How do you choose for a build?

[JokerFire]

I`ve always looked up or asked people about builds but i`ve never understood, what do you guys do to find the right parts? When i say this i mean within bottle necking parts cause i know a part of shopping for parts does have personal opinion in it.

[kalious78]

not really much bottlenecking going on when building new, no one is gonna pair a titanxp with a Celeron.

 

myself I just look at the cosmetics, functions(pci-e slots, usb ports etc) and try to find the best value/prices when planning a build.

[iLoiter]

When I shop for parts I think about the goal I want to accomplish with budget in mind. Example, I want to play X game in Y resolution/fps. I'm not the guy who want to "future proof" something and go over and beyond. It helps to go to certain sites like buildapcsales subreddit to to minimize cost.

[laminutederire]

You can't avoid bottlenecks, they're inevitable. Personnally the way I'd plan things would be: defining your needs -> choosing which CPU or at least which cpu tier, choosing the Mobo with ram (I don't think that those will bottleneck anything for gaming, look closely to the ram latency if you want to do some computing heavy tasks), choosing the best gpu you can with the budget, while still being more or less balanced. I'd say with a good i5, gpu wise it wouldn't make sense to go below a 480/1060 as of now. If you can't go for something better than i3 then I'd say 480/1060 should be the higher boundary. Starting with those rules, look closely to the budget you're allocating to CPU and GPU and see if you can balance those to get something more balanced performance wise.

After that choose the PSU accordingly (but don't cheap out on it)

[Nup]

Balancing price and features. 

[Marinatall_Ironside]

It's more complicated for me. I am a PC enthusiast who also does computer graphic arts as a college major as well. For me, it's many variables (such as performance-per-watt, features, stability, quality, reliability, safety (applicable only on PSU's) overall performance, cosmetics, etc.), making it more difficult for me to find what I will be happy with at the end of the day.

 

I could have easily gone with a Xeon CPU for my system, but with how far I've overclocked my 5930K CPU (4.7 at 1.325 volts), I am happy with it by the end of the day. I also went crazy overkill on my motherboard (Yes! I literally spent $599.99 on an Asus ROG Rampage V Edition 10 and I absolutely love it. It's in my sig) and the PSU (I can pretty much forsee what's going to happen when I overclock two Titan X Pascal GPU's in spite of the fact that the power efficiency is better than Maxwell). Now I am on monitors, and trust me, I can't decide on one of these displays (Asus ROG Swift PG27AQ, Acer Predator XB321HK, and the LG 31MU97)

[Sean-]

Watch a million YouTube videos until my mind fills up with ideas and inspiration, then gradually brainstorm ideas and eliminate things, finalize my essentials, then build around them

[Canada EH]

Everyone wants a $3000 for $1500 with a window on the side of the case and fancy flashing lights.