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tips on building own gaming PC


rockstarjazz

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this has been a curiosity of mine.

not so much the games themselves, but the process of building a gaming pc.

watched a couple of youtube vids and the specs mainly are: motherboard, processor, fan, power pack, graphics card, sound card, ram, hard drive, tower box...and lots of wires (!)

my question though is how easy or difficult is this - for example, if i start with a tower box, does that mean i could only get certain motherboards to fit inside it, meaning in turn i could only get certain processors/graphics card etc to fit in this, and so forth? or is the motherboard a standard shape which means i could just get any processor or graphics card i want - i'm sure it can't be that easy either? when i saw all those wires in the videos it began to throw me off abit.

how expensive is this process? is it still cheaper than buying a fresh/used pc if i ordered the parts off say ebay? what about compatibility of parts, would that complicate things?

thanks

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Motherboards these days are pretty much two standards: ATX and Micro-ATX. You get a case that fits one or both of those by searching for either of those. Motherboards are going to limit which processors they support. Generally you'll have to pick either AMD or Intel and once you pick one of the processor brands, you need to pick a CPU. Base this on how you'll use your gaming PC. After you do that, you can pick which CPU to use and they'll have a specific socket, how they connect to a motherboard. Once you've picked a CPU, get a motherboard that has that socket. Next determine if you can use onboard graphics from the CPU or if you need to pick up a discreet graphics card. All the graphics cards use the same socket, although some are quite large and need extra space in your case. Depending on which CPU and graphics card, you can determine how much power will be needed and you'll pick your power supply based on that. The motherboard you've chosen will determine what type of ram you'll be able to use, you'll need to pick how much and what speed.

 

For putting it all together: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/how-to-build-a-pc,5867.html

 

For cost: it can cost what you want it to cost. Here is a $350 gaming pc: https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/350-pc-build but keep in mind CPU and graphics cards prices are incredibly out of whack right now and you'll pretty much be paying 50-100% more than before COVID.

 

If a pre-built pc has everything you'd put in your own build and it's the same or cheaper price, then pick it up.

 

There's a lot to consider and whole websites discussing all this in much more detail. Without specific goals in mind, this is all going to be a ton of information. It'll only be manageable once you determine some parameters and you'll need to be careful of people speaking in absolutes (that you HAVE to this or that), as you almost always have a lot of options and not only one.

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With the current prices... I wouldn't exactly recommend building a gaming PC right now, and instead wait 9-12 months (hopefully). :P Maybe they even release new GPUs and CPUs by then. As for CPUs I think Intel might actually deliver something more worthwhile again then. There's also the release of DDR5, which is not compatible with current stuff.

 

 

As for actually building a PC. It's not difficult if you get the right parts. Motherboard needs the correct socket for your CPU. You need the correct type of RAM (DDR4 likely), and supported speeds (not really a big problem to have too high, motherboard determines this, and you need to enable the extra speed (XMP) in "bios"). The motherboard needs to fit in the case, there's some few standards various ATX and ITX is the normal, and one case usually supports many sizes. You will need some cooling, unless water, you need to consider the size of the heat sink in terms of the case width and it not crashing with ram on your motherboard. If you need wifi, this can be included on the motherboard, or usb or even pci (if pci, just make sure you got space for it next to your gpu). Remember to get a good power supply, good rating and enough power, and it fit in your case etc, don't cheap out on it, rarely a good idea.

Edited by MMDE
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Recommend you to watch a few CareyHolzman videos.

Mind you alot of the videos I watched from this channel span from 2012 - 2016 but overall I do still watch his tech videos/livestreams today. I find this channel best for the Category IMO, yes there is Linustechtips or Jaytwocents but with those channels I feel like I'm watching an advertisement. (If there other channels that are similar? I'd love to know!)

 

I used this video to build my 1070 build, right now I have 3070 evga & 9th gen intel.

 

 

There's a global chip shortage ( and everything else on that matter lol ) so Expect to spend $2,000 or $3,000 at least or more unless you find parts from previous owners or used.

