PC enthusiasts, sanity check my new PC please

[Bleib]

How far are you people sitting from your monitors? Don't you like the monitor square within the middle of your view. This is what I prefer and don't get people that want a huge 'cliff face' of monitor in front of them at a desk, that they have to constantly move their line of vision to take in all 4 corners, it must be rather fatiguing.

More than arm-lenght. I put the text in for instance Firefox to 125-140% normal size to make it all easier to read. Too close isn't something my eyes like, and I even use f.lux to cut down on the blue light and also take down the brightness on the monitor itself.

 

[Doodski]

How far are you people sitting from your monitors? Don't you like the monitor square within the middle of your view. This is what I prefer and don't get people that want a huge 'cliff face' of monitor in front of them at a desk, that they have to constantly move their line of vision to take in all 4 corners, it must be rather fatiguing.

I sit when my application specific prescription lenses are in focus for PC work ~15 inches from the display on a 1440, 27 inch. Otherwise I am reclining and reading albeit stuff can get blurry.

 

[Berwhale]

How far are you people sitting from your monitors? Don't you like the monitor square within the middle of your view. This is what I prefer and don't get people that want a huge 'cliff face' of monitor in front of them at a desk, that they have to constantly move their line of vision to take in all 4 corners, it must be rather fatiguing.

About 80cm, but my Phillips 34" WQHD monitor is curved and is narrower than the two 24" monitors I have on my desk at work.

 

[Blumlein 88]

How far are you people sitting from your monitors? Don't you like the monitor square within the middle of your view. This is what I prefer and don't get people that want a huge 'cliff face' of monitor in front of them at a desk, that they have to constantly move their line of vision to take in all 4 corners, it must be rather fatiguing.

I sit also about arm length from a 24 inch. I don't do much serious work. However, when I've used either two monitors or one large one, it is handy when you have two or three things open transferring info between them or using one to also input stuff into another. I also do keep one monitor centered in front of me with others to the side or vertical above the main monitor. I am reminded of how confining a small screen can be when I work on my laptop. Like when I record some music using a few microphones and have the DAW open on the laptop I use for that tracking several audio tracks at once.

 

[TheBatsEar]

Being an IPS is not a problem. Local dimming is HDR's important part but your monitor does not have it. For example Cooler Master Tempest GP27Q is IPS and it's real HDR monitor with its 576 local dimming zones. Hardware Unboxed's reviews are very good to now about monitors but if life is too short for watching couple of minutes then you can use timestamps.

Spoiler

View attachment 259223View attachment 259224

First, thanks for the detail. Second, the display you pasted as an example of HDR done right was more than 700€ last time it was available. Third, you have convinced me, i'm taking an hour or so out of my busy schedule (retired) to watch these to get a good impression on what the market has to offer:

If i find something that doesn't kill my budget i might reconsider and send the bought display back unopened (will be reduced to 1080p until another display arrives, blames for that goes to you).

I think it’s a mistake to skimp on the display like this. They last a long time and don’t necessarily get replaced with a PC

That can be said about every other component. However, i think it's wise to set a budget first, then pick components, otherwise you end up with a 3500€ high end system you probably don't get much value out of.
I probably use this one for 6 years or more, like the last one and the one before that. I'll get a 4k display then, it will probably also have a cerebral interface, making old 4k displays obsolete.

HP X34 UW monitor if you can find it cheaply (I paid about 350euro). After UW everything really just feels small

400€ right now, wll look into it.

reclining

I too like to use all available positions my chair has to offer, you have to stay in constant motion once you cross over 40y to make sure blood keeps flowing.

 

[TheBatsEar]

HDR

So since HDR in almost all 1440p displays is fake, i too k it from the list of my requirements, however, my selection came to the same display. All of the tested and recommended displays from that praticular channel would cost around 400€ up right now. That is a lot more than 270€ now.
Sticking to my budget i have no choice but to leave it at that.

 

[TheBatsEar]

Thinking about cooling now, the only open topic left, since you guys scared me away from using my old water cooler.

