Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

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jztemple2
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately getting at the rig requires lying under my desk again with a flashlight and I have to brace myself for that :wink:

Funny you mention air bubbles in the cooling loop, there are actually instructions on dealing with that in the Falcon paperwork. I might try that first, it just involves tilting the rig to various angles.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Hrdina »

jztemple2 wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 10:44 pmIt also has glass side panels, which caused my wife to roll her eyes when she saw the unit powered up with all the RBG lights going through their color patterns. I told her that it would have cost extra to have solid metal side panels, so it was all about keeping costs down. That got another eye roll :D.
I noticed that, too, when I was playing around with their configurator. I don't particularly want glowy RGB lights on my machine, but if that will save me a few bucks... :D
jztemple2 wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 10:44 pmHrdina, as you say, the boxes are familiar, but now the computer comes in a Falcon box within another Falcon box with padding all around. They emphasize that the boxes have to be kept so that if the computer has to be sent back it can be properly shipped. Do you still have your leatherette bags with the extra cables, disks and paperwork? I have the one for my 2014 rig but haven't been able to locate the one that came with my 2003 computer.
For my current Talon, I do indeed have the "bag" (more like a zippered notebook in this case). It has all the paperwork, the rescue drive, a couple of CDs with drivers, and a whole bunch of cables that I've never used. Some of them are obvious (PCI Express), but others I honestly have no idea what they would be for.

I've definitely kept all my boxes, but so far have never needed to send my PC back to Falcon. Twice they've offered that service to me, both times when the CPU fan failed. They ended up shipping the fan to me with installation instructions, instead.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by malchior »

I have a new rig coming Tuesday. I bought it from a different online assembler. There was a premium buying from Falcon and I tend to fix my own problems anyway so CS beyond the transaction wasn't too important to me. I originally wanted to assemble it 100% myself for more flexibility but getting hands on a 3080 is difficult to say the least. The online assemblers have a pipeline with nVidia so you essentially are getting in their line which is ... stable and dependable. In the end I'll get it a week quicker than anticipated.

The good thing was that I waited until the new AMD line was announced/released so Intel threw out a bunch of promotions. I ended up getting a bunch of discounts that weren't available even a month ago when I first looked. $100 off the i9s and $50 AMEX gift card to start. I'm not too upset about buying the "2nd best" now. It'll be x% slower than the top AMD chip but it significantly boosted the price/performance curve. This is especially true for the KF model which was another $100 cheaper vs. the K version when I spec'ed it out. Plus, the AMD stuff is going to be hard to get for some time.

Anyway here is a cutdown list of the specs:

Case: LIAN LI PC-O11 Dynamic Razer ATX Mid-Tower Dual chamber Gaming Case w/ USB 3.1 Type-C, Tempered glass on the front & side
Case Fans: 3X 120mm APEVIA 120mm Addressable RGB 1200RPM Fans w/ Hub
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 750W 80 PLUS GOLD Certified
Motherboard: MSI MPG Z490 GAMING CARBON WIFI 6
CPU: Intel(R) Core™ Processor i9-10900KF 10/20 3.70GHz [Turbo 5.2GHz] 20MB Cache LGA1200
CPU Cooling: CyberPowerPC DEEPCOOL Castle 360EX ARGB 360mm AIO Liquid CPU Cooling System
Memory: 32GB (8GBx4) DDR4/3200MHz Dual Channel Memory
Graphics: EVGA GeForce RTX™ 3080 10GB GDDR6X (Ampere)
HDD: 2TB ADATA ASX8100NP-2TT-C PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD

Note: I've got a slightly faster M2 drive that I'll drop in as a data drive in the second M2 slot.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

With everything going on, it wasn't till today that I was able to get under my desk, open the Talon side panel and watch and listen while it powered up. The clattering seems to be coming from the front two fans, most likely the top one. I've sent an email to Falcon support to see if they have any suggestions or if I should be concerned enough about this to ship the unit back to them (I think not).

By the way, the two fan housings, which hold the fans, have the Falcon "eye" in the center of the fan housing where it overlays the fan hub. Cool, geeky stuff that :D
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Isgrimnur »

Fans are easy to change. Just have them send you a new one.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Daehawk »

Could be as simple as a wire touching the blades as they spin or perhaps a blade touching the fan case.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

I determined it was the top fan by sticking my finger in the fan before starting, noting no noise, then noting that the noise did occur when I removed my finger :D

I've contacted Falcon support and they asked for some photos to see if the fan is out of alignment. Thankfully it is the upper fan, the lower one is mostly blocked by the video card.
Isgrimnur wrote: Tue Nov 24, 2020 3:26 pm Fans are easy to change. Just have them send you a new one.
Boy, not that lower one, there's very little room between the end of the video card and the fan itself. Thankfully it is the upper one, I believe.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Daehawk »

Video cards come out for that :)
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

Daehawk wrote: Tue Nov 24, 2020 9:02 pm Video cards come out for that :)
Yes, obviously I know that since I've changed out a number of them over the years. However this rig is under warranty and I'm not in a hurry to invalidate it.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

I got back an email from Falcon. They thought the upper fan mounting screws might be overly tightened and I might try backing them out a thread at a time and see if that helped. Well, I got down there and fired up the rig and tried the suggested, but when I backed the upper screw out one turn it had no more resistance at all, it had been in by only one turn apparently. So I turned both outside screws a bit alternatively till the noise went away, then tested it twice after half hour cooling down periods. The noise is apparently gone.

