Time to Build a New PC

[Koz]

I built my current PC just over 10 years ago and it has served me well all this time. Back then I spent about $1,300 on it and including a cool, NZXT tower case, Intel Core i5-2500k 3.3 GHz CPU, a 1TB HDD, ASRock Z68 Extreme motherboard, 8 GB of RAM, 1000W power supply, and a mid level NVidia video card. A comparable Alienware system was about $3k at that time.

 

But as software and technology changes, the system bogs down, especially with hard drive bottlenecks. Some drivers are now longer being supported, and the dreaded Blue Screen of Death has been common despite all of my troubleshooting. Because my hardware is so outdated, there are no simple upgrade paths worth the time, effort, or money. So it's build or buy time.

 

But now I'm stuck in the paralysis of analysis. AMD or Intel? Ryzen 3 or Ryzen 5? Core i3 or Core i5? Maybe i7? Integrated graphics or not? OK, now which motherboard? Built in WiFi or add on card? I will say that I prefer integrated graphics only because if you don't have that and your graphics card fails you're out of luck until you can buy a new one.

 

The biggest issue is the graphics card, primarily because of the chip shortage. Used graphics cards that cost $150 new are now selling for $400-$500. At those prices it makes more sense to buy a pre-built PC that comes with a mid level graphics card. But a lot of those reasonably priced pre-built PC's (like HP Pavilion Gaming) come with cheap components and almost no upgrade path.

 

That's another thing - I want this entire package to be under $850. It's an arbitrary number and I don't have a budget, but I just can't see dropping any more money than that on a PC. I'm not really a gamer. The only games I have on my system are Civilization 5 & 6, Kerbal Space Academy, Fishing Planet, and OOTP Baseball. But I would prefer to run them in full graphics for once, and I may try out some VR in the future.

 

I expect for the next week this is going to give me a headache as I decide which path to take. Knowing my luck by the time I decide, whatever I need will be sold out!

[huZZah]

Now is a hard time due to the superconductor shortages. My district can’t replace 15 year old computers just because everything is back ordered and in such short supply. 
 

That being said, I’m a fan of intel, I say i7 so you get more years before obsolete, and I have onboard graphics but also a separate a Nvidia chip for anything serious. I prefer it for power consumption/heat.
 

Your budget is also gonna be a problem for quite some time. Not sure what specs you wanna go with, but even the RAM itself is astronomical at the moment. $70-$100 for a 16gb chip set. Crazy. Solid state drives are insane right now as well, but even 7200 rpm disk drives are going up due to shortages of other options. (I prefer solid state.) I’ve been told there’s a serious motherboard shortage coming as well.  Like grind the industry to a halt serious. We’ll see. 
 

Good luck to you. 

[MN Fisher]

I have your new computer here.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/640266/powerspec-b733-desktop-computer

 

I have a Power Spec that's been rock-solid the past 5 years...if I had to replace it, I'd go with Power Spec again.

[Bubba 460]

2 hours ago, Koz said:

the paralysis of analysis. AMD or Intel? Ryzen 3 or Ryzen 5? Core i3 or Core i5? Maybe i7? Integrated graphics or not?

 

 

Well I got the drift that you want a new computer, everything else went over my head. I've seen designations like that but usually on the side a jet fighter and always near the "RESCUE" panel.

[Koz]

3 hours ago, MN Fisher said:

I have your new computer here.

https://www.microcenter.com/product/640266/powerspec-b733-desktop-computer

 

I have a Power Spec that's been rock-solid the past 5 years...if I had to replace it, I'd go with Power Spec again.

Interesting... I'm not sold on AMD, but you're forcing me to take a deeper look. What I see right now is that if I have to rely on integrated graphics for a while, that AMD may be the way to go - as long as dual channel RAM is used. But from what I saw on Tom's Hardware, I'm not sure if the extra $110 for the Ryzen 7 offers that much more performance than the Ryzen 5 5600G. I need to do some more research.

 

Thanks for the heads up.

 

 

[MN Fisher]

2 minutes ago, Koz said:

Interesting... I'm not sold on AMD, but you're forcing me to take a deeper look. What I see right now is that if I have to rely on integrated graphics for a while, that AMD may be the way to go - as long as dual channel RAM is used. But from what I saw on Tom's Hardware, I'm not sure if the extra $110 for the Ryzen 7 offers that much more performance than the Ryzen 5 5600G. I need to do some more research.

