5 ms·

I think folks here are missing something. It isn't assembling a gaming PC that's difficult, it's the process of building the rig; specifying parts and confirmi

I think folks here are missing something. It isn't assembling a gaming PC that's difficult, it's the process of building the rig; specifying parts and confirming that they're compatible can be a daunting task, much less sourcing them and recognizing the appropriate prices. It's a really big matrix of possibilities that can be pretty opaque to people who don't keep up with it.

trey-jones 9y ago
It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the shopping is the fun part.
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  Maybe for some people, but for others it can be a big, risky outlay of a significant amount of money.
wtallis 9y ago
Using a tool like PCPartPicker takes almost all of the effort and uncertainty out of planning a build.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  I've only built a couple of PCs but my method has been to find a PC for sale that is outside my price range - check for Linux compatibility by searching for problems - and then source the parts that match the spec. I can modify as I go, double up on RAM or whatever.
onli 9y ago
There are several sites that help with that. I built one of them: https://www.pc-kombo.com/ https://www.pc-kombo.com/ - it gives you the best cpu + gpu for your budget, based on benchmarks, with fitting parts around that. The most known is https://pcpartpicker.com/ https://pcpartpicker.com/, which gives you a broad selection of parts and checks compatibility as well.
- brownbat 9y ago
  That's a great concept, I always wondered why "best X for the money" (like the columns on tomshardware) weren't just automated, given the availability of crowdsourced benchmarks (http://www.userbenchmark.com http://www.userbenchmark.com). I wish I could specify other specific priorities, like video conversion or compression or data management, so it would trade off between CPU, SSD speed, SSD storage space, or RAM in slightly different ways (though maybe that level of optimization is overkill).
  - onli 9y ago
    Thanks! > I wish I could specify other specific priorities I tend to think that's overkill :) But one can toggle between a gamer setup and a mainly more more cpu heavy app focus, it's in the advanced menu under the recommend button. Switching between gpu and cpu heavy builds catches a lot of those different usecases. > given the availability of crowdsourced benchmarks (http://www.userbenchmark.com http://www.userbenchmark.com). One problem with those is that they are often based on artificial benchmarks, which is most of the time not what you want. I use benchmark results from professional publications instead. The problem then moves to ordering, but that's manageable with enough data.
    - brownbat 9y ago
      > > I wish I could specify other specific priorities > I tend to think that's overkill :) Yeah, I think you're right. It's like that old Knuth quote. Programmers waste enormous amounts of time worrying about the speed of noncritical parts of programs. > I use benchmark results from professional publications instead. Yeah, I generally do that too, I just thought userbenchmarks would be easier to API and be more comprehensive. Though thinking about it now, I'm not sure why I distrust UB so much. In a sense I'm just choosing different biases. Even if I find a reliable reviewer that personally buys each part at a retailer to avoid "reviewer binning," the best case, I still risk a sampling error due to the small numbers (typically n = 1) tested. The bell curves on two different CPUs might overlap considerably. So buying a marginally better rated processor might only give you better performance in 51% of purchases. No professional reviewer could afford the cost or time to individually buy and test a statistically significant number of devices to determine its variance in operation. On the other hand, the errors in judgment that might creep in from variance due to small samples are almost certainly washed out completely by the leaps between generations, right? So trustworthy reviewers are probably "good enough" and worrying about that issue is another form of unnecessary optimization, as