Bigg

The tall man who posts

I'm a writer and indie game dev of indie games with cum in them. One half of @BPGames. Most recent project - Opportunity: A Sugar Baby Story.

Other Accounts

@zippity - goofy porn game screenshots
@BiggHoggDogg - this is where I do most of my porn following & sharing
@BiggBlast - high-volume shitpost/screencap posting

Current avatar by @julian!


I've been setting aside a few hundred bucks every month for the past few months in anticipation of buying a new desktop PC - I've had my current rig since 2016 and while it technically works fine for 100% of the things I use it for, every couple years a component will fail and cost me $300 to fix (most recently it was my motherboard) and at this point it's starting to feel like I'm paying a subscription fee to use a 6-year-old machine.

Because I know Cohost has a higher-than-average concentration of tech-knowledgeable types, I figured I would allow you the greatest pleasure known to the tech-knowledgeable: the opportunity to offer your well-considered in-depth advice and opinions about computers and computer-adjacent components.

What I'd appreciate some guidance on:

  • External data storage/transferring data from my old machine to the new one. What would be the "best" (easiest/safest/etc) way to back up and transfer the important stuff I've got on my current PC? I can probably just use GDrive for the text files etc but I've got. Images and videos. You know how it is. I picked up an external hard drive from The Source but the transfer rate was garbage and when I tried to check the files on it it said they were corrupted. Help
  • Gaming monitor upgrade ideas. Currently have a 23.6" Asus VE247, wouldn't mind going a little larger while preserving the same depth of color and responsiveness
  • Graphics card recommendations. Currently have a NVidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB. Not looking to break the bank on this one (like I said, the current card's been able to do just about everything I need it to, my demands are not great), so mid-range recommendations would be appreciated
  • Audio peripherals. Currently got a couple of cheapish desktop speakers (Realtek High Definition), and an expensive-ish headset (Corsair HS45) that unfortunately has a growing crack in its headband. Lemme know your favs
  • Any other good-to-knows or uncommon pieces of knowledge you might want to pass on. All my PCs in the past have been built by my dad so I really don't know very much

And a few caveats:

  • My general goal is "better specs than my current 6-year-old machine but definitely not anything near top-of-the-line", and the absolute ceiling of my budget is $3,000 CAD, and I'd prefer to come in significantly under that if possible
  • It's gonna be a Windows 10 machine. I am 34 years old and I am not going to learn how to use Linux
  • You probably already figured this out if you've read this far but despite having used computers since I was 11 years old and somehow being a niche-unpopular developer of pornographic software I am not actually very good at computer. Layman-level communication is very appreciated

Okay, I think that does it! Thank you for helping me make my computing experience better than it currently is!


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in reply to @Bigg's post:

Not sure if I can give much direct advice on what parts to buy but PCPartPicker is a godsend, it does everything. You can put together a list of the parts you want and it'll show you the total price, where to get everything the cheapest, any conflicts like needing a higher wattage power supply for your GPU, etc. it's the best

Honestly I've been a Build My Own PC guy for most of my life and while I still think that's a reasonable pathway if you want to do that (computers are not terribly difficult to put together, even moreso nowadays that the Key Components are pretty much down to like 6 things) you could also go the prebuilt route for like $2k USD (or so) and get something pretty close to "top of the line".

My last computer buy was this - I bit the bullet and paid about $1800 for a pc from Cyberpower. I would say my experience was "7/10" (the PSU crapped out about a week into using it, but they did send a replacement fairly promptly - I didn't want to wait, so I just plugged in my old PSU and it worked fine).

As usual the general tradeoff is BYO is cheaper but more finicky/annoying, prebuilt is more expensive but obviously kind of a turnkey solution. I saved a bit of money by reusing a few components from my old build (RAM, SSDs) which is definitely an option.

As far as "stuff to look for" whether BYO or prebuilt:

  • if you don't care about exemplary gaming performance I think the high end AMD video cards are perfectly decent and generally easier to find than the nvidia cards, even now (Radeon 6X00 i think is what you'd want to look for).