 

I think biggest step is to buy all parts at once or if you want to budget just get a list and buy one part at a time, then eventually you'll end up with a decent computer. I still consider myself not completely tech savy so I don't I can walk all instructions.  I been doing soldering at my Airport job and I get dumbfounded on every mishap. heh

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Graphics card prices are just sick thanks to those lame scalpers. How do these people live with theirselves jacking up graphic card prices?  May karma bite them in the butt.

I had bought an Alienware back in December with a Geforce 3080 RTX, 32 GB RAM, and a 10900-KF processor for about 4 grand. I'd hate to think what that would cost at the present time. As things are now, I'd wait a bit for this mess to cool down.

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The 2 most important factors are PSU and GPU, Currently GPU prices are just rude.  I am still running a RTX 2070 Super and it does the job, wait for the GPU prices to settle a bit. Ram is cheap as are psu's, for PSU I would suggest minimum 750 watts.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Recently, AMD processors are gaining popularity among users. How does AMD and Nvidia link work? For example, I want to implement the assembly of AMD Reisen 5 3600 and Nvidia 2060. I read about AMD and Nvidia compatibility in the article. What can you say about such an assembly?

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20 minutes ago, bresttest said:

Recently, AMD processors are gaining popularity among users. How does AMD and Nvidia link work? For example, I want to implement the assembly of AMD Reisen 5 3600 and Nvidia 2060. I read about AMD and Nvidia compatibility in the article. What can you say about such an assembly?

You can use NVidia cards just fine with an AMD cpu

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On 7/29/2021 at 7:09 AM, bresttest said:

Recently, AMD processors are gaining popularity among users. How does AMD and Nvidia link work? For example, I want to implement the assembly of AMD Reisen 5 3600 and Nvidia 2060. I read about AMD and Nvidia compatibility in the article. What can you say about such an assembly?

 

Perfectly fine, I have an AMD CPU with my Nvidia 3090 GPU and have had no issues whatsoever. 

 

 

Parker

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From what I've read over the past few years, amd and Nvidia play nice together now, unlike when I bought my laptop 7 years ago. 

There's still differences, but as long as they're recent you shouldn't have an issue. 

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5 hours ago, Dav9834 said:

From what I've read over the past few years, amd and Nvidia play nice together now, unlike when I bought my laptop 7 years ago. 

There's still differences, but as long as they're recent you shouldn't have an issue. 

I also remember the times when AMD processors were not so well optimized for Nvidia video cards.

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Love my gaming PC but with the new games it really needs to be updated, and as others have pointed out, prices for the components are out of whack.  

 

Until I can get it up to speed, I've decided to stick with a PS4/PS5 future, at least for the next 12-18 months.

 

Doesn't answer your question but this just isn't a good time to go down the PC road.  Unless, you can get a gaming system already built that they are pretty much giving away.

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  • 1 month later...

i was thinking of buyng a second hand pc off ebay, and replace the key components to make it cope with games today or at least titles released in the last 10 years at least.

for example, buying a tower off ebay, and then purchasing processor, graphics card and more ram and install all these replacing the old parts.

is it doable or is it not that simple to do?

i like the idea of giving something a new lease of life and saving it from being consigned to landfills

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1 hour ago, rockstarjazz said:

i was thinking of buyng a second hand pc off ebay, and replace the key components to make it cope with games today or at least titles released in the last 10 years at least.

for example, buying a tower off ebay, and then purchasing processor, graphics card and more ram and install all these replacing the old parts.

is it doable or is it not that simple to do?

i like the idea of giving something a new lease of life and saving it from being consigned to landfills

 

It depends on how wild you go with the replacing. I personally wouldn't recommend getting one that would need new/more RAM, and especially one that would need a new processor. If you go with too old of a machine, finding the right RAM can get a little expensive, perhaps now even tricky due to the pandemic. It's not a good idea to mix different brands of the same type RAM, and even if you get the same exact brand/model of new RAM to put alongside the machines existing RAM, there's still the possibility of performance issues (it's best to get it all bundled together new so you know it came off the same factory line).

