Computer build...

So is anyone in here current with all the new computer components and connections out right now? Looking to build a new computer and it’s been years since I tinkered with any of it.

Wanting something extremely fast and loads of storage. Mostly use it for photo editing.

Looking at the i7-8600, 32GB DDR4 memory, 500GB M.2 SSD drive paired with another maybe 2TB HHD. My biggest unknown is what motherboard to go with. Probably get an Asus or Gigabyte, just not sure which one. Then also a good video card, don’t plan to do any gaming.

 

I always go with Gigabyte, The 500gb SSD is great. Just make sure your MB can handle the M.2 SSD, I always go with nVidia, the 1050 and up seems to be doing well.

 

I built an I9 about a year and a half ago, using a board I never thought to use before (always been an Asus Fan Girl), Asrock. They had the upgraded caps that weren't overheating and causing thermal throttling, well before the other brands bothered. X299 Taichi XE. Very pleased, overclocked on a custom water loop. More money than I wanted to spend but I went 5 years on my Asus Maximus 5 Extreme with a delidded 3770k and it was time (overvolting was starting to cause issues with it). So I am happy with Asrock and will give them a good look when it comes time again.

I would suggest, with whatever you decide to do, look into doing M.2 or at least an SSD for the second drive as well. The prices are coming down, at least on the 1TB and 512. Big difference in load times and save times for large image files. A spinner would make a good backup drive or long term storage/rarely accessed drive; these days M.2 (and NVME if the board supports it) is the way to go, wallet permitting. Spending money on a fast new motherboard and CPU isn't gonna matter when it's all waiting on slow spinners. And trust me, I know about the cost difference. I paid $69 for a 2tb spinner on sale last year, and $1250. for a new 2tb M.2 NVME Samsung 960 PRO last year (for my Steam Game Catalog yes call me crazy). That hurt.

 

I don't want to highjack this thread,but I just wanted to say I can't believe how far computers have come. Many years ago I built my first computer, it was an AT with 1Mb of ram, a 40 Mb hard drive,a 5 1/4" floppy drive running MS-DOS.year later upgraded to a 2400baud modem to connect to local bulletin boards downloads were FTP.

no, I don't have it still! Although I still have a Tandy Color Computer 3, that still works running Basic only!

 

Why build when it costs just as much or less to buy one already built? Unless you’re doing it for fun...

 

Because building it yourself allows you to avoid questionable business decisions and create a better, faster platform with significantly higher quality components.

Crack open a dell and take a gander at the garbage parts inside of it. Look where they skimp on things like power phases for the processor or Liquid capacitors maybe the crappy power supplies and proprietary motherboards lacking expansion slots.

 

Thats very true if you’re buying a $500 computer. At the same time, you’re not going to build a top notch computer for $500 either. Nowadays you can select what parts go into your computers if you know what you want and you’ll see you will pay the same price or even more if you build it yourself. (At least for servers) IMO building a computer now is more for the sake of having fun with the build than using better parts or saving money.

 

For a server you are absolutely correct. I 100% go with prebuilt and get a solid warranty and let Dell deal with that crap.

But, for anything that’s for gaming or video editing or the like I still shoot for build your own. You may be able to spec the parts that go in but you can’t spec the platform.

I personally really like Gigabyte motherboards. I have had excellent luck with them. They are a robust platform. I love having a spare bios at the flip of a switch all solid captors and overclocking features. I don’t get those particular things with prebuilt stuff unless I go high end or botique, In which case it saves a good chunk of change to do it myself.

I like non proprietary cases as well, where I can get in to upgrade things without losing a finger.

I like solid aftermarket coolers to keep the noise down and robust power supplies that you just can’t get in an average prebuilt.

But then you have a valid point in that while I appreciate all these things the average person won’t ever notice the difference. The average person won’t even keep it long enough for any of that to make a difference. So while I may not agree I will concede your point.

 

Zapp, this is for you:

 

I have had great experiences with Asus. As far as reliability, I still have a running Asus rampage formula with q6600 that is used on a daily basis.
My main PC is a little over two years old, and has an Asus Maximus IX hero and 7600k, 32gb, gtx1060 6gb. I am a gamer (I'd buy a new video card if I didn't want so many truck parts...), And also use the Adobe cloud suite for content creation. The additional ram here and nvme drive are a must if you're working with large memory intensive files.

Like others here, I have built computers for many years using many platforms.

I have built AMD and Intel systems, without saying one is always ''better" than the other. If I was building a PC today, I would look to use the ryzen platform. The ryzen 5 would be a good middle of the road cpu for you.

I also recommend taking advantage of the nvme technology. I have a 512gb Samsung 960 pro and my boot times are down around 12 seconds.
I think the nvme can also be justified in every day use. I have a single 1tb spinner for long term storage, but would go to an SSD if buying today.

If you're not gaming, there's really no need for a 'good' video card...?

What's your budget?

As far as preferences for me, I would absolutely rather build a $500 PC over buying one. Specs will be very similar, but you will get better quality with diy parts. Guaranteed.

 

Ya'll lost me after capacitor

 

This site keeps my attention for hours, and leads to siphoning of my wallet:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

 

I would also echo @mojojo with go for the ryzen you will get a good quality processor and you can use the difference in price between the intel to amd to fund a better solid state or m.2 where you need the speed for photo editing.
i upgraded to a ryzen 7 1800x last year and could not be happier with it. My brother goes intel most of the time and to get the same performance as my processor he will have to spend a bit more.

