334
Build HelpFirst PC build, how do you future-proof without going overboard? (focus on ram, cpu or gpu)(self.buildapc)
submitted 7 months, 3 weeks ago* (edited 23 hours, 41 minutes after) by RubenD96 to /r/buildapc (8.4m)
since 7 months, 3 weeks ago
51 of 51
Tip Reveddit Real-Time can notify you when your content is removed.
your account history
Tip Check if your account has any removed comments.
view my removed comments you are viewing a single comment's thread.
view all comments
The only "future-proof" components I've had are PSUs and PC cases. I view the motherboard/CPU/RAM as a single component. By the time I want to upgrade my CPU, it's usually on a new socket, which requires a new motherboard, and also needs the next DDR generation. Storage becomes obsolete faster than you think with the increasing size of game installations. Fans poop out over time and need to be replaced, unless you want to manually repair them.
Get a great PSU and a case you really like, then allocate the rest of your budget towards whatever performs the best right now.
Only using 1080 monitors is the true future proofing secret.
Double your fps with this one simple trick.
A 1080 60hz plasma is then a double secret trick.
Plasma monitor and PC works as a heater on winter, triple secret trick!
Run the game at 1080p if you have to and 1440p if it can handle it.
That's not really a great option. On top of it leading to a ton of time in the settings menu, it also has some major drawbacks:
1080 on a 1440 monitor looks worse due to poor scalability.
Running it at native pixel count means black bar border. This can introduce backlight bleed issues.
Upscaling introduces latency. And often looks worse than native.
The scaling works fine even on Linux for me and no border.
Have you personally tried it or are you saying what you've read?
And it's hardly any time in the settings lmao. I go to the settings anyway to enable subtitles and max out the graphics because they usually aren't maxed by default.
How much time are you spending in the settings 😭
Scaling working and it looking bad are completely different things.
I'm glad your standards are so low that it looks fine to you.
You're right they are different. If they were the same I would agree 1080p monitor.
My standards are not low, it looks amazing.
And you didn't say you tried it so I assume you don't know.
I have samsung syncmaster 732nw, 1440x900. Its running today too and giving very good fps on gtx 1650ti g-card. Its future proof.
To your point about storage, a 5-10TB SSD can potentially last a while but as time passes, larger hard drives will become more affordable so a large upfront investment might be a wash
Big storage SSD's are still way to expensive, definitely waste of money.
I don’t think 5tb drives are that bad, I remember when you had to pay like 30 dollars for a 1gb thumb drive
To me that's a real waste of money, 2TB tops for me right now.
Same. Large storage was a consideration when I didn't have 1gig fibre. Now I can simply delete and reinstall if I actually need to do so.
Unless you feel the need to have every game you own installed all at once, or you absolutely hoard media, 2tb SSD should be enough.
I hoard media, it's on my NAS which contains 40 TB worth of hard drives with 10G network card.
Networked NAS is the way to go for that.
[removed]
Restore AllHide UnarchivedHello, your comment has been removed. Please note the following from our subreddit rules:
Rule 3 : No piracy or grey-market software keys
Click here to message the moderators if you have any questions or concerns
2TB is enough if you need to survive on a budget. 4TB is the sweet spot if you do more than just one game.
More then 1 game?? I have tons of games, I had a 1 TB sata SSD which didn't work anymore in my new build. So I got a 2 TB NVMe for my new build, thought of getting a 1 TB again but with 'future proofing' in mind I got a 2 TB.
I have multiple really large games installed like multiple BF's, GTA V, RDR 2 etc etc, I'm not even close to it being full. So saying you need 4 TB if you want to play more then 1 game is absolute nonsense.
Seems you missed the point in your effort to spin the notion that "more storage is better" as nosense.
2 TB for someone who plays a few games is not a big deal, but it's pretty barebones if you actually use the computer for anything else in addition to having multiple newer titles installed.
The idea of having to uninstall games to make room for new ones is a very console-like mindset for the lower end systems. Nothing wrong with doing it that way, but it's wildly unpleasant and absolutely not needed with todays hardware.
Yeah I don't buy that one either. I'm not a huge AAA player but 2TB is more than sufficient for multiple games.
Same, 2GB or 1GB m2 gen 4 SSDs always.
That's relative. 4 TB NVMEs are pretty reasonably priced, and for almost everything but mass media storage they are plenty fine.
Highly recommend RAID, you can do JBOD so if you have 50 GB on one drive and 50 GB on another you can still download a 90 GB file. And you get 100% of their capacity and regular redundancy.
I put four 1 TB sata drives in RAID 5 so I get 3 TB of storage and 1 drive can fail without data loss. If you do RAID 0 you get negative redundancy but way faster IO. For games you could be bottlenecked by CPU or GPU and it not even matter. Mdadm was really easy to use to set it up too.
I kept my NVME boot drive separate though.
I've upgraded CPU's in the past a few times. CPUs can be a super cheap upgrade once the motherboards behind a generation or two. It's still obsolete in most cases but at least it's the best it can be for very little cash.
But yeah, completely agree that it's not something to worry about when building a new PC. My dad told me in the 90's that whatever you buy will be on it's way to obsolete by the time you take it home and put it together. As true then as it is now.
Yep, my cases last through several builds.
I last upgraded my case maybe seven years ago and just replaced it last month.
I picked up a Lian-Li O11 RGB Evo and I'm thrilled with it. I sure hope it will last me just as long.
I have that case in black and it's a bit pricey but a great case. Infinity modular. I believe it only comes with one fan.
