because overall financials around the planet. I'm glad that some of these reviewers are calling the BS out otherwise they were fine with extreme Nvidia price rises for that 4090 - Full die 3090Ti is costing $1000, while the cut die 4090 at $1500+, while price matching to the outdated mining priced overpriced rubbish 3090 (which is 100% price increase over 3080 for less than 20% gain) is not accurate, nobody mentions this in 4090 and they say it's 3090 mining price and good value BS.

 

Now that's out of way, basically the die size of 4070Ti is very small for it's price bump, they are raking in profits, it's just 294,5 mm² compare to old gen 392 mm² 3070Ti 8GB (which is priced still higher at $700+ AIB) higher performing RX 6800 16GB is 520 mm² is way less around $600 but unfortunately AMD stopped production for RDNA2 as the AIB cards are MIA, really unfortunate as AMD cut the supply a month and half before, as Ampere is also getting dried up pretty fast too.

 

Nvidia is charging the MSRP $800 which is fake because this one does not have FE variant so it's up for grabs by ASUS, MSI, GB which start from $900. Yeah they gave it a memory bump to 12GB from 8GB but the needle is not moving. You can get 3090/Ti  24GB performing around SAME mark or more for literally SAME value, yeah DLSS3 but it's FAKE FPS booster. And for $100 more you can get an RX 7900XTX 24GB that will destroy this card outright for good and in the future it will be a bloodbath. No wonder Nvidia rebranded it and adjusted price by $100.

 

Performance to put it straight, it gets knocked by 7900XT 20GB by a large amount in many titles, sometimes it beats and trades blows with 3090Ti 24GB (which is commendable). But there's an important factor to think here, the VRAM buffer is just lower, so scaling in the future titles might be challenging, because we are at the transition of the Old Gen Xbox One X / PS4 Pro -> XSX / PS5 so new textures and new unoptimization policy of AAA, it will eat up the VRAM fast and esp when enabling RT the VRAM will choke fast which is why on 4K it loses out to 3090Ti just because of sheer bandwidth advantage of 384Bit bus 24GB vs 192Bit bus 12GB. And 7900XT which has 20GB memory buffer and higher Rasterization power.

 

Anyways it will be interesting if it's going to be selling like 4080 or 4090. That is going to decide a lot. Once AMD's new xx50 and Nvidia's Ti / Super launches maybe the price cuts might happen also 2023 crash doomsday plays a role.

 

 

 

 

Heres the ting. Tomshardware...... continue give bad advices and reviews. I checked with Pcworld. They are often the worst of them all but was spot on for the  4070Ti review.

 

 

 

https://www.pcworld.com/article/1444726/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4070-ti-review.html

 

My comment on Tomshardware.... Why give 4070 Ti 3.5 stars of 5? Pcworld was more spot on with 2 out of 5 stars. Castrated mem bus and overpriced by hundreds of dollars. Weird that Tomshardware give cons less impact for the review score

 

 

Tomshardware need to be educated. People need to tell them how wrong they are. Paid by Nvidia and other HW manufacturers shouldn't be paid of. 

 

Edit. Here is another one. Almost nothing neative to say about 4070Ti.... Not a single word about "not to buy or all too expensive". Stamp = Failed. Almost as some reviewers is very well paid by Nvidia.

 

 

ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4070 Ti OC Edition Review

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/

[Talon]

4 hours ago, Ashtrix said:

Nvidia is charging the MSRP $800 which is fake because this one does not have FE variant so it's up for grabs by ASUS, MSI, GB which start from $900.

 

Actually more than half of the 4070 Ti models prices are within $50 of MSRP, yes that includes Asus. 

 

https://www.microcenter.com/search/search_results.aspx?Ntt=rtx+4070+ti&Ntx=mode+MatchPartial&Ntk=all&sortby=match&N=0&myStore=false

 

3/13 cards are $799 and more than half are within $850. 

[Raiderman]

So answer me this..... If cryptodicking is really down, who TF is buying all the GPU's? Is it scalpers? If it is, are any of the retailers going to curtail this? This is stupid. Are the days gone when you felt you needed an upgrade, then going to your favorite reseller site, and buying on that day? At this rate, I may never get another card, unless it is a lower tier card. If its scalpers causing the shortage, this is worse than it was 4 years ago, at least you could find something at MSRP.

