Topic of Discussion Any PC builders on here?

[frieed]

So after 10 years, my PC was starting to dial up the fan just to keep up with web browsing and such.
This was a Gen 3 I-7 processor with 16 GB ddr. I had strung it along for a couple years by moving to a SATA DDR, but the noise of the CPU fan finally got to me.
I'm pretty sure it all started after the last WinDoze update when the cpu utilization jumped to 50% to just exist.

I have a friend at Dell that could get me 17% off anything on the Dell website but I could not find what I wanted so I decided to build my own. Since I'm not a gamer I targeted a fairly fast office kind of PC with enough new features to push off the next build for a while.

I ended up with an 11th gen Intel I-7 on a Gigabyte Aorus B560 pro AX with 64 GB micron DDR4-3200 and a 1 TB NVME, gen 4, m.2 SSD.
No gaming and no over-clocking the CPU or RAM.

11th+ gen Intel CPUs have a separate gen 4 PCIE for the system flash so this thing goes from power off to login screen in about 23 seconds with the BIOS taking most of that time.

To address noise, I opted for a Silencio S600 case by Cooler master(much larger than I expected) with all panels covered with high mass vinyl and an overkill Noctua NH-12A CPU cooler that is nearly silent.

For the same workload, a bunch of Chrome windows and maybe some playing music or video, CPU utilization is about 3% with RAM at 6%, and I have to listen closely to hear the fans.

This setup ran about $1500, but if I get another 10 years, I'm a happy camper.


Tell me your build story.

 

[shortstraw8]

That should last you a good amount of time, I keep throwing the aorus in my build carts when I do them. You probably could have grabbed a cheap graphics card and reapplied thermal paste and a new cpu fan and been fine with the old setup since the workload is not crazy.

My first build was 09 ASUS mobo, AMD Phenom2 x6, with 16G ddr3, 2tb hdd.
Still runs like a champ, just as a headless container server.

 

[frieed]

the old MoBo will move on to upgrade the TruNas server in the basement (with a couple of new 4TB drives)

"You probably could have grabbed a cheap graphics card and reapplied thermal paste"

actually upgraded to cheap gpu to run 1440p?.

It really could have been a dry rot issue with thermal paste on the cpu after 10 yrs.... I'll redo it for the NAS

 

[Spork]

I don't know if I want to admit what I built last, it's been a couple years, money was tight and it just had to be better than the 10 year old system it was replacing

I realized that the majority of my time is just spent browsing or streaming so I'm going to put this in good enough
AMD Ryzen 3200G (onboard graphics)
16G of memory
1TB SSD
ASRock Motherboard
Some case that looked good enough (plain black with a window)
And a power supply that I've already replaced
Stuck Linux on it

Total was under $400
Tons better than whatever you could buy for double the price at the store at the time

 

[frieed]

If I didn't need to run WinDoze to work from home I would have wiped the drive and installed linux and continued on for another 10 years.

 

[Kevin B.]

cheap graphics card

Is there such a thing right now?

 

[DAA]

It's been more than 20 years since I built one. And didn't think I'd ever consider building another.

Considering doing it for my next one though. Price/performance makes it hard to ignore. Photo and video editing. My current Dell barfs trying to render 4k video. Maybe this summer, maybe not until next year - need to see how the budget is looking this summer.

- DAA

 

[frieed]

I forgot to add that I "upgraded" to Windows 10 Pro with an OEM key from https://www.vip-scdkey.com/ for about $17.
I was skeptical about it but figured I'd risk the little bit of cash. I paid with PayPal, got the key, and it worked perfectly. I had no issues registering the key once the machine was online.
To my understanding, that website is a clearing house for OEM's that have a surplus of software keys they purchased for products they build. They have older versions of Office, some games, etc.
The only downside to this license is that as an OEM license, it's tied to my motherboard, but for $17 instead of $129+ I'll take it.

 

[mbryson]

I forgot to add that I "upgraded" to Windows 10 Pro with an OEM key from https://www.vip-scdkey.com/ for about $17.
I was skeptical about it but figured I'd risk the little bit of cash. I paid with PayPal, got the key, and it worked perfectly. I had no issues registering the key once the machine was online.
To my understanding, that website is a clearing house for OEM's that have a surplus of software keys they purchased for products they build. They have older versions of Office, some games, etc.
The only downside to this license is that as an OEM license, it's tied to my motherboard, but for $17 instead of $129+ I'll take it.

