The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Despite the caveat of active cooling, the impressions of X570 have been almost universally excellent. The chipset performs well, is stable, and is reliable. Go figure. Not only that, but MFGs finally pulled their heads out of the sand, and most X570 boards have greatly improved VRMs as well as improved I/O options. So X570 might be better than you think...

The problem with B450 is that the large majority of the boards have barely adequate VRMs that will throttle an 8 core CPU. The VRMs on B450 are such an issue that lists of known good boards are being compiled. I wouldn't even use a B450 ASUS or Gigabyte board. BOTH made some really weird mid-range X470 boards with garbage VRMs that can only really handle a 6 core. Their B450 boards are even worse.

Surprisingly, MSI is at the top of the list. Their 4+3 phase boards have by far the best VRMs for B450. The MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon is a little pricey but is a spectacularly equipped board for the price with great cooling. Like the kind of cooling and VRMs where it's recommended for OCing 8 core CPUs. Several of the MSI B450 boards below it in the lineup, B450 Mortar and Tomahawk being the standouts, use identical VRMs however with lesser cooling. That said, even the boards with lesser cooling have a better VRM solution than everyone else's B450 boards. Considering how much better MSI's design performs in the real world, I wouldn't even look at other brands for B450. The rest just straight up aren't as good. It's not even a matter of comparison anymore.

In fact, their next board up, the X470 Gaming Pro carbon, is almost literally the B450 board with even better VRMs and more I/O. It has the weakest VRMs of any PROPER X470 board(The equivalently budget-orented Gigabyte and Asus boards are a joke) and is still far more than adequate for the chips the board can take. X470 was fine in general. manufacturers learned their lesson on high end boards after X370. Nearly every single X470 board made has been solid. B450 though, they grossly underestimated the number of people who would be using 8 cores on them...

X470 in general? It surprises even myself that I can't recommend Gigabyte OR Asus. If you wanna get like a $200 board then yeah it'll be awesome. Every MFG makes kickass high end boards. But for some reason a lot of manufacturers struggled with mid-range boards for the platform.

So X570 is also a nice step up in that regard. You have far fewer boards with crappy power handling in general. I can wholeheartedly recommend the budget oriented x570 boards from any brand.

 

Sam, I mirror you in this respect. My 1070 has been perfectly fine since new with a mild overclock. To get a card that is plainly better is still a good chunk of money. Like at this point I'd be in at LEAST the $400 I paid, and it wouldn't be anywhere near the 50% leap I saw from my 970s. It'd be maybe... 20% on a good day. Performance-wise the RTX cards just aren't a very big jump. I have a couple friends with 1080s who are happy to just keep using them. In fact I myself am looking at a used 1080. I'd like a little performance boost, but I don't wanna pay $400-$500 for a mid range non-super 2060 when my overbuilt factory OC'd 970s were roughly $300 each and my super overbuilt factory OC'd 1070 was $400 retail...

CPU... well, lol. Anything quad core is gonna struggle nowadays. In fact I'd go so far to say that my overclock and the addition of Hyperthreading is enough to close the gap on your CPU or outright beat it in some scenarios. Multithreading is everything these days. I've seen a lot of gaming and productivity benchmarks that have convinced me that my next CPU will be 6 cores 12 threads minimum. Just moving from my 4690K at 4.4GHz to my 4770K at 4.3GHz was a massive boost in some things. Like an extra 50% faster for some particular activities. Go check out some performance charts. It's 6 cores and better all competing, and all the 4c and 4c/8t chips sitting way at the bottom hitting a performance brickwall. There's a very clear divide.

I'd like to find a 4790K and some more RAM and stretch this platform a few more years, and likely will. It does everything I need it to very well still. But ultimately, 6+ cores is the future. Kids are building their first machines with cheap Ryzen 2600X's and they're ultimately better CPUs than ours. GPUs though? I play brand new releases at 1440 maxed and it still locks vsync in some of them...

