GPU Market Share, The State Of PC Building, Thunderbolt 5 & More | The Full Nerd ep. 271
Okay. Uh, I was recently at a brewery, and I was overhearing some younger people talk about how. How did anybody survive before Apple Pay? It was kind of the discussion. Like, it's. It's so easy. Like, can you believe all those Android people that don't even, like, get it? They're just like, they just get.
Do they not they're aware that there's other contactless payment for. I wanted to be like actually actually write my my Samsung note had a strip of a metallic strip in it. I'm sorry. Magnetic strip in it that mimicked a credit card before before even that NFC stuff took off. Oh, that's cool.
Yeah. You need another chip. Oh, it's such a Bay Area thing. Just to say, too, though, because there are also plenty of other regions that don't have a lot of contactless pay. Yeah. So sometimes, sometimes I understand why people want to send locusts our way. Yeah, it was. It was.
It was really one of those hard things that just I wanted to be like, actually. But then, then I was like, whatever, you know. But yeah, no, I remember. Yeah, I remember. I think it was a note five. I think it was my note. Five.
Yeah. They had a magnetic strip in the phone that you could use it as a, as a card as long as, as long as it was a tap, you know, like a had had the magnetic strip. Right. The running. Oh, that's cool. So, yeah, like, I remember the first time I used it was in the safe way, the old safe way about my house. And, and, um, I got out my phone and the lady was like, Oh, no, we don't.
We don't like, except the NFC stuff. And I was like, What's this? Yeah, it's going to see it. It's going to see it as a card. And I tapped it right by the, by the swipe thing and it worked. And she's like, Oh my God. And like, yeah, like I just, I would constantly get that.
And then when NFC picked up, like that was kind of a different thing. But yeah, yeah. Anyway, you kids and your Apple Pay and your, your stupid usb-c ports. Did you know Apple invented the Usb-C port? And we just found out today. Today?
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so anyway, actually, do they even announced that? I don't know. I'm all right. I should actually be checking them. Yeah. Yeah, well, it will. This is watch and Wills is a dirty iPhone user who thinks he thinks Apple pay's the best. But I have.
I'm a dirty iPhone user, but I don't use Apple Pay. Uh, well, yeah, where I'm at. Do you get it then? Maybe 70% businesses, 60% support it, so. Oh, got it. They have this as the best usb-c phone that was ever made.
Uh. Yeah, because it's the only one that they've ever made. I don't think I'll switch. I'm. I'm still holding strong on my iPhone 13 pro right here. That's not what they want you to think. No, no, you got to you're you're a horrible Apple user.
Tim. Tim, Apple needs to needs your money. He needs your money here. Needs your money. Give him your money anyway. Hello. Welcome. We're live.
I see it here on the internet. Glad to have everybody here. Um, we. We got some. It was funny, I, I was putting. We were trying to think of what we were going to talk about and at first I was like, man, we get we don't really have much to talk about.
And then all of a sudden, uh, we got a good list of stuff to talk about today and hot off the presses. I didn't even know about it Dropped Thunderbolt five, so we added that to the list. Um, and then it passed. Yeah. And then sorry for everybody who, uh, who felt like the last episode ended on a cliffhanger, because it did. We had some technical difficulties, and we just started talking about the Legion go, and then all of a sudden I think it had something to do with networking and YouTube itself because YouTube actually killed the stream, which doesn't happen unless we do it manually.
So I think it's that YouTube problem. Anyway, can you actually finish your sentence? You were say, saying like, Oh, we're going to get what? We're going to get ripped. We're going to be ripped. We're going to get ripped because that thing is £1.8. It is heavy, heavy, heavy, handheld. Anyway, we'll talk a recap really quickly in the Q&A, just in case your laptop we got. Yeah, and it's in it's all held by, uh, plastic because they're detachable.
Joy-Con. So, uh. Oh, man. We just got a super chat from Marlin Gems on the Amazon. Yeah. Thank you. I think I'm saying that correctly. 1999.
Thank you. That was a great year and even great Super Chat. Thank you so much. I appreciate this. There's no questions here. Just wanted to say keep up the good work, ladies and gents.
Also, you should do more tier list podcasts like the candy one you did a few months ago. Oh, yes, yes, we should. Actually, I, I have tier lists working. I've been working on tier lists for months, so, yeah, I wanted I want to do the one because I think I think that's just kind of fun.
So anyway, yeah, and once again, we are fabulously sponsored by Falcon Northwest, if you couldn't tell. Also, I also brought in some liquid death. Oh, boy. Because we got to get that. You know, I'm breaking the number one rule of sponsorships is that you don't give them free sponsorships. But, you know, maybe this is the way to get the foot in the door.
I don't know. Hashtag. Ooh. Should I sprinkle a little bit of falcon fuel in my liquid death? Just like a little. Oh,
no, it's just liquid. This is just a bit. This one's just water. They do make other other versions, but this is. And this is the sparkling water. This isn't still water.
You combine those two, you'd have a pretty bad ass cup of coffee, I think. Uh, sorry. One more thing.
I know we haven't even started yet. The. When I lived in Pittsburgh, there was a beer called Iron City, and it came in cans. Before cans was cool instead of bottles because they were joking around about how, you know, if there's all those, uh, bar fights in Pittsburgh that you don't want bottles, you want cans because things get things get hairy anyway, the joke was, is that Iron City beer tasted like a steel mill because like the the the workers would leave the steel mill and the beer was like so too to clean. So they would put a little ash in their beer. So like, you know, like just get that taste of the steel mill in there.
And then it just tasted like that. That was their flavoring was steel mill ash anyway. Yeah. Flavor or something like that.
Maybe I'm misremembering the. Yeah, I love it. Anyway, how's your health business? I didn't like Iron City.
