Upgrade or wait and see?

[NaffNaffBobFace]

Keep in mind too, there are other factors that can lead to periodic freezes. This is particularly true on a PC older than 2 years. What I would do is:

1. Check your memory. Try memtest86. If you have a bad sector on your ram, it can cause hitches and freezeups.
2. Check your PSU. Do the math on your cpu, gpu, hdd, etc. See if your power supply is up to the task. Sometimes it isn't and can cause freezeups and slow your pc down in various ways. This is particularly applicable in a prebuilt machine since many manufacturers cut corners on their PSU.
   
3. Check your temps. Sometimes on an older rig, the heat sink can become dislodged or inefficient. As the CPU approaches overheating, it slows you down and can throttle everything. This can be more prevalent if you are running your cpu at 100% all the time.
   
4. Get a SSD. Like others mentioned, it's a little money for a ton of improvement. Plus, you can bring it with you when you do finally upgrade your whole PC. So you're not throwing away money.

I'm not saying you have any or all of these issues, but you might. It's worth checking out though if you're trying to squeeze every last month out of an older rig.

Great advice, I'll be checking some of this later :slight_smile: When I got my PC (kindly donated by a friend) the heat-sink CPU cooler was full of dust, but further to that the Thermal Paste between it and the CPU was dried out and had turned to dust. I got a new cooler with thermal paste pre-applied, cleaned off the top of the CPU and attached the cooler and the computer was like new again :slight_smile:

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Lot of peeps saying get the SSD. I'm curious if you can still get the Optain/Raven package and if that's a good option.

IIRC, people were selling the Raven for about the price of the whole package, so the SSD is nearly free or free. Looks could be a good way to go, and puts more Raven's on the market.

 

[marcsand2]

Lot of peeps saying get the SSD. I'm curious if you can still get the Optain/Raven package and if that's a good option.

IIRC, people were selling the Raven for about the price of the whole package, so the SSD is nearly free or free. Looks could be a good way to go, and puts more Raven's on the market.

The Optane has an insane price compared to a M.2. For €100 you can get a decent M.2 while the Optane, similar size costs around €360.

Compared to the Samung 970 EVO...
970 EVO: read 3400 MB/s, write 1500 MB/s vs
Optane: read 2500 MB/s, write 2000 MB/s

 

[Shadow Reaper]

While we're on the subject, can someone explain the issues involved in running multiple graphics cards?

Do they need to be the same? Can they split monitors?

For instance, I keep looking at folks liquid cooling the i9 chips running about 5 Ghz, (some as high as 5.8 Ghz), and they're usually putting in 2 GTX 1080 Titans. Is that enough to run 3 4k monitors, or would you need three cards? The graphics cards seem about the most expensive component, so simply adding a third one is not advised unless you need it. So can you run three big (front and both sides) monitors on two cards?

 

[BUTUZ]

There are many issues involved - the main one being that many games are not very well optimised for running in SLI or Crossfire - so adding a second card more often than not won't give you double the FPS.

I wouldn't recommend it unless you know that many games you play ware optimised and will benefit from a second card. (star citizen is terribly optimised by the way)

Always better of having one good card than 2 bad cards IMHO.

 

[SoloFlyer]

If possible, try to get an M.2 instead of an SSD. SSD is limited to SATA, max 600 MB, while M.2 can go much faster.

Samsung 970 EVO, 250 GB SSD: read 3400 MB/s, write 1500 MB/s, € 96,90
Samsung 860 EVO, 250 GB SSD: read 550 MB/s, write 520 MB/s, € 73,90

You must check if your MB supports M.2

I think i'll save my pennies and try to get an M.2 before making any other changes as that seems like what will best serve me in the long run

Keep in mind too, there are other factors that can lead to periodic freezes. This is particularly true on a PC older than 2 years. What I would do is:

1. Check your memory. Try memtest86. If you have a bad sector on your ram, it can cause hitches and freezeups.
2. Check your PSU. Do the math on your cpu, gpu, hdd, etc. See if your power supply is up to the task. Sometimes it isn't and can cause freezeups and slow your pc down in various ways. This is particularly applicable in a prebuilt machine since many manufacturers cut corners on their PSU.
   
3. Check your temps. Sometimes on an older rig, the heat sink can become dislodged or inefficient. As the CPU approaches overheating, it slows you down and can throttle everything. This can be more prevalent if you are running your cpu at 100% all the time.
   
4. Get a SSD. Like others mentioned, it's a little money for a ton of improvement. Plus, you can bring it with you when you do finally upgrade your whole PC. So you're not throwing away money.

I'm not saying you have any or all of these issues, but you might. It's worth checking out though if you're trying to squeeze every last month out of an older rig.

I'll try memtest86, ram is fairly new but its possible something could be bad. my PSU is 850w and should be more than enough for what i have in the machine. i've been running speedfan to check temps but not when in SC because I'm trying to minimize resources, so far they seem to be pretty decent.

Btw, I had heard something like this month, but does anyone know the date we might be seeing this next build? I tried to be frugal with my credits, only buying with 1/4 of my total, but the frequent freezing issue has left me nearly broke. Can't wait on the optimizations and credit reset!

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

I think i'll save my pennies and try to get an M.2 before making any other changes as that seems like what will best serve me in the long run

I've been thinking about an M.2, but my Motherboard is a 9 years old Asus M4A77T... Do you know what slot it would sit in, i'm not sure I actually have the required connections for a piece of kit like that...?

EDIT - Scratch that, I read a little further into it, my PCIe x1 slots are v2.0 and M.2 drives are v3.0 so i'll be sticking to SATA SSD's as they are compatible :slight_smile:

EDIT - EDIT - Reading further 3.0 may be backwards compatible with 2.0...

EDIT - EDIT - EDIT - And reading even further using the PCIe x16 for the graphics card and an M2 SSD may limit the bandwidth to the Graphics card kicking myself in the botty if I do that... Well this is getting very complicated :)

 

[SoloFlyer]

I've been thinking about an M.2, but my Motherboard is a 9 years old Asus M4A77T... Do you know what slot it would sit in, i'm not sure I actually have the required connections for a piece of kit like that...?

EDIT - Scratch that, I read a little further into it, my PCIe x1 slots are v2.0 and M.2 drives are v3.0 so i'll be sticking to SATA SSD's as they are compatible :slight_smile:

EDIT - EDIT - Reading further 3.0 may be backwards compatible with 2.0...

EDIT - EDIT - EDIT - And reading even further using the PCIe x16 for the graphics card and an M2 SSD may limit the bandwidth to the Graphics card kicking myself in the botty if I do that... Well this is getting very complicated :slight_smile:

I have an MSI z270 sli plus motherboard. IIRC there are two slots on the board specifically for M.2 drives. I've never used an M.2 drive before so I have no idea about the limiting of the bandwidth to the graphics card, something I'll have to look into

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

I have an MSI z270 sli plus motherboard. IIRC there are two slots on the board specifically for M.2 drives. I've never used an M.2 drive before so I have no idea about the limiting of the bandwidth to the graphics card, something I'll have to look into

Probably not an issue with more modern boards but it's worth reading your manual back to back just to ensure that you don't have any issues :)