building first pc

[oldskoolgent]

My current desktop via novatech hs just had it's 12 birthday - and although i've given it a new GPU a few years ago, it's starting to creak.
With that in mind i have thought about building my own pc, but i've really no idea where to start - especially with regards picking a CPU.

Primarily the PC will be used for desktop stuff and the occasional word doc, however I'm also thinking about getting into flight sim again now that i've seen the latest ms offering ...

is it just a case of find the recommended specs and price myself accordingly ..

[The_Jackal]

Just set aside 2 grand from your bank account and buy a bundle you like the look of.
It really isnt worth wasting hours and hours comparing the minutia of a single ghz, unless you get off on willy waving PC specs.

[mikef]

Surfing the web and browsing, budget £500. Flight Sim with a decent size monitor and frame rate, budget £2,000. Take your choice, there’s not much sense going in between for those two use cases

[otherman]

I'd start by visiting one of the online components places like Scan or Aria.
Choose your processor first, then a motherboard that has the right socket type for your CPU, then ram that's matched to motherboard specs. They make it all quite obvious.
After that its down to what hard drive sizes you want etc.

[grumbledoak]

First, do you really want to? It's not difficult, but it's no cheaper either.

If you do want to, you can see guides and sample build lists, with links and prices, here
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/

[Gandahar]

mikef said:

Surfing the web and browsing, budget £500. Flight Sim with a decent size monitor and frame rate, budget £2,000. Take your choice, there’s not much sense going in between for those two use cases

For fs2020 you can easily get a rig for £1300.

[Gandahar]

oldskoolgent said:

My current desktop via novatech hs just had it's 12 birthday - and although i've given it a new GPU a few years ago, it's starting to creak.
With that in mind i have thought about building my own pc, but i've really no idea where to start - especially with regards picking a CPU.

Primarily the PC will be used for desktop stuff and the occasional word doc, however I'm also thinking about getting into flight sim again now that i've seen the latest ms offering ...

is it just a case of find the recommended specs and price myself accordingly ..

What's the old rig spec, CPU, graphics, motherboard and HDD ? And how is it starting to creak ?

12 years is impressive use I love the seniors! I still have my Conroe CPU on my desk, it rocked in it's day.

[Djtemeka]

My pc is also around that age. I’ve changed the graphics card, put more ram in it and fitted a ssd.
Still chugging along fine but it’s starting to struggle with the big games now.

The processor is an i72600 sandybridge.
I think i7 was a new thing back then. No idea what the rest of the pc is as I’m not pc smart :P

[oldskoolgent]

Thanks for the replies - i had thought about going prebuilt, but i've always been under the impression that you'll get more for your money building your own. if thats wrong, then yes happy to go prebuilt.

Current specs are :
Intel Core i7 3770K @ 3.50GHz 61 °C
Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology
RAM
16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. Z77P-D3 (Intel Core i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz) 31 °C
Graphics
VX3276-FHD (1920x1080@60Hz)
2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 (ASUStek Computer Inc) 35 °C
Storage
1863GB Seagate ST2000DM001-9YN164 (SATA ) 33 °C
111GB INTEL SSDSC2BW120A (SATA (SSD))


i had initially wondered if it was possible to just up the memory / GPU to a newer card, which then led me to thinking about replacing ...

[grumbledoak]

oldskoolgent said:

Thanks for the replies - i had thought about going prebuilt, but i've always been under the impression that you'll get more for your money building your own. if thats wrong, then yes happy to go prebuilt.

No. There is some totally phony "mystique" about self build that I hate with a passion.

Assembling a PC was never difficult so there never was money to be saved there. And Dell's volume discounts make grown men - salesmen - cry. Legal Windows license $5, for example. So they could sell you a built and tested PC at profit for less than you can buy the parts.

You build one because you want to.

[Derek Smith]

I've recently upgraded my desktop to Ryzen 9, 64gb RAM, and mobo. I already had an SSD for C drive, and a couple of 6TB HDDs. I had a spare case and PSU. My GPU is adequate, 8GB RAM Asus Radeon RX 570 ROG STRIX OC. I used my 850W PSU. I've got a 27" and 24" dual display.

The bits I bought came to <£800. The SSD is now around £100. My GPU <£150. The case £40 (guess). The PSU £70.

I use mine for 3D modelling, graphics and video, plus browsing and writing. I'm told it would be adquate for gaming but a different GPU might be handy.

I built my own desktop in the days of Win95. I've still got the same one more or less. All I've changed is everything, but it's been done in stages. I treat myself to an upgrade each year: minor one year, significant the next, minor, then the biggy. Every four to five (I can't stick to plans) I've had a new CPU. Every 4-5 years GPU (new one coming 2022 unless I have problems with Blender), and then various things like SSDs etc. Next year is a 27" VDU.

Not only that; I enjoy building and, especially, speccing my desktop. It's sad that I find it fun I suppose, but I don't really care. It's not as if it is mind-stretching. The only tools I use are: set of insulated screwdrivers, earthing band (not really required I'm told), magnifying glass (easy to misread those pesky connectors for the front controls). Not a big investment.

[rxe]

grumbledoak said:

No. There is some totally phony "mystique" about self build that I hate with a passion.

Assembling a PC was never difficult so there never was money to be saved there. And Dell's volume discounts make grown men - salesmen - cry. Legal Windows license $5, for example. So they could sell you a built and tested PC at profit for less than you can buy the parts.

