Building My Own PC

[Braivo]

Has anyone built their own PC? I recently built a home office in my basement and I would like a high powered desktop with a dual monitor setup. I have a laptop already that works great for light work when on the go, but I'd like something with some real horsepower at home. I am finding most of the high-end desktops are geared for gaming and I'd be paying for a lot of graphics add-ons that I don't really need. I used to build my own computers about 15 years ago, but a lot has changed since then. I am going to give it a try again, ordering some parts on newegg and go from there. I have a lot of decisions to make like Windows vs Linux, etc. 

[Jeremie Boop]

Just out of curiosity, what do you need a high powered PC for if you are not gaming? Other than gaming most off the shelf pc's will have more than enough power for a large majority of things you want to do. You are correct though, that if you don't need a high end graphics card then that will lower the overall cost of building a pc by a good amount.

[Lihu]

20 minutes ago, Braivo said:

Has anyone built their own PC? I recently built a home office in my basement and I would like a high powered desktop with a dual monitor setup. I have a laptop already that works great for light work when on the go, but I'd like something with some real horsepower at home. I am finding most of the high-end desktops are geared for gaming and I'd be paying for a lot of graphics add-ons that I don't really need. I used to build my own computers about 15 years ago, but a lot has changed since then. I am going to give it a try again, ordering some parts on newegg and go from there. I have a lot of decisions to make like Windows vs Linux, etc. 

Every time. The reason is liquid cooled PC's are not that cheap with the desired specifications I want. Plus, I usually exchange parts that don't quite reach the performance I want. The last build was a 5.6GHz liquid cooled with Peltier cooled I7.

You probably want to get a liquid cooler for the graphics card as well.

It's pretty easy to do with the new BIOS. They usually double boot to optimize for the ambient temperature. Don't fiddle with the bus memory timing other than the baseline clock speed.

There are many experts out there and youtube videos to help with building the latest stuff.

I use matlab and do image processing. There are even applications that use the graphics cards for higher speed floating point processing.

[jkelley9]

10 minutes ago, Jeremie Boop said:

Just out of curiosity, what do you need a high powered PC for if you are not gaming? Other than gaming most off the shelf pc's will have more than enough power for a large majority of things you want to do. You are correct though, that if you don't need a high end graphics card then that will lower the overall cost of building a pc by a good amount.

Agreed, from what the OP has stated thus far. 

Do you want more editing power (like photoshop) or something from like CAD drawings? Or something else?

Gaming, editing, and CAD-like stuff are kind of the 3 areas right now. The way it works not is they're 75%+ primarily driven by a single components (gaming = gfx card, editing = monitor/capable gfx card but nothing like a gaming card), CAD requires like 90% CPU.

[mdl]

I also used to build my own but haven't in ~15 years.  Am interested in what you end up doing.  Update this thread with progress!

[jkelley9]

3 minutes ago, Lihu said:

Every time. The reason is liquid cooled PC's are not that cheap with the desired specifications I want. Plus, I usually exchange parts that don't quite reach the performance I want. The last build was a 5.6GHz liquid cooled with Peltier cooled I7.

You probably want to get a liquid cooler for the graphics card as well.

It's pretty easy to do with the new BIOS. They usually double boot to optimize for the ambient temperature. Don't fiddle with the bus memory timing other than the baseline clock speed.

There are many experts out there and youtube videos to help with building the latest stuff.

I use matlab and do image processing. There are even applications that use the graphics cards for higher speed floating point processing.

You may have just blown his mind lol.

Why would you suggest liquid-cooled anything to someone without a specific set of requirements? Especially gfx card, since he's expressed little interest in gaming or imaging/compression/plexing or whatever the kids are doing these days.

I have yet to need a liquid cooled PC for my needs. But I also don't use MATLAB anymore or even do CAD drawings on my PC.

[nevets88]

 

8 minutes ago, jkelley9 said:

Agreed, from what the OP has stated thus far. 

Do you want more editing power (like photoshop) or something from like CAD drawings? Or something else?

Gaming, editing, and CAD-like stuff are kind of the 3 areas right now. The way it works not is they're 75%+ primarily driven by a single components (gaming = gfx card, editing = monitor/capable gfx card but nothing like a gaming card), CAD requires like 90% CPU.

You plan on making the next Pixar movie?  Video processing is power hungry.

[Lihu]

11 minutes ago, jkelley9 said:

You may have just blown his mind lol.

Why would you suggest liquid-cooled anything to someone without a specific set of requirements? Especially gfx card, since he's expressed little interest in gaming or imaging/compression/plexing or whatever the kids are doing these days.

