That’s 130.
Prices have dropped a lot since I purchased my stuff but if you can go fast and big as tolerable on your first drive, well everything else you can add later if you feel like it.
It’s hard to know about the CPUs coming out. There always seems to be something on the horizon. The 2700, not x, has been around that price a few times before. It looks like a nice build to me though. MSI is not my favorite but everyone has good and horror stories based around who knows how many brands.
I think m2 nvme speed is artificial benchmarks, it’s not gonna help real life much. Booting W10 is already just a few seconds, the BIOS takes longer. Total War isn’t gonna get much faster, it’s waiting for the video card to handle a zillion little orcs. I got one, and I’m much happier with the 2TB “slow” SSD I have to fit my entire steam library.
edit: Found a result on my feed today.
TLDR the NVME is actually slower than the normal SSD (162 seconds vs 160 seconds)
Samsung 970 Evo vs Samsung 860 Evo
Seems like a solid build. I’d say no reason to wait for Ryzen 3.
Looking at that list it’s crazy how messed up DDR memory prices got and still are today. $120 for 16GB still.
I remember the days when I bought 4 megabytes of RAM for $125, and it was a bargain.
Dude. 16 kilobytes. 300 bucks.
I just did a similar upgrade yesterday, and I’m quite pleased with the new machine. I haven’t had a real gaming rig in a few years, and running VR on my “franken-computer” was getting to be a chore.
I went with:
Ryzen 2700 - $230
Gigabyte B450 WIFI pro (so I wouldn’t have to buy a wifi card) - $110
16 gigs Corsair vengeance @3000 MHz with RGB - $110
Corsair Carbon 540 case in white - $130
I already had a good power supply, a 1070 video card, and a pair of M.2s. Sadly, when I booted up a fresh copy of windows, my second, and older WD Blue M.2 couldn’t be found. I even tried putting it in a SATA adaptor kit, and plugging it into the motherboard’s SATA 0, but the BIOS refuses to recognize the drive. I have no idea why it went bad. It’s a real shame because it was about 500 gigs of steam library, with a ton of mods for Skyrim VR.
Other than that, the entire build was easy, and I was happy when it booted on the first try. I haven’t built a PC in at least 5 or 6 years, so this thing seems like a beast compared to my old rig.
Dumb question time: Where do I begin to build my own machine nowadays?
I have built a few PCs in my day, but haven’t done it myself in about 15 years. Just looking around now, there are so many sites and so much to learn to get caught up. I don’t know where to even start, and I really don’t want to spend hours researching it all either. I just want to order some stuff and throw it together.
Is it true that Newegg isn’t as good anymore? Not sure where I read that, but it seems I heard that recently.
Newegg isn’t the same as it once was, but I still buy stuff there on occasion.
Start here:
*** Also might want to wait to see what the new RYZEN 3000 series looks like, seems parts will start showing up in July.
Seconding PC part picker. Also a fan of Logical Increments if you have absolutely no idea where to start and want some guidelines.
Awesome, thanks guys, will start with those two sites.
Safe to assume there is no clear winner between Intel and AMD currently? Really don’t want to wait until July though…
Is Tom’s not updating their guides anymore? Looks like last one was 10 months ago.
I went through something similar. A lot of PC journalism has moved to video these days, specifically YouTube. So, go there and search for “PC Build.” I just did so and found plenty of videos released in the last 3 months. I don’t think the basic building blocks have changed all that much in the last 15 years.
What I ultimately did was just go to a local Micro Center and got their advice on parts to use for a given budget after having some specific ideas of what I wanted. However, this only works if you have a local Micro Center. I certainly would not recommend this strategy for Best Buy.
Intel vs. AMD currently gives a modest price to performance ratio advantage to AMD, though Intel is the more established brand, which means if you do not want to risk compatibility issues I suppose you stick with Intel.
The thing I think has changed the most is storage, with hard drives being replaced with solid state drives, including solid state drives plugged into PC’s using non-SATA connections to motherboard.
Depends what you’re looking for. The GPU hierarchy is kept up to date, for instance (last update on 4/25)
Yeah, I got my stuff at Microcenter too. They are absolutely great.
You just have to have your common sense and teenage/young 20s something gamer filter ready, as you will occasionally get a tech nerd selling you something you don’t need (but usually not out of them being greedy, but just because it’s a teenager excited about technology that is cool, but not really all that useful). When I went, for example, they were very helpful getting me sorted on SSD NVMe M.2 drives, but then were going all nutty about case fans and ventilation (the dude wanted to sell me enough case fans to cool an Amazon server center).
