Customer wants Dual GPU upgrade in Mini-ITX case

[DJMadMax]

Well, I guess I have a problem.

I'm lvl 25 at the moment and in the middle of the private detective storyline which I find (as most of the recurring jobs in this game) pretty entertaining.

For an earlier job, as the detective requested a neat machine to be able to "impress" others at a LAN party I chose to fit his new build with a Corsair Graphite 380T which in real life represents one of the coolest looking and most practical LAN machines you can get.

Now the customer requests THREE things at once that are not possible to be done!

1. Dual Graphics
2. GTX 1080 Ti K|ngP|n or better
3. 14000 3DMarks

1) is a general problem with this case since it simply doesnt have enough space for a second GPU. Single slot cards are out of the question since they would never provide enough oomph for the required 14000 3DMarks.

2) The 1080 Ti K|ngP|n (and EVERY other, faster card, since the game states "or better") at this point are way too large for this tiny case.

3) 14000 3DMarks are (at least at this point in the game) not possible to achieve with a single GPU build.


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Conclusion
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I know, I know... You should'nt blindly accept any incoming job (especially not those stupid overclocking achievements, I already learned that at an earlier point in the game).

But still, in those "story driven" questlines, I really have a bad feeling rejecting those in case I would miss out something.

At the very least there should be a possibility to bail out of a job without getting a straight 1 star review.

Lets reflect this to a real life case:
You have a problem with your car, it's not running well or whatever. If you bring it to a workshop and they tell you "We'll have a look at it and let you know", you would AT LEAST receive an invoice for the work the technician had simply by reviewing the car, even when he could'nt fix the problem itself! You would never give the workshop a bad review for this behavior.

It's even worse in PCBS since you do NOT charge the customer for work hours and even when you have to return the computer without the necessary jobs done (and without any costs for the customer at all) he still rewards you with the lowest star rating possible.

Well thanks for that!

What do you think about this behavior ingame?

I really enjoy the game, even though I'm a computer technician IRL I kinda fancy the game but this is one of the few things that really bug me out.

[FurBall]

Unless things have changed in recent updates, you should be able to go over-budget on story jobs (and ONLY story jobs) while still receiving 5 stars. If you can swap the case, you're in business.

[DJMadMax]

You CANT swap the case. Cases are job-bound! Thats the way how the game determines certain jobs - as long as its no "build from scratch"-job.

EDIT:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/621060/discussions/0/3799284136645722028/

Found someone who had the exact same problem (maybe he even used the same micro atx-case, who knows). Nice to see that this hasnt changed in over a year. Maybe devs should rethink this "everything is bound to the case" behavior in those particular jobs.

[FurBall]

Damn! I was afraid of that! Sorry I wasn't any help.

[spelljammer]

It has been some time since I had this mission but IIRC the "Kingpin" requisitive comes from an earlier mission where the customer demanded the best clocking card at that time.
Although you cannot install a second equally spacious card into the case you really do not have to, just go for two cards that are better than the Kingpin - and smaller.
There are small Zotac cards like the 2070 Mini that should fit the case.
Nowadays you can even filter by "maximum GPU length" in the shop. The maximum length for the Corsair Graphite case is given as 290 mm. For example two Nvidia RTX 2070 Founders Edition cards should work.

I would suggest you do every story mission offered just for the fun of it. Sometimes you do not know if you make a profit or not like in the Nigerian Prince story-arc. Other times you might not be able to purchase the hardware required at first, so you have to wait until you have levelled high enough that the parts become available. Just make sure you have no deadline to fulfill. It might have been in the Orc (or was it Goblins?) Mining story I had to put the PC on the side for that. It always pays off in the end to do the story!

[DJMadMax]

@spelljammer
Like I said before, the cards need to be SINGLE slot and on top of that the Corsair 380T case does only have two slots for expansion. I highly doubt that there is a mainboard in the game not only bringing two 16x slots directly above each other but ALSO being small enough for fitting inside said case.

I will try in free build mode now just to double check.

[spelljammer]

For rebuilding this scenario could you please state the motherboard that was used?
I did the complete Detective story arc and I am positive that I solved this problem by installing two small cards. I still have the used Kingpin card in my inventory from that time. He never got it back.

[spelljammer]

Wait wait ... you chose the Corsair Graphite case yourself when you built it from scratch?
Oh then it seems like you shot yourself in your own knee from the start. Maybe you have an old savegame before you started the build - that is if you want to revert back so far in your career.

On a sidenote it is an oversight from the developers that they created a mission where a certain case dimension (for a dual card setup) is needed later on in the arc and they do not check this requirement in the first build mission.

[DJMadMax]

@spelljammer
Correct, I'm bound to the rather small Corsair Graphite 380T. Like I said before, for a LAN build this case is practically a no brainer (IRL). Who would've thought the devs will kick me backwards with such a twist ^^

To reassure, I tried several builds in free build mode but still, there's no way to fit two graphics cards (neither watercooled, nor stock cooled) inside this case.

Funny thing on top: It only supports Mini ITX boards - so far, so good... but why are there Mini ITX-boards that support "SLI/Crossfire" in the first place since ALL of them only have one x16 slot? Doesnt really make sense to me and maybe it's another mistake by the devs since most of the Mini ITX boards in the game dont state the multi GPU support.

Nevermind, it's a bit annoying but ...life goes on :D I dont have a savegame that reverts that far back but I saved right before cancelling this quest.

I Guess, I'll store it in the cabinet for later to at least achieve TWO of the three goals, that would be: hitting over 14.000 3DMarks and using a graphics card faster than the 1080 Ti K|ngP|n. By that I would only lose in realising the dual GPU goal which hopefully wont give me a too bad rating.

Is there any knowledge about that? Can I complete a contract with just solving two of the three main goals and not getting the lowest rating possible?

