PC Building Guide / PCMaster Race

[rock840]

Introduction

I had this PC building guide on kat as well , would like to share it here as well ,  may be helpful to someone .

The purpose of this page is to disprove the myths about the price of a custom PC and educate people on possible hardware configurations for different budgets and performance requirements. It is ideal for any beginner who wants to build his/her own PC but is new to this stuff and need some guidance to pull it off . Yes, we all start from somewhere , in this thread , I would start with basics first , i.e. the PC components that we will be needing for the build , explaining the basic things about these parts which a buyer should know before buying products without going much deeper technically since their are a vast number of different Motherboards/CPUs/RAMs/GPUs/PSUs/Cabinets , all doing the same work .  

Hardware Parts required :

1-Motherboard
2-CPU or Central Procesor Unit
3-Memory or RAM
4-Storage
5-Video Card
6-Case or Chassis
7- Power Supply

Explained :

1-Motherboard

We can call the motherboard or MoBo as builders would like to call it as the spine of the PC, without it, your PC won't turn on, as a case with a connector to the power button would be connected to the motherboard, not the power supply. Asus, AsRock, MSI and Gigabyte are notable manufacturers of motherboards.

Form Factor

Every PC ever built goes somewhere. Maybe it’s on the floor or on top of a big desk, but it might be in a rack, on a shelf, share a [small] desk with other accoutrements of a typical office worker, or be placed somewhere that puts practical limits on size. Here are the most common form factors.





As you can see, each of them has a different number of expansion slots, into which cards such as display adapters, wireless NICs, and tuner cards can be inserted. The EATX form factor is deeper than ATX, but adds no additional slots. If it needs to fit in an alcove of a desk, then ATX (or EATX) may not be viable options.

Layout

Let’s take a look at a typical ATX (aka Standard ATX) motherboard



We need to choose one according to the CPU will be using , intel CPUs has specific motherboards not compatible with AMD CPUs and vice versa .

Some popular Intel MOBOs for 6th/7th gen CPUs :

H270 series (Use this if you're not intersted in overclocking your CPU and RAM)
Z270 series (Use this if you're intersted in overclocking CPU and RAM)

Budget friendly Intel MOBO:

Intel H110M (M signifies that it is a Micro ATX MOBO)
Intel B250 Series (Standard ATX)

Intel 8th Gen CPUs are incompatible with these motherboards and would be using Z370 series motherboard as of now . (Update 2018) Intel is extending a hand to budget builders eyeing its locked-down chips with motherboards built around the new H370, B360, and H310 chipsets. Motherboards built with these platform controller hubs (PCHs) on board should go a long way towards reducing the platform cost associated with Coffee Lake. By forgoing the ability to overclock CPUs or RAM, they provide more sensible foundations for systems built around locked Intel eighth-generation processors.

Popular Ryzen MOBO :

Amd B350 series (its overclock ready)

The motherboards have CPU sockets respective to the CPU , for ex: LGA 1151 socket is used in intel MOBOs for intel 7th gen cpus and AM4 socket is used for Ryzen CPUs in AMD MOBOs .

2-CPU or Central Processor Unit

So far, only two are manufacturing CPUs, they are AMD and Intel, AMD is the most notable for having more powerful multi-core performance, while Intel can provide the most powerful single core performance, Intel is the most used CPU for overkill builds.  AMD’s new Ryzen processors have sparked a brutal price war in CPUs.

Short answer:

Choose Ryzen if you want to do editing work or want to use application which require more cores. It is very good for any productivity work , if you like the idea of streaming games while gaming , then this is the right CPU for you as an I7 7th gen goes out full 100% usage in Rise Of The Tomb Raider .  Here is the price chart




Choose Intel if you want to play games at 1080p at the highest FPS or achieving the fast 144 FPS. Undisputed king in the gaming department especially with its high Single core performance which games use the most contrary to multi cores utilisation . Ryzen is no slouch here either in gaming but its still behind intel due to intel's superior IPC performance . If price is not a concern for you then you could choose Intel as the price difference is huge . Intel 8th Gen series is also out now , i5 8400 is a great vale for money CPU . Detailing the differences is beyond the scope of this piece , you need to buy according to your need .




