Choosing the Right Graphics Card for Your Needs

If you're in the market for a new graphics card and have a budget of around $11,000, then Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 super is an excellent choice. It offers exceptional performance and features, making it a top contender in the high-end range of Nvidia GPUs. On the other hand, if you want to stick with Nvidia but are looking for a more affordable option, the GeForce RTX 4070 super is a great alternative. This GPU provides a significant amount of bang for your buck, offering impressive performance and features at a lower price point than its flagship model.

In contrast, AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XT is another excellent option in the high-end range. It offers raw rasterization performance that's comparable to Nvidia's top-of-the-line GPUs, as well as more VRAM, which can be beneficial for video editing and other applications that require a lot of memory. The prices for these high-end graphics cards can fluctuate, but if you're looking to spend between $500 and $800 or so, the Radeon RX 7900 XT is definitely worth considering.

Upgrading Your Wall-Mounted PC

I recently upgraded my wall-mounted PC with a new hub that's now sitting on my desk. The unit is from LionWay and comes with 10 USB ports, including one Type-C port, a power plug, and four blue ports that support USB 3.0 at 5 Gbps per second. The two top-tier ports are capable of supporting USB 10 Gbps per second, making it an ideal solution for transferring bulky video files. Additionally, the hub has AC adapter and comes with a couple of USB-C cables.

The hub is powered and can charge devices that require faster charging, thanks to its 2.4A power output. It's also worth noting that this port can be used for other purposes as well, making it a versatile addition to my desk setup. The unit arrived quickly and I'm excited to test it out and see how it performs in real-world use.

Testing the Hub

As with any new hardware, I'm always cautious about its performance and compatibility. However, since this hub is from a reputable brand like LionWay, I have high hopes that it will work seamlessly. If for some reason it doesn't meet my expectations, I'll be sure to post an update in the comments section or create a separate video to share my thoughts.

For now, I'm happy with how everything has come together and I look forward to putting this hub through its paces. With my wall-mounted PC now fully upgraded and equipped with this new hub, I'm confident that it will make a significant difference in my workflow and overall productivity.

Supporting My Channel

As always, I want to thank each and every one of you for stopping by and watching this video. If you enjoyed the content, be sure to hit that like button and leave a comment in the comments section below. Your feedback is invaluable to me, and it helps me understand what you need and want from my channel.

If you'd like to support my channel and get your hands on some cool merch, be sure to check out my store at paul.net. There's everything from t-shirts to stickers, all bearing the Probing Paul logo. Your support means the world to me, and it helps me continue creating high-quality content for you.