I wasn't a big Iron City fan. I don't drink beer. So my first thought listening to all of that was, Wow, A Streetcar Named Desire. I mean, so different if they did not have bottles and, um, anyway, we should we should get, we should get going, um, because we're already a little late, so we got fun stuff.
Fun stuff and stuff. What? I was just saying a little bit of that. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. A lot of. A lot of Italy. Yeah, just that. All right.
We got an ad read, and the ad read is going to be from our one and only Illini. So go ahead and kick kicks off when you're ready and okay, here we go. Go for it. Every bag. A falcon fuel is an experience. It's rich, hearty, a swift kick of caffeine.
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Sorry already there is no better pairing than this. Head to falcon-nw.com and grab yourself a bag of falcon fuel alongside a killer PC. In this episode of The Full Nerd, we talk about the CPU market, the State of PC Building and Thunderbolt five. Welcome everybody to the full nerd Episode 271 I'm your fill in Host Adam Patrick Murray and on the line with me I have that fantastic ad reader Alaina Yee.
Sara I don't want to skip you, Brad, but Alaina did a really good job reading that ad. Hello? It's me. If you didn't know if you didn't know it was Alaina the whole time. And we got Brad, Brad, uh, Brad. Choco taco, turkeys on the on the line. What's going on? Hello, Internet. What's your shirt?
It looks like cyberpunk coloring. Oh, okay. I'm sorry, BFF. I just saw the. The neon yellow on your shirt.
We thought it was cyberpunk. It's past my turn, but can I also show my shirt? Because I'm very excited for it. For audio listeners, it says, I don't.
I don't grow old. I level up. And as a consultant, good thing Gordon's not here.
That he'd get triggered by the controller. Speaking of triggering the verticals and horizontals we get to Willis like hopefully Willis you can you can peel away from the Apple keynote to to help run the show. I'm I'm trying to you know not give Tim Cook my my money you know every year trying to but hello everyone hello internet I'm also wearing a monster zinc Mike Markowski T-shirt.
Yeah Low man. We are stylin today. I know. Well, sounds like it. I'm just boring wearing a shirt with, uh, with a cactus on it. Cacti. Anyway, we got a we got a fun show that we're going to get to.
I got my notes here. Look how professional I am filling in for Gordon. Unfortunately, still can't join us. So we're here to talk about PC stuff and the first topic of the day is a PC sorry, CPU marketshare. Actually a little bit of CPU market share in there. There were a couple recent reports that we hadn't covered.
This is a little bit of older news, but we just haven't covered recently. John Petty Research, a famous or infamous, whatever you want to call it, a research firm is actually not too far from us. We need to have John Petty on the show sometime. He's a cool guy. Put up a couple recent articles about GPU marketshare and shipments for AIB is a little bit of CPU stuff in there. It's it's something that that I think we always get the emails and we kind of like to look at the information and kind of just from take that analyst put a point of view and maybe, you know, look at it through our lens to see like, oh, okay, well that makes sense.
I have links in the description to both of these articles, but the first one titled GPU Shipments increased by 11.6% from last quarter and decreased by 27% year over year. So one of the big takeaways is that second quarter is usually down. So maybe this means you know, a little bit of a recovery for the markets, but either way, it is down year over year. And I mean, we've seen the the charts when I remember the last time we covered it, but we have that chart of like shipments just like continuing to drop it. Yeah.
Here's a quote from John Petty, a quote. Whereas the increased shipments are welcome. Good news, the overall PC market and therefore the GPU market has been on a steady decline since 2010. And so if the market has indeed turned around, it's not going to get to the levels it was ten years ago, end quote.
So yeah, that that's not always good news, I guess, but good news in the in the short term. If we dig into the numbers a little bit, I think Willis, if you want to put up that that first one the market share one he kind of lists out quarter on quarter and then year over year and it's this chart that he has for the the breakdown of the market share and who kind of controls what. Obviously we see the biggest slice of the pie is in video and they've pretty much held steady quarter over quarter 68% and have actually increased year over year from 62%. So as once again, we've kind of seen that before.
AMD has increased, uh, quarterly and then Intel has decreased a little bit. Also, I should I should mention this, this isn't just discrete GPUs, this is also laptop configurations as well. So that's why the the higher intel number, you'd be like, what Ark is selling that? Well, yeah, Yeah. So, uh, any, any quick takeaways from, from, from the spread. Uh, a couple of things popped into my head looking at this one, it definitely isn't the GPU market of yesteryear. If you look at the combined total of shipments this quarter, it was, you know, just over 6 million units, whereas, you know, in 2017, 2016, like M.D alone was shipping that.
So like the total market isn't as big as just the radio market used to be, much less a video. Uh, 61 million units. Uh, correction for GPUs, you might be looking at a slightly different thing, but I think it is encouraging, even though it's unusual for GPU shipments to come up this quarter, it makes sense.
We've finally saw the launch of the 40, 60, 40, 60 ti. I hopefully no one's buying that. But you know, the 46 is out. That tends to be the system seller for Nvidia, the main driver of all the steam service. Uh, and being down year over year, that much makes sense because last quarter remember was the worst quarter ever for graphics cards like in decades. Like it plummeted.
So having it down year over year still obviously aren't great, but having it come back up from that is a good sign. Hopefully things are starting to get back to normal now that we actually have affordable graphics cards out. Yeah, in in once again, this research does not include, uh, like resale cards or, you know, like, I'm sure there's there's plenty of, there's plenty of other GPUs being bought and sold that aren't the current stuff. This is, this is talking about shipments brand new card shipments from the actual manufacturers themselves.
So there's there's obviously plenty plenty else going on in here. But this is just at least one little look, um, of where it is. I know this is once again a little bit older and this was before the 7700 and the 7860 got released. I know there was a little bit of that research from not research, but sales numbers from that German. What is that German site that easily.
