Advice for Building a Desktop
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Advice for Building a Desktop
What it says on the tin.
My laptop crapped out on me towards the end of the summer. Lately, I’ve been making do with an ancient (circa 2012) notebook and borrowing my wife’s laptop any time I want to do some serious work, but neither of these has the performance capabilities I’m looking for. They’re both too old to even connect to a 5G network, for goodness sake, and are slower than molasses by my standards.
I am looking to build a new computer. Laptops have served me well, but I’m sick of them having short life expectancies due to wear and tear. As such, I have decided to grow up and build a desktop.
I have never built a computer from parts before, and am a bit out of my depth.
I am looking for serious gaming-quality hardware, but it need not be bleeding-edge competition-grade stuff. Ideally, this desktop would last me at least five years with modest maintenance, perhaps a bit longer with upgrades over time.
I am in no hurry on this, and with Fall upon us, I am happy to wait for November to take advantage of Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales, or even farm this out to family for Christmas gifts. They’re always complaining that I never ask for anything.
Parts I currently have:
-A quality mouse
-A USB Keyboard
-Speakers
-A CD/DVD drive
-A nearly-new 1TB SSD, salvaged from my old machine. ~8-10 months old"Cry havoc, and let slip the wombat of war!"
Act 3, Scene 1 ofJulius Caesar, by W. Shakespeare- Pine
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Pine In Your Head
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- Aristophanes
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Aristophanes He/HimMr. Blue Sky
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Ooo I used to be really into computers and replacing parts and stuff!
I'll take a look at this later and see what I can adviseHalf meme, Half real, All Aristophanes ;)- JingleAri has appeared way too competent for me to even pretend to know what they're thinking
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profii Jack of All Trades
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I always tried to just set a budget and get the best stuff I could for that much money
I tend to figure it was largely the same if you are going to spend X bucks and when you hone in on a price range there will be a generally recommend product in your range
I used to nerd out on stuff like this and then I stopped caring ha but it takes the stress away I guess- Pine
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Pine In Your Head
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Aristophanes He/HimMr. Blue Sky
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Nvidia does nice graphics cards and driversHalf meme, Half real, All Aristophanes ;)- JingleAri has appeared way too competent for me to even pretend to know what they're thinking
- MooseEatsBear on discord mafiait wouldn’t be an ari sig unless it takes up half the screen on mobile - Vonflare- Aristophanes
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Aristophanes He/HimMr. Blue Sky
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i7 Quad core processor is best imoHalf meme, Half real, All Aristophanes ;)- JingleAri has appeared way too competent for me to even pretend to know what they're thinking
- MooseEatsBear on discord mafiait wouldn’t be an ari sig unless it takes up half the screen on mobile - Vonflare- Alisae
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Alisae lolbalance
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Alisae lolbalance
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popsofctown SheSurvivor
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I wanna hijack this thread like a douchecanoe
I have a gaming PC I spent a lot of money on a couple years ago, but it doesn't seem able to run Borderlands 3 at smooth framerate.
It seems like I can't be more than 1 part away from actually having it be on par with BL3 but I don't know enough about PCs to figure that out. My friends helped me build it but then when I ask them about the parts later it is less exciting to them than building it in the first place was.
The graphics card is "NVidia GeForce GTX 970". The processor is "Intel Cor i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz", and it says that 8 times so I guess I have 8 of them?
Is there any other part that would matter?
I have a fancy water based cooling system I'm supposed to replace every 2 years but didn't, but my core temp monitor says 30 degrees Celsius which ought to be ok?
Maybe I should just overclock? I think I'm not overclocking right now.
Thanks if anyone knows stuff.
Pine please don't hurt me."Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"- Alisae
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Alisae lolbalance
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I pinged Shiro on discord and gave them the thread
I'm sure they'll be able to help anyone who needs it.
Plus, any help I would have given would have been probably just asking them or anyone else I knew and then posting that information here.| here.GTKAS- Pine
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Pine In Your Head
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- popsofctown
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popsofctown SheSurvivor
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"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"- Bins
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Isn't BL3 having performance issues for a bunch of people?In post 9, popsofctown wrote:I have a gaming PC I spent a lot of money on a couple years ago, but it doesn't seem able to run Borderlands 3 at smooth framerate.- popsofctown
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popsofctown SheSurvivor
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According to google it doesn't have a reliable framerate even on consoles, which is precisely targetted hardware.