[spelljammer]

This is a bummer but no. Without completing all the given objectives (3 out of 3) you cannot finish the job and have the case ready for shipment.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by DJMadMax:

@spelljammer
Correct, I'm bound to the rather small Corsair Graphite 380T. Like I said before, for a LAN build this case is practically a no brainer (IRL). Who would've thought the devs will kick me backwards with such a twist ^^

Just a note here: This is not a problem with the game. This is a problem with you and the case you chose. You should pick every case for every "Build me a computer" job for every customer in the game anticipating that they may (potentially) return the same computer for upgrades later. You should of built them in a case large enough to be able to upgrade it later. If you didn't do that then you "Built yourself in to a problem". Just don't build jobs in that way. The solution here is to re-load an older manual save back when you first built that computer and build it differently. If you aren't already then everyone should be in the habit of creating a new manual save before accepting a new job. Every job gets a new save. I would also suggest another new save before turning it in too. Just for reasons like this. If you can't load an older manual save then you just can't complete it on that career playthrough and it's your fault for building it that way.

[Amethyst]

Originally posted by Aquafawks:

Originally posted by DJMadMax:

@spelljammer
Correct, I'm bound to the rather small Corsair Graphite 380T. Like I said before, for a LAN build this case is practically a no brainer (IRL). Who would've thought the devs will kick me backwards with such a twist ^^

Just a note here: This is not a problem with the game. This is a problem with you and the case you chose. You should pick every case for every "Build me a computer" job for every customer in the game anticipating that they may (potentially) return the same computer for upgrades later. You should of built them in a case large enough to be able to upgrade it later. If you didn't do that then you "Built yourself in to a problem". Just don't build jobs in that way. The solution here is to re-load an older manual save back when you first built that computer and build it differently. If you aren't already then everyone should be in the habit of creating a new manual save before accepting a new job. Every job gets a new save. I would also suggest another new save before turning it in too. Just for reasons like this. If you can't load an older manual save then you just can't complete it on that career playthrough and it's your fault for building it that way.

I wouldn't call this their fault, since it still IS the fault of the game and they hadn't encountered the issue before. Why have ITX cases and motherboards if you don't get the chance to use them?
The game really should be more aware of what computer was submitted and adjust its upgrade requests accordingly.
It still also should have a way to replace the case itself. Just pick up the little postit from the desk and put it on a new one, like you can with a new build.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Amethyst:

I wouldn't call this their fault, since it still IS the fault of the game and they hadn't encountered the issue before. Why have ITX cases and motherboards if you don't get the chance to use them?
The game really should be more aware of what computer was submitted and adjust its upgrade requests accordingly.
It still also should have a way to replace the case itself. Just pick up the little postit from the desk and put it on a new one, like you can with a new build.

The issue is that the story jobs in-game were written years ago and already had pre-determined requirements. Like "Upgrade me with two GPU's." The story jobs in game were written back when we didn't have mini-itx or even mini-atx systems in the game. The story jobs don't take in to account what case we used and it's requirements don't change.

Therefore if people build them in the wrong case they can build themselves in to a corner. So just don't build them in a case that can't be upgraded and folks won't ever have an issue. To "Fix this" they would have to completely re-write all of the story jobs for the entire career mode. Which is very unlikely at this point. That would be a significant amount of effort and the time for "big changes to the game" is mostly gone. That was during Early Access. Now they're (mostly) focused on small things added to the game, adding new parts and bug fixes.

I agree it would be nice to fix this but with the amount of work that would be involved to fix this it would be impractical to expect them to resolve it. Unless something has changed this is a small team of about 5 people working on this game last I heard.

[vdeogamer]

i give all the "build me a pc" jobs mid sized cases and ATX motherboards just for that reason so if they want to upgrade to dual graphics cards they can

[Amethyst]

Originally posted by Aquafawks:

Originally posted by Amethyst:

I wouldn't call this their fault, since it still IS the fault of the game and they hadn't encountered the issue before. Why have ITX cases and motherboards if you don't get the chance to use them?
The game really should be more aware of what computer was submitted and adjust its upgrade requests accordingly.
It still also should have a way to replace the case itself. Just pick up the little postit from the desk and put it on a new one, like you can with a new build.

The issue is that the story jobs in-game were written years ago and already had pre-determined requirements. Like "Upgrade me with two GPU's." The story jobs in game were written back when we didn't have mini-itx or even mini-atx systems in the game. The story jobs don't take in to account what case we used and it's requirements don't change.

Therefore if people build them in the wrong case they can build themselves in to a corner. So just don't build them in a case that can't be upgraded and folks won't ever have an issue. To "Fix this" they would have to completely re-write all of the story jobs for the entire career mode. Which is very unlikely at this point. That would be a significant amount of effort and the time for "big changes to the game" is mostly gone. That was during Early Access. Now they're (mostly) focused on small things added to the game, adding new parts and bug fixes.

I agree it would be nice to fix this but with the amount of work that would be involved to fix this it would be impractical to expect them to resolve it. Unless something has changed this is a small team of about 5 people working on this game last I heard.

They could maybe have gone in an added an extra requirement for at least m-atx on the original build, because in its current state the game makes literally no effort to avoid this issue cropping up.

Ya really can't blame someone for using ITX if they didn't know the story is broken :P

[[FNW] Alpinwolf]

Sorry about pickle you're in, though it does strike me as a game-flow or coding error on the dev side. I'm really glad I read this, at just Lev. 5, so I'll build every custom job (unless otherwise requested) in a full-ATX case.

I'm also a PC tech IRL, and on the surface, I have no idea why I'm playing this. But I think it's appealing because the problems are relatively simple, and never require talking to or emailing to any actual human beings. I can "get my work done in peace", LOL!