much overkill as my first idea. I'm open to that possibility. Though we might go further down this line... Maybe the performance exaggerations due to conformance to published benchmarks aren't much of an issue either. As long as we're talking about ranking cards for real world usage, the odds that a card will perform noticeably better at benchmarks but noticeably worse at tasks I care about is... Well it's nonzero, but small. Smaller still if we upgrade our threshold from "noticeably" to "significantly" or "substantially." I mean, it's your own call where you pull your data from because no data is perfect, and we probably pull from the same places. But you really got me running thinking everything is needless optimization and now I can't stop. :)
jotux 9y ago
There are sites now [1] that let you select components and will tell you if your CPU/motherboard/RAM are compatible. It will even tell you if your power supply can handle the amount of power of all the components. When you select components it will give you links to multiple places to purchase them. I don't keep up with current events in custom PCs and when I built a PC last year [2] I thought it was incredibly straight forward. [1] pcpartpicker.com [2] https://pcpartpicker.com/b/HgBbt6 https://pcpartpicker.com/b/HgBbt6
- InitialLastName 9y ago
  Yeah I'm not saying it's hard for me, but I've built a few (using pcpartpicker) and do a lot of electronic design work, so I'm comfortable handling PCB's. For others, even just pcpartpicker can present an overload of information.
- bsder 9y ago
  Except that you have the problem right off the bat: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/ https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/ Which CPU family and which series? Once you finish THAT, everything gets a lot more straightforward. That list is terrible. At least order the families/series chronologically. If I'm a reasonably informed random, I know to click a handful of things with "lake" in the name and a handful of things with "zen" in the name and that's about it. Except you can't do that with the chooser as it gives you zero choices, since -zen is a series and -lake is a family and those are disjoint (I should be able to union those). As a noob, I would miss any of the "gaming value" choices with that heuristic (Haswell/Broadwell that are quite nice). I don't see any EPYC in that list, so I'm scratching my head (yes, I know it's a server but a random person won't) and I would miss the Threadripper choice (why doesn't it have Ryzen next to it). The problem isn't assembling a PC. It's the fact that PC knowledge has a half-life of like 6 months, and you really can't trust review sites or web searches on this topic anymore.
  - LeoPanthera 9y ago
    You're not supposed to pick a CPU from the full list. Use the filters on the left to narrow it down.
falcolas 9y ago
I just did this part a week ago. All I did was keep the motherboard specs open in one window, and narrow down choices based off that. Wasn’t really hard in any respect, just detail orientated. Pick a processor, that determines the motherboard socket. The motherboard and CPU arch will determine the memory type. The wattage of the CPU and video card determines your PSU lower bounds. The only odd thing was the addition of SSDs on a stick, but the motherboard determines the options there too.
- eat_veggies 9y ago
  PCPartPicker will not let you pick parts that aren't compatible with each other, and even keeps a tally of your wattages. I think they even use the measurements of your case to tell you if your GPU or cooler might be too big.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    My point was not that I'm better than tooling, but that it's a very possible task even without extra tooling. And that task isn't hard, just detail orientated.
jrs95 9y ago
I’ve actually had the opposite experience. Figuring out what parts to use is pretty easy, just takes a little time and attention to detail. Actually getting everything assembled can be a huge pain in the ass, I feel like it’s all designed for people with tiny hands.
chx 9y ago
http://www.logicalincrements.com/ http://www.logicalincrements.com/ is your friend even more in the "I didn't keep up" case than pcpartpicker