[cylix]

Normal people that because of the crypto scalper market are normalized to this prices. This is the new normal sadly and i dont think the situation will change anymore, we will have to live with this prices from now on. Lowcards will be 600 usd, middle tier  around 1k and high one around 1300 1500 and a no comprise one like 4090 Ti at 2k

[Papusan]

19 minutes ago, cylix said:

Normal people that because of the crypto scalper market are normalized to this prices. This is the new normal sadly and i dont think the situation will change anymore, we will have to live with this prices from now on. Lowcards will be 600 usd, middle tier  around 1k and high one around 1300 1500 and a no comprise one like 4090 Ti at 2k

You won't see a 4090Ti at 2k😎But xx90 is the only new card without screwed up price point vs 3000 series cards. Price increase is below inflation. Can't beat that😀

[ryan]

but what if nvidia drops a bomb and the 4090ti is like 30 percent faster. like when does greed end

[Etern4l]

2 hours ago, Papusan said:

 Price increase is below inflation. Can't beat that😀

 

The problem is that there is no sensible reference point, since past two years were shrouded in the crypto mining distortion field. Applying inflation to a meaningless number doesn't achieve much. The street price of the 3090 Ti collapsed around 50% in what? 9 months? Has the market reached the bottom? Unlikely, the only gaming GPU price direction is down. Once the premium on early adopters and enthusiasts has been reaped, Nvidia will reduce the prices on the current line to reach the rest of potential customers, then drop the 4090Ti at a price tempting enough to induce a second harvest :) (ca. $2k, perhaps not even would be my guess).

[jcordero]

When building the most high end desktop (liquid cooling, RTX 4090/A5000, i9 13900k/AMD EPYC, etc) possible that will last you a long time, what do you look for in each of its components (motherboard, power supply, cooler, etc.) when choosing what to buy?

[Mr. Fox]

26 minutes ago, jcordero said:

When building the most high end desktop (liquid cooling, RTX 4090/A5000, i9 13900k/AMD EPYC, etc) possible that will last you a long time, what do you look for in each of its components (motherboard, power supply, cooler, etc.) when choosing what to buy?

That is a totally loaded question. It really depends on what you want and what you intend to do with it. There is no single right answer.

 

Gamers that don't care about overclocking buy things like an AMD X3D CPU, drop it in a gamer motherboard, run it stock or with an undervolt, then decide how much they want to spend on a GPU. As long as it plays the games they want to play at a decent framerate without overheating or throttling, they're good to go. This does not require the best and most expensive parts to do that well as long as they are healthy parts. The GPU is the most important component to that type of person, and they generally need less than what all of the marketing hype would suggest. If they buy a high end halo GPU like a 4090 today it should last them at least 4 or 5 years before it struggles with gameplay, longer if they don't expect to max out every available setting. If they go cheap on the GPU, they'll need to update the GPU (with something new or used) every year or two and keep using the rest of the system until a component fails and has to be replaced. Gaming doesn't require expensive CPUs, motherboard or bleeding edge memory. Fast storage and a mid-range GPU will get the job done.

 

If you're an overclocker that love chasing numbers, there is still no single "right" answer. If you are always trying to beat yourself and set impressive scores, it is a never-ending pursuit of the cutting edge parts that you can push to the edge of functionality. If you are looking to set records for specific hardware, you can do that with old parts and collect hardware points. For example, if you grab a GTX 690 GPU and do hardware/firmware mods and go to great lengths to keep it freakishly cold and install that in a modern high end motherboard with a wicked CPU overclocked to the edge of functionality it will blow away all of the old high scores for a GTX 690 GPU.

 

If you are a cutting edge hardware junky that craves the best of the best and feel compelled to stay current whether you actually use that hardware for something important, or not, just because that's what floats you boat, then you're just screwed... real bad. You're either filthy rich and blow money without a care in the world about it, or you're in bondage to an addiction that you can't afford. If you're in this last category there is nothing that will ever be good enough because nothing remains static. Today's most insanely expensive parts will be obsolete tomorrow and worth a small fraction of what you paid for it yesterday.