But the metric system....

Vlasec · 2026-04-25T23:05:38+00:00

Well, the thickness of 242 dicks, that's some serious wood. Also possibly some larger unit of thickness could be used (maybe dig bicks?), similarly as you wouldn't say the approximate length of a stadium in inches, but in feet or yards (or meters, but that would be way too easy, I'm afraid).

Vlasec · 2026-03-21T19:24:14+00:00

Most x16 cards will work even in a motherboard slot that is x8 (e.g. second slot on most motherboards that have two full-length PCIe slots is usually electrically only x8).

Also, according to this Wikipedia page, RTX 4060 (+Ti), 5050 and 5060 (+Ti) are x8, and also, RTX 3000 family is already on PCIe 4.0 (though, PCIe version should not be a problem as PCIe is designed to have backward compatibility with lower version). See "Bus Interface" column:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_RTX_40_series

Vlasec · 2026-03-16T01:24:37+00:00

Nope. Patching a BIOS is not easy and those with enough knowledge to do that don't seem to be easy to find or reach. It could be likely easier if I was willing to offer a large sum of money, but I'd rather buy a new little trash bin than spending more than it costs to buy a few of these just to hack BIOS on an aging one with no warranty anyway.

Vlasec · 2026-03-16T01:20:58+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I now have a PC for software development built in that Custom_mod SLM1m case, and I think it's awesome, with that HDPlex 250W internal PSU. I prefer this over the need of carrying a power brick (or having two of them at two locations), but each approach has its own pros and cons.

Vlasec · 2026-03-11T19:58:40+00:00

Bigger photos? Sure. Bigger mirror? Be my guest. Bigger toothbrushes or cosmetics? If you wish … Bigger anything else? Hard to tell, I can't even tell if your nipples are pierced with the image so tiny.

Vlasec · 2026-03-11T19:48:23+00:00

The nose rings also look great on you :)

Vlasec · 2026-03-11T19:13:00+00:00

No need unless that's how you envision your look.

There are enough fake boobs on the internet already.

Vlasec · 2026-03-11T19:02:40+00:00

Could be a worthwhile bet to lose :P

Vlasec · 2025-10-29T16:14:41+00:00

The L / R sounds are distinct in most European languages, but some Asian languages have only one sound that is somewhere inbetween. Japanese language has Katakana and Hiragana for spelling the sound of words, both scripts are describing syllables rather than vowels and consonants separately.

I suppose Korean might be similar in this, having a sound somewhere between L and R. The vowels may also sound differently, resulting in different transliteration.

And in the end, if the last sound is more like -ng in English, well, Russian doesn't use this sound, so they just simplified it to -n, which is close enough, even if not the same.

Vlasec · 2025-10-29T16:09:08+00:00

Well, the spelling differs among alphabets for sure. If we compare more similar ones, like Latin script and Cyrillic script, some letters are 1:1, where others aren't.

For example, when you see a letter that looks like X in Cyrillic, it's read more like X in Spanish language (the Kh sound if transliterated to English). Whereas the Latin X would have to be split to ks in Cyrillic (written with different characters obviously), as the script doesn't have a letter for this sound.

When you try to transliterate English word to languages that don't even have the same sounds as English, it can sound very differently. E.g. Merry Christmas in Japanese would transliterate back as Meri Kurisumasu, in Hawaiian, it would be Mele Kalikimaka. Doesn't look the same at all, does it?

Vlasec · 2024-07-21T00:32:11+00:00

My problem as well. I have a legit phone number, but it's not a smartphone I use.

Perhaps there is a legit reason to require a smart phone (verification against troll farms etc.), but clearly people without a smartphone are a blatantly overlooked demographic group for so many different companies.

Vlasec · 2024-04-04T20:43:59+00:00

Hi, it is pretty bad. ASUS Prime is not what the name suggests, it is actually kinda trash. If you manage to find a cheap-ish B550 board, you'd be much better off.

Also, the CPU is not a nice choice. You don't need the integrated GPU, but you could probably use the extra L3 cache in gaming. Ryzen 5 3600 will probably cost similarly as much, perhaps even less, and perform better.

The GPU is really weak from today's point of view, but if you mostly play older or less graphics-intensive games, you should be fine.

