Official Computer Talk Thread

Do you have any experience with building a computer in the past by chance? It’s not that it’s all that difficult, but if you don’t have much experience, you just need to be comfortable with the fact that you are essentially your own tech department/warranty/repair service if you have any issues with it. If that part doesn’t bother you at all, I say build a setup for your specific needs.

A lot of lower end pre built things you find in stores won’t have a dedicated graphics card. They tend to use graphics from the motherboard/cpu. If you do a lot of video or picture editing, it’ll make a world of difference having a dedicated card.

if you go the pre built/store route, look for something that has dedicated graphics. It will be more expensive clearly, but it’ll run better.
 
I helped build one years ago and feel pretty comfortable with doing it. I'm trying to stay away from a store bought. I had been looking on newegg to see what kind of options are out there.

Should have added, I feel comfortable getting it all together. What I'm not sure about is making sure I buy parts that will all work with each other.
 
That’s not too bad honestly.

https://pcpartpicker.com/

pretty good resource at finding parts/pricing trends and where to find parts for good prices. Like it’ll show a specific part and what site/store has it for the best price. It also shows off what people have built in various price points.

If you’re going to use it for gaming or anything like that, it’d be best to know what games you like to play. Others can prob tell you good options for specific video cards for specific games.

if you’ve got a budget in mind, we could probably help you piece stuff together depending on what things matter to you like storage size and whatnot.
 
Thanks I'll check it out. I don't play any games so that will be easy. The biggest thing I need it for is photo and video editing. Mainly photo. Not too worried about storage size as I'll been saving most photos to an external drive. Just wanting it to be fast while using a few different programs like lightroom and lightroom classic and photoshop. Probably stay around $1000 if possible.
 
You can do quite a bit with a grand honestly.

I’d say look for an i5 Intel chip (or i7), or something similar in amd spec wise for performance.

For graphics cards (since you’re not gaming) I’d look at something like an amd rx580 or something like a nvidia 1060, 1070, or 1080?

cases- go with whatever you like I guess. A lot of cases can be found for around $100 that can do the job.

I’d say get a ssd for your operating system and to handle your video/photo work while you’re doing the editing. I’d say 500 gig Samsung drive or so. Size it up as needed if you tend to work with a lot of large video files.

I’d say go with 32 gigs of ram. Like (2) 16 gig ram chips. That should handle adobe programs and your work real well.

Asus, Msi, gigabyte and others all make a pretty wide range of entry to high end motherboards. I’d prob pick any of those brands without issue. Model will just depend on what brand processor (intel/amd) you decide to go with. The more expensive you go the more features they tend to add like gigabit internet, WiFi onboard, Bluetooth, etc. some people don’t care or need certain upgrades like that.

Number or ram slots/total ram it supports, number of sata ports (for hard drives/optical drives etc), m.2 slots, number of pci slots... all will play a part in cost as well. If you’re just worried about one internal hard drive, you don’t really need to worry so much on the sata side.
 
I would also like this thing to be good enough to last a while and not have to update it much down the road. I put some stuff together on that site and it came out to $1400
 
Gitrdone42 said:
I would also like this thing to be good enough to last a while and not have to update it much down the road. I put some stuff together on that site and it came out to $1400
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You could definitely get something that will suit you well for much less than that. $1400 is like high end gaming desktop money. Just my 2 cents.
 
Motherboard, CPU and Sound Card are probably overkill if you're doing photo editing, but it would futureproof you for sure.

Case is nice, but quite large. Unless you're planning on sticking multiple 3.5in drives or another GPU (which I wouldn't recommend) you could definitely scale down to a midtower.

If you stay with this build I'd beef up the PSU. You don't have much headroom on that. If nothing else I'd go with at least 80+ bronze (gold if you can swing). That will save you some power consumption. Especially if you're going with a R7 2600x. Get a good PSU. That's not the place to skimp in my opinion.

And skip buying Windows. Running unactivated has absolutely no repercussions outside of the Activate Windows watermark you'll see. There are a handful of other features you'd miss being unactivated, by nothing that will hinder usage. Mostly personalization stuff is what you'd miss. Like changing the wallpaper.

Feel free to ask anything you might wanna know. :)
 
fahnix said:
Motherboard, CPU and Sound Card are probably overkill if you're doing photo editing, but it would futureproof you for sure.

Case is nice, but quite large. Unless you're planning on sticking multiple 3.5in drives or another GPU (which I wouldn't recommend) you could definitely scale down to a midtower.

If you stay with this build I'd beef up the PSU. You don't have much headroom on that. If nothing else I'd go with at least 80+ bronze (gold if you can swing). That will save you some power consumption. Especially if you're going with a R7 2600x. Get a good PSU. That's not the place to skimp in my opinion.

And skip buying Windows. Running unactivated has absolutely no repercussions outside of the Activate Windows watermark you'll see. There are a handful of other features you'd miss being unactivated, by nothing that will hinder usage. Mostly personalization stuff is what you'd miss. Like changing the wallpaper.

Feel free to ask anything you might wanna know. :)
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Thanks, I will look around some more and look at other options. That helps a good bit.

When you say beef up the PSU, what exactly should I look for?
 
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With the build rated around 450w being powered by a supply that's 650w you're running at about 70% capacity. Granted that would be running at full tilt, but power efficiency goes down, and wasted power turns to heat and so on.

So give it a little more available wattage, or go up in efficiency. Or if you scale down the mentioned parts above you'll more than likely bring down overall wattage along with.
 
I will look through your build stuff here later this evening if I can. I glanced at it and you won't need the audio card since your motherboard will support the audio. I'll see what I can do to give you some options. Also, do you have any copies of windows from even old computers going back to windows 7 by chance?
 
webby said:
I will look through your build stuff here later this evening if I can. I glanced at it and you won't need the audio card since your motherboard will support the audio. I'll see what I can do to give you some options. Also, do you have any copies of windows from even old computers going back to windows 7 by chance?
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I'd definitely appreciate that. Unfortunately I don't have any copies.
 
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