 

With you on the 1070's. The one I've got seems to be more than adequate for my needs for now. Can't see spending a premium on marginal gains.
I believe that x570 is the way to go for me. As I seem to run my PC's for upwards of 5 years. While I may not be a huge gamer, the PCI 4.0/bandwidth support may come in handy for add-in cards down the road. It's also being suggested, that zen 3 will only be supported on 500 series chips. Couple that with beefy VRM's, and the premium for 500 series motherboards seems justified. Depending on how long I wait, 3900x may be my taste test lol I believe it'll hold some resale value, than I can upgrade to 4000 series when the price calms down.

I'd like to check out rendering, and I would definitely benefit from 12 cores plus, as I would like to begin compressing X264 to HEVC. Thank goodness for modern instructions, like AVX2

 

ASRock and Gigabyte currently have the best X570 boards IMO.

Like Sam I'd probably be looking at a 3600X. It beats up on Intel CPUs anywhere near it in price. The 3000 series CPUs already have pretty aggressive turbo OCing. With a well binned CPU from factory I'd almost not be inclined to overclock. At factory turbo settings the 3600X is already guaranteed to match or beat my 4.2GHz 4770K in clockspeed, and have MUCH better IPC. And more cores. And use less power. And Hyperthreading.

I've been looking at building a platform with a 2000 series CPU just to get my foot in the door. A 2600X can do all cores 4.2GHz on a good board which obviously matches mine, but they have per-core performance like a Kabylake. With 6 cores. Using a little over half the power of my current OC'd CPU. With Hyperthreading. Lol so even a 2000 series Ryzen is very tempting. They're very good CPUs.

For me the main draw is that I handle large amounts of uncompressed textures packed into archives. It's super CPU intensive to unpack them, and even more so to pack them back up. It uses all 8 threads to the max. This is where the 4770K at 4.2GHz with its 4 extra threads and 2MB of extra L3 cache was a big step up from the 4690K at 4.4GHz. 200MHz less is nothing compared to the benefits. While moving files around could benefit from a dedicated SSD-to-SSD working setup, generally handling them and processing them has only gotten better with better CPUs. Even cheap CPUs are better now.

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Also, did a little refresher on my storage. Replaced the pair of WD Green 2TB EZRX drives with a pair of WD Blue 4TB EZRZ drives. One generational step forward and double the capacity. That gives me a total of three Blue 4TB EZRX drives and one Green 4TB EZRX in my main PC. I also bought a cheap WD Blue 1TB SSD for use with my gigantic Bethesda games. Between 5 games I have easily 500GB of install and asset files. This has so far been a really fantastic upgrade, and cleans up my otherwise clogged 2TB Game Installs drive.

The 2TB drives are my oldest new-ish drives so I'd rather relegate them to elsewhere. So I moved them to my other PC which spends time powered off in the living room when it's not being used. As opposed to my main PC which is perpetually powered on. The drives replaced a pair of Ancient WD Green 1TB EARX drives. That brings the total to four identical 2TB WZRX drives in the secondary PC.

I also replaced the ancient WD Black 1TB 1001FALS game installs drive with a brand spanking new WD Black 2TB 2003FZEX. This is identical to the drive that failed in my main PC and was replaced with the Seagate Firecuda SSHD. Still it's a great HDD and was worth buying. I now have all newer drives in that PC, more space than ever, and more performance as well.

I also took the opportunity to replace the pair of 1500RPM Thermaltake Riings with yet MORE failed LEDs. This time another pair of Noctua Redux NF-P12 1700s like in the main PC. Quieter AND better performance in the tiny, restrictive Corsair Carbide 200R

The old girl purrs like a kitten, especially with the addition of the Q9650 and 8GB(4 x 2GB) kit of RAM. Basically the platform is maxed out. When well equipped the Core 2 Quad does a perfectly reasonable job with Windows 10. Cool and quiet and plays all my 1080p encodes no problem with DXVA. No problem playing 1080p web streaming or Netflix/Hulu/Amazon. Often gets used to surf the internet and play a wide variety of games and generally does a pretty good job. With all the new hardware in the last year or two, basically replacing most of the PC with modern hardware, LGA775 is better than ever.

