Building My Own PC

[Lihu]

  On 1/10/2017 at 3:45 PM, nevets88 said:

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. 

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The free player version (non-commercial use) works fine with Linux (Ubuntu especially). You can use Cygwin for command line Linux. Windows already has a VM for older versions of Windows.

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/playerpro-evaluation.html

Not a fan of this one, but I need to use it as well. . .

https://www.virtualbox.org/

I agree that if you need the native drivers, dual boot is the way to go. Usually, people don't need native drivers though. . .

[ZappyAd]

I've built my last 3 or 4 PCs for work (3D, photoshop, video editing and programming).  It is pretty straightforward - there is a good magazine in the U.K. called CustomPC that keeps a list of top components and a few component suppliers (scan.co.uk) where you can get all the bits.  It is a bit nerve wracking fitting a $300-600 chip into a motherboard without bending the pins or frying the innards with static but so far have had no problems.  It's useful to get a motherboard that will post an error code on a digital display as that really helps diagnosing issues.  The whole process is good in that it demystifies what's going on inside the box and makes it easier to add in drives and ram etc down the line.

For my next PC though I think I will get it built by a custom build company (scan as mentioned above).  Their price is almost the same as buying and building yourself but without the stress.  Plus they match components so everything is compatible and they know how far configurations can be overclocked.  Plus they give a pretty good guarantee.  It is one of those things that doing it a couple of times is useful but after that you don't learn much new.

[Lihu]

  On 1/10/2017 at 6:32 PM, ZappyAd said:

I've built my last 3 or 4 PCs for work (3D, photoshop, video editing and programming).  It is pretty straightforward - there is a good magazine in the U.K. called CustomPC that keeps a list of top components and a few component suppliers (scan.co.uk) where you can get all the bits.  It is a bit nerve wracking fitting a $300-600 chip into a motherboard without bending the pins or frying the innards with static but so far have had no problems.  It's useful to get a motherboard that will post an error code on a digital display as that really helps diagnosing issues.  The whole process is good in that it demystifies what's going on inside the box and makes it easier to add in drives and ram etc down the line.

For my next PC though I think I will get it built by a custom build company (scan as mentioned above).  Their price is almost the same as buying and building yourself but without the stress.  Plus they match components so everything is compatible and they know how far configurations can be overclocked.  Plus they give a pretty good guarantee.  It is one of those things that doing it a couple of times is useful but after that you don't learn much new.

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Yeah, it's a sea of tiny pins on the sockets, but I figure the sockets on the motherboards can be replaced more readily than a ruined pad on the chips.

Other than that part, it's pretty straightforward. The cooling systems are pretty easy to install nowadays. . .

[Pretzel]

  On 1/9/2017 at 5:01 PM, 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. 

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I built my computer about five and a half years ago (summer of 2011), and just recently upgraded my graphics card to a GTX 1070 after my trusty old 7950's cooling fan broke. I've listed my general advice for the higher end components below within a reasonable budget (and putting a lesser GPU in since you won't need a big one unless you're gaming).

If you don't care about gaming, you won't need a GTX 1070 however, but the top of the line CPU these days in the Intel i7 7700k (all the parts names will be links to their Newegg product pages, by the way). This is the latest i7 from Intel with it's hyperthreading and an unlocked clock multiplier, meaning you can overclock it at will. I haven't read up on the overclocking properties of Kaby Lake, but you can usually expect at least a moderate performance gain of .2-.3 MHz from a majority of chips if you have a decent cooling fan. The best fan on the market is the Noctua NH-D15, but as this is expensive the best "bang for your buck" CPU cooler would have to be the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo. I personally use the Hyper 212 Evo in my build, and I've been able to overclock my i5 2500k for the last five and a half years to 4.7 GHz (stock clock is 3.3 GHz on that particular model) with temperatures in the fairly cool range of ~30-35* on idle and 50-55* under load.

