Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: 230G on November 26, 2018, 10:00:42 PM
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I've been running the same computer now for 7+ years and am ready to build or buy another one. It will be used for normal computer "stuff", Word processing (MS Word), balancing the checkbook (MS Excel), etc., but I'd like to optimize it for AH3.
My current system has a fairly new NVIDIA GeFORCE GTX 1050ti. If memory serves it has the PCI-2 (?) interface...or whatever they used 7 years ago.
Knowing how expensive video cards are, would it be worth building my system around this graphics card and maybe the 8Gb of memory I already have or should I start from scratch? I've had absolutely no problems with my Windows 7 operating system, should I stick with it or move up to Windows 10? I'd appreciate recommendations for a tower, power supply, motherboard, processor, hard drive, etc.
My budget is <$1000...preferably in the $700-$800 range.
Thanks!
35 Whelen
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I'm happy with 8GB Ram, I5-7600K, 650 Watt PSU, & 3GB GTX 1060. The newer vid cards do not seem to draw much power. My 1060 calls for a 400 Watt PSU. My system runs AH3 fine in VR on an Oculus Rift. I was mostly happy running a 1440p monitor on this system with an i3 6100 cpu, prior to upgrading to my i5 7600K cpu. If I recall correctly Brooke is happy running AH3 on a 1050. In short, I think you should be able to build a AH3 capable system on far less than $1,000, especially using some of your current parts. A big determinant of how much processing power you will need will be how high much resolution and refresh rate your will want in your monitor.
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If you're happy with the AH3 performance of the GTX 1050Ti, building around it is a good choice. The PCI-e version is mostly irrelevant as they're both ways compatible and in any case the 1050Ti is of the latest version.
Your RAM sticks may not be compatible with new motherboards, they use DDR4 nowadays and yours are most likely DDR3.
The basic rules of thumb for a good basic AH3 rig run on a 1080p 60 Hz monitor are as follows:
- Intel i5 @ 3 GHz or faster
- 8 GB RAM
- GTX 1050 or faster
- a reliable power supply, 500 - 750 W
Of course the AMD equivalents apply as well, but I'm not familiar with them.
If your current rig has 8 GB of RAM and a dual/quad core CPU @ 3 GHz+ you won't notice any difference in game speed unless your current system is full of crap slowing the performance.
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OK, I'm getting some idea.
My current processor is a Core2 Duo E8400 @ 3.00Ghz 2.67Ghz (Socket 7 as I recall), RAM is DDR3 @ 8 GB, monitor is an old Acer America AL2223Wd.
The video card is the older PCI Express. Can I still get an up to date MB with a PCI Express slot that will use a fast processor?
Seems like I have a 600W power supply, but I wouldn't mind upgrading it.
The current system is definitely lacking in performance. I have quite a few of the eye candy features turned off and I'd like to not have to worry about that.
Thanks.
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You can use your video card and your power supply on whatever you choose. They should be both ways compatible. Based on Nvidia's site the video card supports natively PCIe 3.0 which is still the mainstream and won't cause a bottleneck in the foreseeable future.
The E8400 is basically sufficient for AH, it should have enough of what it takes to give the 1050Ti something to chew, but there's benefits in getting a quad core. In theory Windows should use the extra cores for background tasks, leaving two or three cores for AH only which should make the overall performance more fluid. New motherboards, processors and memory also have wider buses which allow for better performance even though the clock rates haven't improved that much.
Some more basic rules: - There's nine generations of Intel i#-#### processors so far, the main difference between them being power consumption. Thus a 7th gen @ 3.5 GHz is as powerful as a 9th gen one of the same speed.
- There's three variations of the i# CPU's: i3, i5 and i7. i3 is much like your Core2Duo, i5 is cost effective for gamers and i7 is for high end multimedia like video editing. Very roughly.
- The generation of Intel i# processors is indicated by the first digit in the ####
- The i#-####K processors allow overclocking
- For overclocking you'd also need a suitable motherboard, not all chipsets allow it. If you're not going to, it's possible to save some money with a non-oc-able system.