  • I love my arctis 7 wireless headset almost entirely due to the fact it is a) wireless and b) has a little knob I can use to change the volume of how much Chat I am hearing and how much Everything Else On My Computer i am hearing. it is genuinely one of the smartest things I've ever used design-wise. On the downside it's a bit snug on my Giant Head and it has a bit of a serious ambient hiss. Not unusable though.

  • I got super lucky and scored some 1440p 144hz monitors used from someone I work with and they're fucking great. They are not cheap if you buy them new though, so my real stance here is: Wow 144hz is an absolute gamechanger, but honestly MOST modern monitors were just... miles better than the 10 year old ones I had. Do not make my mistake and assume "well i don't really need to upgrade my monitor" if yours is super old

  • if you have the budget and know what you want to transfer over is more than what fits reasonably in Onedrive/Dropbox/whatever - getting an external RAID unit of some sort, loading it with some midgrade, large HDDs and transferring stuff Slowly But Safely through that to the new computer might be good? Especially if you have a use for a device like that in the future. But ymmv there I just happen to be a big Local Network Nerd these days

External data storage/transferring data from my old machine to the new one. What would be the "best" (easiest/safest/etc) way to back up and transfer the important stuff I've got on my current PC? I can probably just use GDrive for the text files etc but I've got. Images and videos. You know how it is. I picked up an external hard drive from The Source but the transfer rate was garbage and when I tried to check the files on it it said they were corrupted. Help

My preferred method here is directly connecting the old PC's hard drive to the new PC's motherboard after you've installed Windows and have that setup on the new PC. It is very likely a SATA connection, and that's very compatible. The drive will show up as an external drive on the new PC, and you can copy files from that to your OS drive using Windows Explorer.

I specify "after installing windows" because then you don't ever accidentally overwrite the old drive when installing windows.

Graphics card recommendations. Currently have a NVidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB. Not looking to break the bank on this one (like I said, the current card's been able to do just about everything I need it to, my demands are not great), so mid-range recommendations would be appreciated

What's your price range here?

Right now is a pretty good time to pick up ~$400-$800 CAD graphics cards: last gen cards are pretty cheap right now and next gen mid-to-low-end is still a ways away. I'd look at performance charts around your price point (something like Hardware Unboxed - Radeon RX 6800 vs. GeForce RTX 3070, 40 Game Benchmark: 1080p, 1440p & 4K - December 2021)

If you'd go more expensive than $600, then I recommend waiting for the next AMD release - high end RX 7000 series cards are right around the corner, and once there are reviews you can compare AMD RX 7000 vs NVIDIA RTX 4000 cards. Can still always build the rest of the PC and keep your GTX 1060 6GB in this case.

As for NVIDIA vs. AMD in general this generation... I think both are pretty good. If triple-A titles are your jam, and raytracing (much nicer shadows n stuff, slower performance) is something you'd use, NVIDIA is best at that. Right now it's mostly just triple-A games that will use that. If not, AMD is generally better value non-raytraced performance and most of their cards have 16GB VRAM which is quite future proof (not the biggest concern, but a nice to have if it's already a good value card).

I'm bad at recommending specific cards here, as I always want to go, like, with the nice quiet triple-fan cards (like SAPPHIRE NITRO+) and then that's always much worse value for performance than cheaper versions, and... it's hard to know what's actually worth it and what's wasted money.

Any other good-to-knows or uncommon pieces of knowledge you might want to pass on. All my PCs in the past have been built by my dad so I really don't know very much

  • Not uncommon, but I highly recommend https://pcpartpicker.com/ to check part compatibility. Can just stick parts you'd use in there. Also useful as a reference if you save the list after buying it.
  • Besides the full freshness of having a completely new computer, by-part upgrades are still largely possible:
    • Unless you're going for top-of-line graphics cards that are super power hungry, your power supply will still likely work. pcpartpicker can ensure this
    • Cases... are usually still compatible, but older ones typically don't have the airflow you need to keep a current-gen graphics card happy
    • storage is always still compatible, but good SSDs are v cheap nowadays (sub-$100 USD/1TB) and a fresh windows install is always nice to do for a new computer
  • current-gen GPUs run hot, and will work best in a case with a mesh front & at least two good fans blowing air through. there are cases with builtin fans that will do this for sub-$100 USD, specific recommendations depend on the exact market.

