Thinking about building my own gaming computer. So many questions

The Game Room
61

Is Dell still a thing? The last PC I bought in 2013 was an iBuyPower from Newegg, but the one before that was a Dell in 2006ish. Just on a whim I checked out the Dell site and it’s competitive. Really competitive. Similar to Digital Storm, they give you a handful of choices for each component.

Their not-quite top-end (for them) gaming rig with high (not necessarily top) choices across the board looks pretty good to me. It’s a gaming rig so stupid lights, but the lighting is passably understated, similar to my current machine. (Still hate any lighting, but it’s fine.)

Dell G5 Gaming Desktop $1675
Intel i7 10700F
Unknown cooler
Unknown motherboard
Unknown PSU
Nvidia RTX 3060 ti (!!!)
16GB RAM
1TB NVMe M.2
(no D: drive; I would have to buy and add the 2.5" SSD D: drive myself)
Windows 10 Home installed

I mean, that’s almost a turn-key solution and kind of fits my price range. Maybe $100 higher than ideal but a real contender.

It lets me choose a second HD, and a 2 TB is available, but all the second drive choices are mechanical HDDs. I inquired if it was possible to customize beyond the few choices, but no.

How insane would it be to actually buy a Dell nowadays? I can only imagine most of the parts are crappier than the ones I’m looking at for a custom build, except of course the i7 and (swoon) the RTX 3060 TI.

62

Gah! Going back to check the Dell for more info, the only “chassis” selection available mentions the PSU is 500W. No brand given. Not loving 500W.

EDIT: And looking closer at the Digital Storm site, many or possibly all of their second drive choices are also mechanical, just like Dell. Is it really so weird that I want my second drive to be SSD?

63

You buy big-name if you’re afraid of doing the assembly yourself. Theoretically, you customize the thing as far as you can on the website, pay up, unpack (after it’s delivered), and just set up with the external peripherals.

I guess folks are really afraid of cracking the case and plugging stuff together, and they’ll pay the premium (and the lack of flexibility) to avoid having to muck around under the hood.

64

I’m wrestling with that very question.

I’m fine popping in more memory or an extra hard drive. I was stressed about upgrading the power supply but that went off without a hitch. (And that leaf blower is still cranking away right next to me as I type this.)

But a full build, I dunno. I’m feeling pretty nervous.

65

There’s nothing wrong with buying a big name prebuilt if you’re doing your research. The days of saving 50% on your system by building your own died out in the early 2000s and now it’s more a question of “Spend an extra $200 to save myself a few hours and have a single-source warranty or save/spend the $200 elsewhere?”. Both are legitimate options especially these days when Dell or HP or some other big brand can sell you a system with a 3000 series card. If you’re not going to overclock, etc you don’t need all hand-picked top of the line components.

All that said, the 500W PSU is a little worrying since it’s well under the 600W Nvidia recommends for the card. Even a 550W I might be “Sure, you’re not overclocking, etc” but 100W under spec is a bit much. You’re basically buying it with the plan to add another $100+ on a new PSU right out of the box.

66

Nvidia’s PSU recommendations are notoriously nutty.

For example, in the KitGuru 3060 Ti review, they report a 317w power draw from the wall with an i9-10900k @ 5.1GHz with a 1200w Platinum PSU. That PSU is probably pushing only 275w - 300w to the hardware. 500w is plenty, regardless of what Nvidia recommends. 350w is probably fine given the modest 65w chip (vs overclocked 95w)

67

I actually found a small shop chain with a site in Brooklyn that makes machines to order. Their stock is impressive and prices fairly competitive. They had one last 3070 card as of this morning, but I’m sure it’s gone now. No other cards.

They had just about every specific part I wanted in a build. Not quite the right fractal case but a close enough one that would have worked. It even had a USB-C front port so all good there.

It ended up being like $200 markup which is perfectly fair. $1950 or so all in including the video card. The catch? In store pickup only. In Brooklyn.

Technically I’m only 50 miles from New York City but there’s no way in hell I’m driving into the highest population center in America during the worst pandemic in our history.

But they exist, so maybe someone else does too.

68

Here’s a link. This is pretty impressive stock considering it’s only what they physically have in the store.

EDIT: Looking more closely, they charge exactly $200 to put together an air cooled system with an OS install.

But still, of course, Brooklyn is a bridge too far.

69

You want a PSU rated to about double your average draw since it’s most efficient at around 50% load. If they were getting 317w draw, you would want a 600w PSU, not one that’s getting close to its ceiling.

