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New build. Does all this look OK?

E

echter

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 10, 2016
Messages
65
I don't do this often. It's been over 6 years since the last one, so even though I'm pretty sure it's all compatible I don't know that the combo of everything is optimal. The most stress it will get is with Photoshop, DXO deep prime, Gigapixel AI, a lot of video encoding and that sort of thing. Gaming not a factor. I decided to go with Intel because, after looking at the benchmarks, right now it just seems the best price/performance value for what I do. At first I thought about a 14600K, but with all the issues those gens had, I'd rather have some peace of mind about reliability and get the better performance/efficiency too.

Mobo: Gigabyte B860 Eagle WIFI6E ATX LGA1851
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 265K
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 TT Premium 750W
SSD: Samsung 980 250gb PCle M.2-2280 3.0x4, NVMe
RAM: G.Skill Flare X5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000
Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE
Video: Gigabyte Windforce OC GeForce RTX 3050 6GB


First choice for power supply was a Seasonic Focus gold 650, but they're sold out. Better reviewed PSUs seem to be higher wattage, and the Thermaltake looks like a good deal and was rated high on the list posted here.

SSD will only be used for the OS, so 250gb looked good for $49.

I guess the biggest questions I have are about the motherboard. I've had really good luck with Gigabyte and want to go for whatever's least likely to fail. But is the B860 the right one? The B860 gaming X is $10 more and the Z890 UD $25 more. For RAM, I just care that it's stable and will never give me problems - G.skill has been good to me. I might go for 64gb, not sure. I've been using ripjaws and don't know if the flare is as good.

I may hold off on the video for now since the 3050 just jumped $80 higher yesterday. The setup above is about the max for my budget.
 
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im good with GB, most of my machines have been their boards. model, thats up to you to decide if the features are worth the extra cost.
 
The more I read and look through specs and pics of the mobo models the more unsure I get. Other than the rear panel USBs and such I don't really know what advantages to look for. I know the Eagle model is a bit short on USBs, though I can put 2 in the front and add a card. Maybe the gaming model is worth $10 more just for the USBs, but I wouldn't want those additions to come with a disadvantage elsewhere. Also, these ultra boards are so new that there aren't many user reports.

I did see an older reddit post comparing Eagle vs Gaming on a B650 that said, "B650 Gaming X has 8 smart power stages, B650 Eagle AX has 12 discrete chokes + MOSFETs, ancient design. 6 of these are on the backside of the board and receive no cooling. Discrete components heat up more than the smart power stages.... In other words both aren't the best VRM but Gaming X is better."

No idea whether that's significant at all or whether it would even apply to the B860s
 
A 256 GB SSD leaves you very little room to work with once the OS and apps are installed. Also, the value at that capacity is typically very poor and usually only found in older models. Looking at Amazon right now, that 980 Pro (an older PCIe3 model) is $53 ($0.21/GB), while the 500 GB model is only $67 (+$14, $0.13/GB) and the 1 TB is $98 (+$45, $0.10/GB). A more current PCIe4 1 TB SSD, like the 990 Pro or WD SN850X, will cost about the same, or if the budget is tight the 500 GB Crucial T500 is $73.

Make sure the RAM selected has XMP profiles.
 
Unfortunately, GPU prices are going through the roof right now, and that RTX 3050 6 GB card is a gimped version of the standard RTX 3050. As such, both of those GPUs are very poor buys at their current street prices; in fact, the 3050 6 GB card simply does not perform sufficiently better than the Core Ultra 7 265K’s integrated graphics to justify spending anywhere near $200 for at this time.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
A 256 GB SSD
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I was going to say, if you are not the type of person that take time to setup (temp, users, download, program data folder) default path on external drive, 256GB will be trouble and simply buying a larger main drive is cheap enough now a day.

That said easy enough to check if the OP is already setuped like that and can see his C: disk usage.
 
I chose that GPU after looking at benchmarks and it was the best performance I could afford. Its value for me is not driving a monitor. Programs like DxO deep prime benefit a lot by shifting some of the processing to the GPU. Doing a 45mp photo can take a long time with just the CPU, up to 2 mins or so, but I've seen claims of a 3050 8gb getting the time down to 27secs. I can't afford an ideal here, so just trying to get the best I can.