Yeah. Mine factory here showing that what was it like 5050 split nearly between AMD and Nvidia at least for their sales. I don't know how much to take from that. That's obviously, you know, just a take that with a little slice that's one one retailer in one part of the world usually a good indication but it's not the whole picture.
Um I always always it's good to see those numbers but I was sick with the huge grain of salt. They definitely in Germany do tend to skew higher towards AMD than other parts of the world. And again, it's one retailer.
So yeah, but I also I will say anecdotally, it seem like now that we're about a week off of the the launch of those GPUs, the official launch of those GPUs that the it feels like and may maybe correct me if I'm wrong that the 7800 XT was like, hey, you know what there's a there's a damn good card and I know at least on Newegg in the U.S., it was sold out for at least a day or two. I back ordered one and then it just barely shipped, so. Oh jeez. Yeah. So it makes sense. We haven't had it. We haven't had a 1440 PPI graphics card, just like we were talking about last week or the week before. With Jared.
You shouldn't buy a 46 or tie in the 47 600 bucks. So AMD didn't have to do much beyond puts that now that's not crazy bad value in they put on that that's pretty good value so it to me it's the only realistic 1440 PPI option unless you really want to spend up to get dialysis three in a video. But to me $600 for a 1440 GP is ridiculous. Elena, you hear any word on the street on, on how well this, this last radio launch this has been.
Well, actually, it's funny you mention that because I was helping a friend put together a build list right before Labor Day weekend and she was, she was ready to buy. And I was like, hang on, let's wait till next week for your graphics card. You can buy the rest of it now, but wait till next week.
And so then the reviews launch are dropped. And I was like, Oh, okay. So like, here are your options. You could do the 4070. Could you just I'll try to monitor.
You can do a 47, you can do the 7860 or you could do 6100. Okay, here's the pros and cons of each. Go look at the charts yourself. Figure it out for yourself. I don't want to. I don't want to. Given how much this card is going to cost you, I want you to have an informed opinion before you put down the money.
She comes back like 10 minutes later in late messages and she's like, I bought a 7000 XD. Well, she just looks like that. Does she just look at the thumbnails on YouTube and she's like, you know, what is the one? I don't know. I mean, I might have exaggerated slightly within 15 minutes but she, she went through it quick.
I think she think partially because she trusted me. Okay. And then too she's like, okay, this is like just confirmation bias. At this point. I really kind of know what I want. But as we were talking because she's like, Oh, I'm going to get this model. And I was like, Oh, do you? You might want a different card because, you know, this brand has slightly better cooling, quieter. And as we are talking, it sold out.
And I was like, Oh crap, I'm so sorry. She's like, No school. I read ordered it, but I sent it to you.
I already decided. I was like, okay, good. So that's what she does. This is an anecdote off the street. So like, yeah, definitely that first day because we were talking on September 6th and that first day I was already, she was already say two people already decided, I think, what they wanted. So yeah, there was a period where it sold out.
Well has a as she had aimed before issue. Yeah. Actually a big upgrade for her she's going from Coffee Lake processor to a 7600 X sorry 7670 200 X for a CPU and then she's going from an hour x 580 to 7000 next. You know, she's like dang I haven't heard from her.
I think she's just been lost. Yeah. This is like, don't talk to me. I'm playing games. She, she, she had it.
She got, she built it on Sunday. I want to see her Saturday night and I haven't heard from her since the the you with another satisfied customer thoughts. That's what I like to hear uh saying okay well back to the the John Petty research stuff. He does give a quick summation that AMD's overall market share increased 1.2% from the last quarter.
Intel's market share decreased 0.4%, Nvidia's market share decreased point 8%. Obviously, Intel's market share is is slim. And I mean, who knows how many they're selling of the 87, 50 and 87, 70 or the A380, even from late last year, They haven't had a new GPU launch since then.
So, you know, I can understand why that one hasn't moved. But in videos, market share, I thought would have you know, I don't know. I don't know. So wait, sorry. I was reading chatter.
I might have misheard. You had Intel's share actually went down a smidge, didn't it? 24%. Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean, once again, it's a small part of the overall market share. Well, I'm sorry.
You know, I was slightly confusing the share, but also how many that shipped. So they actually shipped fewer cards. I a slightly higher percentage like almost what, 12th was it 12%. Okay. Uh, uh, Intel's shipments rose 11.7% to 2.0%.
Uh, I, I'm not surprised by that. Intel's views have evolved into being pretty competitive, especially that a 750 if you can get Apple around 200 bucks, that's great. But they've largely just let the A7 70 go away. Like you can still find some of them out there, some third party ones. Intel doesn't even offer the first party limited edition design anymore. Well, not even for the limited edition is gone for the 750 as well.
I don't know. Yeah, I double checked recently, so I was chatting with Keith and here we were like, Oh, we should do a check in and ask, check in kind of thing. And we looked and we're like, Oh man, you can't even get the limited edition A7 50 either. Um, I guess it was limited.
Uh, we fit that limit. Um, but uh, the, in this article they also talk about the total CPU sold as well, and they break it down if you want to show the second slide marks or to the total CPU units. And this does the, they do kind of break it down between desktop and laptop laptop increased quarter over quarter and held steady from year over year. So it's 72%. And then desktop CPUs kind of the same thing.
But from quarter over quarter, it actually they actually dropped CPU sales. I think that's probably obvious. I mean, there hasn't been a new CPU launch I guess since the 7800 x 3D. So the second second quarter, again like we're seeing with the graphics and everything, because graphics cards obviously go into new systems, the second quarter is historically pretty soft for for PC sales because that's like between the holidays and the back to school summer season.
Those are the big times for pushing for these companies to release new products and push prebuilt laptops and stuff out. So the second quarter is always a little bit, you know, soft. So I'm not surprised to see that. Yeah, in the article they they state that the second quarter is typically down compared to the previous quarter. This quarter was up 12.4% from last quarter, which is above the ten year average of 8.1%.
