I want to escape consoles and finally build a gaming pc but I’ve seen the prices…
Everything is really overwhelming for me and I have no clue what I should go for and everyone is giving me differing answers so I ask you.
Is building a PC ACTUALLY cheaper than buying one?
What specs would I even need? All I wanna do is play arc raiders comfortably at high settings and play heavily modded Garry’s mod.
For a goof I priced a NAS box today, AM4, 8 GB RAM, cheapo everything except for the drives (4 x WD Red 2 TB). It came to almost $1300. 😑
EDIT: I may be wrong about prebuilts considering the memory bullshit. Please investigate.
Is building a PC ACTUALLY cheaper than buying one?
Yes…of course it is. If you see a prebuilt PC “with the same specs”, the PSU, motherboard, case, fans and storage are likely all shit, and you will have really weird fucked up problems like USB’s not working right, random-ass crashes, limited BIOS options, and other super annoying bullshit. Don’t buy a prebuilt.
Prebuilts are for people that want to pay more for a worse product than if they assembled it with no knowledge. You can afford to destroy a mid range CPU while building and you’d still get a better deal than buying a prebuilt.
Some random tips:
- Don’t use cables from one modular PSU for a different modular PSU
- Configure fan curves by RPM not by %
- The only things that are truly a struggle is getting that damn 24-pin in and out of the motherboard, and tightening down the CPU radiator. And cable management I guess.
- Don’t build on a carpet, touch metal bits from the case sometimes.
- Don’t cheap out on the PSU. Check this https://cultists.network/140/psu-tier-list/
- Rough CPU comparison https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
- Rough GPU comparison https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
- Don’t trust any short form content about PC building.
- You can’t fuck up thermal paste, stop worrying about it, plunk it down, squish it, and forget about it.
- Don’t cheap out on storage. But also don’t overlook hard drives, they’re still the best bang for buck for mass storage.
- Consider the used market. No reason not to. Hell, I’d buy everything used, unless you want to get latest gen, but even then it may be worth it.
- Use pcpartpicker to configure but don’t trust it 100%.
- Don’t get a small case, you will hate it.
- Bigger fan better less noise more flow, you also don’t need a billion fans.
- Mesh front case. Consider nothing else.
Counter point you can sometimes get a good deal if you prebuilt and a bit of TLC. I bought my last rig because it was the same price as a GPU by itself. All I had to do to fix it was properly run and route the cables.
Unfortunately, it is a bad timing to build a PC, as the AI industry is hogging hardware so much, prices are unreasonnable AF.
Yeah. So I’ve seen…
To get an idea, a PC is probably 2x the price compared to like 2023 right now.
For building your own, step one is to decide on your budget, and step two is to go to Logical Increments, look up your pre-determined price range, and bam - you now have your complete list of parts. To spare yourself from wasting an unnecessary amount of time and energy, it’s important that you complete step one before starting step two. Realise that what’s available in other price ranges than your own is entirely irrelevant to you.
Logical Increments does a really good job of picking good, sensible parts for each price range that are great value, and which is guaranteed to be compatible. Unless you already know a lot about hardware on a technical level, it’s like another full-time job trying to compare every available piece of hardware against all other available hardware, especially when much of the available information is untrustworthy or biased, is marketing fluff, is misinformation or superstition, is generally esoteric, and if you seek the advice of “enthusiast” communities, you’re just going to get parroted answers from people that can’t actually tell you the reasons for any of the answers they give you, because they don’t know themselves.
You can of course replace any recommended component in your tier, if you want, but if that means doing a lot of research, then you should realise that it’s probably more efficient to just spend that amount of time working a paying job, and then either upgrade the part in question to the next tier (but make sure it’s compatible with the rest of your build!), or set it aside, and upgrade that part in a few years from now. Remember that being able to easily install and replace parts is one of the pros of PCs, and that you’re doing it wrong if you’re trying to find or build some kind of “forever pc” that will “last”. There is no such thing, and you will just end up paying overmuch for less compute, by chasing that idea.
