hope you didn't pay more than $180 or so... i think i lucked out at ~$150-160, however you want to calculate the $20 combo savings at Microcenter... (before the fall hardware stock madness)
it's been hot since you could get a 1950X for $450 like i could last Black Friday (and i think a little before that, too)! i even took top 14 if not top 10 with just the Threadripper on the Sheep-It renderfarm distributed computing project in just my first 30 days trying it (i even messed up a...
my incentive to crunch is that i've lost both parents and a few relatives to cancer. it may not find a cure during my lifetime, but at least i like to hope it's helping more than donating money to a random organization
my problem with all these "other brands/gaming stuff" is that they haven't been around as long as Senn/Audio Technica/Grado/Ety/AKG, nor are they focused on keeping audio snobs happy. if you DO go with a non "audiophile" brand, i wouldn't spend more than $50-80. heck, i'd even suggest Sony (like...
oh yeah, i was going to mention Beyer (with the sidenote that they're uncomfortable on my ears) but forgot. also maybe AKG (but i don't think i've heard these)
well, i'm happy i don't just game and that AMD caught up enough to the 8700K for me (and that IPC parity has been reached).
now i just hope that RPCS3 can utilize the 8 cores (or 6 or 12!) for SPE emulation 1:1 core:SPE rather than being stuck on one CCX
the frustrating thing is how long Intel has been sitting on the same IPC. tho, i suppose it's good they didn't swoop in with Ice Lake before Zen 2 launched, giving AMD some breathing room and some room for competition for a while