As for the SSD, I'm currently using the same size drive and only 56gb of it is used. My data goes on multiple existing SSD/HDD drives. I'm not sure what the "little room to work with" means given that usage. I've been satisfied with the OS speed of the 860 evo I'm using now, so I don't see why this would be an issue unless it's somehow more prone to failure. Is it?

Apparently the Ripjaws have XMP but I don't see it with the Flare. Is XMP necessary if it's just running at stock? I just want maximum stability, so I hadn't considered overclocking.

Edit: Hmm. I just noticed Newegg's got the MSI version of the 3050 for $184. Maybe that's back in consideration.
 
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If you already running that setup and will copy it, of course there is no problem and you already know for sure.

My windows (11) folder alone is bigger than 56GB, that why the comments.
 
Understood, I guess most use their C drive for a lot more. I just did a WinDirStat scan and found that Windows, System Volume, Program Files, Users, Program Data & pagefile take up 98.6% of that 56gb.
 
echter said:
Understood, I guess most use their C drive for a lot more. I just did a WinDirStat scan and found that Windows, System Volume, Program Files, Users, Program Data & pagefile take up 98.6% of that 56gb.
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Fair enough, but FWIW older-model/discontinued 250 GB SSDs are still a poor value relative to the current 500+ GB models.
 
E4g1e said:
Unfortunately, GPU prices are going through the roof right now, and that RTX 3050 6 GB card is a gimped version of the standard RTX 3050. As such, both of those GPUs are very poor buys at their current street prices...
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The part about the "gimped version" has been bugging me a bit. I'm not sure what that means and how it would compare with other 3050s like the MSI Ventus 2x OC and the MSI gaming X for $200. If they are poor buys, what's better for $190-200?

In my searches I keep seeing recommendations for RX 6600. There are models like the PowerColor Fighter for $229. Didn't want to spend that much, but it's apparently a significant boost in performance for $40 more. Is that brand suspect? Then there's the general AMD vs Nvidia choice. Most everything I read about that is people parsing fine points about gaming advantages, but I'm getting this for boosting performance in things like DxO and Gigapixel I mentioned above. To some extent don't the cpubenchmark scores just represent a good idea of raw processing power? The RTX 3050 comes in at 10,712, while the RX 6600 is 15,387. Not sure what they're testing to get that.
 
Sorry, I know it's a dead horse, but I'd also suggest a larger ssd only because they're basically just a few dollars more and upgrades after the fact (especially with limited m. 2 slots) can be a pain.
 
echter said:
The part about the "gimped version" has been bugging me a bit. I'm not sure what that means and how it would compare with other 3050s like the MSI Ventus 2x OC and the MSI gaming X for $200. If they are poor buys, what's better for $190-200?

In my searches I keep seeing recommendations for RX 6600. There are models like the PowerColor Fighter for $229. Didn't want to spend that much, but it's apparently a significant boost in performance for $40 more. Is that brand suspect? Then there's the general AMD vs Nvidia choice. Most everything I read about that is people parsing fine points about gaming advantages, but I'm getting this for boosting performance in things like DxO and Gigapixel I mentioned above. To some extent don't the cpubenchmark scores just represent a good idea of raw processing power? The RTX 3050 comes in at 10,712, while the RX 6600 is 15,387. Not sure what they're testing to get that.
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“Gimped”, in this case, is the fact that the 6 GB version has fewer CUDA cores (2304 versus 2560 in the standard version) and lesser GPU memory bandwidth. In order to achieve the target 6 GB size, the memory bus had to be cut down from 128 bits down to 96 bits, which directly impacts the memory throughput of the card – in this case, the memory throughput is only 168 GB/s versus 224 GB/s in the standard RTX 3050.in turn, this directly affects performance in a negative way.
 
E4g1e said:
“Gimped”, in this case, is the fact that the 6 GB version has fewer CUDA cores (2304 versus 2560 in the standard version) and lesser GPU memory bandwidth. In order to achieve the target 6 GB size, the memory bus had to be cut down from 128 bits down to 96 bits, which directly impacts the memory throughput of the card – in this case, the memory throughput is only 168 GB/s versus 224 GB/s in the standard RTX 3050.in turn, this directly affects performance in a negative way.
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also limited to x8 bus speeds. if its in pcie 4 it will be fine, on 3 not so much...
 