- You basically can't see any difference with systems that have less than 20% difference in power. Try to find a balance between price and performance. Saving a tenner in a $300 CPU may not be worth it if you can get the flagship instead of something you'd be thinking as a bottleneck. Paying double the price for a 5% improvement is the other end of that line.
- Same applies for motherboards. "Gamer", "Pro" etc. marketing phrases don't necessarily add any oomph unless you really get your kicks from fancy lights and colours. If the bus speeds match there's no difference in performance.
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Posted this in another thread 10 days ago:
Prices from Newegg:
Ryzen 5 2600 boxed= 160$
Asrock B450M motherboard = 60$
GSkill Aegis 3000 RAM 2x8 = 125$
RX580 8G = 200$ (20$ less for RX570 8G)
Seasonic Focus Gold 450W = 60$
Crucial BX500 480GB SSD = 80$
That's about 700$ (+ Taxes) for the main/core components. + case and OS if not on hand
One could save 60$ by using just 2x4 or 1x8 RAM or further 20$ by going down to RX570 4G, there may be some good 400W PSU for 40-45$ available but couldn't find them at Newegg
take away the rx580 you won't need and you are at 500$ + taxes.
please specify the brand and model of you current power supply, 600W says nothing about its quality.
For speeding up older systems its essential to get a 250-500GB SSD for use as main (system) drive
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Denniss, in all friendliness "essential" isn't the word I'd use for an SSD. Agreed, they're fast but as the OP said, he's going to use the computer for AH, Word and Excel, neither of which gains any benefit of an SSD other than that they load faster. On my HDD it takes a full 3 seconds for the first menu of AH to load after clicking the icon, Word2003 took only 2 sec. Reducing numbers like that doesn't make an SSD essential, IMHO.
@230G, I just noticed your question about the OS. Windows 7 will be supported until Jan 2020, a little over a year. As you're going to abandon the old system and salvage some parts from it, you can install either 7 or 10 using the license code of your current system without any extra cost. The license is for one single computer so there shouldn't be any issues. The installing media for 10 is downloadable from Microsoft.
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SSD's are not essential. They are optional. For games, money put towards a better video card would be a better investment.
For Aces High III, there is virtually no benefit to using an SSD, unless your system is overloaded with background processes which are constantly hitting the storage device.
It is the expensive, lazy way to correct performance issues which can be alleviated with a little time invested in eliminating the causes of performance issues.
The only time an SSD is beneficial, in a properly configured system, is the first time something needs to be loaded, after a fresh power up.
Example:
The first time I load Aces High III. on my very slow 2.33Ghz E6550 Intel dual core system with 4GB of system RAM running Windows 7 Pro 64 bit takes 13 seconds to get to the main menu.
The second time I load it, it only takes 4 seconds.
After either load, there is little, to no benefit of having an SSD in a properly configured system. The only time saved will be the first load. The second load does not hit the storage device enough to make any difference.
Now, after logging into the game and selecting an arena.
The first time takes 11 seconds to get to the tower. The second time takes 7 seconds to get to the tower. Again, the only time you will save will be the first time as the second load is taking it from the Windows cache, which will reside in memory if there is room.
Note that my minimum 4GB system RAM still had the game loaded in the Windows memory cache, but my systems are properly configured and that makes all the difference. Nothing magical about it. Anyone can do it. It just takes some time.
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WOW! All this advice is very much appreciated!
Deniss- my current power supply is a Rosewill Green Series 700W
I will be replacing the hard drive for sure. My hard drive doesn't have to be enormous because I keep a separate drive for storing files, pics, videos, etc. So my main HD only runs programs. To that end, suggestions?
Sounds like I need to get a MB that will work with my existing graphics card and if I'm understanding correctly, an Intel Quad Core would be a good idea? Maybe a 3.2Ghz i5? I don't care at all about overclocking.
Basically, if my power supply and video card are OK, it sounds like I need a MB, processor and HD....and possibly a new tower though not necessary.
