Haven't had a hand on them or tried one. Doesn't look like many folks have. From what I read, Intel made a command decision and chopped out compatibility for any games, systems, and resources specific to DX11 and older titles, which would include us. Arc is intended as a budget-friendly option to play games made for DX12 and forward. A750 and A770 are their RTX 3060 contenders. The A380 isn't even up to par to a GTX 1050, that's best for a 3rd or 4th Monitor card to add displays or video editing at best. (It DOES have AV1 hardware decoding built in, but that's not worth the price. AMD and NVidia's next model lines are going to include it too.) If you're thinking of one for a 2nd system and are willing to eat the cost, maybe a shrug? Try it? If this is to be your daily driver PC, I'd really advise against it and wait for a braver soul to give it a rundown. Before I'd pick one of those, I'd look at AMD Radeon RX or R7/R9 cards that are more affordable, or NVidia Geforce GTX 1060/RTX 2060's still out there that are similarly priced. If budget is a real concern and you don't have a need for AAA-Gaming or Ray Tracing (meaning you just play MMOs, Emulation and older games that don't demand as much) give the Ryzen 3/5/7's with Radeon Graphics (Vega/Navi/etc.) a serious look. That way, you can play COH as soon as it's built and save on cash until you can get the card you want (and possibly a Power Supply that does a better job for that card) for more intensive gaming later.

Intel's cards, the ARC 750 and 770. Does anyone know if they work or not with CoH? Many thanks. 🙂

Been using one of these as a 2nd system to play on. https://www.amazon.com/TRIGKEY-Mini-Computer-PC-Graphics/dp/B0BCVLFQQ4 It's a NUC clone using AMD Ryzen instead of Intel. Cost varies if they're on sale or not, but generally a decent one can be had for $300-400 to game on. Pros: NUCs and NUC clones are super portable. If you have room to take a Nintendo Switch around on trips, this is just as able to travel with you to plug into a Hotel room TV, just BYO Bluetooth keyboard and Mouse. Unlike most laptops, these can be upgraded in RAM, Wi-Fi, and M.2 Storage. This one also has a slot for a SATA 2.5" drive for additional data storage past the M.2 drive it comes with. And for the price, a similarly equipped laptop would be on the low end for graphics/processor. ($400 for a laptop is looking at a Ryzen 3 and likely 4-8GB RAM.) The gaming capability is a touch oversold in the marketing material, most AAA games, FPS and eSports titles will need the resolution turned down to FHD or 720. For MMO titles, however, it runs great. Cons: It's... not a laptop. Even if it is basically laptop parts in a tiny box. So if you don't have a screen and AC Jack, you're out of luck. The prior post is a better choice for graphics upgrades, which isn't a possibility here (System on a Chip - Ryzen CPU and Radeon graphics soldered to the board.) And some Intel fans will deride the AMD versions of the same thing as inferior build quality or questionable brands. Both Intel and all of the AMD ones are made in China anyway, so the distinction of quality is a bit silly. And only enthusiasts go for these, so if the warranty is important, you won't look at one of these to begin with. If you fix your own stuff, cause "PC Builders", you have a good chance of being a self-support type. Trigkey is the same label as Beelink, they both have the same manufacturer. Minisforum also sells these (their Kickstarter for AMD versions of the NUC is what touched this off to begin with.) Finally: some shopping advice -- AMD laptops and NUC clones are on older Zen architectures at the moment waiting for a refresh. Zen+ and Zen 2 NUC Clones can be had for cheap, and still support Windows 11. Zen 3 models, the price will be a bit higher (because they'll last longer and possible have Win 12 in their future). If you look, you can find a Ryzen 5 for $250-300 if you don't mind either a Windows 10 one, or feel froggy enough to put Linux on it instead. Watch the specs carefully, the low end (Sub $200) may be in unplayable territory (Intel GMA or low end Iris graphics, or AMD E-Series processors pre-Vega.)

Gonna drop this here as he even goes over basic, yet important information across several dozen boards: And before I forget, here's what appears to be an active chart for motherboards in general!

