mr Beginners Guide to Building a PC For Beginners (2020 Edition) [BEING REVAMPED]

[wall03]

--Taken down by myself to revamp it--

 

please await further changes, but here's what I got

 

Spoiler

    So you have decided to upgrade/replace your computer. You want to build it yourself and have put hours and hours of effort trying to figure out the difference from everything from threads vs cores, RAM speed vs RAM version (DDR4, DDR3, etc), but you are stuck somewhere in between 650W PSUs and clock speeds. Well I am here to help you. And this forum is here to help you. But especially this thread was made directly for you, so hang on. We are here to throw you a buoy in the large sea of computing. Ok. Go buy the best pre-built PC you can buy.

    WAIT A SECOND! NEVER BUY A PREBUILT IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE BEST BUILD FOR YOUR MONEY! Oops! That's caps lock man! (inspiration: the other PC build guide from 2013) ALWAYS BUILD YOURSELF! ALWAYS! Ok ok! I get it! I was just writing about choosing the best parts man! SHOW THEM HOW TO BUILD! SHOW THEM HOW TO BUILD! Fine! You get your way!

    NOTE: ALL THESE PRICES ARE IN USD AND ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

 

    Why You Can Trust Me

    I have been researching the computer market for 2+ years and these are the conclusions I have come up with. I have built 1 computer and have troubleshooted it far more then I want to share.

 

    Budget

    WAIT! BEFORE BUYING MAKE SURE YOU KNOW HOW MUCH YOU WILL BE SPENDING AND MAKE SURE TO ALLOCATE THE CORRECT AMOUNT OF MONEY TO EACH PART! You should spend around 1/5 of your budget on the CPU, 1/5 on the GPU, >$60 on the PSU, 1/5 on motherboard, >1/10 on case, 1/10 on cooling, and the rest on peripherals (Monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc).

   

PC Terms

This guide uses multiple abbreviations. Here is a list of what means what:

• PSU -> Power Supply
• GPU -> Graphic Processing Unit
• CPU -> Central Processing Unit
• PC -> Personal Computer
• RAM -> Random Access Memory

 

    What Does This Thingy Do?

    You want to know what parts to look for when building a PC. Everyone does. Let's go over what a product does, why you need it, and how much you need it.

Spoiler

CPU

Spoiler

 

This is the Central Processing Unit. You aren't going anywhere without one of these. You need a good one to provide the best experience, whether that might be gaming or web browsing or rendering, you are going to need one for these. You may have heard about the AMD vs Intel competition. Currently, AMD is on top, so my suggestion right now is to buy AMD.

               

                       

                            What are cores?                        

                       

                            Let me introduce you to the worker analogy. Your CPU is a worker. The bigger the clock speed, the faster the worker can work. The more threads, the longer the queue can be for tasks. But watch out! You need ample cache or this can bottleneck (one part is slowing down because the other part(s) are too slow/not enough)! Look for 32MB if possible, but 16MB will do the trick. The more cores, the more stuff the worker can do at a time. This will come back later. Remember it.    

RAM

Spoiler

RAM stands for Random Access Memory.                        

                       

                            This is the overflow for your CPU's cache (see above). You need (when I say need I mean you should have) at least 8GB minimum, unless you are running Chrome OS (please don't. it is very limited), in which case you need at least 4GB (it is performance optimized so much). Let's go over what you need (or should have at least):                        

                       

                            4GB: Very limiting. Pair with only CPU's under $75 or it WILL bottleneck. Can open 20 browser tabs on Chrome OS but will slow down system.                        

                       

                            8GB: For most people. You can use 30 browser tabs on this thing or light gaming at not at the same time. Pair with $75-$125 CPU.                        

                       

                            16GB: For gamers. If you game, you should have 16GB. If you have 50+ browser tabs open, get 16GB. If you photo edit, get 16GB. Your SSD/HDD with thank you (see below)                        

                       

                            32GB+: Reserved for video editors, power users (200+ tabs), content creators, and people who render. Stay out of it otherwise. It will be a waste of your money. WAIT A SECOND: Be wary of how much your OS supports. Windows 10 Home supports up to 128GB of RAM and motherboards can limit it too. 32-bit OS's can't take full advantage of 4GB (they only use 3.2GB) and 64-bit OS's need 4GB+ to run. Windows Pro supports up to 2TB RAM, 128 CPU cores, and 2 CPU sockets. Windows Pro Workstation, can support up to 8TB of RAM and 4 CPU sockets, and 256 cores. (Wikipedia)                       

                       

                            The analogy continues: The workers desk space is it's RAM. If you have too much space it can even slow you down a little due to the work being laid out. When there is not enough space, the worker stores it in his/her filing cabinet (SSD). If the worker doesn't have one, it put it in the shed next door (HDD) temporarily. With faster RAM (the number like 3200 etc), the faster the worker can take the papers (applications) or read them or write on them. But there is latency to consider. This is the amount of time the worker's order takes to go from the brain to the hand. The faster the RAM the more expensive, however

 

SSD

Spoiler

SSD stands for Solid State Drive.