OK I'm seeing mostly criticisms here and elsewhere about the 3050. Is it because it's actually bad for the price or just not up to current standards? No one's really suggested alternatives in the same price range. Is the RX 6600 really a slam dunk choice that makes it worth the $40 more?
 
echter said:
OK I'm seeing mostly criticisms here and elsewhere about the 3050. Is it because it's actually bad for the price or just not up to current standards? No one's really suggested alternatives in the same price range. Is the RX 6600 really a slam dunk choice that makes it worth the $40 more?
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Both. It was considered a bottom-of-the-barrel card 4 years ago, hasn’t aged well, and is a particularly poor value today given current GPU prices. The RX 6600 was a great card for the money at the time, but honestly you’ll want to steer clear of AMD if you’re doing a lot of production and encoding. $230 is also a pretty terrible price: I used to see those for like $120.

Given your budget, have you thought about an M-series Mac Mini? I’ve seen the latest M4’s for $450 around here, and unless you have to run certain Windows-only software, it’s going to be a much more capable machine for those tasks than buying the cheapest PC components you can find.
 
arthur_tuxedo said:
Both. It was considered a bottom-of-the-barrel card 4 years ago, hasn’t aged well, and is a particularly poor value today given current GPU prices. The RX 6600 was a great card for the money at the time, but honestly you’ll want to steer clear of AMD if you’re doing a lot of production and encoding. $230 is also a pretty terrible price: I used to see those for like $120.

Given your budget, have you thought about an M-series Mac Mini? I’ve seen the latest M4’s for $450 around here, and unless you have to run certain Windows-only software, it’s going to be a much more capable machine for those tasks than buying the cheapest PC components you can find.
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OK, the point about AMD cards not being the best for production and encoding is the kind of thing I was wondering about. I knew that for CPUs, which is why I like the 265K, but didn't know about GPUs. Which brings me back to the 3050 and the $180-200 range. I understand your points about it being low end, but my question remains.... what in that range is a better choice?

Sorry, I could never live with MacOS. The hardware is probably fine, but I can't deal with the restrictiveness of all that is Apple. And there's a LOT of Win software that I'm dependent on apart from the photo things I mentioned.
 
echter said:
OK, the point about AMD cards not being the best for production and encoding is the kind of thing I was wondering about. I knew that for CPUs, which is why I like the 265K, but didn't know about GPUs. Which brings me back to the 3050 and the $180-200 range. I understand your points about it being low end, but my question remains.... what in that range is a better choice?

Sorry, I could never live with MacOS. The hardware is probably fine, but I can't deal with the restrictiveness of all that is Apple. And there's a LOT of Win software that I'm dependent on apart from the photo things I mentioned.
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OK, so if Apple is out, I think the wiggle room is on the CPU + Mobo. I’m seeing ~$330 for the 265k and $170 for the MB on PCPartPicker. Intel used to be more stable than AMD for CPU’s, but that hasn’t been the case for years. You still have to be careful with budget MB’s on the AMD side, but other than that, stability should be as good or better than Intel ever since the Ryzen 5x00 series. You can get a Ryzen 7700 non-X on AliExpress for ~$160 right now, which is how I bought mine last year (just stick to the 5-star sellers with plenty of recent sales and you won’t have a problem), so that frees up another $180 toward a GPU.

For ~$400 you can actually do OK, even in this terrible market. For encoding and productivity, you want as much VRAM as you can get. I’m seeing 3060 12GB cards sold recently on eBay in the low $2xx range, and I guess you could consider a 4060 Ti 16GB, which I’m seeing for around ~$450 completed sale. You can also go the Intel route, as I’ve heard theirs are very good at productivity, even the A-series cards. They also have plenty of VRAM. You’ll just want to make sure the driver issues have been ironed out for your use case. I know stability and compatibility was pretty bad in the early days for Intel Arc cards, and I never seriously looked at them after that so I can only assume the issues were fixed. AMD is OK for productivity for the price, VRAM, and raw compute, it just suffers from the worst hardware encoders of the Big 3 GPU makers and it can’t use any acceleration software that was made for Tensor cores, which is a lot of them. The second point also goes for Intel, but they have better encoders than NV and better raw compute for the money so it kinda balances out.