You build one because you want to.

Well ... not quite so sure about that. Looking at the Dell XPS desktops, the prices are pretty chunky compared to a home build. I've not gone through the specs in great detail, but they look steep compared to Scan.

But yes, the biggest draw for me is flexibility rather than price. It's very hard to get a powerful desktop optimised for development off the shelf. I want big CPU, loads of memory, a bunch of SSDs for the database, and I don't give a stuff about the graphics card. If you build it, that's easy.

Upgrades are another point. My current desktop is about 5 years old. When the time comes, I'll stick a new motherboard/processor/memory in, and that'll be it. Sometimes I can get away with a processor upgrade if I've chosen a socket at the beginning of its life. So rather than spending £1600 on a new high end machine (per Dells XPS offers), i can spend about 600 quid on bits.

[grumbledoak]

rxe said:

Well ... not quite so sure about that. Looking at the Dell XPS desktops, the prices are pretty chunky compared to a home build. I've not gone through the specs in great detail, but they look steep compared to Scan.

^^^ this is the "Self builders are so clever" mystique that I hate.

Dell charge what they market will bear. "You cannot make one cheaper even if you self build" is their point of maximum profit.

Sure, your box will be more upgradable. Equally, I would bet my lunch you pointlessly gold plated the PSU.

[rxe]

grumbledoak said:

^^^ this is the "Self builders are so clever" mystique that I hate.

Dell charge what they market will bear. "You cannot make one cheaper even if you self build" is their point of maximum profit.

Sure, your box will be more upgradable. Equally, I would bet my lunch you pointlessly gold plated the PSU.

Huh? Did I say it was clever? What did say is that what Dell is charging for a high end XPS tower is £1699, which buys you a lot of kit as bits. There is a whole load of pointless stuff in there - like a 2TB spinning hard drive - what the hell do I want that for?

You've lost your lunch - the PSU is pretty old and not gold plated. It is fanless though. No LEDs inside the box either.

And just to confirm, I picked this at random:

https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/desktops-and-all-i...

Pricing up the bits to turn my current machine into this is £832. Which is indeed a chunky saving. Clearly there is lots of stuff I don't need because I have it already: Windows, keyboard, mouse, non-gold plated PSU, 2 TB hard drive, case .... but that's why I'll stick with building it myself.

Edited by rxe on Wednesday 14th October 13:28

[xeny]

grumbledoak said:

Equally, I would bet my lunch you pointlessly gold plated the PSU

Not necessarily pointlessly. I buy decent numbers of Dell workstations. We get through PSUs just after the warranty expires at a scary rate.

[grumbledoak]

xeny said:

Not necessarily pointlessly. I buy decent numbers of Dell workstations. We get through PSUs just after the warranty expires at a scary rate.

I doubt even the £20 PSU manufacturers shave it as far as Dell do.

Self builders will talk themselves into fanless, 80+ Gold, and twice the power they need for £80...

[mikef]

There is building a cheap PC and building an upgradeable PC. Dell engineer down to a price point - when I have bought a Dell XPS desktop, the first time I needed to update the graphics card I had to also buy a PSU that could handle the additional pull. When I self-build, it's in the expectation that I will be upgrading and adding bits for the next few years so it's not surprising that off-the-shelf can come in cheaper

[Mr E]

grumbledoak said:

First, do you really want to? It's not difficult, but it's no cheaper either.

If you do want to, you can see guides and sample build lists, with links and prices, here
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/

Pc part picker is very useful.
Building your own means you can optimise what you want, or in my most recent build means the 15 year old can have the hideous case that he wanted.

[grumbledoak]

Mr E said:

Pc part picker is very useful.
Building your own means you can optimise what you want, or in my most recent build means the 15 year old can have the hideous case that he wanted.

I helped my ten year old make his first PC recently. It's a cross between a Christmas tree and a jet engine.

[Derek Smith]

For me, the upgradable bit is the biggest money-saver. I don’t think future-proofing is possible except by being able to replace bits that become a bit passé. My previous set-up could cope with my then demands. Some aspects were reaching their end of their useful. Rendering speeds for video were a test of patience. Then I wanted to try Blender 3D modelling software, something that I had not anticipated.

There were hangs and a number of software shutdowns. I could get around these problems by waiting or reducing the detail in the model, but it was hardly optimum. The option of buying a new computer that could cope, with its nigh-on £2000 cost, was a non-starter. £800 was well within budget.

One motivator was that I wanted to put my external HDDs into my ‘old’ computer and network them for backup. It’s not a RAID, but it’s adequate for me.

It’s not for everyone, but it is an option for everyone with a set of small screwdrivers.

As pointed out above, it's modular so I could transfer the SSD and GPU.

I've been doing this for 25 years. I can't see any reason for not continuing. Parts, like cables, tend to accumulate, just like pens don't. I upgrade computers for friends and relatives, so end up with lots of spares, hence the spare case. I did buy a ready-made desktop for a job I was doing, with someone else paying. The components were all down to a price - can't blame them for that - and after 3 years I had a catastrophic failure of an HDD. I discovered that a couple of the mobo spacing screws had not been put in. It did not cause me any problems, but it wasn't something I would have done.

The choice is there. My experience, and remember that's 25 years of upgrading, is that it is significantly cheaper than buying new.