Starting from a mid-90s (Pentium 2 original CPU) PC case, I plan to build a PC designed for high-quality BD/ripped 4K BD playback, paired with an HDR monitor.

What pointers need to be considered?

Switch: 10Gb RJ45 Router: 10GB RJ45 NAS: 10Gb RJ45

Seems a shame to not have 10G-baseT on my desktop.

I have an older home built machine, built on a MSI Tomahawk B450. I'm not looking to upgrade at the moment, but I have an empty PCIe 2.1 x16 slot.

I don't expect to be able to guarantee 10Gb ethernet speeds with my motherboard and CPU, but I'd like to get close. I've seen that Intel X540 NICs don't have any power saving/thermal modes, so they should be avoided. Aquantia apparently was acquired be Marvell and basically ignored to death -- and the AQC113 has rumors of an unfixable bug that sometimes leads to it not being recognized at system boot. Realtek doesn't have a chips/boards available yet, and Broadcom costs two arms, two legs, and three noses.

Any suggestion on what to get? Bonus for PCIe 2.1x16 over PCIe 3x8, really want to stay under $100US.

I'm a newbie so am not familiar with a lot of things, please be kind, also am super overwhelmed by all the choices and options out there, but I'm currently building an mini itx pc with a Ryzen 9 (planning to eco mode it, but still want good cooling just incase) in it and need something compact but powerful to cool it.

The 90 SE is at a very good price right now for me, but no idea if it's enough. The silver soul has an extra pipe so I'm guessing it's more high end? It's price is also higher, both are the same height and size. And there's the low profile coolers, no idea which one of them is best. Any recommendations or other options to go for?

So its been almost 10 years since i've swapped computer parts and I am nervous about this. Ive never done any homelab type thing involving big powerful parts, just dealt with average mid range consumer class parts in standard desktop cases.

I do computational work now and want to convert a desktop pc into a headless server with a beefy GPU. I bit the bullet and ordered a used P100 tesla 16gb. Based on what im reading, a new PSU may be in order as well if nothing else. I havent actually read labels yet but online info on the desktop model indicates its probably around a 450~ watt PSU.

The P100 power draw is rated at 250 W maximum. The card im using now draws 185 W maximum. Im reading that 600W would be better for just-in-case overhead. I plan to get this 700W which I hope is enough overhead to cover an extra GPU if I want to take advantage of nvidia CUDA with the 1070ti in my other desktop.

How much does the rest of the system use on average with a ryzen 5 2600 six core in a m4 motherboard and like 16gb ddr4 ram?

When I read up on powering the P100 though I stumbled across this reddit post of someone confused how to get it to connect to a regular consumer corsehair PSU. Apparently the p100 uses a CPU power cable instead of a PCIE one? But you cant use the regular cpu power output from the PSU. Acording to the post, people buy adapter cables with two input gpu cables to one output cpu cable for these cards.

Can you please help me with a sanity check and to understand what i've gotten myself into? I don't exactly understand what im supposed to do with those adapter cables. Do modern PSUs come with multiple GPU power outputs/outlets from the interface these days and I need to run two parallel lines into that adapter?

Thank you all for your help on the last post im deeply grateful for all the input ive gotten here. Ill do my best not to spam post with my tech concerns but this one has me really worried.

Last weekend I tried to put together a new machine with all new parts except a few SSD's, a soundcard and the case.

Specs:

-AMD 9950X3D

-64GB Corsair 30-6000 RAM

-Samsung 9100 2 TB nvme drive

-Gigabyte Aorus pro X870E mobo

-RTX 5080

Took some doing but eventually we did get it to power on. However, it would only power on and there was no video output. After some searching I've come to conclude it was a memory training issue (apparently DDR5 can take a long time to do this, this was new to me).

Eventually we got into bios and installed win11, which was extremely slow even by MS standards.

Once in Windows though, several issues:

-Task manager shows only 8 of my 16 cores

-Overall performance seemed very slow considering the hardware

So I went back into the bios, disabled all the "performance" options for the cpu, loaded optimized defaults and after that I did have all 32 threads visible in task manager, but this disabled EXPO for the RAM. If I re-enable EXPO, I again only have 8 visible cores in task manager.

On top of that, booting up takes ages. The Aorus splash screen appears almost immediately but remains there for MINUTES before loading windows, which also takes a good minute by itself.

I tried to flash the BIOS but I already have the latest available version installed.

