Building a PC for the first time

[XJDenton]

As long as the speed of light remains constant, this kind of approach will have limited applicability to scenarios where latency is important (like gaming).

[Chino]

Planet Coaster is $30 off for the next four days... bitchin'\

Edit: Just played the first scenario with all the settings on their highest options and didn't experience any hangups of any kind. I am pleased.

[The Walrus]

Glad you're enjoying it, Chino. The last rig I built, I was so in love with it that I had a custom jacket made for it. I keep it on the tower when it's not in use and it still looks as clean as the day I built it 4 years ago.

[ReaperKK]

Planet Coaster is $30 off for the next four days... bitchin'\

Edit: Just played the first scenario with all the settings on their highest options and didn't experience any hangups of any kind. I am pleased.

Awesome! Make make sure you download the geforce experience app if you haven't already for game profiles, also make sure you enable your monitor to 144hz if your monitor supports it.

[El Barto]

Planet Coaster is $30 off for the next four days... bitchin'\

Edit: Just played the first scenario with all the settings on their highest options and didn't experience any hangups of any kind. I am pleased.

Awesome! Make make sure you download the geforce experience app if you haven't already for game profiles, also make sure you enable your monitor to 144hz if your monitor supports it.

I just looked into that. Something that creates custom profiles for specific games would be pretty useful. I can figure out my own game settings, but something that optimizes a game for a specific card would be nice. However, things that "keep my drivers up to date" are not allowed in my household, and that's the first thing it claims.

[The Walrus]

Planet Coaster is $30 off for the next four days... bitchin'\

Edit: Just played the first scenario with all the settings on their highest options and didn't experience any hangups of any kind. I am pleased.

Awesome! Make make sure you download the geforce experience app if you haven't already for game profiles, also make sure you enable your monitor to 144hz if your monitor supports it.

I just looked into that. Something that creates custom profiles for specific games would be pretty useful. I can figure out my own game settings, but something that optimizes a game for a specific card would be nice. However, things that "keep my drivers up to date" are not allowed in my household, and that's the first thing it claims.

I've used it for 4 years and have never had a single problem with it. I totally get the apprehension with the drivers thing, I was in that same boat, but honestly? It's been a godsend. I love it.

[cramx3]

Planet Coaster is $30 off for the next four days... bitchin'\

Edit: Just played the first scenario with all the settings on their highest options and didn't experience any hangups of any kind. I am pleased.

Awesome! Make make sure you download the geforce experience app if you haven't already for game profiles, also make sure you enable your monitor to 144hz if your monitor supports it.

I just looked into that. Something that creates custom profiles for specific games would be pretty useful. I can figure out my own game settings, but something that optimizes a game for a specific card would be nice. However, things that "keep my drivers up to date" are not allowed in my household, and that's the first thing it claims.

I've used it for 4 years and have never had a single problem with it. I totally get the apprehension with the drivers thing, I was in that same boat, but honestly? It's been a godsend. I love it.

It just makes it easy to do the driver updates, doesn't force you to install them.  It's a nice tool to have.  I get the alerts but typically wait a bit unless a game I am playing needs the latest.  I just don't like being the tester for the new drivers.

[jasc15]

 ..

[Chino]

Getting the new setup finalized. I have to replace this keyboard ASAP though. Not only does it not illuminate  , but it's a bitch to type on. I don't know what it is, but my hands really hate it. I regularly switch between keyboards at work and at home, but my fingers just won't adapt to this one.

[El Barto]

I don't know what it is, but my hands really hate it. I regularly switch between keyboards at work and at home, but my fingers just won't adapt to this one.

Yeah, I have the same problem with the cheapo I recently bought. Despite the fact that the keys suck terribly, I can actually type faster than it can transmit. I don't care about illumination, but typability is something we take for granted.

I dig the astronaut in there.

[cramx3]

I have the razer blackwidow chroma keyboard, I like it a lot and has all the fancy lights.  I also like my razer death addr mouse, also has LEDs on it.  I like blue so my rid has lots of blue lights on it.

