General computer talk/advice

No, it is bit different, while monitoring shows for example 50C under load, what people have measured with thermal imaging is over 100C from hotspot, of course having copper heatsinks help a lot, chip closest to connector is one heating up and my square heatsink was perfect size for that, so it is probably not heating up as bad as without heatsink.

Still thermal throttling happens, so keeping what monitoring shows below 40C all times reduces thermal throttling a lot, it still happens though, copying file goes from 1000MB/s to less than 200MB/s but more cooling I can make, less there is a drop.

Downside of fast Nvme SSD is thermal throttling and to keep it from bogging down, one needs really some cooling airflow in addition to heatsink.

Mine does not go even to 50C under heavy load right now, there is enough cooling airflow to keep it under that, but sadly I don't know what true temp is, enough for thermal throttling to happen, that much I know, however only when copying something like 10GB, with current setup temp does not change much when loading heavy level in BeamNG for example, definitely all the adjusting have made difference in loading times though, also temperature alarm does not ring anymore when playing heavier game, I think it was 43-45C where temperature alarm of Crystal disk info rings for this SSD, I believe it is at point of thermal throttling, but not sure.

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6GB on lowest? Oh that is quite bad, I can't recall any game that I have played taking that much even on highest, everything has been under 5GB so far.

 

I found why forza runs so bad. So it runs fine at the start, around 60fps or so! (low settings 1080p). Then as i play through and cover the whole map, the gpu memory rises and rises, and eventually it just bogs down my machine until it sits around 100% GPU usage and 30FPS. It also causes stutters on my recording (now doing it through iQSV). A

Overall, on Lowest texture quality, Forza uses 6gb of vram ish

Ahh i see what you mean. Something else on the chip is getting hot. If you are getting thermal throttling then it certainly is appropriate to strap a desk fan to your machine and cool it off!!

 

It's that first chip, not sure if it is controller or what, which is getting hot, also I have no idea where temperature sensor of the thing is located, but this is quite interesting video:


Case fan mounted on side panel and mesh removed from side panel seems to be enough most of the time, it is just amusing how much desk fan can bring down temps even it can't blow to SSD, only to help case fan to move air.

 

I have this same problem with my samsung m.2 ssd, it gets pretty hot since it's right next to my gpu.

 

I never knew that M.2 ssds could even get hot, i suppose they are really fast, and they have a smaller footprint than the 2.5in normal ssd, so less heat is dissipated.

 

Earlier generation Nvme are bit hot, I think current generations are already better at that, but still heat dissipation being something one need to be aware of with these things.

M2 and Nvme are then 2 different things, M2 does not mean fast or hot, Nvme does

gtx1080 is bit problematic in my case as it does produce quite bit of heat, even at idle it likes to use 23% of max power, which then becomes a heat that warms up Nvme, which is enough to get effects to practical performance under heavy usage.

That means cooling needs bit of optimizing.

Even idle temps are up 6 to 10 degrees compared to no GPU situation, depending which slot I put Nvme, under load it is kinda challenging to keep enough cool air flowing to Nvme as both slots are placed in such way that with my CPU cooler case limiting GPU to only one possible slot, it is kinda difficult to get air moving where it needs to be moving.

Video recording is pretty much only thing this heat really shows up, at least it is only explanation I have found why videos don't come out smooth at times as hardware load should be quite low. Still it is bit odd that 50 000kbs is too much, but OS, Beam and video on same drive and I guess it can easily get bit too taxing.

 

I think it's partly b/c of my small form factor case. The graphics card fans seem to blow air onto the ssd, which doesn't help with thermals.

 

Well, I figured out that so called "Eco" mode actually prevents GPU to go down to desktop clocks and has it running full clocks all the time, hence 23% power usage constantly.

OC mode runs it cooler, quality of this bundled software
--- Post updated ---
Bit more tweaking and now I have pretty much same single core performance as average 6700K has, not bad for lame 6700 non K?