In reality, gaming is basically done for PC. The games that I Do have for PC could probably run on half a potato inside of a VM three nests deep as they're mostly pre-y2k~CoX era and rarely played. So I guess that swings things towards the 7950x (or whatever comes next) and the joys of trying to untangle the Motherboard choices. On that front, I'd likely be switching to Seagate 530s for the boot and app drives along with probably one more for a scratch drive (mirroring what I have right now). So long as they don't share the ports, I'd probably be ok with just a 6 SATA port board, but 8 would still be nice if I don't lose something else feature wise. I noticed some of the board do weird bandwidth sharing across different buses. PCIe Gen5x16...2 would be nice, but so long as the other slots aren't halving the primary, then I guess it wouldn't matter, but I'd need at least one more slot for the Wifi 6e card I nabbed. IDK what kind of ports I'd need otherwise, but Thunderbolt 4 would be cool as well as some USB-C ports for future proofing. It tried playing on newegg, but it was getting kinda messy. I did find that I'd need to get a new CPU cooler though as the one I have won't work beyond AM4 according to the listings I've read. I'll just get another 212 (newer version) for that I guess. Not gonna think about ram until the board is decided on. The PSU is going strong, so I'm not sure I'd need to swap that unless there's some weird requirement from the board. It IS a 1kw unit, so it's not like I should have power capacity issues.

Basically, is this JUST going to be a gaming system? If so, the Intel chips are more economical at this juncture. If you plan on doing real work with the machine and want as much grunt as possible (SQL, VMs, etc), the regular 7000 series is currently a better buy. The situation to wring performance of of the 7000 series chips in games is an utter hack. Using the XBox bar to turn off half the chip? PASS! This is a sign that the X3D platform isn't quite ready yet. So, if what you've got now meets your needs, fine. The only reason I could justify building my rig during the middle of COVID scarcity was the fact that my original rig was on its way out. I'd popped the SAS controller and thus couldn't trust the motherboard anymore.

Re-poking the dragon on this one again. Now that the X3Ds are out (probably not actually considering based on everything I've seen) and both platforms have had some time under their belt, I'm wondering what we think about a 13th Gen vs 7000 series with the same concepts in mind? I just went back and watched / read some RL reviews and it seems like it's kind of a tightrope really. The most I might be doing in the future (that I can see at this point) is toying with VMs, finishing the AV project with the help of software that may use AI driven design, and honestly not much else. Right now, my 2019 MBP is handling my VM fix just fine and I'm not really messing with it beyond archiving OS ISOs as they come (MacOS, Windows, etc). I don't plan on getting a new case, nor am I looking into watercooling. The more I look at builds though, the thought of throwing the old parts into a (new) storage server comes to mind, but at the same time, I don't really need one and practically speaking, don't have the space for something that big. Let alone the added power consumption. So it may be best just to cleanup and sell of the parts Post upgrade. Hell, I've got the boxes to everything. 😛 Realistically though, I could probably keep going with my 3770k setup for a while longer (at least until Win10 loses support), and my Actual usage barely pushes the current system as it is. Even after adding the new 120Hz TV/display into the equation, my GTX 970 only saw a mild bump in usage to ~25% in vRAM vs the previous ~5%. At nearly idle (save a couple Edge tabs), the system itself is only using ~6 Gb of system RAM. The CPU is showing its age though as more and more I see all core spikes in usage (I love my metric gadgets!) while simply browsing or watching youtube. Gaming is basically dead on the PC itself as console is just that much less painful for my hands (probably less power draw too). The more I look at my usage now and how it may even keep dropping in the future, reality seems to make me rethink how much I want to overbuild. >.< Either way, I like my builds to last 10+ years and I've had good luck so far with self-built (community designed) systems, so I really do often ignore the total build price as it's a long-term investment (while getting deals at the time). I just wish my mobile devices held out that long.

Well, if you're looking for "balls to the wall", the X3D should work nicely.

Which is one reason I've been holding back this gen TBH.

Yeah the CPU space is looking really interesting again.