Finally, if you'd like to stay up-to-date with my latest videos and behind-the-scenes insights, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel. I post new videos every week, covering a wide range of topics from tech news to personal projects and beyond. With your subscription, you'll never miss a video again!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome back this is the April installment of  probing Paul my monthly Q&A Series where I'll be placing myself at your  disposal answering questions submitted by viewers to put my personal knowledge and  ability to answer off-the-cuff tech questions to the test. wish me luck.excellent today's video is brought to you by lexar's NM790 nvme ssds providing Lightning Fast  storage for the latest generation of gaming and workstation PCS featuring A high bandwidth pcie  gen4 x4 interface broad compatibility thanks to the m.2 2280 form factor and capacities  up to 4TB with sequential read speeds up to 7400 megabytes per second the NM790 makes no  compromises and is conveniently available with or without an integrated heat sink it's also a  perfect pairing for Lexar's stable reliable and efficient Thor OC ddr5 memory kits too so click  the sponsor Link in the description for more. I'm also going to be doing a little bit of mail time  today so use the time stamps to jump ahead to the question or part of the video you want and check  the video subscription down below if you want my PO Box address to send me stuff and also a brief  explanation for how this works all the questions I'm answering today were posted in the comment  section of last month's probing Paul so leave me a comment down below if you have a question that you  would like to hear me answer and also don't forget to check out the probing Paul playlist if you'd  like to go back in time to see all of the times I have been probed so let's begin with our first  question which technically isn't a question but it does bring up I think a very fundamental question  that people who are building PCS have to deal with at some point and that is form versus function the  initial comment here is from Stephen Smith 9522 so this is a response to last month's Q&A where I was  talking about water cooling and recommending that people do not invest in water cooling  unless they're already using the best version of whatever thing they are water cooling so if  you're not already using the top tier CPU for the platform you're on then you shouldn't bother water  cooling it if you're using a lower-end one you should upgrade to the top tier one once you're at  that point and again this is my opinion then it's okay to invest a little bit more in water cooling  because the typical water cooling setup is going to start at like 80 to 100 bucks if you're talking  about an AIO and ramp up quickly from there if you get into custom water cooling configurations  Stefan disagrees with me uh he says I've always hated hearing don't water cool just buy the next  stepup product that looks plain and is slightly faster water cooling is fun and the looks are so  much better than a plain Jane air bu I'd rather get 160 frames per second instead of 180 if that  meant looking at an awesome water cooled system I'm going to go out and limb here Stephan and say  I disagree uh but he is backed up by Dex 1s who says exactly they have a 3700x and a 6900 XT with  a water block they don't need the extra frames at the moment since the GPU is doing all the heavy  lifting which I which I don't fully understand what he's saying there but with the FPS counter  off I don't notice a difference it does look cooler now and I hear nothing from the fans and  it's a foot above my head so I wanted to respond to these comments specifically because I disagree  with them but also because I wanted to get your guys' feedback back on whether you disagree with  these two I come maybe from an older School mentality when it comes to PC building which  is that function is always of primary importance and it doesn't matter if you have an ugly looking  beige box if you have some kick-ass PC Hardware in there that's going to get you crazy frame rates  and do lots of other stuff besides gaming like video editing who cares how it looks especially if  you have the PC somewhere where you're not going to be looking at it all the time that said I also  do a channel that is primarily about building PCS and I know that Aesthetics are important to lots  of people and a lot of people build systems not just for the satisfaction of building something  that can do Computing stuff for them but also Building A system that they can look at and say  look I put that together I chose these specific components because not only are they powerful but  they look pretty nice too I invested the extra cash in stuff like RGB lighting or custom water  cooling or even just an all-in-one liquid cooler because I thought that looked nicer for me all of  those things are are good they're like perfectly good reasons to build your own PC perfectly good  reasons to take the extra time to choose some parts that you feel match your aesthetic and  it's going to build a system that looks good in the end but I think this really boils down  to where you draw the line between function and form for me if you start with something that's  functional and you do everything you can to get as much performance out of a build as possible and  then you have extra money or extra time or simply that's tinkering Enthusiast mentality where you  want to build a system that's really specific to something that you Envision in your head well then  by all means do that invest three to5 or $600 in a custom Loop liquid cooling system deck out your  system with