There are not many i7-6700 CPU's that are faster than mine according to Userbench:


I'm not happy to SSD results though, from some reason first sustained write got lower result than it should of had, that first usually is around 1000MB/s, still there could be more performance available, so might do some kind of air funnel to get bit more airflow there.

I guess that GPU could perform better too, with some other driver version or tweaking clocks a bit, but as it works and is more than enough fast, I'm not too keen on tweaking more performance out from it.

Memory performance is disappointment though, sure it is not slower than average, but maybe some tweaking would do good:

Faster memory would of course improve things a bit more, but cost/gain ratio would be quite small.

It is bit over 57fps, so close to be able to keep 60fps, but not quite there, if I put dynamic reflections to lowest faces per update instead of 2nd lowest, it manages to keep 60fps just and just, so tiny little bit more is needed.


Of course turning off UI and using cockpit camera would work too, but certainly I should be able to tweak that 3fps more from CPU as it is CPU that is holding back.

So all the tweaking has helped, but need to figure out how to add that tiny bit more performance as any dip below 60fps is not acceptable.

 

I need some advice on what to do about something.

I am about to switch my primary computer to an HP i7 mini-pc. It has decent specs apart from an internal GPU. How well do external gpus work? I’ve never really messed with them before so I could really use some help.

@torsion @fufsgfen

 

I bought a PC for 100 Euro(114$)
CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0 OC at 3.4
RAM 4gb of ddr3 1333mhz
GPU: Gigabyte Geforce gt220
HDD:500gb hitachi 7200Rpm
Motherboard:Gigabyte GA-G41MT-S2p
Going to buy a SSD soon
Did I buy a good pc for that price?

 

No idea about external GPUs.

Mini usually means something bad, HP being mostly overpriced and at least in case of laptops badly designed cooling has been their norm.

 

External GPUs send the price through the roof as the external adapters/enclosures are not cheap. Also, not everything from HP is overpriced... mostly just their PCs. Their business routers and switches seem pretty decently priced, especially when compared to Cisco Catalysts (admittedly, its kind of fun working with the Cisco Catalyst though).

 

Also one can get HP multi function junk at very cheap from special offers, lowest cost printing available really as with 20€ you get perfectly working multifunction machine that can print something like 150-200 pages, by time I have printed that much ink has already been dried useless, so I'm just getting new special offer machine, sell old one with a tenner and can print 1-2 years with 10€ cost.

Not good for environment, but ink pricing is making this stupidity reality.

Although latest one I bought was Epson, but at that price level they all are pretty much same.
--- Post updated ---
I did calculate bit of prices, it seems DVD discs at prices I could get them, would costs twice per GB than HDD, so saving bit longer and buying 4TB HDD would save in long term a LOT of money.

Action camera footage is quickly taking up space.

 

https://www.polygon.com/2018/8/20/1...-2080-ti-2070-specs-release-date-price-turing


So the specs for the new Nvidia cards are out i think that they are way to expensive for what they bring and i hope the old ones will get cheaper now

 

GDDR6 increases prices I guess.

I was reading about that earlier today, this is what I gathered.

2070 was 8Tflops and top of the line model 14Tflops, while 1080 was 9 Tflops (Ti 11.3Tflops), so surely there is performance increase, but offers nothing for 1080p as that 9Tflops is already enough or even overkill.

Prices indeed are insane, not sure if old ones get much cheaper, for example shops still sell Kaby Lake 7700k near the same price as at launch (at least ones I monitor), I guess demand is enough high.

For Beam 1070 should be plenty enough, it is rare I see over 50% GPU usage with 1080 (it is not much higher in Just Cause 3 or pretty much any other game, except I don't get so much drops below 60fps) with all eye candy on and CPU is then holding back when there might be any higher usage for GPU.

WCUSA and some other maps mostly, but there are really lot of maps that would require more power from CPU that there is in fastest one, so if you get fast GPU, to be able to use it, you might need faster CPU.

This is at least my experience with 174 Cinebench R15 single core score, that is not enough, would need around 200 to keep 60fps on pretty much any map, minus few odd ones that don't run on any machine.