In terms of motherboards, the "bang for your buck" brand tends to be ASRock, though I wouldn't call them low quality. I have their LGA 1155 Pro3 motherboard in my computer and it's worked flawlessly through the years. Motherboards are a component where you don't have to go too expensive to find what you need, so long as it supports fairly high clock speeds for RAM and has 6 Gb/s SATA connections you ought to be good to go. I don't have any particular recommendations for this component. You can check out motherboards for the i7 7700k on Newegg here.

For your RAM, you're going to want it to be relatively fast RAM and I would recommend at least 16 GB. Make sure to get DDR4 RAM with a clock of at least 2400, with faster being better. This G.SKILL Tridentz fulfills all those requirements and would be a solid choice.

For a graphics card, you won't want to use an integrated GPU just because that can seriously limit you in the programs you use. That said, you don't need a top of the line gaming card. An EVGA GTX 1050 Ti will give you all the power you could need, and EVGA is a company with a reputation for fantastic customer support should you ever have issues with the card in the future. 

For your hard drive, I cannot recommend a solid state drive enough. The Samsung 850 Evo is widely regarded as the highest quality SSD for consumer use, and 500GB can be had for under $200 now (compared to the $200 I paid for 128!). If you think you'll need any more storage than that, you can always purchase a 2 TB Seagate Hybrid Drive that combines a small SSD with a larger HDD to give you large storage size with faster loading programs than a standard HDD.

For a case, you can really go with whatever looks best for you. I recommend you browse Newegg for cases that you like the look and price of.

You'll also need a power supply. Whatever you do, get one that is modular, it makes cable management easy. The EVGA SuperNOVA is a solid 750W PSU which is fully modular, will provide plenty of power (even if you decide to upgrade to better graphics capabilities in the future), and will give you the same stellar customer support as for their graphics cards.

Finally, if you desire you can get yourself a CD/DVD drive to have for your computer, though I think I've only used the one in my computer three times throughout the time that I've owned it. Different optical drives can also be found on Newegg.

There are also excellent videos, such as the one I included below, that provide you with step by step details on how to assemble everything once you've put it together. I was intimidated by the process at first, but I found that it is essentially LEGO's with power cables once it actually came time to build it myself. It's nothing to be afraid of, and the monetary savings for building it yourself are fantastic.

 

In terms of Linux versus Windows, why not both! A dual boot of Linux Mint and Windows 10 is what I have on both my desktop and laptop computer, and it is really easy to do if you look up a video on how to partition a hard drive. Linux Mint installs itself with Grub Loader, which just means that every time you turn on your computer you'll have a short menu (it stays on the screen for about 5 seconds) that lets you choose which OS you'd like to boot into. Linux Mint is similar to Windows, making it easy to navigate and learn on for someone who is familiar with Windows and not Linux.

  On 1/9/2017 at 5:27 PM, jkelley9 said:

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.

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You don't need a liquid cooled PC for either of those things. My PC runs Solidworks, AutoCAD, MATLAB, Mathematica, and Dip Trace just fine on air. My MATLAB calculations might finish in a quarter of a second less time if I had a liquid cooled PC with a bigger overclock, but I'm patient enough that I'll wait the extra quarter second over dealing with the insane hassle that is water cooling. @Lihu , I'm not sure I want to know what you're doing with MATLAB to require such a build, because I've done some pretty nasty differential equations and matrices without having to wait any longer than 10-30 seconds for results.

I highly recommend to the OP to steer far clear of water cooling solutions. Depending on the radiator you purchase, you can often times end up with a cooling system that is more expensive, more prone to breaking, and LESS effective than an air cooler simply because you still have to get the heat out of the water once you get the heat out of the chip. The Noctua NH-D15 is a plenty capable air cooler that surpasses the performance of most budget friendly water cooling rigs without any of the hassle of water cooling.