RGB lights and extra fans that don't really like do that much in terms of air flow but  give it a nice uniform look with fans everywhere so for me all the form stuff is okay as long as  you're drawing that line after the function stuff is already taken care of and as long as the form  stuff doesn't detract or take away at all from the function stuff and that's where my stance  deres from with a lot of the AO liquid coolers that cost $100 to $200 versus perfectly adequate  air coolers that cost $30 to $50 I think you should invest that extra money in a better CPU  or a better GPU with uh more cores and threads or just a higher tier of graphics card versus  just going for liquid cooling because you think it looks cool but as with so many things this is  my opinion and just as it is somewhat subjective to say that liquid cooling systems universally  look better than air cooling systems cuz I would disagree with you on in that point as well it's  totally fine to disagree with my opinion that you should go all out function before you consider  form versus maybe having a balance between the two or making some accommodations to get yourself a  system that looks the way you want your system to look but again I'm super interested to hear what  more of you guys think about this so your comments are very welcome in the comment section down below  and Stefan and Dex even though I disagreed with you I really do appreciate you guys commenting on  the video next question is from cool poet hey Paul thanks for doing these you're welcome my question  is will will there be any break in am5 motherboard prices even the cheapest am5 board is as expensive  as the processor itself depending on what processor you getting of course I have taken issue  with motherboard pricing for a couple years now because it seemed like there was like a definite  inflection point right around when am5 launched when there was perhaps an informal agreement  between the motherboard manufacturers that hey we could probably charge more for these things and  suddenly your average motherboard price went from about $200 to $400 to boards that are 500 600 and  $700 being pitched as sort of mid-tier mainstream options which I still think is ridiculous I think  200 to 300 bucks for a motherboard should still get you all that you need and I agree with you  that it sucks when you're trying to build a system and you're spending like 200ish Dollar  on something like a 7600 X and then you need to spend more than that on your motherboard our good  friend from Australia Steve uh from the hardware unbox channel has just recently done yet another  uh budget b650 Roundup because there was a new crop of these that came out and his opinion if  you read the title here is that they're not very impressive which kind of sucks because if you're  looking for lower prices on am5 motherboards then having good budget tier options is a good  way to tell manufacturers like Hey we're going to recommend this budget one and we're going  to tell people to avoid all the higher-end ones if there is a budget option that works well for  most people's needs taking a quick glance at some of Steve's testing he was testing with the ryzen  979 50x because the idea here is that you're if you're investing in a budget motherboard  on am5 you might have in mind an upgrade path to upgrade to a higher core count or maybe a 9,000  Series ryzen processor when they come out but if your motherboard is already pushing its vrm  temperatures to upwards of 90 100 118 to 121 C for some of these new gigabyte boards this  is just unacceptable and it completely negates the whole point of investing in a platform with  an upgrade path if your motherboard sucks so bad that you can never upgrade to anything fortunately  there are still some reasonable holdouts that are somewhat reasonably priced the azero b650 m hdv  m.2 is a good budget option likewise the azrock b650 PG lightning performed reasonably well of  course the v650 orus elite ax is doing quite well down here but that's a representation of a more  expensive motherboard for the time being in terms of basic functionality for am5 if you're looking  towards the budget range with b650 it's seems like you have two categories of board that you  should choose a handful a couple two three maybe four models that are down under $150 such as the  ASRock v650 M hdv m.2 which is currently 120 or spending a bit more money closer to the $200 range  for a solidly built mid-tier b650 board such as gigabytes b650 orus Elite ax which is about $210  right now my hope is that this information percolates amongst PC Builders enough that  people avoid many of this new crop of motherboards that they've made in a very cheap sort of way and  also hopefully that people just generally avoid overpaying for a lot of the ridiculous $400 $500  plus motherboards that are out there that are really very impractical for the amount of money  that you pay for them but unfortunately just in terms of economics and the way pricing has gone  in the past couple years it seems like we're just kind of stuck in this new Dynamic where before you  had plenty of solid mid-range uh motherboard options that were around maybe $130 to $150  now those have all bumped up to the $170 to $200 range and the lower cost motherboards just really  aren't worth it by and large but anyway check out Steve's video if you haven't already it is  linked in the video's description he does great motherboard reviews testing the vrms especially  for anyone who's investing in a budget system now with plans to upgrade in the future you want to  make sure that the board you get now is going to be able to handle that upgrade and not throttle  itself or run