7950X as a general workhorse is a monstrous butt-kicker. But if you REALLY want something that can "do it all", give it about 2 weeks. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D hits at the end of the month. 145MB of total cache! Slightly lower base clock. But top clocks are identical. But if "gaming" is something you want to scream at, in addition to workstation horsepower... And no compromises the way Intel's upcoming HEDT chips are going to be.

What're your thoughts on the 7950X so far? Or is it too early to speculate?

Just make sure that power connector is good and tight on that 40! No bends, etc.

Yeah my last CPU was an i7 970. 11 years old. And the motherboard was on its last legs. I had a nice 15K rpm SCSI drive in the thing and the drive controller for it died. Needless to say, the Ryzen 9 5950X was a HUGE step up. *cuddles his rig*

Yeah like i mentioned, lucky to have what I got. The last CPU i bought was my 4790k, so its been a number of years. had hand me downs since then. after saving a full year i was able to buy a 3080, before the price hikes, and fully expected it to be the last card I would ever buy, only to get exceptionally lucky with that competition. :) So I think with my old school pc knowledge and what I have been able to accumulate, I've knocked together an amazing rig :)

Not shoo tabby. For its heyday, the 10900K and that Meg board were GOOD kit. You won't be seeing full throughput on the SSDs. But that's okay. What you're "missing" will be virtually indistinguishable without resorting to benchmarking software to tell. You're right that you won't be taxing the 4090 on that dinky screen. WHO CARES? You got it FOR FREE. I, personally, couldn't justify paying the sort of price a 4090 commands. But whatever works man! Also, you've got a large enough frame buffer on that card that you can crank up the FSAA ALL THE WAY. I'm, not really a great lover of LED. I have a high end keyboard (Apex Pro). And I use the LED there for visibility. Then again, my computer resides in my room. But the rest of the case lighting, I turn all that crap off. Personal preference. The only thing you could probably improve is cable routing for the rear exhaust fan. It's just kinda dangling there. A bit of careful routing and a couple zip ties could clean that up and lock the cable down. Other than that, your rig's cleanly and decently cabled. Good job .

Well, bit of an update for me. We've moved, so my desk is different, and I got a free 4090 from nVidia just before christmas from their beyond fast competition (yes I am late lol). My rig currently, which I am very lucky to have because most of it is hand me down hardware from a good friend of mine. i9 10900k @ 5.5Ghz MSI Z490 ACE MEG Motherboard AORUS Waterforce X 360 (i hate gigabyte but it was free) 64Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RTX 4090 MSI gaming x Trio Corsair RM1000x with advanced cabling kit. Various 2 pcie gen 4 NVME's 2 SSD's and one HGST HDD. Monitor is an odd one, Phillips 32 inch 1440p 75hz. Yeah I know not 4k or fast, just means that 4090 is going to have an easy time of it, until I put the VR headset on 🙂 The case is an interesting story. I had a cougar case as a Christmas present 2 years ago, one that I thought would make for a nice build, but it was quite mis-represented, and having had issues with Cougar in the past, I should have learned my lesson, shame on me I guess. So when the gpu came in, I decided to rebuild the whole thing in my now 7 year old Phanteks Enthoo Pro, the original one, with 2 plastic side windows, not the glass. It's a great case and still holds up, I removed the giant 200mm fan in front and went with 2 120mm. I also removed the bottom drive bay section, I only have 1 3.5inch HDD and don't need it. My old desk (and a lot of our furniture before the move) was actually stuff I built with scrap particle board and mdf from my fathers garage. This place had quite a few flat packs that hadn't been used yet so I set myself up a neat desk.

So I just recently made the jump to a 120Hz 4k TV (that all my tech is connected to) and realized that I'm not sure what to adjust the game's GFX settings to. My build is still powered by an EVGA GTX 970 FTW (04G-P4-2978-KR) and while I don't Expect to see anything beyond 60Hz (based on the control panel), it would be nice to setup the game so that it's as smooth as it can be, even if some things get dialed down. I do have to admit that I haven't actually Played in quite a while, but I think a thread where people are sharing their optimized setups would be helpful to others.