So on average it's actually up four C for the CPU once again, but that's also including laptop and and desktop. Um, so yeah, laptops, I mean, you know, obviously we focus a lot a laptop on the the website part of it not not as much here on the on the podcast but I mean it seems like people are still buying laptops. Everybody wants laptops. It's, I think it's unusual to find people who want desktops versus laptops actually.
Yeah. Much more laptops get sold than desktops, even though we're in the desktop DIY space. Yeah. Given the niche of a niche. Um, so the, the second article that John Peddie research published, kind of a little extension on this Tuttle, the AIB shipments climb in second quarter 2023 with unit sales increasing from quarter to quarter.
So this is specifically about add in board shipments. Um, and so if you want to show that the chart, so this is the total AIB share and units, they break it down quarter over quarter year over year AMD Intel and and Vedere Intel was dropped from 4% to 2% of the market in video dropped from 84% to 80% quarter. I'm talking quarter over quarter and then AMD increased from 12 to 17%. Uh, yeah, that's a healthy jump. That is a healthy jump. And obviously we don't we don't know the how many, how many not first party but reference cards or Founders edition cards are compared to AIB.
But most of the market is AIB, correct? Yeah, Yeah. The vast majority, vast even like NVIDIA obviously makes its founders edition. AMD makes its reference cards and sells multiple sites, but they are a tiny fraction of total GPUs they want.
They want their partners handling other customer service at X. But yeah, I mean, so this is this is kind of a good look into the overall GPU market. Sure.
We're kind of missing out on the first party for lack of a better term. But this is this is the majority of them. A quick highlight here. They say the it's above the ten year average. So like this this quarter increased by 3% and it's above the ten year average. The total AIB shipments decreased from quarter this quarter last year to 6.4 million units,
but then were up from 6.2 million units last quarter. Oh, that that's where you got that number? I'm sorry. I had the I was looking at the wrong one. Yeah, yeah, that's fine.
And then AMD's quarter to quarter total desktop AIB units shipments increased 46.8% quarter to quarter, but it's still decreased 48.7% from last year. So so yeah, let's a man, it's like an fluctuation. It's crazy. It's the same as we were talking about earlier.
It's good that it's going up by it's we're definitely like hopefully last quarter, not this one that we're talking about, but the quarter before that was the bottom because it got pretty brutal out there. And to have it up the very next quarter in a quarter, that's usually down. I mean, that's a good thing. So one of the questions I had just kind of talking about this whole GPU marketshare stuff is I remember when Evga announced that they were going to stop making GPUs. There was a lot I was getting ready for a wedding.
I literally was getting ready for a wedding. I was there with my girlfriend. She was freaking out mad at me because I'm like, I got to stop. I got to watch this gamer's next video. And I took 15 minutes to watch the game. The next video.
I mean, it was wild, no news. And I mean, it still is, you know, wild news to think about. But one of the speculations we had soon after that is like, okay, who who's going to fill in that that that slot? Right. Like Evga, at least for me, was always one of the first abs that I looked at for video cards. So, you know, now that we're now that we're some time out from it. Brad Lena, do you have any feelings of who's kind of filled in that slaughter? Do you think? It's just been kind of like evenly dispersed between the, the major ones like MSA is who's zotac or I guess low tech, doesn't I, I have bought a lot of G-force cards and I was a very loyal I never said it back when they were still in business, but I was a very loyal evga buyer like I love DVDs, customer service, I love to build, I love Precision X.
I loved everything, and I don't think any other company has stepped in to fill that sort of void yet. I think it's more just the companies that are around are selling more cards than they used to. I don't think any of them have necessarily stepped up to try to fill the shoes of an evga reputation like they had excellent customer service, they had responsive of everything, and there's no company that does that at that level yet. And that well, what was that program? The the the step up program. Yeah, that was it.
That was it. Evga step. Oh, Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah.
I think things like that you don't necessarily find again you know, from from a manufacturer, but at least in terms of like actual cards made in different styles, like I feel like we're starting to see some, some cool trends and in the esthetics, you know, to kind of differentiate. So, you know, like it's healthy, I don't think as much as it pains to not have evga around for GPUs, like, I also don't feel like we're in a worst spot for it necessarily, but they've kind of filled in performance wise, just not necessarily from the customer service and the company wise, I'm I of these John Petty numbers. I find it really interesting just how much market share and declined last quarter for the ABS going from 12 to 17% sure that's only what 5%.
But like you said, that's a 48% increase compared to what they were selling before. I think I have no idea. But off the cuff, I would say that really speaks to the fact that Nvidia has basically given up on the sub $500 price point like the 4640 is nothing. You should buy any iteration. The 4060 is not as good as the 7600, which is cheaper. Like if you unless you're spending $600, you know, like you really shouldn't be considering Nvidia too heavily.
Well and I was reminded recently that they haven't launched a desktop 4050 either. So we have 4080 is the lowest end of the stack. I doubt they will. Yeah. Or you don't think they're going to.
I get the feeling we've had the SOC on here before. Integrated graphics are getting good enough and making these cutting edge process chips. The TSMC TSMC process is so expensive that I think they're kind of ceding the low end to integrated graphics and handhelds at this point. Sorry, that was me opening my liquid death as quietly as it could slow got brought up on the on the requirement especially kind of depressing that though Brad because I feel like there's still a significant enough gap between integrated graphics and where we're currently sitting with current gen discrete graphics cards that there's a pretty big underserved population and like yet like it was a couple of weeks ago, I went in to borrow the 6400 from Adam since I wanted to finally finish up article that you're going to start doing. And I was like, Man, there's just there's just no 75 cards.
