Something that you just don't understand?

@verucassault The 1070 is still a respectable GPU if you are playing everything at 1080p. If I had to guess for the RAM, either it wasn't quite compatible (RAM is handled differently between Intel and AMD systems due to their architectural and chipset differences), or he may have tried manually tuning it and giving it too much voltage, which possibly could have somewhat fried it (I almost did that once, odd visual artifacting even when booting is one of the obvious signs, leaving it overvolted to that degree for any extended period of time can physically fry the memory). There may be multiple reasons for the crashing (try doing a fresh reinstall of the GPU drivers using DDU to clean out any traces of the old driver or any broken parts of it). Also, that rig of yours with the 1070, is likely almost as powerful as a PS5 anyways. lol Understandable that you may have had some unfortunate luck with parts. My current rig has some wonky RAM that was advertised as 3600Mhz, but It wouldnt even boot when I set the XMP profile to 3600Mhz. I could only manually clock it to 3400Mhz, either that, or would have had to use it at non-XMP settings of 2666Mhz. I also managed to bend some pins on my CPU, I nearly had a heart attack when that happened, but thankfully, I managed to fix it with some steady hands and one of my pocket knives. I keep up with the latest news and releases for PC components, and have a decent idea of how to troubleshoot any problem that may arise from a custom built PC. The current market for PC parts and PCs in general is quite fucked due to the insane demand. Even last generation and older parts are going for far above MSRP right now. If anyone is considering building a mid to high end PC ($1000+ USD), it will likely be a couple months before prices and availability settle down somewhat. High end PC gaming is an expensive hobby, that much needs to be made very apparent to anyone that is interested in the subject, if you want to be playing all the most recent games at high resolution, high refresh, and high settings, the general sense is to upgrade every 3-4 years, and most people cannot justify $1000+ for a new PC on that regular of a basis.

I know that when they announced the next model of TI he was quite salty because his version plummeted in price and the new ones might not have cost as much as the version he got when they were first released ??? Anyway, since we play games together it's been as much my problem as it is his. lol I've been wanting to build a computer for a while and now that I have I've almost completely switched to PC gaming. I need to finish Red Dead 2 on the PS4 and I might have one or two games left to play I bought a while back, but I see no point in buying a console or console games now.

So, the entirety of the 20 series for Nvidia was a bad value prospect and did not push forward performance enough to justify the massive price increase. If he was paying attention to any of the proper hardware reviewers at the time, he should have known this. Also, he needs to understand that in the realm of PC components, new generations are every 1-2 years, so parts dont really stay at the top for very long. Hence, again, the problem of diminishing returns the higher up the product stack you go. You should never buy the top of the line option, unless you have the money to spare to by another one in 1-2 years, since that is what the product is designed for, people with deep pockets that want the best possible performance with no regard for price. Its a matter of setting expectations. lol On the subject of a new build, again, the current situation makes it best to wait a bit for stock and prices to stabilize. its not like you have a broken PC. The most recent generation of parts would be the best option, as this new generation that was just released, actually is a proper jump in performance for the price.

@verucassault Those issues are why I wanted nothing to do with building my PC. I was fine with opening my wallet a little wider and just getting an Alienware PC so that I knew everything would work together. @shinkutsume I don't agree at all that the people paying for top end CPU's and GPU's do it under the impression they'll swap components in 1-2 years. I think it's the opposite. You get low or mid level components to achieve some current games you wanna play with medium settings and/or 1080p, with the expectation in a few years you'll upgrade to something higher end. Who paid $1000 for an RTX 2080ti and said to themselves "This is just to hold me over for a year or two when the next cycle of GPU's comes out for another $1000 that will give me another 4fps!!" You get top end components to SKIP cycles. Isn't that the entire premise of "future proofing?" Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, so correct me if I'm wrong.

how anyone can prefer anime over manga its not even that manga is necessarily the best utility to tell a story, but more so that the author's original work tends to just be the best Bakemonogatari's ln is better then the manga, which is worse then the anime but for people to avoid the manga and only get into the anime, or only occasionally get into manga is beyond me

