Building a gaming PC

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Has anyone here with a Pascal card (probably works with Maxwell cards as well) used the MSI Afterburner Voltage/Frequency curve to adjust their voltage and clock speeds?

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages...ner-4-3,2.html

Was able to achieve higher and more stable clock speeds with lower voltage than factory settings. So now my card runs cooler and quieter and is faster as well. A brilliant tool. :)
 
Hey guys. Laptop questions.

I wanna buy a laptop for my wife and would like your feedback on these two options I found. Both are Asus and will run Linux only (or primarily). Intended uses include recording/producing audio (Ardour, LMMS) and video editing, plus normal activities such as browsing, office work and HD video streaming. Not much gaming but running things like Tyranny/Pillars of Eternity would be a plus.

Both laptops come with 8 GB DDR4 and a 1TB HDD. The first Asus has an i5 7200U and Nvidia 940M, for only 599€. The other one is a low end gaming laptop with an i5 7300HQ (or HK?), 128 GB SSD and Nvidia 1050, for 799€.

Since games are not the main thing here I'm not sure whether the faster GPU matters much, but the SSD might. If anyone still reads this thread, what do you think?
 
Is alternate.de known for price gouging? Just a few days ago the laptops I was looking at were, as I said, 599 and 799 euros, and now all of a sudden they went up to 679 and 999! Just around the end of the month when, I suspect, most people get payed. I'll see if prices drop again by early July otherwise I'll buy my things elsewhere.

It seems there is also a 20% tax when "importing" new electronics into Germany (as part of your luggage) if they cost over 450 € or so, so buying in the US is not necessarily cheaper.
 
Gilrond-i-Virdan;n9015130 said:
I'd say avoid mobile Nvidia chips if you care about Linux.

I thought Nvidia had pretty good support. At least on the desktop Nvidia drivers always work very well.
 
AMD released Vega at last, but their first edition is a power hungry beast (requires > 850W PSU, estimated TDP - 300W), and it costs around $1000. I hope they'll make something more sensible (at the very least - half that in price / power consumption). To me, this one sounds like two GPUs combined in one.
 
Gilrond-i-Virdan;n9019150 said:
On desktop it's OK, but on laptops it's a major mess, because they use their Optimus which is a completely non standard thing. Nouveau somehow supports it well with PRIME, but Nvidia blob support for it was abysmal, at least last time I checked it.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA_Optimus

So if we can disable switching and use only the discrete GPU it should work like on a desktop, right?

Would a laptop with equivalent AMD CPU+discrete GPU work well with Linux?
 
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If you can disable Optimus, and just use one GPU, it would be OK. But if you use just Nvidia one, it will drain the battery much faster. Also, ability to do that depends on the UEFI firmware, and that varies quite a lot between manufacturers.

I think laptop with decent (modern) AMD APU (that's how they called those combined chips) should be better. But as usual, try to do some research before buying. If you can wait, Ryzen based laptops should arrive this year I think.
 
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Gilrond-i-Virdan;n9026120 said:
If you can disable Optimus, and just use one GPU, it would be OK. But if you use just Nvidia one, it will drain the battery much faster. Also, ability to do that depends on the UEFI firmware, and that varies quite a lot between manufacturers.

I think laptop with decent (modern) AMD APU (that's how they called those combined chips) should be better. But as usual, try to do some research before buying. If you can wait, Ryzen based laptops should arrive this year I think.

Good to know. I wanted to buy a laptop this month. Like I said it doesn't have to be a proper "gaming" laptop but I think not having a real GPU is serious limitation.

Are AMD APU's comparable to Intel's integrated graphics?
 
Oh by the way, separate post. I was browsing Newegg looking for modern motherboards and on the Asus Z270 line I saw this warning:

WARNING: Products with exposed solder may contain lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects and other reproductive harm. Please wash hands after handling internal components and motherboards and avoid inhalation of fumes if heating the solder. For more information, go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.

What the hell? Has this always been the case and we were never warned? Is there some kind of clean computer hardware? Does this mean the heat generated by regular computer use (eg. a hot GPU) can have seriously harmful consequences?
 
volsung;n9027730 said:
What the hell? Has this always been the case and we were never warned? Is there some kind of clean computer hardware? Does this mean the heat generated by regular computer use (eg. a hot GPU) can have seriously harmful consequences?

I noticed it recently on quite a few components. I suppose some stricter regulation now requires them to post that. And most probably it was always that way.

 
Increasing laptop prices seems to be a thing. A friend also bought a laptop and the next day it was way more expensive.

Maybe the current GPU issue is a thing. GPUs currently get more and more expensive, because people buy them for mining bitcons and other currencies. Maybe that's why some shops increase also other prices.

Beside that, for Linux I think AMD GPUs are the better choice, other than Linux I would never ever by a notebook with AMD GPU anymore.
 
M4xw0lf;n9162830 said:
Nice. What RAM did you get?


Current config:

CPU: Ryzen 7 1700X
Motherboard: ASRock X370 Taichi
RAM: G.SKILL Flare X 16 GB (2 x 8) / DDR4 3200.
GPU: same as before (Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480).

From what I've read, Ryzen benefits a lot from faster memory, and this one was recommended as one of the best compatible models. It's pricey, but I decided it's not worth having compatibility and performance issue because of RAM.

Anyway, now I switched to full AMD :D

 
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Gilrond-i-Virdan;n9162900 said:
Current config:

CPU: Ryzen 7 1700X
Motherboard: ASRock X370 Taichi
RAM: G.SKILL Flare X 16 GB (2 x 8) / DDR4 3200.
GPU: same as before (Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480).

From what I've read, Ryzen benefits a lot from faster memory, and this one was recommended as one of the best compatible models. It's pricey, but I decided it's not worth having compatibility and performance issue because of RAM.

Anyway, now I switched to full AMD :D


Good choice in RAM (and CPU, of course ^^) :)
Should I go for a Ryzen system, I'll go with a low latency DDR4-3200 kit as well.
 
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