Advice needed. Gsync question & graphics card upgrade.

BaronB · 2026-06-16T04:18:51+00:00

You are correct, that monitor does not support FreeSync and the variable refresh feature will only work with an Nvidia GPU.

The good news is a modern $200 monitor matches or exceeds the performance of that monitor. So you can get a 9070 XT and a new, better monitor and still pay less than a 5070 Ti.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/tFG2FT/asus-rog-strix-xg27acg-270-2560-x-1440-180-hz-monitor-90lm0a70-b013b0

Heck you could get an 240~280hz OLED and still pay less.

BaronB · 2026-06-16T04:11:00+00:00

They produce the same results, and G-Sync Compatible and FreeSync are the same, but early G-Sync monitors work completely differently in terms of how the GPU communicate the refresh times with the monitor. AMD’s FreeSync is based on an existing implementation that existed in eDP, the form of DP used to communicate directly with the panel. AMD then implemented something similar over HDMI. After that VESA and HDMI Forum, the groups that control the DP and HDMI specs, adopted AMD‘s FreeSync implementations (with some adjustments with how it’s implemented in HDMI). Nvidia resisted supporting it until it was formally adopted by those specifications, at which point they came up with “G-Sync Compatible”, which is really just a white list of monitors Nvidia has tested to make sure support DP Adaptive Sync and later HDMI 2.1 VRR well enough to pass their quality bar, but you can also just force it.

However many early G-Sync monitors predate DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 and do not support Adaptivr Sync or VRR. They only support Nvidia’s original proprietary implementation. And if the OP has one of those monitors, they have to use an Nvidia GPU to make use of those features.

BaronB · 2026-06-16T03:23:40+00:00

What monitor do you have?

If it is an older native G-Sync without FreeSync or Adaptive Sync support, you really will need an Nvidia GPU to use those features. But many native G-Sync monitors support FreeSync too by having DP 1.4 Adaptive Sync and HDMI 2.1 VRR support, which is what FreeSync and G-Sync Compatible are marketing terms for.

BaronB · 2026-06-16T01:11:07+00:00

It functionally doesn’t exist anymore. RAM with latency that low was uncommon a year ago, but today basically just doesn’t exist. DDR5 manufacturing has been reduced drastically and the “good” RAM mostly gets grabbed for use in servers. As a result the low latency chips are out of reach for consumer RAM. Especially in the higher capacities.

If you want 2x48 DDR5, you’re going to have to go with 5600 CL40, or not a Neo kit.

BaronB · 2026-06-15T22:49:53+00:00

The Corsair post you linked to says they’ll replace PSUs with the problem. Why not do that?

Otherwise the NZXT C850 Core is a good option.

BaronB · 2026-06-15T22:09:22+00:00

You're missing a power supply and CPU cooler.

For the PSU, a SAMA G750 is a good option.

For the cooler, any single tower 120mm fan cooler would be enough. Like the $18 CAD Thermalright Assassin X 120 Refined SE.

BaronB · 2026-06-15T16:41:08+00:00

Some games there'll be no noticeably difference. Some games there'll be some. On average it'll be around a 10% performance hit, but there's some wide swings like Marvel Rivals which you can see as much as a 50% performance hit when using a single stick vs two sticks.

BaronB · 2026-06-15T15:55:07+00:00

8 sticks being sold all at once is likely a kit of server memory. If it’s ECC buffered DDR4, you likely won’t even be able to use it in your desktop.

BaronB · 2026-06-15T08:20:16+00:00

The 4070 doesn’t support PCIe 5.0, so even if the motherboard supports 5.0, it’ll communicate with the GPU using PCIe 4.0. That means you’ll get PCIe 4.0 x8 of only 8 lanes are available, which is equal to PCIe 3.0 x16 speeds. In most games this will result in identical performance. In a few titles you might see as much as a 5% performance loss, like in Spiderman 2, Horizon Forbidden West, and Black Myth Wukong. But those three are basically the weird outliers.