I found (4) Windows Pro (8/10) licenses while cleaning a drawer last night if anyone else is looking. They were sent out with Dell motherboard replacements. Licenses have never been assigned to anything.

 

[TurboMinivan]

I don't know if I want to admit what I built last

(pshaw) My very first full-time job (back in Ohio) was at Midwest Micro, a large (and now out of business) computer builder/seller. When I started there, Intel had just released their fast, flashy new i486 processor... but it was expensive. As a result, most of the machines I built were i386-based, though I also still built a large number of low-cost i286 machines. When I moved to Utah, I worked for a company where I built thousands of then-new Pentium-based machines... but I got out of the PC hardware field after a while and never went back.

Anybody here ever build a PC with less than an i286 processor?

 

[Spork]

(pshaw) My very first full-time job (back in Ohio) was at Midwest Micro, a large (and now out of business) computer builder/seller. When I started there, Intel had just released their fast, flashy new i486 processor... but it was expensive. As a result, most of the machines I built were i386-based, though I also still built a large number of low-cost i286 machines. When I moved to Utah, I worked for a company where I built thousands of then-new Pentium-based machines... but I got out of the PC hardware field after a while and never went back.

Anybody here ever build a PC with less than an i286 processor?

My first that I built was a 450. Picked up parts from some place in Salt Lake that I can't remember the name of now... used to be big.

 

[mbryson]

Starwest is still in business. When I started in the IT business in 1995, that's where we bought our stuff from. From about 2004-current, I've been in Dell environments for the most part (some HP or other servers). I'm not married to Dell, it's just what I know If you get the right stuff, they work just fine. If you buy junk, it is what it is.

 

[Spork]

EBC was the one I was thinking about I think they've been gone for a while

 

[J-mobzz]

I did some upgrades for my boys for Christmas this year we reuse the RX 580 8 Gb graphics cards from the PCs we did the year earlier but upgraded to MSI B 550 mother board , ryzen 5 5600x cpu, 32 gigs of DDR 4, 1tb nvme , new cases and We kept one old 19 inch monitors but I had a 24 inch curved gaming displays to replace some older second monitors they were using. They run pretty good but the GPU is still a little under powered unfortunately it is what it is until that stuff becomes affordable and available again.

 

[nnnnnate]

I hope to never build another computer in my life. We did the custom build stuff at my office for a while and those machines ALWAYS had issues. We generally run dells and mac's but always both with windows.

Our desktops are always the pretty high end dells so they are decent. My current laptop is a precision 5560 and it's pretty baller. Top end i7 with 64 gbs of ram and a 1tb m.2 drive. I didn't spec it out but it's slick.

 

[shortstraw8]

Is there such a thing right now?

I have 3 that do 1080p, possibly 4 not sure what I did to this 960 when I tried to use it for a container but I think it is psu related. but yeah looks like comp parts on ksl are taking after the used car market.

 

[frieed]

I stuck with onboard graphics since it supports my 1440P monitor and nothing I do requires a high frame rate. That said, the system is built so I could drop in a good GPU and rock the games.

 

[Kevin B.]

I've never built a PC from scratch, but the boy needs something with a little more grunt than his Surface so I think we might give it a pull. Good to know there's so many experts around for when I get stuck.

 

[DAA]

Is there such a thing right now?

Holy crap... This thread got me thinking it might be worth stuffing a better card in my current PC. So I started looking at them. Jeeezus... Prices are insane!

Probably not going to do anything for at least another year. Hope things eventually start to settle back down.

- DAA

 

[J-mobzz]

Holy crap... This thread got me thinking it might be worth stuffing a better card in my current PC. So I started looking at them. Jeeezus... Prices are insane!

Probably not going to do anything for at least another year. Hope things eventually start to settle back down.

- DAA

It’s insane. The cards I have in mine and my boys computers we paid $300 for June of 2020. That same card is going for $600 today and that’s down from $900 just before Christmas. I really wanted to upgrade them but a card that should cost $700 to $900 are selling for over two grand. Even in June 20 20 when I picked up those for $300 I felt like I overpaid because of the shortage that had already started.

XFX Radeon RX 580 GTS XXX Edition 1386MHz OC+, 8GB GDDR5, VR Ready, Dual BIOS, 3xDP HDMI DVI, AMD Graphics Card (RX-580P8DFD6) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y66K3XD/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_i_R268RXHFN6ND4NWPS2AC