Thanks again for all the good info.
35Whelen
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If the information I've found is correct, Rosewill Green series is built by ATNG which means it's not the greatest on earth. For the system you're planning a 500W Seasonic would be powerful enough and provide good quality.
Something like i5-7500 or 7600 with a silent cooler like Arctic Freezer 12, a Gigabyte GA-Z270P-D3 for mobo and 2x4 GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666 and a Seagate ST1000DM010 (yes, it's 1 TB but they're the cheapest) should be less than $450. Put $50 more for a SeaSonic SSR-550FM and pack them into your old case.
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Rosewill is not the most reliable power supply. When they fail, they do so pretty spectacularly. There are some pretty cheap components in there.
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Hmmm.....I just noticed that the Intel Core i5-7500 Kaby Lake works ONLY with Windows 10. That changes things a bit....
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Oh, you pretty much have to go with Windows 10 with a new system. Microsoft/Intel made the arbitrary decision to stop supporting Windows 7/8/8.1 with new hardware.
I think the last generation of CPU you can get for Windows 7 is the Intel Skylake CPU's. i7-6700 series, i5-6400, i5-6500, i5-6600, i3-6100, i3-6300, Pentium G4400, Pentium G4500, and the Celeron G3900 series.
Those would be the newest Intel CPU's Windows 7/8/8.1 would support. Older ones would also work.
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Oh, you pretty much have to go with Windows 10 with a new system. Microsoft/Intel made the arbitrary decision to stop supporting Windows 7/8/8.1 with new hardware.
I think the last generation of CPU you can get for Windows 7 is the Intel Skylake CPU's. i7-6700 series, i5-6400, i5-6500, i5-6600, i3-6100, i3-6300, Pentium G4400, Pentium G4500, and the Celeron G3900 series.
Those would be the newest Intel CPU's Windows 7/8/8.1 would support. Older ones would also work.
As was mentioned a bit ago-
@230G, I just noticed your question about the OS. Windows 7 will be supported until Jan 2020, a little over a year. As you're going to abandon the old system and salvage some parts from it, you can install either 7 or 10 using the license code of your current system without any extra cost. The license is for one single computer so there shouldn't be any issues. The installing media for 10 is downloadable from Microsoft.
I guess I naively thought I could use my Windows 7 install disc, then upgrade to Windows 10. That doesn't appear to be the case and it looks like I may have to spring for the Windows 10 OS.
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As was mentioned a bit ago-
I guess I naively thought I could use my Windows 7 install disc, then upgrade to Windows 10. That doesn't appear to be the case and it looks like I may have to spring for the Windows 10 OS.
As I said earlier, you can use your existing Windows 7 license to install Windows 10. Just download it from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10) and follow the instructions for "Using the tool to create installation media---on a different PC."
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Believe me, SSDs are essential for any computer. Not primarily to speed up games but overall experience like system boot, update install and general responsiveness. Difference is epecially noticable on systems where the pagefile is in use as the SSD is wayyyy faster than a HDD due to lack of moving/spining mechanical components.
On Win7/8.1 a 120GB SSD is more or less sufficient as system drive, double that for Win10.
With the SSD prices dropping a lot this year many opt for 500GB or more as system drive (+ their favorite games).
HDDs are still usable for data storage due to their cheap price but if you have games with thousands of small files you want to have those on a SSD for faster load.
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There is nothing that requires an SSD to run. Nothing. That makes it optional.
Not saying it is a bad thing, but to say they are required, or essential is simply not true. That is like saying an NVidia 2080Ti is essential/required.
What you consider a big deal in performance gains is not what someone else might consider a big deal. If you play games and are on budget, then an SSD should be the last option in the list of things to get for that system. Spending more on a video card will get you more for game play.
I m really not trying to get in your face about this, but when you say things like you just said, and some inexperienced person comes along and reads it, then it could lead them to spend money on hardware they would be better off spending on a better video card, for example.