Like, is this the last of its kind for however not for however long it's going to be. Are we just going to move to integrated graphics? But they're not there yet. So somebody who has been hoping to get off of a $130, $200 graphics card from ages ago is stuck between this really this lyric and this like no man's land right now. Yeah, it's too bad because I really love the video, especially the 5050 Infinity class. Once, because like you said, the whole point is you don't even need a power connector.
You can just swap out what you had, plug it in, and even if it's, you know, decidedly unimpressive performance even versus the 40, 60 or whatever, being able to do that and getting that dedicated RAM and stuff like that, if you just won't play e-sports games like fill up a cyber cafe in China or something like that, I think there's still a market for that, but I'm just not sure that they can make them cheaply enough to make it worthwhile. I mean, really, you're just looking at Intel and AMD. Uh, yeah, A-380 being the, the bottom line than a seven 5015 a or X 7600. Yeah. But even those don't, they need power connectors so it's not the same. Yeah. The A380 I think needs one right. I think so. Yeah.
I should look at it. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Especially because there's 13 countries in the chat now saying that he wishes the A380 was 75. What, for The Av1 decoder, right? Yeah, that would be perfect.
You just add that card in as a, uh, second slot. Just handle all of the the encoding. But, you know, anyway. Yeah.
So let's it's a little taste of the GPU market share. Any, any other thoughts before we move on. I, I actually looked at this from the way zoomed out kind of perspective in terms of just wondering like what does this mean going forward just because there's there's all this economic instability happening in the background right now. But we've also come off all these pandemic years where people held out for a really long time to upgrade their cards. So I'm kind of interested to see, because I know the report also said something about how they're anticipating, like usual, Q3 will be much more robust than Q2 was.
But I am wondering how that's going to look just because people are suffering from the effects of inflation right now. So is it is it enough that people were holding off that they're finally like, I got to upgrade like my friend who's like, I'm going to get off my x 580 finally? Or is it going to be more of a thing where they're like me and like the cost of food just keeps going up. I think I'm just going to keep riding out until maybe some day my 75 watt replacement card will come.
So I'm kind of interested and see how it goes. I feel like I don't have a good personally, I don't feel like I have a good idea of like what the market's going to end up looking like even the next six months to a year. Well, last that last three or four years have taught me to no longer make predictions, so I have no idea like either. I mean, honestly, there's still a lot of old inventory, you know, RTX 30 series and the Radeon RX 6000 units that are still getting sold through. So it's this feels truly like a weird mixed generation.
Yeah, sure. So yeah. Anyway, um, yeah, speaking speaking of PCs, uh, I wanted to, I want to take a second to talk about Falcon Northwest right here on the on the table next to me. For audio listeners, I have a Falcon Northwest Tiki.
I'm going to clear off any, any liquid things, so I don't drop it over. But this is, this is a small form. It's a micro tower is technically what they call it, but I call this smartphone small form factor.
It's also got the I don't know if anybody Brad you never got that that 4080 that was in from the pro art the issues pro art 4080. Nope So I'm going to open it up. Sorry uh, for audio listeners, but inside this we, and we, we do have a video, a sponsored video coming up looking at this as well. But inside this, I don't know if you can see it this is the the RTX 4080 x pro card and I see I feel like we're starting to see slimmer versions of the 48 and the 49. Even even MSI announced they slimmed down 1490, which at 322 Mm.
Technically fits in the fractal design. Terra So I'm going to try to get one of those and see if it fits in that in that case or not, because technically it does on paper. Anyway, if I can. Northwest did work with axes to be like, Hey you know what, like we need a small compact 4080 was great for, for production you know and actually the style stylistically I like the pro art series and this is like a perfect pairing for this, this tiki. Uh, also one of my favorite things to do with the tiki is just like, sit here and push it because, yeah, a lot of people think it's like going to be real top heavy and like, tip over, but it's got a heavy, heavy base to it. So
of the tiki, those are I think I talked about this last week those are the like I've always admired the tiki is like you could tell Falcon Northwest has put a lot of time and engineering into making those things run awesome and it's crazy you can get a box that small enough. 40 Yeah and that custom configured still texts right out of my mouth. Like the Tiki line's been around for a long time.
Like, I remember seeing those like that back in 2015, 2016 when I was still relatively new to covering just tech and that was before small form factor was a DIY, small form factor had really, really taken off as like a more general popular thing. And so those very impressive displays, to see those. Yeah, super cool. And thanks again to fuck Northwest for uh, for sending us all this coffee, this falcon fuel because you know, if you, if you want some, go ahead and buy some falcon fuel and it comes with a gaming PC for the low low price. Yeah. Just happens to come with it anyway, I hope they didn't make too much of a mess on the table here.
So let's talk about the state of PC building, shall we? Because Elena was like, Hey, you know what? Well, there's not a ton of news, but maybe we can talk about just like the current status of PC building, where we're at, where we feel like and I kind of want to it out by component. I know we talked about GPUs for a little bit. We talked a little bit about CPU, but I feel like CPUs are like an awesome spot. Like you can get some really good power for real low prices. Um, how does everyone feel about the the current state of CPUs right now? I totally agree. To me, with the way product lines traditionally get released in like a fall or at yes do CPU lineups to me if you're a DIY builder this late summer period is always the best time to buy because you're starting to clear house and you can get some excellent CPU power for really great prices right now.
Yeah, I don't know, Brett. I still like Black Friday. So Elena, you're not you're not as excited about where CPUs are now. I mean, I'm still excited.
I'm just just being particular about when I shop for them, when. Okay, well, do you, do you think this this year we're going to see like insane CPU deals for Black Friday? I, I feel like in general I don't like, like Brad it's hard to make predictions because things have been so unpredictable for the last four years really. So part of me wants to say no because I just don't think there's going to be like major drops that would precipice date, like having just this whole like kind of fire sale mentality on what would be a previous generation. Chip At the same time, it is kind of a slower year, I feel like in terms of what people are buying, right? So maybe just to add some incentive, we could see some loss leaders. I just my spidey sense tells me that it's not going to be like last year. I was just like, Oh my God, this like 3D, like a like the video X 3D is suddenly, like, insanely cheaper.