And if you don’t like the capability of the parts in your budget tier, then that means you should set aside the amount of money it would have cost, and make a feasible plan for how much money you will set aside each month and add to the pool. Then you will know how many months until the next budget tier is in your range, at which point you should come back and evaluate if that tier is then sufficient for your needs, or if you should save up for the next tier instead.
Just know that value drops off fast the higher up you go, so saving for a higher tier is rarely worth it. High end computing has incredibly poor value, so don’t look jealously to that. Mid range is where you’re getting the most bang for your buck.
And of course, if it turns out that the budget you set for yourself actually gives you needlessly high end hardware, then go ahead and down-grade to a lower tier, and spend that extra money on ice cream, or a loved one, or a charity, or set it aside for future upgrades.
EDIT: If I was building a PC right now, I would be taking a serious look at the second-hand market, which would be a first for me. That’s a possibility for you as well, though that will obviously require a lot of research on your part. It may be a decent compromise to get everything new, except for your GPU and/or RAM.
From the advice I’ve seen on Gamer’s Nexus, it’s currently cheaper to buy pre-builts at the moment since their systems are priced from RAM they for 3-6 months ago.
As much as I hate to admit it as I don’t like Linus, LTT has some good secret shopper episodes (and so does GN to a lesser extent). Just watch the conclusion episodes where they rate how each system integrator performed. Stay away from big brands like Dell, HP, etc.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that you don’t need to water cool or add a hundred oversized fans for a computer you’re not going to overclock. So long as the graphics card has room to breathe, modern electronics are way more power efficient than older stuff and will stay plenty cool on air.
Also spend the extra money on a motherboard and power supply. Everything else is splitting hairs for fps or style. Especially ram, you don’t need crazy high numbers unless you know how to tweak the motherboard clock speed without breaking shit.
It had been cheaper to wait for component sales. But certain components are getting so expensive that my local Memory Express shop stopped putting the price tag on their RAM and graphics cards, so it’s market price as if it’s fancy whole lobster at a restaurant. So now it’s not much different and a good deal on a pre-built might get you the best bang for buck at this moment. I think I’ve seen decent quality/price builds at Costco.
Canadian examples: https://www.costco.ca/.product.4201008598.html for 1700 CAD (1200 USD) as of today.
https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX00138751 same price, slightly better CPU.
For what you want (arc raiders and gmod) these will work great. An 8 gb card will do great for all except maybe some games’ “Ultra” settings with textures filling up all your vram. 16 gb of DRAM is about the standard for games, gmod is old so it doesn’t need much at base, the modded servers it depends but it will probably handle okay unless you go super overboard with it. Luckily RAM is one of the easiest components to upgrade on most desktops, it’s just being hoarded between AI companies and the greedy cartel of companies that make memory.
For a new CPU I’d recommend i5 12th generation or later, or AMD Ryzen 5 3600 or later, but newer is better, these are the oldest ‘minimums’ I could recommend picking up. I use cpubenchmark.net to know the relative score between chips.
Prebuilt is actually cheaper now with the ram crisis. There are some very good deals if you get lucky. They sell out really fast though.
Thanks!
Ram prices suck bad.
Just throwing it out there but why not go DDR4? Your motherboard and CPU might be slightly older but I’ve literally used the same mobo for like 10 years. Currently I have a Ryzen 5800x, Radeon 9070xt, 32gb ddr4. I upgraded the CPU in 2020 and the GPU this spring, selling my 6700xt to make up some of the hurt from GPU prices.
I can play cyberpunk on like max settings. The rig works great on Linux. I don’t know how much of a difference DDR5 really makes since I’ve never had it but I feel like it’s getting into diminishing returns for PC gaming, it can’t really be noticeable that frames load 5-10% faster or whatnot.
On top of that, the 5800x3D is still regularly recommended despite being 4 years old. For arc raiders and older titles, some slightly older hardware could do wonders for you. I’d probably go this route than dropping $2k on a pre-built unless you really want Nvidia for some reason.
I’m very pleased with the specs I listed, like I said I can play the newest titles on max settings. You can prob build it for somewhere around $1k, mostly due to GPU prices. And if you build it yourself you get a better power supply, cabling, case, etc.
