Building first PC

[Koekiejars]

I've been thinking about a proper gaming PC for a while as an upgrade from the underpowered gaming laptops I have been using for the last couple years.

My friends are split about what I should go for, some say an idiot like me should stick to factory products as although they have less value for money,

some say a second hand pc of a website like Preloved would be best but that requires driving miles away to run tests in some neckbeards house to not get scammed,

and some say I should build a PC but emphasize the stress of building a PC.

I'm leaning towards building but whenever I mention it i do quickly get told about people horror stories of breaking graphics cards, and screwing up other components.

What do I do?

[Slayer3032]

Building computers is easy, I built my first about 6 months after I got my first computer at 13. There's definitely little nuances that can affect performance but don't let that discourage you thinking you might do something not perfectly as most people are oblivious that they might not be getting the absolute 100% of what they could be anyways. That's more of an enthusiast mindset and unfortunately if that's your concern now, you have no choice but to build your own and figure it all out lol.

 

There's nothing stopping you from figuring things out after you build it and/or making changes to your system over time so it can meet your needs and budget as time goes on. That's the whole point of building it yourself is that it is specifically built how you want and need it then you can change it whenever you feel. Just watch some youtube how-to's, there's tons of very good ones and I'm sure you can find a video which would pretty much step by step you through pretty much anything you could buy. You really have to try to break things, other than dropping things there's really not much you'll likely do to break parts.

 

There's definitely plenty of good used options out there though, I've had very good luck buying systems off of craigslist but there's a lot of hilarious garbage on there for insane prices that you'll need to be careful of too. Used parts are sometimes really good value, used GTX 970's and 1070's make Nvidia's current offerings look like a joke for instance. Used is also a good way to acquire a lot of the other things you'll need at the same time like monitors, keyboards, ect. The used market varies wildly based on your location so sometimes it's not an option at all for people.

 

If you have the money, there's always like Maingear, NZXT BLD and other places which will use brand name enthusiast hardware over the usual corner cut hardware/systems that OEM's churn out most of the time. LTT just did their secret shopper series which is pretty good and goes over some of the more common companies you might look at.

 

The best option to just explore all of your options and decide from there on what you want.