And this is cheaper and this is cheaper. This is cheaper. I think it might be more of a situation where it's again, it's like micro centers doing this. And I was like, I always have to buy Christmas. I mean, they still have crazy bundles. They do like Super Ram.
Yeah, that's why everyone's like, I wish I lived near a micro center. Yeah, I've never set foot in one and I hate that. Hurts your heart. I think I think for all cam computer parts in general, aside from graphics cards, like what stinks for the HP and Dell's and whatnot of the world like so few computers are selling like we're just talking we're at the bottom of the crater you can get really good deals because people are trying to move what they did make and they're sitting on giant stockpiles of stuff.
So I just feel like everything right now, if you have the money to spend out of it, don't need to pay for gas and food or you have to do that anyway. But you know what I mean? You got some leftover after pay for gas. I mean, bread priority. A great time.
Yeah. You can eat the chips, right? Well, I still feel like storage is somewhere just like, man, I keep seeing, like, storage deals. Most storage. That is insane right now. Like I was just yesterday, I was debating, Oh, there's an intel. I think it's like 70 deep whatever that model number is two terabytes for, I want to say 65 bucks.
70 bucks. And I was like, Yeah, So it's not the best performing drive out there. It's not a terrible drive, but it's not like at the top for me. And if you just want to throw your all your games on there, like that's a really good price for that.
And then the next part of me was like, let's see how much more it drops. Let's not talk about it. But yeah, yeah, you know, I could. Who knows, right? Yeah.
I also feel like ddr5 ram prices have have been going down as well. Yeah, they've gotten better. Like, I don't feel like people are like, oh man. Crap.
It's the it's the big buying consideration on a new platform. Like Ddr5. Or you got to worry about that price going up because I mean, especially with, like we said, with those micro center bundles, like you can get 16 or 32 gigs like in the motherboard and the CPU for like 500 bucks, and it's just like, Oh my. Yeah. Wow. That's, that's nice. Yeah, that's that. It's hugely different. Like you can get solid 1632 gig kits for under $100 these days of Ddr5.
And that was very much not the case when all this launched, what, a year ago? DDR five was actually the pain point, not buying the new motherboard and CPU. I mean the motherboard a little bit. You know, motherboard prices definitely have creeped up. That's the other thing right is the motherboard prices like yes, we've gotten more features and you know better quality and like more stylistic options.
Like I feel like there's a very wide variety of motherboard options out there, maybe, maybe even like more so it was like, Oh my God, Well, okay, there's a lot of options there. Yeah, yeah. Motherboard processors are, for me, at least when looking at pricing or when I was doing the build lists for my friend, that was still the stickiest point for me because I feel like, you know, even just a couple of years ago you could spend 150 bucks and get a really solid motherboard like wi fi and like things that you consider kind of extras in there. Maybe not the best for overclocking, like, not like VRM kind of stuff, but just like your basic upgrades for people who don't aren't into like the super, super high end things or hobby type things, but now it's like 150 bucks and I'm only getting PCI for support, which I guess is maybe greedy of me. But it just feels weird where you're like, before this would be like an X class, not a B class motherboard.
And now I am paying this much more for it. Yeah, if you have it, if you haven't built a PC in five years or so, prepare to be shocked at how much motherboard you cost. It does make sense because as we're getting all these new technologies, not just are the chips, especially on the intel side, those things e power. And so the motherboards have to be beefed up to be able to, you know, support that.
But is the same deal with PCI 85 is the same deal with DDR five. Like you have to add so much more circuitry into the motherboards to support those. It makes sense that the prices are going up. But damn, have the prices gone up. Yeah. Actually this is something I asked gigabyte about a number of weeks ago when I was there for the Z 790 refresh.
Excuse me. And yeah, I was like, Hey, how are how are you balancing the fact that, you know, people are asking for more features, but they're also at the same time trying to try and ask for cheaper prices because that's the thing. Like there are a lot of cool features, like a lot of those, a lot of the motherboards have the quick release latch for the the AMD two drives, things like that. It's like, okay, well that's awesome.
Or stylistic features or I mean feature sets, you know, talking about PCI, F5, how many lanes do you get? I mean, something I always look for is like a, you know, the higher end boards have like ten gig ports or like, you know, 2.5. Like, you know, what's the kind of connectivity on that? I mean, VRM support, like it's definitely bulked up, of course, but also like, I don't think like I think it's a little bit more of a marketing things like, yeah, you know, how many phases and all that kind of stuff is meaningless to a certain degree when when you're not pushing it that hard anyway, if, if you're just gaming or anything like that. But yeah, I mean there, there is a lot that's going into these, these motherboards and their features, but also at the same time, I mean, it comes at a cost. So, you know, it does feel a little bit like what we've discussed on the laptop side of things where, you know how if you get bells and whistles and everything but the everything and the kitchen sink type gaming laptop, like everything is upgraded, right? So you can't really get justice. A couple of features you kind of have to pay for, like the whole premium experience.
It kind of feels similar on the motherboard side right now as well. Before you could actually get like, Oh, well, I don't really need, you know, this support, but I want that. And you could usually find a motherboard that kind of fit that. Now it's just like, nope, you just get all these like it's almost like this is your standard car package at this level kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty much.
It's a shocking number of like 800 to $1000 motherboard. Thanks. Well, you make fun of those. Very. You talk about that with this kind of like that kind of money and now it's like, oh, there's so I guess there are people who have that kind of money. Yeah. Well that's why 4090s.
