Is there a website like staticice that lets you pic all the parts at best price and orders it?
How do you select a PC build, From one shop or other?
How Do You Buy Build a PC
jizmo on 20/04/2023 - 15:39
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wow these links are great! (i'm commenting to refer back later!)
pcpartpicker
Do ALOT of research, youtube is your friend here.
If you want to speed up that process i would recommend that you get a friend that has built a computer to give you some guidance. The high level stuff is easy….which parts etc, it's not till you get hands on that the little things that you can't predict till you're putting it together get you. I've been building pc's for over 15 years, and i still get surpises every now and then when putting a pc together with new parts.
It is more or less fool proof now. Can be tricky to connect pins for custom cases to make sure all Led indicators work as they should, but quick MB manual reading can certainly help.
That's what I mean though….there will always be a new part, connector,bracket, header or accessory every now and then that a company is trialing that like I said "get surprises". For an experienced builder like myself despite the surprise I figure it out very quickly, however I can definitely see someone that hasn't built a PC to struggle of they don't know what to look for
…..I've seen same crazy stuff ups come in with people asking me to fix the PC they tried building to realise they screwed up something badly in the build.
….the best 2 I witnessed was the following:
a customer spliced and soldered the motherboard power connector to also route power to a fan header. He looked at me and said "how else do the fans get power".
someone found some funky unknown bios from some unknown Chinese website, tried installing it onto his motherboard because he wanted to reverse the fan power direction to reverse the fan blowing direction….I gave him a free lesson on how to install a fan inwards vs outwards
I like that they had the technical knowledge to solder or flash a motherboard bios but overthought the problem and missed the simple solution
Fool proof? Hardly.
Try installing an AMD CPU into an Intel motherboard.
Or an ATX motherboard into an mATX case.
DDR3, DDR4, DDR5 ram.
Dimensional issues are still a big issue - CPU heatsink is too big, graphics card is too long
Yes, it is considerably easier these days, but there are still lots of areas for issues.
For someone that is new to building PC's then there are plenty of pitfalls.
goto a pc site that has a prebuilt you like, open a second tab and add all those parts to the cart and see how it adds up
First you need to take a step back and ask yourself:
- What is it used for
- What is your budget
- What peripherals / accessories do you also need
You need to have an idea of what you are looking for before you go about building / buying a computer.
If its a gaming PC, then more of your budget is going towards a graphics card.
If you need a monitor / headphone / keyboard / etc… then this will reduce your budget left over for the main tower / components.
Building a PC is pretty easy once you know a little bit about it, but can be pretty confusing if you are just starting. Educate yourself first.Actually it's a NAS. Video not important, trying to find a case is the most difficult.
Need mini ATX with 4 x 3.5" HD minimum
That's all I'm thinking ATM
I do know you get nothing from Qnap for $1200 in a 4 bayhttps://www.ple.com.au/Products/648684/fractal-design-node-8…
I'd buy, but out of stock.I'll need mainboard cpu ram psu and case
I want 2.5G Lan with additional PCI LAN to add one more for LAGG maybe at a latter date, if that's doable.Goal is to run proxmox truenas and Blue iris on a VM, without forgetting Plex
Pretty fun would recommend and save money by waiting for parts to go on sale. Eg my first PC I was using integrated GPU until 1070 went on a steep discount and smacked that bad boy in.
Was using and old 60hz monitor secondhand monitor and upgraded when 144hz was on sale. It’s like I’m tuning up a car but much cheaper
What colour is your Bugatti?
The easiest way is to sucker a friend you know irl who uses OZB into helping you, who will then go to OZB and ask other users to research compatible parts for them. Guessing you re gaming on it, and not rendering videos or design or whatever?
I create a spreadsheet with the components I select, then watch across several retailers, wait for a bargain then make my purchase.
pcpartpicker is great for new comers.
Great tips above. I watch a few Youtube channels such as Hardware Unboxed, Gamers Nexus.
In addition to the other sites mentioned, I use CamelCamelCamel and alerts on Ozbargain to find parts on special(or for price protection). I then buy based on a balance of effort/postage/availability costs.