at a lower frequency than you would expect out of the CPU that you upgrade to next  question for Dey sellers 1450 too I'm wondering how you like the Corsair chair after you have used  it for more than a year that's this chair that I'm sitting in right here which is the tc200 so we got  these uh for the office uh when I was doing the office thing for a while last year before I moved  back here to the garage we got a couple of them Joe has taken the black one uh to his apartment  so he's using that there now I have the gray and white one here functionally speaking they're  they're fine they're totally fine uh I haven't had any like back problems or difficulty sitting it  for extended periods of time or or anything like that I will say that practically speaking with the  white chair here my instinct when I'm moving it around is to grab it by the top right here so the  white trim around the edges has started to get a little discolored I actually noticed that back at  the office so I've tried to grab it by the little slots here instead uh just to move it around to  try to avoid that but but it has ended up getting a little bit dirty nonetheless in terms of like  ergonomics and everything like I said it's fine I wouldn't say it's awesome I have had a little bit  of a progress with my chairs over the years this like eight or n years ago I started out with a  verar SL 4000 that I used for quite some time before I finally passed it on at the last fan  Meetup actually and again that one was like fine it wasn't that great I eventually had to put a  piece of foam on the butt of it to make myself a little bit more comfortable long term but this is  one of those like really typical uh racing frame chairs that have been I don't I don't know if I  want to use the word popular but they certainly have been ubiquitous for quite some time back in  December 2020 1 though I got two of these Herman Miller Aeron chairs one of them was for me and one  of them was for Joe I totally said that wrong I've just realized the tc200 the other the black one we  didn't give to Joe cuz Joe has a Herman Miller Aon at his apartment the black one actually my wife is  using in the office now my Herman Miller Aon chair is definitely my favorite because it's just like  like it's one of those office office chairs designed for ergonomics so it has the proper  back support I can actually sit in it edit do all that stuff for an extended period of time and I  do notice that it's like a lot easier on my back and on my butt so I'm happy with that purchase  and that upgrade and it's probably for that reason that I also have a Herman Miller air on that I'm  not quite as like glowing about the Corsair tc200 again they're fine but I would say that if you are  looking for an an office chair or a desk chair and especially if it's something that you're going to  be sitting in for an extended period of time then I would say opt for something like a Herman Miller  Aon of course they are more expensive I got mine used uh which was nice to not have to pay like  $1,000 bucks for it but it's also used I can tell it's used but it was less money anyway I hope that  answers your question just a couple more questions Andrew pop tenic 5284 says hey Paul always love a  good probing me too I've been thinking about upgrading to an OLED monitor they're looking  at the MSI MPG 321 urx the room they in is fairly bright though and they're concerned about glare  currently running a pixio 1440 32 in 165 HZ so this is a new one from MSI B&H has it for $950  although is a new item still coming soon QD OED panel 32 in 4K 240 HZ really nice set of specs  on this panel and less than $1,000 so not the cheapest but this does have like a really nice  array of specs I like the refresh rate uh I like that it's OLED of course I really like LED panels  I'm not going to try to talk you out of this but the glare question sent me down a little bit of  a rabbit hole because that is I think one of the fundamental questions for people who are looking  for a new monitor should you go with a matte finish an anti-glare finish or should you go with  a glossy finish which can be more reflective but can present more Vivid colors and a lot of people  say a sharper picture and I hope this doesn't raise more questions then it answers but Samsung  has a new LED panel lineup that they have are just launching like right now they're just starting  to come out and they said por do these are third generation QD OLED TVs and there is two serieses  of them the s95 D and the s90d the s95 D panels appear to be the one that have this new version  of anti-glare that's not technically matte it is anti-glare though I believe these were shown off  at CES there have been like a handful of reviews coming in here and there on the s90d versus s95  D the reason I bring up the s9d is because that one is going to be available in a smaller size  that I believe 42 and 48 in for that one there are questions about whether they are W or QD OED  anyway like I said this was a rabbit hole I don't have like clear answers for you or anything this  is more of like a FYI this is something that is coming to Market and something that you might want  to consider if you're really want OLED and you're really planning to use it in a room that might be  bright or have to deal with glare and reflection here's a quick side by-side test of the Samsung  s95 D this is a not this is not the s95 D that's one with glare this is the s95 D that has the  new anti-glare filter they say it does not affect the brightness it is matte so it doesn't reflect  and because Peak brightness is one of the weak points of OLED panels in general it seems really  good that Samsung has developed