@bob_loblaw So... I have some bad news for you then. You do not buy the very highest end part if you want to make your build as future proof as possible, especially for the money. As an example, the RTX 3090 is 7% faster than a RTX 3080 at 1440p, and 10% faster at 4k. The 3080 is $700 USD MSRP. The 3090 is an eye-watering $1500 USD MSRP. Over double the price, for single digit performance gains. (remember, you can relatively easily overclock a 3080 to perform at basically 3090 stock levels) Technically, yes, a system with a 3090 will be "more futureproof", but with that $800 you saved from stepping down to a 3080, you can easily set that aside for the next upgrade you want to do in the future, thats the next GPU paid for right there. It is all about getting the best performance per dollar for the level of fidelity that you want. The Nvidia 20 series was an anomaly, mostly because they wanted to do two things, they wanted to push their new proprietary graphics tech of ray-tracing, and they wanted to milk the market, as they were the top dog, with nobody even close in performance (until now). The performance gains from the 10 series, especially when you factor in the price, were disappointing to say the least. It was also the first time Nvidia decided to start releasing consumer level cards for more than $1000 MSRP, which is further proof that they were milking the market. With the Nvidia 30 series and the AMD 6000 series, we are finally seeing competition in the higher end of the GPU market, so we should be seeing appropriate jumps in performance and price for performance moving forward for the time being. And on top of that, I dont have a problem with pre-builts per-se. You just need to know what you are getting. Especially around the time of launch for a new generation of parts, its best to avoid most pre-builts, so they can get the new parts in stock for their builds, and avoid the dumping of their old stock for only slight discounts. If you dont want to deal with the possible issues with a computer you built yourself, then that is fine, just understand that you are paying quite the premium to do so, and not just in price. Most run-of-the-mill pre-built PCs skimp everywhere they can afford to. So, you will be getting things like, a garbage motherboard, garbage RAM, garbage PSU, etc, since none of those parts are listed on the specs sheet, and they obviously want to make every possible cent from you. Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTni-Vfrf9c Its pretty egregious example, but it makes the point. and if you want an LTT example (I dont watch their stuff anymore, since I think they shill too easily for questionable products) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzpYkpZX8qw If you are going to be buying a higher end pre-built, you want to get it from a more boutique company that customs computers, as they are less likely to skimp on parts quality, but the trade-off is, it costs more. Ex: Digital Storm https://www.digitalstorm.com/ But of course, that is my opinion.

^I'm not talking about what's currently available and choosing what's the "best bang for the buck." And based on your statement of "You should never buy the top of the line option, unless you have the money to spare to by another one in 1-2 years" it sounded to me like you were saying you shouldn't buy top end today unless you're gonna upgrade it in 1-2 years... y'know because you said don't do it unless you're gonna buy another one in 1-2 years. IF what you meant is don't buy top end of all CURRENT GPU's because dropping down a level saves you a lot of money for a 5fps difference, then carry on.

So, on that note, if you really are buying the top of the line, then you are basically saying that "I want the best possible performance, price be damned". And as that type of consumer, if you REALLY want the best possible performance, the next "best performing part on the market" will be showing up in 1-2 years. So, get ready to open your wallet again, since you dont care enough about price to pay more for one part than what most people's entire systems cost. At that kind of price-to-performance, you shouldnt care about futureproofing, since you should be willing to spend enough to just brute force the futureproofing by just getting a new system/part when yours isnt the best anymore. I have a friend that does that. He was running a Titan, and then switched to a dual 2080Ti setup, and now he has a 3090. Those parts are designed to be sold for people like him. Even Nvidia themselves state that the 3090 is designed for people that dont care about price. Halo products are designed for a specific kind of crowd, the 3090 is a halo product. Another example of a halo product is the Sennheiser HE1 at $60000 USD (yes, sixty thousand) or the Abyss Audio AB-1266 at $5000 for the less rich among us. That friend I mentioned that has the 3090? He just decided that he wanted the Hifiman Arya, which is $2000. He paired that with a Topping D90 DAC $750 and a Topping A90 amp $500. He is only willing to pay the big bucks for those two things specifically, his gaming PC, and his headphones, he is relatively cheap for everything else he gets. While I do pay for quality, price-for-performance is what I tend to be a stickler for, as I want to maximize what I get out of my hard-earned dollar (with certain limitations). As examples of things on my to-get list: initially, a 3080 ($700, but looking at the mess around the 30 series, I just dont want to deal with it, my 5700XT is doing just fine), a Schiit Modius DAC ($200) and Magnius amp ($200), with a set of ZMF Aeolus headphones ($1200), or more likely, some Campfire Audio Cascade headphones ($800), since I already have an excellent wide warm pair of headphones with my Argons. For the average consumer, halo products are just there as a marketing tool. Halo products exist, because they can, since they are basically trophies to the brands. A good consumer does their research and makes smart buying decisions. I can understand the logic behind what you say, but its easy to get caught in the trap of grossly overpaying for things.

They push computer components out like they do cell phones, so I buy with the expectations that everything PC will be outdated after a year. I wasn't able to buy top of the line like Arc was when we were building our computers, but I did splurge a bit so that my components could hold up with the next 2-3 years worth of games coming out. I think updating them every 4-5 is probably more expected and reasonable.

^Exactly, that's what I was saying too. Most people are NOT buying high end GPU's and CPU's to buy another one "in 1-2 years." xD Most people that drop $800+ on a GPU (hell, even $500) are doing it to skip future cycles and be able to play their games for 4-5+ years without having to worry if their setup can play the next big game coming out. Or they do it because they want to upgrade from 1080p to 2K or 4K... which means dropping another $500-1000 on a new monitor. There are some people that do drop $1000 with every new cycle in 1-2 years, just like there are people that trade in their smartphone with every new release, or trade in their cars with every new remodel, and if a person has the money to do that or doesn't care about falling further in debt, then that's great for them. @shinkutsume I honestly don't mean any offense by this, because you're very knowledgeable with computers, but I stopped reading your reply after the first paragraph then very quickly skimmed the rest. Not because what you're saying doesn't have merit, but because the points you're (still) making aren't addressing the statement I had disagreed with. That's cool if you wanna elaborate or clarify, but I'm moving on :)