Heck it, have a specific GPU recommendation: Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 6800 16 GB for around $800 CAD.

  • Sapphire is one of the more reputable AMD GPU vendors. good support, well built cards.
  • 3-fan design will be cool & quiet (assuming your case has a mesh front that pulls in enough air for it)
  • decent price. not the best, but the cost here is a very nice, quiet, well-built cooler

There are 2-fan AMD RX6800 XT cards for this price which will perform better, but I don't believe there are any at this price with 3-fan builds and the same build quality.

This is about as high-end as I would go buying now. Any higher, and it'd be better to wait for RX 7000-series reviews.

If you'd rather go to a lower price point, I can definitely come up with another card to recommend here.

If you're willing to go used, you can get a better card for cheaper - used market is great right now! but it's used.

Monitor: Gigabyte M32U or Q. Thoroughly pleased with it (though OLEDs are always coming down in price and very tempting) Video card: It's hard to beat the price/performance/power draw of the Geforce 3070. Not sure about the 4000 series Geforce or the new Radeon cards.

Gaming monitor upgrade ideas. Currently have a 23.6" Asus VE247, wouldn't mind going a little larger while preserving the same depth of color and responsiveness

Depending on how you budget this, maybe the MSI MAG274QRX? It's a darn good 27" 240hz 1400p monitor, very good for what it is, and not nearly as expensive as such displays used to be. Pulling this from a recent Hardware Unboxed review - I trust their monitor coverage more than anyone else's, and agree with their conclusion of it being very good and also very good value.

In the recent years, IPS panels in general have caught up nicely to TN in responsiveness. 60hz IPS panels are even much more responsive, and you can match TN well with good 120hz+ IPS displays.

The contrast is still not as good as TN panels (like yours, I believe). Color accuracy is good, and especially accuracy at different viewing angels, but I think TN panels still win for black-on-white contrast / range.

OLEDs would match/outperform TN colors and contrast in all manners, but are not yet monitor-sized.

Edit: also +1 to dell s2721qs and Gigabyte M32U/Q recommendations. also very good monitors at different form factors (27" 4k 60hz and 32" 4k 144hz).

4k 60hz is less fluid than your current panel, but as a modern-day 60hz IPS panel I would bet it's at least nearing the responsiveness of your monitor, and miles more responsive than what you would expect from a 2016 60hz display.

I can also vouch for Gigabyte's 144hz panels. I use an M28U personally - 27" 4k 144hz - but I don't generally recommend it unless you're in my exact shoes of both A) loving the space provided by tiny text on a 4k display, and B) wanting to spend a heck ton of money for 144hz at that high resolution.

AMD just launched a new platform for this current generation of CPUs, and the New Platform Growing Pains are a bit of a sticking point - the motherboards are fairly pricey because they haven't rolled out their budget/midrange chipsets yet. The higher-end CPUs from both AMD and Intel are massive power hogs this generation, and if you're aiming for lots of cores for work, you'll have to spend time thinking about cooling solutions.

If you don't feel comfortable about the complexity of finding a case and radiator that work well with each other, it might be worth checking out pre-built machines.

To be honest, for your data transfer, OneDrive will handle most of that. I did a new build recently, and it'll even sync your settings (things like your desktop, etc) over to a new build when you sign in with Microsoft.

Otherwise, I admit I've been using the same hard drive since 2012.. Not specifically for my OS, but uh.. yah, I should probably clean that out at some point.

And another +1 to PCPartPicker.

I'm 32 so I totally get the whole "I know what I'm doing but good god I'm sick of dealing with this crap"

Oh for monitors:

I am very picky about mine, and have to stick to IPS because I'm very sensitive to colors (as in, I notice when they are off, even if its just a few shades). That said, FreeSync now supports even nVidia cards. I personally still use GSync, but I'm also using monitors from 2016.

So I guess TLDR, don't overpay for GSync (freesync is fine!), and the colors in IPS panels are the best.