Getting something to compute with

[vladgd]

Kinda been off the desktop due to back pain reasons, would like to get back into things. Looking into both a laptop, and later ( probably after I get the money for a new hdtv In the later future) a living room desktop set up.

Been procrastinating learning how to code too long, when I get a machine, I'll get to work.

Doing some basic looking this might be promising. Really don't want to spend $800+ so any feedback would be nice.

Obviously I'd like to play games, but I ain't really a AAA gamer, most of my gaming is console. PC side would be for those PC only things like wow classic, and...? Probably the Warcraft 3 remaster.

Having a portable machine I can just open in my recliner would drastically get me to learn coding, and I think it's a solid reason to look at that over a desktop for right now.
I'm aware it's not optimal, but my new place is the living room in a nice back friendly recliner, not a computer room desk.

[Spectere]

Looks like a decent little machine to me. Not sure how the GPU performance is on the mobile Ryzen chips, but considering the dinky Skylake Intel HD GPU in my Dell can handle WoW at 1080p/medium with no problem I think you'll be fine.

I generally recommend at least 16GB of RAM, but 8 should be alright. It looks like you can bump that laptop up to 16 if you need to down the road (some assembly required, I'd wager) so I wouldn't consider that a deal breaker.

[vladgd]

Looking more at that machine, no upgradable ram...

Thinking more about what I want to do...I am a wee bit worried that if something breaks on a laptop, it'll be harder to just replace something than if I had a desktop.

May mock up a desktop machine (and figure how the hell I'll get a living room setup) before I spend any cash.

I love the idea of a laptop, it's a simpler solution, but probably more risky/costly. Will update when I draft parts.

[Spectere]

"No upgradable RAM" as in they solder the RAM onto the board, or because they don't have any easily accessible slots available? My mom's laptop doesn't have any "user-replaceable" parts, but I was able to just unscrew the bottom of it and replace the slow HDD in favor of an SSD, and it also has exposed RAM slots.

If they solder the RAM on a standard size laptop like that, they're mad. I understand soldering to a certain extent with ultrathins and tablets in order to reduce the weight and footprint, but sheesh.

Re: desktops. I'm currently using a desktop PC hooked up to my TV and it's been pretty nice. If you go with a wireless keyboard/mouse (Logitech has some nice gaming grade ones) you won't have to worry about running wires. If you end up going wired, bundling your keyboard and mouse cords together with velcro or zip ties every six inches or so should keep everything together nicely. If you get a Bluetooth transceiver (some motherboards include a laptop-style wi-fi/Bluetooth module onboard nowadays, or at least have a mini PCI-e slot for one) you can even pair up wireless controllers with little to no additional setup.

[vladgd]

Figure I'll update this thing. Set on a living room desktop setup, going to figure out logistics later, but brainstorming parts atm.

Video card
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078VCBGPV/?coliid=I16Z6WIF6BD5DM&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071CD6K6Z/?coliid=I3I8BJJSFDQSU&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MC23VS4/?coliid=I2UD30X4JTV8H&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M5BQRIO/?coliid=I31ON2TLV8AHD0&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Would prefer not to spend over $200 on a card, but if what's good is more, I might splurge on more. I am not doing VR, and I have no current intent to do 4k, so I doubt I need too much.

HDD
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FJRS6FU/?coliid=I2LFURL8C1XFRJ&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Don't need anything fancy because I want to run a primary SSD with HDD as storage setup, Western Digital has been good to me and I trust the brand, but still not sure what exact drive to get.

SSD
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M7Q21N7/?coliid=I1O4WFYDOVFZ9U&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

SSD's are a lot cheaper than I remember, I currently run a 130gig, but a 500 gig would be fantastic primary drive with a few games.

PSU
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N18J52E/?coliid=I33M37YKNG08RA&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Will look around , not super picky on this part, but I do like modular. May be the last part I decide on, because I really only need to make sure it fits in the case (which wont be an issue) and has the connections "I need.

Case
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N9JPSEU/?coliid=I342V9TWNNY032&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DRVHBWK/?coliid=I1WWPOUIRRKKZZ&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I love full tower cases, but since I'm going living room, and have a nosey cat, maybe a mid tower? I might save money that way, but again, I aint great at building, and a big case makes for great cooling, quiet, and easy to build in.

For example the last TWO machines I built used older versions of the cooler master HAF case. Which I am going to prefer by default, but if another case can change my mind, I am all ears.

MOBO
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0775JBB87/?coliid=I2TQXVRDPWDHWJ&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Obviously depends on CPU, so part is mostly placeholder

CPU
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0759FGJ3Q/?coliid=I7RC8FT97PR53&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

I have no bias on AMD or Intel, I have used both. Only factor is bang for my buck at the time of my build, so this one is also higly open to change. I don't like to spend too much more than $220, so that's what I typically work with.

RAM
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075TQS5QP/?coliid=I3TAYAC9PP2FRV&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006EWUO22/?coliid=I3LT2ZDEQUS97W&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Cheaper than I remember, but not too picky, I just need 16gb of something decent.

