This thread will attempt to provide a place to discuss past/present/future PC gaming deals. While mainly focusing on Steam games, any standout sales may also be presented. I will not be updating every Daily/Weekly/etc. sale. The tools to help individuals become a smarter shopper will be provided below.
See this POST for links to store sale pages, threads of interest and other tools to help you become a more informed PC game shopper.
Am I the only one that rocks a lot of drives? I have 6 internal, 3 external including one backing up my main SSD, and I believe 2 I dock now and then for backup purposes. 2 of those drives are old now though....like 3 TB or so. I think just my Steam drive and one of the drives (an old one) isn't backed up. I am majorly due for a motherboard/ram/processor upgrade though.
For a gaming machine going to a better card is by far the most effective choice. Going from 16 to 32gb ram is near meaningless unless you highly value being able to game with 400 chrome tabs open in the background or want to run 3+ games concurrently for some reason.
I do understand why you'd prefer more storage though. If I needed more I'd probably look for a cpu without HT to free up budget for larger ssd(s).
What I would do and someone else does - yeah, those are two really different things. We all have different wants and needs, of course.
Right, the 2080 will definitely out-power & out-perform the 2070 & cost a bit more - but for me, eh; I don't really need to be rocking everything at 1440p or 4K towards 60fps or (hopefully) much better. I'm pretty happy myself right now with 1080p w/ games at 60-240fps with G-Sync.
The 32GB, eh - to me, that would just me doing a bit of future-proofing. Don't need it right now; that's for sure. Can't argue that.
I am absolutely terrible-terrible-terrible (and always have been) when it comes to games and cutting them from my HDD's (especially when games have DLC's, Expansions, updates, etc) - so, having way more really space matters to me. I often do not like re-downloading huge games, as I do have pretty much 3 gaming rigs (2 laptops and my main desktop) that I'm always going b/t, given the situation.
It makes far, far more sense to get a great GPU and add more memory later to your existing memory than to start with a bunch of memory and then upgrade your GPU, thus leaving you with an unused extra GPU. You can add to your memory (and/or add an another drive), you can't add to your GPU.
Awesome rig!!! That SSD, CPU, and GPU sounds INSANE.
Awesome @ the newest Evo. Speeds must be awesome. Only 500GB though. That's fine for a front drive for the OS boot and a few games.
But does he have a secondary SSD/HDD with some space for storage? Does your friend have any hard drive docks, extra open HDD slots, SSD slots, SSD's, HDD's, or anything w/ some space? Some of these newer games are huge and gonna easily eat up space - i.e. Gears 4 PC is 120+ GB; COD: IW PC is almost 98GB; etc etc.
About the 2070 v. 2080 - me, I probably would've went w/ the lower card (RTX 2070), went for 32GB of RAM, and bought a secondary HDD/SSD (if you don't have some already). I'm terrible at HDD management, as I hate uninstalling stuff from main drive.
How far can the mobo' allow for on the RAM?
I actually have a ViewSonic 25'' XG2560 240hz G-Sync monitor. That $700 Dell monitor sounds awesome.
Am I the only one that rocks a lot of drives? I have 6 internal, 3 external including one backing up my main SSD, and I believe 2 I dock now and then for backup purposes. 2 of those drives are old now though....like 3 TB or so. I think just my Steam drive and one of the drives (an old one) isn't backed up. I am majorly due for a motherboard/ram/processor upgrade though.
You guys make it sound like it's trouble to add another SSD later lol.
You only need 1 to start with, and if you're doing a new build you want to go with an M.2 nVME drive. It also doesn't make a lot of sense to spend the $250 it takes to get a good 1 TB version. So you start with 1 high quality Samsung Evo or another equivalent highly rated version for your Windows install, and then you go from there.
Shit my dudes, people actually argue and side with that we have no need for optical drives anymore. You certainly don't need all that extra hard drive space, and definitely not to start with.
The other main thing is you don't buy SSDs until you need them. Prices have been in freefall for years and new tech keeps releasing. The updated 'Evo Plus' is a good example of that. He already has a newer SSD than my new build from just two months ago.