 

This is where your applications, your files, and your overflow RAM goes. SSDs are fast, versatile, and (mostly) inexpensive. The unwritten minimum for capacity in 2020 is 256GB. That definitely does not mean that 256GB is enough for anything besides spreadsheets and documents. See the guide below:

<insert guide here>

 

<insert analogy here>

 

 

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by wall03
SSD desc starting

[Letgomyleghoe]

You should use spoilers to organize your information, and your underestimating the amount of chrome tabs you can open, ive seen 4gb laptops open about 25-30.

[wall03]

13 minutes ago, scuff gang said:

You should use spoilers to organize your information, and your underestimating the amount of chrome tabs you can open, ive seen 4gb laptops open about 25-30.

Fixed that. Tomorrow will add GPU and PSU.

[wall03]

Today's Update: PSU guidance finished up + OS guidance added. Tomorrow Case guidance will added.

[wall03]

Todays update: Monitor Guidance started and Case guidance done

[wall03]

todays update: Monitor guidance finished, CPU socket updated

[wall03]

bump

[kkpatel87]

I just saw in your other thread that you were building your first machine but you have buying guides for components? Honestly curious, how do you reconcile that?

[wall03]

Just now, kkpatel87 said:

I just saw in your other thread that you were building your first machine but you have buying guides for components? Honestly curious, how do you reconcile that?

I use recommendations from other people and use the Internet. A little time can make one discover a lot.

[kkpatel87]

Just now, wall03 said:

I use recommendations from other people and use the Internet. A little time can make one discover a lot.

Sure research is very important, but there is no first hand build experience, right?

 

So here is a clip out from your guide: "You also have to consider the wattage your PSU supplies. If you don't have enough, well IDK what would happen but it isn't good." How can you give advice but not explain your rationale or provide objective evidence?

[wall03]

2 minutes ago, kkpatel87 said:

Sure research is very important, but there is no first hand build experience, right?

 

So here is a clip out from your guide: "You also have to consider the wattage your PSU supplies. If you don't have enough, well IDK what would happen but it isn't good." How can you give advice but not explain your rationale or provide objective evidence?

Just asked the community

 

 

[kkpatel87]

1 minute ago, wall03 said:

-snip-

That is not what i meant. I would recommend gaining first hand experience before creating a guide. Its blatantly obvious to someone experienced that this is not a good sourcing guide but people who don't know any better won't.

[wall03]

1 minute ago, kkpatel87 said:

That is not what i meant. I would recommend gaining first hand experience before creating a guide. Its blatantly obvious to someone experienced that this is not a good sourcing guide but people who don't know any better won't.

OK. Will update after building PC with Hindsight points.

[SansVarnic]

@wall03 Please understand this is meant to be constructive criticism.

That said I start with this, your CPU section is lacking a lot. You seem to have focused only on AMD creating a bias. Also your categories are price based instead of performance based. You need to look into rewriting this to reflect a more logical and comprehensive view of what each level of CPU does and what performance to expect. Your guide lacks severely in this aspect and quite well mislead any newcomer into incorrectly misunderstanding and choosing the wrong Processor for the work load they are looking to apply to their machine. If you want to do price categories then you need to add a price to performance comparison at the least.

I have not looked over the entire guide but if this part is a good example then I feel the rest will be just as underwhelming and I am not sure what to think of this guide.

 

What I look for in any type of guide is a comprehensive layout of what the component does, what it offers in features and a comparable alternatives if the price point is to high or the features I'm looking for not quite what I expect. What your offering is a very generalized overview of what the CPU does, any cpu can run with 10-20 browser tabs but not same performance will be seen in chrome vs firefox vs opera... etcetera. CPU's do not define how many tabs a web browser can have, your RAM does. Also you do not explain the difference of single core vs multi-core performance. This is crucial since currently most programs still rely on single performance over rmulti-core and only some programs and more recent AAA games rely on multi-core performance over single core.

Please look into updating this into a more informative and inclusive guide.

 

This is not me saying this as a Moderator but as an experienced builder of 25 years myself.

