Building a Custom Desktop Computer (Part 1) · 3:18pm May 26th, 2012
laptop I have been using since starting college is getting near the end of its life as my heavy lifting / gaming comp (as I estimate anyways). Specifically starting this summer it is entering its final year. Thus I have started building a desktop (first time to build one from scratch, though I did help replace most of the parts in a dead one over spring break), which I have decided to tell about incase anyone else is looking into building gaming comp* now that I have finished the first stage. First stage means enough to boot a Linux Live CD to test the parts purchased so far.
After all, this is a good time to buy parts if you plan on doing so as the new models are coming in if you want cutting edge and the old are going on sale if you want a good deal.
Searching and purchasing:
For those new to buy parts, Newegg is a great site for looking up and comparing parts, and its large user base provides a good bit of feed back on how reliable the parts are. However, their policy on returning parts that do not work on arrival or break after very little use is not great, which can make Amazon a better site for actually buying from for parts that are more likely to have said issues (especially hard drives, which have a high failure rate in that first interval) as they have a very good one.
Now to talking about some parts.
Case:
Best piece to buy first if you do not have one already, as they do not change much except for the front ports provided (and maybe drive bays, if it is one that is not able to use 2.5" drives... though there are parts to fix that if it needs to be) so you can then wait as long as you need to get the rest. Also it may be worth investing in a one that is overkill for what you plan as it is unlikely that you will need to replace it for a long time.
Basically you want one that has lots of PCI slots and drive trays (coming in the internal 3.5" normal size and 2.5" SSD size, and external 5.25" which is for disk drives and extra front ports and external drive trays for hot swaping). Also look for good ventilation (check the number and size of fans, and the comments/reviews) and good cable management (easier to handle all the interal cabling when building in it). Tool-less is very nice as a extra feature to look for. Some times a case that seems like another but costs more is so because it is easier to build in and has nice features for such. Also do get one without a power supply unless it happens to come with one you find desirable. Can be better to get them separate.
Important Note: If you can be proactive enough to clean them, air filters over the intake vents are very good to get. (Water cooled is not worth it except for the most extreme overclocked builds and is quite a hassel so I assume those reading this will use fans).
In my case (cough) I got a Lian Li PC-K63 for around $100 from Newegg. It has more space to put things (PCI, drives) than a number of larger Full Tower cases, with it being a mid tower.
CPU:
First thing to note is that last year's CPUs have a 3 year warranty, where as this year's have none at all. Apperently they are not as sure about the quality of the new models... Do watch out for that.
AMD & Intel: AMD has cheap with lots of fast cores relative to the competition, where as Intel has more expensive and actually do more with the clock speed they have (meaning at the same speed and number of cores they are vastly superior to AMD). At the low end of the price range AMD is best while Intel is better at the high end. APUs stick a GPU on there, and are not as good as getting the two separate, though it can be cost effective.
If you go with AMD, last year's look better. I have heard they are far better per clock (similar to how Intel is better than AMD CPUs) and the extra cores do not help much yet as few games can take advantage of them yet (though they are coming soon, as the first have arrived and others will follow).
With Intel, i5 is better for most than i7 for most people and will save about $100. The advantage of the i7 is they can split cores into weaker virtual cores to run more threads with higher effeciency; see what I said about AMD's extra cores as it is similar. Also I will note it is hard to tell when it is spliting the cores or not without better tools than I have which make it seem it is always doing so which would be bad when playing a game that needs stronger cores rather than more.
Final words are do look at the availible motherboards for potential CPUs, especially when comparing between brands and/or CPUs from different years (the latter as some features of a motherboard may require one from this year and the former as there are distinct trends in the motherboards for each brand).
For me, I got a Intel i5-2500K from Amazon ($205 at the time) which is a model from last year even though my Motherboard could benifet from a newer one as I perfer some insurance it will keep working for some time to come.
Motherboard (MoBo):
You will want one that has four 240 pin RAM slots, can hold 32 GB of RAM, 8 channel audio, and 10 / 100 / 1000 Mb (Mega bit) ethernet as a starting point for searching. And the CPU socket the for the CPU you are looking at boards for. For Intel this will likely be 1155 LGA and for AMD it is AMD3+ or (FM1 if you did choose one of their APUs). Integrated graphics are not recommeded (if you have an Intel CPU that supports Intel HD Graphics, support for that does not count as an integrated card). This is because those with a built in card tend to have fewer PCI slots for expansion and those tend to not work well.
The difference for those for AMD and Intel is: AMD have more USB ports and support internal USB 3 connections allowing for that to be used on the front panel if the case has them and better support for the latest version of SATA connections for drives (6 at the latest rather than 2 and 4 for the older version). However some new Intel boards support a newer version of PCIe if the CPU is from this year.
Note that CPUs from this year are needed for the faster RAM speeds (at least for Intel, have not checked AMD) on the MoBo to matter (meaning above 1333). Also for Intel you need a new CPU from this year to use PCIe 3. Speaking of PCIe, the x16 sized slots (used for video cards) may not always run at full capacity so look out for that; especially when it comes to those with more than one slot of this size (in which case it is when more than one is in use most of the time).
Do get a board with EFI or UEFI, which is a replacement for the dated BIOS for booting that is much better. New OSes (Windows 7 and more current Linux Distros) are needed to get the most out of this. A couple of recommendation on features to look for on Intel boards are support for thier HD graphics built into some CPUs should you have such (so you can use it for testing stuff before buying a GPU and as a back-up for video cause you can) and Intel Smart Response which improves Hard Drive and SSD preformance.
