Planning Advice Needed Please

[Firedingo]

Hi,

So I'm looking at building my first computer some time in the future but I'm not really sure where to begin. I'm very much a DIY girl and I do love computers but I'm much more into the software side of things than the hardware.

Up till now I've always had laptops thanks to the limited space at home as well as their portability being a bonus.

 

I know enough about hardware to at least figure out how much ram I want, how much storage space, roughly what cpu I need and a bit of an idea on gpu but that's about it.

For me, I try pick parts that mean the system will last a while, can handle the heavy use I throw at it and are flexible. My work load varies from light document processing right up to code compilation, streaming(hobbyist), gaming and game development.

I often have multiple programs open and running at the same time. I also use my pc up to a good 15 hours a day sometimes most days of the week.

At minimum I'd want 2 monitors, maybe more in the future. Peripheral wise I'm pretty good but will happily take advice on keyboard and mouse(quieter is better in my opinion).

My current pc is about 2 years old, the one I had before was 5 years old. I generally go between 4 and 5 years before upgrading any device or hardware. To give you an idea about how heavy of a load I can throw at my computer, I managed to break the keyboard once, fan twice, battery once, hard drives twice and the power adaptor once on my last pc. I fried the gpu on the pc before that too.

 

While my current pc is adequate for my needs for now, I'm looking at planning now so in the future I can have a decent idea about what I want with some minor changes based on what the latest hardware is, hence the I need advice.

I'm in Australia and have previously spent about $2000 on my laptops.

 

Mainly I'm not really sure how to pick the right compatible parts nor am I sure exactly what I should be looking for when comparing parts. I'm more than happy to read and research heaps but I could really use some advice on where to begin. At this stage everything is sorta fairly flexible because I'm unsure of a lot of things.

One thing I am pretty sure of is that I'd like to mix both Linux and Windows in some kind of dual booting setup. Given my dislike of windows 10 and the way it behaves at the moment, I'm content to stick with windows 7 for now or perhaps move to windows 8 (since I hear you have more control with 8 than with 10).

 

Anyway, sorry for this being a kinda massive post. I didn't mean for it to get quite so long. If you read this far, thanks and I hope you can offer me some advice and point me in the right direction to get started with my planning.

[GoldenLag]

What is your budget?

You mentioned how much youve spent on laptops but i didnt see what your budget is. 

 

Also from your older pc's is it possible to extract their HDDs and possibly an SSD from them?

[NoRomanBatmansAllowed]

If you're that serious about sticking to windows 7/8 you'll be stuck with intel 4xxx processors (don't consider AMD's trash from then).

 

Since it's that old already you're most likely gonna need to buy used, so I don't think we'll be much help planning out a build here.

[Taf the Ghost]

pcpartpicker.com 

 

Making a list there is always a good place to start.

 

Only Windows 10 is officially supported on Ryzen & 8th Gen Intel. So if you want a different OS, you'd need to look for a Kaby Lake system, which I'd probably recommend against.

[GoldenLag]

Im gonn throw in some links to articles or forum posts that might be informative. Currently also looking for instability issues within game development engines for a given cpu.( I havent found any yet, but anyone else please inform if there are any)

 

Links: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/766129-cpu-for-game-development-unreal-engine/

https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3287-amd-r7-2700-and-2700x-review-game-streaming-cpu-benchmarks-memory/page-2

 

[GoldenLag]

Peripherals i would go with a Cherry mx silent and a G403 prodigy mouse (wireless). Though id try finding a store to figure out what flavor you like your keyboards and what formfactor yoj want your mouse. 

 

Monitor: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/xv38TW/lg-monitor-25um58

 

That monitor should serve you well.

 

Edit: id try switching to Win 10 as you will have to swap sooner or later (hardware and software support will only get worse)

[Firedingo]

23 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

What is your budget?

You mentioned how much youve spent on laptops but i didnt see what your budget is. 

 

Also from your older pc's is it possible to extract their HDDs and possibly an SSD from them?