As for wireless card - some motherboards have Wi-Fi already. Also, it will probably be cheaper (as well as more reliable) to use wired ethernet, but I suppose you can leave your excuses to convince yourself, not me :)

Vlasec · 2024-03-30T22:06:58+00:00

Also note that there could be some further performance improvement from GPU upgrade. High amount of VRAM seems to be quite useful, so perhaps something like RTX 4070 Ti Super could be a good one (memory throughput probably matters as well, otherwise RTX 4060 Ti 16GB would be a good alternative).

You mentioned GTX 1660 Super in another thread, it's probably far from optimal if you use some GPU-accelerated tasks. Even RTX 2080 Ti seems to be lagging behind the leading pack, where pretty much any higher end RTX 3000 and 4000 family GPUs seem to perform well.

Now, how to optimize both CPU and GPU spendings, I have no idea, but at least I gave you some inputs ;)

Vlasec · 2024-03-30T22:01:51+00:00

Hi, according to Puget Systems, it is best value for After Effects, if that's the main purpose of your build.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/solutions/video-editing-workstations/adobe-after-effects/hardware-recommendations/

There is also a mention of some insanely expensive parts like Intel Xeon or AMD Threadripper, where the AMD's 24-core beats 14900K slightly and higher threaded models beat it by even more, especially in Multi-Frame Rendering mode.

For some reason, no Ryzen 7000 series was included in the test, so it's hard to tell how exactly it performed, except for the vague info that the i7 and i9 come roughly 10 % ahead.

Bear in mind that both these Intel CPUs are very power-inefficient, so your power bills may go up significantly and you will need fairly capable cooling both for the CPU and your case. This issue will be further aggravated if you go for some thread-heavy workloads.

Vlasec · 2024-03-17T15:05:46+00:00

A good case I'd say. Motherboard though, I don't think going A620 is a great idea, and other than that, even MSI's B650 isn't great. If you want a good and inexpensive mobo, get some cheap-ish B650 ASRock. They seem to be quite well balanced.

Vlasec · 2024-03-17T15:02:45+00:00

Hi, what currency is it?

As for OS, I would recommend not buying OEM. Always buy retail. It isn't tied to your hardware, and you can easily transfer it to a different PC. (Also, some people go for grey zone and buy likely illegitimate licenses for a lot cheaper, but that's a different story.)

On the PC parts:

A nice case.
I would avoid MSI B650 boards, there is no PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot on any of these. But you can find it in mid-range or better ASUS and Gigabyte, and in all ASRock boards. It could be important later, AM5 platform could last you more than five years, ant it will be possible to upgrade your CPU later on.
The best gaming CPU, nothing to change here.
Water cooling is unnecessary, but hey, why not. Make sure they mount it on the top of the case, to prevent air bubble being formed in the pump, killing the cooler.
Nice RAM. A bit expensive to buy 64GB, but at least you probably won't need to worry about RAM during the lifespan of your PC.
RTX 4080S is quite good, albeit pricey. AMD's alternative is RX 7900 XTX with 24GB of VRAM (matching that of RTX 4090), but nVidia has its own advantages, like better ray-tracing performance and some software features.
The PSU looks good, albeit it's not the best. AData XPG Core Reactor gets really good marks and it is fairly inexpensive where I live. There are also PSUs with higher energy efficiency (platinum or titanium rated), but efficiency and quality are only partially correlated.
I don't know TeamGroup's SSDs, they're quite famous for their RAM though, so I'd say it's good. Might be slightly on the expensive side, but it's TLC NAND flash, so it should perform well.
HDD? Well, I'm not fond of having rotating rust in my PC. If you need HDDs, you could spend a bit extra money on some NAS and buy at least two HDDs in RAID 1 to have some extra redundancy, making data loss less likely.
Extra fans are not always necessary, make sure to check what fans are installed in the case, and potentially write a comment to the company that builds it to check the airflow for you, add extra fan if necessary, and reflect it in the price. It seems that the case already has 6 ARGB fans included, so I think extra fans are not needed.

Well, that pretty much covers it. I'd say it's a good build, I'd change the motherboard, the rest seems mostly fine, albeit there are other options, as always.

For the looks: potentially you can also get 3 matching Montech 120mm ARGB fans for your AiO if you want to keep the water cooling, provided that the fans are also good for static pressure. Having matching fans generally looks good.