70

Is lower than 50% less efficient than 50%? I’d been operating under the assumption that lower is always better…

71

No. PSUs running a low capacity (say, drawing 20% of their potential) are very inefficient while doing so. Obviously you’re better off running a 200w draw with a 1000w PSU than vice versa but you really want something like a 450w PSU for the task. The 1000w one will probably be around 50% efficient, the 450w one more like 80-85%. Obviously there’s other factors like how well the PSU is made.

In fact, the worst efficiency is when it’s very low. A 500w PSU pulling 425w is still relatively efficient while doing it (say, 75%) but then you risk problems with overhead and the fact that PSUs degrade over time so you don’t really want to be skirting the high end of the range either.

72

Too Late to Edit: I should note that 80+ Rated PSUs are supposed to guarantee a minimum 80% efficiency even at low draws. So, while it’s still not ideal to have a high wattage PSU in a low draw machine, it’s not as bad as it could be. Also, the validity of the ratings below 80+ Gold rated are considered a bit of a joke in real applications.

73

I’m going back and forth on whether my C: drive should just be a regular 2.5" SSD or a full-on NVMe M.2.

The only reason it isn’t an unqualified yes is because of the heat issue. Quiet cases run hot, and mine will be no exception. Just air cooling, and eventually tossing a video card in there, it’ll be toasty. So on the one hand I think play it safe, just do 2.5", and all that M.2 heat is taken away from between the CPU and the GPU.

Then I started reading about M.2 heat sinks, which are a thing you can buy separately, and which also comes on a lot of motherboards. The problem is the more I read about it, the more I wonder if they’re actually worth it.

Writes are more destructive at higher temperatures, but you usually aren’t writing. Reads are more destructive at lower temperatures, and that’s almost the only thing you do with a hard drive. So you kind of want an M.2 to run hot.

I’m not totally sure about all that, but at least I’m not currently buying aftermarket heat sinks for an M.2. It also explains why Samsung doesn’t include them with their drives.

I think I kind of have to do an M.2 C: drive. It seems to be the current standard.

74

It is just throwing money away if you’re already getting a highly efficient PSU. Money that could be spent on useful stuff like CPUs, GPUs, and flame decals.

For example, just pulling from the latest review on jonnyguru (http://www.jonnyguru.com/blog/2019/04/08/fsp-hydro-ptm-750w-power-supply/3/) the difference between 50% load and 100% load is 92.43% vs 90.25%. That’s like 6 watts at a 300w load. If you’re really worried about efficiency, turn your computer off when you’re not using it.

75

I’d rather have a PSU I know is working well and had sufficient overhead than one that’s marginal. The real issue with the Dell isn’t “cost”, it’s that there’s no option to get better. If you’d be happy with a 500w PSU in that system, then that’s great. I’d see it as the first thing I’d want to upgrade and that upgrade would leave me with an extra PSU I didn’t need which feels like a far greater waste of money than getting the right PSU (proper wattage, known brand, etc) in the first place instead of a 500w mystery supply.

76

I’ll also point out that it’s less than $10 to go from a (for example) EVGA 80 Gold 500W to a 600W and all of $6 over that to go from a 600W to 700W.

You’re not going to upgrade your CPU or GPU with that kind of money but you could be contributing to a healthier, happier life for your expensive components by not cheaping out. I’d rather spend the $10 and have the proper rated PSU for my GPU than save $10 and tell myself it’s fine and buy $10 worth of fire stickers for my case.

77

I don’t think of Micro Center as a small shop chain. They have 25 stores in 16 states. That may not seem like many compared to a lot of other tech stores, but they’re still considered one of the 200 biggest private companies in the U.S.

Also, there are plenty of custom builders out there if that’s the route one wants to go. Here’s a recent rating of a few of them:

78

iBuyPower had this customized for $1687 after NORUSH coupon code (two week delay on the 3060ti). Memory is a limited time deal but you can get 16GB of other stuff and be in the ballpark. I cut out anything in the customization that I didn’t change for sake of brevity.