(we actually couldn't have finished readying his rig had he not have an external optical drive. We couldn't get the internet working. We had to load up the Gigabyte CD that came with the mobo to install an internet utility and then it finally recognized the cable being connected. In spite of almost everything being automated on Windows 10 these days.)
It makes far, far more sense to get a great GPU and add more memory later to your existing memory than to start with a bunch of memory and then upgrade your GPU, thus leaving you with an unused extra GPU. You can add to your memory (and/or add an another drive), you can't add to your GPU.
Also, by the time games start really needing 32 GB of RAM the RAM you initially bought is probably outdated. I'm guessing we are still another 3-5 years (possibly more) away from needing that much.
It makes far, far more sense to get a great GPU and add more memory later to your existing memory than to start with a bunch of memory and then upgrade your GPU, thus leaving you with an unused extra GPU. You can add to your memory (and/or add an another drive), you can't add to your GPU.
Yeah, 100% this for pure gamers. Of course this means you have to choose 2x8GB then and you'll be limited to 32GB (or 48GB of go full weirdo for 2x16GB+2x8GB). Of course that's probably enough for almost everyone.
Even I'm going for just 32GB for my next upgrade (will still keep GTX 970 for time being tho, unless 2000 series get massive price cut). And I do lot of dev/db/vm stuff which all eats memory for living. But going for 2x16GB to keep ability to upgrade later on.
(If only there was 12GB sticks)
Games are going to be limited by next gen anyway, which probably have ~16GB range of shared memory.
Might as well go for the best, if you want to use it for next 6+ years.
Am I the only one that rocks a lot of drives? I have 6 internal, 3 external including one backing up my main SSD, and I believe 2 I dock now and then for backup purposes. 2 of those drives are old now though....like 3 TB or so. I think just my Steam drive and one of the drives (an old one) isn't backed up. I am majorly due for a motherboard/ram/processor upgrade though.
You guys make it sound like it's trouble to add another SSD later lol.
You only need 1 to start with, and if you're doing a new build you want to go with an M.2 nVME drive. It also doesn't make a lot of sense to spend the $250 it takes to get a good 1 TB version. So you start with 1 high quality Samsung Evo or another similar, highly rated version for your Windows install, and then you go from there.
Shit my dudes, people actually argue and side with that we have no need for optical drives anymore. You certainly don't need all that extra hard drive space, and definitely not to start with.
The other main thing is you don't buy SSDs until you need them. Prices have been in freefall for years and new tech keeps releasing. The updated 'Evo Plus' is a good example of that. He already has a newer SSD than my new build from just two months ago.
(we actually couldn't have finished readying his rig had he not have an external optical drive. We couldn't get the internet working. We had to load up the Gigabyte CD that came with the mobo to install an internet utility and then it finally recognized the cable being connected. In spite of almost everything being automated on Windows 10 these days.)
When spending say $1900 or so on rig (and even throwing $800 or so at a GPU), it just seems like (to me) that $$ isn't much of an object here. Seems odd to me to skimp on HDD/SSD space, when spending that kind of $$.
Nobody ever said it was hard to add HDD's, SSD's, or any of that storage stuff later! I think w/ the way tech's gone w/ USB 3.0 (and newer formats like USB 3.1), Thunderbolt, and whatnot - it's so much easier than ever to just buy more drives & add them internally...or and even connect them externally, if need be via docks or however.
I do think regular mechanical HDD's give tons of space for storage - and if you're like me and want to back-up stuff so you don't want to re-download it (especially big-big games; though smaller games are easily enough to re-download) - yeah, that's an option. I'm terrible when it comes to removing/reinstalling games, so...for me, HDD's are a must for big storage amounts. I own ridiculous amounts of games and have a few hard-drive docks so I can do transfers, when need be.
Of course, on another hands - if one doesn't care and just plays through a game, not caring to ever touch it again - yeah, I can see why to skimp on HDD/SSD space amounts. If one doesn't have data caps, one can always pull games from off Steam's cloud (or any other service) when need be...as long as Steam and those other services are still in business, of course.