 

On 4/30/2020 at 10:00 AM, wall03 said:

--The Official Successor to That Other Build Guide--

Until you are able to rewrite this guide please, find something else to say than this. It can or will mislead the reader.

On 4/30/2020 at 10:00 AM, wall03 said:

A Guide to Macs (Macs are good too just not a great value)

This is incorrect,  now I am no fan of Apple (the exact opposite) but Macs are of good value in the uses they excell in just like PC's but they are not gaming machines. If gaming value is the point you are choosing to stand on [I assume] then you need to make that point clear to the reader, otherwise you are misleading.

On 4/30/2020 at 10:00 AM, wall03 said:

Why You Can Trust Me

I have been researching the computer market for 2+ years and these are the conclusions I have come up with

This will be my last point as I dont want tear apart you whole post. This statement doesn't instill much faith in me to trust your post, it does the opposite unfortunately. I can make the same claim about a great many number of things but as mentioned by another member you have a topic claiming you never built a PC before so all you have is a very narrow base of research but no working knowledge on the subject. In addition to what I have already pointed out the combination shows the lack of what is needed to show the reader that your guide is comprehensive and easy to understand.

[ShaheerWasTaken]

Can you please add that you can get windows 10 for free. From microsofts windows media creation tool. I'm running it right now and it's regular windows. I don't even have the "please activate windows" thing.

[Bartholomew]

On 4/30/2020 at 5:00 PM, wall03 said:

Idealy, you would want 256GB of SSD storage and  1TB (1000GB's) of HDD storage

Is it me or is this "ideal" storage in 2020 not so ideal but more a absolute bottom of the barrel bare minimum?

[kkpatel87]

21 hours ago, ShaheerLikesGames said:

Can you please add that you can get windows 10 for free. From microsofts windows media creation tool. I'm running it right now and it's regular windows. I don't even have the "please activate windows" thing.

That is incorrect, you cannot get Windows 10 for "free".

[dcybergeek]

Thanks for the write-up, great read!

[ShaheerWasTaken]

11 hours ago, kkpatel87 said:

That is incorrect, you cannot get Windows 10 for "free".

Yes you can 

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/software-download/windows10

 

s

[kkpatel87]

13 hours ago, ShaheerLikesGames said:

-snip-

Let me be more specific. You can acquire the Windows 10 media for free. You cannot get a licensed copy of windows for free.

 

Here are the limitations for the un-activated windows 10:

"Initially, you won’t notice a difference. Eventually, Windows will start nagging you a tiny bit. First, you’ll notice a watermark in the bottom-right corner of your screen. You’ll also see a “Windows isn’t activated. Activate Windows now.” link at the bottom of the Settings app. This is the only form of nag you’ll see–there are no pop-up windows, for example."

 

"Second, you’ll be unable to change your desktop wallpaper and from the Personalization > Background screen in the Settings app. You’ll see a “You need to activate Windows before you can personalize your PC” message at the top of this window, and the options for changing your wallpaper will be grayed out."

 

"Aside from these basic limitations, your Windows 10 system will continue to work forever. There are no nag prompts aside from the watermark, you’ll get all the system updates, and everything else is completely functional. The only thing that could change this is a Windows 10 update, but Microsoft has become increasingly lenient since Windows 7."

 

Source

[ShaheerWasTaken]

15 hours ago, kkpatel87 said:

Let me be more specific. You can acquire the Windows 10 media for free. You cannot get a licensed copy of windows for free.

 

Here are the limitations for the un-activated windows 10:

"Initially, you won’t notice a difference. Eventually, Windows will start nagging you a tiny bit. First, you’ll notice a watermark in the bottom-right corner of your screen. You’ll also see a “Windows isn’t activated. Activate Windows now.” link at the bottom of the Settings app. This is the only form of nag you’ll see–there are no pop-up windows, for example."

 

"Second, you’ll be unable to change your desktop wallpaper and from the Personalization > Background screen in the Settings app. You’ll see a “You need to activate Windows before you can personalize your PC” message at the top of this window, and the options for changing your wallpaper will be grayed out."

 

"Aside from these basic limitations, your Windows 10 system will continue to work forever. There are no nag prompts aside from the watermark, you’ll get all the system updates, and everything else is completely functional. The only thing that could change this is a Windows 10 update, but Microsoft has become increasingly lenient since Windows 7."

 

Source

Completly wrong, I have media creation and nor is there a watermark and I can also change my background.

[ShaheerWasTaken]

[kkpatel87]

What does your activation screen show?

[Torotoplayer]

Building a PC is the best thing I've ever done.

[wall03]

Working on an update...

 

boy has it been a while!

 

hopefully the revamp will be done soon...