[jkelley9]

  On 1/11/2017 at 6:16 AM, Pretzel said:

I built my computer about five and a half years ago (summer of 2011), and just recently upgraded my graphics card to a GTX 1070 after my trusty old 7950's cooling fan broke. I've listed my general advice for the higher end components below within a reasonable budget (and putting a lesser GPU in since you won't need a big one unless you're gaming).

If you don't care about gaming, you won't need a GTX 1070 however, but the top of the line CPU these days in the Intel i7 7700k (all the parts names will be links to their Newegg product pages, by the way). This is the latest i7 from Intel with it's hyperthreading and an unlocked clock multiplier, meaning you can overclock it at will. I haven't read up on the overclocking properties of Kaby Lake, but you can usually expect at least a moderate performance gain of .2-.3 MHz from a majority of chips if you have a decent cooling fan. The best fan on the market is the Noctua NH-D15, but as this is expensive the best "bang for your buck" CPU cooler would have to be the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo. I personally use the Hyper 212 Evo in my build, and I've been able to overclock my i5 2500k for the last five and a half years to 4.7 GHz (stock clock is 3.3 GHz on that particular model) with temperatures in the fairly cool range of ~30-35* on idle and 50-55* under load.

In terms of motherboards, the "bang for your buck" brand tends to be ASRock, though I wouldn't call them low quality. I have their LGA 1155 Pro3 motherboard in my computer and it's worked flawlessly through the years. Motherboards are a component where you don't have to go too expensive to find what you need, so long as it supports fairly high clock speeds for RAM and has 6 Gb/s SATA connections you ought to be good to go. I don't have any particular recommendations for this component. You can check out motherboards for the i7 7700k on Newegg here.

For your RAM, you're going to want it to be relatively fast RAM and I would recommend at least 16 GB. Make sure to get DDR4 RAM with a clock of at least 2400, with faster being better. This G.SKILL Tridentz fulfills all those requirements and would be a solid choice.

For a graphics card, you won't want to use an integrated GPU just because that can seriously limit you in the programs you use. That said, you don't need a top of the line gaming card. An EVGA GTX 1050 Ti will give you all the power you could need, and EVGA is a company with a reputation for fantastic customer support should you ever have issues with the card in the future. 

For your hard drive, I cannot recommend a solid state drive enough. The Samsung 850 Evo is widely regarded as the highest quality SSD for consumer use, and 500GB can be had for under $200 now (compared to the $200 I paid for 128!). If you think you'll need any more storage than that, you can always purchase a 2 TB Seagate Hybrid Drive that combines a small SSD with a larger HDD to give you large storage size with faster loading programs than a standard HDD.

For a case, you can really go with whatever looks best for you. I recommend you browse Newegg for cases that you like the look and price of.

You'll also need a power supply. Whatever you do, get one that is modular, it makes cable management easy. The EVGA SuperNOVA is a solid 750W PSU which is fully modular, will provide plenty of power (even if you decide to upgrade to better graphics capabilities in the future), and will give you the same stellar customer support as for their graphics cards.

Finally, if you desire you can get yourself a CD/DVD drive to have for your computer, though I think I've only used the one in my computer three times throughout the time that I've owned it. Different optical drives can also be found on Newegg.

There are also excellent videos, such as the one I included below, that provide you with step by step details on how to assemble everything once you've put it together. I was intimidated by the process at first, but I found that it is essentially LEGO's with power cables once it actually came time to build it myself. It's nothing to be afraid of, and the monetary savings for building it yourself are fantastic.

 

In terms of Linux versus Windows, why not both! A dual boot of Linux Mint and Windows 10 is what I have on both my desktop and laptop computer, and it is really easy to do if you look up a video on how to partition a hard drive. Linux Mint installs itself with Grub Loader, which just means that every time you turn on your computer you'll have a short menu (it stays on the screen for about 5 seconds) that lets you choose which OS you'd like to boot into. Linux Mint is similar to Windows, making it easy to navigate and learn on for someone who is familiar with Windows and not Linux.