Ah yeah sorry, I meant to specify I have a flexible budget but given I've spent about $2000 in the past on laptops I'd be willing to spend that again on a PC. By flexible, I mean it's ok to go over or under the $2000 mark. Probably $1000 either side might give a decent enough range price wise.

 

Yeah HDD extraction is definitely possible. I've pulled apart both this laptop and my previous one for cleaning purposes. (God the dust really accumulates when you forget to clean it for several years :P)

The SSD will need to be replaced. It's just functionally too small to handle everything. I was looking at getting a larger SSD and HDD for this laptop in the short term so I can get some more life out of it. 120Gb SSDs aren't large enough for windows an its updates + the other key software like drivers and such I have(plus the unavoidable files that get hardcoded to save to folders like the users documents -_-)

The HDD is 1TB which s beefy but steam easily eats it up so I need some more space.

[Firedingo]

23 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

Peripherals i would go with a Cherry mx silent and a G403 prodigy mouse (wireless). Though id try finding a store to figure out what flavor you like your keyboards and what formfactor yoj want your mouse. 

 

Monitor: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/xv38TW/lg-monitor-25um58

 

That monitor should serve you well.

 

Edit: id try switching to Win 10 as you will have to swap sooner or later (hardware and software support will only get worse)

Yeah. Eventually I will have to. My current laptop came with a copy of windows 10 home. Considering getting a pro license for the extra control. Mostly I'm glad I stuck with windows 7 till now as quite a few of the more severe bugs have been worked out. Like Amazon Kindle's causing the system to freeze when plugged in via USB(Have a Kindle myself)

And Wacom's graphics tablets being completely incompatible driver wise until recently for another. Plus there's that great bug with Nvidia's drivers where it caused Windows to try and install the wrong driver only to have Nvidia try to fix it and commence an endless loop between the two.

 

Having never used Cherry mx anything, or I think anything to do with mechanical keyboards, that will definitely be a new thing for me to research. Mostly I've just used elcheapo wireless keyboard and mice from my local office supplies store.

 

Monitor looks good and much better than the second one I have at the moment which I picked up from a local shop like nearly a decade ago. Thanks for the suggestions

[Firedingo]

23 hours ago, NoRomanBatmansAllowed said:

If you're that serious about sticking to windows 7/8 you'll be stuck with intel 4xxx processors (don't consider AMD's trash from then).

 

Since it's that old already you're most likely gonna need to buy used, so I don't think we'll be much help planning out a build here.

Not that serious just I don't see Windows 10 as worth jumping to yet. Could be worse though. The Australian government still uses Windows XP.

Kinda like how Windows XP was considered rock solid stable and reliable when Windows 7 first came out, that's how I see Windows 7 with Windows 10. I'm hoping that the kinks and bugs that have popped up over the time since launch are petered out so I don't have so many issues. Nothing is worse than being in the middle of something only to find the whole system shutting down and having some of your work just lost.

I had an installation of Arch Linux setup a while ago. Despite having updates pushed bi-weekly, it had less issues than Windows 10 has had which is mainly why I prefer Windows 7/8 over 10 at the moment. Though I'm always open to having my mind changed.

[Firedingo]

23 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

pcpartpicker.com 

 

Making a list there is always a good place to start.

 

Only Windows 10 is officially supported on Ryzen & 8th Gen Intel. So if you want a different OS, you'd need to look for a Kaby Lake system, which I'd probably recommend against.

Care to explain why not a Kaby Lake system? I'll have a look at pcpartpicker.com then. Thanks

 

23 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

Im gonn throw in some links to articles or forum posts that might be informative. Currently also looking for instability issues within game development engines for a given cpu.( I havent found any yet, but anyone else please inform if there are any)

 

Links: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/766129-cpu-for-game-development-unreal-engine/

https://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3287-amd-r7-2700-and-2700x-review-game-streaming-cpu-benchmarks-memory/page-2

 

Thanks

Yeah, the main issue I've seen so far is my engine of choice will take some DIY work with Linux since it's only officially supported on Ubuntu. I currently use Gamemaker Studio 1.4 though I'd also consider Unity as my next jumping platform for engines.