From searching and Chatgpt I've gotten the answers that it's possibly a memory issue (doesn't seem to "remember" the training, having to do it over every boot?) or an issue with connected drives/usb/... being detected slowly, but I've aready set the bios to fast boot, only take SATA drives from last boot, only EFI, etc etc but nothing seems to have any effect.

Edit: after another day of testing and troubleshooting, we're almost good.

-core count fixed, was caused by a "gaming" setting in the bios?? that I had never heard about.

Slow boot remains but is apparently due to the high amount of connected drives (1 optical, 1hdd, 2 sata ssd'd & 4 nvme drives. So something I'll have to live with unless I disconnect the drives.

Been benchmarking & stress testing since the fix and results are looking very hopeful. Temps don't exceed 70°C even under full load (cinebench) and gpu remains at a crisp ~64°C. Framerates are great as hoped/expected and at full blast I still barely hear it because of the Noctua cooler.

All in all a gigantic mess and lots of frustration, but eventually worth it. Thanks again for your thoughts and perspectives, it definitely pushed me in the right direction!

Hey, thanks for all the advice so far, I think I've narrowed down what I want a little bit more, but the CPU cooler and GPU sizes are confusing me.

Wondering if anyone has any example builds or tips they can share with this broad criteria...

• Case = Fractal Terra
• GPU = rx 7800 xt (but open to suggestions)
• CPU = Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• CPU Cooler = Noctua L12Sx77

Essentially I am wanting a good mid-range build for games like Civ 6/7 and Anno. I don't want the CPU fan right next to the case because I've heard it adds noise, so I was looking at the L12Sx77. But I'm struggling to understand what size GPU I can use with this type of configuration.

Hey! You might have seen my last post here

Looking to build a living room Linux gaming desktop and I'm looking for some additional advice and suggestions.

I’m planning a Mini-ITX build centered around a Ryzen 5 7600X and RX 6700 XT. My main focus is smooth performance in late-game Civilization 7 and Anno 1800, but I’d like to keep my options open for newer, more graphics-intensive games as well. List of games are in my old post, they aren't super graphics intensive, but I might want to switch that up in the future.

Sticking with AMD for now and probably going to run Bazzite as the disto.

I don’t have a strict budget right now, I’m trying to get a solid understanding of what to look out for in terms of available space, component sizes, and cooling in a small form factor. I also want a motherboard that’s ready for future upgrades (ideally something that can handle next-gen AM5 CPUs and higher-end GPUs). I might look for a mix of Used and New components depending on the state of prices in the US.

Questions:

• What should I consider for case size and layout, especially with a 7600X and a GPU like the 6700 XT? Any specific Mini-ITX cases you’d recommend for airflow and GPU clearance? I might move it from the living room to my desk on occasion.

• What are the best practices for CPU cooling in Mini-ITX builds? Is air cooling enough? I don't think I want to go down the path of water cooling right now.

• Which Mini-ITX AM5 motherboards offer the best upgrade paths for future CPUs (like the 9700X/9800X3D or even 9950X3D)?

• Any tips for fitting in enough fans or maximizing airflow in these compact cases?

• Anything else I should know about cable management, PSU size (SFX vs ATX), or other common Mini-ITX pitfalls?

Thanks for any advice, part recommendations, or build examples! I want to make sure I get the right balance of performance, cooling, and upgradability before I start ordering parts.

NOTE: This is for the Singaporean market and all prices are in SGD and taken from this following link,

https://dynacoretech.com/image/catalog/Price%20list/Dynacore%20PL%2010th%20May2025.pdf

Some prices not shown in the list are directly taken from the store themselves.

Some of the parts recommended in North America market is simply not available some times and prices are different too. But just need your feedback on whether this build is good for generic 1080p, 60 fps gaming for the next few years or so of high end games like cyberpunk, doom and monster hunter wilds or whatever. I am already on the upper limit on my budget which is why I didn't go for the 7800x3d for the cpu or higher specs for gpu. I would like to upgrade to this at a later time but would just like a system for now that performance on an okay level.

Mobo+ CPU: MSI B850 GAMING PLUS + RYZEN 7700 $618

RAM: GSKILL X5 FLARE 32GB CL36 $139

SSD: Crucial T500 Pro 7300MB/s Gen4 Nvme M.2 1TB $110

HDD: 1 TB, taking from my prev system

COOLER: Phantom Spirit 120 SE $48

GPU: 9070 XT Sapphire pulse $1039

POWER SUPPLY: DA1000R $185

CASING: Cooler Master Elite 502 Argb Black TG Casing $82

Total: $2221

Bought a 5700X recently and was surprised to find that it came with no cooler! Luckily I had not shattered my old Ryzen 2200G cooler, so for the time being it is working. But this would have been a bad experience otherwise.

