To build or not to build

[Narcisus]

So... I've been building my own machines since the ' Old Days '. First build a 486DX50.

Last build around 10 years ago which is a testament to how powerful the hardware is nowadays. That's based on a 2500k.

Never thought I would say this but i'm really on the fence about building it myself or having someone ( Scan etc ) do me a custom build.

Not bothered about the extra it will cost and I just dont know if I can be bothered to do it myself also lot to be said about all the components coming from one source if there is a problem...

[grumbledoak]

The only reason to do it is if you want to. You won't save any money buying all the bits retail.

[Sporky]

I was in the same position a couple of months ago - had a PC originally from Scan that'd done me about 8 years or so with one graphics card update and a couple of new SSDs.

I ended up building new(ish) - kept the PSU, graphics card, and the SSDs, but a new case, motherboard, CPU, RAM, closed loop watercooler for the CPU, and a new mini SSD for the operating system.

I actually rather enjoyed building it, and it went without a hitch (apart from the effort involved in persuading Windows 10 to let me put documents and program files on the second and third SSDs).

That leaves the old case, motherboard, RAM and CPU to sell to recoup some of the upgrade costs, and the new PC is modern enough to make a fancy-pants graphics card a sensible upgrade in the next couple of years.

You could, of course, read this as it being perfectly sensible to buy a PC from Scan (or similar) and just let it keep on trucking for 5-8 years...

[ArsE92]

Buy from Scan. So much easier!

That reminds me. I remember one of the Directors (Shelley) there had a Nissan GTR with numberplate B1 5CAN. And a Smart car with B1 CPU.

As you were.

[Narcisus]

Thanks guys. Yeah I'm sure I would enjoy the build if I did it but it's just the space and time. If anything goes wrong troubleshooting is a pita...

OK you have persuaded me i'll let someone else do it

[Narcisus]

grumbledoak said:

The only reason to do it is if you want to. You won't save any money buying all the bits retail.

I was referring to the cost to actually perform the build. Looks like most places charge around £120.

[Sporky]

With a self build you do get to use exactly the components you want.

Which may be a disadvantage when you find out that the graphics card won't fit on that motherboard in that case with that CPU cooler...

[Narcisus]

Sporky said:

With a self build you do get to use exactly the components you want.

Which may be a disadvantage when you find out that the graphics card won't fit on that motherboard in that case with that CPU cooler...

Lol ! Yeah never had that problem. I always research every item to the nth degree. Luckily if I buy from Scan I can get every component I want anyway.

[deckster]

Narcisus said:

Thanks guys. Yeah I'm sure I would enjoy the build if I did it but it's just the space and time. If anything goes wrong troubleshooting is a pita...

Disagree with that bit to be fair. If I've put everything in myself then it's much easier to diagnose and swap out bits than if somebody else has done it for me.

[Miserablegit]

I’ve just built a new office pc in the exact spec I want -
Msi X570 mobo
16gb ram
2ssd and 2tdhdd

And a Ryzen 3400g processor with in-built graphics to keep cost down
Reason I did this is I’m going to upgrade my graphics card in one of my other pcs soon and drop that into this - I can then cheaply update the processor next year if needed.
Mobo is overkill for my needs today but will hopefully still be compatible in 4 years or so.
I couldn’t buy this spec elsewhere...

Only downside was the hell that was installing win 10 on an amd system- took me a week. Would have taken longer had Jinx on here not told me about the current driver issue on win 10....
Working now but I invented a few new swear words

I bought another office pc last year off the shelf from pc specialist as they had an offer on and the spec was near enough to what I was looking for at the time but it was £100 cheaper than me building myself.

[Miserablegit]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Agreed but I have plans for this to replace my water cooled gaming rig in due course and didn’t want to buy another mobo later on when I drop a graphics card and new processor in

[poppopbangbang]

I just built a mini ITX based PC as I was fed up of having a massive chunk of tower floating around the place.

- 9700K @ 5ghz overclock.
- Corsair H80i V2 AIO Cooler
- MSI Z390 Gaming Pro I Motherboard.
- 32GB silly speed RAM
- My old Pascal Titan graphics card as it's still good enough to be honest.
- 4TB Mechanical raid across two drives.
- 2 X 512GB Sata SSDs
- 1 X 1TB WD Black PCIE SSD

All in a little Node 304 case.



Getting the cooling right was the only tricky bit. It's a huge amount of performance in a tiny little PC though now it's done! I think building your own makes sense when it's something like this as there isn't a lot of options for having it built by someone. However for a standard tower type setup, unless you absolutely want to build it yourself, just get someone else to screw it together

[Narcisus]

Just this.... WOW !! Well new system now up and running for a couple of weeks and I can honestly say I cant believe the performance... I thought my old 2500k - 970GTX was doing well but by Christ the new hardware is fast !