That's mainly why I've stuck with Windows for so long, compatibility. Otherwise I would have long jumped ship.

For comparison my current CPU is an Intel i7-4720HQ @ 2.60GHz. I've maxed it out more than once with streaming and code compilation.

[GoldenLag]

6 hours ago, Firedingo said:

Care to explain why not a Kaby Lake system? I'll have a look at pcpartpicker.com then. Thanks

I believe it has to do with the fact that your budget would greatly suffer performancewise if you have to go back a gen of CPUs. With your budget you really should aim for the 6-8 core mainstream processors.

 

 

[Firedingo]

31 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

I believe it has to do with the fact that your budget would greatly suffer performancewise if you have to go back a gen of CPUs. With your budget you really should aim for the 6-8 core mainstream processors.

 

 

Ah. Thanks. Yeah I generally prefer as many cores as I can get my hands on.

[GoldenLag]

21 minutes ago, Firedingo said:

Ah. Thanks. Yeah I generally prefer as many cores as I can get my hands on.

That is kinda why either coffelake or Ryzen is preferable. And now that the latest CPUs dont officially support anything below win 10 id try moving onto something else. 

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

That is kinda why either coffelake or Ryzen is preferable. And now that the latest CPUs dont officially support anything below win 10 id try moving onto something else. 

If MS could be forced to remove the telemetry issues from Win10, it'd be a lot easier to recommend to just upgrade.

[GoldenLag]

7 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

If MS could be forced to remove the telemetry issues from Win10, it'd be a lot easier to recommend to just upgrade.

That is very true.

 

Well..... While om the buss i created a quick build with room for OS and other changes. I included two monitors i linked in earlier posts

 

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9nz7RJ
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9nz7RJ/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7GHz 8-Core Processor  ($319.99 @ Amazon) 
CPU Cooler: be quiet! - Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler  ($64.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: ASRock - Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($163.98 @ Newegg) 
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($174.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Crucial - MX500 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($72.89 @ OutletPC) 
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($59.79 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1080 8GB DUKE OC Video Card  ($564.98 @ Newegg) 
Case: NZXT - S340 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($59.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($59.99 @ Newegg) 
Monitor: LG - 25UM58 25.0" 2560x1080 75Hz Monitor  ($158.34 @ Newegg) 
Monitor: LG - 25UM58 25.0" 2560x1080 75Hz Monitor  ($158.34 @ Newegg) 
Total: $1858.27
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-05-23 02:47 EDT-0400

[Firedingo]

29 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

If MS could be forced to remove the telemetry issues from Win10, it'd be a lot easier to recommend to just upgrade.

Agreed. It took them long enough to admit sometimes people need to push updates off for compatibility reasons. I'm the first to update/upgrade when I can no longer justify being on older hardware/software but MS have actively worked against themselves with Windows 10.

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, Firedingo said:

Agreed. It took them long enough to admit sometimes people need to push updates off for compatibility reasons. I'm the first to update/upgrade when I can no longer justify being on older hardware/software but MS have actively worked against themselves with Windows 10.

MS made all of the right moves, then the Telemetry issue hit. Turns out "Free Upgrade" really meant letting them track anything they wanted to track, without the ability to turn it off.

 

I'm personally set on my main system tech for a bit, but I'm pretty radically rethinking where my next upgrade will go.

[Firedingo]

3 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

MS made all of the right moves, then the Telemetry issue hit. Turns out "Free Upgrade" really meant letting them track anything they wanted to track, without the ability to turn it off.

 

I'm personally set on my main system tech for a bit, but I'm pretty radically rethinking where my next upgrade will go.

Agreed. It's why I'm planning this far in advance of my next upgrade while considering Linux.