You don't need a liquid cooled PC for either of those things. My PC runs Solidworks, AutoCAD, MATLAB, Mathematica, and Dip Trace just fine on air. My MATLAB calculations might finish in a quarter of a second less time if I had a liquid cooled PC with a bigger overclock, but I'm patient enough that I'll wait the extra quarter second over dealing with the insane hassle that is water cooling. @Lihu , I'm not sure I want to know what you're doing with MATLAB to require such a build, because I've done some pretty nasty differential equations and matrices without having to wait any longer than 10-30 seconds for results.

I highly recommend to the OP to steer far clear of water cooling solutions. Depending on the radiator you purchase, you can often times end up with a cooling system that is more expensive, more prone to breaking, and LESS effective than an air cooler simply because you still have to get the heat out of the water once you get the heat out of the chip. The Noctua NH-D15 is a plenty capable air cooler that surpasses the performance of most budget friendly water cooling rigs without any of the hassle of water cooling.

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Liquid cooling is only a change in heat removal from the processor, allowing you (often) to break into higher clock speeds when OC'ing. Oc'ing a processor for calculations such as MATLAB compilations are much more linear than most things (of course there's tons of variables there, threads, single versus multi-thread ability, and even chip architecture, but it's "more" linear). It's like running a 5k @ 6 mph versus 7 mph. You'll finish in less time. The liquid cooling aspect of that only changes if you up the clock to a point that is stable and beyond what an air cooler can do. Otherwise it has no effect. But my point is that if you're running things like compilations in MATLAB or iterative/looping logic any clock speed you gain CAN drop your time.

This was obvious when I was in school; If I ran my MATLAB labs on the school PC, the same program that I ran on my personal PC would take 5 minutes to run versus 3 minutes. Although I also had program that took hours  Multi-component distillation optimizations in both MATLAB and Apsen HYSYS, Aspen Plus, etc.  

[saevel25]

  On 1/11/2017 at 6:16 AM, Pretzel said:

I highly recommend to the OP to steer far clear of water cooling solutions. Depending on the radiator you purchase, you can often times end up with a cooling system that is more expensive, more prone to breaking, and LESS effective than an air cooler simply because you still have to get the heat out of the water once you get the heat out of the chip. The Noctua NH-D15 is a plenty capable air cooler that surpasses the performance of most budget friendly water cooling rigs without any of the hassle of water cooling.

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If someone is looking for better cooling that a fan, I've heard good things about these. 

http://www.corsair.com/en-us/cooling

 

[Braivo]

  On 1/9/2017 at 5:06 PM, 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.

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I should specify, my son may use this PC for gaming at some point, but that is not the primary purpose right now. I would like to edit video for posting to youtube, etc. At the moment my primary goal is sound editing for podcasts. 

I am interested in building my own for a few reasons:

1. I can upgrade components as my needs change rather than buy a new PC (if my son gets heavy into gaming or I get deep into video editing)

2. It's fun to build one (main reason, tbh)

3. I like to know how things work, I'm a knowledge junkie. 

  On 1/9/2017 at 5:21 PM, 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.

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I am going to spend the next hour on Google to understand all of this, but then I'll be an expert. 

  On 1/9/2017 at 5:23 PM, 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.

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Sound and image editing are my primary needs right now, video down the road. 

  On 1/9/2017 at 5:24 PM, mdl said:

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!

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I most certainly will, the knowledge here is vast. 

  On 1/9/2017 at 8:19 PM, 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. 

 

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Thanks. I might start building a shopping cart full in NewEgg soon. 

  On 1/11/2017 at 6:16 AM, Pretzel said:

I built my computer about five and a half years ago (summer of 2011), and just recently upgraded my graphics card to a GTX 1070 after my trusty old 7950's cooling fan broke. I've listed my general advice for the higher end components below within a reasonable budget (and putting a lesser GPU in since you won't need a big one unless you're gaming).

