- Dec 30, 2013
- 18
- 0
- 10,510
Hi guys. =) I've been working with PCs my whole life, and I've done a lot of upgrades on my systems, but this is the first time I'll be building entirely myself from scratch. And the last few years I've been distracted and gotten completely out-of-the-loop about the entire market.
What I need most isn't specific parts lists or shopping carts (that will come later), but honest and straight advice about what type of components to shop for. Because I'm a little overwhelmed/confused right now.
TIMEFRAME
This will depend on how much the final build's cost is (cheaper = sooner), but there's a hard deadline of March 2014 so I have time to order, build, and troubleshoot before WinXP end-of-support.
CURRENT SYSTEM
... is so old that nothing inside the case can be upgraded or salvaged. We are definitely building brand-new, from scratch.
RESOLUTION
Currently I use a 19" 1280x1024 DVI LCD flat-panel, old-school (purchased about 6 years ago). I'm not sure if a new display will fit into the budget right now, but eventually I do want to upgrade to an LED-backlit, thinking roughly 24" and at least 1920x1080 as the long-term goal.
BUDGET
This is hard to answer. Flexible. I want to keep the cost down, because I don't want to waste money on power I don't actually have the skill to utilize yet. But I am willing to pay whatever is appropriate to build this system "properly" based on my goals.
USAGE
This splits 2 different ways, and forms my primary dilemma when building this system.
First, there's the 'guaranteed' stuff. Tasks I've done for years and will certainly continue doing on the new system. These are:
The 'experiment' part is what's making this hard. Basically, I'm stuck between 2 completely opposite issues:
What I need is people who understand all the details about current-market hardware stuff better than I do, who can tell me how much power I actually need to:
What I need most isn't specific parts lists or shopping carts (that will come later), but honest and straight advice about what type of components to shop for. Because I'm a little overwhelmed/confused right now.
TIMEFRAME
This will depend on how much the final build's cost is (cheaper = sooner), but there's a hard deadline of March 2014 so I have time to order, build, and troubleshoot before WinXP end-of-support.
CURRENT SYSTEM
... is so old that nothing inside the case can be upgraded or salvaged. We are definitely building brand-new, from scratch.
RESOLUTION
Currently I use a 19" 1280x1024 DVI LCD flat-panel, old-school (purchased about 6 years ago). I'm not sure if a new display will fit into the budget right now, but eventually I do want to upgrade to an LED-backlit, thinking roughly 24" and at least 1920x1080 as the long-term goal.
BUDGET
This is hard to answer. Flexible. I want to keep the cost down, because I don't want to waste money on power I don't actually have the skill to utilize yet. But I am willing to pay whatever is appropriate to build this system "properly" based on my goals.
USAGE
This splits 2 different ways, and forms my primary dilemma when building this system.
First, there's the 'guaranteed' stuff. Tasks I've done for years and will certainly continue doing on the new system. These are:
- ■Gaming. I play a variety, but my 'standard' genre is open-world action stuff (think FPS, adventure, Far Cry, Just Cause, GW2, etc.).
■2D design / illustration using Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.
■Various irrelevant stuff that basically any computer could handle.
- ■Recording/capturing gameplay.
■Editing video (game & IRL), extensively. (not simple compress > upload).
■Uploading to videosharing sites (YouTube, etc), nothing higher-quality needed for now.
■3D art/design (Maya, Blender, etc. stuff).
■Animation (2D, 3D, machinima, etc.)
The 'experiment' part is what's making this hard. Basically, I'm stuck between 2 completely opposite issues:
- ■I don't want to spend silly amounts of money building for Video / 3D capability when this experiment may not work out, and I may just stick with illustration & design.
■But I also don't want to build too cheap now, only to find myself slamming into an un-upgradeable brick wall if I get more serious.
What I need is people who understand all the details about current-market hardware stuff better than I do, who can tell me how much power I actually need to:
- ■Play with this stuff effectively and get a fair impression of what creating in these mediums is like.
■Have a solid system that can be upgraded and invested in further if I decide to push it more.
■Not go overboard and give myself Ludicrous Speed™ that, as a newbie, will just be mostly-wasted while I'm still learning to walk in programs like Premiere, Maya, etc.
- ■RAM: For my needs speed is ~irrelevant, even 1333 performs competitively in most tasks. Whereas RAM size can never be big enough. This is true even for 2D design/illus work. So I'm thinking about 16GB to start, and leave room to expand.
■PSU: There's really no such thing as 'too good', a lesson I learned the hard way when previous systems were killed by poor stock PSUs. I am willing to pay extra for a good PSU.
■Everything that lives outside the case or is more optional/peripheral.
- ■CPU: They all sound good! Ahhh! I need someone to just slap me upside the head and say "You don't need the power of X, just buy Y and you'll never notice the difference with what you're doing."
■MoBo: These scare me, because it feels like there's a million ways to accidentally buy the 'wrong' one. I will do the dirty boring research myself, I just need to know what "numbers" I'm looking for because I can't make heads or tails of MoBo info. :p
■GPU: OK look, GPUs are the sexy celebrities & porn stars of PC building. I want that big expensive card so bad because it's so pretty. But do I actually need that "80" suffix for what I'm doing? Or is "70", "60", or something else totally adequate? :p
■Cooling: I'll look into this in more detail once I have components narrowed down. But I will say every single PC I've ever owned died from overheating, and I'd like to prevent that for once.
■SSD/HDD: I'm finding a lot of conflicting information about whether I need SSD, what kind of HDD, whether I need a RAID 0 setup for recording/editing, etc. Again: they all sound awesome. But I'm not really sure what I pragmatically need for right now.
- ■Intel CPU. I don't think AMD is bad, but I have a hangup about Intel. And I like blue.
■NVIDIA GPU. Because I also like green. =)
■No SLI. I've researched it, and it won't benefit me much and adds potential headaches I don't see as worth it.
■Overclocking: I've never done it before, and it scares me because I've blown up past PCs via heat-death w/o changing any settings.
But I am willing to be open-minded if you think I can benefit from it without blowing something up.
■Case/form factor: HUGE. I'm tired of tiny PCs that overheat easily and are hard to work inside! I want a case + mobo that could double as a horse trailer in a pinch.
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