Metal Guitarist Forums banner

The Build-a-PC thread

3K views 26 replies 10 participants last post by  HamBungler 
#1 ·
Anyone else into building their own PC rig? I was hoping there are a few on this forum that are also into this rather techy hobby. I've built PCs for myself and friends over the years and love putting them together. There's always a bit of thrill when you first have it all hooked up and are about to turn it on for the first time, hoping it will actually work. Recently AMD has come out with impressive CPUs and video cards, and the higher-end NVIDIA cards are just exceptional. Anyone building a rig right now or soon?
 
#2 ·
I bought my first PC when I was like, 13. From some stupid low rent gaming PC company advertised in PC Gamer. "Cyberpower". Still remember it. There's a bunch of lower end companies that meet the demand for people who can't buy Alienwares or Falcon Northwests or Voodoos or whatever. Don't know if those are still the in companies. Total piece of shit. At the time I thought buying the parts and building one myself was too high risk.

Built my first PC when I was 14. Been building them ever since. :lol:

I don't even know if "building" is the right word. Box of parts shows up from New Egg, you plug everything together, 15 minutes later, new PC.

For anyone that hasn't built a PC because they feel like it's too hard, I say go for it, easiest shit ever.

I'm actually due for an overhaul soon. I do a new main rig everytime a new game (or games) require it. The current rig I have I built when Fallout 4 came out. Swapped in some more RAM and SSDs over the past few years, but the CPU/Mobo/GPU is still the same.

With Cyberpunk, The Outer Worlds, Borderlands 3, etc. etc. etc. coming up, I will be building one in the next couple of months. Ideally I want to build it as close to possible to Cyberpunks release, since I think that is the only super graphic intensive one. There's a lot of good games coming in the next 6-8 months I've been anticipating forever, obvious time to build a new PC.

Vince, I thought the last time we talked PC specs you were rocking an ATI R9? That's what I still have.

Basic specs of my main.



I actually find Reaper/Kontakt more of a pain to build for than games these days. Can never have enough RAM. IIRC when I built it for Fallout 4 I had 8 Gigs in there, after using Kontakt, I threw in another 16, could still use more.

Aesthetically none of my stuff is the gaudy over the top gamer shit. I fucking hate the "Gamer" look. I only buy understated Antec cases in black. I fucking hate the stuff with lights all over the place and side windows. Antec Three Hundred is my go to. I'm on my third one of those.

Last upgrade was two new Corsair 500 GB SSDs a couple months back when they were on a good sale. Between gaming and DAW shit SSDs are mandatory these days.
 
#8 ·
I bought my first PC when I was like, 13. From some stupid low rent gaming PC company advertised in PC Gamer. "Cyberpower". Still remember it. There's a bunch of lower end companies that meet the demand for people who can't buy Alienwares or Falcon Northwests or Voodoos or whatever. Don't know if those are still the in companies. Total piece of shit. At the time I thought buying the parts and building one myself was too high risk.

Built my first PC when I was 14. Been building them ever since. :lol:

I don't even know if "building" is the right word. Box of parts shows up from New Egg, you plug everything together, 15 minutes later, new PC.

For anyone that hasn't built a PC because they feel like it's too hard, I say go for it, easiest shit ever.
Agreed 100%. I call it Lego for adults, but there is a lot of fun in customizing the system for your own needs. I started messing with computers as a kid. We had an old Apple IIe that you could take the cover off, and later a 286 and 386 that you could expand the memory with PCI cards. Good times.

I'm actually due for an overhaul soon. I do a new main rig everytime a new game (or games) require it.
I usually do the same thing. I wanted to run Reaper in 64 bit a few years ago, so I upgraded at that point. Now I had a couple of games that had a few issues with my old PC, so I upgraded again.

Vince, I thought the last time we talked PC specs you were rocking an ATI R9? That's what I still have.

Basic specs of my main.