That 5800x3d chip, my gosh. I completed a 5800x3d/4070ti/64gb refresh almost four years ago (four years in January I believe). I already had a 3600x/32gb ddr4/rtx2070 build that I did in late 2019, so I gave it a refresh (that 2070 card was never great), and added another 32gb of ram as I found two exact match sticks on sale that were a great price (because everyone was onto DDR5). There was a bit of a supply reprieve in late 2023 with chips and graphics cards, so I reupped when the 4070 came out and I’m so friggin glad I did. Four years later it still feels fresh, still plays games at higher end settings. I think it’ll easily go another 4 years, if not maybe even more. If it does that will be well over 10 years on the motherboard (and half the ram) which I’ve never done before. So I mean these prices suck for sure, but the equipment doesn’t as much.
I’m not sure if this is still true, but in the very recent past you could find better deals on DDR5 RAM when buying it in a bundle with a CPU. A lot of stores did this as a way to try to prevent scalping.
Interesting…
I’ll certainly take note of that!
Prebuilts often cut corners all over the place. Especially Walmart. Typically in the power supply, wiring, and other small things that no one looks at on a spec sheet. And the prices usually aren’t much lower. Plus building a PC is fun, educational and will help you troubleshoot inevitable issues and failures in the future.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, PCPartPicker has a bunch of good builds at very price points and resolutions.
Arc Raiders is not a terribly demanding game.
I agree with this. Pick one of the build templates on PC part picker that fit your budget, and then tweak it here and there for specific things you’re looking for. That said, I have seen pre built for sale at Costco or on eBay that are ‘worth it’ for the RAM alone. Building a PC is fun as hell. Once you’ve done it, you know how to do it, where everything goes and how it works together, making future inevitable work on it so much more intuitive.
An easy way to come up with some starting places is to search for “rate my build” type communities for recent posts at around the budget you have, see how people respond with suggestions or critiques and go from there.
In my experience you can’t really do cheaper than a cheap pc although some loss leader parts maybe. Building a pc allows you to make something that is cheaper for the level of quality of the parts used.
You don’t need to build your own, but I would at least recommend buying a pre-built that gives you the option to upgrade later on. Some pre-builts (cough cough Alienware) go out of their way to make sure their computers can’t be upgraded.
I would recommend taking a look at Starforge. I’ve been pretty impressed by their prices.
If you want Linux, you’ll definitely want AMD. Nvidia works, but AMD works better.
Also, don’t feel bad about not getting the best and most expensive model. Low-mid end is really the sweet spot for price-to-performance. And games typically play pretty well, just not on max settings. And you can always upgrade later on
I’ve never been much of a graphics person to be honest. I mainly play shooters and I would much rather have fps over graphics lmao
I will prioritize graphics for games that are less action and more story focused though because I wanna be there. I don’t mind 30 fps once in a while. (I’m currently playing through assassins creed 3 on ps5)
I’ll be sure to check them out, thanks!
I was in your position two years ago, I was super scared when building… and it was totally fine, fun, and interesting! Besides planning everything via PCPartPicker, I would recommend getting a big-ish case if you can fit it, which makes everything a bit easier for the beginner.
Building your own used to be a lot cheaper.
If you live near a Best Buy (or wherever you’re seeing prebuilt computers for sale), take a picture of the shelf tag with the specs. Alternatively, since it runs Windows 11, go to Start (Windows flag) → System, scroll all the way down to About. It’ll tell you what CPU it has and how much RAM. You might be able to find the GPU stuff here. A little help, Windows guys? Mac user here but I use a PC at work and I generally know my way around them. Take a picture of that.
Now go to PCPartPicker.com and try to build a system around that.
Building a PC isn’t hard, but it’s not easy either. I’d call it an intermediate skill. I would recommend against listening to anyone who says it’s easy. It may be easy for them but they may be setting you up for expensive failure. And now computers are largely sold water cooled. That’s cool and all, but I’ve built PCs across two decades, and I’ve never built with a water cooler. If I were gonna get a gaming PC again, I’d go prebuilt. Just save myself the hassle.