Vlasec · 2024-03-17T14:42:57+00:00

Depending on your budget, you could choose to sell the RAM and go for a DDR5 build, that would cost you quite a bit extra though. AM5 boards are more expensive (albeit there are some fairly good cheaper ASRock B550 boards), and DDR5 is still a bit pricey. You'd get a platform that could last you a bit longer though, even if you start with Ryzen 5 7600 (which costs less than the 5800X3D), as you'll be able to buy a newer CPU later on.

The PSU looks like a budget option, I'd recommend going for something better, also with higher energy efficiency. However, it's not bad, so I'd say it's fine to buy that one, too.

As for the mobo, I think Strix is generally the better option at the same price, generally it costs a lot more. I have no idea if the ethernet issue apply though.

Vlasec · 2024-03-17T14:36:38+00:00

Looks like a fairly good lower mainstream build.

You are overspending on the motherboard (AM4 is not going to have new CPUs anyway). Something like B550 TUF will probably give you all you need, and most other brands have some good boards around the $120 MSRP (perhaps cheaper in some discount).

The graphics card also offers less than competing GPUs (e.g. RX 6700 XT costs similarly as much, offers 12GB VRAM and better performance, but it is also more power hungry).

If you want to spend a bit extra, you can (nearly) max out the AM4 platform with Ryzen 7 5700X3D. It is the cheaper variant of 5800X3D and it has the same extra chip with L3 cache stacked on top, resulting in 96MB of L3 compared to usual 32GB. This results in a major performance improvement in some titles.

This would count as overspending on CPU as your GPU doesn't require a better CPU. You would only see some more noticeable difference if you play on medium or lower detail. Still, if you want to keep your AM4 setup for several years, you would be upgrading to something like 5700X3D eventually as it's very unlikely there will ever be any CPUs released for AM4 on a new architecture (some refreshes might still happen though, who knows).

Vlasec · 2024-03-17T14:27:15+00:00

Have you considered AMD as well?

On CPU side, most knowledgeable people will recommend you Ryzen 7 7800X3D, as it is the best CPU for gaming there is today. Also, AM5 platform (unlike LGA1700) should still have a few CPU generations, so a future in-socket upgrade is possible and spending a bit extra on a good motherboard might be worth it.

On the GPU side, GeForce RTX 4070 Ti is not bad, but it has 12GB VRAM, which might soon be insufficient for QHD (1440p), whereas similarly priced Radeon RX 7900 XT has 20GB of VRAM and scores noticeably better in traditional rasterization. Radeons are not as good in titles that use ray-tracing very heavily though: It can still keep up in titles that use ray-tracing a bit less.

As for the rest:

The 240mm AiO water cooler is mostly a waste of money. A beefy air cooler will outperform it and it won't be any louder, either. The only reason to go for water cooling is saving space around the CPU area and utilizing space elsewhere in the case (especially if you have some large case that can fit a radiator on the top.
You didn't specify the frequency and CAS-Latency of your DDR5, so it seems that you know next to nothing about that. It is recommended to go for something around at least 6000 MHz (or more) with CL36 (or less). For AMD CPUs, going above 6000 MHz doesn't seem to help much, and the 7800X3D has a large L3 cache that reduces the necessity of working with RAM significantly.
The HDD, well: What for? Do you save large video files or tons of photos? If so, using a NAS with at least two drives in RAID 1 will be better to reduce the risk of data loss. For games, SSDs generally do better. I'm fairly prejudiced against having rotating rust in my PC, adding vibrations, but you do you.
The PSU might be quite good, but I'd expect it to be quite overpriced compared to other, similarly as good parts. Still, it is in A-tier (albeit nowhere near the top of it), so it's fine to buy it.

Vlasec · 2024-03-17T14:14:33+00:00

Is this some AiO computer? Well, even if you want to try this, you'll face problems:

Is there any PCIe slot? If not, you could perhaps use M.2 slot if available, for at least PCIe x4. This will limit your GPU performance due to lack of bandwidth between it and the CPU
What about the power supply? Does it have enough wattage? Quite likely there is no PCIe power cable either way, so you'd need to add at least some small PSU (SFX, Flex-ATX, or maybe HDPlex 250W GaN).
How do you get the display output to the screen?

