desktop PC building guides

[Perfection]

Hey duders. I was all googly and stuff for good PC building guides, but I nay find good ones, but I know some fine CFC homies who know their stuff know where they are, so I'm askin' y'all what some good up-to date PC building guides are.


Imma a build a super productivity rig with some gaming abilities too!!!!!

Love,
Perfs

 

[tokala]

This thread should be a good start:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=480098

And you should probably be a bit more specific on what kind of software you are intending to run on it, what's your budget , what display(s) you are using with it.

 

[Perfection]

Dual 1080x1920 monitors for now, with possibility for expansions (fleixibility is important), will be frequently running Cad software, firmware development software, and games (will get new SimCity). Often while simultaneously running browser streaming video. Monitors are already purchased budget is about 1k.

 

[Zelig]

What do you need a guide for? Like what parts to purchase, or how to physically assemble parts, or both?

 

[Perfection]

what parts to purchase, I don't keep up on PC hardware so am not sure what I need to get.

 

[GoodGame]

Hey duders. I was all googly and stuff for good PC building guides, but I nay find good ones, but I know some fine CFC homies who know their stuff know where they are, so I'm askin' y'all what some good up-to date PC building guides are.


Imma a build a super productivity rig with some gaming abilities too!!!!!

Love,
Perfs

I thought you designed electrical chips for super colliders or something, Perf!

I initially got started with a Dummies guide, a Maximum PC annual guide (they did/do those for home building). Nowadays just watch Youtube videos if you're not sure of your skills, and a A+ Dummies guides couldn't hurt in case of any extended trouble-shooting.

The best guide is probably to hound people for their build specs and ask them every so often if they got any glaring hiccups. If not, then clone their design, like the Chinese did to IBM. The second best guide is to hound the manufacturers' sites for 'approved/tested' combinations, but those are usually spotty at best; start with the CPU maker's guide.

Decent websites: Tom's Hardware, ANANDTECH, Overclockers.com, and Youtube (with a grain of salt).


For your CAD needs, you might want to check websites/mags associated with the professional level you'll be working at, as you might need a special GPU card over typical gaming cards. I'm going to guess you'll want more CPU cores than the average quad-core user, too.

 

[ainwood]

CAD just requires decent 3d rendering (presumably this is 3d CAD), and any decent modern graphics card that can output to dual 1080 x 1920 monitors should be fine for CAD.

 

[Perfection]

It'll be a mixture of EDA and 3D CAD. I don't anticipate huge requirements for it. I'm guessing the newer SimCity will be the biggest thing.

 

[Zack]

Newegg posted a 3-part video on this subject on YouTube a year or so ago, although I admit I haven't watched it.

 

[Mr.WorldWide]

Emulate Toms Hardware builds and you can't go too wrong.

 

[tokala]

Careful, depending on the CAD software package, you might need specific certified systems and/or video cards.

The likes of Inventor should run on anything, though.

If you want to keep the system for a few years, it's probably sensible to build it around an intel i-5, i-7 or entry-level Xeon, your budget allows that easily.
If you aren't shuffling huge amounts of data, a 128 or 256 GB SSD should be sufficient to keep all your work-related programs and data on it, it's really worth it.
If you can still find one, get a Samsung 830, otherwise a 840.

Video card should probably selected according to the preferences of your CAD software. Most likely a $100 card will do comfortably, unless you need one of those overprices CAD cards.

The rest of the parts aren't performance critical.

 

[warpus]

The one thing I can recommend is an SSD for the OS

 

[Perfection]

which CAD packages I end up using have not been determined yet. I'm bit leary about Tom's Hardware build, as they build things for overclocking. I'm quite concerned about machine reliability it would be great to have something with better cross comparisons that I can sort of storm through.

 

[illram]

Spoiler :

This might be more what you're looking for? I think someone here posted this a while back. Useful as a starting point to compare tiers. Spoilered due to huge image size.

 

[tokala]

Great chart!

Bu if you are really concerned about reliability and compatibility, it's probably best to go with a pre-assembled system from the business line of one of the big brands.

 

[Perfection]

Thanks, I was thinking of that chart, actually, I'm glad they still makie it

Great chart!