 

Getting a used office PC and simply chucking in a newer graphics card would be good enough. The PC I'm using right now is an older Dell office computer that I've put new RAM and a GTX 1650 into, and it's great for 1080p gaming. If that's the path you end up taking, I have a few suggestions. They are:

 

1) Get one with at least an i5 processor, preferably at least a 3rd gen, but one with an i5-2400 is still totally acceptable for most games. The i5-2400 is what I have in mine, and it's what you're going to find in half (or more) of these used office PC's boasting an i5.

 

2) Get one with at least 8GB of DDR3 RAM. Nowadays you can even get one with 16GB for really not all that much extra money. I'm seeing PC's on eBay right now with 16GB of RAM + an i5-2400 for around $130. That's a great deal, pandemic or not.

 

3) This is the most important bit of advice I have to offer. You're going to want to get a graphics card that gets it's power directly from the motherboard, and you're going to want a PC with at least a 300w power supply. This link will give you a good idea of what to look for with motherboard-powered graphics cards: https://pcmecca.com/best-low-power-graphics-cards-without-external-power/

 

Also be sure you get an appropriate size. If the used PC you get is a slim style, you're going to need to get a low-profile graphics card. I would recommend getting a PC with a bigger/wider case if possible, so that you'll have more graphics card size options.

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21 hours ago, rockstarjazz said:

i was thinking of buyng a second hand pc off ebay, and replace the key components to make it cope with games today or at least titles released in the last 10 years at least.

for example, buying a tower off ebay, and then purchasing processor, graphics card and more ram and install all these replacing the old parts.

is it doable or is it not that simple to do?

i like the idea of giving something a new lease of life and saving it from being consigned to landfills

 

It's doable, and simple, but when I think about giving an older pc a new lease on life, I'm thinking just getting more comfortable ram, a ssd, and a compatible graphics card for the motherboard. (you could switch out the processor too, say if it's dual core and you give it quad, as long as it's the right socket and the motherboard is compatible) 

 

Now if you wanted to take an old pc and give the motherboard things it literally is not compatible with, like a brand new processor that is not the right socket, or brand new ram that isn't compatible, etc, then no you'd have to get a new motherboard, and all new components that are compatible with it.

Then the only thing you're giving a new lease on is the case. At best 

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On 06/07/2021 at 3:57 PM, rockstarjazz said:

this has been a curiosity of mine.

not so much the games themselves, but the process of building a gaming pc.

watched a couple of youtube vids and the specs mainly are: motherboard, processor, fan, power pack, graphics card, sound card, ram, hard drive, tower box...and lots of wires (!)

my question though is how easy or difficult is this - for example, if i start with a tower box, does that mean i could only get certain motherboards to fit inside it, meaning in turn i could only get certain processors/graphics card etc to fit in this, and so forth? or is the motherboard a standard shape which means i could just get any processor or graphics card i want - i'm sure it can't be that easy either? when i saw all those wires in the videos it began to throw me off abit.

how expensive is this process? is it still cheaper than buying a fresh/used pc if i ordered the parts off say ebay? what about compatibility of parts, would that complicate things?

thanks


Like everyone else, I recommend first to watch some videos, my go to PC builder is JayzTwoCents, he actually has a whole range of videos on about choosing parts, and literally guides how to build PCs that literal children could follow with some assistance.

Next I would recommend using pcpartpicker and setting it to your region, pcpartpicker is a site which allows you to piece together a PC by parts, and as you are doing this, it will let you know if any problems will come up, it'll tell you things like "this isn't the correct CPU for this motherboard chipset etc", it'll also show you a range of prices of where to get parts new, cheapest to highest, as well as that, reviews left by those who use the site on said parts. It'll let you know if you'll have any issue fitting things like your selected graphic card or CPU cooler into your case. Overall, you want no warnings being left down when you're building the PC on this site so you have a problem free experience of whether it will fit or not, or if it's compatible or not with other parts you purchased.

 

Personal opinion, you're best to go with a ATX case, even if you are only planning to put a smaller motherboard in there, main reason why is that they are less cramped space, small form factor is nice for not taking up as much space on your desk, but in the end of the day, these PC can usually have space problems (as well as parts getting much warmer than they would if they were in a bigger case), are more suited to those that know what they are doing.