Final specs :

29' LG Superwide 2560x1080 75Hz Monitor
27' Samsung CFG70 Curved 144hz Monitor
Corsair K63 Wireless Keyboard
Corsair Harpoon RGB Wireless Mouse
Ultimate Ears Megaboom
Kef LSX Speakers ( green )
Avantree Leaf Bluetooth Audio Transmitter
Seagate 6 TB Backup Plus Hub USB 3.0 Desktop 3.5 Inch External Hard Drive
Fractal Design Define R6 eATX Brushed Aluminium
ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus ATX Motherboard
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Processor
EVGA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER BLACK GAMING 8GB
SoundBlaster AE-5
Corsair 850 Watt RM850x Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
2 x of Seagate Barracuda 6TB Serial ATA III
Seagate FireCuda Desktop 2TB Hybrid Hard Drive (SSHD) 3.5" SATA III 6GB's 7200RPM 64MB Cache
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB NVMe M.2
Asus BW-16D1HT 16X SATA Blu-Ray Recorder Drive
Corsair CMK32GX4M2D3200C16 Vengeance LPX 32 GB
Xbox Wireless Joystick Adapter
Anker® USB 3.0 Card Reader 8-in-1
SanDisk Ultra Flair 128 GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive
TP-Link UH720 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub with 2 Exclusive 2.4 A

Total storage now is over 50Tb !

Oh and I ended up doing it myself lol !

Edited by Narcisus on Monday 14th October 17:20

Edited by Narcisus on Monday 14th October 17:22

[Sporky]

Narcisus said:

Total storage now is over 50Tb !

That is a LOT of saucy photographs.

I'm still trying to work out if it's worth upgrading from a 980ti yet, and if so, to what. I don't fancy splurging over a grand on an all-in-one watercooled RTX2080ti, but it seems silly to half-measure it. And the watercooler for the CPU is so quiet, which makes the 980 seem all the louder.

[Narcisus]

Sporky said:

That is a LOT of saucy photographs.

I'm still trying to work out if it's worth upgrading from a 980ti yet, and if so, to what. I don't fancy splurging over a grand on an all-in-one watercooled RTX2080ti, but it seems silly to half-measure it. And the watercooler for the CPU is so quiet, which makes the 980 seem all the louder.

Yeah I like my saucy pictures lol ! It's the 4k video that's the storage killer …. My old rig was all water cooled and I did a lot of research for this system and guess what ? I stuck with the stock cpu cooler !! Saved myself a packet … Looked into water cooling everything but for the current gen Ryzen it's just not worth it... It runs plenty cool. It's just too much faffing about for a few FPS...

Edited by Narcisus on Monday 14th October 18:15

[boxedin]

Another nice AMD setup :-)
I do like the Define cases.

[Narcisus]

boxedin said:

Another nice AMD setup :-)
I do like the Define cases.

Yeah love the case. Previous build was a Coolermaster Cosmos S.. Nice case at the time but a million miles from the Define.. AMD ! Well this is my first none Intel processor since I built a system with a 120Mhz Cyrix 5x86 !

Hard to believe that I don't have Intel silicon in my system but I did the research and for me it made sense …. I would have had 9300x if they had been available and may still drop one in or even a 3950x in 12 months or so.

[Sporky]

Narcisus said:

Yeah I like my saucy pictures lol ! It's the 4k video that's the storage killer …. My old rig was all water cooled and I did a lot of research for this system and guess what ? I stuck with the stock cpu cooler !! Saved myself a packet … Looked into water cooling everything but for the current gen Ryzen it's just not worth it... It runs plenty cool. It's just too much faffing about for a few FPS...

I did it for the quiet.

[AdamD]

poppopbangbang said:

I just built a mini ITX based PC as I was fed up of having a massive chunk of tower floating around the place.

- 9700K @ 5ghz overclock.
- Corsair H80i V2 AIO Cooler
- MSI Z390 Gaming Pro I Motherboard.
- 32GB silly speed RAM
- My old Pascal Titan graphics card as it's still good enough to be honest.
- 4TB Mechanical raid across two drives.
- 2 X 512GB Sata SSDs
- 1 X 1TB WD Black PCIE SSD

All in a little Node 304 case.



Getting the cooling right was the only tricky bit. It's a huge amount of performance in a tiny little PC though now it's done! I think building your own makes sense when it's something like this as there isn't a lot of options for having it built by someone. However for a standard tower type setup, unless you absolutely want to build it yourself, just get someone else to screw it together

Cracking case, managed to shoehorn a 140mm aio cooler on a 9900k paired with a 1080gtx, m2 drive for windows and 12tb of mass storage. Quiet and punchy performance - was originally to be a plex server but I got carried away lol.

[anonymous-user]

In similar boat, built my own desktop 15 years ago and have finally run out of ways to upgrade it so looks like i'll be takign the SSD and GPU with me to a new build.

Is scan fairly decent value? Where is the best place to buy online? I usually go to Argos for high priced electronics, as they seem to be usually cheapest. But hard to compare like for like so unsure if they are competitive with desktops.