SSD's, like many higher end hardware devices, are a nice option. If you want faster boots, then that is one way to go to get there. If you want those initial load times for an application to be faster, then that is a way to get to there.
As far as overall responsiveness goes, if an SSD is making a difference in that, then the system is poorly configured. Very poorly. The thing about properly configuring a system is this; it only takes some time to do. No more cost than that.
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By the way, I posted my various load times for Aces High III. It would be nice to hear from others what their load times look like.
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Believe me, SSDs are essential for any computer. Not primarily to speed up games but overall experience like system boot, update install and general responsiveness. Difference is epecially noticable on systems where the pagefile is in use as the SSD is wayyyy faster than a HDD due to lack of moving/spining mechanical components.
On Win7/8.1 a 120GB SSD is more or less sufficient as system drive, double that for Win10.
With the SSD prices dropping a lot this year many opt for 500GB or more as system drive (+ their favorite games).
HDDs are still usable for data storage due to their cheap price but if you have games with thousands of small files you want to have those on a SSD for faster load.
I was waiting to see if Skuzzy noticed/caught this in Denniss' post, quoted above....
with regard to SSDs being used as the main OS drive as well as running AH3 game on the same drive...
their have been known problems regarding SSD drives being used as the main OS drive as well as running AH( AH2, AH3 etc ) from the SSD when it comes to doing MS windows updates and doing Aces High patch updates....to where the SSD could possibly be in cache mode or trash cleaning mode, etc while a person is not aware of it and begins to do their MS windows updates or do their Aces High patch update or worse yet, they start to update their Aces High Version from something like Example: Aces High III Version 3.03 Patch 19 to Aces High III Version 3.04 Patch 3 ....... and finds themselves with a completely FUBAR computer........
need to go make Supper for Dad..... I'll let Skuzzy break it down for y'all,if people have questions....
TC
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TC, that was some interesting reading! How can you tell if the SSD is in cache mode or trash cleaning mode? I've recently had some hard times trying to get a brand new SSD equipped PC to install updates, both for the Store Apps and Windows itself. No damage done so far, but the installing times have varied from half an hour to overnight for a version update. It's kinda funny, new laptops have been manufactured only a couple of months before selling, yet their Windows usually is two or three versions behind.
Another thing I've noticed about SSD's is that since they're fast they're widely used in cheap systems to mask the lack of performance. Anyone knowing anything about computers could immediately tell that a ~1GB processor, 4 GB RAM and a 32 or even 64 GB SSD is far from capable to everyday usage despite being "lightweight and stylish" as a recent ad said. What hasn't been advertised is that the semi-annual version updates have been growing almost exponentially. The latest version update requires at least 20 GB of free disk space, rather 25 or even 30. A year ago 6 GB was sufficient and back then it could be expanded with a memory stick, a feature that has recently been abandoned. In that perspective I fear that 128 GB won't be large enough as a system disk in only a couple of years.
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For example, running the game off an SSD could induce stutters in the game if you have skins downloading in the background.
The weakness of an SSD comes to when a file needs to be updated or even changing the name of a file. On an HDD updates or name changes are much faster as HDD's can overwrite information.
When a skin comes down from the server, it is stored as a temporary file until the file can be verified. The OS actions for this operation are about the same for either the SSD or HDD. The difference comes when it is time to rename the file to its new name and put it in the skins folder.
SSD's cannot update information of a file. A name change on an HDD is a very fast operation as it can change data stored on the disk. An SSD has to read the original file into a temporary system RAM location. Erase the original, then write the entire file again, to its new name and location. With the SSD, the Windows directory update requires the filesystem data to be read into memory, then changed, then erase the original and write the new. An HDD just overwrites the original data with the new. This takes a lot longer than an HDD does. It could stall the game.
For those of you who are running Aces High III on your SSD, I strongly recommend disabling skin downloads in the hangar.
There are also potential problems with patches where data can get corrupted causing a complete game installation to be done.