Any processor in these charts can produce 60fps @1080p when paired with a suitable GPU , however you would like to future proof yourself and that's why buying atleast a hexacore CPU is an ideal option , Ryzen 5 1600 is a great all rounder and can be found with good deals and for less than 200$ as well , it comes with a wraith spire cooler as well which does a good job in keeping the temps down (they can be overclocked out of the box) . On intel side , I5 will do you good for gaming according to your budget , 8th gen i5 is a hexacore now so it goes toe to toe against ryzen . If you want to overclock intel CPUs , buy the K CPUs like i7 8700 K and a compatible motherboard like the Z series one , the non K  version CPUs can't be overclocked but comes with a stock CPU cooler which is average at best but gets the job done  .

3-Memory or RAM

The minimum of RAM today is 8GB, or at least for gaming. However it's moving onto 16gb RAM as standard now , it is advised going for a 16gb (2x 8gb kit) DDR4 RAM set instead of a single 16 gb RAM if possible , however the performance is not too much depending on the game  . The notable manufacturers are G.Skill, Kingston, Corsair and A-Data . Ryzen needs DDR4 unlike Intel which works with DDR3 as well , due to the huge demand for DDR4 memory in Smart phone and for Ryzen , its prices have sky rocketed so you need to find a good deal on it (pcpartpicker will help here)

Anything 2400 Mhz and over is unlikely to bottleneck your performance. So get that set with the best price , however modern CPUs like ryzen does scale well in performance with higher RAM speeds . The more the merrier , remember that on intel platforms you will be needing Z series MOBOs unlike AMD's B350 MOBOs for overclocking your RAMS .... Do check the OC (Over clock) supported RAM rating of your motherboard .

Almost all RAMs by default aren't OC'ed to meet the board specifications  , XMP 2.0 saves the day here , we just go to bios and select from the pre defined/tested values and we're done  , its XFR on AMD MOBOs to my knowledge that is used for overclocking RAM .



4-Storage

The standard storage is the Hard Drive, but now, SSDs, or Solid State Drives are going to replace them as a boot drive, since it is faster for about 4 times, the most common HDD speed is 7200RPM and the most common space is 1TB, 2TB is the ideal as its not that expensive nowadays (Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200 rpm is a good budget hard disk) . The notable manufacturers of HDDs are Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba. The most common space for SSDs, are 250GB, as Operating systems do not need much space.

7200 rpm for Hard disk is recommended instead of 5400 rpm (loading time suffers and running multiple apps at once or even an antivirus scan in backgrounf will bottleneck your PC and it will start stuttering)

An SSD massively helps here by removing this bottle neck by providing higher read/write speeds than a mechanical hard drive but they are expensive as well . Installing windows on SSD is a must as it reduces boot time to under 10 seconds and significantly improves the responsiveness of your PC  , buy the SSD with size according to your budget .

SSDs are available in different form factors



What matters while buying is their interface , SATA hard drives supports SATA III 6 Gb/s which would provide maximum approx read/writes speed of 540MB/s / 520MB/s . M.2 SSDs are also available in SATA III interface , however PCI NVMe M.2 ssds are the fastest available SSDs giving theoratical speeds of upto 2500 MB/s read and 1900 MB/s write , also making them the costliest amongst all types of SSDSS .

For general use and gaming purpose , SATA III interface will do you good as well . Samsung 850 evo is a very good SATA HDD .



5-Video Card

Aaahhh, the Master Race's favorite PC part, the GPU or the Graphics processing unit, these can be only made by either AMD or Nvidia, but the manufacturers of GPUs are a lot, namely the Big Four, or most known as Asus, Gigabyte, EVGA and MSI. You need to have a good CPU in order to not bottleneck the GPU . Custom board partners generally provide a better performing gpu then the founders edition . Some have better cooling features , it may be Over Clocked by default or have a longer warranty upto 5 years .

Nvidia has been dominant in this segment for a while courtesy of their timely updates and optimisation for games , for a budget build , a GTX 1050 Ti 4gb vram GPU is a good gpu to be paired with any budget CPU , it can provide a solid gameplay experience equal or better than a PS4/Xbox one . A good 1080p 60 fps card is the GTX 1060 with 6gb VRAM , for 1440p or 2k resolution , the GTX 1070 is good and 4k gaming is best enjoyed with a GTX 1080/GTX 1080 ti/Titan . Prices are fluctuating and inflated due to the etherium mining craze , so get the one that fits your budget . AMD has recently launched their Vega GPUs , Vega 56 in response to GTX 1070 and Vega 64 in response to GTX 1080 . Similarly they have RX 580 competing with GTX 1060 , however their cards have better mining performance then nvidia's and thus are gobbled up quickly by miners leading to its price rise .



