Help me build an awesome gaming computer

[Bert]

No rush. Not going to do it yet. I'm at the stage where I'm assembling the list of components I want and coming up with a plan. I was browzing empty towers yerstday at Frys electronics and man they have so many cool ones.

I want to build an awesome one, but I'm not going to put in an $800 graphics card, more like a 300-400. So ya know. Upper mid range components.


I want it to have a super fast chip and TONS of RAM. When I'm batch editing photos my current setup gets painfully slow.

Anyways, what would you guys recommend?

Motherboard/Chip? (If theres something I want to splurge on, it's this, so I7, but which one?)

Power Supply?

What is liquid cooled anyways besides the obvious? Do I need it? Is it something a semi-non-expert could do?

SSD or hard drive?

Graphics card?

RAM?

Hard drives and storage I've got for days. I'll be running Windows obviously. I need to run multiple displays for work.

Thank you in advance my fellow nerds.

 

[BigRedRage]

I bought a Helios Predator gaming laptop for $1,100. I like it.

I lost the link but a buddy had sent me a custom build website where you can do your build or at least research your build and also showed a lot of builds other people did. It was really cool.

 

[Shaggy]

Ever just think about buying one already built? I have built my computers for the last 10 years. Just finished building one a few months ago and the price of my build ended up being close to a already built one by a HP. Seems like they are getting cheaper to just buy pre-built then to do it yourself nowadays.

For example. Ibuypower has been getting alot of good reviews. This one has an I7.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07BDTTQ1M/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1526310370&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=iBUYPOWER&dpPl=1&dpID=51x+ov9

Same thing with cyberpower. All getting great reviews.

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[Shaggy]

After my last build, I decided I was just going to buy a pre-built pc from now on. It's just a hassle to build now as I feel I'm not saving all that much, if at all, nowadays.

 

[jbeecham]

After my last build, I decided I was just going to buy a pre-built pc from now on. It's just a hassle to build now as I feel I'm not saving all that much, if at all, nowadays.

You can thank Bitcoin & all the other cybercurrency for making the cost of video cards skyrocket & memory costs have probably doubled too.

Bert - SSD drives are still pretty expensive for large capacity so it's more common to have a 256GB or 512GB SSD for Windows & then a larger SATA drive for storage.

If you're looking at pre-built models too, Dell occasionally has sales on it's XPS 8930 tower. Some of those have solid video cards in them like the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050Ti with 4GB GDDR5, NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 with 6GB GDDR5 or NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1070 with 8GB GDDR5 . You might even find a great deal in the Dell Outlet if you don't mind a scratch/dent on the case.

 

[SO91]

The reason I don't like prebuilts is because they cheap out on components. Sure you get an I7, but they put a crappy PSU and/or mobo that has the potential to ruin some of your nice stuff.

I've always used https://pcpartpicker.com/ to pick out the parts I want and check pricing. GPU prices are still ridiculously high due to mining, but hopefully they'll come down soon.

I built my last gaming PC not long ago and I'm happy with my Ryzen 5 1600.

 

[Mainstreet]

Ever just think about buying one already built? I have built my computers for the last 10 years. Just finished building one a few months ago and the price of my build ended up being close to a already built one by a HP. Seems like they are getting cheaper to just buy pre-built then to do it yourself nowadays.

For example. Ibuypower has been getting alot of good reviews. This one has an I7.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07BDTTQ1M/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1526310370&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=iBUYPOWER&dpPl=1&dpID=51x+ov9

Same thing with cyberpower. All getting great reviews.

You can always tell the wife you need a new desktop computer.

 

[Shaggy]

You can always tell the wife you need a new desktop computer.

Thats how I got my last one. Now have 2 beefed up PCs.

 

[puckhead]

I'm a little old school in the idea that I don't like to mix "fun" computers with work computers. IMO, it's best to build a machine specifically for work (photo editing, etc) and not use it for surfing or gaming because of the occasional sketchy nature of those communities. Yes, I know many people game and work on the same machines without issue, but to me, one takes much higher priority than the other and I couldn't have my work machine go down because of something unfortunate happening while having fun. YMMV.

 

[Shaggy]

I'm a little old school in the idea that I don't like to mix "fun" computers with work computers. IMO, it's best to build a machine specifically for work (photo editing, etc) and not use it for surfing or gaming because of the occasional sketchy nature of those communities. Yes, I know many people game and work on the same machines without issue, but to me, one takes much higher priority than the other and I couldn't have my work machine go down because of something unfortunate happening while having fun. YMMV.

I agree. That's why I have 2 desktops. One for web/work and the other for movie/gaming.

 

[SO91]

No rush. Not going to do it yet. I'm at the stage where I'm assembling the list of components I want and coming up with a plan. I was browzing empty towers yerstday at Frys electronics and man they have so many cool ones.

I want to build an awesome one, but I'm not going to put in an $800 graphics card, more like a 300-400. So ya know. Upper mid range components.


I want it to have a super fast chip and TONS of RAM. When I'm batch editing photos my current setup gets painfully slow.

Anyways, what would you guys recommend?

Motherboard/Chip? (If theres something I want to splurge on, it's this, so I7, but which one?)

Power Supply?

What is liquid cooled anyways besides the obvious? Do I need it? Is it something a semi-non-expert could do?

SSD or hard drive?

Graphics card?

RAM?

Hard drives and storage I've got for days. I'll be running Windows obviously. I need to run multiple displays for work.

Thank you in advance my fellow nerds.

What's your budget?