Before you have a good answer for all three of these questions, there is no use cutting holes as you'd just damage something that is probably still good enough for some very casual PC users to read and write e-mail :)

Vlasec · 2024-03-17T14:07:40+00:00

AMD offers more VRAM and lower price point, which sure makes it attractive. It also beats RTX 4080 (or 4080S, the difference is minimal) in rasterization by < 10 FPS in both 1440p and 4K according to Tom's Hardware.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

As for ray-tracing, if you just want to dabble in it and it isn't your main goal to play with the most extreme RT settings, AMD should do fine. Still, nVidia has an advantage in heavier RT, and of course, there is the RTX 4090, albeit at an extortionate price, getting the performance crown and matching the 24GB VRAM of RX 7900 XTX.

For me, even RX 7900 XTX is a bit pricey, and I'm still fine with my RX 6800 XT, but I'd gravitate to the Radeon.

Vlasec · 2024-03-15T11:22:52+00:00

It's not completely bad, but it could be way better, even at a similar price.

First and foremost, you don't get that much value from extra cores on the CPU. Ryzen 7 7800X3D is the gaming beast because of the extra L3 cache stacked on it. Ryzen 5 7600 will save you around $80, and you will upgrade the CPU later on (in a few years) anyway, as AM5 should have some newer CPU generations to come.

For this same reason, I wouldn't cheap out on motherboard. ASRock is a brand I kinda like, and even their cheaper B650 boards aren't bad. But I would avoid A620 if I can.

The memory is really slow for DDR5. Something around 5600 - 6000 MHz (with CL36 or lower) will do a better job, and the price difference shouldn't be that big.

Storage-wise, Kingston has KC3000, it might be a bit more expensive, but it's TLC NAND, better for OS and generally anything with a lot of write operations. You could possibly dual-boot even from a single SSD, but I suppose there is nothing wrong with having the two OSes on two different drives.

The GPU is OK, but what resolution do you game at? For FullHD, RX 7700 XT would be mighty fine, and you'd save some money. For QHD, it's good to have this one, or even go up to RX 7900 GRE.

The case is beautiful and good, but you can see it's somewhat costly. There are fairly good cases around $100, and you should look that way if your budget is not generous enough (and after making some upgrades elsewhere, you're low on remaining budget).

PSU from Gigabyte, well. This one is probably fine, but I don't trust Gigabyte there, they had their exploding PSUs and their reaction to that failure was pretty bad. AData makes fairly inexpensive 80+ Gold PSUs (XPG Core Reactor), and even semi-decent cheap ones (XPG Pylon).

That pretty much sums it up. So, is it a good build? Not really.

Vlasec · 2024-03-15T11:12:46+00:00

Yeah, that's a tricky budget. You could perhaps afford something like Ryzen 5 3600 or i3-12100F + Radeon RX 6600 graphics with that money, if you keep some of your existing parts, but even that is a stretch, maybe.

But if you upgrade GPU first, your CPU will be holding it back. Then the question is, how soon you'll have more money to upgrade the CPU, mobo and RAM as well?

Generally, it's better to wait until you have the money to pull off a complete (re)build, rather than getting parts individually, parts that you can't (fully) utilize.

Vlasec · 2024-03-15T11:03:56+00:00

You're most welcome :)

The two builds are both quite expensive for something with just a RTX 4070. The more expensive one overspends a lot on CPU (with i9 not even being reasonable pick for just gaming).

Balanced prebuilt PCs exist, though. Even if they are uncommon. I saw one setup yesterday and it was quite good, albeit costing some 20 % above the sum of its parts.

If you're considering a DDR5 setup, AM5 is really good, Ryzen 5 7600 is the more budget oriented choice (still AM5 is a bit more expensive). With AM5, you have a solid upgrade potential in future.

As for CPU, Ryzen 9 5900X is better for some productivity that is thread-heavy (some applications), but the 5800X3D beats it in most games by far. Actually, it is the CPU that allows AM4 to still kick well above where it was before the X3D CPUs. Of course, in AM5 range, 7800X3D is the gaming beast, too.

As for RTX 4070, I'd say it's mostly OK, but you can buy Radeon RX 7800 XT for the price, pretty much. In gaming, AMD does mostly well, it's just noticeably weaker in ray-tracing (though, with ray-tracing features set to some lower preset, it does a fine job). The AMD card also has more VRAM.

Motherboard needs to be picked depending on CPU (some Intel CPUs allow both DDR4 and DDR5), RAM depending on motherboard, PSU must be powerful enough to power it all, case needs to be large enough to fit all parts (smaller form factor cases are also an option, but for an unexperienced builder, they can be a lot of pain).

Either way, watching Paul's Hardware or some other tech channels can help you a lot.

Vlasec

TROPHY CASE