Now that prices seem to be normalizing, the build project that I've had in the back of my head for two years seems feasible. I've never built my own before so I could certainly use any and all help/advice. My rough budget is $1,000 but that is not a hard limit. I'd like a reliable, long-lived build that I can use for general productivity, potentially some video editing, and gaming. I mostly plan to play older games but would like the option to play some newer games (even if I need to dial back the settings a bit). I've done a fair bit of research, including quite a few YouTube videos and browsing some build guides on PCPartsPicker. I've put together a rough build (linked below) that I think gets me in the ballpark. I have parametric selections for most parts so you can see some of the options I am considering, and I am not necessarily leaning towards the lowest price option for each component, but that's how the site displays them. EDIT: Now that I am done, I've changed the link to represent my final build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/AboveTheChemist/saved/C2N3wP For those that don't want to click the link, here's what I chose: Feel free to comment on or give advice in relation to the build above if you like. It was my first and I am more than happy with it, although as time has progressed I see a couple of things I might have tweaked. The original RAM and SSD I bought were replaced with the options above, because I found better options after I made those purchases. I'll put the original purchases to good use, though. I enjoyed the process so much that I decided to put together a small form factor build using a mini-ITX motherboard and an APU with no discrete GPU. I plan to install Linux on that machine, maybe put a few old games on it (and at least try CoH on it), and possibly let my wife use it as a potential replacement for her aging MacBook Air. I also have been helping a family friend with tight budget gaming PC build and I am really happy with what we put together for that computer.

I generally have a parts list for people looking to build a so-called "bare bones" rig that rages CoH. One thing I've avoided is that there are PREBUILTS that actually have a nearly identical layout. Ryzen 5 5600G Hex-Core CPU 8GB RAM (BARE MINIMUM, recommend bumping to 16GB when money allows) 500/512 GB SSD (recommend bumping to 1TB to extend lifespan of the drive, and you can use the 512 as additional cold storage) These builds use the IGPU on the 5600G's die. And these are MicroCenter systems. So if you're risk averse, you have a location that can service you. And their warranty ROCKS. https://tinyurl.com/Ryzen5-5600G-Boxes $560+tax/warranty/etc. Now, if you're running lots of VMs. SQL server, etc. Any business computer-heavy loads, these are NOT the machines you want. But as the baseline for a general productivity/gaming box, this is BIGTIME bang for the buck.

*le sigh* Of Course they're discounting right now...like I needed to do a new build anyway.

https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-is-now-selling-ryzen-7-5800x3d-for-329 AMD has implemented some major discounts on their Zen3 processors. Lower prices have now been updated on the official AMD US store. While most CPUs were seen with lower prices already, the most interesting SKU equipped with 3D V-Cache is now discounted to $329. This is the lowest price for this CPU according to multiple price trackers. AMD Ryzen 5000 pricing (official US store): Ryzen 9 5950X: $799 → $549 ($250 discount) Ryzen 9 5900X: $549 → $349 ($200 discount) Ryzen 7 5800X3D: $449 → $329 ($120 discount) Ryzen 7 5800X: $449 → $249 ($200 discount) Ryzen 5 5600X: $299 → $159 ($140 discount) AMD Ryzen 5000 series pricing, Source: AMD So overall, AMD is lowering prices on their CPUs by up to $250 for the 16-core part and $120 for the 5800X3D. Even the 5600X is now $140 cheaper. Furthermore, AMD is also giving away Uncharted Legacy with all purchases of Ryzen 5000 series through this store. These are the lowest prices for 5800X3D in the US right now. MicroCenter’s price is $369, Amazon is selling this CPU at $349, while Newegg has it listed at $331, however not all stores have them in stock. A quick look at other markets shows that 5800X3D is also getting cheaper in Europe, it recently dropped from €349. AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D is an 8-core CPU with additional 64MB of L3 Cache. This processor is considered a great choice for gaming on the AM4 platform and, unlike the new Ryzen 7000 CPUs and AM5 motherboards, does not require expensive DDR5 memory.

Well, the AMD lineup has dropped. $1000 for the 7900 XTX $900 for the 3900 XT No clue on actual performance yet. The specs look to be great. Now to see if the driver stack can actually handle it.

I mean, you kinda have to do slots +1 because of airflow, so there's that.