I got an ASRock Z68 PRO3 GEN3 Intel Z68 ATX from Amazon for about $105.
Power Supply (PSU):
Reliablity is key and you should pay for it as it can cause issuse when it dies are harm your other hardware. Also, any thing over 500 watts should do unless you have some crazy configuration with multiple GPUs. 650 would give a nice buffer, just in case. Also your energy bill would prefer an effecient one. Do be sure to verify these stats on one or more review sites such as HardwareSecrets to make sure they are not lying as they do that kind of thing quite often.
And you will want a fan attached to cool it, and that it fits your case (most will fit an ATX case).
Some points to look for after watts and effecency:
- Plenty of PCIe, Sata, and 'floppy' (fan and PCI) power slots.
- Modular, though 'fully modular' is overkill as it means you can remove cords that you will always be using. This is a good trait for the purpose of setting things up as being able to take out extra cords makes keeping things tidy inside easier.
- Connectors that have the pin count in the form of X + Y, as that means it is adaptable to different sizes of things that use them.
I ended up with a Corsair Professional Series 750-Watt from Amazon for a little over $138.
RAM
A good place to cut back if on a budget, as it is easy to upgrade at a later date. Do be sure to get the fastest speed supported by the MoBo and CPU, as speed does not affect the price much. If you are looking at getting 8 GB sticks, it would be good to wait and just get a couple of 4 GB for now as the former are quite pricy for now.
I went with somewhat cheaper Corsair RAM 4 GB X 2 sticks at 1333 Mhz to use until 8 GB sticks are cheaper from Amazon for around $41.
Disc Drive:
Not stricktly needed, but it is a good thing to have. For testing you would need to have a bootable USB rather than a CD if you do not. A cheap, well rated DVD Burner would be fine (choose one with a Sata interface). Or a Blu-ray reader, though cheap hard drives and more use of the internet for installation of software has kept those from taking off. You may need a SATA data cable to hook it up (power cables come with the PSU, however the MoBo may not or it may have very few like mine).
I got a DVD Burner (Sony brand) from Amazon at about $18.
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Next blog will be about putting the parts listed here together.
PS:
Do note that a GPU is needed to see if your parts are working if the Motherboard does not have a graphics card built in or the combination of CPU/Motherboard does not provided graphics as the case may be (with Intel it is possible to support video if both MoBo and CPU support Intel HD graphics and for AMD if you have an APU and supporting MoBo as it is a hybrid CPU and GPU).
* Plan is to also involves running a Linux server for certain program development things, for any that may care. May blog about setting that up some day.
i bought the pieces and assembled a computer myself about a year ago, i didn't really know what i was doing when i started and the whole thing would probably have ended up a disaster if a friend of mine and a friend of my family hadn't helped me out with giving feed back on what i wanted to buy, a lot of the things i thought i needed i really didn't. point is; this is incredibly helpful for anyone that has not built a computer themselves, although i don't really need to buy a new computer at the moment; this is quite fun to read, and i will need all the knowledge i can get when it's time to get a new one...
Really like the advice you posted here, very similar to the process I used when I built my desktop last year. Didn't get EFI though, thought it was only for OS X computers back then. Though I would like to know about what sort of Linux build you will be using for the server and if it will be a TUI or GUI.
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Fedora (xfce spin) for GUI desktop (testing platform for Linux development), Gentoo configured for TUI as the server.
The plan is to use Windows 8 for the main OS (cause that is the one games run on, and they need more power than anything else I will do with it), and then run one of each mentioned variation of Linux in a virtual machine (with Win8 supports from the start, and with the right drivers installed Linux can access the hardware fairly directly for little slow down for being a VM). And setting up said VMs will be easier from Windows than the Linux method.
I will be check that the Hyper V server is included as stated in earlier info on Win8 once I have a hard drive in there via the consumer preview.
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EFI is not a must have, it just a nice extra that is now becoming common enough that one does not have look hard for.
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I have an old eMachine I am screwing around with Linux on. Never much played around with VMs since I never had a need, though I have screwed about with trying to get OS X on a custom desktop (I've had limited success but further experimentation is stifled by my lack of patience with a 85 KB/s DL speed). dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Cheerilee.png
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Slow connections are painful; dorm internet at college is slow (how much depends on how many others are using it).
VMs is because while dual booting with a desktop Linux distro with a good installer is not hard, undoing it is messy. Thus VMs is the way to go for multiple OSes, that or setting up to boot from a virtual hard drive from the Windows Boot Manager (possible in Win8 from what I have read, at least in the Pro edition). VMs also allow for more than one to run at a time.
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I can see the benefits from using a VM, I just have yet to have a good reason. Being in a mechanical engineering program doesn't really force me to play with OSes and similar things. I just need an operating system to work and run the programs I need, everything else is secondary and more relegated to the realm of hobbies; that of coarse does not mean I don't like learning and playing with code. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Lyra_dealwithit.png
Very interesting blog. I haven't heard of EFI or UEFI either, so that's pretty cool.
Anyway, I just have to say that I decided to buy an APU (A8-3850) for my system, and I run Linux (Xubuntu 12.04 64-bit). They mix horribly and the proprietary drivers hate me. Regret the purchase. Oh well, my first build. Can't be perfect.
Looking forward to the next blog about this.
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I think the next blog with be tonight; I had planned to wait for all the parts but the last two (HDD and GPU) are not cooperating and going down in price. It will cover said parts and some extra things to consider, followed with a bit of configuration advice and a rant about the latest preview of Windows 8.
Graphics drivers are one of the main reasons I am unlikely to ever use Linux as a primary OS on a non-server system.