Made my homeworks, and I'm 99.99% sure (wanna leave that 0.01% of hope) that AMD CPU is NOT able to play UHD-BD...

Not that it's the most important feature, nor mandatory, but it will force me - when/if I want to have it - not only to change the CPU (a less-than-painless operation), but to change at least CPU+MB+cooler...

(2019-01-28, 12:49 AM)spoRv Wrote: I had some problems with my PC lately and, even if probably I could solve them just buying a new PSU, this lead me to think about others things (oh yeah, I like to make my life even more complicated, technology-wise! )

Some quick thoughts for you.

PSU - yes you should buy a good quality PSU. It's the one component in your PC capable of destroying every other component. As for having 7 hard drives plus a GTX 750 that's nothing in terms of power consumption. Your hard drives each will use about 6-9 Watts and less when most of them are idle, so say about 56 Watts when they're all in use. Your GPU uses about 18 Watts (according to NVIDIA it can use up to 60 Watts, but real-world measured data is a lot lower). But I don't know maybe if you're mining bitcoin it will actually use 60W. Everything else in your PC will use well under 100W (Motherboard + CPU + SSD + Optical Drive), so say about 80W for that. Add that together and the total is about 200W. Your liquid cooler uses some power too, not sure how much but it won't be a lot. The point is that even a 250W power supply should be well able to power the entire PC just fine. Your power supply is probably rated for at least 350W so there would be no problems there.

If CPU overheating is an issue then it's quite possible the thermal paste has "worn out". Go and buy some thermal paste at your computer shop (about €1) take the heatsink off the CPU and clean both it and the CPU very carefully using mentholated spirits and q-tips, wait for both to dry and apply new thermal paste. If you still have overheating issues the problem could be with the liquid cooler.

(2019-01-28, 07:32 PM)Stamper Wrote: Those HP Elite 8300 (the i7 ones large tower not SFF) are equivalent inside to the tower MacPro (the one in metal they don't make anymore). In fact they are MacPro clones and cost nothing because they were produced for compagnies who dumped them after three years.
You can find them pristine mint in many places, almost never used. (Just open and see if the HDD looks new and there is no dirt).
They are hackable with OSX, and are the best machines when it comes to video editing because they are highly customisable.
You add the graphic card you want, the ram you want, and have a killer machine for a fraction of buying one new, and this one will last you for years.
If you're looking for 4K playback without stutter, google this machine with 4K card added, i'm sure you will find some people giving configurations. You can also I think change the processor, though you need to know what you are doing.
The best way to have a future proof machine is a custom one, but these are the next best thing, and come pre-built.

You can't fit 7 hard drives + an SSD inside those, nor do their motherboards even have 8x SATA. Really they're useless for that kind of thing.

Yeah, a PSU with 550W at 88% efficiency should be more than enough!

Thermal paste: when I'll go to the shop for the new PSU, they said it will be tested for about an hour, to see if everything is OK. "IF" this will be the case, I'd prefer to not touch the CPU at all ("if ain't broke, don't fix it!") because I'm not totally sure to do a perfect job - unless the boys in the shop will do that for me...

The ThreadRipper is reeeeeeally tempting me, but dunno if I'm ready to shell out that amount of money (that I actually do not have), plus to risk that mine will not be sold... the "smartest", safest move would be: buy the new PSU (if it's the cause of the problems, of course), eventually upgrade with a "simple" GTX 1060 and stay put for a while, or put it on sale with the old GTX 760, hoping to get the amount (that I think is feasible, seeing what's around) for €450. Then, upgrade.

I would say for you needs a custom PC (some stores can build them for you and deliver) would be the best then.
Just pick up all the configuration you need. Improving it in the future will cost you just a graphic card or new processor.

(2019-01-29, 03:37 AM)spoRv Wrote: Yeah, a PSU with 550W at 88% efficiency should be more than enough!

Thermal paste: when I'll go to the shop for the new PSU, they said it will be tested for about an hour, to see if everything is OK. "IF" this will be the case, I'd prefer to not touch the CPU at all ("if ain't broke, don't fix it!") because I'm not totally sure to do a perfect job - unless the boys in the shop will do that for me...

The ThreadRipper is reeeeeeally tempting me, but dunno if I'm ready to shell out that amount of money (that I actually do not have), plus to risk that mine will not be sold... the "smartest", safest move would be: buy the new PSU (if it's the cause of the problems, of course), eventually upgrade with a "simple" GTX 1060 and stay put for a while, or put it on sale with the old GTX 760, hoping to get the amount (that I think is feasible, seeing what's around) for €450. Then, upgrade.

Replacing the thermal paste is easy, safe, and cheap and effective maintenance. Really you should aim to do it every 2-3 years. Here's the free i7-4770 CPU I found at the dump:


The motherboard was fried, so was the graphics card, but the CPU, RAM, and DVD drive were all fine. My PC had an i5-4460 so I installed the CPU (and RAM):


You can see how clean the CPU lid was before new thermal paste was applied. Same thing with my Lenovo Laptop, I took out an i5-520M and put in an i5-560M, the photos show the i5-520M going in to the "donor" laptop (that has no dedicated GPU) but it shows the fresh thermal paste:

"CPU HEVC HDR UHD decoder - it stutters, as the CPU is not powerful enough to decode it
CPU HEVC encoder - not mandatory, but could be useful sometimes"

What for do you want those things? If you have a 10x0 GPU, you don't need that in your CPU anymore. I assume you mean Intel Quicksync. It fills more or less the same purpose as NVENC on NVIDIA cards, so if you have a 10x0 card, you don't need that de-/encoder in the CPU.

Correct me if I missed some important detail again, you know how my brain sometimes does that ...

(2019-01-29, 11:49 PM)TomArrow Wrote: What for do you want those things?

I wanted to write GPU!!! What a stupid!   Going to correct it right now!!!

PC sold, just a day before I have decided! Lucky me, as usual - but sluggish like... well, a slag (EDIT: should be slUg) ? My fault!

I think you might mean a slug.

(2019-02-13, 12:54 AM)TomArrow Wrote: I think you might mean a slug.

Yeah, yeah...



Being corrected repeatedly by a German is bad, and it's even worst when he's right!

Fixed, happy now?  

(note for the others: me and Tom loves to kid each other, it's normal - and strange, because... he's German, you know? Who knew that German loves to kid? We all thought they only loves to work, dring beer, and correct other's mistakes!)