Yeah, SSD's are great for the boot-drive. Can always wait to buy more of those, if need be...as they are in a freefall (like you said). Really only need those for OS boot drives and a fair amount of space open for games that really need to be on the SSD that you're running on the regular (for better speeds, loads, performance, whatever).
About optical drives - always good to have a cheap $20-30 external DVD-burner or (I guess) a BR-burner, just in case you got older stuff on discs and have games, drivers, or anything on disc that you need. I have a cheap DVD-burner I got from Microcenter, just in case - which I bought when I bought my first gaming laptop, a few years back...b/c there are games I wanted to install from off a DVD drive.
When spending say $1900 or so on rig (and even throwing $800 or so at a GPU), it just seems like (to me) that $$ isn't much of an object here. Seems odd to me to skimp on HDD/SSD space, when spending that kind of $$.
If you got the ports and space why not use it /shrug
2 of those are externals, and there's another 8tb external somewhere that will probably end up going to the wife since her external recently died
The drivepool is currently 3x8tb, so still got room for one more when space gets tight. Handy software that drivepool, lets you do a faux file based striped raid, and stablebit also makes monitoring software to start pinging alarms if anything is about to die
How long does it take your PCs to boot? with several drives and attachments
It's bugging me that my new build takes 20-24 seconds to startup due to some modern hardware pieces like the Asus bios and overclocking. My old '12 build boots in about 13 seconds on just a crappy Inland 250gb SATA SSD
How long does it take your PCs to boot? with several drives and attachments
It's bugging me that my new build takes 20-24 seconds to startup due to some modern hardware pieces like the Asus bios. My old '12 build boots in about 13 seconds on just a crappy Inland 250gb SATA SSD
yea having a bunch of USB crap plugged in extends the boot time, a lot. Between the drivepool, 2 externals, kb/m, various controllers, sound card and midi devices, mine probably takes at least 30-60sec to get through the post scanning. Though you can tell its done when the kbm light up and then from there its only a couple seconds in to windows itself
But whatever, my pc is on 24/7, just reboot for driver updates so Ive never really been bothered by boot times
I shut down my computer anytime it is storming since I have had numerous things in this house fried in the past. I also shut it down when I am vacuuming around it, that is just paranoia though.
I want more storage than I have, despite having a lot of drives. Between albums I have bought/downloaded online and ripping my entire music collection, I currently have around 4-5TB of music. Additionally around 1TB of digital and scanned photos, another 1TB or so of misc stuff that I either couldn't replace or would be difficult to do so. That is all of the "must not lose" data so I have it backed up on a couple of 8TB externals.
I have several other externals with random stuff on them like fansubbed shows I never get around to watching, downloaded game mods, emulation stuff... all things that would be annoying to lose but nothing I care enough to have multiple backups of. Some of my externals are ones I have had for ages, 1 or 2 TB and more in the way than useful. I want to eventually get a few more large ones or do an NAS setup.
I have six internals but none of them are large drives either, I need to get a couple of larger drives and replace all of them except the SSDs one of these days. I wish I had splurged and bought a bunch of the 8TB external WDs on sale at Best Buy before they changed them and you could still tell if you were getting a faster drive or not, shucked them and put a couple in my PC and used the others in NAS.
I keep all my important stuff on my home server that runs 24/7 with a UPS. Non-entertainment data gets copied weekly to an internal backup drive that stays online, but not mapped. Raw entertainment data gets copied onto old drives I've since swapped out (about 20TB worth), then gets processed and loaded onto the server. The entertainment media drives have their own offline backups (12TB) that are mirrors should I ever need to rebuild.
I never used to care about backing up stuff until I built a server to hold my movies and music. Having rebuilt my movie database three times and burned through at least four blu-ray drives I'm not intent on doing that again anytime soon.
It's great to be playing a game with people online, have the power go out and be able to tell them "I'll have to quit if the power doesn't come back on in a minute".