I spent a little more than I wanted to, but my storage array is much healthier and newer now. I have my drives as big as I want to take them in the secondary PC. It has no UEFI so I want to avoid the issues that come with that. I'm happy with where it's at.

 

Hey Sam - hey Kevin, hey Jeff,

Wow, Sam, 60 degrees, for non-enterprise "desktop" drives???​

50 OR 60 DEGREES ARE YOU KIDDING???

I have to respectfully report that my personal experience does not support those kinds of temperatures. I have had too many hard drives run for long periods of time at 55 - and then start developing bad sectors. Almost all of my hard drives are now enterprise-rated - double support of platter on each side, etc. etc. and these enterprise drives are usually rated at 55, and sometimes 60 degrees, AND I STILL WINCE WHEN I SEE THEM HIT HIGH 40s.

The USB seagates I have had, before adding external cooling, hit 55 consistently, and developed bad sectors all over the place. That 9 year old seagate of yours was an unusual beast, lol.

My former torrent download laptop had a hard drive that ran often at 55 degrees, and suddenly last year the drive froze up and took out the motherboard - end of laptop. The "new" laptop, an old Dell Latitude D610 single core 1.6 ghz - speedy in its time - has a hard drive that I try to keep at 40 or under. In this intense heat - 95 degrees here in the trailer - with 3 external 120mm fans blowing on the hard drive compartment, the hdd hit 45 degrees a few days ago, but usually all the external fans will drive the temp down to below 40.

I am not comfortable with the 45 degrees - but I guess you're right - I probably am being a little too cautious.

Sam are you still gaming at 4k? That is a bunch of (8.3 million) pixels. Any new games? Does your work keep you too busy for gaming? I just played AC Origins, and getting ready for AC Odyssey, Rage 2, and Red Dead Redemption 2.


HALF LIFE ALYX VR

Hey, speaking of new games - do you have Half Life Alyx? The animator relative says he has an extra valve VR Index headset. He says he'll let me borrow it the next time we have a family luncheon up in LA. I checked the specs on my hardware, and the gtx 1070 (just like Jeff's) DOES have the dp port needed by the Index - and I think it also needs USB 3.0, and my "new" sabertooth X79 motherboard with i7-4930k (6-core 12 threads like Jeff suggests) DOES have two usb 3.0 slots. Linus tech tips said he thought the 1070 would run Half Life Alyx fine - he tested it with a weaker 1050 and it seemed to work fine - but at the end of the YouTube video he suggested maybe a 1070 as the minimum hardware to ensure a smoother experience.

I haven't seen the animator guy for a while - about 6 months or so - we were shooting for a lunch a month with a few other relatives, until Covid hit - now the animator is trying to concentrate on "isolation" but he surprised me by doing facetime with me through WhatsApp the other day. I finally got a smart phone - free from Verizon, one of the cheepie "moto G7 play" phones, 16 gigs, around $120. But for a cheap phone it is amazingly loaded with pretty good features, and a pretty decent screen resolution - videos look very crisp.


FACETIME - MOTO G7 PLAY (whatsapp feature)

So yes, I was losing a few frames on the facetime - I could tell - but mostly it was REALLY cool.

I had unsuccessfully tried to download a face time app - but I WAS successful finally in downloading WhatsApp for messaging - I think it's a google product.

BUT I WAS TOTALLY SHOCKED TO SEE HIS FACE pop up on the 8th, (and my little face in the corner) about one week ago - "How did you do that?" I asked. He said it's a WhatsApp feature - yes as I seem to recall now, my phone did ask me if whatsapp could have control of the screen - or was it the video recorder? I said "yes" and there he was.