So you're right, the game probably has a performance bug and I should chill.
Now Pine will hate me xtra"Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"- Aristophanes
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Aristophanes He/HimMr. Blue Sky
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Like anyone could actually hate you Pops XD
The i7 is a quad core so saying you're running 8 of them is kinda accurate since I believe that's how they classify it.
I've had good luck with Nvidia, like I say. Have you updated the driver software? That might be why it's lagging on framerates.
Also water coolinf is efficient AF but adds a hefty price tag. Personally I'd never get the use out of it but for any prolonged gamint it is such a great feature!
Sounds like your friends built you a great machine there, Pops!Half meme, Half real, All Aristophanes ;)- JingleAri has appeared way too competent for me to even pretend to know what they're thinking
- MooseEatsBear on discord mafiait wouldn’t be an ari sig unless it takes up half the screen on mobile - Vonflare- Bins
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I built my PC... two years ago? So my knowledge is pretty out of date on parts, but r/buildapc was very helpful. I also tracked everything on pcpartpicker.
I remember the key decisions for me were:
1. Graphics card. Pretty much the area I knew I couldn't cheap out on if I wanted a good gaming PC. I opted for the GTX 1060 6GB GPU, which was basically the best priced gamer (but not pro gamer) quality card out there at the time.
2. CPU. Honestly, Intel and Ryzen are pretty comparable and I saw good arguments for both. At the time, I was most comfortable going for an i5. My budget was around $1100 (CAD, not USD). I knew I only wanted to do gaming, and the i5 is sufficient for those needs. If you want to run some heavier software and multitask and do editing, then get an i7. But really, if just for gaming, consider an i5 to save money. I was heavily debating on Ryzen, though.
3. A mini vs. full-size motherboard. I went with mini to save money, because I knew I was likely not going to upgrade further past what I made. If you want more flexibility, go bigger.
4. To SSD or to not SSD? I didn't. But I can always add one on later. I have had no reason to so far currently. Performance is fine.
5. I went lower than 750W on the power supply... by a lot... I can't remember, but I think I did a lot of research and found the lowest that would still work for me, and that was around 550W, I think (I can check if you want). I got it fully modular too.
6. The only regret I have I think is not getting more or better RAM. I have 8GB and I feel for the rest of the build its the weakest link.- popsofctown
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popsofctown SheSurvivor
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My one thing is maybe I should get more memory, I have to uninstall games I actually might have a whim to play to make room sometimes.
I remembered to check on driver software I think it might just be borderlands three."Let us say that you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this 'other world' worth to you? What do you have there that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?'"
"Well, I..."
"What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"- Shiro
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Shiro Jack of All Trades
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I personally advice against buy intel processor,In post 6, Aristophanes wrote:i7 Quad core processor is best imo
While yes they are a little bit better than amd ones the price difference isnt worth it plus the ryzen series is future proof motherboard wise since unlike intel amd doesnt change the socket for each iteration of the same processor.To me:
shiro you are a charmer you were obvscum but for some reason people just wouldn't eliminate you ~Antihero
About me:
I stg this is how conversations with Lucifer go. ~Papa Zito- Shiro
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Shiro Jack of All Trades
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Flubbernugget Survivor
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You most likely have one processor with four computational units (cores) that are able to perform trickery on the code they run to make your OS think you have 8 cores.In post 9, popsofctown wrote:The processor is "Intel Cor i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz", and it says that 8 times so I guess I have 8 of them?- Pine
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Pine In Your Head
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See, I don’t even know what the hell that meansIn post 22, Flubbernugget wrote:
You most likely have one processor with four computational units (cores) that are able to perform trickery on the code they run to make your OS think you have 8 cores.In post 9, popsofctown wrote:The processor is "Intel Cor i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz", and it says that 8 times so I guess I have 8 of them?"Cry havoc, and let slip the wombat of war!"
Act 3, Scene 1 ofJulius Caesar, by W. Shakespeare- Flubbernugget
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