So while your 750ti might limit FPS on high details now, you might not get full benefit of fast GPU without overclocking CPU quite a bit.

 

The thing is my cpu is cool emough now (rarely gets over 30 celcius but i dont quite know enough about overclocking so i rather let it be for a while probably going to try and get a deal on a 1070ti or stick a while longer until my 750 gives in

 

Do you play other games that require faster GPU or do you use/plan to use higher resolution than 1080p in somewhat near future?

1070Ti is kinda close to 1080 I guess, not much difference in price either, so based on my experience, without overclocking 6600k, it would be kinda hard to use whole potential of 1070Ti in BeamNG with 1080p and 60fps.

WCUSA with full eye candy on could benefit from that over 1060 I guess, but most of the times, even with 1060 6GB it would be CPU limiting FPS more than GPU, but sadly I don't have much data available from that.

Surely 1070Ti would then be future proof for many years to come, even for next system, so there is always that point.


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As I decided to keep this 2nd hand 1080 which I have been testing, I still need to negotiate price of the thing, asking 400e is bit much for my liking, especially as according to my calculations, I would need around 30% more single core CPU performance for BeamNG to run it well enough on pretty much all maps (around 200 score in Cinebench), so there is that upgrade coming.

Currently that upgrade would be 600-800 euros, depending if going for faster memory at the same time or not. I could get something back from selling current hardware components, maybe around 300 euros at max, but waiting for future chips would of course reduce that.

However I'm not sure about upcoming intel chips or even AMD responses, single core performance is not much advertised these days and I don't know any good estimates of how that would be in upcoming releases, would it be that next variant of chips would have 200 Cinebench SC score for lot less cost or will it take 2nd optimization of 10nm until there would be better price SC performance ratios of that level available? Also would it be possible that in few coming years there would be considerable boost coming to SC performance or would it be more likely that we are seeing diminishing gains on that area again?

 

The other games i play are forza and ets2 wich both habe theyre problems also how much does running a second monitor affect performance on a graphics card? Another thing is the price of the 1070ti is ok for me as my current pc with a new card should at least run 4 years and 2 years it should be able to max games at 1080p i also might upgrade to 4k or 1440p if the prices of those monitors go down

 

I have ETS2 also, that one has one odd setting, scaling or something like that which makes things look crisp or blurry depending from how you set, but that was setting I could not set very high with 1050Ti, with 1080 it really does not matter which game, I set everything to maximum and look how they use about 50% of GPU most of the time, 1070Ti should be similar, performance that you don't need to max out, so whatever you do in game it should run perfectly.

ARMA I and BeamNG are which I find CPU lacking, also in Red Faction Re-marstered edition one core is running really high usage, but seem to be 60fps all the time, it is really really weird game in terms of hardware usage, GPU usage is something like 35% and when there is more explosions, destruction etc. CPU load of heavily taxed core gets lower, while keeping solid 60fps.

ARMA I is only one where I get drops to below 60fps in addition to BeamNG though.

6600k should be pretty close similar performance as 6700, maybe even bit faster SC, even mine does run relatively fast, difference comes only when there is more threaded work and I don't honestly know if there is such, even JC3 which is very heavily threaded, it tends to use only about 50% of each 8 threads, so 6600k should do it fine, I believe.

Might test Final Fantasy XV demo again (100GB, doh!), that did lag real bad with 1050Ti, probably one of the heaviest games around as graphics on that are quite impressive.

I was thinking also about 4K, that might be next monitor, or more likely smart TV, current monitor is really old and I do hope it lasts at least a year still, but eyesight is getting worse and worse, those 50" or bigger 4K tv screens do interest me because of low price and while they do have setbacks, so do my eyes, no point seeking perfect image at this stage anymore, even photographing is something that I can't find much fun anymore, no way to see and focus

Update, forgot:
Oh and 2nd monitor, that only causes performance loss if you put game on both monitors, at least it was so when I had 2 monitors, years ago.

 

I'd say wait until real benchmarks come out to show how it lines up. Tech specs do not always translate directly to performance, so these cards may well be either faster or slower than you're expecting.