After a couple of decades of building PCs for myself and family members, and about 3 years doing it professionally, here's my surprise tips that haven't been covered by anybody else:
A store like PC Case Gear, with a limited selection of parts, is better than a 'we have literally everything' site. Even if you don't buy from them, it's a good starting place because they have chosen a limited selection on purpose and it will eliminate a lot of choice anxiety and make comparing items easier. If you want to go on static ice later and min-max, you can.
Look for the gap - If you sort items in a category by cost (e.g. ram or hard drive) you'll usually see a point where the price is suddenly a lot more per GB or MHZ or whatever is the relevant metric. The item below that point is usually the best value for money because it's the lowest point per unit of performance before you hit gap where you are paying a premium to be on the bleeding edge. Never buy the lowest or highest cost product in any category.
Factor in how long you are willing to wait or put up with delayed packages. Getting the best possible price buy ordering everything from a different vendor might seem clever, but when you are waiting a week longer on that one part you need, it can put a dampener on the whole project. Buying from a store that will ship everything together in one order might just be worth paying a little extra for and they may offer some assistance with making sure everything is compatible.
Watch out for hidden GST and postage costs because a lot of the cheaper stores will gouge you. A lot of these places charge a postage fee per item, so the charge to you for postage of a bunch of small components shipped together is way higher than what they actually pay to ship. They may not be good on warranty returns either.
My 2 Computers before my current one were built from components from 2 or 3 different vendors, the cheapest possible cost. And last time I did have to wait an extra week on a key component. For my current computer I bought the components from PC Case Gear including a case (I swear I'm not a shill) minus the graphics card which I carried over from the previous build and then upgraded later. Everything arrived together and I could start building straight away. I maybe paid $20 more total than the cheapest I could have got stuff elsewhere, but I would have spent hours looking and then making sure that I was comparing actual final prices, not the pre-tax, pre-delivery prices that are artificially low.
Bonus tips:
Look out for a motherboard with 4 ram slots so you can fill 2 now and add 2 later. Look for a case that comes with a PSU, but check it's really cheaper than buying separately. Plan to upgrade your GPU at least once during the life of the PC, unless you aren't much into gaming. Swapping out an NVME drive is more pain than I could be bothered with, so I'd go bigger than I think I'd need rather than mess with it later.Every half decade or so when I have to upgrade, I spend like a week just watching youtube videos/reviews/etc to get a grasp of what the current tech is, what the options are for cheap, medium, high end, and extravagant, what the ins and outs of current tech are, etc, and usually buy at the inflection point where value for money stops increasing. Those PCs last years and handle most stuff pretty well, but it's always confusing at first getting caught up on all the choices now.
The things you'll need are:
A case (filters, airflow, and space are good, though space can backfire if you want to move it around a lot) - also case fans, I used to ignore those but something like the cheap 5 pack of arctic P12s with fan control speed and daisy chained connections are an amazing upgrade for quietness with the fans only spinning as much as necessary, and also being able to plug together to make use of limited points to plug into the motherboard, and sometimes even just necessary to even reach the motherboard.
A motherboard (you'll want one which matches your CPU and Ram, which also need to match each other. They come in low/medium/high end variants, where the high end variants allow overclocking and more connections)
A CPU
Ram (should match the CPU and motherboard)
Storage (Current options from best to worse are and most to least expensive: NVMe, SSD, spinning HDD)
A video card if you intend to do any kind of gaming, AI, or production work
A power supply (should check how much the video card in particular needs, high end cards lately have been known to have spikes of power drawn where you need wiggle room)
A monitor, keyboard, and mouse
These days your sound and wireless will likely be included on your motherboard.
These days there's a big push for glowing keyboards and mice and cases with windows with glowing components. I personally avoid those because it's incredibly distracting having tons of bright stuff flowing around you when you're trying to use your pc, watch a movie, game, work, etc.
Give your credit card number to an AI bot and let it do the shopping for you.
Don't forget to instruct the AI to lowball
https://au.pcmag.com/components/95162/first-time-pc-builder-…
https://au.pcpartpicker.com/
https://www.logicalincrements.com/
https://pangoly.com/en/pc-builder