Bu if you are really concerned about reliability and compatibility, it's probably best to go with a pre-assembled system from the business line of one of the big brands.

I'm guessing they'd be expensive and not so good for gaming.

I got a reccomendation from Tom's Hardware:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/378337-31-magical-gaming-productivity-desktop-computer-machine

I'm wondering what people think of it.

 

[Zack]

Too much RAM, terrible choice of CPU, power supply is way too big (but don't take my word on it), you definitely want a better graphics card if you're using two 1920x1080 monitors, and I don't know about the rest.

 

[Zelig]

Looks mostly fine, 1TB drives are a bad $/GB. I wouldn't get any computers with internal optical drives, just get a USB blu-ray drive for the same price and you can share it between any of your computers.

Also I hate legacy ports on motherboards, if it were me I'd just figure out a serial -> usb thing, which you'll be able to keep if you still need it when you can't get mobos with serial ports anymore.

Too much RAM, terrible choice of CPU, power supply is way too big (but don't take my word on it), you definitely want a better graphics card if you're using two 1920x1080 monitors, and I don't know about the rest.

I dunno how anybody gets by with less than 16GB of RAM. I'm sitting at 12GB used as I type this, and I don't have anything particularly demanding open. (3.7GB for kernel, 1.6GB for Photoshop, 1GB for Firefox, 1GB for Virtualbox, everything else below 200MB). If I want to open anything really big I'd have to close a bunch of stuff.

CPU isn't particularly terrible, especially for CAD stuff which I assume is heavily multithreaded, and CPU hardly matters for gaming as long as you've got at least four cores.

PSU is probably bigger than needed, I generally look at 650W models as baseline for rigs in that range. AMD processor does take more power though.

Video card isn't unreasonable at that price, I assume games are only going to be on a single monitor, for non-games, video cards hardly matter. (My laptop video card can simultaneously drive a 2880x1800 monitor, two 2560x1400 monitors and a 1920x1200 monitor.)

 

[Perfection]

Too much RAM, terrible choice of CPU, power supply is way too big (but don't take my word on it), you definitely want a better graphics card if you're using two 1920x1080 monitors, and I don't know about the rest.

Would you be able to reccomend a better graphics card and CPU?

Looks mostly fine, 1TB drives are a bad $/GB. I wouldn't get any computers with internal optical drives, just get a USB blu-ray drive for the same price and you can share it between any of your computers.

I can do OS install with USB BluRay, right? And yeah, I'd bump up internal HDD

Also I hate legacy ports on motherboards, if it were me I'd just figure out a serial -> usb thing, which you'll be able to keep if you still need it when you can't get mobos with serial ports anymore.

That's not a bad point (USB to serial emulators can be sort of annoying though), I think some mobos have internal serial connectors that can be broken out right, but not an external connector. I have a gizmo that breaks them out.

Edit: 45,000

 

[Zack]

I dunno how anybody gets by with less than 16GB of RAM. I'm sitting at 12GB used as I type this, and I don't have anything particularly demanding open. (3.7GB for kernel, 1.6GB for Photoshop, 1GB for Firefox, 1GB for Virtualbox, everything else below 200MB). If I want to open anything really big I'd have to close a bunch of stuff.

The vast majority of people don't need more than 8 GB of RAM.

CPU isn't particularly terrible, especially for CAD stuff which I assume is heavily multithreaded, and CPU hardly matters for gaming as long as you've got at least four cores.

CPU is probably bigger than needed, I generally look at 650W models as baseline for rigs in that range. AMD processor does take more power though.

Terrible choice, not necessarily terrible CPU. I was under the impression that getting an i7 is better than an AMD hexacore, but I admit I'm not particularly knowledgeable about CAD's requirements or hexacore processors.

Video card isn't unreasonable at that price, I assume games are only going to be on a single monitor, for non-games, video cards hardly matter. (My laptop video card can simultaneously drive a 2880x1800 monitor, two 2560x1400 monitors and a 1920x1200 monitor.)

If one of the primary purposes is gaming and a 2013 game (SimCity), getting a good video card should be a pretty big priority.

EDIT: I should add to take everything I say with a fair serving of salt, as I am not especially knowledgeable about the matter at hand and am simply parroting information I've read on the internet.