Tech Anyone build their own PC's and wanna talk tech and specs?

GojiBean

Your resident irradiated Kaiju King
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I've built 2 PC's now, and they're built around gaming (go figure, :P).

One of them is an Intel build, the other an AMD build (have at me purists!).

The Intel build centers on an i7-7700K CPU and a GTX 1080 graphics card.

The AMD build is on a Ryzen 3900X CPU and a GTX 2080 XC Ultra Gaming graphics card.

What kinds of builds do you guys have, and what are the CPU and GPU that the builds are centered on? And for what purpose did you make your builds? Gaming? Music? Video streaming? A mix of different purposes?

Let's discuss!
 
Currently only on laptop with a MSI (cause budget + needing a laptop for school doesn't leave much room for a tower PC), with an i7-9750H CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD and a GTX 1650.

Honestly, when I was shopping for this baby, I knew I had a preference toward's MSI laptop. They are little demons that are awesome to work with, and since I needed a laptop that would let me play with unity and visual studio as well as let me game, the brand was an obvious choice.

I have an external drive for storage, so only having 512GB of storage (well...less since there was windows installed already) isn't so much of a problem for me.

What I wanted however was high RAM (since I multitask a lot!), so 12GB was the bare minimum for me. (Cause...try having unity, a convo discord and visual studio open at the same time on 6GB....hahaha no).

Also AMD is awesome this year! I don't understand how they still have this bad reputation when their current CPU outperforms Intels when it comes to gaming.
 
Currently only on laptop with a MSI (cause budget + needing a laptop for school doesn't leave much room for a tower PC), with an i7-9750H CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD and a GTX 1650.

Honestly, when I was shopping for this baby, I knew I had a preference toward's MSI laptop. They are little demons that are awesome to work with, and since I needed a laptop that would let me play with unity and visual studio as well as let me game, the brand was an obvious choice.

I have an external drive for storage, so only having 512GB of storage (well...less since there was windows installed already) isn't so much of a problem for me.

What I wanted however was high RAM (since I multitask a lot!), so 12GB was the bare minimum for me. (Cause...try having unity, a convo discord and visual studio open at the same time on 6GB....hahaha no).

Also AMD is awesome this year! I don't understand how they still have this bad reputation when their current CPU outperforms Intels when it comes to gaming.

Gotcha.

Yeah, more RAM is definitely a must for multi-tasking. And I can see the rest of the specs working pretty well for gaming too. Not a bad setup for a laptop, actually. I haven't really delved into laptop specs for much of anything as I always preferred having a desktop workstation (except in college where the macbook pro was mandatory since all the college's programs ran in Apple... Thanks for that guys). So much for "budget" when you're being made to shop with Apple. Lol. RIP my wallet back in college.

Anyway. No whining about my college woes. XD

If you weren't restricted by budget and if you had the time and space needed for it, what kind of PC do you think you might build? And what specs would you go after?
 
I'm just about to replace most my components right now except my GPU.

My components if you're interested:
i5-10400
Noctua NH-L9i
Asrock Z490M Mini-ITX
Team Force Vulcan Z 16GB 3200 MHz
Western Digital 1TB M.2
NZXT H210 Mini ITX Tower case
RTX 2060

Power supply's are super expensive and none of them are in stock, I'm gonna have to wait on that part.
 
Ouf I feel the : Everything needs to be Apple brand. Did you study design or editing?

I think I'd play around with different cooling builds. My SO recently showed me a mercury cooling system that looked really awesome. Other than that I'd probably go for the latest AMD Ryzen, a GTX 2080, 256gb HDD, 2To hard drive with plenty of RAM. For the motherboard and everything else, I'd probably go play with PC Part picker to maximize the build and make sure everything is compatible.

But if we talk battle stations, I'd probably go all out with a gaming chair, a desk with libraries on the side, and a nice lighting setup for those long coding/gaming/writing nights. I'm also a leftie so I'd probably splurge on a nice death adder mouse for left handed gamers. Pairing everything with a nice mechanical keyboard to annoy the hell of everyone around me and I'm set :D

You guys? What would be your dream battle station?
 
I'm just about to replace most my components right now except my GPU.