Summary

BASE_PRICE: [+1449]
CASE: CyberPowerPC ELUNA 242V Premium RGB Gaming Case Mid-Tower w/ Tempered Glass Window Panel (White Color)
CPU: Intel® Core™ Processor i5-10400F 6/12 2.90GHz [Turbo 4.3GHz] 12MB Cache LGA1200 [w/o Integrated Graphic] (Comet Lake-S) [-134]
Extra Case FAN: 3X 140mm Phanteks SK140 PWM FAN - high airflow nine-blade 500-1500 RPM Radiator Fans Black [+21]
CPU COOLER: Cooler Master Hyper 212 RGB Black Edition CPU Cooler w/ PWM fan - Efficient Cooling Performance [+2]
HDD: 1TB Samsung 860 EVO Series M.2 SATA-III 6 Gb/s SSD - Seq R/W: Up to 550/520 MB/s, Rnd R/W up to 100/90k [+109] (Single Drive)
HDD2: 1TB WD Blue Series SATA-III 6 GB/s SSD - Seq R/W: Up to 545/525 MB/s, Rnd R/W up to 100/80k [+125] (Single Drive)
MEMORY: 16GB (8GBx2) DDR4/3200MHz Memory [-40] (Team T-Force Delta RGB)
MOTHERBOARD: MSI Z490-A PRO ATX, ARGB, 2.5GbE LAN, 2 PCIe x16, 4 PCIe x1, 6 SATA3, 2x M.2 SATA/PCIe
OS: Windows 10 Home (64-bit Edition)
POWERSUPPLY: 600 Watts - Thermaltake SMART series 600Watts 80 Plus Gold high-efficient Power Supply [+21]
RUSH: Extra 2 week lead times for selected video cards, Eligible for 5% Instant Rebate when enter “NORUSH” During Checkout. [+0]
VIDEO: [Extra 2 Weeks Lead Time] GeForce RTX™ 3060 Ti 8GB GDDR6 Video Card (Ampere) [VR Ready] [+231] (Single Card)

PRICE: (+1776)

79

I’ll look closely at iBuyPower, and check out all the customizer shops I can find, because those are real possibilities.

As I take stock of what I actually care about, my raw computing needs are modest (anything will be a massive improvement and great) but I care very much about the non-computing aspects of it. Much more so than how powerful it actually is.

My #1 priority above all else is silence. This old computer has worn me down over 8 years of leaf blowing. When not under load, but just surfing the net or working in Office, I want the new computer to be utterly silent.

My #2 priority is that the case is just a plain black box with overly picky front port requirements. Ventilated or mesh designs totally satisfy the plain black box requirement, so they’re on the table. A fully mesh design makes everything cooler, which could (likely would) end up being quieter by virtue of the fans spinning more slowly or even not at all. Hell, pretty much anything without lights satisfies the “plain black box” requirement. The front ports are trickier…

For front ports I need a USB-C slot, which just by itself eliminates all older cases and many custom shops entirely. I also need a USB 2 (or 3) front slot dedicated to my $20 walmart wireless mouse and keyboard combo. The walmart keyboard has my (strongly) preferred keyboard layout, which I actually had trouble finding on amazon. Then finally I need at least one unused usb 3 I can plug my various devices into. More is preferred. The fractal define 7 has my ideal amount of front ports: two USB 2s, two USB 3s, and one USB-C. Perfect. (Only because “two USB-Cs” doesn’t appear to be a thing on any case.)

My #3 priority is boot speed and wake speed, plus everyday usage like browsing the web and working in Office. My current computer takes minutes to boot, and any programs (firefox, office) take 30-60 extra seconds to open the first time. So we just leave the computer on 24/7, letting it sleep between uses so it’s always “quick” to wake up and go. But even with that, the hard drive thrashes for a solid 20 seconds or longer just to wake up. Certainly not instant. I also do the occasional media editing but that’s a lower priority. I specifically want booting and waking up to be as fast as possible.

My #4 priority is games. I want to be able to play modern games (low settings is fine) through at least 2025 or 2026 as they come out, but this is a much lower priority than the above three. Subnautica wouldn’t even let me try to install it a couple years ago when it was a thing here on the dope, and that was a bummer. (The epic launcher practically laughed at my GeForce GT 630.) I kind of have my heart set on either a 3060 ti or 3070, and am perfectly content to wait however long it takes until those become affordable. In a perfect world I’ll wait long enough that the next big thing comes out and I can grab an old 3070 for like $300. The integrated chipset graphics on the cpu should serve me just fine until then. (The most modern game I actually play is Starcraft 2, though of course that may no longer be true once I upgrade to a 2020 video card.)

I’m thinking more and more that I should build it myself so that I can make it as close to “perfect” (for me) as possible, and also for the accomplishment. That said, if a pre-built does what I need, has the front ports and isn’t overly gaudy with lights, that might be the smarter play in terms of service and warranty. I’ll just have to take gamble on the quiet.

80

How does connecting front ports to the motherboard work? Can I set up two ports with a single header? Is there a difference between a 3.0 port and a 3.1 header? Or 3.2 header?

I’m trying to make sure I have a perfect match between the motherboard and case but I’m not sure how many headers I need for the ports.

Edit: For example the define 7, The case shows two 2.0 ports, two 3.0 ports, and one USB-C. Exactly what headers do I need for that?