 

Thanks for the heads up.

 

 

Well, for $50 cheaper - drop to a Ryzen 5 chip and 500GB SSD

https://www.microcenter.com/product/640130/powerspec-b248-desktop-computer

[Koz]

3 hours ago, huZZah said:

That being said, I’m a fan of intel, I say i7 so you get more years before obsolete, and I have onboard graphics but also a separate a Nvidia chip for anything serious. I prefer it for power consumption/heat.
 

Your budget is also gonna be a problem for quite some time. Not sure what specs you wanna go with, but even the RAM itself is astronomical at the moment. $70-$100 for a 16gb chip set. Crazy. Solid state drives are insane right now as well, but even 7200 rpm disk drives are going up due to shortages of other options. (I prefer solid state.) I’ve been told there’s a serious motherboard shortage coming as well.  Like grind the industry to a halt serious. We’ll see. 
 

Good luck to you. 

Intel is due to release 1th generation chips soon, but I'm not sure if that's going to impact 10th generation pricing right away. I actually think RAM and SSD's are still reasonably priced - it's the GPU's that are ridiculous if you can find them.

 

I've kind of just glanced at AMD's because I have been a fan of Intel, but with the benchmarks I'm seeing with integrated graphics on the AMD's I need to take a longer look.

 

I actually have a cousin who is a bigwig at NVIDIA, but he works with the US military, NASA, and SpaceX on double secret probation top secret stuff, but maybe I'll see if he has some connections to the video card division. I've never asked him for a favor before, but with the shortages maybe he can call in a favor.

8 minutes ago, MN Fisher said:

Well, for $50 cheaper - drop to a Ryzen 5 chip and 500GB SSD

https://www.microcenter.com/product/640130/powerspec-b248-desktop-computer

It looks like one CPU cooler fan on there and two exhaust fans at the rear. Is that it or is there an intake fan on the side as well?

 

How's the temperature level of the CPU and components? I'd be a little worried about airflow if I added a GPU, even one with fans.

[MN Fisher]

9 minutes ago, Koz said:

It looks like one CPU cooler fan on there and two exhaust fans at the rear. Is that it or is there an intake fan on the side as well?

 

How's the temperature level of the CPU and components? I'd be a little worried about airflow if I added a GPU, even one with fans.

I dunno about the newer cases, but my B333 has never come close to overheating even with 4-rotary drives, a DVD-RW drive, a drive card (internal only has 4-ports) and a USB card (needed more USB-3 ports than the 2 supplied).

[Koz]

2 hours ago, MN Fisher said:

I dunno about the newer cases, but my B333 has never come close to overheating even with 4-rotary drives, a DVD-RW drive, a drive card (internal only has 4-ports) and a USB card (needed more USB-3 ports than the 2 supplied).

I did some reading on the ASRock motherboards on those systems and the biggest complaint was that those boards overheated with both the CPU's and the GPU's. I'm going to look into some beefier MOBO's for those Ryzen's.

[MyKeyBe]

Get a small ssd drive and wipe your hdd. Install your os on the ssd and use the hdd for games and what not. That alone will make a big difference. Probably going to be your best bet right now. I built a new one this spring and just the gpu was $300.00 for a new asus strix 1650 super and it would be hard to find something like that again. If you do decide to build I went ryzen 5 and it has been fantastic. Stay away from gigabyte power supplies.

[Boomstick]

First, get a SSD, large enough to install windows and games on and use that as your drive to install your OS and apps on. Then use a quality rotary drive to store your documents, music, install files, etc. The SSDs have a write limit so they are not the best to store data you care about on, but they are so much faster. I won't even use a computer that has a rotary drive anymore if I don't have to, I have better things to do be doing with my time.

 

Second, look at one of those enclosed water cooling units for the CPU. They run much cooler and quieter than air cooling.

 

Personally I would not use anything AMD if it was free. Their CPUs are finally catching up, but primarily by adding more cores that won't get utilized unless you're using professional video editing software. Their GPUs have came with inferior cooling and pushed the clock speed and power as far as they can go, so basically running a game from a few years ago on low settings with a frame limiter is enough to drive the temperature up to 80 Celsius in a few seconds, and something that's actually pushing it will overheat. Even the best available aftermarket cooling systems run very hot, and I've had several melted.

