Tell me about building a PC

[jon-nyc]

I do better than that, I order it online and they ship it to my front door.

This is more about a project for the boy.

[Rainman]

I do some research, then wait for a sale, like Black Friday sales after Thanksgiving.
Then, I order based also on price. If something costs more, then it MUST be better. And I know that's dumb, but I also end up with overall a powerful computer, even if paying too much.
Last one I bought (this one), I bought on Black Friday, spent a little over $2k, list price was around $4500. And, it's been great, especially since it can handle very large music files created in a DAW, withough getting overwhelmed.

Next computer I get will have a liquid cooling system. Even if I don't need it, it's cool (haha, a pun, so so clever...), and seems something to brag about whether needed or not.

I bought a 1 T external hard drive a few weeks ago, based on my Dell having two thunderbolt ports. I had no idea what thunderbolt was, did a little research, and am really happy with the new external drive which is amazingly fast. It was a bit pricey, but what the heck. I used to dump money into cars and motorcycles, all in all, this is a lot cheaper.

[taiwan_girl]

@Rainman said in Tell me about building a PC:

I bought a 1 T external hard drive a few weeks ago, based on my Dell having two thunderbolt ports. I had no idea what thunderbolt was, did a little research, and am really happy with the new external drive which is amazingly fast.

Again, thanks to @Axtremus and @George-K , I did something similar for my (old) iMac and it almost seems like a new machine!!

[Larry]

@jon-nyc said in Tell me about building a PC:

I do better than that, I order it online and they ship it to my front door.

This is more about a project for the boy.

Yes, i understand and agree. I was thinking more about the "my pc is bigger than your pc stuff.

[mark]

My PC time is 95% work related. I need a PC to be as fast as possible within a relatively modest budget. I also detest the pre-installed software that comes with big name and store bought PCs.

Come to think of it, I think I had one such monster and used it for about 2 months and ditched it for a component build.

I am not putting the fastest, most cores, processor in it. I am not putting the fastest memory dimms in it. I am putting the fastest 2TB SSD I can find and the video card is very good but there are much better and much more expensive.

I try to build it to last me 10 years. Last time I did this, I met that goal. This PC is still running just fine and now sports a 2TB SSD as it's main hard disk. It runs WoW Classic like a champ. It will still be on active duty, in some capacity, after the new one is built.

[mark]

Getting closer to the build.

Now I am having a processor debate. Stay with Intel or move to AMD. If I move to AMD the RYZEN 9 16 core is in the same price range as the Intel i9 14 core I was looking at. I also found out that this particular series of Intel processor is missing some libraries in the chipset that prevent it from being able to decode 4k BlueRay video. That seems strange to me and I am still searching for confirmation.

So looking at AMD I am now torn between the Ryzen 9 and the new 3rd generation Threadripper which starts at $1600 and has 24 cores / 48 threads. They also have a 32 core and a 64 core model that costs $3,500. lol

[Copper]

I switched from AMD to Intel because I wanted to get the option to use Hyper-V.

If you don't care about Hyper-V, you don't care.

If you do want AMD and Hyper-V I believe there are some downloads needed to make it work and maybe some driver problems.

I'm not current on this stuff at the moment, but it might be something to consider.

[Loki]

Jon

Let us know what you bought/buying?

Going to build for very basic email and web access use in public space in our house.

Embarrased to say that current is still on old windows and it is starting to concern me.

[mark]

@Copper said in Tell me about building a PC:

I switched from AMD to Intel because I wanted to get the option to use Hyper-V.

If you don't care about Hyper-V, you don't care.

If you do want AMD and Hyper-V I believe there are some downloads needed to make it work and maybe some driver problems.

I'm not current on this stuff at the moment, but it might be something to consider.

I am currently running an 8 year old AMD Opteron in our server which I upgraded to Server19 last last year. I have one Hyper-V session running an instance of Server16 for testing purposes. lol

I haven't run it lately but the last couple of times I did, I am pretty sure it hung the server to the point that I had to do a hard reset. I will have to give another try. I do not have a need for Hyper-V on my workstation.

[Loki]

I’m beginning to wonder if all I want is the most basic desktop that I should just buy it? Could be cheaper?

[mark]

@Loki said in Tell me about building a PC:

I’m beginning to wonder if all I want is the most basic desktop that I should just buy it? Could be cheaper?

If you can put up with all the crap-ware that is installed on commercial builds.

[George K]

@mark said in Tell me about building a PC:

@Loki said in Tell me about building a PC:

I’m beginning to wonder if all I want is the most basic desktop that I should just buy it? Could be cheaper?

If you can put up with all the crap-ware that is installed on commercial builds.

Can't you get rid of it by just reformatting the drive and reinstalling the OS?

[mark]

@George-K said in Tell me about building a PC:

@mark said in Tell me about building a PC:

@Loki said in Tell me about building a PC:

I’m beginning to wonder if all I want is the most basic desktop that I should just buy it? Could be cheaper?

If you can put up with all the crap-ware that is installed on commercial builds.