I wanna say that's everything? Making this post to consolidate everything and fine tune my parts to hopefully get something built in a month.

Having a living room work machine would be great, also catching up on some pc gaming is exciting...and..."cough" wow classic, warcraft 3 reforged "cough"

Any recommendations please let me know, I typically allow myself a lot of time to finetune parts because it'll be a machine I use for easily over 5 years.

[Spectere]

Gonna hack away at your post and leave the links of the parts I recommend.

Figure I'll update this thing. Set on a living room desktop setup, going to figure out logistics later, but brainstorming parts atm.

Video card
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MC23VS4/?coliid=I2UD30X4JTV8H&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

This is a bit of a tentative recommendation, as I'm really not too familiar with AMD's GPU line. About all I do know about it is that my laptop has an AMD dedicated GPU and somehow their drivers are somehow even more awful than they used to be. The real kicker is that my laptop has a FirePro (their workstation line) and the drivers for those are supposed to be more stable. Yeah, not so much. It's not a bad performer for what it is (dunno about the ones you linked) but the Catalyst Control Center is such an awful piece of software that I wouldn't even consider purchasing hardware from them until they ditch it altogether.

I would definitely say that the 2060 would be a better prospect than the 1050 Ti. There was a pretty good performance bump between this generation and the last, so that would buy you a bit more time until your next GPU upgrade.

If you can find a used 1080 Ti at a reasonable price, that would be a very good option. A lot of those were dumped on eBay when the 2080 Ti came out, courtesy of people who decided to upgrade before third-party benchmarks were even released. Some of them were obviously pulled from cryptocoin mining rigs, but you can generally tell the gaming and mining focused cards apart based on the lot size.

HDD
SSD

This one's kinda tricky. Depending on what you want to do, 1TB isn't going to get you very far. For games that need a lot of storage (like FFXV) the load times would get pretty outrageous on a hard drive, too.

What I would do is go with a 1TB NVMe SSD and, when that starts to fill up, pick another one (or two) up. It'll be a bit more money up front for less storage, but I guarantee you'll be a lot happier with it.

When I built my current system I ended up putting three 500GB 960 EVOs in it and ended up running out of space surprisingly quickly. The problem was that because I didn't have any available slots my only upgrade option was to do an expensive replacement. In my case I was able to upgrade my laptop with one of the old 500GB sticks, but you're not going to have the option to do something like that.

I would only recommend an HDD nowadays if you have a lot of data and you don't need to access it very quickly. Even a relatively cheap SATA SSD (I upgraded the 1TB HDD in my laptop to a 1TB 870 EVO for ~$130) is generally going to be a better option.

PSU
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N18J52E/?coliid=I33M37YKNG08RA&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Looks good to me! I'm running a Corsair semi-modular PSU in my current rig, actually.

Case

Obviously this is largely personal preference. I will say that mid-towers nowadays are a lot easier to fiddle with than the ones from 10 years ago, but they're never going to be as versatile as a full tower.

I notice that the ones you linked have tempered glass sides. Those are wonderful and handle case lighting very nicely (my current tower is basically a metal shell with tempered glass on all sides) but bear in mind that they do add quite a bit of weight. Totally worth it, IMO.

MOBO
CPU

Sticking with the $220 budget, I'd either go with the Ryzen 5 2600X ($190; fewer cores, better performance per-core) or the Ryzen 7 2700 ($220; more cores, slightly worse performance per-core). Get the former if you mostly plan to game, get the latter if you plan to stream.

If you don't mind spending a bit more money up-front, the Ryzen 7 2700X costs $290 and will beat both of those in anything you throw at it.

As far as the motherboard is concerned, the ASUS ROG Strix B450-F looks like a solid choice. I've been hearing not-so-good thing sabout Gigabyte's QC process lately, and I can't say that I'm really blown away by my ASRock (it sure surprised me, but not exactly in a particularly good way), so ASUS it is!

RAM
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075TQS5QP/?coliid=I3TAYAC9PP2FRV&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006EWUO22/?coliid=I3LT2ZDEQUS97W&colid=3CLVULCML3QQF&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

Cheaper than I remember, but not too picky, I just need 16gb of something decent.

Both of those look solid, but I'd go with the latter simply because the order would actually be fulfilled by Amazon. My experience with third-party sellers hasn't been the greatest (read: I'm spoiled by Prime).

I wanna say that's everything? Making this post to consolidate everything and fine tune my parts to hopefully get something built in a month.

The only additional thing you may want to consider is some sort of optical drive, but those are becoming increasingly irrelevant nowadays.

[Bobbias]

lol optical drive.

daemon tools and usb sticks/sd card readers have effectively made optical drives obsolete. Well, that and reasonable internet speeds.

[Spectere]

Yeah, but discs didn't just suddenly go away as a result of that. I still use them a fair amount (recently installed Diablo 1 from CD--why rebuy it if I don't have to?), though I've switched to just using a single USB optical drive for convenience sake.