Look at what they cost. Save up the money or get your money ready. If you see a computer you want and the price looks fair, go for it.
Look for open box deals. You really don’t want a computer that’s been worked hard and hung up wet, as it were. Store computer displays rarely get worked, though. If anything, they get dirty. So you clean the thing. I wouldn’t use an open box keyboard, though. I’d be looking for a deal on just the computer that was out for people to play with. Mostly they just shake the mouse and bang on the keyboard a bit. Hit the web browser. The wise gamer is going to nuke and pave anyway — that means, when you get it home, before you put it on your network, you’re gonna wipe the drive and reinstall Windows (or better yet Linux) fresh so you don’t have any badware on the machine.
Building one isn’t actually surprisingly all that hard. I literally had never built one before I built mine. I just watched a bunch of dudes doing it on YouTube and spent a month or two doing a ton of research to make sure everything worked together and there would be no conflicts. Then one afternoon when I had everything together, I was like whelp no time like the present and dove right in figuring it would probably take me a few days, and anticipated that I would have many issues. Two hours later I was playing GTA and waiting for the sky to fall because I was like that was actually not that hard. Like I was suspicious even, because I was like there’s no way it was that easy like somethings going to blow up or break, but it never did. I’ve now pretty much upgraded it once over at this point too.
Just don’t do anything to crazy for your first build, like I would get a good size case (glad I did) with really good built in organization for the cables and components, that really was the difference maker. And I would just do a good quality air fan for the cpu, like don’t do something exotic like a water cooler or liquid cooling on your first go around, or the fancy displays and all that other stuff that’s really unnecessary. Good case, simple fans with some nice but simpler lighting, take your time to neatly route the cables and organize them and it’ll all go smoothly.
You can just hit the Windows key to bring up the start menu, then type “About PC” and that will have all the usual hardware info you need.
Shoutout pcpartpicker.
Nice. I’ll try to remember that at work.
jfc I just went on there to build the same machine I have sitting on my desk from a year and a half or so ago and it would be $5.5k if I built it again today
Talk about timing the market…
I’ve seen some pretty good deals on prebuilts at everywhere but best buy lmao. Reinstalling windows won’t be a problem for me since I use linux!
If I may ask what’s wrong with water-cooling? Should I avoid it or is it personal preference?
It was kind of a pain in the ass to install, to get everything routed right and all that. There’s not a lot of space left in my case at the front, the rad is quite large, and my case is not exactly that small either. It was really tedious to route, and I can’t see that airflow could possibly be all that great. I’m not convinced mines perfect either, for instance I’ve noticed in the last few months my cpu seems to be running at slightly higher temps, like nothing major just a degree or two higher than it used to idle at. I might rip it down at Christmas, like I mean it has been four years, probably just has some dust built up somewhere you cant super easily get at. It’s a lot of faffing around for I’m not even really sure what advantage it would have over a good fan cooler.
Nothing is wrong with water cooling! All I meant was, I’ve never built with it so that would be something I’d have to learn and would create a higher barrier to building.
Most PC gamers will use Windows. I wouldn’t.
You could not pay me to use windows lmao
For my use case I won’t go with water cooling based on the various responses I’ve gotten.
I haven’t heard anything bad about it. Maybe someone will @ me with some good info.
But yeah, I wouldn’t choose to use Windows… but I am paid to use it and I don’t complain. But in my home? Nah, best I can do is put Outlook on my iPhone. Not a fan of that but I do need to be reachable. (Better Outlook than WhatsApp or anything else by Meta. But not by much.)
For 75% of gaming builds water cooling doesn’t really matter. Air cooling is good enough these days that unless you’re overclocking there isn’t really a point. It is, however, much quieter if you do a custom loop, but that can easily add an extra $500 - $1000 to your build cost, especially if you don’t have the proper tools already. Stick with air cooling.
Water cooling is just air cooling with extra steps.