Then add in all the known issues with their hardware that they go to market with anyway. You might be lucky and have minimal issues but remember this is a company that released a known issue where you had to disable multiple cores or eventually USB usage would cause a system crash, with no fix. You simply do not have problems like this with Intel.

 

Now that said, the price of GPUs has gotten absolutely insane, so at the end of the day if you still go with an AMD video card I get it. I dropped $700 on my 980gtx in order to play The Witcher 3 when it launched which is the only game I've really cared to play in the past few years since The Witcher 2 and even then I opted to wait a few years before rebuilding my computer to play it so I didn't have to drop money on cutting edge hardware.
 

12 hours ago, Koz said:

It looks like one CPU cooler fan on there and two exhaust fans at the rear. Is that it or is there an intake fan on the side as well?

That case doesn't look bad but I would personally like one giant fan on the side. They move a good amount of air, from all areas of the motherboard and are quiet.

12 hours ago, Koz said:

ntel is due to release 1th generation chips soon, but I'm not sure if that's going to impact 10th generation pricing right away. I actually think RAM and SSD's are still reasonably priced - it's the GPU's that are ridiculous if you can find them.

CPUs have largely came to a point where the next generation will usually offer more power savings than performance gains. A similar chip in a prior generation is usually fairly close in performance to the next generation. I'm still running my 4th gen i7-4790k with no plans to upgrade soon.

[MN Fisher]

1 hour ago, Boomstick said:

Then use a quality rotary drive to store your documents, music, install files, etc.

Western Digital - that's all I've ever used and in 30 years of having PCs, only one has ever failed.

 

Back when I was in user support, we'd have Seagates drop left and right, the WDs just sat there, laughed at them...and kept on working.

[Boomstick]

34 minutes ago, MN Fisher said:

Western Digital - that's all I've ever used and in 30 years of having PCs, only one has ever failed.

Agree, but WD Greens are garbage I haven't ever got a year for one, for for a blue or black.

 

Personally I buy the RE (server grade drives). They're expensive, but they're designed not to fail - and they don't.

[MN Fisher]

18 minutes ago, Boomstick said:

Agree, but WD Greens are garbage I haven't ever got a year for one, for for a blue or black.

 

Personally I buy the RE (server grade drives). They're expensive, but they're designed not to fail - and they don't.

Agreed - I don't buy the Greens, just the Blue or Black. My #4 drive is a 500gb Blue that I ported over from my previous system...so it's going on 12 years now. Still spins, stores, retrieves just fine.

[HenryPF]

As for WD drives, this is my drive that I am retiring this week (see attached)

 

Want to know what everyone else really runs for pcs?

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

 

As for HDDs - Seagate used to be absolute crap, but I personally buy WD. This guy has more HDDs than anyone on the planet and they are the same drives you and I buy, consumer grade. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q2-2021/

 

You should not even have to worry about HDDs - you will be getting NVMe anyhoo. Your games mentioned do not require a discreet graphics card, 5600g is just fine. You are most likely running 1080p at 30fps anyhow due to your monitor.

 

But for your pc, build it yourself which is completely upgradeable:

 

First video is why he is choosing these parts, 2nd video is him building it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Koz]

7 hours ago, HenryPF said:

As for WD drives, this is my drive that I am retiring this week (see attached)

 

Want to know what everyone else really runs for pcs?

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam

 

As for HDDs - Seagate used to be absolute crap, but I personally buy WD. This guy has more HDDs than anyone on the planet and they are the same drives you and I buy, consumer grade. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q2-2021/

 

You should not even have to worry about HDDs - you will be getting NVMe anyhoo. Your games mentioned do not require a discreet graphics card, 5600g is just fine. You are most likely running 1080p at 30fps anyhow due to your monitor.

 

But for your pc, build it yourself which is completely upgradeable:

 

First video is why he is choosing these parts, 2nd video is him building it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm prett sure I'm going to stick with the long term reliability of an Intel CPU. The people that rave about AMD are usually ones that build new systems or upgrade every few years and to them long term reliability of the CPU is not a factor.

 

I'll do some more research this week, but I'm leaning at staying with Intel.

[HenryPF]

I have both intel and amd - my last build was in 2013 personally for gaming and I didn't upgrade til now with a 5950x from AMD. I have both Intel and AMD servers for my testing lab with 48-128  cores each, so no personal preferences here.