My components if you're interested:
i5-10400
Noctua NH-L9i
Asrock Z490M Mini-ITX
Team Force Vulcan Z 16GB 3200 MHz
Western Digital 1TB M.2
NZXT H210 Mini ITX Tower case
RTX 2060

Power supply's are super expensive and none of them are in stock, I'm gonna have to wait on that part.

Interesting build dude.

How much power were you hoping for? The build you have pulls around 300 Watts as is based on what you listed, so a 500 Watt power supply would more than suffice. If you wanted to stretch it, you could go 600 Watts.

The EVGA 100-W1-0600-K1 is 500 Watts, 80+ Gold Certified and costs $59.99 USD which isn't too bad. It's not modular though.

Another option would be the Cooler Master MWE Gold. 650 Watts, fully modular 80+ Gold Certified for $99. A little pricey, but you get what you pay for here. And I've always gravitated towards EVGA power supplies myself, so I'll vouch for this one.
 
Interesting build dude.

How much power were you hoping for? The build you have pulls around 300 Watts as is based on what you listed, so a 500 Watt power supply would more than suffice. If you wanted to stretch it, you could go 600 Watts.

The EVGA 100-W1-0600-K1 is 500 Watts, 80+ Gold Certified and costs $59.99 USD which isn't too bad. It's not modular though.

Another option would be the Cooler Master MWE Gold. 650 Watts, fully modular 80+ Gold Certified for $99. A little pricey, but you get what you pay for here. And I've always gravitated towards EVGA power supplies myself, so I'll vouch for this one.

I was going to go for the Cooler Master MWE 650 watt but it's not in stock for me anywhere. I'll probably have it wait for it to come in stock and who knows how long that'll take with corona. All my other parts are luckily in stock. I might swing by Best Buy and see what they have in store now that they're starting to open stores again. I generally prefer Corsair, Seasonic or EVGA, whatever is cheaper at the time.
 
Ouf I feel the : Everything needs to be Apple brand. Did you study design or editing?

I think I'd play around with different cooling builds. My SO recently showed me a mercury cooling system that looked really awesome. Other than that I'd probably go for the latest AMD Ryzen, a GTX 2080, 256gb HDD, 2To hard drive with plenty of RAM. For the motherboard and everything else, I'd probably go play with PC Part picker to maximize the build and make sure everything is compatible.

But if we talk battle stations, I'd probably go all out with a gaming chair, a desk with libraries on the side, and a nice lighting setup for those long coding/gaming/writing nights. I'm also a leftie so I'd probably splurge on a nice death adder mouse for left handed gamers. Pairing everything with a nice mechanical keyboard to annoy the hell of everyone around me and I'm set :D

You guys? What would be your dream battle station?

Haha. Nice.

Your 256 GB HDD. I take it that's your boot drive, right? Are you sure you want a HDD? Since they have moving parts they're rather slow. I'm hoping I don't sound too pretentious (lol), but might I suggest an M.2 drive as your boot instead? The best in the market right now for the money and the quality is the Samsung Evo Plus 250 GB M.2 drive for $84.99. Not exactly cheap, but you get what you pay for. And this line of M.2 drives are blazing fast. From the moment you press the power button to being at your desktop and ready to do whatever you want to do can be anywhere from fifteen to twenty five seconds or so at max.

As for a battle station, I'm quite the simpleton. Give me a decent 1080p monitor, a pair of decent speakers for monitoring my music while I'm composing, my guitar on my left in case I want to play, and my drawing tablet for whenever the mood strikes to draw something, and I'm good.

Oh, and a chair that lets me lean backwards. Gotta be able to lean backwards.
 
Slav Slav Yeah, got lucky and ordered my laptop JUST before COVID. My SO recently tried to upgrade his desktop but couldn't because there weren't any parts he wanted available in Canada (or for a 100$ shipping price...yeah we don't have that budget). Let's hope the situation clears up soon!

GojiBean GojiBean

We are geeking out on computer pieces XD It's ok to throw around suggestions, it doesn't make you pretentious.

