My thoughts after building a PC for the 1st time.

[cbranham26]

30 years old, had never done it previously. My current computer ( well not anymore ) was purchased prebuilt from Craigslist, in a deal that surprisingly worked out great. It had 8 gbs of Corsair 1600 MHz ram, a 300 GB HARD DRIVE ( fancy ) also had a AMD Phenom XT 1090T. This was bought around 2012. This was my everyday computer and I had zero problems with it, even playing WOW in a hot room when the CPU temps would hit over 90%C, it never shut down.

 

But I was always curious about building a computer-lord knows I have spent hours watching Linus and other tech channels, who made it look so effortless. And I wanted a new computer because I purchased a 144hz monitor, which my current system couldn't really hit reliably ( I mainly play Overwatch on low settings )

 

There is a microcenter about 30 minutes from me. All in all I spent 2 hours there, and spent north of 745$ bucks-which for someone who isn't rich, is a pretty serious amount. I was very intimidated, because I knew that if I MESSED something up, they most likely wouldn't return it, and you hear all of these horror stories about bent CPU pins, frying the mobo with electorstatic, etc etc. The build process was interesting, I honestly think I over-thought every aspect, because I didn't want to break anything, but as I have come to find out, todays hardware is pretty damn tough.

 

So, as of last night, the computer was fully assembled-I finally configured BIOS, installed W10 from a USB drive, and that's that. My closing thought?

 

When can I do it again?

 

And for those wondering, my new build is

 

NZXT S340 black.

INTEL I7-8700 ( non K ) ( with stock intel cooler which I will replace )

MSI GTX 1060 3GB.

Gskill Aegis 2400 MHZ DDR4 16GB

Inland professional 480GB SSD.

Corsair CX650M power supply ( probably overkill )

MSI B360-M MOBO ( cheapest I could find, I paid 40$ for it )

 

So far have only played overwatch. Pulled around 120FPS on Ultra-in the high 200's on low. May be able to get more FPS if I update the drivers, or I may be GPU bottlenecked. hoping to get a 1070 when Black Friday hits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, cbranham26 said:

When can I do it again?

Welcome to the ranks of just about every PC enthusiast.

 

One thing that I find really fun is getting older machines such as Athlon 64-based systems and fooling around with those, helps the "PC building fever" and you even learn some stuff.

 

Congratulations on your first build!

 

One thing I will mention about the 1070, is that you can find a 1070 and even up to a 1080/1080Ti for in the region of 400-500 USD on the used market, so that's something to consider if you're thinking about upgrading.

[Firewrath9]

Imo overpowered cpu but well done!

[PorkishPig]

10 minutes ago, cbranham26 said:

hoping to get a 1070 when Black Friday hits.

Make sure that you take a look at your local classifieds for 1070s. I was able to pick up a used 1070 for $275 USD on Facebook Marketplace last month. They also go for around this price on eBay, just ensure you're not picking up a mined card.

[cbranham26]

Well can someone tell me if there is a humongous leap in performance from a 10603gb to a gtx 1070? my aim is to future proof myself the best I can, while sticking to a budget. And FWIW, I have no interest in the new GTX cards they just announced.

[Crunchy Dragon]

5 minutes ago, cbranham26 said:

Well can someone tell me if there is a humongous leap in performance from a 10603gb to a gtx 1070? my aim is to future proof myself the best I can, while sticking to a budget. And FWIW, I have no interest in the new GTX cards they just announced.

1070 is a better card and has more VRAM.

 

There is a pretty decent gap between the 1060 3GB and the 1070.