I just threw a 1TB 970 EVO plus NVME into my Skylake system.
I already had a PNY SSD but I needed more room.
It is true that for most things, the NVME is only slightly faster than SATA or a wash. Those things do add up over time though, and when it comes to copying larger files, holy hell it is dramatically faster. The first time I tried that I was using a Macbook which has those standard. I copied a 200GB file and had to triple check that it actually copied it went so fast. I had no idea the technology was in there and fell in love with it since then.
I just built a new box at the begining of the month and MicroCenter was my go to also. I had been watching off and on and things just sort of lined up. I knew what I wanted before going in so I didn’t have a whole lot of interaction with the staff. The one guy who helped me almost steered me wrong though I wanted a 1 TB Intel 660 NVME for storage and he tried to tell me it only came in SATA, luckily I got it worked out and got the one I wanted. They run a lot of sales so it’s just a matter of watching for whats on sale.
I did end up splitting my purchases some what I got my GPU from Newegg and RAM from Rakuten. All based on pricing.
I’m pretty happy with the build it was right at $950 until I added another case fan and 1 TB ADATA SATA SSD for another $115.
For comparison this was my build, I got most everything on sale so you kind have to watch for that if it matters to you to save every penny. BTW, for some ridiculous reason I RGB’d the living shit out of this thing. I can’t explain why it just happened ;-)
$200 Ryzen 2700 (MC) It would have probably been smarter to get the 2600X for the clock boost since this is mostly a gaming box but it was only $30 less and thought the more cores and OC potential was worth it.
$50 Aorus (Gigabyte) B450 M -M-ATX, (MC) I wanted a more “portable” PC since I often move it between rooms. MATX really limits your AM4 board options. This one seemed to have most of what I wanted and since Microcenter has a lot of bundle deals it was $30 off with the CPU. The main thing I wish it had was a 2nd M2 slot.
$80 Adata XPG Spectrix D41 16 GB 3000 RGB ram (Rakuten) -MOAR RGBs
$95 PSU Thermaltake 750 Gold modular (MC)…Even MORE RGBs…Even worse you can’t barely see the damn thing in my case…poor planning
$150 Case Corsair Crystal 280X RGB (MC)-This was my most wasteful, I could have bought a lot cheaper case but this one really caught my eye and I fixated on it. I do love it, it’s pretty sweet.
$105 Intel 660 1 TB NVME (MC)
$25 Extra 120LL RGB fan for case (the case came with 2 120LL and a Corsair RGB controller) -(Amazon)
$270 Gigabyte Vega 56 (Newegg) The most controversial part of my build. I had every intention to go RTX or maybe a 1660 TI but they had this awesome price with a sweet 3 game bundle of Resident Evil 2, DMC 5 and Division 2. I wanted to build a strong 1440 box and that fit the bill for cheap. This card has extremely shitty reviews on Newegg and Amazon but good “pro” reviews. I upped my PSU to make sure I could dedicate power to this beast and was hopeful the issues reported were mostly “user error” so far so good it’s been solid and I’ve got a nice Undervolt/Overclock going on. Even better I thought I didn’t care about Division 2 but it’s a blast. I’ve spent a lot more time playing it than expected. I got another copy from the CPU that I was able to give my son so lots of freebies.
So right at $975 plus tax. I then promptly filled my NVME with downloaded games and bought an Adata 960 GB SATA SSD. Now both are about full ;-)
So far it’s been great. Easy build, (knock on wood) it went together in one night and fired right up. Win 10 loaded in like 10 minutes it was amazing.
I’m looking at a new build and the new intel i5-9400F is on sale for $219 Canadian pesos. This makes it notably cheaper than the i5-8400 and the Ryzen 5 2600X, and even $5-10 cheaper than the Ryzen 5 2600 non-X. So it seems like a good way to go.
But if I buy a motherboard, and it needs the bios update to support the latest processor, I’m pretty much screwed? Does the new CPU boot at all (e.g. safe mode) allowing a bios update? What should someone do in this situation?
Check the mobo to see if it supports the CPU. :)
Most mobo makers are pretty good at revising their boards / updating the bios as they are shipped from the factory over the course of that model run.
Website says that there is an update available to download. I suppose it’s possible to dig into forums and serial numbers?
Yeah but if you look at the mobo revision number it should tell you it supports the following CPUs out of the box.
Link the mobo, someone here will take a look. ;)