[Samsara]

I last built a computer in...1995. Needless to say, I still have the scars on my hands. 

For its time though, that thing was a BEAST.

[cramx3]

I last built a computer in...1995. Needless to say, I still have the scars on my hands. 

For its time though, that thing was a BEAST.

I fix servers for a living, I have a saying if you aren't bleeding you aren't working.  I get little nicks on my hands and fingers all the time working on computers 

[BlobVanDam]

I don't know what it is, but my hands really hate it. I regularly switch between keyboards at work and at home, but my fingers just won't adapt to this one.

Yeah, I have the same problem with the cheapo I recently bought. Despite the fact that the keys suck terribly, I can actually type faster than it can transmit. I don't care about illumination, but typability is something we take for granted.

I dig the astronaut in there.

I spent over $350 on my current keyboard because the cheapos feel like sludge. Until then I was still using an old keyboard from 1995 that required a special plug just to use in the ps2 port.
Here's the old and new side by side. No fancy bullshit lights or media keys, just a clean mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX brown switches, and I separately bought the keycaps because I really wanted the classic two tone look, not just because it's oldschool, but I just find it more visible overall. Also they're dye-sub PBT, so they'll last forever without wearing off. They cost me about $120 on their own. I also got dampeners for the keys so it doesn't drive my family quite as mad with the noise.

[ReaperKK]

I don't think I've ever seen a picture of your keyboard Blob, that's fine looking keyboard

[BlobVanDam]

Oh I never showed you? Damn!

[cramx3]

If you did, I don't remember seeing it either, really cool and old school 

Well here's my setup this morning, about to jump into some gaming:

[BlobVanDam]

Aw yeah dual monitors!

Here's my scrappy setup.

[cramx3]

noice, what kind of monitor is that?  is that like a cover over it or something?

[BlobVanDam]

noice, what kind of monitor is that?  is that like a cover over it or something?

Yeah, it's called a monitor hood. Here's a better view of what they look like.


It's to help block out light and reflections from affecting the colours, useful for graphics work. That's a $1600 pro graphics monitor (and that's only the 24" 1920x1200 model), so I want it to look its best!
The second monitor on the other hand was just a cheap-ass thing that cost $130, and it's a surprisingly great monitor for the price. Wish I could fit more monitors, because I'd totally buy another one.

[El Barto]

I don't know what it is, but my hands really hate it. I regularly switch between keyboards at work and at home, but my fingers just won't adapt to this one.

Yeah, I have the same problem with the cheapo I recently bought. Despite the fact that the keys suck terribly, I can actually type faster than it can transmit. I don't care about illumination, but typability is something we take for granted.

I dig the astronaut in there.

I spent over $350 on my current keyboard because the cheapos feel like sludge. Until then I was still using an old keyboard from 1995 that required a special plug just to use in the ps2 port.
Here's the old and new side by side. No fancy bullshit lights or media keys, just a clean mechanical keyboard with Cherry MX brown switches, and I separately bought the keycaps because I really wanted the classic two tone look, not just because it's oldschool, but I just find it more visible overall. Also they're dye-sub PBT, so they'll last forever without wearing off. They cost me about $120 on their own. I also got dampeners for the keys so it doesn't drive my family quite as mad with the noise.

The venerable model M keyboard. I think they used a 6-pin plug of some sort. The nice thing about them is that if anybody ever home-invades your house it can double as a weapon.

I never thought about the personal preference aspect, but everybody keeps their second monitor on the left. I prefer mine on the right. I've got a mount so that it stays as close to and as centered as possible to the primary so it's effectively just an extension of the desktop. I also use an old 4x3 as my secondary, just because that's what I got used to. Since I watch so many old TV shows and movies it's actually cool to have a monitor they "fit" on. They're getting hard to come by, though.