 

And as for used PC/parts, I would personally say this is a big no no unless you can guarantee things like the GPU hasn't been used for mining etc, GPU that get used for mining can be terrible afterwards, plus it's just nice in general to have warranty on your parts and easy returns if anything for whatever reason doesn't work with what you picked (for example, some RAM can be finicky and motherboards can be very finicky, I would also suggest never to buy a used PSU/power supply). Since we're coming up on Black Friday in November, I suggest leaving buying parts until then, of course, you can find deals on PC parts all the time, but you don't really want to be buying parts and keeping them for months, then realising, oh these don't work/something better comes out, Amazon usually do deals on storage/RAM/keyboards/mouse/monitors during Black Friday sales, so you can cut off a bunch by leaving it til then and perhaps getting a M2 drive for cheap (right now M2 drives are up in price because of people rushing to get them because PS5 enabled that port).

I hope this helps, and of course, if you don't really feel up for it at the end, there are PC building sites that can build the PC for you, and like Amazon, have deals on their builds around November time, so it's worth waiting, whilst you wait, do some research on the PC you ideally want to build/have built.

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  • 9 months later...
  • 2 months later...
On 7/7/2021 at 0:57 AM, rockstarjazz said:

this has been a curiosity of mine.

not so much the games themselves, but the process of building a gaming pc.

watched a couple of youtube vids and the specs mainly are: motherboard, processor, fan, power pack, graphics card, sound card, ram, hard drive, tower box...and lots of wires (!)

my question though is how easy or difficult is this - for example, if i start with a tower box, does that mean i could only get certain motherboards to fit inside it, meaning in turn i could only get certain processors/graphics card etc to fit in this, and so forth? or is the motherboard a standard shape which means i could just get any processor or graphics card i want - i'm sure it can't be that easy either? when i saw all those wires in the videos it began to throw me off abit.

how expensive is this process? is it still cheaper than buying a fresh/used pc if i ordered the parts off say ebay? what about compatibility of parts, would that complicate things?

thanks

 

So did you ever end up building this? Just Curious.

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  • 4 weeks later...

PC Building in of itself is not very hard or complicated. There are of course things one needs to pay attention to and things one should know (like how some motherboards need a BIOS Update to work with newer processors or how enabling XMP can give big performance boosts on AMD platforms or how you should populate your RAM slots for Dual Channel etc. etc.) but most of it is simply putting parts into the right slots and screwing in some screws. But it is still an enthusiasts hobby because you cannot really go into it blindly. That's why many people here recommend you do check out YouTube Videos. I recommend LinusTechTips, Bitwit and JayzTwoCents for good PC building guides. I think Bitwit might be the most beginner-friendly.

 

Financially, building your own PC will ALWAYS be cheaper than buying a pre-build PC with the same components - but you have to factor in time. It will take a novice at least three to four hours to build his first PC, probably longer. You will probably also lose a lot of time with troubleshooting because more often than not, the PC will not boot up on the first try. (and then you find out that one connector was lose or that you did forget to connect something but to connect it you have to take half of it apart again haha) You will spent a lot of time on cable management if you want it all to look good (but it is optional ;) ) Also, if you order your parts online and don't buy them all at the same place, it might take some time for everything to arrive so that you finally can build. Buying a pre-build saves time, but costs more money. (Time is money, after all...)

 

What's great about building your own PC is the sense of accomplishment you get when its finished and it works and also the individuality of your build. There are so many cases, RGB options, components etc. that you can really make your build your own. You can also mod cases to make your computer even more your own. Virtually every self-build PC is unique, especially if you include more advanced stuff like custom water cooling. It can become an addictive hobby and you might at some point want to build computers for others, just to get your fix :D 

 

If you want to go down the pre-build route though, there are many companies now where you can choose your own components and they build it for you. You don't necessarily need to buy a completely pre-configured system where you have no say over with parts go in. There are ways to customize the PC and just skip the building part. But where's the fun in that, right? ;) 

Edited by Sicho
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