Yeah. Yeah. One one thing that we don't talk about very too often because they're outside of your PC and not inside displays are in a really rocking place right now too. You can get awesome monitors for real cheap today we were in a deal. Uh, by running to deal, I mean, we look around to look for a cool stuff in the morning and we're like, Hey, that's cool. I'd spend my money on that and we do a post about it. It's not like we're working with Samsung, but get a deal on a Samsung 4K monitor for 200 bucks.
A week or two ago there was a 240 hertz Acer. I want to say it was monitor 1080, of course, if you're looking for 20 and 40 hertz, but that was under $200. I think it was $180. Like you can also spend up real big and get an older micro-led display these days like the high end things are being in two displays. It's a great time to be buying. I feel like.
I mean, obviously ten HP is the majority out there, but I do feel like 1440p has finally gotten some really good inroads because 1440 PPI monitors have really come down in price, right? Yeah, you can definitely get great ones for under $200. You can get really great ones for if you spend a little bit more, but you can get a solid 14, 40, 144 hertz monitor might need to look around a little bit, but you can find one for under $200 every day. And that really is to me, that's the PC gaming Sweetspot like if someone's like I have that unlimited budget but an okay, but just want to, you know, set for get a set on a system and that's kind of what I want to be running for years. I would definitely point someone to 1440p rather than work eight or 1080 Yeah. I mean obviously like the ten ADP there is use for it for sure because you can push really, really high refresh rates if you care about that. But yeah, I feel like 1440 piece definitely a sweet spot.
And then I mean the hardware to push 1440p like what do you think? What do you think? It's like, hey, you know what this is? This is either the minimum you should go or like a good recommendation for 1440p olina. I'm sorry, remind us your friend paired the seven 800 X to you with a 7600 x CPU. Yeah. So my 600 x is kind of a sweet spot for a solid gaming CPU right now.
I was actually looking at some of the intel offerings and I was like, Oh, you know, I don't think I like actually as much for this build. So yeah, I ended up going with AMD and five. Brad What do you think's a good sweet spot for 1440p gaming in terms of hardware, I think core i5 or ryzen five so 76 X and what is it, 13 700 K No, that's 13 500 K I forget 600. Yeah. That changed by one like every generation. Yeah. Okay.
All right. Now it's 500. Now it's 600 now. Big one. Yeah. It was just to clarify, it's a pricing thing too, right? So between the two chips, that's really what's causing and leave the pricing difference plus the performance relative differences.
Right. So like that's honestly what ends up influencing decision. Yep. 414 $0.40 If you're playing e-sports like you can get by with a pretty cheap GPU, believe it or not. But ideally you would want to have something like the new 7760 or 7860 or, you know, maybe find a used 6800 or from last gen, but if you can find them, they're starting to dry up the 12 gigabyte 6700 XT from last last generation you can still get those for around 300 bucks and that's a pretty solid 1440p performer so right yeah yeah like it's good and we're talking specifically like standard 1440 ultra ultrawide right? Because that was one of the considerations that I take into account as well.
So that's why I ended up boosting our up to like the six 6870 800 XT range, because if you go to ultrawide you want to it, you need to step up. Yeah. Ultrawide you definitely would want to see video. So that's essentially, I mean, depending on the the pixel count of the ultrawide, I mean you're talking about more closer to 4K performance like between the two.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, well, speaking of outside of the system cases, we're. Elina Yeah, I know, I know you have a soft spot for cases, but where do you think we are with cases right now? Like in what sense? Like are we seeing a lot of innovation or just innovation, pricing style? Like, Oh man, are we in a really good spot? You can get some real good bang for your buck or I haven't been finally as close as of late, unfortunately, just because of, you know, other priorities on my plate right now. But I do feel like we're still seeing like some fun stuff and like people and, you know, you were at Computex, so you saw it firsthand.
Like how like there there's still that continuing push to make building, you know, easier, simpler, faster, being able to accommodate the parts that one wants, even though because I feel like back in the day, back in there being, what, like six, seven, eight years ago, where people just kind of assumed like, you want a big graphics card, you're going to have a bigger case, right? So just kind of like like, like and I think now companies are more aware that people are like, Yeah, but you know what I want to do? I want to take this 4090 and put it in a cases let's see how we can make it work, right? I feel like this is the break. I feel like that is one of the overall trends. And I was even chatting and maybe we talked about this on the show with Tony from Silverstone of like, Hey, you know, how do you how do you make a case as small as possible, but then also trying to account for the increased size of GPUs? Once again, I do feel like we are starting to see some of those top end SKUs, like a 48 and a 4090 like get smaller redesigns.
But still, I mean, these are these are huge cards and like there are plenty of cases where like I'm having to look and be like, Oh crap, okay, wait, the configuration I want to use, is it actually going to fit in there? And I'm not even talking about mini ATX, I'm just talking about like a, you know, a smaller ish mid-tower like the fractal in the works. I was looking at a fractal north and I was like, Okay, what's the GPU support in that one? It's not bad, but it's also like, okay, well it's not going to fit some of these things. It's isn't it saying that you have to, you have to look, this isn't saying that you have to even buy an mid-tower these days.
Have to consider how big the freaking graphics cards are. It's insane. It's a weird trend and I feel like it's it's going to have this knock on effect or it already is having a knock on effect where case manufacturers are starting to go a little bit bigger because of it. You know, not too much bigger, but yeah, like the case manufacturers obviously want to try to fit as much as they can unless they're trying to go for small. But even on the small end, you know, you know, like they're still having to think about it like that. Like I said, the fractal the fractal terra has a max length of 322 Mm support, which is still pretty long, but I mean it doesn't fit 4090 that I can find right now.
So I do think it's a it's the good time, if you like, playing Tetris. It's a really good time if you enjoy Tetris. But also I do think that I know I saw some chatter in the the comments right now about how cases seem to be more expensive. But I actually think that cases have also gotten largely more affordable in terms of getting better features at those price points. Right. Like what we expect out of a $100 case now is different than what we used to expect.