Can't you get rid of it by just reformatting the drive and reinstalling the OS?

Typically, they don't come with install disks anymore. Even when they did, they were HP or Dell or insert your brand name here, install disks that just reloaded the crap on installation. lol

[George K]

@mark said in Tell me about building a PC:

@George-K said in Tell me about building a PC:

Can't you get rid of it by just reformatting the drive and reinstalling the OS?

Typically, they don't come with install disks anymore. Even when they did, they were HP or Dell or insert your brand name here, install disks that just reloaded the crap on installation. lol

Get a Mac...

Apple has an "Internet recovery" option. By booting the Mac while holding a keystroke combo (Command, Option, R) it boots from the internet and you can re-install a "clean" MacOS.

Useful.

[jon-nyc]

@Loki said in Tell me about building a PC:

Jon

Let us know what you bought/buying?

Didn't move on it yet. The problem is the boy's computer is in the kitchen (which is nice so we always know what he's up to) and where it sits is not a convenient place for a traditional computer with a chassis and separate monitor etc.

Currently it's an all-in-one and a small one at that so it fits fine.

Not sure what we're going to do. He would love to move his PC to his room but I'm not ready for that. Maybe I could find a way to make the chassis setup fit in situ.

[Klaus]

@jon-nyc take a look at the "Mini-ITX" form factor. You can home-build very small PCs that fit very nicely on a desk or under a display. You'd still have a separate display and associated cables, but PCs don't need to be in a "midi tower" or the like anymore. A mini ITX PC can be as small as a Mac Mini, if you use the right chassis, and it can be very quiet if you use passive cooling.

[Doctor Phibes]

@jon-nyc said in Tell me about building a PC:

@Loki said in Tell me about building a PC:

Jon

Let us know what you bought/buying?

Didn't move on it yet. The problem is the boy's computer is in the kitchen (which is nice so we always know what he's up to) and where it sits is not a convenient place for a traditional computer with a chassis and separate monitor etc.

Currently it's an all-in-one and a small one at that so it fits fine.

Not sure what we're going to do. He would love to move his PC to his room but I'm not ready for that. Maybe I could find a way to make the chassis setup fit in situ.

Go on. You know you want to. Never mind all this 'Buy a Mac' bullshit.

[jon-nyc]

@Klaus said in Tell me about building a PC:

@jon-nyc take a look at the "Mini-ITX" form factor. You can home-build very small PCs that fit very nicely on a desk or under a display. You'd still have a separate display and associated cables, but PCs don't need to be in a "midi tower" or the like anymore. A mini ITX PC can be as small as a Mac Mini, if you use the right chassis, and it can be very quiet if you use passive cooling.

I'll check it out

[mark]

I 99% sure have my build finalized and I was able to trim the cost to $3,316.00 for the components and $325 for a 4 year no cost replacement on most of the components. The power supply has a 10 year warranty.

After researching the best processor specifically for audio recording/mixing the winner of that contest is the Intel Core i9-10900 Comet Lake 10-Core 2.8 GHz It even beat out the 3.7 Ghz model and every other processor including the 64 core $4,000 AMD Threadripper, in single core / thread performance. The processor is only $587 and is the most significant factor in bringing my cost down. The motherboard also brought the price down.

During my research, I found out that audio production, while definitely taking advantage of multi-cores, requires very fast single thread performance and there is no getting around that. It's why a $500 processor can best a $4,000 processor in this very specific task. Other factors come into play like what is interrupting the processor and vying for time and power in competition with the audio processing. That can include system devices like memory, video, network, etc. Motherboards needs to be up to the task and the gaming motherboards seem to be the motherboards accepted as best for this task.

New Build:
Intel Core i9-10900 Comet Lake 10-Core/20-Thread 2.8 GHz (Able to be overclocked to 4.9 Ghz)
ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XII HERO (WI-FI) LGA 1200 (Intel 10th Gen) Intel Z490 (WiFi 6) SATA 6Gb/s ATX Intel Motherboard
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 128GB (4 x 32GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory
ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Triple Fan 8GB GDDR6 256-bit 15.5 Gbps Gaming Graphics Card
Sabrent 2TB ROCKET NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive
LG Black 12X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray Burner
Seasonic FOCUS GX-1000, 1000W 80+ Gold, Full-Modular Power Supply
be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 Black rev. 2 Full Tower ATX Case
Arctic Silver Arcticlean Thermal material Remover & Surface Purifier
Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound
Optical Quantum 25 GB 6X BD-R Blu-ray Recordable Media 10 Pack

For a monitor I am going to buy a 43" TCL 4K UDH TV and give it go. If I don't like it I will get the LG 38WN75C-B 38-Inch Class 21:9 Curved UltraWide QHD+ (3840 x 1600) IPS Display with HDR 10

https://www.newegg.com/p/0JC-000D-00B06?Description=LG 38WN75C-B&cm_re=LG_38WN75C-B--0JC-000D-00B06--Product

[Loki]

I was able to upgrade free to Windows 10 via Microsoft download. How about that. No money and importantly no decisions to be made.