Prebuilt PCs

[Shuffler]

Funny thing in electronics, 6 months is a lifetime.

[edge12674]

Funny thing in electronics, 6 months is a lifetime.

Agreed.  When I shop for electronics I have a 6 month window.  If something is not due to come out within the next 6 months then I don't consider it when purchasing.  I also look for the "big" improvements.  The small improvements happen pretty much continuously.

[AKIron]

You want to look at need also. If you plan to do high res VR you can't buy too much horsepower. If not VR then you won't see much difference between a $2K system and a $3K system.

[Maverick]

Every time I plan on buying a new PC I don't look for the absolute "bleeding edge". I look for the tech level that has been out for about a year or so. They aren't that far back in performance, and there has been time to correct any issues in chip design / board reliability. For my needs that has been more than enough performance for what I do and the cost is always lower than the hottest newest gizmo.

[icepac]

Yep….. me too.   

Same goes for software.

[Grayeagle]

Well.. I have bought PC's and built my own over the years. Latest iteration is an ASUS laptop from 4yrs ago..a TUF F15 or some such that runs a 3070 RTX card. I have upgraded it to 40g Ram and 1Tb SSD along the way. It pretty much rocks anything I play, even MSFS. Any time I want to peek at what the bleeding edge is, I visit Falcon Northwest's site. They do gaming PC's that use best of the best.. and allow options to build 'em to suit. The laptop sits on a small 'desk' thingy that I rest on a pillow on my chest. The monitor is 16" or so from my eyes and runs at 240hz. I useda upgrade every 4yrs as a rule.. so I am 'due' .. but this laptop still rocks what I play -Just sayin (tm Pasha)

[Animl-AW]

Well.. I have bought PC's and built my own over the years. Latest iteration is an ASUS laptop from 4yrs ago..a TUF F15 or some such that runs a 3070 RTX card. I have upgraded it to 40g Ram and 1Tb SSD along the way. It pretty much rocks anything I play, even MSFS. Any time I want to peek at what the bleeding edge is, I visit Falcon Northwest's site. They do gaming PC's that use best of the best.. and allow options to build 'em to suit. The laptop sits on a small 'desk' thingy that I rest on a pillow on my chest. The monitor is 16" or so from my eyes and runs at 240hz. I useda upgrade every 4yrs as a rule.. so I am 'due' .. but this laptop still rocks what I play -Just sayin (tm Pasha)

GE - A name I’m always glad to see.

I hope all is well

[Animl-AW]

Every time I plan on buying a new PC I don't look for the absolute "bleeding edge". I look for the tech level that has been out for about a year or so. They aren't that far back in performance, and there has been time to correct any issues in chip design / board reliability. For my needs that has been more than enough performance for what I do and the cost is always lower than the hottest newest gizmo.

Yep, tried and tested good reputation gear.
I’m an Intel - Nvidia fan.
However, if I have to overclock it, I won’t waste my time with it
It will waste my time soon enough.

[Volron]

What do y'all think about buying prebuilt PCs?  I'm in the market for an upgrade, and I have never built a PC before.  So the pros (for me) would be it's already assembled, AND I wouldn't have to drop the cash all at once.  I don't really have anyone close that I trust to help build a PC either, so all of my help would come from online.  Just picking your brains and seeking advice!

<S>

Found it:

https://www.buildredux.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjwgdayBhBQEiwAXhMxtsNBI6OBWhWFI9CuGhYIVz6u0g7zIzVo2Gfui8zPxBqM6ao15HBBABoCRK0QAvD_BwE

[TryHard]

I run this game and many other games just fine on 8+ year old hardware on 1080p with all settings maxed out, I never drop below 60 FPS. I don't know where this sentiment comes from in the PC gaming world where people think if a system is 2 years old its out dated.

CPU: Intel i5 7600k overclocked to 4.8 Ghz air cooled
GPU: Nvidia gtx 1060 6gb
RAM: 8gb DDR4 3200mhz (16GB is my next upgrade, for other games aces high will run on 4 gigs lol)

If you plan to do VR you need gtx 1080ti or better and really that's it, aces high is not a very demanding game even in VR.
In the future I may upgrade my system by buying a 10 year old processor off Ebay for 50$ (i7 6700k im looking at you) but that is more so to help with modern AAA games which require a lot of CPU threads.

[Bizman]

TryHard, the math is failing on you. The i5 7600k was launched early 2017 which was 7 years ago plus some months. And the 17 6700k you're looking at was released over a year earlier (q3/15) which makes 8 years instead of 10.

