It's time for the PCPer Mailbag, our weekly show where Ryan and the team answer your questions about the tech industry, the latest and greatest GPUs, the process of running a tech review website, and more!
We realized that this is our last Mailbag before Christmas, but we forgot to ask for holiday-themed questions. So, instead, enjoy the answers to these standard tech questions and just pretend that Ryan's actually wearing a Santa hat:
00:23 – Upgrading a Skylake PC on a budget?
02:56 – Why are 1440p displays still a thing?
05:14 – Enough PCIe lanes on Z370?
08:45 – Can an underpowered PSU damage your PC?
11:07 – Overclocking Infinity Fabric?
12:43 – Where is Intel's Bluetooth 5 wireless card?
14:04 – Windows Mixed Reality vs. Vive & Rift?
16:34 – Cache memory everywhere?
20:04 – Single Precision vs. Double Precision compute?
Want to have your question answered on a future Mailbag? Leave a comment on this post or in the YouTube comments for the latest video. Check out new Mailbag videos each Friday!
Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel to make sure you never miss our weekly reviews and podcasts, and please consider supporting PC Perspective via Patreon to help us keep videos like our weekly mailbag coming!
I still don’t understand
I still don’t understand displays at all.
Once samsung had the 48″ 4k VA Panels on the market I just bought a curved TV and it looks almost as nice as my 27″ LG IPS Panels. PWM backlight but never bugs me that I notice.
Now they have these tv’s cheap as hell if they would just displayport maybe but what else is wrong with them? Why are people actually avoiding this and buying half of a tv panel cut down to an ultrawide monitor instead?
I guess I’ll avoid looking at what the supposed quality differences between TV and monitor are now that they both seem plenty adequate compared to what we’ve had in the past.
Just get a TV imo they are big, so no scaling, and they are awesome.
TVs usually have a huge input
TVs usually have a huge input lag and pixel response time so they are no good for gaming if one possesses a working pair of oculars.
Thumbnail caption:
“I know
Thumbnail caption:
“I know you’re jealous, those are real fartflakes”
Hey, want to know what side
Hey, want to know what side effects can vibrations have on closed loop liquid coolers?
I have small micro ITX case that I bought so I can easily transport it with me. Next year I plan to upgrade my 4770k and since there is very little space for air cooling, I’m tempted to try water coolers, but I’m scared that something will come loose from vibration in my car.
(I hate laptops :))
The recent fall in bitcoin
Do
The recent fall in bitcoin
Do you think this has to do with the removal of net neutrality?
I want to trade bitcoin, therefore I need the internet
Now my ISP can FAAPMO by blocking/slowing my b/c related traffic
My huge farm of high end GPUs making indelable audits can have the snot kicked out of them by some neoliberal commie ISP applying their damp fingers to my money fuse?
Who can I sell these really long hex numbers to now?
WTF Trump?
Looks like I will have to sell all these TITANs for half the price of a 750Ti
Merry Christmasssss!
This was a somewhat
This was a somewhat disturbing mailbag, when it reached the point where people were being burned alive at the stake, on a loop, on the test stand behind you. Christmas candles?
Something about power
Something about power supplies. Not all of them come with the necessary protection circuits. There are plenty of low price power supplies that not only don’t provide the power they claim, they probably lack many of those protection circuits that will save the PC hardware in case something goes wrong. Ryan seems to take for granted that the power supply in question, is a good one.
Don’t skimp on the power
Don’t skimp on the power supply on a gaming rig as that useage alone implies that lots of extra capacity/protection will be needed. It’s best to stay within the area of not using more than 80% of the power supply’s maximum rating on any El-Chepo power supply’s maximum rating as corners have to be cut on those lower cost power supplies to get costs down. But Really it’s best to spend to get a better rated power supply and spend the extra needed to get a better part! Everything downstream will feed from the power supply and the older the part gets the more chances for things to go wrong and maybe ruin some part that costs much more than any power supply.
Get a part with the best warrenty and that warrenty length usually indicates the part’s usable life for being taxed to it’s limits so the power supply’s maker will not be cutting corners there. Gaming usage implies that any power supply will be subjected to way more load variance than the standard PCs used for non gaming workloads. And that includes overclocking and power state setting mistakes that can lead to lots of more costly damage.
Ever wonder why the OEM PC makets can get away with those El-Chepo power supplies on those off the shelf business PCs. That’s because the workloads are not going to vary that much on those OEM SKUs and gaming workloads are the most stressful more for the variance above any normal threshold. Spend the proper amount on the power supply unless you are building Granny a kitty video watching/emailing-video calling the grandkids sort of PC build.
You can pay for a proper power supply now or a lot more money later when something much more expensive goes snap, crackel, and pop because you cheaped out on the power supply. So it’s just like those car oil filters and other necessary sorts of things that can not be skimped on.
question for the mailbag:
I
question for the mailbag:
I noticed on Podcast 480 you seemed to refer to FP16 and FP32 shaders separately. I thought these were all the same FP32 silicon. Doing FP16 math either wasted the extra precision, or double packed the math for two operations per cycle. Do I have the right idea?
Related to this: As FP64 performance is often a fraction of the FP32, why not make all FP64 shaders and just double/quad pack the math?