 

For intel, you would be looking at the i5 11600K with UHD 750 built in graphics.

 

Here is a great comparison for ya!

 

 

 

[Dwight Hottle]

I'm not a computer nerd at all but if you look at the analyst community the differences in market share & company performance going forward clearly favors AMD over Intel. AMD has been eating Intel's lunch for well over a year. Instead of looking at historical rating consider the underdogs recent rise to superiority. 

[DaubsNU1]

I've been building my own computers for about 20 years. Usually head over to ArsTechnica and scope out their latest build threads. I've been running the same monitors / keyboard / mouse / speakers / etc. for a while...just upgrade the "Box" and be done with it.

 

I have a photography business on the side, and don not game on my computer at all.

 

Last build was in 2016...went with Intel, 32GB RAM, three SSD's, 3TB HD, water cooling...it has been a solid machine for me. Upgraded to Windows 10...really like it.

 

I don't see a need to upgrade any time soon...computer technology is not like back in the late 90's and early 2000's...when Microsoft came out with a new OS, and everyone, I mean EVERYONE had to upgrade. 

 

My first Gateway computer was in 1992 or 1993...486-66mhz, 428 megabyte HARD DRIVE, and it cost me $3,500(!)

 

Last box (above) I built for under $1k.

 

Good luck with your build! As always, build it for more than you need.

[Tennessee Boy]

1 hour ago, Dwight Hottle said:

I'm not a computer nerd at all but if you look at the analyst community the differences in market share & company performance going forward clearly favors AMD over Intel. AMD has been eating Intel's lunch for well over a year. Instead of looking at historical rating consider the underdogs recent rise to superiority. 

Going forward,  I think PCs will transition to ARM processors.  Apple's new M1 ARM processor has demonstrated the advantages the  ARM architecture provides.  I certainly don't think everyone will switch to Macs.  I do think the current Wintel world with follow suit and you will see high powered ARM processors that are intended for PCs from companies like Qualcomm.  Rumor has it that Samsung has one in works now.

[Koz]

35 minutes ago, Tennessee Boy said:

Going forward,  I think PCs will transition to ARM processors.  Apple's new M1 ARM processor has demonstrated the advantages the  ARM architecture provides.  I certainly don't think everyone will switch to Macs.  I do think the current Wintel world with follow suit and you will see high powered ARM processors that are intended for PCs from companies like Qualcomm.  Rumor has it that Samsung has one in works now.

I have a Mac Mini that I use for coding iOS apps and I hate it. I don’t know what it is, but nothing on it seems intuitive. I’m not an Apple basher. In fact, I have an iPhone and an iPad. I just don’t like the Apple OS.

[Tennessee Boy]

20 minutes ago, Koz said:

I have a Mac Mini that I use for coding iOS apps and I hate it. I don’t know what it is, but nothing on it seems intuitive. I’m not an Apple basher. In fact, I have an iPhone and an iPad. I just don’t like the Apple OS.

That's why I don't think everyone will switch to Macs.   I use Linux for software development work.  I have a Windows Laptop that I use for email and such for work.  I use a Mac at home.  They all have their advantages and disadvantage.  The thing that bugs me the most with Apple is the planned obsolescence.  The iMac that I'm typing this on came out in 2012 and it will not run the latest version of MacOS that was released last Fall.  This might be expected if it was a low end computer but it has a Core i7 3.4GHz processor and 24GB of memory.

[Boomstick]

On 8/30/2021 at 11:30 AM, Tennessee Boy said:

The thing that bugs me the most with Apple is the planned obsolescence.

Yeah, it's kind of sad. Especially since decent modern hardware will remain effectively functional for years at this point unless you do a lot of heavy tasks like gaming or video editing where you always need more power.

[CrankFate]

I’d recommend an energy star i7 or i5 prebuilt system, with 32gb Ram and a GTX1650 Super. The reason for this recommendation is that we have 3 in the house. They play all modern games. All three running all day use less power than one similarly powered system using a different processor and GPU.

[Ski]

This thread is just what and who I need right now...... My monitor goes black frequently with message that says "No HDMI signal from your device" I have changed out the cable with an old one and am waiting on a new one today to try. I have unplugged restarted everything several times and still get message. Any advice??

R/Ski