The boxed fan will do for now, but i'm looking into what makes a good cooler for a AM4 socket today.
Obviously the only requirements is that it fits my case, has an acceptable price and is not very noisy with office work. Maybe the boxed fan will be ok after all? It's not a high end CPU, so it might.

 

[digitalfrost]

I have a Noctua NH-D15. It equals cooling performance of the normal AiO watercoolers, but it also requires a lot of space. In any case I want to recommend Noctua as a brand. That cooler came out in 2014 I think. I got a free mounting kit for AM4 when it came out in 2017, and 2021 when I went LGA 1700 I could buy a mounting kit for this for 8€. They would also have sent me one for free, but I didn't want to go through the hassle of finding the old check.

You can really buy once and almost use it forever. Noctua fans are a bit more expensive than others, but if you view them in terms of air moved/noise/$ they are cheap.

For something cheaper checkout Deepcool AK620

The main thing to check with these huge air coolers is that the height is accomodated by your case (AK620 is 160mm high, NH-D15 is 165mm).

 

[Berwhale]

Thinking about cooling now, the only open topic left, since you guys scared me away from using my old water cooler.

The boxed fan will do for now, but i'm looking into what makes a good cooler for a AM4 socket today.
Obviously the only requirements is that it fits my case, has an acceptable price and is not very noisy with office work. Maybe the boxed fan will be ok after all? It's not a high end CPU, so it might.

I've had no issues with my Corsair H60, although obviously it's quite old now. I did swap the Corsair fan out for a Noctua one to keep the noise down. If you do similar, make sure you get the version of the fan with the correct flow profile. You want Focused Flow for radiators... https://noctua.at/en/nf-f12-pwm

The Noctua fan controller is good for getting the fans to run even slower than the motherboard 'thinks' they are, without them stalling... https://noctua.at/en/products/accessories/na-fc1

 

[JaMaSt]

Steam has an survey of what the gaming community is using by %. It gives you a good idea of the what works for most gamers.

Steam Hardware & Software Survey

 

[staticV3]

If you do similar, make sure you get the version of the fan with the correct flow profile. You want Focused Flow for radiators... https://noctua.at/en/nf-f12-pwm

The A12x25 is superior for radiator cooling to the F12, unless you stack like five radiators in a row:

 

[ugur38]

So since HDR in almost all 1440p displays is fake, i too k it from the list of my requirements, however, my selection came to the same display. All of the tested and recommended displays from that praticular channel would cost around 400€ up right now. That is a lot more than 270€ now.
Sticking to my budget i have no choice but to leave it at that.

Actually this was the same thing I was trying to tell from beginning. For this budget you can't find real HDR. HDR claims and 1 ms response time is monitors' snake oil like cables in audio world.

 

[Berwhale]

The A12x25 is superior for radiator cooling than the F12, unless you stack like five radiators in a row:
View attachment 259295

Thanks for that. I don't think the A12 was available in 2018, when I built the PC.

 

[staticV3]

Thanks for that. I don't think the A12 was available in 2018, when I built the PC.

It was released in May 2018. The A12 is also good bit more expensive than the F12.

 

[TheBatsEar]

Actually this was the same thing I was trying to tell from beginning. For this budget you can't find real HDR. HDR claims and 1 ms response time is monitors' snake oil like cables in audio world.

Indeed, thanks for alerting me to it.

 

[monkeyboy]

When I was looking to by a 4k TV as a monitor I put this together...I was trying to get the font sizes of a 27" @ 2k. The retinal distance is key, at that distance you can't see the pixelation. A 48" TV w/ a 36"x72" table top is what I'll get next time, I currently have the TV mounted on a stand behind the desktop, it works great giving me a huge clean table top