You also have the option of waiting a month or two for the Blackwell x60 cards. Midrange cards are usually not as hard to get near MSRP as the higher-end ones, although in this market you never know. A 5060 12 GB in the low $3xx range might be your best bet if you don’t need something right away.
 
echter said:
OK I'm seeing mostly criticisms here and elsewhere about the 3050. Is it because it's actually bad for the price or just not up to current standards? No one's really suggested alternatives in the same price range. Is the RX 6600 really a slam dunk choice that makes it worth the $40 more?
Click to expand...
As a poster stated, both. The RTX 3050, even in its OG 8 GB version, was not meaningfully faster than an old GTX 1650 GDDR6 version while costing much more money. The 6 GB version was, and still is, a complete ripoff at any of the prices that it ever sold for.
 
arthur_tuxedo said:
OK, so if Apple is out, I think the wiggle room is on the CPU + Mobo. I’m seeing ~$330 for the 265k and $170 for the MB on PCPartPicker. Intel used to be more stable than AMD for CPU’s, but that hasn’t been the case for years. You still have to be careful with budget MB’s on the AMD side, but other than that, stability should be as good or better than Intel ever since the Ryzen 5x00 series. You can get a Ryzen 7700 non-X on AliExpress for ~$160 right now, which is how I bought mine last year (just stick to the 5-star sellers with plenty of recent sales and you won’t have a problem), so that frees up another $180 toward a GPU.

For ~$400 you can actually do OK, even in this terrible market. For encoding and productivity, you want as much VRAM as you can get. I’m seeing 3060 12GB cards sold recently on eBay in the low $2xx range, and I guess you could consider a 4060 Ti 16GB, which I’m seeing for around ~$450 completed sale. You can also go the Intel route, as I’ve heard theirs are very good at productivity, even the A-series cards. They also have plenty of VRAM. You’ll just want to make sure the driver issues have been ironed out for your use case. I know stability and compatibility was pretty bad in the early days for Intel Arc cards, and I never seriously looked at them after that so I can only assume the issues were fixed. AMD is OK for productivity for the price, VRAM, and raw compute, it just suffers from the worst hardware encoders of the Big 3 GPU makers and it can’t use any acceleration software that was made for Tensor cores, which is a lot of them. The second point also goes for Intel, but they have better encoders than NV and better raw compute for the money so it kinda balances out.

You also have the option of waiting a month or two for the Blackwell x60 cards. Midrange cards are usually not as hard to get near MSRP as the higher-end ones, although in this market you never know. A 5060 12 GB in the low $3xx range might be your best bet if you don’t need something right away.
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Appreciate the detailed response. The platform shift would change a lot - in ways I'm skeptical about. I'm pretty solid with my CPU choice because, for ex: for high quality h264 encoding it's all abut the CPU (GPU encoding is faster with lower quality and larger file sizes) and the 265K benchmarks I've seen show it going through a 4K video sample in 28 sec, while the Ryzen 7700 took 47 secs. In a Handbrake fps test, the 265K got 146 fps while the 7700 was 77 fps. That's just a big difference when dealing with long/hi res video.

Of course I don't like that the 3050 doesn't perform like a 3060, but we're talking about a 10,712 benchmark vs. a 15,322, giving a 43% benefit for Gigapixel and Dx0, whereas the Ryzen cpu will be a bigger performance hit for a lot of other things. Then there's the fact that a GPU-only future upgrade would be simpler than a CPU-mobo upgrade. And..... not too comfortable going the AliExpress route or used.

The RX 6600 does get up to the 15,000 benchmark level just like the 3060, which is why I was intrigued with it for $40 more. When you mentioned steering clear of AMD for production/encoding did you mean their cards perform worse than the RTXs for crunching things like DxO/Gigapixel or were you thinking of hardware encoding specifically? Because my encodes are with ffmpeg using the CPU.

Maybe I should also explain, for anyone here thinking I'm going to be disappointed by the setup being too low end, consider that right now my video is a GT-710 -- paired with an i5 8400. Whatever I get is going to be a big improvement.
 
E4g1e said:
As a poster stated, both. The RTX 3050, even in its OG 8 GB version, was not meaningfully faster than an old GTX 1650 GDDR6 version while costing much more money. The 6 GB version was, and still is, a complete ripoff at any of the prices that it ever sold for.
Click to expand...