 

AMD has really upped their game with their Ryzen processors. If you're not doing any gaming, take a look at the 2200G and 2400G processors. Built in and very capable graphics so that saves you some money right off the bat.

As far as motherboards, you can't go wrong with the usual suspects- Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, and Asrock.

IIRC, Asrock was founded by one of the founding members of Asus.

I'm looking at the item below for my next build but want to buy truck parts first.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...w&cm_re=deskmini_a300w-_-56-158-064-_-Product

 

geez. all you PC people. just buy a mac and call it good.

photoshop, lightroom, motion, final cut pro, davinci resolve and anything else related to editing and motion, are huge video card hogs.

i'm still running a 2009 mac pro. about a year and a half ago, i flashed the mother board so i could drop in new CPUs and faster RAM. i'm now running dual 3.06ghz 6 core xeons with 64gb of 1333 memory. dropped in a 3gb radeon 7950 and converted all the 'working' drives to SSD. covers everything i need and then some.

the only thing that's a bit slow is downloading work from cards. no thunderbolt. but, i can deal with that. i just go work on the truck to fill the time...

 

I went the Mac route back in 2011 and have no regrets. Bootcamp is a wonderful thing! Looking at my needs now, I have no desire to pay the Apple tax again. Good machines and great ecosystem though!

 

500 PC users and one mac guy lol

 

My last two computers were store bought HPs. Good computers, but when you open them up, there is absolutely no room to upgrade. Can't add an extra hard drive, can't add RAM unless you buy larger ones and replace what's there. So I just feel limited and stuck in 2016 technology. When I bought it, it was about $900 if I remember correctly. Right now I'm looking at about $1,200 with everything I have so far and will be SOO much better and room to grow.

 

Never buy apple. just wait until something minor breaks and the genius bar comes up with some bullshit that says you may as well buy a new one because the repairs will be over $1000 but they are lying through their teeth and its usually a simple board fix that any repair service worth their salt can fix for under 200 depending on severity.(providing they can get the chips or capacitors because apple tries to monopolize everything they have.

 

FYI: Best Buy has Samsung 1TB SSD on sale for $150.

I always build the computers for me and my sons. I just built my youngest son an Intel i7-8700 w/1080 vid card, 32gb RAM, liquid cooling. The system kicks ass. I almost took it for myself.
Simply go to PC Part Picker and build your own. They have ratings and the places that have the current lowest price.

 

so, i've never used the genius bar for anything. ever. never will either. my mac pro is from 2009 and there has never been a single issue even with the above mentioned upgrades. i had a 17" 2010 mac book pro that never had any issue either. i finally replaced it because the 8 gb of ram was killing me. everyone in the house has an apple machine. there are no issues. never have been.

i've been a software engineer for 20 years. i know more about the internals of windows than i'd like to and i hate trying to keep windows running. i have more problems with my corporate issued dell laptop than i do with any apple product in my house. so much so, that i converted the corporate laptop to a vm image that i run on my mac book pro.

these days, i want simple. apple is simple. plug it in and it works. i don't have to hunt for drivers or dig through registry settings or worry about viruses. simplicity is the ultimate elegance.

 

You mentioned photo editing, you already have a 4K Eizo, NEC or wide gamut Benq? I’d factor that cost and your time building. I used to build years ago too but ended up getting a P3 5K iMac refurbished from Apple for less than build. It’s pretty much calibrated stock. P3 covers more reds than adobeRGB and the iMac looks great in my workspace when I present to clients. I use PCs and Macs, both platforms fine with me. If someone said gaming, I wouldn’t even look at Apple.

 

Yep, after I get the machine built, next will be to find a quality 4k screen. I use a laptop for some things right now and is 4K and the photos look amazing. When I put them on my current PC, non-4K, they look like crap, although I know the photo doesn't look that way. But is for sure frustrating.

 

great monitors. great price for what you get too. i'm still using an apple 30" cinema display with colormunki for the calibration. i've really liked the colormunki but they are pretty slow in software updates. their stuff is still 32bit, for whatever reason, and mojave likes to yell at me for it. if they don't post an update soon, i may have to switch to spyder.

 

Use a SpyderPro or X-rite to calibrate, correct printer profiles are another story but sticking to digital images, as long as you are the gold standard, it doesn’t matter what it looks like on anyone else’s low percentage sRGB display. You don’t want the opposite where you’ve edited on a cheap monitor and someone sees weird shades and blotchiness on their accurate display.

 

don't forget to save your finals, or whatever you're going to post/share/etc, in the srgb space too...

 

well you are definitely not the normal apple user . i'm not disputing their products are very refined i just hate how apple as a company takes advantage of most of their users that are computer illiterate. and i am definitely not saying that some pc repair shops dont take advantage of pc customers its just the pc parts are more accessible so if something breaks it wont cost an arm and a leg to fix it if you find a good repair shop. (just like mechanics)

(btw i read through your tundra build and am very envious of it )

 

So this is what I have in my cart right now. Some are just place holders as I haven’t made up my mind yet.

 

Looks like top notch parts and brands. Shouldn't have any issues.