For 16:9 Monitors​

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Diag​

General​

Horz​

Vert​

Horz​

Vert​

Area​

Horz​

Horz​

Vert​

Vert​

Scale Factor​

Area Ratio​

Pixel Density​

Density Ratio​

Retina Distance​

Inch​

Size​

pixels​

pixels​

inch​

inch​

sq inch​

ppi​

mm/pixel​

ppi​

mm/pixel​

N/A​

N/A​

pixel/inch^2​

N/A​

in​

27​

2k​

2560​

1440​

23.533​

13.237​

311.501​

108.786​

0.233​

108.786​

0.233​

1.000​

1.000​

11,834.29​

1.00​

31.59​

27​

4k​

3840​

2160​

23.533​

13.237​

311.501​

163.178​

0.156​

163.178​

0.156​

0.667​

1.000​

26,627.16​

2.25​

21.06​

32​

4k​

3840​

2160​

27.890​

15.688​

437.555​

137.682​

0.184​

137.682​

0.184​

0.790​

1.405​

18,956.25​

1.60​

24.96​

40​

4k​

3840​

2160​

34.863​

19.610​

683.680​

110.145​

0.231​

110.145​

0.231​

0.988​

2.195​

12,132.00​

1.03​

31.20​

42.5​

4k​

3840​

2160​

37.042​

20.836​

771.810​

103.666​

0.245​

103.666​

0.245​

1.049​

2.478​

10,746.69​

0.91​

33.15​

48​

4k​

3840​

2160​

41.836​

23.533​

984.499​

91.788​

0.277​

91.788​

0.277​

1.185​

3.160​

8,425.00​

0.71​

37.45​

48.5​

4k​

3840​

2160​

42.271​

23.778​

1005.116​

90.842​

0.280​

90.842​

0.280​

1.198​

3.227​

8,252.18​

0.70​

37.84​

50​

4k​

3840​

2160​

43.579​

24.513​

1068.249​

88.116​

0.288​

88.116​

0.288​

1.235​

3.429​

7,764.48​

0.66​

39.01​

 

[TheBatsEar]

Got the GPU, SSD, mainboard and display.
But, there is one thing i didn't consider, that is buying a mainboard with WLAN.

Can't put in a PCIe card, because the GPU blocks all three PCIe ports. Can't use USB WLAN because that sucks with Linux, i would be reduced to Realtek chips and had to compile my own drivers.

So this caused some head scratching for me, i looked into PCIe risers, but nothing viable came up. So in the end i came up with this:
Since my mainboard has two PCIe SSD slots i have opted for this (45€ together, almost broke the budget there):

https://smile.amazon.de/gp/product/B0B39631G1/

https://smile.amazon.de/gp/product/B09ZS1FHCG/

It's a AX210 WLAN/Bluetooth module from Intel which usually is found in notebooks, the connector is A/E and the antenna connects with SMA:


And this is the adapter kit you put into your PCIe SSD port, it expects a A/E card and SMA antenna connections:


If i got this right it should work just fine with Linux and fit snugly under the GPU.

Wish me luck.

 

[digitalfrost]

Got the GPU, SSD, mainboard and display.
But, there is one thing i didn't consider, that is buying a mainboard with WLAN.

So what did you end up getting?

 

[AnalogSteph]

It's a AX210 WLAN/Bluetooth module from Intel which usually is found in notebooks, the connector is A/E and the antenna connects with SMA:


And this is the adapter kit you put into your PCIe SSD port, it expects a A/E card and SMA antenna connections:


If i got this right it should work just fine with Linux and fit snugly under the GPU.

If this works, it would certainly be better than the lowly 3168 1x1 job you'd be getting on the B550M DS3H AC.

Now obviously, for what the little oopsie workaround costs, one could probably have stepped up board quality a notch, but oh well.

 

[TheBatsEar]

So what did you end up getting?

The same stuff from my initial post.
Learned a lot and got some valuable advice, but i had to discard most of the suggestions to stay within budget. Most advice was "just buy the best" without regards to price.
For example, if i had picked AM5 instead of AM4 i would have to have get 200€ or so elsewhere. Reduce the 1440p display to 1080p? Pick a smaller GPU?
If i would go with a 4k HDR display i would have been reduced to onboard graphics.
And so on.

Now obviously, for what the little oopsie workaround costs, one could probably have stepped up board quality a notch, but oh well.

True, my solution costs 45€ and blocks a PCIe SSD port, the mainboard solution would have cost 25€. Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.