Then I told another relative to call me and do the same trick. It was similarly awesome!!!!!!

I haven't myself tried to do it on any calls.

The animator is still with Valve - one of a few employees who does not live in Seattle. Oh, but he told me that they moved him to private contractor status instead of employee - some tax benefits. He hardly flies up there anymore, unlike a few years ago when he would fly up every 2-3 months or so.


KEVIN THE HOMEOWNER - WITH WORKROOM

Kevin, how's the house going? You've got a mortgage now - so I don't blame you for being a tightwad. Have you fixed up the workroom you talked about - is that part of the garage or a room in the house?

Jeff, are you staying busy at the plant? I'm going to push this 6-core for a few more years, but I guess you guys will get me on Ryzen eventually.

- Rich​

 

The Gigabyte X570 UD board was in stock for a short time today. Once again, the tightwad in me shut down... lol
I believe that board suits me well.
I have a detached shop on the property. slightly larger than a 2 car garage. It's very full of furniture, and scrap metal. Lots of valuables, but it does bother me lol Something I'm currently trying to remedy.

 

Kevin,

A detached shop - slightly larger than a 2-car garage! Wow!!

Very unusual. (Remember, when I work, I sell houses.)

I think you had mentioned that a brother, or a cousin or somebody, was really envious of that shop of yours. So you're using it now just to store some random stuff - what eventual plans do you think that you might come up for the shop?


WE WOULD USE IT FOR STORAGE, UNTIL WE GOT SMART AND STARTED TOSSING STUFF
If we had a shop like that - I guess we would just use it for now as storage, because we are paying for two storage units - throwing thousands of dollars away every year!!!

I have to go up to LA soon, and take my old truck, with my much older utility trailer, and move a relative OUT of a 5x10 storage rental that is costing her $135/month. Her husband picked up a 5x7 shed, then mounted it on a frame so it has 8-10 feet high ceilings (after I told him that the storage has 8 foot ceilings) and he's all done with it, so now it's time for me to get my butt into gear.

I had told him we needed high ceilings, because I had built four 3' x 5' wooden shelves, 4 feet high. The idea was a to run two of them together, making a 3x10 foot table, 4 feet high, to pile plastic tubs of stuff on the tables all the way up to the ceiling, plus lots of tubs under the tables, to take full advantage of another storage area that we have, 10 x 10, that I'm paying $219 per month to keep. Without the tables, we would stack the tubs from the floor on up, but an 8 foot tall stack of tubs is too much weight for the plastic, and they would start collapsing. The tables solved that problem.

But obviously, as I said, we are throwing thousands of dollars down the drain, so the first thing is to move her 5x10 storage into that shed that is on their property, and get her out of that monthly expense. Next will be to throw EVERYTHING away, lol, and get rid of the $219/month expense of the big 10x10 storage.

But apart from storage, which in our case is just dumb - what plans do you have for that great workroom?

- Rich

 

I'm strongly considering wood working. Metal working. I scrap/recycle in my spare time. Much of what's in there, is valuable scrap metal. Once recycled, that'll open up over half of the shop. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has negatively impacted prices of metals. So, I'm being patient. I am seeing a rising trend now. So it could be soon

 

Yeah, good old covid19. Unless we all die first, life will one day go back to normal.

Well, wood working sounds like fun, as long as you don't ingest too much smoke - oh, but you're not talking about wood burning like I used to do - you're probably talking about fine cabinetry, etc.

 

Well, repurposing to start. Some of the furniture in there, I'd like to bring back to good shape. Go from there. Never been one for woodworking, but now that I have the space, the ideas are flowing lol

 

Point taken re: VRMs Jeff, but with a 3600, that probably shouldn't be an issue. With a bigger CPU, of course, it will be. Depends on what you need the system for.