Besides, you have to be able to feed Daemon Tools (or Windows 8/8.1/10, for that matter--its ISO reader seems to work pretty well for basic stuff) with an image, and nowadays it's far safer to just rip your own disc rather than torrenting it. Last time I torrented an old game to save myself the trouble of ripping it I ended up getting a nastygram in the mail from my ISP…sigh.

I've also been trying to image and back up my old DOS games, since I don't want to be the victim of disc rot (I have a retro PC, so I can still play DOS/Win9X titles natively).

Also: Tool doesn't do digital distribution and their fifth album is due to come out this year. How else am I going to rip that?

[vladgd]

'Scuse the absense, not a lot of free time now a days.

Anywho, thinking of ordering in 2-3 batches to make the wallet sting less.

First batch being case, mobo, cpu, aftermarket heatsink, and...maybe a psu, though I could probably delay the cpu. Figure the first order would be the most annoying stuff (installing the cpu and aftermarket heatsink) first. Then the second order would be plugging in power/plugging in components.

Looking at that mobo you recommended, and I get scared really fast when multiple people say there's bugs with the thing, so I'm a little sketch on the one you recommended. Might look around a little bit, I am usually hesitant before purchasing any given part on a machine I'll likely use over 5 years. Anything in particular I should be looking for/be warry of?

[Spectere]

You really have to take negative component reviews with a grain of salt, because nine times out of ten it's someone who 1) straight up broke the thing, 2) refuses to RMA a board that's dead out of the box, 3) overclock the shit out of their components and wonder why they're running into stability issues, or 4) didn't read the manual. Also, consider the fact that people are generally more likely to leave a review if they run into issues. Seeing a 4.1/5.0 star review for a piece of hardware is actually really good. Plus, I know at least half a dozen people who have been running a variety of different ASUS boards for years with zero issues (myself included--my current system is using an ASRock board and I'm planning on replacing it with an ASUS ROG Strix board within a year due to some Linux-related issues I've experienced with the ASRock piece).

One of my friends also reported smooth sailing with their MSI board, so they seem to be another decent choice. I don't really have a huge sample set to pull from, though.

[vladgd]

Point made. One of those things I only build a PC every 5-6 years, so I want the fucker to last. I know I've bought parts that a lot of people sketch on, and I have no issues, and vice versa.

No idea what I'm looking for so ill try and get the case, CPU, Mobo, heat sink ordered on my time off. No rush to get this thing made besides classic wow and programming anyway.

[Spectere]

Just don't do what I did with my current build. I figured I'd build my rig in pieces, so I ordered the PSU and...well, it just sort of sat in my basement for about eight months.

[vladgd]

650 watt psu good enough or do I need more? Used to buy a psu based on GPU needs, but I honestly don't know all that much about this stuff.

[Spectere]

Yep, 650W will be fine for what we specced out and will give you a bit of wiggle room if you want to upgrade down the road. More than anything else, make sure that it's from a decent manufacturer. That alone could save you plenty of heartache down the road.

To elaborate on that a bit: I had a power supply failure a few years ago (on raid night, too...go figure). Pressed the power button, fans started to spin up, then the system immediately shut down. The power supply had worn out to the point where it couldn't fire up the system and shut down to protect the components.

In addition to simply not being capable of holding consistent voltages, cheaper power supplies tend to lack protection circuitry. If they wear out they'll still try to provide the same amount of power. As a result they'll overheat and ultimately suffer catastrophic failure and, nine times out of ten, take something else with them. I saw one system where a cheap PSU suffered this kind of failure and pushed mains power to a hard drive. Not only did it blow out several chips but it got the HDD hot enough to melt the Molex connector into the slot.

tl;dr 650W is fine, just make sure it's not a cheap PSU. Corsair is a great choice.

[vladgd]

With my games finished, I kinda wanna get this thing built within the month.

I did snag a 650w corsair PSU, samsung 500gig ssd, and some thermal paste. Intending to use stock heat sink for the ryzen since I ain't going to OC, and all of the feedback confirms it's a good heatsink for running that thing at stock settings. Only issue is it has pre applied paste, so I read you can clean it off with some iso alcohol, so I got some of that, but haven't put the time into actually removing it yet. Will get done before I install.

Things I'm missing.

HDD, going to nab a WD black 1tb, shouldn't be an issue
Multi card reader, don't need one, but would be nice to have.  Link
Optical Media Drive, thinking of gutting the dvd drive off my current machine, or getting a shiny new blu ray, undecided yet
Ram, could take the 16 gigs from my current machine, buy new ram? or get 32 gigs which could be stupid overkill, not sure
GPU, pretty lost on this one, under $300 would be nice unless I can see reason to spend more, in that case under $400 might be doable
OS, I just buy win10 from amazon and its easy peazy? or is there a better way? I see some for $85, and some for $100, but they say the same win10 home OEM. I don't quite understand. Should a user like myself even consider pro?

Givin my energy and motivation (tired physically from work and being ill) I would like to nail all of this down and have it ordered within the week. Kinda have the hankerin to play final fantasy 14 for some reason...and It may take some doing to figure out a good physical setup for my living room after this machine is built, requiring more time and $$$, so I aughta get this fucker built already.

Input for the uneducated plz