I don't have anything on my computer that is irreplaceable (or, if it is, I don't care). It'd be a pain in the ass to find a few things again but my computer lives in the moment. I don't have movies on my computer and my music is uploaded to Google Play so I could retrieve it all. Games on Steam, etc. I guess I'd have to download my porn again.
I have reliable power as well, maybe had one outage that lasted more than 2 seconds in the past 10+ years. Though I did lose one phase for a night a couple years ago.
I have more issues with power flickers. It's convenient to not have everything shut down when the electricity goes out for 3 seconds. EDIT: We have above ground power lines around here so someone hitting a pole or a branch temporary landing on the wires can happen.
The Ryzen 2600X with a 860 EVO Sata SSD takes maybe ten seconds to boot. I mean... maybe longer but at that point it's not practically noticeable. Usually when I first start my PC I'm doing other things and not sitting in my chair screaming at it to boot faster.
As some of you might recall several years ago I had a low opinion of SSDs due to the price/performance ratio. Now, however, they've dropped significantly in price -- I got an 1 TB 860 Samsung around $110. If you're just an average/somewhat more than casual gamer who doesn't download shitloads of AAA stuff (and can delete shit he's not actively playing) then you're good-to-go with only one SSD. If you're into media storage of music, videos, whatever. Yeah, I guess you would need multiple drives.
How dare you, sir. A Valley WIthout Wind will remain installed on the off chance I beat everything else in my backlog and am bored enough to boot it up, thank you.
How long does it take your PCs to boot? with several drives and attachments
It's bugging me that my new build takes 20-24 seconds to startup due to some modern hardware pieces like the Asus bios and overclocking. My old '12 build boots in about 13 seconds on just a crappy Inland 250gb SATA SSD
Welcome to the variable world of motherboards where each manufacturer can and does do weird shit with their mobos/bioses. Sort of like win8 and 10 with their "fastboot" mode which is just a form of sleep/hibernation but it boots faster they say!
Gigabyte appears to have put out motherboards from 2011-2013, Intel or AMD based that ended up hating newer AMD video cards from 2014 onward. All kinds of weird random blue screen crashes due to that. Fix it or even admit it is a thing? Ha, ha, ha.
Ugh, the last storm we had messed with the power all night and now my PC doesn't shut down, and if I force it to shut down it doesn't want to start back up. I'm going to have to just start replacing parts and hope.
Finished Metro Exodus last night and my opinion didn't change much. Probably a solid "B" game, rating a little higher if you have particular fondness for the Metro franchise and/or Stalker. No regrets about getting or playing it. I put about 30 hours into it and got 65-70% of the achievements. People hunting for every collectable and achievement will take longer. I also played at default difficulty and had few hang-ups in progressing.
The game has five major phases: two 'open world' lite, two linear tunnel crawlers and one exterior that's still pretty linear. Story is serviceable; you're out looking for a new place to live and naturally each spot has shit going down that pushes you to trying the next spot. Atmosphere is very well done and there's tons of NPC dialogue to eavesdrop on and letters and stuff if that's your jam. Guns feel distinctive and good although the shooting mechanics aren't as refined as other games (namely no cover or lean). Stealth felt good to me. The game uses light well including parts where creeping in the dark is your best option and other times where the light is needed to keep the creepy-crawlies at bay. Weirdly, they leave you unvoiced which means you spend a lot of time mutely standing around while people spout exposition at you. For the amount of NPC chatter they weren't suffering for voice actors so this was a conscious decision but I don't know if it was a great one. I think some better shooting mechanics and a voiced protagonist would have bumped it up a grade.
Welcome to the variable world of motherboards where each manufacturer can and does do weird shit with their mobos/bioses. Sort of like win8 and 10 with their "fastboot" mode which is just a form of sleep/hibernation but it boots faster they say!
Gigabyte appears to have put out motherboards from 2011-2013, Intel or AMD based that ended up hating newer AMD video cards from 2014 onward. All kinds of weird random blue screen crashes due to that. Fix it or even admit it is a thing? Ha, ha, ha.