I'm not against using older hardware, on the contrary. But I'm a bit concerned when it comes to unsupported software. For longevity I would rather look at Intel CPU's of the 8000 series and newer as they are supported by Win11 and can be upgraded for free when support for Win10 ends in Oct. 2025. That's only 1½ years from now. Win11 will most likely be supported until 2031 or longer, counting a decade from the release.

[AKIron]

I wouldn't play DCS with VR with that hardware but for non VR it would handle medium settings well enough. A few years ago I was using a GTX 1080 and upgraded from a 6700K CPU to a 9700K and my frame rate in DCS almost doubled. Same GPU. Surprised me.

[TryHard]

TryHard, the math is failing on you. The i5 7600k was launched early 2017 which was 7 years ago plus some months. And the 17 6700k you're looking at was released over a year earlier (q3/15) which makes 8 years instead of 10.

I'm not against using older hardware, on the contrary. But I'm a bit concerned when it comes to unsupported software. For longevity I would rather look at Intel CPU's of the 8000 series and newer as they are supported by Win11 and can be upgraded for free when support for Win10 ends in Oct. 2025. That's only 1½ years from now. Win11 will most likely be supported until 2031 or longer, counting a decade from the release.

I don't have the dates written down anywhere I just roughly remember when I built this system... anyways yeah 8 years old not 10 got it.

I'd rather not have to reinstall windows and buy DDR5 memory and more than likely upgrade cooling with the higher TDP of modern CPUs but I will have to if i want to upgrade to anything past gen 7 intel with a z270 chipset. I would upgrade to a 7700k but given the fact the 6700k is the EXACT same processor with a slightly slowly clock speed (which means nothing if you can overclock) but also about 100$ cheaper.

Only game she struggles with on higher render distances is Arma 3 with a boat load of mods and Helldivers 2 which is where the 4 extra threads would really help out.


Any ways the whole point of that post was to address this as BS:
 

Funny thing in electronics, 6 months is a lifetime.

I reckon my system has lasted me *checks math* 14 LIFETIMES! and still plays any game with exception of two fully maxed out on 1080p 60 fps.

[hazmatt]

I'm writing my experiences here relating to AH3 performance to hopefully give a reference of some hardware I've used over the years.

If you are running 1080P, you can get by with a really low spec computer, however, when you get into VR stuff I think you need at least a 1070, even thought I was able to run it on an R9 380 for a while.

I have run AH3 at 1080P on a GT 1030 with a 3470 without issues at 60FPS.

In my experience I ran ran AH3 on a 3470 with an R9 380 for many years.(I had no problems with this one in 1080P with a decent level of detail) I as actually running this when I got my Rift-S and it was playable but not with much detail and big fields with puffy ack and stuff would kill the frame rate.
 
I upgraded to a 4770 and a 1070 which handled the VR much better. (This one would run at high detail levels in 1080P too)

Next upgrade was a 12100 and a 1080TI. This allowed me to run my detail in VR at 1.5.

I upgraded the 1080TI to a 4070 Super and didn't see much of a change over the 1080TI in AH3. I did see improvements in other games.

I have a 12700 but I haven't put it into the box yet. I'm hoping that the 12700 with the 4070 Super will last me for a few years.

[Bizman]

I don't have the dates written down anywhere I just roughly remember when I built this system... anyways yeah 8 years old not 10 got it.

No offense intended, also sometimes I forget that not everyone has given a thought for a simple rule of remembering the Intel Core i# generations (applies to Android versions as well): Simply add 10 to the build number to get the year of launch. Or distract 10 from the year to get the build number of that era. Unfortunately I haven't figured out similar "rules" for Ryzens or any of the GPUs, or the cheaper CPU models.

Regarding the lifetime of electronics, 6 months is a lifetime. Same with cars, it's old right when you drive it out of the store. But that isn't synonymous to "obsolete". The usability depends on many other variables than just the latest quirk - a perfect example of that is how processors are made: They are "baked" as a disk of some 1½ ft in diameter, the individual chips being the size of a fingernail or so. And all chips are identical by design, for Intel that means that they only make i9-14900KS CPUs! However, the closer to the edge the chip is from, the less perfect it is. But as long as parts of a chip work, it can be used for tasks with reduced performance. They simply disable the non-working sections. Thus most of use CPUs that are second-rate, or third or fourth or...

For longevity the best time to get a new computer would be around halfways of the expected life span of the current Windows so that the system would be compatible with the upcoming OS. Windows 10 was launched 2015 so based on history that halfway point would have been around 2020. Windows 11 can be run on systems from 2018 and up but they didn't tell that until 2021. That makes guessing a hit and miss game.