6-Case or Chassis

This is probably going to be around $50-$150, They can have as much features, such as USB 3.0, a power button, a reset button and probably audio jacks. Make sure it's compatible with your parts. Most common manufacturers are Rosewill, Cooler Master, NZXT , Phanteks , Corsair and Antec etc. These come in different form factors as we mentioned in Motherboards



A mid tower will do just fine and is generally used to house a Standard ATX MOBO but if you have a Micro ATX MOBO , a mini tower is a better choice as it may look a bit weird housed in a mid tower .

NZXT S340 is a great budget and beginner friendly case :



Corsair Spec 03 is a good 50$ budget case , comes with 2 pre installed fans (1x intake fan , 1x exhaust fan) . 2 fans should generally be fine if your case has decent airflow but you should test your PC to see if the temperatures are within limit , if the temperatures are on the higher side then you should consider adding more fans. Buy according to your taste as well , there are many cabinets that comes with a tempered glass on the side panel which is costs you a bit so choose wisely .

7- Power Supply (Power Supply Unit or SMPS)

Do not cheap out on this, if you do, your PC will be a pile of ash soon, this is the 2Nd to the most important part, as this is needed to turn the PC on. The most notable manufacturers are Corsair, Seasonic, Cooler Master, Thermaltake and Antec.

You should actually be getting atleast an 80 plus or 80 plus bronze efficient rated psu , higher will be 80 plus gold , silver and platinum,  gold is the sweet spot but bronze will do well too , i would recommend u to get a 550 or 650 watts psu as u definitely would like to leave some extra watts in case u want to upgrade in future , imagine replacing psu again and doing wiring all over again , it will draw power what it needs and not 550/650 watts incase u have doubt about it ... you can check your power requirements at pcpartpicker , also note that components like GPU can draw much higher power then their TDP when under heavy load .For a strict budget gaming build , a 450/500 watts PSU will work as well . These are available in Standard/Modular/Semi Modular form . Modular/Semi Modulars PSUs are basically selective in choosing which wire you require in your PC and thus helps in Cable Management.



In modular PSUs , all cables are detached and in Semi Modular PSUs , except CPU and PCIe (GPU) wire , all other cables are detached . So just get the semi one if its cheap , these doesn't affect their efficiency .

8- Optical Drive  

It is optional now as you can just buy a simple external USB 3.0 DVD drive if you want .

[size=undefined]OPTIONALS[/size]:

1: Cooling Materials

This can be either air cooling or liquid or water, with water being the most expensive and most efficient cooling system, these are installed by a user guide, there are multiple ways, but I can't enlist them all. In simpler terms , a decent Air cooler is good enough even with some over clocking . If you're not into overclocking , Stock cooler provided with Intel/AMD CPU will do just fine and is the easiest to install , intel stock cooler is kind of noisy as compared to AMD coolers ,  when buying CPU , check if a cpu cooler is provided with it ,  however you can still replace them with a after market cooler to further improvement on temps and noise . Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO is a good buy here , check the cpu socket of your mobo to know if its compatible with your Motherboard before buying  . It comes with some thermal paste as well . Deepcool GAMAXX 400 is also a very good and easy to install CPU cooler .



2: LEDs

To be used for your PC to look cool in the dark,  generally these come with 3 pin connector which can either be connected to your motherboard or PSU via a molex cable , just how you can connect some extra fans. Cooling fans connected to motherboard is ideal insted of PSU as its speed is controlled by your mobo instead of running at full speed always by your PSU .

3) Wi fi/Bluetooth Support

Some mobos doesn't support wi fi/bluetooth and thus are cheaper , Now here is the part where you save money on the remaining parts if you want them :

Bluetooth 4 USB dongle For 14$ can be picked from Amazon .

and Wifi Adapter Wireless N Adapter 300Mbps 2.4GHz Wifi Usb for 13$

External DVD Drive USB 3.0 Slim Portable External DVD CD Drive,External CD DVD +/-RW Writer/Burner/Rewriter /DVD CD ROM for 24$ :


Now for the last but tricky part , you can either choose to buy windows 10 or use a trial version for your custom built PC , the pre builds that people buy generally comes with the same OEM windows copy and not the retail one , the OEM copy is cheap and bound to your motherboard , you can use a trial copy from microsoft to set your PC up and then activate it via KMS or Toolkit .