[Anguyen92]

Man, I wish I had the space in my table to fit a second monitor.  What I wish is that I get not too large of a monitor and then just hang it on my wall, so what I can watch some streams on Twitch while playing something like World of Warcraft.

[BlobVanDam]

The venerable model M keyboard. I think they used a 6-pin plug of some sort. The nice thing about them is that if anybody ever home-invades your house it can double as a weapon.

I never thought about the personal preference aspect, but everybody keeps their second monitor on the left. I prefer mine on the right. I've got a mount so that it stays as close to and as centered as possible to the primary so it's effectively just an extension of the desktop. I also use an old 4x3 as my secondary, just because that's what I got used to. Since I watch so many old TV shows and movies it's actually cool to have a monitor they "fit" on. They're getting hard to come by, though.

I wish that was a model M! It's just an old rubber dome keyboard, not mechanical, but it was really responsive. It did use that same old big plug though.

I actually would have preferred my second monitor to the right tbh, but that was the only place I could fit the second monitor properly, so left it is.

[faizoff]

Since we're all about the dual monitors Here's my setup

[cramx3]

I cant see it I can now, nice

I'd actually like a third but totally unnecessary. I do hate my desk. My brother is moving out soon so I could upgrade and get a bigger desk which is really tempting. The height of my desk isnt right for my arms so I think I'd benefit in gaming as well.

[ReaperKK]

I’m going to get a third monitor soon, we freed up one of our bedrooms so my gf is going to take that as her office and I’m going to move her desk out of my office. It’ll be fantastic because I’ll have space for a bigger desk and more room for my guitar.

[faizoff]

I never thought about the personal preference aspect, but everybody keeps their second monitor on the left. I prefer mine on the right.

I too prefer to place mine to the right. I love my setup of two 27" monitors but am sorta itching for a 4k upgrade. I assembled my PC over eight years ago and it's still going super smooth, no complaints at all. With a 500 GB SSD and an extra 12 TB of storage, only reason to upgrade at all would be for a full native 4K setup.

I think if I do upgrade I would definitely try to get two 4K 34" monitors.

[faizoff]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0757DVF4Z?ref=ppx_pt2_dt_b_prod_image



Processor   2.8 GHz Core i5 8400
RAM   8 GB DDR4
Hard Drive   1024 GB 7200 RPM SATA III
Graphics Coprocessor   GTX 1060
Chipset Brand   NVIDIA
Card Description   Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 1060 3GB
Graphics Card Ram Size   3 GB
Number of USB 2.0 Ports   2
Number of USB 3.0 Ports   6

I totally blew my budget, and I'm sure I paid a bit of a premium for it already being assembled and whatnot, but I'm fine with it.

On the listing of that link it says it comes with a 128 GB SSD along with a 1 TB HDD. did you check if you got an SSD? I wouldn't use any computer without an SSD these days. They are an amazing and cheapish upgrade.

[ReaperKK]

Yea SSD's are the best, I still have 3 HDD in my machine that I've had for years, once they die I'll replace them with SSD's.

[cramx3]

My storage set up:

1x 256GB NVMe for my OS and important applications
3x 400GB SSD in Raid 0 for game installations and rest of applications
1x 2TB SSD for video editing and game saves
1x 3TB HDD for my old long term storage, I've filled this so I added recently:
1x 4TB HDD for my current long term storage, I've got awhile to go to fill this but when I do, I have another 4TB HDD on my desk I can install. I also have an older 2TB HDD filled of cold storage in my basement.

I mentioned before I have access to SSD/HDDs at work so the 4TB I grabbed from an old storage unit we decommissioned and had a few spares we won't use again.  The 400GB SSDs are like candy at work, probably have over 100 of them that we don't use anymore as we use 480GB SSDs now.  And the 2TB SSD was a test SSD, we had a period when we tested out like 10 different SSDs and brands to see which one to purchase in mass quantities and well, we didn't go with these so they had no use besides in my PC now. 

