[PINCAB] Recommendations for upgrading a PC

[RocketSci]

The story starts in 2021, when we needed some pandemic self-care and we had a lot of money that we hadn't spent on vacations. My wife and I had long had a dream of getting a physical Addams Family table, but one in good shape was more than we wanted to spend. We had discovered the Pinball Arcade app for our tablets, so we knew that virtual pinball existed, but playing on a tablet or even a console just doesn't feel the same as standing at a table and slapping the flipper buttons. So my wife went looking for a ready-built cabinet -- we weren't prepared to build a cabinet ourselves.

Some of the ones we found looked pretty sketchy, but then we found one built by the Skee-Ball company, the Skillshot FX. It's beautiful, built more like a piece of furniture than a conventional pinball table. It was built on Pinball FX3, a legitimate product. And that collection included some tables that we had fallen in love with through playing Pinball Arcade, like Safecracker. We had to buy it, even though it was still missing some tables that we really wanted (like Addams Family and Star Trek TNG) -- we hoped that the publisher would someday be able to license them.

That was 2021. Since then, we've also installed Pinball FX (the successor to FX3), and I had discovered VPX as well. Thanks to some help from this community, I've got a PinballX front end tying everything together. It works...well enough. The PC was more than adequate to run FX3 on Steam in 2021, but now the Steam client is heavier, and FX is a heavier app than FX3, and some of those VPX tables have some pretty heavy scripting. We need to upgrade it, especially since the CPU isn't supported by Windows 11, and we don't want to have that machine on the Internet once Windows 10 goes out of support.

Our current setup:

CPU: AMD FX8800P Radeon R7 12 core 2.10GHz
RAM: 32GB DDR3
Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (2 displays, just backglass and table, no DMD)

Our question is what sort of hardware we should upgrade to? I haven't built a desktop PC since before smartphones were invented, so all of the modern hardware is a mystery to me. We need it to be able to run FX3 and FX through Steam, and VPX. It doesn't have to be the absolute best hardware that's available today, but good enough to play pinball well for years to come.

We're prepared to spend at least $1k, and would top out at about $3k. Less than $1k would be nice, of course. The preference is for an AMD CPU, but otherwise we're not particular about brands. It's a mini-ITX board, but the case frame inside looks like it could hold up to a full ATX. It currently has a SATA hard drive, but I could replace that with a M2 and just copy everything over to it.

Pics or it didn't happen, of course.

[Draco1962]

Nice looking setup! What kind of displays do you have?

AM I correct that you are not looking at a full gut and just replacing the PC components (CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage)? 

My most recent build was by CyberPowerPC but I added to it with additional drives and accessories. See here: 

The motherboard, CPU, and GPU are all solid. I suggest at least an 1TB M.2 or SSD for OS and apps (PinballX, Steam, VPX)

Leverage a 2TB SSD or greater or use your SATA drive. This would be for FX and FX3, VPX, and PinballX tables and media.

 

[RocketSci]

That's correct. Just gutting the PC components and keeping everything else. Since the cabinet has already been built, replacing the displays would require finding new ones that are the same measurements, and we're more than happy with the way the current ones look.

Thanks for the suggestion of putting the OS and apps on the M.2. Like I said, I haven't built a desktop in decades, and my day job has me working with rather more abstract compute components, when I'm thinking about it at all.

And thanks for the hardware list -- I've gotten some other suggestions, and I'll look them all over and see what works best for availability and our budget. I'll follow up here once I've figured everything out!

[Draco1962]

I look forward to what you come up with. You could possibly keep your existing GPU initially as prices still tend to be a bit excessive and still play quite well.

 

[tthurman]

Good suggestions, should get you where you want things and do easily under budget.

[scutters]

On 11/10/2024 at 9:11 PM, RocketSci said:

2 displays, just backglass and table, no DMD

For the GPU the main factor will be what refresh rate and resolution the screens are running (for the backglass anything more than 60hz HD/1080p is probably a waste but the playfield could be HD, 2k or 4k, 60hz or 120hz +).

My advice would be work out the GPU needed and then work back from there to the CPU using something like a bottleneck calculator (https://pc-builds.com/bottleneck-calculator/).. but that all depends on the screen refresh rates and resolutions you're going to be running.

For VPX i'd say current minimum GPU's;

RTX3070ti  for 4k/120hz   (RTX3080 for anything higher than 120hz refresh rate)

RTX3060ti for 4k/60hz

RTX3060 for 2k/60hz

RTX3050 for anything lower

Change the 3's to 4's in those cards for the later 40 series cards which will give you a good bit of future wriggle room with the performance. Not sure when the next generation 50 series cards are out but when they are you may be able to bag a bargain on previous generation cards.

 

Nice looking setup anyway! 👍

[RocketSci]

Thank you. That is precisely the advice that I needed on the GPU. The playfield is 2k/60, so that would be a 3060.

I had posed this same question to our gaming community at work, and the recommendation coming out of there was also a 3060. If I'm hearing the same thing from two people in very different settings, there's probably quite a bit of merit to that advice.

They also recommended a Ryzen 5 9600X, which the bottleneck calculator says would work fine with a 3060, but it would hold a 4060 back. Pretty much any CPU that would do justice to a 4060 feels like it would be overkill for what we're doing with this system. I'll need to play with the combinations and numbers some more, but I'm a lot closer now than when my wife and I decided that we needed to do this.

Thanks again!

[tthurman]

This page seems to refresh and sell out, but may be worth keeping an eye on if you're okay with Zotac and refurbs.

https://www.zotacstore.com/us/refurbished/graphics-cards

 

 

 

[RocketSci]

Thanks for that, but particularly for a GPU, we're not too keen on the idea of buying a refurb -- what did the prior user put it through before retiring it? No matter how good the refurb job is.