If you don't care about gaming, you won't need a GTX 1070 however, but the top of the line CPU these days in the Intel i7 7700k (all the parts names will be links to their Newegg product pages, by the way). This is the latest i7 from Intel with it's hyperthreading and an unlocked clock multiplier, meaning you can overclock it at will. I haven't read up on the overclocking properties of Kaby Lake, but you can usually expect at least a moderate performance gain of .2-.3 MHz from a majority of chips if you have a decent cooling fan. The best fan on the market is the Noctua NH-D15, but as this is expensive the best "bang for your buck" CPU cooler would have to be the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo. I personally use the Hyper 212 Evo in my build, and I've been able to overclock my i5 2500k for the last five and a half years to 4.7 GHz (stock clock is 3.3 GHz on that particular model) with temperatures in the fairly cool range of ~30-35* on idle and 50-55* under load.

In terms of motherboards, the "bang for your buck" brand tends to be ASRock, though I wouldn't call them low quality. I have their LGA 1155 Pro3 motherboard in my computer and it's worked flawlessly through the years. Motherboards are a component where you don't have to go too expensive to find what you need, so long as it supports fairly high clock speeds for RAM and has 6 Gb/s SATA connections you ought to be good to go. I don't have any particular recommendations for this component. You can check out motherboards for the i7 7700k on Newegg here.

For your RAM, you're going to want it to be relatively fast RAM and I would recommend at least 16 GB. Make sure to get DDR4 RAM with a clock of at least 2400, with faster being better. This G.SKILL Tridentz fulfills all those requirements and would be a solid choice.

For a graphics card, you won't want to use an integrated GPU just because that can seriously limit you in the programs you use. That said, you don't need a top of the line gaming card. An EVGA GTX 1050 Ti will give you all the power you could need, and EVGA is a company with a reputation for fantastic customer support should you ever have issues with the card in the future. 

For your hard drive, I cannot recommend a solid state drive enough. The Samsung 850 Evo is widely regarded as the highest quality SSD for consumer use, and 500GB can be had for under $200 now (compared to the $200 I paid for 128!). If you think you'll need any more storage than that, you can always purchase a 2 TB Seagate Hybrid Drive that combines a small SSD with a larger HDD to give you large storage size with faster loading programs than a standard HDD.

For a case, you can really go with whatever looks best for you. I recommend you browse Newegg for cases that you like the look and price of.

You'll also need a power supply. Whatever you do, get one that is modular, it makes cable management easy. The EVGA SuperNOVA is a solid 750W PSU which is fully modular, will provide plenty of power (even if you decide to upgrade to better graphics capabilities in the future), and will give you the same stellar customer support as for their graphics cards.

Finally, if you desire you can get yourself a CD/DVD drive to have for your computer, though I think I've only used the one in my computer three times throughout the time that I've owned it. Different optical drives can also be found on Newegg.

There are also excellent videos, such as the one I included below, that provide you with step by step details on how to assemble everything once you've put it together. I was intimidated by the process at first, but I found that it is essentially LEGO's with power cables once it actually came time to build it myself. It's nothing to be afraid of, and the monetary savings for building it yourself are fantastic.

 

In terms of Linux versus Windows, why not both! A dual boot of Linux Mint and Windows 10 is what I have on both my desktop and laptop computer, and it is really easy to do if you look up a video on how to partition a hard drive. Linux Mint installs itself with Grub Loader, which just means that every time you turn on your computer you'll have a short menu (it stays on the screen for about 5 seconds) that lets you choose which OS you'd like to boot into. Linux Mint is similar to Windows, making it easy to navigate and learn on for someone who is familiar with Windows and not Linux.