I'm not disagreeing about value at another time, I'm just wondering, in the current market, what's better for the same price, now?
 
echter said:
Appreciate the detailed response. The platform shift would change a lot - in ways I'm skeptical about. I'm pretty solid with my CPU choice because, for ex: for high quality h264 encoding it's all abut the CPU (GPU encoding is faster with lower quality and larger file sizes) and the 265K benchmarks I've seen show it going through a 4K video sample in 28 sec, while the Ryzen 7700 took 47 secs. In a Handbrake fps test, the 265K got 146 fps while the 7700 was 77 fps. That's just a big difference when dealing with long/hi res video.

Of course I don't like that the 3050 doesn't perform like a 3060, but we're talking about a 10,712 benchmark vs. a 15,322, giving a 43% benefit for Gigapixel and Dx0, whereas the Ryzen cpu will be a bigger performance hit for a lot of other things. Then there's the fact that a GPU-only future upgrade would be simpler than a CPU-mobo upgrade. And..... not too comfortable going the AliExpress route or used.

The RX 6600 does get up to the 15,000 benchmark level just like the 3060, which is why I was intrigued with it for $40 more. When you mentioned steering clear of AMD for production/encoding did you mean their cards perform worse than the RTXs for crunching things like DxO/Gigapixel or were you thinking of hardware encoding specifically? Because my encodes are with ffmpeg using the CPU.

Maybe I should also explain, for anyone here thinking I'm going to be disappointed by the setup being too low end, consider that right now my video is a GT-710 -- paired with an i5 8400. Whatever I get is going to be a big improvement.
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You are still thinking that the only difference between the two RTX 3050’s is the memory size. Your quoted score for the 3050 is for the OG 8 GB version. The 6 GB version is significantly slower than the OG version.
 
echter said:
I'm not disagreeing about value at another time, I'm just wondering, in the current market, what's better for the same price, now?
Click to expand...
In that case, unfortunately, you’re in no-man’s land. Both your current system and your planned system are grossly imbalanced in terms of the performance balance between the CPU and the GPU. That can, and occasionally does, result in corrupted video renders and exports compared to a system with a lesser CPU but a more powerful GPU. In the worst cases, the GPU will simply give up on the job knowing that it cannot come anywhere close to matching the CPU.

Under those circumstances, then, you might as well downgrade the CPU from your planned Core Ultra 7 265K plus B860 motherboard down to a previous-gen Core i5-14600K plus B760 motherboard, and ditch your planned 3050 in favor of a newer-gen RTX 4060. This will result in a better-balanced PC build for what you’d be using your planned upgrade for.
 
echter said:
Appreciate the detailed response. The platform shift would change a lot - in ways I'm skeptical about. I'm pretty solid with my CPU choice because, for ex: for high quality h264 encoding it's all abut the CPU (GPU encoding is faster with lower quality and larger file sizes) and the 265K benchmarks I've seen show it going through a 4K video sample in 28 sec, while the Ryzen 7700 took 47 secs. In a Handbrake fps test, the 265K got 146 fps while the 7700 was 77 fps. That's just a big difference when dealing with long/hi res video.

Of course I don't like that the 3050 doesn't perform like a 3060, but we're talking about a 10,712 benchmark vs. a 15,322, giving a 43% benefit for Gigapixel and Dx0, whereas the Ryzen cpu will be a bigger performance hit for a lot of other things. Then there's the fact that a GPU-only future upgrade would be simpler than a CPU-mobo upgrade. And..... not too comfortable going the AliExpress route or used.

The RX 6600 does get up to the 15,000 benchmark level just like the 3060, which is why I was intrigued with it for $40 more. When you mentioned steering clear of AMD for production/encoding did you mean their cards perform worse than the RTXs for crunching things like DxO/Gigapixel or were you thinking of hardware encoding specifically? Because my encodes are with ffmpeg using the CPU.

Maybe I should also explain, for anyone here thinking I'm going to be disappointed by the setup being too low end, consider that right now my video is a GT-710 -- paired with an i5 8400. Whatever I get is going to be a big improvement.
Click to expand...
Re: AMD for encoding and productivity: I don’t do a lot of pro work on PC, so I’m fuzzy on the details, but I know there are several professional software packages that are coded for either CUDA or Tensor and run much better on NVIDIA than AMD. If that doesn’t cover anything you’re likely to use, go ahead and get an AMD card. They’re generally a much better deal for the money, and the supposed driver issues are mostly a figment of people’s imaginations. My last 3 cards have been AMD, and I’ve never had any problems.