[El Barto]

I never thought about the personal preference aspect, but everybody keeps their second monitor on the left. I prefer mine on the right.

I too prefer to place mine to the right. I love my setup of two 27" monitors but am sorta itching for a 4k upgrade. I assembled my PC over eight years ago and it's still going super smooth, no complaints at all. With a 500 GB SSD and an extra 12 TB of storage, only reason to upgrade at all would be for a full native 4K setup.

I think if I do upgrade I would definitely try to get two 4K 34" monitors.

I bought my CPU, MOBO, and memory in 2011, and I'm only now starting to feel outpaced. Thanks to a bundle deal and Black Friday sale I got it all for <$200. In the interim the I5-2500k has attained legendary status, and rightly so. This weekend I noticed that the 8 year old cooler was no longer cutting it so I spent $40 on a solid one. This allowed me to overclock that CPU by 37%, up to 4.5ghz which is actually considered a trivial OC for this particular CPU. That's doable with stock voltage. It's running Prime95 at 70c with no problem at all, and there's a noticeable improvement in game FPS. That might actually allow me to get 10 years out of it, which is pretty unusual in this day and age.



Edit: and somebody brought up a good point for Chino. You should make sure that the components you paid for are the components you got. I saw a video yesterday of a guy tearing down a Walmart gaming computer (WTF?) that had an HDD rather than SSD, and a mid-tier GPU rather than the top-tier it should have come with. I'd check those things, along with the CPU model, the amount of RAM and its timings, and the PSU. CPU-Z will tell you everything you need to know about what's in your computer.

[faizoff]

I never thought about the personal preference aspect, but everybody keeps their second monitor on the left. I prefer mine on the right.

I too prefer to place mine to the right. I love my setup of two 27" monitors but am sorta itching for a 4k upgrade. I assembled my PC over eight years ago and it's still going super smooth, no complaints at all. With a 500 GB SSD and an extra 12 TB of storage, only reason to upgrade at all would be for a full native 4K setup.

I think if I do upgrade I would definitely try to get two 4K 34" monitors.

I bought my CPU, MOBO, and memory in 2011, and I'm only now starting to feel outpaced. Thanks to a bundle deal and Black Friday sale I got it all for <$200. In the interim the I5-2500k has attained legendary status, and rightly so. This weekend I noticed that the 8 year old cooler was no longer cutting it so I spent $40 on a solid one. This allowed me to overclock that CPU by 37%, up to 4.5ghz which is actually considered a trivial OC for this particular CPU. That's doable with stock voltage. It's running Prime95 at 70c with no problem at all, and there's a noticeable improvement in game FPS. That might actually allow me to get 10 years out of it, which is pretty unusual in this day and age.

Internet Hi-five, I too have the i5 2500K and exact same Hyper 212x cooler and have it OC'ed to 4.2 GHz which I think I set eons ago. I haven't tinkered with the settings in ages so I might bump it up some more when I get a chance.I think I read the 2500k is everyone's favorite CPU to overclock. I too got a great deal at the time for the same three components from Newegg during the release week in Jan 2011. The only component I've changed during the 8 years is the capacity of the SSD. I initially had a 64 GB and finally settled on a 500 GB Crucial model.

[El Barto]

I never thought about the personal preference aspect, but everybody keeps their second monitor on the left. I prefer mine on the right.

I too prefer to place mine to the right. I love my setup of two 27" monitors but am sorta itching for a 4k upgrade. I assembled my PC over eight years ago and it's still going super smooth, no complaints at all. With a 500 GB SSD and an extra 12 TB of storage, only reason to upgrade at all would be for a full native 4K setup.

I think if I do upgrade I would definitely try to get two 4K 34" monitors.