But yeah, a SSD would be better than a HDD for my boot drive, and while I never heard the term M.2 for them, it is quite interesting to see that this type can use both SATA and NVMe connections! Though I am not at the level where picking either of these would make a big difference tbh. Since I don't do 3D animation the most strain I can put on my PC is Unity + Visual Studio or Photoshop (and maybe the next Dragon Age...if Bioware doesn't get killed by EA x.x).
 
Slav Slav Yeah, got lucky and ordered my laptop JUST before COVID. My SO recently tried to upgrade his desktop but couldn't because there weren't any parts he wanted available in Canada (or for a 100$ shipping price...yeah we don't have that budget). Let's hope the situation clears up soon!

GojiBean GojiBean

We are geeking out on computer pieces XD It's ok to throw around suggestions, it doesn't make you pretentious.

But yeah, a SSD would be better than a HDD for my boot drive, and while I never heard the term M.2 for them, it is quite interesting to see that this type can use both SATA and NVMe connections! Though I am not at the level where picking either of these would make a big difference tbh. Since I don't do 3D animation the most strain I can put on my PC is Unity + Visual Studio or Photoshop (and maybe the next Dragon Age...if Bioware doesn't get killed by EA x.x).

Lol. Fingers crossed for Dragon Age. I love that series. And I don't want EA screwing with it anymore than the next fan.

And that sounds fair. The M.2 drive (or NVMe, same thing in most cases nowadays) is just an option for consideration. Some people don't mind the speeds of a typical 3.5" SSD drive or a HDD. The main reason I prefer the M.2 is because I compose music, and running high end music software libraries requires a fast drive for the sake of load times for the samples. The HDD, even at 7200 RPM, will take upwards of 6-10 minutes to load a standard orchestra template, whereas the 3.5" SSD can do it in about 2 minutes. And the M.2 (providing there's enough space for the library on it) can do it in under 1 minute.

So yeah. Just options and things to consider. Since you like art and doing artistic things, a standard 3.5" SSD and anywhere between 16-32GB of RAM at speeds of 3000-3600 MHz would be your best friends. Lol.

Do you have a deviantart, or another site where you share your art? I'd like to see it if you're willing to share!
 
Oh no! I'm sorry about the misunderstanding, but I code, I don't do art. Photoshop is used for simple picture manipulation or web design. Visual Studio is a .NET platform for coding, and it pairs really well with Unity for game dev or simulations.

But yeah! I'll keep the rest in mind for when I finally have the budget (and the space) to build the desktop of my dreams ^^
 
Oh no! I'm sorry about the misunderstanding, but I code, I don't do art. Photoshop is used for simple picture manipulation or web design. Visual Studio is a .NET platform for coding, and it pairs really well with Unity for game dev or simulations.

But yeah! I'll keep the rest in mind for when I finally have the budget (and the space) to build the desktop of my dreams ^^

Ah, gotcha. My mistake!

Now, to have some fun and put it out there so everyone knows how geeky I really am (#GojiExposed), this would be my ultimate (and stupidly expensive) dream music/gaming PC (which I will never own because reality is a biznitch, and I'm not made of money no matter how hard I dream):

* AMD Threadripper 3990X CPU (64 Cores, 128 Threads) ($3,500)
* Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro TR4 CPU Fan ($90) ((cheapest part in the build!))
* Gigabyte TRX40 AORUS XTREME Motherboard (256 GB of RAM capacity) ($850)
* Corsair Vengeance LPX 256 GB RAM ($1,500)
* 2x Sabrent Rocket 4TB M.2 NVMe SSD's (for music library storage) ($1,700)
* 1x Samsung Evo Plus 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD for a boot drive ($450)
* 1x Seagate Iron Wolf Pro 16TB HDD (for game storage and all other shenaniganry) ($500)
* 2x PNY VCQRTX8000-PB Quadro RTX 8000 Graphics Cards ($5,340/card for a total of $10,680)
* Be Quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Rev. 2 Case ($250)
* EVGA Supernova T2 1600 Watt Power Supply 80+ Titanium Certified ($450)

Total Cost for this supidly expensive dream music/gaming build... Roughly $20,200.

So yeah... #GojiExposed for stupidly expensive taste. Lol.

How about you guys? If money were no obstacle and you could get stupid crazy with your build, how far would you go?
 