The rig spent five days being jostled on various trucks, so a screw backing out isn't totally surprising. And now I have the confidence to try this fix once more if I get fan noise again.

Here are a few photos to give you an idea of how tightly packed things are in there.
Image

Image

Image

And an overall pic:
Image
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malchior
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by malchior »

Nice! That is indeed pretty tight but those big fans have to be pretty quiet.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Hrdina »

I've been dragging me feet on upgrading for a while. Last night, I locked screen to go eat dinner. I came back a couple of hours later and it would not wake up. Cycling power earned me an error code on my motherboard, and eventually the message "Missing operating system". D'oh! It seems like my SSD boot drive has gone bad.

This morning I sent two emails to Falcon-NW: one to support (to ask for any advice) and one to sale (to start the ball rolling on a new system).

Not long after sending the email to sales, some combination of messing with the BIOS and trying to boot from USB managed to get my PC to boot from the SSD again. I spent the next couple of hours updating all my backups and moving a bunch of stuff off that SSD.

Also, after I finally got the thing to boot, Windows humbly told me that it needed to install updates. I'm sure that was totally unrelated to the problems I saw.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

How old is the SSD?
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Daehawk »

jztemple2 wrote: Fri Dec 04, 2020 9:30 pm How old is the SSD?
Its old enough he wants to order an entire new system because of a hard drive :lol: :icon-wink: :icon-wink:
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Hrdina »

jztemple2 wrote: Fri Dec 04, 2020 9:30 pm How old is the SSD?
7 years, almost.
Daehawk wrote: Fri Dec 04, 2020 9:34 pmIts old enough he wants to order an entire new system because of a hard drive :lol: :icon-wink: :icon-wink:
Ha, maybe.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Jaymon »

thats hecking fancy pants setup
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

Jaymon wrote: Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:50 pm thats hecking fancy pants setup
Thanks! :D
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Hrdina »

So I, uh, might have just clicked "Purchase Now" on the Falcon-NW site.

The build time is 14 days, but there is an additional 14-day delay due to parts availability. The punch line is that it's not the RTX 3080 FE (that's only 7 days) but the chassis.

It's almost the same system that jztemple2 ordered a couple of months back. Same processor & GPU (I'm not sure that either will be overkill for MSFS 2020). I didn't get a new monitor since I already have a 3440x1440 LG (only 60 Hz though, but good enough for me). The sales guy said that the 750W PS was more than enough so didn't recommend that I step up to the 1000W model.

I also left in the standard ARGB fans instead of getting the black ones as I had planned. I'm sure that when I first turn this on, my wife will consider this to be my equivalent of buying a red convertible sports car.

I had originally spec'd 64 GB RAM, but both the sales guy and my friends at work thought that anything more than 32 GB was a waste. Since they configure RAM as either 2x16GB or 4x16GB, I figure I can always add two more sticks later if I really need it.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Formix »

I read through all these threads when my PC died two days ago. I wish I had the time to wait for Falcon, they've always interested me, but I've always built my own. This is the first pre-built I've bought in probably 20 years. Not what I would've wanted, but I had to buy it immediately because of my wife's classes.
US - ROG Gaming Desktop - Intel Core i7-9700K - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER - 2TB HDD + 512GB SSD - Black

I need to take a look at the RAM, I'd really prefer to have 32GB.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Daehawk »

I'm sure that when I first turn this on, my wife will consider this to be my equivalent of buying a red convertible sports car.
Well at least you didn't get the optional younger side girlfriend :)
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

Hrdina wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 1:27 am I had originally spec'd 64 GB RAM, but both the sales guy and my friends at work thought that anything more than 32 GB was a waste. Since they configure RAM as either 2x16GB or 4x16GB, I figure I can always add two more sticks later if I really need it.
I went through the same thinking on RAM, figuring that I can always expand in the future.

Nice to see someone else drinking the Kool-Aid :D
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Hrdina »

Daehawk wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 11:02 amWell at least you didn't get the optional younger side girlfriend :)
Damn, I must have missed that option on the Falcon site.
jztemple2 wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 12:12 pm
Hrdina wrote: Sat Dec 12, 2020 1:27 am I had originally spec'd 64 GB RAM, but both the sales guy and my friends at work thought that anything more than 32 GB was a waste. Since they configure RAM as either 2x16GB or 4x16GB, I figure I can always add two more sticks later if I really need it.
I went through the same thinking on RAM, figuring that I can always expand in the future.