I have yet to need a liquid cooled PC for my needs. But I also don't use MATLAB anymore or even do CAD drawings on my PC.

Yeah, but he asked.

Would have blown my mind too, if it weren't for the youtube videos. I built PC's when I was a kid up through grad school, and stopped for 15 years or so. When I got back into it, there was a humongous amount of stuff to learn. So, I watched youtube videos to help me with my builds. My oldest build is 4.4GHz with a i7-2700K 6 plus years ago. Still works fine. My latest build is still from a year ago with the latest stuff back then.

The reason I needed that kind of performance (and more if possible) is that matlab is a semi-interpreted script language. The alternative would have been to build C++ code applications which would have taken a lot longer to write and manage.

CAD itself doesn't use that much power, but structural modeling uses a lot of processing.

Plus, my son played games like StarCraft, which was super processing intensive. . .

[jkelley9]

1 minute ago, Lihu said:

Yeah, but he asked.

Would have blown my mind too, if it weren't for the youtube videos. I built PC's when I was a kid, and stopped for 15 years or so. When I got back into it, there was a humongous amount of stuff to learn. So, I watched youtube videos to help me with my builds. My oldest build is 4.4GHx with a i7-2700K 5 or more years ago. Still works fine. My latest build is still from a year ago with the latest stuff back then.

The reason I needed that kind of performance (and more if possible) is that matlab is a semi-interpreted script language. The alternative would have been to build C++ code applications which would have taken a lot longer to write and manage. It's great for running simulations too. I also do a lot of structural modeling which uses a lot of processing.

I'm in the same boat. I built my first PC when I was 12 years old, built 3 or 4 (my own personal PC's) of them before finishing high school. Built 2 or 3 in college, and now I built probably 1 to 2 per year since graduating and having a big boy job (~5+ years) as a hobby. All for different applications though: gaming, programming, web server, home server with a 4x 3TB in RAID5, and now I'm working on a camera server home-built DVR running 8x cameras at varying (calculated) resolutions and FPS. 

But I've never found it to be necessary to go into as much detail as people let on unless you have a daily, very high usage of a particular task. For example: MATLAB coding with multivariable iteration hammering on a processor will pay off for an optimized system with a powerhouse CPU. You're buying straight time there. Also the cooling that goes with that, and doing your own OC'ing, praying you got a "good chip" from the factory. But photo editing and stuff? It's so not needed. For God's sake they sell 64GB ram kits in "gaming" PC's nowadays! I can promise you that 99%+ of people only need 8GB even with 87 chrome tabs open!

The toughest PC I had to build was for a NAS, running FreeNAS. Keeping drives alive. That needed major full-hardware precise selections. That was a fun project.

3 minutes ago, nevets88 said:

 

You plan on making the next Pixar movie?  Video processing is power hungry.

I'm not sure what you mean by this...?

If you mean when I said "editing" you took that as video processing when sure - video power is a thing. But most people I talk to edit photos and stuff and like a nice big beautiful picture. Not so much video - moreso monitor.

[saevel25]

3 hours ago, Braivo said:

Has anyone built their own PC? 

Yes. I used this website for most of my parts.

http://www.newegg.com

This is a good website that lists CPU's and Graphics cards. 

http://www.tomshardware.com

 

3 hours ago, Braivo said:

I am finding most of the high-end desktops are geared for gaming and I'd be paying for a lot of graphics add-ons that I don't really need. I used to build my own computers about 15 years ago, but a lot has changed since then. I am going to give it a try again, ordering some parts on newegg and go from there. I have a lot of decisions to make like Windows vs Linux, etc. 

Most non-gaming applications don't require high end power. Unless you are getting into video editing, CADD, or gaming then building a high end desktop is not worth the money. Though you can build a pretty fast computer for a smaller amount of money. You can easily switch out that $350 video card for a $75 video card and use the rest for memory and a processor upgrade. 

Windows 10 is one of the better Windows OS I a while. I always wanted to take e a crack at Linux. 

 

[CarlSpackler]

28 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

Yes. I used this website for most of my parts.

http://www.newegg.com

This is a good website that lists CPU's and Graphics cards. 

http://www.tomshardware.com

 

Most non-gaming applications don't require high end power. Unless you are getting into video editing, CADD, or gaming then building a high end desktop is not worth the money. Though you can build a pretty fast computer for a smaller amount of money. You can easily switch out that $350 video card for a $75 video card and use the rest for memory and a processor upgrade. 

Windows 10 is one of the better Windows OS I a while. I always wanted to take e a crack at Linux. 

