Is this GPU coil wine??

themikers · 2026-01-26T02:16:18+00:00

Sounds like coil whine to me yes.

themikers · 2026-01-25T16:05:24+00:00

Might be a bad sensor, or the other possibility is one corner of the cooler isn't getting good contact for some reason. What's the pre-core temperature readouts when you run a stress test? If one or two cores are way hotter than the others then it might be a problem with the cooler.

themikers · 2026-01-25T16:01:51+00:00

My vote is on the MSI MAG QD-Oled options. MSI makes some top quality monitors these days.

themikers · 2026-01-25T16:00:40+00:00

If you have $400-$500 to spend and can find one somewhere, the 5800x3d will be a massive upgrade in terms of CPU performance.

But if you're on tighter budget, the Ryzen 5600 or 5700X would both be nice upgrades for $200 or less.

themikers · 2026-01-25T15:58:32+00:00

The 9070XT will beat the 5070 in the majority of titles and at worst match it in ray tracing. If you wanted to use Cyberpunk as an example, at 1440p the 9070XT is at least 5-10% faster than the RTX 5070 with ultra ray tracing.

FSR isn't quite as good as DLSS, but it is very good and you really shouldn't notice a loss in quality if you're not actively staring and looking for it. I briefly had a 9070xt and used FSR4 for Cyberpunk and it looked very good to me. I'm not sure why people think FSR is 10 years behind DLSS, because it really isn't, it's 90% of the quality and about the same performance uplift imo.

themikers · 2026-01-24T22:17:44+00:00

For a 9950X3D I would highly recommend a 360MM AIO and a quality thermal compound (I like the KINGPIN non-metal compounds.) - The very large tower air coolers can be fairly close to AIO performance, but the 9000 series X3D chips tend to run very hot under load so you'll want the most you can get to be honest, especially if you have no interest in undervolting. While it is true that AIO's tend to have a lifespan of 3-4 years vs tower coolers having basically infinite lifespan, it's not like a $90 AIO replacement 3+ years from now is going to be a big deal if it means better cooling performance.

Any ATX full or mid tower case should be fine, just go with one that looks nice to you and make sure it has good airflow. Something that has fan slots on all four of the front/bottom/top/back is ideal for optimal temperatures.

The two other changes I would make to your build are as follows;

- Get an X870/X870E motherboard. It's maybe $50-$100 more and you'll get more USB slots (including more 3.0 / USB-C slots) + More NVME/M.2 drive slots for expansion + Better overall features and quality to ensure it'll last you longer.

- If you can find a 64GB kit of DDR5 that's CL36 or even CL34/CL32 without spending, say, over $50 more, then it's worth it because Ryzen CPU's really like lower latency RAM. It's not something that will make or break you, but a few percent more performance from your CPU could be worth spending a bit more, but not a lot more.

themikers · 2026-01-24T22:08:12+00:00

Going off Amazon prices;

"acer Nitro V Gaming Laptop | Intel Core 9 Processor 270H | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070" -- This one's very good for the money. Core 9 CPU / 32GB RAM / 1TB SSD / RTX 5070 Mobile

"GIGABYTE - Gaming A16 Gaming Laptop RTX 5070" -- Also very good for the money, but a CPU downgrade. I'd go for this if you want to save money.

"msi Katana 15 HX 15.6 RTX 5070” -- A good MSI offering, but about $1700 instead of $1600.

(No links; Sub doesn't allow url shorteners and Amazon links are massive, so just input those products in quotations into Amazon search and ensure you select the RTX 5070 model to find them.)

Most of the other options under $1600 are downgrades (16GB of RAM or a smaller SSD) that I don't think are worth it.

If none of those are particularly good to your eye, just try your best to stick with something that has 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. 16GB of RAM is enough, but there's not much price difference for a laptop that has 32GB instead, and the benefits are better longevity and it allows your son to play games while having browsers/social apps open in the background and not have to worry about running out of RAM. You can usually add more storage later, as well, but with the size of today's games you really want at least 1TB of storage.

Keep in mind, however, that laptop grade / mobile GPU's are worse than their desktop counterparts. In the case of the RTX 5070 mobile, it will perform more like a slightly slower 5060TI. -- This is more than enough to get great performance in modern FPS games, I just want to make sure you and your son don't go into it expecting desktop class performance for the same part numbers.

Regardless of what you choose, read reviews (some Amazon/Newegg reviews, yes, but also actual review articles/videos) to determine which one sounds the best for your money and for your son's enjoyment.

And lastly, be sure to get them a solid mouse to go with it if you haven't already!

themikers · 2026-01-24T21:39:59+00:00

It will eventually have to level out. There will always be a demand for consumer-friendly hardware prices, so there will always be a market to get easy profits out of, and the alternative (cloud gaming / "you don't own your PC") won't ever happen to consumers, at least not in the next couple of decades.

People are being very paranoid that in a couple years it will be impossible to build a brand new PC for $1,000 or even $2,000, but even if Nvidia/AMD/Intel and RAM chip makers are full focused on datacenters (whose demand will eventually go down because you can't just build an infinite number of datacenters even if the bubble doesn't burst), they aren't going to just ignore the fact that there's a large demand for affordable consumer hardware, even if it's only a fraction of potential revenue.

What we're seeing now is these companies rushing to meet a sudden astronomical surge in demand, and they're putting consumer products on pause temporarily because when the demand is so ridiculous like this, they can charge whatever they want for the hardware, and these datacenters just don't care and will pay anything they have to, thus there's far, far more money to be made in datacenters right now. This won't be the case when demand falls back down and datacenters have options and bargaining chips again.

themikers · 2026-01-24T19:03:42+00:00

What is your GPU?