My PC was similar to what you had there. I had an I5 4590 with an AMD RX 480. I recently put together a new build around an AMD Ryzen 9 3900x and an EVGA RTX 2070. Splurged for an M.2 SSD just to see what the fuss was. Mine apparently 'underperforms' at 4100 MB/s! Windows loads in 4 seconds, so I'll take that underperformance any day.

I actually find Reaper/Kontakt more of a pain to build for than games these days. Can never have enough RAM. IIRC when I built it for Fallout 4 I had 8 Gigs in there, after using Kontakt, I threw in another 16, could still use more.
Why are you having issues with Reaper? I had it running fine on my laptop years ago with only 4GB of RAM. I've seen guys run Reaper on a Surface Go, your PC should be fine even at 8 GB of RAM.

As for any new PC, the main thing I'm going to do different this time is get a better power supply. I got a nice Antec one for like $80-100 or something, but these days you need ridiculous amounts of power.

I remember when I started building PCs graphic cards got all their power through PCI. These days any serious one requires additional power from the PSU in a 6-8 pin or whatever.

If you are running two graphics cards you need a serious power supply. Forget how many watts mine is, it handles OK, it's not some cheap piece of shit, but next time I'm going for Overkill.
I wouldn't even consider running two cards anymore. The benefits of SLI just aren't there. I saw a video recently of a guy running two 2080 TI's in SLI and didn't see a massive performance gain relative to the cost.

My old PC was running off of a EVGA 850w and I moved it over to my new one. Runs it perfectly :yesway:
 
#3 ·
As for any new PC, the main thing I'm going to do different this time is get a better power supply. I got a nice Antec one for like $80-100 or something, but these days you need ridiculous amounts of power.

I remember when I started building PCs graphic cards got all their power through PCI. These days any serious one requires additional power from the PSU in a 6-8 pin or whatever.

If you are running two graphics cards you need a serious power supply. Forget how many watts mine is, it handles OK, it's not some cheap piece of shit, but next time I'm going for Overkill.

I'm actually mainly worried because most audio interfaces are powered through Firewire/USB whatever. I didn't factor that in when building a PC. I don't know how much power they consume compared to a GPU, but better safe than sorry.
 
#5 ·
I was looking at building my PC myself back when I bought my current one. However, I ended up not doing it because I was able to get a PC built for me for way cheaper than just buying the parts from the store. Apparently the company that built it could get the components way cheaper than I could buy them for in the store.
 
#7 ·
I always build my own. Have done since I was 8 years old. Just bought a new rig for my buddy yesterday, just awaiting on the parts. We were going to go fully custom watercooling again, but we decided on a Corsair AIO cooler instead. Specs are as follows;

AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Asus ROG X570 motherboard
Corsair Dominator - 32GB @ 3000MHz
Corsar Gen4 nVME M.2 SSD - 1TB
Saffire RX 5700 XT
Corsair 1000w PSU
Corsair H150i Pro cooler
Corsair 680X case

Cooler, case and additional 120mm fans are are all RGB, linking into iCue along with his existing Corsair keyboard and mouse. All just to play World of Warcraft :lol:

This is replacing a 2 year old system which is a 6700K and GTX1080 FE, Gen 3 Samsung 960 Evo nVME SSD, and 8GB RAM (Team Group Vulcan)
 
#18 ·
Just upgraded my rig from my old Cyberpower case and to a Thermaltake View 31 that I scored on ebay for hella cheap with a Asus Z-170 mobo I got for $20 at Sweetwater over Gearfest along with 16 gigs of 3000mhz DDR4. Already had a 1060 in my old case so I just swapped it right in there and I've been having a blast with some more memory-intense games. Only problem I have now is upgrading the processor (currently have an i5 7400) which the best I can do on this board is a 7700k which still regularly go for $250+ on the used market. I'm thinking of waiting for Black Friday and just swapping the mobo/proc for 3rd Gen Ryzen since I would be paying the same for the mobo/processor as the 7700k and get better memory use as well as PCI-E 4.0 in the near future.