And I think that trend continues. Obviously, we're going to have we still have cases that are more premium, more expensive, like the terror is beautiful, but it is on the more expensive side, relatively speaking, for today's expectations out of mini ATX, like I think if you've been doing many ATX for years and years and years, you're going to still think of it as not that bad at $200. But if you're used to something, if you came into it because of the cooler master, you know, and are 200, you're going to go, Wow, $200. That's a lot.
But I think it's it's nice to see a lot more representation across that spectrum and that you have a lot more choice for the amount of money you want to spend. Right. So like I keep using this example, it's just really fresh in my head. If my friends build right, I basically went up to her or I presented her a six different white cases because she wanted a white case, you know, not too large. And I was like, great.
Like, I have all these options to offer to her. And she ended up picking I think the fact I'll pop air. Oh, and but she she had these choices and they like were just a little different enough both visually and honestly and just kind of how the build would end up just a little bit. Right. That if felt like there was actually a choice as opposed to it's like, well, you got this case and it's kind of like this, but if you know, this instead, but you really are going to end up giving this up. And and it wasn't quite like that where I feel like it was more like that even just 5 to 7 years ago.
And I feel like there's definitely that trend of more airflow and, you know, performant like, sure, there's going to be some that are more performant than others, but for the most part, all the big name brands are not just dumpster fires in terms of heating up components, but they're not also like. Steve Yeah, I do feel like the other trend that we continue to see being like really trendy is the whole Fishbowl style, right? Like the, like the height, weight was at 60. What was the number Y 60 I think. Yeah.
The obviously the Lynly 11 Aquarium. The aquarium Aquarium. Yeah. So like, I still feel like that storm case.
Yeah. I'm sorry. I still feel like that style's like I and maybe it's just what I see on social media, but usually, like if somebody is like just generically posting on Instagram or, or TikTok or something, it's that like aquarium style that's kind of like the showpiece. Yeah, that's definitely the new. What was it? Lee And Lee was the oh 11 D That was huge. Yeah, Yeah. A year or two ago.
I think that eight is the new version of that. That's the one you'll see all over in build logs and stuff like that. Yeah.
And I think at Computex Montauk had had one where it was like curved on the front too. Yeah. So we did see a few. There was a montauk. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I feel like that's, that's definitely a style, not necessarily my style, but yeah, um, well what are the components, what it would have any, anything else in the overall state of PC building. I mean keyboards if I guess I mean which again is like not quite directly related to the build, but they had mechanical keyboards specially like custom for mechanical keyboards have just like taken off like me of all people, I actually get options now. This is amazing, right? It's like I need an ergonomic keyboard.
Everyone's like, ha ha ha ha ha, happen. That's cute. And I'm like, I know. Exactly.
And now it's like my friend, he he was never into mechanical keyboards, but he picked up one for like 30 bucks and then he bought another one for, like, 50 bucks. He's like, like I've got these different options that, like, do you need two keyboards? He's like, No, I mean, but no, no. You know what? Maybe you need two keyboards, you know, sometimes. And then we been down a AliExpress rabbit hole of different keycaps and like three said, I mean, Alina, do you really need more than one pair of pants? Like, Yeah, you got one. I mean, that's all, you know. How about you? I like to have a backup there.
Just saying, you know, you might not need more than one. It didn't happen. Yeah. How long have you been wearing your pants, Adam? Who says I'm wearing pants? That you don't know? Actually, you know, but, uh, now Willis can't go to h.R. You know, something else people are pointing out in here is a tower coolers. I feel like like tower coolers like, have been getting damn good.
Like with the thermal right, um, assassin. Oh, what is a Yeah, like the assassin 120 or whatever. That dual tower cooler that's kind of compact is like, I mean, that's like 25 bucks and just like, Dang, that's a damn tower queen. That and especially if you're not hitting it hard, then the hell yeah, like tower coolers. It still surprises me the amount of people who still come out and be like, You know what? I don't like liquid coolers. Like, I did a video recently with Dr.
Ian Cutter's. You should go watch it about a new cold plate technology that he saw it. Hot chips, really fun concept, an idea.
And there was a surprising number of people in the comments are being like the air all the way still you know I feel like that's still like a very hotly debated kind of thing. Air versus versus liquid. But luckily, air towers, I mean, they're are doing good. Yeah, I guess Gordon were here, so go ahead. You can go ahead.
I would just say I wish Gordon was here because I feel like he always has a great way of representing the air air coolers versus the air shows. And I think Brad Austin is going to touch on this because I think, Brad, you're also a big air cooling fan, too. Hey, you know. No,
but I'm but it's like I always remember him relating it to basically to like liking the whole, like, muscle car esthetic. Right. Like you just like seeing this like gigantic arc cooler strapped to your CPU and just like, knowing that it's like working to keep that thing at things temps down, right? As opposed to an air, which is like got that thicker kind of look. Also, Gordon really hates dealing with the tubes. I remember, right? So he does, but he turned me on to the damn screens and now I can't get away from those aios that have a built in screen on the internet. Oh, nice touch. He's too fun. Yeah, I still have Bebe on my.
My work. My work on piano. I like. Also, I think that a lot of the cases though, I mean some of the best cases, like the fractal. Um. Oh, God. What? What is that?
The one we have here? The, the flow through case with the huge fans at the front. Um, too many names, but yeah, the like that's made for airflow. Like you can put liquid in there, but it's like if you have a really good airflow set up, it's just like damn, the can still be, you know, And it's similar to, uh, yes. You know what, Dave? David Lee is right. Air coolers need to put screens on them as well.
I think that should be the next trend or push down because you can technically get a bigger screen. Um, so where would you put it though? Like where it where on the fins she strapped that thing to. Well like the would you put it like slightly like apart from like a little like the stand almost on top of it so it still can pass through the air. No. You know well like I think about I have a movie in five whic
2023-09-14 15:24