OR just buy a windows key from a reseller , on hrkgame , its 12$ right now , those prices fluctuate so u need it to grab it at the best one from any decent site u find , i bought my key for 7$ once and it worked  

Tips:

1)PCPartPicker is a comparison shopping website that allows users to compare prices of computer components on different retailers online. You can also check the compatibilty of the PC parts that you have selected if they are compatible with each other or not and your total power draw . Never buy public or example starter builds exactly as-is, there are always personal improvements and 24-hour sales that can lower the price while simultaneously improving price-performance.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/
2)Always click on "PCPartPicker part list" instead of simply buying what's in the table. The reason is to let PCPartPicker use its sophisticated algorithm to pick the cheapest part that's still compatible.
3)If you don't live in the US, no problem. Simply click the "PCPartPicker part list" link, then change the country to your country on the top right corner. PCPartPicker will use its sophisticated algorithm to pick the cheapest compatible part that's available in your country. (Didn't worked for me :O)
4)Take advantage of rebates in mail , as they help reduce the overall cost of your build.
5)Buying used can save you money, but you may have trouble with it later on and no warranty to lean on!
6)Avoid PC bottle necks when selecting parts , you don't want to pair an intel i3 with a gtx 1080ti as the cpu will severely bottle neck the gpu in reaching its Max potential . Same goes for the Over kill.
7)The feeling of nerve-wracking fear and simultaneous excitement is normal for first-time builders. Just remember that these things were made to be put together by humans like you. Just take your time and don't force square pegs into round holes and you'll be installing your OS and drivers within the hour!

Here is a typical 4k entry level gaming build with all cumulative parts showing the compatibility of parts and the total power draw of the system which is 329 Watts  :

Parts list

[Scue]

I assembled a $500 gaming rig...here's how to go about it http://www.gamingreporter.com/the-best-g...under-500/

[theSEMAR]

2020 PC Building Guide Using ~10 Years old Hardware

Low budget? sure.
It's can run Windows 10? absolutely.
It's fast? quite fast.
Can i run latest game? no. mostly only heavy games from 2012 and earlier.

If your daily activity only Browsing, Playing Musics and Videos, Reading Books, and others lightweight activities, this guide might be useful for you.

1. PC Case
Have unused old PC case? use it. Make sure that case can be fitted with standart ATX mainboard. If don't have one, you may buy second hand PC case with cheap price.

2. PSU
Most 450 watt PSU will be fine.

3. CPU
Important part, choose Core 2 Micoprocessor rather than first generation of Core i5 or Core i7. Why? because first generation of i5/i7 don't have Thermal Monitoring Technologies wich will cause CPU become unusable if overheating. All Core 2 Processor will more safe because all of them have it.

From Core 2 Microprocessor, better if you can get Core 2 Quad rather than Core 2 Duo. Core 2 Extreme still expensive so i'm not recomend this CPU for low budget.
Q6600 will be ok if paired with P35 mainboard.
Q9550 will be run fine in P43/P45 mainboard.

Also get a CPU fan with 3200rpm or more.

4. Mainboard
Must be intel chipset. Get a P43/P45 mainboard. Gigabyte or ASUS will be good because they still maintaining sites for old mainboard, that mean you will still able to download mainboard driver from them. DDR2 or DDR3 RAM slot doesn't matter. All are fine.

5. GPU
This is also crucial component because Windows 10 need a huge video memory. AMD HD 5000/6000/7000 series with 2GB video memory will be good.

6. RAM
deppends on what mainboard slot, DDR2 or DDR3. 4X1GB or 2X2GB DDR2 800/DDR3 800 are good. make sure all has same brand/series code.

7. HDD
Seagate or Western Digital 250GB refurbished are fine. but if you affraid of lossing your data, considering to choose new SSD if you have more budget.

8 Fans
If you already have good PSU, it's ok to wire all fans from PSU. but if not, get a cheap 12Volt Adaptor to powering all fans. HDD also need fan for reliable condition. and the rest, position the fans in such a way that the airflow in PC Case is working.

I think, that's are all basic components to build a PC. If something is missing, I will add it next time.

Thanks for reading...