Also, it may destroy your wallet but this thread is worth subscribing to: https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/
 
#21 ·
Imgur: The magic of the Internet

The case is some DIYPC case. don't remember the model number but it works just fine. plenty of room and fan slots.
i7 7700k delidded and overclocked to 5.0GHz(I had more thermal headroom to go higher but didn't really need it for anything. Delidding dropped my temps by 25C or more depending on the task. i couldn't clear 4.9GHz before the delid.)
Cooler Master MA620P Twin Tower Air Cooler
ASUS TUF Z270 Mark I Motherboard
16GB Corsair Vengence 2133mhz LPX running at 2400mhz
Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB (ASUS STRIX AIB model)
2x 1TB WD HDDs @ 7200RPMs
500GB WD Caviar Blue NVME SSD
Corsair 750M Modular PSU
All my case fans are made my Artic(as in Artic Silver thermal paste) they were cheap too. like $26 for a 5 pack and they're all PWM and daisy chainable.

been wanting to do a x299 build just for the fun of it. never tried a water loop before.
 
#23 ·
dude i love it. my board has 2 m.2 slots, ones flush to the board and the other sticks out straight like a typically pcie card. its lightning fast and takes up no space in the case so I'm super happy with it. load times are cut really short and boot time is less than 30 seconds including post.
 
#24 ·
My experience is similar too. Though it wasn't a huge jump for me b/c I've been running SSDs for about 5 or 6 years now. With my new M.2 drive, after POST and the motherboard's splash screen, it's literally 4 seconds into Windows. Insanity.
 
#25 ·
I just realized I started this thread but haven't posted my new system yet! Here's what I recently put together. I wanted to go all PCIe 4.0 with an AMD video card, but the Pulse 5700 XT was just taking too long to hit store shelves. I feel like I lucked out with the 2070 though as my alternative, as the ray tracing in Control and the last Tomb Raider game is just jaw dropping when you see it live.

AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
EVGA RTX 2070 XC Ultra
ASUS AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance LPX 3600 DDR4, 2x8GB
Sabrent 1TB NVMe Gen4 M.2 SSD
EVGA 850w B2 Power Supply
Phantex Eclipse P400 ATX Case

Overclocking the CPU manually, I get good benchmarks for an air-cooled rig, but I actually see marginally better FPS in games if I just keep it at stock speeds and let the CPU manage it's own turbo boost (lower temps, less throttling). If I used an AIO or water loop I could definitely push it more, but I just don't see the benefit. I'm overclocking the RAM to 4000 MHz just because I can, and I'm doing some marginal overclocking on the video card that nets me about 5-10% more performance, but ultimately the only game that's really benefited has been Control, as it's just a really poorly optimized game.

Here's a pic of it, I feel like I'm getting better at cable management. I'm using my PSU from my old PC, so it's an older model with the older style ketchup and mustard color cables. I actually think it adds to the cyberpunk aesthetic, but that's just me.

 

Attachments

#27 · (Edited)
Just thought I'd throw this out there for folks looking for more storage for games/editing audio and video I've been finding great deals on slightly older PCI-e SSDs pulled from server racks and while the performance isn't the latest and greatest the best thing about the drives is the reliability for writes. The drives are typically Fusion-IO spec and range in storage from 320 GB to 3.2 TB from what I've been seeing on e-bay. Now usually its not a great thing to buy a used SSD as I'm sure many of you are aware, but these server-grade drives have re-write reliability in the Petabytes (10-20 for these types). A few caveats of course the main one being that you can't use these as a boot disk and PCI-e 2.0 x4 spec, but cheap low-capacity NVMes are everywhere nowadays that you can pop in your PC and get your rig blazing fast and maybe allow you to dump a couple HDDs in the process. I just scored a 1.3 TB drive for just under $80 and I'll try to throw up a little review if time allows after I test it out.

*edit* I searched for Supermicro Fusion IO SSD on ebay to find what I did, there's tons of listings from a few different sellers and most allow you to make an offer for said drives. Saw a lot of 30+ 3.2 TB drives go for around $200 apiece after offer a few days ago
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top