The game also does a fair number of file updates while playing. Most of these will happen in the SSD RAM drive in system RAM and Windows will also cache those writes as well, but that can also cause some issues when the cache gets flushed and suddenly you have a long pause in the game. File updates are pretty ugly with an SSD and there is no way around that.
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An SSD has to read the original file into a temporary system RAM location. Erase the original, then write the entire file again, to its new name and location. With the SSD, the Windows directory update requires the filesystem data to be read into memory, then changed, then erase the original and write the new.
That sounds like flashing the BIOS which has always been somewhat of a hazardous operation!
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Go to PCPartPicker.com and put together something you like. Save it and post a link here. Many people can help you fine tune it for ah
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For example, running the game off an SSD could induce stutters in the game if you have skins downloading in the background.
The weakness of an SSD comes to when a file needs to be updated or even changing the name of a file. On an HDD updates or name changes are much faster as HDD's can overwrite information.
When a skin comes down from the server, it is stored as a temporary file until the file can be verified. The OS actions for this operation are about the same for either the SSD or HDD. The difference comes when it is time to rename the file to its new name and put it in the skins folder.
SSD's cannot update information of a file. A name change on an HDD is a very fast operation as it can change data stored on the disk. An SSD has to read the original file into a temporary system RAM location. Erase the original, then write the entire file again, to its new name and location. With the SSD, the Windows directory update requires the filesystem data to be read into memory, then changed, then erase the original and write the new. An HDD just overwrites the original data with the new. This takes a lot longer than an HDD does. It could stall the game.
For those of you who are running Aces High III on your SSD, I strongly recommend disabling skin downloads in the hangar.
There are also potential problems with patches where data can get corrupted causing a complete game installation to be done.
The game also does a fair number of file updates while playing. Most of these will happen in the SSD RAM drive in system RAM and Windows will also cache those writes as well, but that can also cause some issues when the cache gets flushed and suddenly you have a long pause in the game. File updates are pretty ugly with an SSD and there is no way around that.
Hhhmmmm
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This could be another reason besides graphics driver-generated TDR's (it makes the most sense of what I've been seeing\capturing) as to why I'm seeing the random game freezes ingame as this will be the same regardless of where the game files are loaded.....whether on the same SSD as the OS is installed on or on a separate SSD from the OS-installed SSD (as I have all currently configured in Team Red.....1 NVMe M.2 SSD for OS, drivers and monitoring softwares, 1 small SATA III SSD for pagefile duty only and 1 large SATA III SSD for programs, Windows Libraries, storage) as OS would be the initiator when it decides to flush the cache of unused\stale data in system mem regardless of whether or not there resides sufficient free addressable system mem to retain it, the write process would be the same due to using SSD's and there won't be any .dmp file dumps generated due to this occurring as well due to normal OS operation to pause game momentarily to perform this work to refresh the cache...
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I have been using my listed SSD configuration for at least the last 2 1\2 yrs so this could very well be the culprit of the screen pause issue on my end. I had ran Win Performance Monitor in background configured to check for writeouts from system mem to virtual mem (pagefile) while playing AHIII for 2+ hrs back in the day and found that there were 0% writebacks recorded there so I knew that no writes to pagefile were occurring but cache dumps are a different process that I didn't consider to be separate from paging
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Can test this out by swapping in a platter HDD then clone my separate SDD that contains the game files to this HDD then run the game to see if the random freezes cease due to the faster write backs to the HDD vs SSD which should speed up the cache dumps thus reduce the time needed to complete them which should show up...
Gonna be a while though as I will need to pick up a 2.5" SATA III HDD to use in my FD Meshify C case (have removed the 3.5" HDD cage for 120mm case fan mount in it's place to provide airflow in back side of case to cool SSD's and back side of exposed mobo at CPU socket)...
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Will post results when done.
:salute
Thanks for posting this.