 

Ubuntu is a decent distro to cut your teeth on if you want to experiment with Linux. 

Side note, 5 o'Clock computers in Beavercreek is a decent local place for parts you should check out.

[saevel25]

1 minute ago, CarlSpackler said:

Ubuntu is a decent distro to cut your teeth on if you want to experiment with Linux. 

Side note, 5 o'Clock computers in Beavercreek is a decent local place for parts you should check out.

Too bad I live in Akron now 

[CarlSpackler]

51 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

Too bad I live in Akron now 

Wow! Missed that! You went the wrong direction. 

[Lihu]

3 hours ago, jkelley9 said:

I'm in the same boat. I built my first PC when I was 12 years old, built 3 or 4 (my own personal PC's) of them before finishing high school. Built 2 or 3 in college, and now I built probably 1 to 2 per year since graduating and having a big boy job (~5+ years) as a hobby. All for different applications though: gaming, programming, web server, home server with a 4x 3TB in RAID5, and now I'm working on a camera server home-built DVR running 8x cameras at varying (calculated) resolutions and FPS. 

But I've never found it to be necessary to go into as much detail as people let on unless you have a daily, very high usage of a particular task. For example: MATLAB coding with multivariable iteration hammering on a processor will pay off for an optimized system with a powerhouse CPU. You're buying straight time there. Also the cooling that goes with that, and doing your own OC'ing, praying you got a "good chip" from the factory. But photo editing and stuff? It's so not needed. For God's sake they sell 64GB ram kits in "gaming" PC's nowadays! I can promise you that 99%+ of people only need 8GB even with 87 chrome tabs open!

The toughest PC I had to build was for a NAS, running FreeNAS. Keeping drives alive. That needed major full-hardware precise selections. That was a fun project.

True, find a store with a policy where you can exchange them. They might get tired of seeing your face, though.

I heard that 5.7GHz was possible with the core I selected, but I could never get reliable operation beyond 5.6GHz and only if the temperature doesn't creep up. I have them in an auto configure more to let the BIOS "find" the highest rate any given boot up. So, most of the time I probably don't see much beyond 5.2 GHz even with the Peltier cooler.

Some guys use LN2 to get operation to >8GHz operation. Crazy stuff, I wouldn't do outside of school. https://hwbot.org/benchmark/cpu_frequency/halloffame

Guessing if you move a lot of data even large SSD will die? Either way, it sounds expensive. Hot swap-able drives seem like the best solution?

 

3 hours ago, jkelley9 said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this...?

If you mean when I said "editing" you took that as video processing when sure - video power is a thing. But most people I talk to edit photos and stuff and like a nice big beautiful picture. Not so much video - moreso monitor.

Yeah, 4K video compression takes forever even on a hyped up machine.

[nevets88]

1 hour ago, saevel25 said:

Yes. I used this website for most of my parts.

http://www.newegg.com

This is a good website that lists CPU's and Graphics cards. 

http://www.tomshardware.com

 

Most non-gaming applications don't require high end power. Unless you are getting into video editing, CADD, or gaming then building a high end desktop is not worth the money. Though you can build a pretty fast computer for a smaller amount of money. You can easily switch out that $350 video card for a $75 video card and use the rest for memory and a processor upgrade. 

Windows 10 is one of the better Windows OS I a while. I always wanted to take e a crack at Linux. 

 

Dual boot? 

[Lihu]

6 minutes ago, nevets88 said:

Dual boot? 

Or perhaps a VM at first and use something like VMware? Then he doesn't have to hassle with the prompt every time he wants to use Windows.

[jkelley9]

VM is the way to go if you want to dabble in alternate OS's. They work great now. I believe there are some strengths to those systems that you can get from specific mobo's but not sure of the details on that one. I was going to consider it for my DVR security camera server project but since I like to build PCs.... I decided to just build a standalone 

[nevets88]

34 minutes ago, jkelley9 said:

VM is the way to go if you want to dabble in alternate OS's. They work great now. I believe there are some strengths to those systems that you can get from specific mobo's but not sure of the details on that one. I was going to consider it for my DVR security camera server project but since I like to build PCs.... I decided to just build a standalone 

In the context of a for fun build, VMware is expensive for most, or maybe you can get it from work. Not a fan of free VMs like VirtualBox having used VMware, the golf, doh, gold, standard. Dual boot is more work, but you learn more getting it done and it's more "clean" in terms of having nothing between the OS and the hardware. I'm dual booting W10 and Ubuntu and the install wasn't that bad other than a couple of tweaks to the UEFI. You get use to the extra steps toggling OSes.