Nice to see someone else drinking the Kool-Aid :D
Needless to say I was a little surprised to have a sales person say I didn't need all that RAM. I've never heard anyone with a gaming PC say "I have too much RAM". :D

Then again, I went and looked up the specs that Microsoft/Asobo posted before Flight Simulator was released, and they listed 32 GB in their "ideal" system.

When flying MSFS 2020, I usually have a web browser open in my second monitor with flight charts or something, so I'm not just running flight sim.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Victoria Raverna »

I don't think we reach the point in time where 32 GB is not enough.

Right now majority of games can run just fine with 8 GB so 16 GB is more than enough. 32 GB is actually too much RAM for gaming PC.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

Interesting article from PCGamesN, Get the right power supply for your new graphics card
Gamers all over the world are clamouring to get their hands on the latest and greatest graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD, but with the biggest generational leaps in performance we’ve seen yet – and I’m paraphrasing Spielberg’s shark epic here – you’re gonna need a bigger power supply. Knowing which one to choose to feed these hungry beasts is a job in itself, but be quiet! is here to shed some light on the right PSU for you.
When I was picking components for my Falcon NW I stepped up from the default 750W PSU to a thousand watt unit on the theory I had read years ago that it was better for the PSU to running long term at a lower load percentage to preserve its life and keep the noise down. This may no longer be true of course.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Daehawk »

Ive used a 850w since 2011.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

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Image
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

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Makes me want to become a package thief :) :twisted:
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

Hrdina wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 3:46 pm Image
Good things do come in bigger packages!
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

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Daehawk wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 3:59 pm Makes me want to become a package thief :) :twisted:
Needless to say, I was right there when it was delivered. Falcon-NW always ships "signature required", so I was extremely fortunate that this arrived on a day when I was already home from work.

Amazingly, when I order this in December, they projected January 11 for delivery. That was in fact the day it shipped. It also arrived on exactly the day they projected.
jztemple2 wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 4:26 pmGood things do come in bigger packages!
Indeed they do.

I am just getting ready to hook this up and power it on. I decided to let it sit for a while to get to room temperature since the case was really cold to the touch.

I am now remembering how disruptive it can be to move your whole digital life to a new machine. I need to get better about offline backups. :oops:

I also really hope that all my flight sim peripherals work on the new box. Some people have had trouble using CH Products gear with Windows 10. I didn't have that issue with my old PC, but that was Windows 10 Home and the new one has Pro.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

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Hrdina wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:34 pm I am now remembering how disruptive it can be to move your whole digital life to a new machine. I need to get better about offline backups. :oops:
When I went to my second Falcon in 2014 I had actually made up a transition plan after reviewing what utilities and other non-gaming programs I had installed and actually used on the previous machine :wink:. I had backup drives prepared and an installation strategy. When I got my latest machine in November I just dusted off the old plan and tweaked it for Win10.

Of course the plan all went to hell as soon as I got Ubisoft Connect ready and installed AC Valhalla :roll:.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Kraken »

Can I have the boxes? (Asking for a cat.)
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by Hrdina »

jztemple2 wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 11:36 pm
Hrdina wrote: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:34 pm I am now remembering how disruptive it can be to move your whole digital life to a new machine. I need to get better about offline backups. :oops:
When I went to my second Falcon in 2014 I had actually made up a transition plan after reviewing what utilities and other non-gaming programs I had installed and actually used on the previous machine :wink:. I had backup drives prepared and an installation strategy. When I got my latest machine in November I just dusted off the old plan and tweaked it for Win10.

Of course the plan all went to hell as soon as I got Ubisoft Connect ready and installed AC Valhalla :roll:.
Oh I had a plan, just not a good one. I had planned to leave my old PC on my network and move data across, since my usual plan (backup DVDs) doesn't work well when the new PC doesn't have a drive. I even tested sharing my drives on the old PC from another PC on my network and it worked fine. I never got that to work from the new PC, and gave up wasting time trying. So, I'm getting there, but slowly. All my "easy" stuff (browsers, email, music, financial stuff) is running fine on the new PC. I didn't have the energy to work on setting up all my flight sim peripherals tonight, so that will wait. Of course flight sims (and Cyberpunk) are exactly why I bought the new PC...

Image

I also want to move my 2TB data drive M.2 SSD from the old PC to the new one, but figured I should wait a little while before going in and changing the HW. :D
Kraken wrote: Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:43 am Can I have the boxes? (Asking for a cat.)
Sorry, cat, I always keep these just in case I need to ship the box back to Falcon-NW (which has never actually happened, knock wood).
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

Post by jztemple2 »

Any fan rattle when you first power up? I'm still dealing with about a ten second rattle before all quiets down.
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Re: Planning a new rig, opinions on components?

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jztemple2 wrote: Wed Jan 20, 2021 9:27 pmAny fan rattle when you first power up? I'm still dealing with about a ten second rattle before all quiets down.
No, I hardly hear anything from the box unless I open the case or start running something heavy duty.

When I have the case open, I hear the tiniest little amount of noise that I can't pinpoint. It's not even even to bother over.

Last night I ran MSFS on the new box for the first time. :wub:
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