I bought my CPU, MOBO, and memory in 2011, and I'm only now starting to feel outpaced. Thanks to a bundle deal and Black Friday sale I got it all for <$200. In the interim the I5-2500k has attained legendary status, and rightly so. This weekend I noticed that the 8 year old cooler was no longer cutting it so I spent $40 on a solid one. This allowed me to overclock that CPU by 37%, up to 4.5ghz which is actually considered a trivial OC for this particular CPU. That's doable with stock voltage. It's running Prime95 at 70c with no problem at all, and there's a noticeable improvement in game FPS. That might actually allow me to get 10 years out of it, which is pretty unusual in this day and age.

Internet Hi-five, I too have the i5 2500K and exact same Hyper 212x cooler and have it OC'ed to 4.2 GHz which I think I set eons ago. I haven't tinkered with the settings in ages so I might bump it up some more when I get a chance.I think I read the 2500k is everyone's favorite CPU to overclock. I too got a great deal at the time for the same three components from Newegg during the release week in Jan 2011. The only component I've changed during the 8 years is the capacity of the SSD. I initially had a 64 GB and finally settled on a 500 GB Crucial model.

Yeah, that chip's an overachieving workhorse. 4.5 is considered the standard for air cooling and safe voltage levels. Beyond that you're looking at increasing effort for decreasing returns. That 4.5 point is essentially free performance though, as there's nothing to decrease the life expectancy of the chip and it's still rock solid. The end is coming, though. Last year they finally started releasing chips with significant enough improvement to warrant the upgrade, and MOBOs don't last forever. I'd still like 10 years, though.

In my case I've updated or expanded everything about it other than the CPU/MOBO. This is probably the third VGA I've used in this. I've added a ton of HDDs and replaced two with SSDs (one system, one games). Hell, I even replaced the case. The core of it keeps on chugging along, though.

[Chino]

I never thought about the personal preference aspect, but everybody keeps their second monitor on the left. I prefer mine on the right.

I too prefer to place mine to the right. I love my setup of two 27" monitors but am sorta itching for a 4k upgrade. I assembled my PC over eight years ago and it's still going super smooth, no complaints at all. With a 500 GB SSD and an extra 12 TB of storage, only reason to upgrade at all would be for a full native 4K setup.

I think if I do upgrade I would definitely try to get two 4K 34" monitors.

I bought my CPU, MOBO, and memory in 2011, and I'm only now starting to feel outpaced. Thanks to a bundle deal and Black Friday sale I got it all for <$200. In the interim the I5-2500k has attained legendary status, and rightly so. This weekend I noticed that the 8 year old cooler was no longer cutting it so I spent $40 on a solid one. This allowed me to overclock that CPU by 37%, up to 4.5ghz which is actually considered a trivial OC for this particular CPU. That's doable with stock voltage. It's running Prime95 at 70c with no problem at all, and there's a noticeable improvement in game FPS. That might actually allow me to get 10 years out of it, which is pretty unusual in this day and age.



Edit: and somebody brought up a good point for Chino. You should make sure that the components you paid for are the components you got. I saw a video yesterday of a guy tearing down a Walmart gaming computer (WTF?) that had an HDD rather than SSD, and a mid-tier GPU rather than the top-tier it should have come with. I'd check those things, along with the CPU model, the amount of RAM and its timings, and the PSU. CPU-Z will tell you everything you need to know about what's in your computer.

Can confirm that everything in the machine is as advertised 

[cramx3]

Intel CPUs are usually pretty rock solid and the k models are awesome for tweeking.  My previous CPU was an I7-2600k, also a really great CPU but I actually did somehow burn mine out.  I was seeing odd issues wtih my OS and while I wasn't sure if it was the CPU or not at the time, I figured I still had the base heatsink on the CPU and hadn't touched the thermal paste in the 5+ years I had it.  So I bought a new heatsink and cleaned and applied new thermal paste and well, the PC wouldn't even POST after that.  I think I somehow fried the CPU, when I pulled that old heatsink off, there was practically no thermal paste and it just looked and felt so dry and old  I hardly ever OC'ed it so I'm not sure what happened other than maybe time and abuse and my own non-maintenance of it.