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Go to PCPartPicker.com and put together something you like. Save it and post a link here. Many people can help you fine tune it for ah
OK, based on advice here and looking at some builds in MAXIMUMPC magazine, here's what I've decided on, and in fact already ordered, for the new build-
Rosewill Blackbone - mid tower - ATX Case
CORSAIR RMx Series RM550X 550W 80 PLUS GOLD Power Supply
MSI Z370 TOMAHAWK LGA 1151 Motherboard
Intel Core i5-7600 Kaby Lake Quad-Core 3.5 GHz LGA 1151 Processor
WD Blue 1TB Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache
ADATA XPG Gammix D10 2666MHz (PC4 21300) 16G (2 x 8GB) RAM
NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti 4GB Graphics card- out of my existing system
I was on the fence about the processor i5-7600 3.5 Ghz vs. i5-8500 3.0 Ghz, but ultimately decided to pay $5 more for the faster processor.
Now I just hope all this stuff will work together!
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Looks nice at first glance.
However, and this is what worries me, MSI says that they support 8th and 9th generation Core processors, plus Pentium Gold and Celeron in the lower price range. I can't open their list of supported CPU's (https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/Z370-TOMAHAWK#support-cpu) but from other sources the information is similar. Check, double check, triple check that before unpacking!
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Looks nice at first glance.
However, and this is what worries me, MSI says that they support 8th and 9th generation Core processors, plus Pentium Gold and Celeron in the lower price range. I can't open their list of supported CPU's (https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/Z370-TOMAHAWK#support-cpu) but from other sources the information is similar. Check, double check, triple check that before unpacking!
I can't open the page either, but I dug a little deeper and I think you are correct, maybe. MAXIMUM PC did some builds and used this MB and an i5-8400 processor but I don't know how that applies to the i5-7600. Any ideas?
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The "thousands" in Intel i# processors tell the generation, so i5-7600 is of the 7th gen and i5-8400 is of the 8th gen.
Did you have the PcPartpicker compatibility filter on when compiling the build? It won't allow that combination. Choosing the i5-7600 doesn't show the motherboard, starting the build with the Z370 mobo doesn't show the 7600.
Hard facts here: https://ark.intel.com/products/125903/Intel-Z370-Chipset (https://ark.intel.com/products/125903/Intel-Z370-Chipset)/Compatible Products. Sorry, no 7600 on that list. You'll have to either change the motherboard or the CPU.
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7k series CPU does not work in Z370 motherboard + 4 core is a really bad choice nowadays
why such a small HDD, no SSD ?
A far better choice would be a Ryzen 5 2600/2600X (6 core with 12 threads) on a good B450 motherboard with 16 GB of 3000 RAM
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The "thousands" in Intel i# processors tell the generation, so i5-7600 is of the 7th gen and i5-8400 is of the 8th gen.
Did you have the PcPartpicker compatibility filter on when compiling the build? It won't allow that combination. Choosing the i5-7600 doesn't show the motherboard, starting the build with the Z370 mobo doesn't show the 7600.
Hard facts here: https://ark.intel.com/products/125903/Intel-Z370-Chipset (https://ark.intel.com/products/125903/Intel-Z370-Chipset)/Compatible Products. Sorry, no 7600 on that list. You'll have to either change the motherboard or the CPU.
Yep....I figured that out too late! I've decided to keep the motherboard and get a new processor.
7k series CPU does not work in Z370 motherboard + 4 core is a really bad choice nowadays
why such a small HDD, no SSD ?
A far better choice would be a Ryzen 5 2600/2600X (6 core with 12 threads) on a good B450 motherboard with 16 GB of 3000 RAM
Yep, I blew it on the processor, but I'll return it and already have an i5-8500 (6 core) on the way, and for less money than the i5-7600.
Regarding the hard drives, I use a seperate 500 Gb drive for storage (pictures, videos, music, documents, et al) so my main drive doesn't need to be large at all. Additionally, I have an 500 Gb external HDD for backup that's not even close to full. I may in the future consider an SD for backup. I figure Skuzzy probably knows what works best for his stuff, and chose to follow his advice regarding HDD vs SSD.
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if you have ever use a SSD as system drive you won't ever want to go back to a HDD as system drive.