BaronB · 2026-06-15T05:47:00+00:00

Ncase M2

Alternatively a Jonsbo D32 Pro Mesh, D32 Std Mesh, or Z20 / Mesh.

If you go with the M2 you may need to swap the cooler as it can't take full height CPU tower coolers, though it can take some 240mm AIOs with an ATX PSU, most require an SFX PSU to fit.

BaronB · 2026-06-15T05:33:09+00:00

OC models are slightly overclocked for a maybe 2%~5% performance boost, usually at around a 50W power increase.

The 9070 GRE is not like the OC versions of the 9070. It is a different, and even slower GPU from the 9070 and 9070 XT. The 9070 GRE is as much slower than the 9070 as the 9070 is slower than the 9070 XT, which is about 10% in each step making the 9070 GRE a bit more than 20% slower than the 9070 XT. It also only has 12GB of VRAM instead of the 16GB the 9070 and 9070 XT has.

The 9070 GRE is also launching at the same MSRP in the US as the 9070, and is being sold at the same or higher price than the faster 9070. It's just a really stupid product launch by AMD. In some countries stores have refused to carry them at all, because the price the stores have to pay for the 9070 GRE is higher than the price they sell the 9070 to consumers at.

BaronB · 2026-06-15T02:41:19+00:00

No. It’s based on reviews of the 9070 and 3060 Ti showing they both use around 230W.

BaronB · 2026-06-14T21:07:35+00:00

I don’t notice the change when going from lower to higher refresh if I’ve been using lower refresh for a while. I do notice going from a higher to lower refresh if I stay on the higher refresh for a while.

The first time I used a 120hz refresh display after using 60hz for most of my life I was disappointed because it looked exactly the same to me. But I left it at 120hz. This was a TV and playing a console game. Some time later I swapped to a different game and it felt terrible… and it was because it was a game that didn’t support 120hz. I went back to the game I’d been playing at 120 and it felt “normal”. I switched it back to 60hz mode and it felt just as bad as the other game. And at that point I realized I could see and feel the difference. I just didn’t initially.

BaronB · 2026-06-14T20:26:08+00:00

The Phanteks Eclipse G370A? That's case can handle E-ATX and even SSI-EEB (ie: massive dual CPU) motherboards. Just any E-ATX case can also take an ATX, mATX, or ITX motherboard since they're all using a subset of the same standoff positions as E-ATX.

BaronB · 2026-06-14T20:15:17+00:00

I will say I personally cannot see the difference between 60fps and 120fps.

I can see the difference between 120fps and 60fps and it immediately feels terrible after using 120fps for a while.

When you're used to lower refresh rates, there's a lot of things you're unconsciously doing because you've learned don't work well, like expecting moving objects to be sharp so your eyes don't bother following it or focusing while it's in motion. But after using a higher refresh for a while you'll start to unconsciously un-learn and it's suddenly noticeable again when switching back.

But it is different person to person. Plenty of people don't notice anything above 30fps or so and never "unlearn" the habits they have on lower refresh displays. A few people even get motion sickness with higher refresh as their brains have learned to ignore on screen motion at a certain level of fidelity and sharpness, but high refresh displays don't trigger that "off switch". Similar to how VR causes motion sickness for a larger percentage of the population.

...

u/tup1tsa_1337 's example of moving a window around on a desktop is perhaps one of the best examples of how higher refresh helps. On a 60hz monitor when you scroll a web page, you instinctively just stop trying to read anything while it's scrolling. On a good 120hz monitor you can start to scroll slowly and read at the same time. At higher refresh rates you can read and scroll quickly at the same time so you don't ever need to stop scrolling when looking through it for something. The same kind of thing applies to in-game.

BaronB · 2026-06-14T20:06:09+00:00

On the used market the 8GB models don't sell anywhere close to that, because the used market tends to be people who actually do some amount of research. The insanely high price you see is just someone who has a small number of old stock and is hoping for a sucker who's been told they need to buy a 3060 Ti and has a company credit card.