You don't need a liquid cooled PC for either of those things. My PC runs Solidworks, AutoCAD, MATLAB, Mathematica, and Dip Trace just fine on air. My MATLAB calculations might finish in a quarter of a second less time if I had a liquid cooled PC with a bigger overclock, but I'm patient enough that I'll wait the extra quarter second over dealing with the insane hassle that is water cooling. @Lihu , I'm not sure I want to know what you're doing with MATLAB to require such a build, because I've done some pretty nasty differential equations and matrices without having to wait any longer than 10-30 seconds for results.

I highly recommend to the OP to steer far clear of water cooling solutions. Depending on the radiator you purchase, you can often times end up with a cooling system that is more expensive, more prone to breaking, and LESS effective than an air cooler simply because you still have to get the heat out of the water once you get the heat out of the chip. The Noctua NH-D15 is a plenty capable air cooler that surpasses the performance of most budget friendly water cooling rigs without any of the hassle of water cooling.

Expand  

Thanks for this, I have it screencapped as my shopping list. I do like the idea of SSD and most store bought PCs with a good SSD are very high end. I want to keep things somewhat simple since it is my first build in 15 years, but man am I looking forward to it. 

[Jeremie Boop]

  On 1/11/2017 at 2:01 PM, Braivo said:

I should specify, my son may use this PC for gaming at some point, but that is not the primary purpose right now. I would like to edit video for posting to youtube, etc. At the moment my primary goal is sound editing for podcasts. 

I am interested in building my own for a few reasons:

1. I can upgrade components as my needs change rather than buy a new PC (if my son gets heavy into gaming or I get deep into video editing)

2. It's fun to build one (main reason, tbh)

3. I like to know how things work, I'm a knowledge junkie. 

I am going to spend the next hour on Google to understand all of this, but then I'll be an expert. 

Sound and image editing are my primary needs right now, video down the road. 

I most certainly will, the knowledge here is vast. 

Thanks. I might start building a shopping cart full in NewEgg soon. 

Thanks for this, I have it screencapped as my shopping list. I do like the idea of SSD and most store bought PCs with a good SSD are very high end. I want to keep things somewhat simple since it is my first build in 15 years, but man am I looking forward to it. 

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The 3 main components you want to focus on if you want to make sure you have maximum flexibility in the future are Motherboard, Case, and Power supply. Once you have those 3 core items future proofed swapping components when you need to will be a breeze.

[Lihu]

  On 1/11/2017 at 6:16 AM, Pretzel said:

 @Lihu , I'm not sure I want to know what you're doing with MATLAB to require such a build, because I've done some pretty nasty differential equations and matrices without having to wait any longer than 10-30 seconds for results.

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Image processing (feature extraction and iterating morphology), medium density FPGA (verilog simulation using ModelSim/matlab and about 8000 lines at a time). . .

I suppose I could do things in C++ with parallel processing libraries, but that would take way more of my time than just using the toolboxes.

[ZappyAd]

  On 1/11/2017 at 2:07 PM, Jeremie Boop said:

The 3 main components you want to focus on if you want to make sure you have maximum flexibility in the future are Motherboard, Case, and Power supply. Once you have those 3 core items future proofed swapping components when you need to will be a breeze.

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At the moment it seems like motherboards are out of date with almost every iteration of Intel's chip updates.  Either they change the socket shape or the memory configuration or the connections for storage or USB.

  On 1/11/2017 at 2:01 PM, Braivo said:

At the moment my primary goal is sound editing for podcasts. 

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I would suggest a dedicated sound card is probably worth looking at along with good monitor speakers and maybe even a USB audio interface depending on what kind of mic you are going to use.  Being able to play back your recordings on good speakers is worth a lot as it helps you hear things that you otherwise wouldn't.  If audio is your focus then paying more for good recording and playback components is going to give you more value than spending on processor power.  Scan have a section on their website for pro-audio with some example systems.  They might be in a different country but it is still useful to compare configurations of example configurations:

https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/pro-audio

[Jeremie Boop]

  On 1/11/2017 at 4:25 PM, ZappyAd said:

At the moment it seems like motherboards are out of date with almost every iteration of Intel's chip updates.  Either they change the socket shape or the memory configuration or the connections for storage or USB.