Is that what was happening?!? Goddamn I thought my comp was messed up since I was getting weird blue screens and startup problems. I had an AMD card from 2014 to now with a gigabyte board. I recently switched to a Asus mobo and ryzen with my old rx480 and everything runs like butter now.
I'm still not done with Far Cry: New Dawn. 15 hours in. Ubi says I have 33% of the story done. I haven't been doing the story. I discovered the Expeditions and spent most of my time doing those. They are special off-map missions where you get dropped off via helicopter, have to find a package to steal, and then meet back up with the helicopter to escape. You can do them at the 1, 2, 3 star level and they are pretty fun. I ran through all 7 of them at each level. You can choose different ways to try to get the package, stealth or guns blazing, but after the package is in your hands it will set off the GPS within like 30 seconds so at the end you have no choice but to defend yourself as it takes the helicopter 2 minutes to pick you up. This, along with being able to reset and replay the Outposts at different difficulties is where New Dawn really shines. I'll finish the story soon since I only have 5 outposts left, but I've been busy/happy with this other stuff so the story is really secondary.
Edit:
Also, looks like Newegg has been stalking MysterD:
Well since we are talking hard drive space I'll go ahead and toss this out there... I recently got a second SSD so I decided it would just be easier to mount them in the same bay. Its metal, very solidly built as in I think it will last me for the rest of my life, and installing both SSD was beyond simple. No screws needed for locking them into their individual bay.
Obviously, if you have a smaller case its may not be that great of an idea but I have a huge tower because its just easier with large hands.
I'm still not done with Far Cry: New Dawn. 15 hours in. Ubi says I have 33% of the story done. I haven't been doing the story. I discovered the Expeditions and spent most of my time doing those. They are special off-map missions where you get dropped off via helicopter, have to find a package to steal, and then meet back up with the helicopter to escape. You can do them at the 1, 2, 3 star level and they are pretty fun. I ran through all 7 of them at each level. You can choose different ways to try to get the package, stealth or guns blazing, but after the package is in your hands it will set off the GPS within like 30 seconds so at the end you have no choice but to defend yourself as it takes the helicopter 2 minutes to pick you up. This, along with being able to reset and replay the Outposts at different difficulties is where New Dawn really shines. I'll finish the story soon since I only have 5 outposts left, but I've been busy/happy with this other stuff so the story is really secondary.
Edit:
Also, looks like Newegg has been stalking MysterD:
Well since we are talking hard drive space I'll go ahead and toss this out there... I recently got a second SSD so I decided it would just be easier to mount them in the same bay.
A UPS is an absolute must here with the constant brownouts, flickering, and outages. Power went out again yesterday evening and there's still no estimate on when it will be back on. I believe this is the 5th outage so far in 2019.
Finished Metro Exodus last night and my opinion didn't change much. Probably a solid "B" game, rating a little higher if you have particular fondness for the Metro franchise and/or Stalker. No regrets about getting or playing it. I put about 30 hours into it and got 65-70% of the achievements. People hunting for every collectable and achievement will take longer. I also played at default difficulty and had few hang-ups in progressing.
The game has five major phases: two 'open world' lite, two linear tunnel crawlers and one exterior that's still pretty linear. Story is serviceable; you're out looking for a new place to live and naturally each spot has shit going down that pushes you to trying the next spot. Atmosphere is very well done and there's tons of NPC dialogue to eavesdrop on and letters and stuff if that's your jam. Guns feel distinctive and good although the shooting mechanics aren't as refined as other games (namely no cover or lean). Stealth felt good to me. The game uses light well including parts where creeping in the dark is your best option and other times where the light is needed to keep the creepy-crawlies at bay. Weirdly, they leave you unvoiced which means you spend a lot of time mutely standing around while people spout exposition at you. For the amount of NPC chatter they weren't suffering for voice actors so this was a conscious decision but I don't know if it was a great one. I think some better shooting mechanics and a voiced protagonist would have bumped it up a grade.
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