Even now I am not very happy.

I have an Acer monitor with in built speakers connected through HDMI cable to RX7600 GPU. Previously when I was on Ryzen 2200G CPU I could get sound from the monitors in built speakers. But now after the upgrade the Windows 10 says that it is sending sound to High Definition Audio Device but I am not getting any sound.

Any idea about why there is no sound now?

Hello!

Still on my server buildin journey, but I acquired a Dell Insperon 3670. The board says it's atx but everything I'm readin says it's a proprietary board, and thus can't be easily moved. My issue is I have 2 12tb HDDs I wanna shove in it without and available cradles. I have a different case was some free slots but my other concern is the psu, its also theirs and the board requires an adapter to be used with other hardware, I believe. I wanna run Minecraft and Valheim off this thing and have a GeForce 1050 I can cram in there to help, how should I figure how much power I have available to do this?

Thanks again y'all's!

I'm waiting on a standoff kit to come in the mail, as this is my next troubleshooting step

I bought this SSD to fit into a thin client. I am new to stick drives so I think it's correct that I can only insert it one way due to the M-key (my port only has one divider, unlike the memory stick).

I don't have a standoff so the stick is in but at a slight angle.

The PC has no operating system yet so is it correct that a blank drive should show up in the BIOS at least? It shows the m.2 slot as being empty currently. Or is it potentially readable as is, but needs something on it to format it?

The plan is to chuck Debian on it to boot into, via a thumb drive, but I wanted to make sure it was at least installed correctly (I mean, it isn't because it should have a standoff).

If when my standoff kit arrives, the drive still doesn't show in the BIOS what would you recommend I do next?

EDIT: thank you so much for the advice so far! I added a standoff and I can now see 500Gb in the BIOS. Truthfully it might have already been recognised, there is a section for M.2 in the BIOS which was reading empty but it also lists primary hard drive and it's showing up there. Now to install me some Debian

So I have an existing 24” (23.8”) 1080p monitor. I want to buy a 2nd one. But if I want to buy a 27” (for bigger screen) it’ll need to be 1440p. This means different resolutions powered by my laptop (mainly work and some video watching use case). Is it ok to mix and match resolutions and screen size or should both be the same resolutions and screen size?

Is it practical to use monitors with different resolutions?

My use case is home office, setup powered by my 5 years old i5 laptop.

Hi All,

I have a somewhat ridiculous setup where I have:

• 4 monitors all fully adjustable arms
• 2 totally separate PCs (one running windows for mostly work, the other debian for sanity)
• all monitors going through switches so any can be either machine with the push of a button (in any combination)
• A M&K switch that swaps my M&K from one machine to the other by double clicking the scroll wheel.

As you can imagine this takes some space. I have both boxes under my desk towards the edge, and have a three section cabinet in front of my desk to neaten everything up/hide cables. It's kind of like the one in the picture, except mine would be an isosceles trapezoid from a top view.

It works well, but I don't really use the cabinet as, well a cabinet. What I'd like to do is mount each computer in the left and right area of the cabinet. At some point, I'd get around to getting an old electric fireplace (preferably a craigslist or garage sale on that didn't work as a heater), take the door off the center cabinet, mount the fireplace in there and tie brightness to fan speed (that part I can do). As a bonus I'd put a mechanical vent switch that let me output heat to the front, or behind, where my feet are under the desk.

My question is: what do I need to do to ensure proper grounding? Also, are there any rules of thumb for air circulation? Any other pitfalls you might be able to think of?

I am also considering putting the guts of both PC's in the center section of the cabinet, but I think that would make it a bit crowded for the fireplace insert.

Hi everyone! I make this post to ask : how to get a ryzen 7 5700X3D to post on a MSI B450 Gaming pro carbon AC?

The thing is I am upgrading from a ryzen 5 2600 to a ryzen 7 5700X3D but I can't get the mother board to POST. The system posts properly with the ryzen 5 and I already cleared the CMOS, and the BIOS is up to date.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/63423629

Background

I use Mac as my daily driver for my work and personal machines, but for gaming I use my Playstation 5 for online or supposedly AAA games (think Call of Duty or Helldivers 2) and I use my Steam Deck for more indie titles. I've got some Linux experience, primarily via my old Mac Mini running Proxmox with mostly Debian VMs and messing around briefly with NixOS.