You'd be surprised actually how well quad cores can still perform in games. The stock cooler on my i5 7600 (or, more accurately, the paste job on it) is knackered, and the CPU runs at 100C throttling back under anything more than about half load.
Despite that, most games run totally fine and where they don't, it's mostly for graphical reasons from running at 4k.
More performance would of course be good and the time of recommending 4-core CPUs for new gaming builds is largely over, but I don't think it's fair to dismiss them out of hand on older machines unless they're very early i5s, Core 2s or pre-Ryzen AMDs.

One thing worth considering is that not all productivity tools are equal. The main productivity tool I use outside gaming is Handbrake, and that tops out around 12-16 threads, any more is of basically no benefit. Therefore, a 24-thread CPU is of no value to me whatsoever.
I experimented with NVENC on Handbrake and performance is stellar, but the files it produces... not so much. After consulting on their forums, NVENC really isn't recommended for anything other than speeding up very rough and ready transcodes and where quality matters even slightly (it certainly does to me!) they recommend only ever running off the CPU. So for now, the 8400 in my LAN machine (not that I've been to any LANs for a while!) is doing the bulk of the work.

I don't really see any reason to recommend the 3600X over the 3600. Here in the UK the 3600X is considerably more expensive and performance is basically identical to the regular 3600. There's less than 5% in it.
It'll be either the 3600 or the 3700X that I buy, unless the T-series chips change anything.

Storage-wise I'm at a bit of a loss. I don't want 7200rpm disks for low-speed storage because it's just a load of extra heat and noise I don't want and performance I can't use.
WD has been my go-to brand for a decade now but their 5400rpm disks are now essentially all SMR, and SMR is something I really don't want. For my off-site server where noise is a non-issue, it's loaded with an amalgam of 8TB WD Reds, 12TB Seagates and 14TB Toshibas.
Here at home, there are still 19 disks in the server despite having a total storage capacity below 75TB. I could replace the whole lot with five disks if I wanted to use the new 16TB models, but there's no reason to spend thousands on that.

For games, I've not been playing much new on a regular basis, but probably several titles I haven't discussed her previously.

Overwatch is still the game I play most, though I periodically dip into Warframe and old classics, Brutal Doom and OpenRCT2. All of those run well at 4k on fairly modest hardware.
Other than those I've played through The Forest which was quite good fun, 'Raft' which I can thoroughly recommend (though much more fun co-op than solo), and have recently picked up Deep Rock Galactic, which is good, but I feel may have limited appeal, and Unfortunate Spacemen, which I wasn't all that keen on.
Every so often we have an arcade games session with Garry's Mod (Trouble in Terrorist Town), Duck Game, Rocket League and, more recently, Ultimate Chicken Horse, which is hilarious.
If it counts as a game we also occasionally stream Jackbox games through Discord, since we can't have a party games session in person at the moment with Covid lockdown and all that.

It's not everybody's game by any means, but I also played through a game called Epistory last month which is a game that uses typing for the combat mechanics, a genre I like, but certainly not one that is popular. It was a refreshing change and really quite well put together.

On the first person shooter front, apart from Deep Rock, I've played a little Killing Floor 2, a little Left 4 Dead 2, a little Vermintide 2, some Apex Legends, and also recently the beta for Valorant. It was alright, very reminiscent of counter-strike but different in its own way. For a beta it was quite polished and I'm looking forward to seeing what the final product looks like.
Apex is good fun and quite pretty, but damn if I'm not utterly hopeless at it!

Lastly, I've not played it for several months but keep meaning to get back into 'Distance' - an unusual take on a racing game that is part-Trackmania, part-Doom and part-Pilotwings. Very odd but satisfying (and infuriating!) to play.

Every so often when I want a chillout I play a bit of Audiosurf still, usually with some ambient, electronic or particularly post-rock music from bands like God is an Astronaut, or Paint the Sky Red - that genre of music lends itself to procedural generation very well.

I think that covers most of it, I've been meaning to play more through Doom 2016 so I can get round to Doom Eternal thereafter, but keep getting sidetracked with other stuff. There's also Serious Sam 4 on the horizon in August, and I will definitely be picking that up.

