How To Plan a Build?

[Skeletor_118]

Hey,

 

So I've never built a PC myself, and as much as I've been learning about components themselves, I realized I've missed out on a huge part which is actually figuring out how/if parts would work together, and how to plan a build.

Now, I have plenty of time before I plan on actually building my first PC, but I want to learn as much as I can before I do it. What should be the first thing I look at when I'm getting ready to build? Should I base my build around a case or should I look at a motherboard first?

 

When I'm looking at a case how large of one should I get? Is there anything I should especially look for in a case? I don't care for a ton of fancy stuff, though I would love to have one with a tempered glass side so I could see inside it.

 

For looking at a motherboard how do I know what to get? All I've really learned is that I would need one with LGA 1151 because of the processors I've looked at all say that. So far all that I know is I want it to have two M.2 slots (I have one drive I'll take out of my current PC, and I want to also get anothre larger one), and of course at minimum 2 RAM slots. I may get one or so internal drives as well, but I'm unsure as I already have a 2TB external drive, which will more than last me for a long time.

 

On to processors, I only really know Intel's line, and I've been looking at likely getting an i7-8700 or something around that, whatever the best I can get within my budget. I've seen stuff written about heatsinks for CPUs but I'm honestly clueless about that at the moment, so if anyone could give me some info about that, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

With GPUs I think I'm pretty good on that front, it's basically just which one I'm going to buy when the time comes. The only thing I know for sure about a GPU is that I am planning on getting at minimum a GTX 1070, and I am going to want to play VR on the system, so I'll likely need either an HDMI port or just an adapter. RAM I also am perfectly fine on, as I was planning to just take my 16GB out of my current system and put it in the new build. 

 

Storage is pretty simple, and I already have an internal M.2 drive I can move to a new system, and then I want to buy another one so I can have more games downloaded to load up super fast.

 

For cooling, I'm not sure what would be the most reasonable system. Should I get a bunch of fans for air cooling? Would it be practical to try to water cool it? If I'm looking at fans how many should I get, and how do I know what fans would be best for me? I know I'd be gaming for several hours at a time, so I imagine I'd want to have a pretty good cooling system.

 

Lastly, for a power supply, I know I'd need to figure out how much power all my other parts require and get one that meets that requirement. I remember a TQ video I watched that mentioned that it's not a good idea to get a power supply that's too powerful, but one that basically has a bit of a buffer between its power rating and the power requirement of the PC. However, where would I look at everything to see how much power they can draw so I can figure out what power supply to get? How much of a buffer should I have between my system requirements and how much power a PSU puts out? Should I take into account the peripherals I have and tack on a few more watts or so?

 

If I have missed anything and you have actually read all of this, please let me know. When it comes to RBG lighting on/in the case, I think it'd be cool to have like an LED strip or something lighting the inside of my PC, especially since I want to have a side of tempered glass. 

 

If you have read all of this mess, thank you, and I appreciate any tips anyone might be able to give.

[Fasauceome]

https://pcpartpicker.com/

Start here

3 minutes ago, Skeletor_118 said:

When I'm looking at a case how large of one should I get? Is there anything I should especially look for in a case? I don't care for a ton of fancy stuff, though I would love to have one with a tempered glass side so I could see inside it.

As long as you don't spend $15 on a case you should be relatively alright

 

3 minutes ago, Skeletor_118 said:

On to processors, I only really know Intel's line, and I've been looking at likely getting an i7-8700 or something around that, whatever the best I can get within my budget. I've seen stuff written about heatsinks for CPUs but I'm honestly clueless about that at the moment, so if anyone could give me some info about that, it would be greatly appreciated.

There is of course the Ryzen lineup and if you manage to save some money with a Ryzen CPU it might move you up a graphics tier which is gonna help in gaming.

 

For the power supply, check out my signature. I have my system's power draw so you can roughly tell what you'd need, and if you click my PSU you'll be linked to the PSU tier list so you can see what high quality power supplies are available (and what to avoid)

[Skeletor_118]

@fasauceome thanks I'll take a look at the Ryzen lineup, though like I'd mentioned, I'm not quite familiar with them. What are the differences between a Ryzen CPU and an Intel one?