I love our Steam Deck, but it does feel a little underpowered, the battery isn't as strong as it once was and I don't love the docking experience with the official dock.

My wife is really into Civilization and similar games and I'd love to setup a desktop connected to our TV to use with a keyboard and mouse on our LG CX. Although I'm tech savvy, I'm not great with knowing what hardware/software to get. It's especially more complicated with the looming tariffs and trying to make sure I don't overspend on something I don't need.

Question

Looking for some guidance on hardware and software to setup for this living room gaming desktop. It's only purpose is to play games, primarily from Steam and it should have hardware which would benefit speed and performance for the type of games I'm going to list. Obviously we want the graphics to be good, but I don't need a beast RTX 5090.

What are some hardware and software recommendations in today's financial climate for playing these games on Linux?

What other accessories would you recommend for couch based keyboard and mouse gaming?

Honestly the game I'm most eager to get into is Dwarf Fortress, but for my wife it's having a smooth experience with Civ6 (she was playing the Switch version for far too long!)

Games

• Civilization games
  • My wife loves 6 and I'm a fan of 5, but we do want to eventually try 7, hoping it'll improve with DLC updates
• Dwarf Fortress
• Rimworld
• Battletech
• Into the Breach
• Brotato
• Vampire Survivors
• Balatro
• FTL
• Caves of Qud
• Persona 5 Royal (although I'm struggling to get into it, pushing through)
• Blue Prince
• ANIMAL WELL
• Factorio
• Return of the Obra Dinn
• Anno 1800
• Project Zomboid

This is a partial list of some of our libraries and wishlists. As you can see, some of them are more graphically, memory and processor intensive, but a lot of them are low performance indies.

I got some great responses last time i posted here looking for help finding a PC for my home. Now I've got a friend that's come to me looking for help selecting and setting up a PC for music recording with the app Reaper. I'd be installing Linux Mint and the machine would be used primarily for music recording, no other major applications. It doesn't sound like it would require a real powerhouse, so we're hoping to keep the costs down if possible. Form factor doesn't really matter in this case, we really just want something simple and reliable.

Last time i inquired here, the consensus was that I'll probably be best taking my specs/needs to the nearest Microcenter and see what they recommend. Does it sound like i should do the same in this case?

Thanks for reading! I appreciate any help you all can provide!

Hello, I have been trying 2 small ff PCs, one HP Z2 mini G9 (i7-13700) and one Lenovo P360 ultra (i7-12700). I decided I will keep the Lenovo, but though I might as well keep the more recent CPU.
After the swap, the HP booted fine, but the Lenovo didn't, the fans spin for a second then off. It never gets anything on display.
I though I had screwed up while doing the swap or reassembly, so I took off the CPU again, checked there was no damage, put it back with fresh paste again, still no luck.

I am aware that both CPUs manage different Max ram speed (4800 vs 5600) so I tried to swap, or leave just one module, no luck.

I though I fried the CPU somehow, so swapped back to each their own, and all works.

Both sockets are LGA 1700/1800 as far as I can tell. Both power supplies are identical, both CPUs are the 65w tdp versions (ie not the T or K versions). The only difference I can see is that the 12th gen is vPro, 13th isn't. Both BIOS were updated prior to the swap.

Am I missing something? Thanks for any advice.

PS. Both machines came with an nvidia t1000, and I tried with or without in case it was a power draw issue, it doesn't seem so.

Yo, trying to move the q latch (Asus thing apparently) (blue circle) to where the standoff is (red circle) is that possible at all?? There was a screw on the under side of the mobo for the q latch (still blue circle) but it didn't move at all... And I chipped the normalish m.2 standoff (red circle) trying to use pliers. Would like confirmation on movability before looking for a tiny socket ratchet...

Important Update #2: If you do this yourself there was a screw on the bottom of the motherboard that held in the longer post that the q latch goes on (with the glue that Asus used)

Update: tried a socket wrench/ratchet... Accidentally ripped it out so I just ripped out the other with pliers and am now super gluing it down where I want it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ hopefully it works fine

Current rig is an (aging) 8086K with 32GB DD4-3000 and Asus ROG Hero mobo. Last week I swapped out my old 2080ti for a 5080. Framerates in games (4K, ultra settings) are now through the roof, as desired.