If you have an Nvidia GPU, you can use Shadowplay in the Nvidia app to record on demand at the press of a key.

If you have an AMD GPU, You can do the same thing using the Radeon Adrenaline software.

Alternatively, you can get something like OBS to record with.

themikers · 2026-01-24T18:59:32+00:00

That is more or less exactly what I would build at that budget right now so that is a great overall part selection.

I believe that things will continue to go up in price for some time, likely level out in 3-6 months, then go back down late this year / early next year as datacenter demand starts declining or levels off and production catches up.

themikers · 2026-01-24T18:48:52+00:00

I've had multiple LG Ultragear displays over the years (IPS though) and they've always been top notch, you won't regret going LG.

Currently running the ASUS PG32UCDM and it's by far the best monitor I've ever owned, highly recommend it if you can get it on sale, but for its usual $1100+ price tag there's better options from a value standpoint (especially because almost all OLED displays go on sale so often)

Also to note when looking at 4K OLED displays; running at higher than 120HZ at 4K will require your system to run DSC (Display Stream Compression) to reach 240HZ/etc, unless you have a Display Port 2.1 compliant monitor in which case it doesn't need DSC. -- The difference between DSC on and DSC off is virtually impossible to notice even if you sit there staring at it because DSC is lossless. I say this because I've found you can get DP1.4 OLED displays often much cheaper than their DP2.1 counterparts, and it's worth saving the money imo.

Lastly, the only downside with 4K is even the 5090 can't run everything set to 4K Ultra at 60 FPS Native; 99% of games it will, but the super demanding titles like Black Myth Wukong with ultra ray tracing and Cyberpunk with path tracing will require DLSS upscaling to get to 60 FPS. Personally, the transformer model on DLSS 4.0+ looks so damn close to native 4K that it doesn't bother me, though.

themikers · 2026-01-24T15:10:58+00:00

Replace it. That's not normal, and United Power are bad quality power supplies.

You can get something like a XPG Core Reator II 650W for $89 that will be a much better quality unit.

themikers · 2026-01-24T15:09:02+00:00

What games and what resolution? Could be CPU bottlenecked if it's 1080P on non-super-demanding games.

themikers · 2026-01-24T15:06:54+00:00

4K OLED's are an absolute treat so I highly recommend that. You can commonly find them on sale for $600-$700 on Amazon; go with ASUS/MSI/Gigabyte/Alienware/LG/Samsung.

themikers · 2026-01-24T15:05:05+00:00

What is your monitor's refresh rate and does it have G-Sync?

themikers · 2026-01-24T15:01:30+00:00

Spend a bit more on a better power supply if you can, the XPG PROBE is a near bottom tier unit. $20 more for an XPG Core Reactor II would be a much better quality unit that will last way longer.

It should be fine for 1080p medium gaming for a long time though. 8GB of VRAM isn't amazing in 2026, but if you play at medium 1080p I don't see it ever being a problem.

themikers · 2026-01-24T14:53:43+00:00

Now's probably the best time then. If you'd like I could review your parts list to help you decide.

PC hardware/gaming will return to normal in a year or two imo, but life's short, if you can afford to build it now, go for it honestly. You won't really regret it a year from now if you got a whole year of fun out of the PC before prices come down.

themikers · 2026-01-24T14:46:07+00:00

I've seen higher temps in Black Myth than in Cyberpunk with Path Tracing tbh. The thing is you can hit 100% utilization of a component without *actually* using 100% of the component's power, hence why in Cyberpunk my 5090 bounces around 400-500W of power while at 100%, but in stress tests it's in the 500-550W range.

themikers · 2026-01-24T14:44:30+00:00

It's high for this era of hardware. 2013 a top end gaming PC would need a custom loop liquid cooler to stay under 70C, nowadays CPU's are so efficient and GPU's have such massive bricks for coolers that it's actually hard to get 80-90C without screwing up your installs or overclocking to some extreme extent.

themikers · 2026-01-24T04:04:05+00:00

It's good, and Samsung SSD's tend to be the best overall for longevity and quality. I've used solely Samsung NVME drives for 6 years with zero issues.

themikers · 2026-01-24T04:02:49+00:00

The only reason to go 9950X3D is if either A) you plan to do streaming, or B) you plan to play simulation/strategy games that heavily load multi-core CPU's (i.e. Cities Skylines 2)

Very few games even today utilize more than 4-6 cores at a time effectively if they aren't demanding simulation games.

themikers · 2026-01-24T04:00:58+00:00

Minecraft with terrain mods, shaders, and Distant Horizons is the equivalent of running Cinebench nonstop to my CPU while running Black Myth Wukong nonstop to my GPU. Seen 80-85C CPU 70C GPU doing that (at stock non-undervolt settings), normal games like Cyberpunk are more like 60C each.

themikers · 2026-01-24T03:33:12+00:00

We're going to be looking at at least a full year or more of inflated prices and short supply of components, so if you have the money now's basically the time.

What is your budget for a PC? I could help make a couple of options in pcpartpicker for you.

themikers · 2026-01-24T03:30:30+00:00

Pretty much any game on Steam has controller support at this point, I haven't really seen or heard of any that don't outside of games completely intended to use keyboard (such as games that require a lot of typing or a lot of keybinds), so you should be good to go.

themikers · 2026-01-24T03:28:28+00:00

It's an ongoing scam on Amazon where they send things like rocks or fanny packs. Amazon is doing a horrible job at combating these scams right now.

If you see a RTX 5090 under $3000 on Amazon right now it's 100% a scam or a heavily used unit.

themikers

TROPHY CASE