PWB: What happened to April, is it really May already?

Unfortunately the budget doesn't stretch to raises or bonuses this year (except for C-level positions, of course).

Got an email from Overclockers this morning that some of the components for our new machine were out of stock, so while I was on the phone okaying an alternative power supply and RAM, I took the opportunity to upgrade the graphics card as well.

Haha nice one! Sorry to be the catalyst for you spending more money. I think you'll be very happy with the RTX2060. Ray tracing is amazing to look at. I've not been doing much with 4k, as I only have quite a small monitor so there really isn't any point, but I did run something on 4K on the TV (I can't remember what) and it worked. The 2060 handles most things at 1440p on ultra settings with a swagger, even with the notoriously system-crushing ray tracing turned on. It's not top of the range, of course. As you realised when choosing a 1660 card initially and ending up upgrading before you even had it delivered, there's always a bigger and better card.

Oddly the thing that has caused my new PC to groan a bit is WoW, but that's probably something to do with some kind of failure to use the GPU efficiently. It runs amazingly, and at something like 150fps, but the card gets hot doing it. I've chosen to limit it to 100fps and run the fans at a higher setting.

What CPU did you get? How much RAM?

I'd have a look in the Epic store and exploit the heck out of that £10 voucher thing they're doing. If you buy anything over £14 you get £10 off, and another £10 voucher. It feels like they did it by accident. Get yourself Control to ogle the ray tracing.

What CPU did you get? How much RAM?

Ryzen 5 3600 (4.2GHz), 16GB RAM.

The fans on this thing will not shut up, though – even at "rest", something in there is blowing a gale. I've tried adjusting the temperature/RPM settings in the bios, but it doesn't seem to have made any difference to the noise whatsoever. It only lets me change the case and CPU fans though, so I suspect it may be the graphics card's onboard cooling that's causing it.

We're CPU bros

I've had a few performance hitches in Asgard's Wrath with the 1070, so I might bump up to a 2060 or higher. Also, dat raytracing in Minecraft.

We've got the same CPU and RAM as well, Aniki!

I suspect that the hot weather is not helping your fan situation. I've got a program called EVGA Precision X1 which checks your GPU temperature and lets you adjust the fan speeds, including the GPU fan (I think). Also, AMD Ryzen Master (which will be on your desktop already, I expect - I got mine from Overclockers and they installed it) does the same thing for your CPU. Check the temperatures. GPUs can apparently run comfortably at 60 degrees C, but 90 is potentially too hot. You might just have a noisy fan though. I changed mine from the default to one that was £10 more expensive on the grounds that it would be £10 more cold, but it might just be £10 more quiet. That is the level of scientific rigur I brought to the process of selecting parts. Also, my old PC sounded like a dying lawnmower towards the end, so mine might just sound quiet compared to that.

Check the temperatures

They're both sitting at around 40-45 degrees at the moment, with nothing heavy running (apart from Chrome lol) and the fans are pretty busy. Though nobody on my Zoom calls today seemed to notice, so maybe it's all in my head.

If those are the temperatures, then there's nothing wrong, just a bit of a noisy fan. What I do in those circumstances is turn up the volume on everything else.

You can probably take the side off and see which fans are responsible for the noise. If it’s just a case of cheap case fans, you can probably switch them for silent models or bigger fans at relatively minimal outlay. I’d be surprised if it’s the graphics card, I’ve never owned one that’s been audible with the case on even at full load apart from one faulty one I had that had a bad case of coil whine.

Swapped out the case fans for quieter ones which seems to have helped a little, but I think the CPU fan is the bigger culprit. It looks alarmingly more difficult to replace, though, so I might just have to resort to headphones.