However, my CPU is having a really hard time pulling this off. There were already games which pushed it to its limit (Helldivers 2, STALKER 2,...) but now with the new graphics card, CPU load in these games is anywhere from 85% to 100%. As a result, my cooling water gets hot (50°C) in about half an hour and my CPU starts thermal throttling, often leading to stutter etc.

I've selected the following components for upgrade:

AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D

GIGABYTE X870E AORUS PRO socket AM5 mobo

Corsair 64 GB DDR5-6400 Kit

Noctua NH-D15 G2 LBC

This would set me back around €1.556 right now. What are the chances this is going to go up significantly in the short/medium term in the EU?

I'm also still running Win10 since I absolutely loathe Win11, so I was thinking of starting off with Linux for this one since I don't really have another €150 lying around to hand to Microsoft for shits and giggles. I have some professional experience with Linux but not in terms of daily driving it. I suppose I could also go with dualboot if need be.

Hello!

Not sure if this is the right place, so if there's a better, please let me know, but I have a Lenovo think center that I acquired that I want to use as a simple home server, got an i5 6700 in it, may need some tweaks, but should be good. My problem is it came from a now defunct company and it wants my corporate email to download the profile. This is after I tried to factory reset it and delete all of the items. When I turn it on it asks for my corporate email, when I try to type iny Hotmail it says it's wrong and gives me the option for a security key USB. I've downloaded the win 11 installer onto a flash drive, but it jus goes straight to the corporate login request. I can get to bios, but admittedly I'm not sure what to do from there, as I'm not seein the proper options.

Any suggestions on how to flash this so I can use it for Plex, Valheim, Minecraft, and personal storage would be greatly appreciated.

Also, I have a pair of hdds imma use for the storage, am I other thinking this and just need to toss the original hdd?

i posted this on linux instance, ill copy it to here too.

Hi, so I want to building a pc for a home server (?) or NAS. I dont really know whats the most appropriate term but what I intend to build is a one pc for my household. currently my requirement is one work 'pc' capable of heavy 3d modeling one light work pc. two 4k gaming tvs. (they most likely wont be used at the same time)

my knowledge of technical stuff is bretty basic so please be patient with me.

before, i used my steam deck to stream my work pc using parsec but i thought i just want to jump all in on linux and using vm to use more niche 3d softwares.

my budget is flexible as long as i dont need to use enterprise hardware. also i heard nvidia is not good for linux so i'd like to confirm if that is still the case as im thinking of using 5090 if not, i hope amd releases an equivalent capable card or if any according my quick research suggest.

as for linux, the only distro (?) i ever used is the steam deck one and i love it. im not a programmer or even remotely capable one so i'd like to avoid anything that has to be manually typing commands at terminal but im open to surface level tinkering.

thank you for your time

Dad wants a new PC. He's considering spending way-too-much on an Alienware, so I figured I'd build him something better+cheaper.

I've built a couple PCs before, but never anything this high-end or expensive so I'd very much appreciate some feedback from an experienced community.

Hi there, I'm starting to look into what PC I could get to (slowly?) migrate over from primarily console-based gaming. I would be buying from Canada fwiw.

Requirements

• 1440p would be the sweet spot most of the time. I have a 240Hz VRR 1440p screen which I would be playing on 80% of the time. I could go up to 4K at times (TV gaming).
• A compact PC would be ideal, I have little space on my desk or behind my TV.
• Primarily using Linux for gaming, but I might periodically use Windows for Game pass stuff.
• It would likely be used as a HTTPC every once in a while.

Budget

I could go up to $2,000 CAD, but wouldn't mind spending less (I'm not really aware of current components prices).
I already have all required peripherals at the ready.

Expectations

Coming from a setup with Xbox Series X, PS5 Pro and Steam Deck OLED, I'm essentially hoping to retire the first two in the process, but would keep the Deck.
Anything around or better than PS5 Pro performance and visuals would be great.
Re specific games, I'd like to play various new and old releases comfortably (BG3, Cyberpunk 2077, KCD2, etc) and would love to be able to emulate most consoles (Xbox 360, PS3?, Switch, etc).

Potential build?

PCPartPicker Part List

No price for the GPU, but I've seen it at around $950 - that would make it all around $2,200 before taxes.
I'm certainly not opposed to buying used, even partially.

Thanks in advance for your help!