10 year old 4790k, with a 1060 I've had an AIO cpu water cooler leak and die, I've had a PSU die, I'm having some overheating issues with my intel stock cooler I can't be bothered to take off to re-paste. I've had my ethernet port die during a storm, I've broken a SATA port on the botherboard, and my front USB headers are broken too.
Not once have I had a fan fail. Storage IS a 256gb SSD, 512gb SSD and a 2TB HDD. Thankfully none of them failed, but I'm of the "stick another one in if needed" approach, still got another 2 SATA ports available.
My advice: Go higher on the CPU. The year over year improvements are meh, so buy something GOOD, and it will last. For ram, get Either 32 GB or 64GB. It is relatively cheap, will last, and if you got a decent CPU, not gonna be upgrading anytime soon.
GPUs are gonna be expensive, so individual choice. Either buy good enough and upgrade every so often, lower expectations with time, or go as high as your budget allows and live with it(not recommended).
PSU that is "good". You don't want it to take the rest of the system when it fails. Mine was decent, but a move killed it(I think), more than anything.
case: I would LOVE a good, small, easy to work with case. But truth be told I got so much use out of my large, 20$ after rebate case it isn't even funny.
Monitor is 1080p/60. Honestly, lower standards are where the savings are lol.
Yes! I just put my old PSU into a new build and got a Fractal North case, it’s my pcs forever home now.
You can fix fans?!
I've yet had a need to fix a fan. They just...work.
I bought fancy light show ones for two builds. Most are dead. Never again. Give me a poop brown Noctua and I’m good.
Also AIOs are useless. I’ve had two go out as well. Heat sinks are just as good.
PSUs are not future proof, as they are only rated for X years, after which they will probably still work but I wouldn't want to chance it with brand new components.
Cases are sort of future proof in the sense you can reuse them, but newer cases have better port setups and tend to iterate on airflow and ease of use too.
Exactly. I've been building pcs for 30+ years. There is no such thing as future-proofing. Power supplies, cases. That's it.
OP asks an irrelevant question. With no regard of the history of technology, no respect for Moore's law.
There is no future-proofing in pc builds.
Yep that's what I do now. I built my first computer in 2012. Still have that case, and the poor PSU gave out about a year ago so I finally had to replace it. Every other part has been switched out at least once, if not twice, since that initial build. My case has a firewire port lmao, just now considering getting a new one and only if my rebuild doesn't fit well in the current case.
I'd say a good CPU purchase is the closest thing to future proof you can get for performance parts. If you play at 1440p and high settings in big games, there's not much difference between the 5000X3D chips and the 7800X3D and the 9800X3D chips. Today for someone currently on AM4, I'd suggest an X3D drop in over a new platform unless you get a great Micro Center deal or something. For GPUs, it's always been the best practice and frankly cheaper to get slightly above the performance you're looking for right now and then upgrade in 2 generations.
What about the RAM though? You said you see it as a single component. I get CPU though, I Would have to remove my motherboard to remove the bracket from the underside of the board to take the cooler off. How long does thermal paste last? With no fans at idle it's 60C, goes down to 40C with fans.
Adding more RAM means games can cache more from storage. Should improve loading times but I haven't benchmarked it. I want to see if I can find someone who has though.
I agree, and will add on that my hierarchy is PSU > Case > Monitor
PSU is pretty obvious, you're more than likely going to need more power the longer you wait to upgrade, so it's nice to have a solid, quality PSU that has ample power and will last. A case is honestly my longest lasting component, I'm still using my Phanteks p400s/p300s I bought in like..2016. I honestly need to upgrade it because I never sprung for the mesh front, so I doubt my temps are great - the only thing that kinda dates it is the acrylic side panel
Motherboard and power supply
This is true. But also get a big case. I made the mistake of buying a prebuilt with a weirdly small case that didn’t fit most modern GPUs. Big mistake.
PC case is mostly true, although I remember I had a small issue when I rebuilt in 2020. I found that in the intervening time between my first build (2011) and 2020 the industry has seems to have switched from a #6-32 UNC hard drive screw to a M3 screw even for mount adapters. The Lian Li case I used had its own set of screws and rubber washers to mount 3.5 hard drives easily but both recent 3.5 to 2.5 mounting brackets I received didn't take the Lian Li screws, and the accompanying screws from the bracket were too short to mount to the case. No one advertises the screw width of their SSD mounting brackets either, which is fun. The mounting bracket I got for the case back in 2011 with my first SSD (40GB, lol) and again in 2014 took #6-32 UNC because the case screws worked with it but both brackets from 2020 were different.
This is good advice imo!
Well if one buy quality components then they last very long time. I use about 8 years old computer (i7-7700k) which has RTX 3070 GPU. I can play all newest games with that build. But when I buy new computer this computer becomes my NAS computer and I expect it to last many years in that role. I think only component which one can't really future proof is GPU.
My C-drive's Power On Hours is 31000h and it still keeps going fine. Current NAS computer's has HDD drives which are over 50000h.
Nobody is saying that older PC's wont play games, but they're talking about future proofing. I was using an fx6300 and an hd7870 until a couple years ago. Could I play games in 1080? Yeah. Was it a great experience? Not really. And was definitely not touching 1440p.
Future proofing today means buying quality computers so it last as long as it is needed. Like I did future proof my computer back in the day when I bought i7-7700k and rest of parts.
I’m still running my 7700k. Great chip. It’ll bottleneck the gpu a bit at this point but if it plays, it plays. Just built a gaming pc with a 7800x3d and man, it slays. I recommend the upgrade if you can.
I'm planning to do that this summer because i7-7700k is not officially supported by Win11. And yes it is bottleneck for my gpu.