something that can solve the glare problem while also not affecting  brightness and still resulting in a nice crisp bright picture what I don't know for sure is if  the s90d also has that same anti-glare uh panel on it which didn't seem to be made clear by any  of the articles I could find it also doesn't seem to be available for sale right now so I'm  I'm guessing estimating that it's going to be like probably $1,500 to $2,000 which would be a  lot more than the MSI panel that you're looking at so once again I hope I have not brought up  more questions than I have answered but it is exciting to see the advancement of OLED panels  uh and I'm actually pretty curious to see how this anti-glare filter looks in person next question by  D tribo 8925 I enjoy these so much thank you Paul you're very welcome I've been following since New  Egg days I commend all your hard work really appreciate that I'm not too sure if anyone has  asked in a previous probing but whatever happened to Arctic Panther GE to you as well just a moment  here we go oh God there's Arctic Panther just been hanging out right here behind me for some time I  actually thought that I had accidentally left it outside but thankfully it hasn't been it's  in here there see it's even uh still got water in it and everything the last time I worked on  this uh I cleaned it out and I switched all the liquid inside from various uh coolants that I had  used to being all water and clear and everything doesn't look as cool as when I had like kind of  the milky white liquid in there also remember the side panel I DIY the side panel tempered  glass window before before it was cool this is like old school tempered glass custom job so  that kind of answers the question what happened to Arctic Panther it's it's still here it's not  currently in use or like plugged in to be turned on or anything but this was a long-term project  I built it and upgraded it from between 9 and 5 years ago full power supply sleeving um did did  a case mod added a USB 3.1 type-c port to it and you know water cooling has its ups and downs has  it has its pros and cons uh buildup and stuff like that that can occur especially if you're  using coolant and stuff that's not just oh look it's my old sink this is this is before we had  our all of our remodel done and everything in our house but anyway this is why I say that the  water cooling is like an Enthusiast thing um you need you need to have extra time you need to have  space to work with you need to have patience to work around things uh this was uh doing the  even just doing something like flushing your radiators and getting them clean properly can  take quite some time so it was a fun project uh to do I spilled water of course because you  know that's thing as well but July 2018 was the last time I did any like actual serious work on  it so uh it's getting getting to be like it's over 5 years now but anyway thank you for the  question I took this as an opportunity to do a little bit of a walk down memory lane and like  I said I still got the system here so I haven't decided exactly what to do with it if I want to  like power it on and have it in the background here somewhere now that I've rebuilt things and  made a little a little bit more space it was a really cool long-term project that I would  like to revisit at some points but of course that depends a lot on the time I have apart from other  ongoing projects that are going on and also me working up the motivation to dive into another  custom water cool build project cuz I haven't done one of those in quite some time either  and my final question once again not an actual question but quite a few comments this is just  a handful of them from the previous Q&A where I showed some of the components for the DIY softbox  light that I built and that video is live so if you didn't check it out definitely take a look we  tried to document the process as well as we could and it is actually lighting me at least partially  we're still kind of dialing things in figuring out the best way to get things lit in here but  I'm really happy with how it turned out I'm really happy that it's mounted up on the ceiling now and  not taking up a bunch of space here or outside on the sidey and if any of you guys know much  about lighting let me know like your feedback like like was it worth the investment of time like does  does it look that much better maybe wait until we do like a build video cuz we have some more  of those coming up again soon but thank you guys all for the feedback on that and again super happy  with how it turned out all right let's finish things off with mail time if you'd like to send  me something my PO Box is Paul's Hardware PO Box 4325 Diamond Bar California 91765 and you know  just saying no one has sent me beer in quite some time but let's start off with a letter I have a  letter here from old PC Gamer let's see what it says this is actually a tech question a question  about dis management when building a PC older systems use MBR or Master boot record and the new  version is GPT for like a new drive that you're initializing or a drive that you're installing  Windows onto why do we need GPT other than having a larger than 2 GB boot drive so the short answer  here is that MBR or Master boot record is older it's quite old in fact it was publicly introduced  in 1983 according to Wikipedia that was a long time ago and back in 1983 when they were designing  this standard the idea that we might hit the actual limit of the technology at 2 tabt was  a bit of a pipe dream that was going to happen way way way in the future and then way way way  in the future happen like 30 or 40 years later and suddenly we started to