I'm also running a Ryzen 9 3900X right now. It's great to see AMD's return to being a competitive option in the CPU market these days.
RTX 2080 Ti, 32 GB RAM, 750W PSU, and 4k monitor round out the other major components of my current build.

The computer component market is seeing some shortages of stock here and there that is driving up some prices, but if you can find availability, it is a great time to build a computer. The value you get for the money is excellent.
 
I'm also running a Ryzen 9 3900X right now. It's great to see AMD's return to being a competitive option in the CPU market these days.
RTX 2080 Ti, 32 GB RAM, 750W PSU, and 4k monitor round out the other major components of my current build.

The computer component market is seeing some shortages of stock here and there that is driving up some prices, but if you can find availability, it is a great time to build a computer. The value you get for the money is excellent.

Agreed.

I just built my parents a new computer as an early Father's Day gift for dad since he just retired recently. They've had an older stock Dell PC he got from them when he worked there (well over 10 years ago), so it's been a long time coming to get a new one. But pre-built PC's are always priced higher than if you build it yourself.

I built them a simple, but fast and reliable Windows PC for only $650.

* Intel 9100F CPU
* Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler
* ASRock B365 Pro 4 Motherboard
* Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3200Mhz RAM
* Samsung Evo Plus 250 GB M.2 boot drive
* Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD for storage
* MSI GT 710 2GB Graphics Card (they don't game, lol)
* Fractal Design Focus G Mini Case
* Thermaltake Smart 500 Watt Power Supply

Only $650 for the entire thing with taxes and shipping costs included at the end of the day. Not exactly what anyone would call a "beast." But when they mainly keep track of finances, surf the web, listen to music, or sometimes chat online with people, this is more than enough.

So yeah, I agree.

If you're looking to build a PC to suit your needs, this is the time to do it.
 
Agreed.

I just built my parents a new computer as an early Father's Day gift for dad since he just retired recently. They've had an older stock Dell PC he got from them when he worked there (well over 10 years ago), so it's been a long time coming to get a new one. But pre-built PC's are always priced higher than if you build it yourself.

I built them a simple, but fast and reliable Windows PC for only $650.

* Intel 9100F CPU
* Hyper 212 Evo CPU Cooler
* ASRock B365 Pro 4 Motherboard
* Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3200Mhz RAM
* Samsung Evo Plus 250 GB M.2 boot drive
* Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD for storage
* MSI GT 710 2GB Graphics Card (they don't game, lol)
* Fractal Design Focus G Mini Case
* Thermaltake Smart 500 Watt Power Supply

Only $650 for the entire thing with taxes and shipping costs included at the end of the day. Not exactly what anyone would call a "beast." But when they mainly keep track of finances, surf the web, listen to music, or sometimes chat online with people, this is more than enough.

So yeah, I agree.

If you're looking to build a PC to suit your needs, this is the time to do it.

Did you consider just using the 9100 non-F since it has an iGPU?
 
Did you consider just using the 9100 non-F since it has an iGPU?

I did consider it, but decided to give them dedicated graphics in the event they want to decide, now that they're both retired and have plenty of time, to do more with it than just what was listed previously. Dad always did like computer games when he had time over Summer breaks and stuff. And he's been interested to try a few newer types as well. So just in case, I gave them a discrete graphics card.
 
When it comes time for a new PC, I think I am more excited about the actual building of it than I am with the idea of actually having a new, stronger machine.

I remember when I built my first machine. It had a FX-6300 CPU and paired with a HD7870 and I was so nervous I was shaking a lot of the time. Constantly slapping anything that was metal to try and ground myself, terrified that I would ruin the parts by accident.
 
When it comes time for a new PC, I think I am more excited about the actual building of it than I am with the idea of actually having a new, stronger machine.

I remember when I built my first machine. It had a FX-6300 CPU and paired with a HD7870 and I was so nervous I was shaking a lot of the time. Constantly slapping anything that was metal to try and ground myself, terrified that I would ruin the parts by accident.

Oh, I feel ya. When I built my first PC, I was petrified. Especially when installing the CPU. All those little pins, and if even ONE of them bends out of place, you're screwed.
 

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