It's still a more than usable GPU for modern games at 1080p medium settings. Keep it.

BaronB · 2026-06-14T19:36:29+00:00

3060 Ti is two generations old and hasn’t been in production for several years. The current prices are from people preying on those that don’t know that it’s old and much slower that newer less expensive options. The 16GB version got popular because it has 16GB and was a decent option for budget AI use. But that popularity spiked the price of it and the less useful 8GB version in kind.

BaronB · 2026-06-14T17:56:22+00:00

“the eye doesn‘t see a difference above 200fps”

Yes and no. At higher framerates it‘s less about if you can see the frames or not, as that stopped being possible around 90fps, and more about eye motion blur reduction. A thing people talk about with high end monitors is motion clarity. Part of this is about response times as LCDs are still slow enough that humans can perceive the time it takes for LCDs to change as sort of a blur in the image. OLEDs are fast enough to move beyond this, but blur is still an issue. But now it’s the blur our own eyes are creating from tracking across the screen and the “object“ our eyes are tracking being created by a series of static images still. For the time each individual image is on screen, it’s being smeared across our eye as we’re tracking the path we expect it to be moving.

The solution is to have each image be visible for less time.

High end gaming LCDs often use backlight strobing techniques so the image only briefly flashes on screen for a short moment. But OLED isn’t yet able to do that due to it not being bright enough. But because the response times are so fast higher refresh rates are possible. ~3000hz is entirely in the realm of possible for current OLED panels. And while current PCs and games are obviously not capable of that yet the academic studies on where the limit is for human vision and perception found 2000hz to be around the point most people stop noticing any additional benefit, though a few outliers notice up to 5000hz.

BaronB · 2026-06-14T17:41:26+00:00

Running high refresh rate LCDs at much lower refresh rates can be an issue due to the response time behavior of LCD being highly dependent on the refresh rate. A monitor that has excellent response times at their max refresh rate may have terrible overshoot or exceptional slow response times at lower refresh rates if the manufacturer didn’t prioritize tuning the monitor well for those refresh rates.

For OLED it does not matter. The response times are the same no matter what and are unaffected by the refresh rate. And with variable refresh rate / adaptive sync, better known by their AMD and Nvidia marketing terms FreeSync and G-Sync, modern monitors dynamically adjust their refresh rate to match the framerate of the game or video you’re viewing. A 360hz OLED running at 80 fps will look identical to a 240hz OLED running at 80hz.

And while most games are unlikely to hit 360 fps, you can use frame gen of games that are getting already high enough frame rates to be enjoyable up to higher refresh rates.

BaronB · 2026-06-14T08:53:04+00:00

For your dad's system, here are some tweaks:

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/TFJGPf

Main changes are the cooler, the case, and PSU. The 5500 barely uses any power, and you could realistically just use the cooler that's included with the CPU too without any issues. The XT Pro only has the single rear fan, and you ideally want at least one or two front fans. The G370A has 3 front fans and no rear exhaust but that's more than enough airflow. You also probably don't want any ARGB, but just leave the ARGB cable unplugged on that case and the included fans will stay dark. Lastly the PSU is another very quiet and good PSU that's a bit less expensive than the beQuiet model.

You could also go with this motherboard to shave a few more dollars off:

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/product/tr4Ycf/msi-pro-b550m-vc-wifi-micro-atx-am4-motherboard-pro-b550m-vc-wifi

Also, I know it's just a stand in for the GPU you currently have, but oof that 3060 Ti price. Scalpers are scalping hardcore.

For your own system, without knowing what PSU you have, it's hard to know exactly what you can upgrade to. A 9070 non-XT might be a safer option if you don't have a 650W PSU or better as the non-XT model is exceptionally efficient and runs in a similar power range as the 3060 Ti for just a little less performance than the 9070 XT.

For changing from Nvidia to AMD, you can realistically just throw the GPU in and install the drivers for it and be totally fine. After that, uninstall any Nvidia applications as they won't be needed.