have mechanical hard drives  and then even ssds that were more than 2 tabt in capacity so they developed the GPT standard  to replace MBR there are of course a lot of under the hood differences between the two of them but  functionally for a home user who's building a PC they're going to work the same the only reason you  would need MBR is if you had a drive or a device that you needed to connect to an older system that  was was so old it couldn't recognize GPT drives so to answer your question as succinctly as possible  unless you have a system that you know will only recognize an MBR drive you should just go with  GPT now it's newer and it's better and you don't need to do any additional formatting if you're  installing Windows 10 Windows 11 it's just going to go with that by default and in fact the only  time I have been faced with the choice to choose between MBR and GPT is if I'm initialing a brand  new drive that's installed to a system using Windows dis management all right that's a good  question next we have a Kirby who sent me this letter Kirby is from Florida we have a pretty  straightforward build question here I would like to build an editing PC for my YouTube channel  slamming gears with David shout out and this is what I was thinking 128 gigs of RAM 850 wat power  supply an AMD 7950 x3d uh a motherboard with Wi-Fi an Ethernet and a full-size case I look forward to  your suggestions was wondering if you could give my channel a shout out already done so I think we  have some good initial choices for the build since it is for editing um but I'm guessing there's also  maybe some gaming involved lots of RAM is good for editing you could probably get by with 64 gigs but  if you've got the cash to go for 128 then go for it 850 W power supply should be just fine for most  configurations in this range the 7950 x3d is a great combination of High Core counts while also  being really capable for gaming the only thing I think you've left out here is a graphics card and  fortunately you have some good choices there of course if you want to go all out just get an RTX  490 but you're probably going to pay close $2,000 for that if you want something a little bit more  sensible but you want to stick to Nvidia the 4080 super is a good choice for around $11,000 and then  if you're trying to keep the cost down but you still want to stick with Nvidia then the 4070  super I think is the best kind of bang for the buck Nvidia GPU that is in the higher end range  of course don't rule out your AMD radon options as well you get a little bit more bang for buck there  in terms of raw rasterization performance and you can also get more vram which may or may not help  your video editing depending on what software you're using but there I would can consider  anything from the 7800 XT 7900 gr 7900 XT 7900 XTX the prices for those kind of fluctuate especially  for the higher end models but if you're looking to spend between $500 and $800 or so then go with  the best graphics card from that group that you can afford I only had letters for mail time today  but I wanted to actually have something physical to open so this actually just arrived I already  took it out of the box and this is an upgrade for the wall mounted PC that I assembled just a couple  weeks ago because it's up on the wall now and the USB ports are a little bit harder to get to so  I wanted a hub that I could set down here on the desk to plug things in and I wanted it to be able  to do a few different things so I ended up with this unit from Lion way which I got from Amazon  of course but I'll put the link in the video's description it's a powered Hub it has not nine  ports but 10 ports cuz there's one more there on the back you got your USB type-c Upstream as well  as your power plug right there since we transfer a lot of bulky video files I wanted to also make  sure that it was capable of at least USB 10 gbits per second so these top three ports here the two  type C's and the red one should do 10 gbits per second these four blue ones are still going to  be USB 3.0 so those will do 5 gbits per second and then you've got some down here that are just power  for charging only and those are also 2.4 amps so they can do faster charging for devices that  are capable of it and I believe since this port is also white that also applies to that one but  yeah that's pretty much all there is to it other than that you got an AC adapter and a couple USB  cables that come in the box so this is yet again like a new thing that just arrived that I haven't  tested yet that I just wanted to show you guys so don't accept this as an endorsement or anything  that said I'm probably going to plug this in and if it works it'll work I'll tell you guys if for  some reason it doesn't work I'll I'll post an extra comment on the video or something like that  but I'm really happy with how that wall mount situation went with that PC and uh it's going  to be even more functional once I get this wired up down here but that is all the time I have for  this episode of probing Paul thank you guys so much for stopping by for watching for hitting  the Thumbs Up Button if you enjoyed the video for leaving comments in the comment section down below  whether it's feedback on this video or a question for me to answer next month closing reminder if  you'd like to help support my channel and get yourself some nice merch check out my store at  paul.net where you can get yourself nice merch that helps support my channel and of course if  you enjoy my content consider subscribing to my YouTube channel so you can be notified when new  videos go live thank you once again for watching this video and we'll see you all in the next one\n"