I don't currently have a VR setup since in all honesty, I don't have anywhere safe to use it. I do intend to get one at some point in the future and HL:Alyx will definitely be on my radar when I do but for now, I need a bigger space and still living with my parents that isn't really practical.

 

Hey Kevin - yeah bring that furniture back to shape.

"If I work my hands in wood, would you still love me?" Remember that famous song?

Getting your hands onto some beautiful wood - polishing it - bringing out the grain. My junior high school wood-working class was really an eye-opener, and there is something very grounding, calming and soothing about wood working.


Wow Sam, I don't think I have heard of any single game that you are playing, other than HL:Alyx, which I might get to one day if we ever get the animator to end isolation and join us in a lunch up in LA, and bring along that spare Index that he says he has.

He's locked up like the little hermit he is, lol.

But Sam, what about Far Cry 5?
What about the sequel New Dawn?
Both of those are utterly fantastic games, in my opinion. They probably have 4k texture packs if you won't touch anything that is not 4k.
Jeff, do you have those two games? I'm sure you do. They are - let me say it again - outstanding!!!

Regarding 4k, I do have a tv in the sunroom which is 4k. Running a $40 6450 hdmi card, I played a YouTube 4k video on it showing part of Scotland I believe - somewhere in Europe. It was quite lovely indeed. I even downloaded the movie, Strange Creatures (part 2) in a 28 gig version, to compare to the 6 gig 720p version. My Power DVD played both. I actually got a bit of eyestrain from the 4k, and I preferred the 720p (the power dvd upscales to 1080p.)

Was it psychological? Was I rooting for the 720 so I wouldn't have to start downloading all these huge movie files? Maybe. I just know that the sharpness EVERYWHERE, was not as good as the sharpness of JUST WHAT I AM LOOKING AT, by which I mean the 720p upscaled to 1080p. I tried to be objective, to run the movie for a good bit, to let it soak in - but no question, it felt like eyestrain.

[Probably psychological]

Rich

 

I bought a 4k TV late 2018. I've seen a few impressive videos on youtube(slow mo guys). My first taste, was the movie 'Alpha'. That was when I really appreciated my buying the new TV.

I do enjoy working wood. But creating something from scratch is something I haven't tackled WELL lol

 

Yeah, the 4k screen is nice - even though I don't use it in 4k mode.

I have been quite happy with 720p videos - really high quality is 1.5 gigs per half hour, but acceptable quality is 0.5 - 1 gig per half hour. Power DVD upscales, and adds saturation and sharpness.

A long time ago we did some testing and could not tell the difference between 720p upscaled on the Power DVD, and 1080p on the Power DVD (even the 1080p is improved by the added sharpness and saturation - you can hit a little compare button on the bottom of the player and split the screen between Power DVD effects, and no effects, and then you really see what the player is doing with all those cpu cycles it uses.)

Anyway, I thought the 4k video might be really cool, but it wasn't - I went back to the 720p version and liked it better. Maybe it's just my eyes.

Gaming-wise, I am still 100% satisfied with my 2006 2560x1600 Dell 30" monitor that Sam convinced me to buy, after he raved about it so much - the best gaming monitor I have ever had!!!

Jeff, if Sam refuses to admit he liked Far Cry 5 and New Dawn, how about you? For sure you have played those titles, right? And Kevin - since you are the certified Grand Theft Auto afficionado of all time - what about Red Dead Redemption 2 by the same group of developers. I have it - I installed it - I have played the first hour just to make sure it works, and I hear that everybody thinks it's awesome!!!

Is that a title you might be considering, Kevin?

-Rich

 

One day, I'll consider Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2. I barely find time for any gaming right now lol
I generally see the difference between 720 and 1080. But you're correct. High bitrate 720 is quite respectable. I suppose 'HDR' is the real eye candy that I love on my 4k screen.