Either way you go, I’d try to at least get something with 12 GB of VRAM, though. Even coming from a GT 710, your longevity at 12 GB will be a lot better than any card with 8 or especially 6.
 
OK thanks guys, at some point soon I'm going to have to stop going back and forth and overthinking the mobo/gpu and just go with my gut feeling. But it's always good to get some thoughts about these things from people who have more experience. E4g1e's idea of a performance imbalance creating video corruption is concerning me a bit. I hadn't heard anything like that before, but will look into it.

My first thoughts about a month ago before I did much research was actually a 13/14th intel, but I'm just as concerned about instability there for the obvious reasons. From all that I read, there are not many complaints about the Ultras (just disappointment from gamers who expected more) and I have a really good feeling about their performace/efficiency specs for what I do. When I see those numbers I have a hard time wanting anything else. Maybe I'm seeing it differently from many but I think of the CPU as the base for everything I do and the GPU as a supplement that's going to give me a needed boost in a couple of areas I've never had before - just crunching data for 2 programs. If it works to the extent I've read about from some photography people, I think I'd be satisfied.
 
arthur_tuxedo said:
...but I know there are several professional software packages that are coded for either CUDA or Tensor and run much better on NVIDIA than AMD.
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Just after my last post, I read on the TopazLabs (i.e. Gigapixel AI software) reddit, "That being said go for nvidia. Everything is optimised for cuda. Everything comes to cuda first." If that's true about the software, I guess that kind of settles it
 
Just throwing another monkey wrench into your plans:

Some of the programs that you will be running actually recommend a Quadro or its successor “RTX Pro Workstation Edition” GPU in order to run properly, and may not work well with a consumer GeForce GPU. If this is the case, then you’re even more screwed since the only available such GPUs in your price range are even older and weaker than your planned GeForce RTX 3050 6 GB GPU.

So, if you absolutely must buy a GeForce RTX 3050, at least get the OG 8 GB version and not the gimped 6 GB version.
 
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I don't know what to make of that because I've read accounts on dpreview and reddit for several years of people using typical consumer GPUs with DxO and Topaz programs. I hadn't paid close attention to the models, but now that I've started looking, it seems like there's a big variety. Someone posted a list of CPU/GPU combos and their processing times with DxO here. There's even a 3050 paired with a 12600K not far from the top. Of course some of those times look inconsistent with the supposed power of the hardware so there may be other factors accounting for it.
 
I was all set to buy today, but now there's a PSU problem. Is there anything I can trust that's reasonably priced and isn't going to fail?

The Thermaltake in my list is not available now at Amazon but even the reviews there for that one have me very concerned now. Lots of failure complaints. I had trusted the test ratings posted here. It gets an A+ there but now I don't know what to believe. Most of the others with good ratings have pretty outrageous prices. Am I taking a big risk with the Thermaltake? Best Buy does have it.

Edit: I just went through the newegg reviews for the Thermaltake GF3. They're horrible.
 
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pendragon1 said:
look on your list for something else that meets what you want.
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I had already been doing a lot of searching through models on partpicker and wasn't coming up with anything that coincided with good ratings on the tested units list for anything less than $160, but just now another google search that led to a Corsair RM 750x for $120 at amazon. Strangely, it seems to be the SAME model that partpicker links to amazon for $185. I don't know what to make of that. Still more than I expected to pay, but I'm thinking PSU is never anything to take a chance with. It's made by CTW, just like the Thermaltake, but the cust reviews are much better. Does this sound like a good one?
 
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Thanks, all the replies are much appreciated. If you don't do this often, you can get bogged down wavering, thinking there's some crucial thing you ought to know but don't.
 
I've ordered everything, but there's one more thing I'm not sure about.
I decided to save up for a better GPU and use the onboard video until then. The trouble is, my 2 monitors both have displayport inputs, but the mobo only has one displayport, an hdmi and a USB-C. The latter is labeled "USB4 DP." I'm guessing this is just fine, but am so unfamiliar with USB-C that I want to make sure. If it's OK, will just about any USB-C to displayport cable do, or is there something specific to look for/avoid?
 
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