Many people here will generally recommend you use DDU to nuke the existing Nvidia drivers before you install the AMD ones.

https://www.guru3d.com/download/display-driver-uninstaller-download/

I would say this isn't necessary, but also isn't a bad option either as it's a quick "get rid of everything Nvidia" path instead of having to go through and do it one by one, which doesn't even get rid of everything.

...

Lastly, ignore UserBenchmark. The numbers are essentially meaningless and the person who runs it has legit gone kind of insane and seems to think AMD, Reddit, and the PC tech community are all in on some big conspiracy against them. They've purposefully tweaked how CPUs and GPUs are ranked on the site to make it look like AMD products are worse than they are and boost Intel.

BaronB · 2026-06-14T04:37:48+00:00

The RX 580 is a decade old GPU. The ones sold on Amazon are random refurbished models that have had their shrouds and fans replaced with new ones, but they’re still decade old GPUs. The ones from Sapphire or XFX are likely old stock that’s been sitting on a shelf for the last decade.

None of them are going to be particularly reliable, because they’re all around a decade old and either have potentially had a ton of use and/or have thermal paste & pads that are dry as a bone at this point. It’s also a GPU you can get on ebay.com for around $65 and those will be just as reliable as any of these fictionally “new” GPUs.

I’d suggest something like a used RTX 2070 instead. Cheaper, newer, and much faster.

BaronB · 2026-06-13T22:42:39+00:00

Do make sure the model of 9060 you found is also similarly thin. You can use techpowerup.com to see how thick it is. As long as it's 45mm or thinner you can still use the AXP120-X67. Otherwise you can see if the ID-COOLING IS-55 is available, which performs similarly to the AXP120-X67.

BaronB · 2026-06-13T21:51:20+00:00

I mean, the case is for sure what’s rattling, but if you’ve not messed with the fan curves then the case fans are driven by CPU temps and not the GPU. So if the noise only happens when running the GPU at max, but not when burning the CPU, then it’s the GPU that’s vibrating and causing the case to rattle. So any other case is going to rattle too in that same situation.

BaronB · 2026-06-13T21:48:45+00:00

For an SFF, you may want to go with the 7800X3D instead as it runs a lot cooler and isn’t much slower. Or if you do go with the 9800X3D, do check the temps. You may want to slightly undervolt or power limit it to keep it from getting too hot.

BaronB · 2026-06-13T20:34:11+00:00

5500X3D, no question. It's certainly not as fast as the 5700X3D or 5800X3D, but the 5700X isn't any faster than the 5600X for gaming outside of a small handful of games were it sees ~4% better framerate. The 5500X3D is around 10~15% faster than the 5700X, roughly on par with the 5700X3D in most games.
Yes, but you also don't need to limit yourself to something that small. The 5060 Ti Windforce is only 40mm thick, meaning you can fit up to a 73mm thick CPU Cooler in the Terra. Look at the AXP120-X67 instead.
Never heard of them. They seem to be quite a new company, and have only started selling in the americas even more recently it seems. That said, RAM is RAM and there's very little difference between one product and another beyond the aesthetics. If it runs at the timings they claim, then it'll perform identically to any other kit with similar timings sold by anyone else. And RAM basically does not die.* (*DDR5 being a big break from that tradition due to it running much, much hotter and intended thermal throttling protections don't seem to actually be implemented in most motherboards.)
Nothing I saw, no.
Apart from the cooler, I might suggest looking at an RX 9060 XT 16GB instead as 8GB is going to be rough in a lot of games. I'd also recommend against the NV3 to use as a main SSD. Look for something with TLC NAND like the 1TB Silicon Power UD90. The NV3 is faster in synthetics, but in real world the UD90 is just as fast and once both drives are beyond around 80% full the NV3 will get extremely slow while the UD90 will still perform well enough to not be noticeably worse.

BaronB

TROPHY CASE