 

I've been using 4k as my desktop resolution for almost 7 years, its big benefit remains desktop real estate to run multiple applications, especially when remote controlling other computers (admittedly something I do less of since becoming a service desk manager). The problem with 4K TV/film content is it's often HDR which standard 4k PC monitors don't display, leaving the content pretty much useless.

I believe my old 2006 3007WFP is still going strong with the friend I sold it to, I also sold him my 2008 3008WFP a decade or so later in 2017 after it failed for the second time, he has since repaired it again and is now using that too.

I've not played Far Cry 5/New Dawn, games tend typically to be things I play multiplayer these days as it's my main means of socialising, particularly when stuck at home since March! I would like to get into them at some point, but I'd need to play the earlier games in the series first!

 

Congratulations Sam on promotion to Service Desk Manager. Yes, I can understand the socializing aspect of multi-player - I dropped multi-player because it was just too addictive - I already was gaming way too much without multiplayer.

I believe you DID play Far Cry 3 - the one at the islands? I am pretty sure you DID play Far Cry 2 - yes I'm almost positive. That was the one in Africa. A lot of people became disgusted by shooting through a roadblock, completing their objective, then finding that the roadblock had become re-occupied 10 minutes later and they had to shoot their way through again. I avoided that by taking the river as much as I could - the water reflections, which seems to be a big thing with me, were utterly gorgeous - so I found the game VERY enjoyable because of all the time on the river.

So if you missed Far Cry 3, and 4, they are both pretty good - my favorite was Far Cry 3, with the utterly unbelievable water reflections - just incredible. And as the game saw me using wave runner so much, the "Director" spawned a wave runner for me on the long "crocodile river" while I was busy using my arrows on a few leopards. I then took that wave runner to a safe house, saved the location, and then started the game from that safe house, with my wave runner right there. Otherwise, there was no wave runner on that long river, other than a wave runner race - and you couldn't keep the vehicle after finishing the race.

I really think you DID play Far Cry 3, but maybe not. Far Cry 4 was pretty good - they added a gyro copter, so now you could fly around. Jeff liked that one better than Far Cry 3, right Jeff?

Actually, come to think about it, I don't know, Sam, if you'd need to bother with Far Cry 3 and Far Cry 4. I think you could just dive into Far Cry 5. It is spectacular, with a great buddy system, and I recommend the girl with the bow and arrow as the best buddy - if you scan the map you will find her in the north. Her name is Jess as I recall. Then the sequel New Dawn is just as much fun - some say more fun! Oh - as I recall they both have coop mode, or maybe it's just New Dawn.

Yeah, Kevin, Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC, is supposed to be somewhat similar to Grand Theft Auto - also by Rockstar Games. I will get back to RDR2 in a month or so I think.

Regarding 4k, I don't know if my TV set has HDR - I think I've seen it at Costco, and that is where you get really brilliant colors - perhaps this cheap 4k set does not have that. In that case, I guess I'll have to upgrade one day.
Rich

 

I played a little FC3 co-op, just didn't finish it. I know I don't explicitly need to play the earlier games but since I already have them, I'd like to!

 

At the tune of $900, I finally bought an AM4 build. I splurged a bit lol
The ram 8GB x 4 cost me $270 for Trident Z Royal 3600 Latency 16. A bit spendy, but I have a thing for GOLD lol
I chose to go with the 3900x and Air cooling, despite a lot of reviews I've read. I find it hard to believe that a 105W cpu (150 absolute peak) can't be cooled by a massive cooler). I'm talking about 250 - 300W dissipation beasts lol
And the mainboard being the Gigabyte X570 UD. I'll be waiting possibly 2 weeks for that to arrive. But I jumped on the order, because I feared price hikes.
I also bought all this thinking It'd kick my ass into gear lol! There's a lot of overtime going on at work, and if I take advantage of it, It'll pay for everything inside 2 weeks.

 

All-in the 3900X tops out around 145W in normal use. An air cooler can definitely cope with that as long as it's fairly big.