trey-jones 9y ago

It's been a while, but I'm pretty sure the shopping is the fun part.

InitialLastName 9y ago
Maybe for some people, but for others it can be a big, risky outlay of a significant amount of money.

wtallis 9y ago

Using a tool like PCPartPicker takes almost all of the effort and uncertainty out of planning a build.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
I've only built a couple of PCs but my method has been to find a PC for sale that is outside my price range - check for Linux compatibility by searching for problems - and then source the parts that match the spec. I can modify as I go, double up on RAM or whatever.

onli 9y ago

There are several sites that help with that. I built one of them: https://www.pc-kombo.com/ https://www.pc-kombo.com/ - it gives you the best cpu + gpu for your budget, based on benchmarks, with fitting parts around that. The most known is https://pcpartpicker.com/ https://pcpartpicker.com/, which gives you a broad selection of parts and checks compatibility as well.

brownbat 9y ago
That's a great concept, I always wondered why "best X for the money" (like the columns on tomshardware) weren't just automated, given the availability of crowdsourced benchmarks (http://www.userbenchmark.com http://www.userbenchmark.com). I wish I could specify other specific priorities, like video conversion or compression or data management, so it would trade off between CPU, SSD speed, SSD storage space, or RAM in slightly different ways (though maybe that level of optimization is overkill).
- onli 9y ago
  Thanks! > I wish I could specify other specific priorities I tend to think that's overkill :) But one can toggle between a gamer setup and a mainly more more cpu heavy app focus, it's in the advanced menu under the recommend button. Switching between gpu and cpu heavy builds catches a lot of those different usecases. > given the availability of crowdsourced benchmarks (http://www.userbenchmark.com http://www.userbenchmark.com). One problem with those is that they are often based on artificial benchmarks, which is most of the time not what you want. I use benchmark results from professional publications instead. The problem then moves to ordering, but that's manageable with enough data.
  - brownbat 9y ago
    > > I wish I could specify other specific priorities > I tend to think that's overkill :) Yeah, I think you're right. It's like that old Knuth quote. Programmers waste enormous amounts of time worrying about the speed of noncritical parts of programs. > I use benchmark results from professional publications instead. Yeah, I generally do that too, I just thought userbenchmarks would be easier to API and be more comprehensive. Though thinking about it now, I'm not sure why I distrust UB so much. In a sense I'm just choosing different biases. Even if I find a reliable reviewer that personally buys each part at a retailer to avoid "reviewer binning," the best case, I still risk a sampling error due to the small numbers (typically n = 1) tested. The bell curves on two different CPUs might overlap considerably. So buying a marginally better rated processor might only give you better performance in 51% of purchases. No professional reviewer could afford the cost or time to individually buy and test a statistically significant number of devices to determine its variance in operation. On the other hand, the errors in judgment that might creep in from variance due to small samples are almost certainly washed out completely by the leaps between generations, right? So trustworthy reviewers are probably "good enough" and worrying about that issue is another form of unnecessary optimization, as much overkill as my first idea. I'm open to that possibility. Though we might go further down this line... Maybe the performance exaggerations due to conformance to published benchmarks aren't much of an issue either. As long as we're talking about ranking cards for real world usage, the odds that a card will perform noticeably better at benchmarks but noticeably worse at tasks I care about is... Well it's nonzero, but small. Smaller still if we upgrade our threshold from "noticeably" to "significantly" or "substantially." I mean, it's your own call where you pull your data from because no data is perfect, and we probably pull from the same places. But you really got me running thinking everything is needless optimization and now I can't stop. :)

jotux 9y ago

There are sites now [1] that let you select components and will tell you if your CPU/motherboard/RAM are compatible. It will even tell you if your power supply can handle the amount of power of all the components. When you select components it will give you links to multiple places to purchase them. I don't keep up with current events in custom PCs and when I built a PC last year [2] I thought it was incredibly straight forward. [1] pcpartpicker.com [2] https://pcpartpicker.com/b/HgBbt6 https://pcpartpicker.com/b/HgBbt6

InitialLastName 9y ago
Yeah I'm not saying it's hard for me, but I've built a few (using pcpartpicker) and do a lot of electronic design work, so I'm comfortable handling PCB's. For others, even just pcpartpicker can present an overload of information.
bsder 9y ago
Except that you have the problem right off the bat: https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/ https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/ Which CPU family and which series? Once you finish THAT, everything gets a lot more straightforward. That list is terrible. At least order the families/series chronologically. If I'm a reasonably informed random, I know to click a handful of things with "lake" in the name and a handful of things with "zen" in the name and that's about it. Except you can't do that with the chooser as it gives you zero choices, since -zen is a series and -lake is a family and those are disjoint (I should be able to union those). As a noob, I would miss any of the "gaming value" choices with that heuristic (Haswell/Broadwell that are quite nice). I don't see any EPYC in that list, so I'm scratching my head (yes, I know it's a server but a random person won't) and I would miss the Threadripper choice (why doesn't it have Ryzen next to it). The problem isn't assembling a PC. It's the fact that PC knowledge has a half-life of like 6 months, and you really can't trust review sites or web searches on this topic anymore.
- LeoPanthera 9y ago
  You're not supposed to pick a CPU from the full list. Use the filters on the left to narrow it down.

falcolas 9y ago

I just did this part a week ago. All I did was keep the motherboard specs open in one window, and narrow down choices based off that. Wasn’t really hard in any respect, just detail orientated. Pick a processor, that determines the motherboard socket. The motherboard and CPU arch will determine the memory type. The wattage of the CPU and video card determines your PSU lower bounds. The only odd thing was the addition of SSDs on a stick, but the motherboard determines the options there too.

eat_veggies 9y ago
PCPartPicker will not let you pick parts that aren't compatible with each other, and even keeps a tally of your wattages. I think they even use the measurements of your case to tell you if your GPU or cooler might be too big.
- falcolas 9y ago
  My point was not that I'm better than tooling, but that it's a very possible task even without extra tooling. And that task isn't hard, just detail orientated.

jrs95 9y ago

I’ve actually had the opposite experience. Figuring out what parts to use is pretty easy, just takes a little time and attention to detail. Actually getting everything assembled can be a huge pain in the ass, I feel like it’s all designed for people with tiny hands.

chx 9y ago

http://www.logicalincrements.com/ http://www.logicalincrements.com/ is your friend even more in the "I didn't keep up" case than pcpartpicker