And what do you mean move up a graphics tier? Would I possibly bottleneck my system if my CPU isn't as good as my GPU or something?

[Mira Yurizaki]

Things in list form:

• Figure out your budget. This is key. Keep things flexible to cover taxes and shipping
• Figure out what you want to do with this computer.
• From there on:
  • Decide on a CPU first, this will determine which motherboard to get.
  • To figure out which motherboard to get, first figure out what I/O you need and what features, like overclocking or diagnostic LEDs, do you want. This will narrow down a lot of boards real quick.
  • After selecting a motherboard or three, this will limit what cases you can get.

After that, it's mostly pick and choose what looks good to you. Though keep in mind:

• I recommend an SSD, but focus getting higher capacity over performance. NVMe for instance doesn't have much of a practical performance benefit over SATA.
• For video cards, emphasize better cooling. If you're looking at two different cards of the same GPU with different clock speeds, it doesn't really matter because the performance benefit is small and the slower card will likely boost to the same clocks as the faster card anyway as long as it's kept cool enough.
• AMD Ryzen performs better with faster RAM, with the "sweet spot" being around DDR4-2933 to DDR4-3200. With Intel, this isn't really the case.
• If you use a power supply calculator, note they are typically using a worst case scenario. To keep things simple, for a single video card system, something between 500W-650W is fine.

[germgoatz]

Just now, Skeletor_118 said:

@fasauceome thanks I'll take a look at the Ryzen lineup, though like I'd mentioned, I'm not quite familiar with them. What are the differences between a Ryzen CPU and an Intel one?

Ryzen is very good with multithreaded applications, Intel with single thread (although they're still both good with either), and intel also has a slight advantage with most games due to better IPC.

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, Skeletor_118 said:

@fasauceome thanks I'll take a look at the Ryzen lineup, though like I'd mentioned, I'm not quite familiar with them. What are the differences between a Ryzen CPU and an Intel one?

At the moment, Ryzen has some slower clock speeds but they are waaaay cheaper. The current CPU value king is the Ryzen 5 2600, it only costs around $170 and is a 6 core CPU just like the 8700. Ryzen CPUs can all overclock as opposed to the K-SKUs from Intel, and on budget oriented motherboards as well. They aren't as good in gaming, but like I said, if you save money on the CPU and get a better graphics card, it's higher performance overall.

[Eastman51]

The first thing to decide is which platform you want, AMD or Intel. Then you need to decide what form factor case you want (ATX, mATX, ITX, etc) and pick out the case that you want. Then decide on the motherboard (that will fit the case), CPU (that fits the motherboard), and RAM (that is supported by CPU/motherboard). Pick out storage based on what you can fit in your case (3.5" and/or 2.5" cages/rails) and what options for connectors your motherboard has (PCIe, M.2, SATA, etc). Then pick out a GPU, one that is good for the CPU you have/isn't too expensive. After you have all of that, look at PSUs (power supplies), use wattage calculators to determine how many watts you need and research brands to make sure you can get the best quality PSU you can get (for your budget).

 

Use pcpartpicker.com to put together a list. The website can tell you if certain parts are incompatible or if they need BIOS updates, etc; and it can give you a good idea of how much the system will cost. 

[Brooksie359]

7 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

At the moment, Ryzen has some slower clock speeds but they are waaaay cheaper. The current CPU value king is the Ryzen 5 2600, it only costs around $170 and is a 6 core CPU just like the 8700. Ryzen CPUs can all overclock as opposed to the K-SKUs from Intel, and on budget oriented motherboards as well. They aren't as good in gaming, but like I said, if you save money on the CPU and get a better graphics card, it's higher performance overall.

I mean the closest cpu in price to a 2600 is the i5 8400 which is about 30 dollars more expensive and they perform basically the same in games. If you aren't buying at least a 8700 or 8700k then there is no reason to go Intel tbh.