I would suggest a dedicated sound card is probably worth looking at along with good monitor speakers and maybe even a USB audio interface depending on what kind of mic you are going to use.  Being able to play back your recordings on good speakers is worth a lot as it helps you hear things that you otherwise wouldn't.  If audio is your focus then paying more for good recording and playback components is going to give you more value than spending on processor power.  Scan have a section on their website for pro-audio with some example systems.  They might be in a different country but it is still useful to compare configurations of example configurations:

https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/pro-audio

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If you get a good, top end processor, you shouldn't have to upgrade it for a long while. Even with changes in memory configuration, you'll see very little difference from one generation to the next in performance and you'll still be able to purchase more memory to add to the system. I wasn't aware that the storage connections have changed significantly, however it has been awhile since I looked at upgrading my storage.

[Pretzel]

  On 1/11/2017 at 1:53 PM, jkelley9 said:

Liquid cooling is only a change in heat removal from the processor, allowing you (often) to break into higher clock speeds when OC'ing. Oc'ing a processor for calculations such as MATLAB compilations are much more linear than most things (of course there's tons of variables there, threads, single versus multi-thread ability, and even chip architecture, but it's "more" linear). It's like running a 5k @ 6 mph versus 7 mph. You'll finish in less time. The liquid cooling aspect of that only changes if you up the clock to a point that is stable and beyond what an air cooler can do. Otherwise it has no effect. But my point is that if you're running things like compilations in MATLAB or iterative/looping logic any clock speed you gain CAN drop your time.

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That's true, for my use case my MATLAB code runs pretty quickly already, so it would be negligible. For @Lihu's uses I can definitely understand why he's squeezing everything he can out of it. 

My main point is that, for a majority of things, it wouldn't make much sense for someone new to building a PC to look into liquid cooling. Especially now that we know @Braivo intends to use their PC mostly for sound, image, and video editing, a liquid cooled rig would be more hassle and expense than it is worth. Like I mentioned (and you did as well), liquid cooling is only a different method of reducing heat and, importantly, is not always better than air cooling. If you go for a cheap liquid cooled setup it will cost you a similar amount as an expensive air cooled setup, and in a number of cases that air cooled setup may be a more effective solution if you don't have a good radiator for the liquid cooler. Good liquid cooling costs quite a bit, hence my aversion to it unless it is necessary. 

For audio editing, I too would recommend a dedicated sound card. The sound integrated into your motherboard would technically be sufficient, but if you're really listening and trying to make it top notch (specifically with things such as bass/mid/treble balances in any music you may have during the podcast) a sound card is the way to go. They can range from inexpensive to fairly expensive, so unless you plan on mixing full songs from a studio recording you can probably stick to something reasonably priced rather than feeling pressured to go straight to the top of the line gear.

If you have any questions or want to have a more in-depth conversation on anything, @Braivo , feel free to shoot me a PM and I can give you my phone number.

[Braivo]

Update: The PC I built based on the recs here is still going strong! It's blazing fast. Other than adding another SSD I have had to make zero modifications. My son has recently got into gaming and this is the perfect PC for him. I am thinking about building another one for myself as he is beginning to monopolize this one. How much has changed in 2.5 years? I wonder what kind of system I could build now?

[shakogolfer78]

I just built my first rig in January.  With AMDs new line of processors and graphics cards there are a lot of good options for the low to mid tier PC as AMD is now on par and in some cases way ahead of Intel in areas (mainly price and multi core performance).

Here is what I went with for my build.  I have a cousin at Corsair so luckily I got all the corsair stuff just above cost.  This thing has been a beast so far and I can play all my games on high settings with 100+ FPS

System Builder - Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core, GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB VENTUS OC, Crystal Series 680X RGB ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker

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