There’s nothing generally wrong with water cooling depending on your skill and commitment to the building process. There’s 2 ways to go with water cooling: an AIO (all in one) cooler, like this, or a custom loop, like this. The AIO you just follow the instruction manual and you’re set, a custom loop you have to buy all the parts, all the tubing, all the fittings, and assemble it all yourself. You have to really know what you’re doing.
My personal preference, however, is also to stick with air cooling. When an AIO breaks, the entire unit has to be replaced. When a tower air cooler breaks, its just the fan, which you can swap out more cheaply and easily.
OP if you live near a Microcenter, go check them out! They don’t do delivery orders, but they are a goldmine of hardware and enthusiast knowledge, and their prices are usually pretty reasonable********.
Oh, yeah I’ll probably roll with air cooling then. I don’t wanna do all that.
Lowkey don’t know if there’s even a microcenter here but I’ll check them out if I can manage it :)
It’s definitely a personal preference, but it’s a very… strong personal preference and in many cases that’s for good reason, in both directions. Water cooling performance is typically incredible and if you are overclocking or otherwise generating a lot of heat in a small space or pursuing very high performance, it not only can manage that effectively but it can do it while being quiet, properly designed it can be pretty close to silent, that’s real nice. The downside is that it’s expensive and it’s… water. It’s not necessarily maintenance-free, unless you’re using an all-in-one (AIO) but that comes with its own limitations, but the biggest problem in my opinion is that when (not if) it fails, it has a high chance of being a computer-ending event. When an air-cooler fails your PC will start throttling, might shut down, in a rare case something might be damaged from overheating, but 99% of the time you just replace a fan, blow out some fins, and it’s happy as can be again after that little hiccup. When a water-cooler fails… it’s typically a big mess. Both practically and financially.
With water cooling, I think it’s fair to say they are either people who have regretted water cooling a PC at least once, or they are people who haven’t regretted water cooling a PC yet. Few people can ever say they’ve regretted using air-cooling in a PC, and I suspect anyone who would say they regret air-cooling a PC, probably also falls into the category of someone who hasn’t regretted water cooling a PC yet.
Oh dear. Totally not going water cooling I guess
I have water cooling in my PC, which I have had to replace as the one that originally came with it from the shop failed after about a year and a half.
The failure was not catastrophic however. The failure was in the sealing of the cooler, so when it got hot enough the water eventually evaporated out of it.
I haven’t had an issue with my new cooler since.
Water-cooling is more expensive and needs to be replaced periodically, where air coolers cost way less and basically just last forever because they have no moving parts. I don’t think anyone should buy them but obviously that’s something of a hot take.
I was in your position, and was lucky enough to have a roommate at the time who actually knew about and built his own PC. His advice to me was to buy a pre-built one if you really don’t know what you’re doing or getting into, which I didn’t. So far I’ve been using it happily almost every day for the last 6+ years, and I’ve only replaced the cooling unit in it. Though I do tend to play games that aren’t super intensive, I think the only game(s) I have/played that are are Spider-Man 2 and Jedi Survivor
The entry fee kinda hurts but ig once you buy one you don’t really replace the whole thing right?
If you get tired of a component you just replace it easily (at least I’ve been told it’s just “adult nerd Lego”
Any suggestions of where I should try shopping for one?
Can you just replace parts as you go with a PC? Yes, but not indefinitely. There will become a point where you would likely have to replace almost all of the components in a PC in order to upgrade, like when a new RAM or CPU socket type is introduced.
But that’s probably not often…
I assume at that point buying a new one is recommended.
I remember my roommate once had to upgrade his entire PC because the components weren’t compatible when he got a new motherboard. At that point it was basically just a second PC he built, using only a few parts from his old one that could work with the new stuff.
I got mine from iBuyPower, which he recommended to me. I got mine for about $2500 including the monitor, and it came in a couple weeks. It was basically just plug and play when I got it.
Interesting. Definitely don’t feel like spending 2000$ lmao.
100% just buying a new prebuilt if that happens
PCs are adult legos. Put your components in PC part picker and make sure they are compatible. At this point, look for a used system on Craigslist or etc to take the ram and hdd from. The other components might be a little inflated but not as bad.
