I’m planning on building a PC soon and, while I have done plenty of research, I’d like to hear advice from people who have experience in the area personally. It’s also just nice talking to other people in general, lol

  •  ramius345   ( @ramius345@beehaw.org ) 
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    1 year ago

    Don’t skimp on the power supply brand. Buy a reputable one. Buy one with headroom if you plan on upgrading your GPU at a later time.

    Watch some build videos from tech YouTubers and watch the steps they go through.

    For gaming start with the GPU and build around it. Pick a CPU with a reasonable price that will not bottleneck it. YouTube reviews are your friend here. Watch a few with your CPU and GPU pairing and get an idea of the average and one percent low marks.

    For your first PC, stick to air cooling. Pick a reputable brand.

    I personally like gamersnexus reviews for all the parts you can. They are very methodical with benchmarks. Ask questions here as you will have many.

    You may be building a PC for a use case other than gaming. If that’s the case you may want to pick another part to start your build around. For instance, developers have a different workload compiling code and would focus more on CPU and threaded workloads.

    Basically know your use case, budget, and ask specific questions as you learn from videos and the community will help you produce a great result.

  • I highly recommend PC Partpicker for compiling all your components (although I don’t typically follow the listed purchase links). The comparability checker it has can save some real headaches!

    Otherwise, some general advice:

    1. Remember the motherboard standoff screws. Most cases these days have them pre-installed, but my first rig did not. And I bent the mobo a little bit before realizing my mistake. It still worked in the end, but it’s now my #1 cautionary tale about PC Building.

    2. Do yourself a favor, and make an attempt at proper cable management. It’ll make replacing components so much easier down the line.

    3. Get a fully modular PSU (if in your budget). This will help with #2 above immensely.

    4. Read the manual that comes with your motherboard. It usually has a lot of guidance for assembling the computer, especially if this is your first time.

    5. Have fun! PC Building/Gaming is one of my favorite hobbies, and I’m always glad to see new people getting interested in it!

    Good luck, and don’t be afraid to ask questions!

    • Thank you! The comments on cable management r definitely taken into consideration, the idea of having to untangle and move all those cables without them being at least semi-organized makes me shiver. And as for 5; PC gaming has been good, but my current PC is loosing its luster, so what better to do than indulge in something I’ve dreamed about doing: building my own! Thanks for the rest of the advice as well :)

        • For sure, I run an 5800x3d and a 4070ti on a 850, but I had to replace the 650 that I built with in 2020 to do that. Two power supplies in three years could have been averted if I had just bought a bit more than I needed the first time. It sucks having to completely rewire an already built computer too.

          • On the other hand, I bought a beefy power supply in my last rig based on advice that I’ll want room for upgrades, but I never did. It’s not really of interest to me to fuff around with upgrades.

            As a patient gamer, by the time my rig isn’t able to handle modern games, it’s time for a completely new build.

            Also, I care a lot about noise (and thus heat), so I’d rather keep my entire build’s thermal profile low, using lower-power components.

            My new build, I only included enough extra power for some extra HDDs (including extra overhead for power spikes).

  • Slightly different advice from what others have said, but while building it, I’ve always used an anti static wristband, grounded to either ground or the pc case. Maybe I’m overly paranoid, but that’s what I was taught, and haven’t had any issues with ESD so far

  •  Zorind   ( @Zorind@beehaw.org ) 
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    71 year ago

    Putting everything together is basically just expensive legos.

    As others have mentioned, definitely make sure you are using the motherboard stand-off screws, or that it comes with them pre-attached.

    For RAM, it can really only go in one way but it’s a little terrifying when it audibly snaps into place.

    If you get everything set up and it doesn’t turn on, first thing I always check is that the RAM is seated properly (motherboard may have recommended configuration depending on the number of RAM sticks).

    Make sure you plug your monitor into your GPU, not your integrated graphics from the motherboard.

    If you get stuck at any point or have questions, feel free to reach out :)

    I’ve put together ~4 computers, 3 in small form factor cases and 1 in a normal sized case. Definitely recommend a modular PSU, and also using cable ties (the Velcro ones that are easy to remove) of some kind for cable management.

    • Thank you! And I was planning on getting cable ties, although the ones I was going to get were zip ties. Velcro ties do sound much easier to manage, though, lol. Setting the ram correctly somehow sounds both simple yet stressful

      • The velcro ones are nice but I’d suggest also getting a bunch of twist ties because they are super cheap and I feel like it’s impossible to estimate how many ties I’ll actually need. Zip ties, I have used but unless you buy the fancy adjustable ones, they are a pain to cut off and annoying if you just need to move something out of the way for a bit so they’re fine at the end.

  • Start the build outside of the case, use the box the motherboard came in as a table. Install the cpu, ram, hook up the psu (fully modular if your budget allows), power on and make sure all works. Easier to troubleshoot this way.

  •  l4sgc   ( @l4sgc@beehaw.org ) 
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    61 year ago

    It’s difficult to know what advice might be helpful for you without more context, but the one mistake I made with my last PC build was choosing a small form factor case. I thought it looked really clean not to have all that wasted space inside the case, but it makes any system changes much more arduous trying to squeeze my hands into tight spots.

    Also when I needed to upgrade my gpu a few months ago and filtered to ones that would fit in the case there was literally only 1 option, it wasn’t my first choice but it was close enough I went with it instead of dealing with the hassle of buying a new case and rebuilding everything. I know for sure I will need a new case the next time I need a new gpu though.

    The other thing I’ll mention is to make sure all your bios settings are configured correctly: resizable bar, XMP, etc.

    • Thanks! Choosing a case that’s small enough to be easy to transport but not hard to build in is a concern, but I believe my current case will do well! Setting up the bios is what I’m more concerned with, but I’m sure I’ll manage. And sorry but the vagueness of the post, I’m generally looking for any advice instead of specific advice

      •  l4sgc   ( @l4sgc@beehaw.org ) 
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        31 year ago

        Bios can be difficult because some of the settings are named differently if you have an amd or intel cpu. Additionally the interface and where the settings are located seems to be dependent on the motherboard manufacturer.

        But in general the important things that are required to install windows 11 are uefi boot and the tpm being enabled, and these will almost certainly be set to the correct values by default.

        For gaming performance resizable bar/smart access memory improves gpu performance, and xmp/expo improves ram performance, these is a decent chance these will not be enable in the bios by default.

        For programming, I also wanted to use the windows subsystem for linux, and I had to go to my bios and enable cpu virtualization for that. Not sure what other workflows might rely on virtualization.

        I’ll also just mention that at one point I had some instability related to restarting. If I tried to restart it would post but fail to boot into windows, but doing shut-down and then turning the computer on again worked fine. And I think I resolved that by disabling fast-boot in the bios. Note that I wouldn’t expect you to get that restart issue, I think it was related to me being on the insider-preview build of windows at the time. But fast-boot-off is something I made a note of as a good troubleshooting step.