Building a PC

[Eelectrica]

Holy f**k, do not buy from PCCaseGear, ever.

I'm not sure what happened to them (as I used to be a frequent customer of theirs going back about 7-8 years) but they are the slowest and most misleading company I've dealt with in quite a while.

That's a shame, but good to know. I'm going to build myself a new PC soon and PCCaseGear is one place I usually check out. Haven't ordered from them for a few years though.

These days I mostly just use U-Mart

 

[bileduct]

That's a shame, but good to know. I'm going to build myself a new PC soon and PCCaseGear is one place I usually check out. Haven't ordered from them for a few years though.

These days I mostly just use U-Mart

They list products on their website as being in stock, or "ships in 1-2 days", which then change to "pre-order" with an ETA a week or two away after you order something. I ordered a motherboard and a few other items from them. After the motherboard changed to a "pre-order" item I then specifically asked if another motherboard was ready to ship as advertised and was told it was. So I changed my order to a different motherboard and the exact same thing happened again.

I then removed the motherboard from my order and bought it elsewhere yesterday (it has already shipped, due to arrive tomorrow) but the rest of the order is still "processing" even though the items are apparently in stock. Getting express shipping from them is a complete waste of time given how f**king long they actually take to process an order and ship it.

I'm f**king pissed. My old PC stopped working last week and I decided to put together a Threadripper 3970X system with a 2080 Ti. All of the parts I have ordered arrived within 1-2 days except for the remaining stuff from PCCG which is the PS and GPU. I'm reading similar complaints from other buyers about orders being stuck in "processing" for ridiculous amounts of time.

I had a great experience with PLE Computers and SkyComp, their prices were either better than PCCG or they had same price but actually had stock they were able to ship immediately. PCCG prices compete on big ticket items like motherboards, CPUs and GPUs, but they are horribly overpriced on everything else.

 

[bileduct]

Also, f**k knows what happened to MSY but they are terrible now too. Poor range of stock, absolutely zero customer service.

And I'm not talking about the kind of customer service where somebody who has no idea what they are doing walks into MSY and expects the clown behind the counter to pick all the parts for them. I'm talking about "yo, what the f**k is happening with my order?" kind of customer service.

 

[Exsilium]

I just finished rebuilding my PC and I literally walked into my local PC shop and bought it all.

I've never been one to buy PC parts online, maybe I am missing out on potential savings but I do enjoy talking to the team and discussing a build.

 

[bileduct]

I just finished rebuilding my PC and I literally walked into my local PC shop and bought it all.

I've never been one to buy PC parts online, maybe I am missing out on potential savings but I do enjoy talking to the team and discussing a build.

I'd love to be able to do that but there's f**k all PC stores in Canberra, and the ones that do exist have both very poor range and are overpriced as f**k.

As far as advice goes, there are sooooo many Youtube channels these days that review and compare components. PCPartPicker is also pretty good for seeing what builds are out there and which components match well with others. I wanted to make sure that the CPU cooler I was using had enough clearance for the GPU, RAM and case I was buying, and that site helped tremendously.

 

[Exsilium]

I'd love to be able to do that but there's f**k all PC stores in Canberra, and the ones that do exist have both very poor range and are overpriced as f**k.

As far as advice goes, there are sooooo many Youtube channels these days that review and compare components. PCPartPicker is also pretty good for seeing what builds are out there and which components match well with others. I wanted to make sure that the CPU cooler I was using had enough clearance for the GPU, RAM and case I was buying, and that site helped tremendously.

Did not know Canberra lacked PC stores.

I took the online learning route with YouTubers and found it worthwhile as well. Plenty to learn and I found it rewarding this time around to really understand what I was building it for and how to achieve the results I wanted.

Then I took that understanding into a store and listened to what some avid gamers felt was the best course of action.

I knew very little when I built my first pc several years ago, when I built the latest one (three builds in total), I felt a lot more comfortable.

I’d encourage anyone wanting to get into PC gaming to try their hand at building their own. It’s rewarding imo.

 

[bileduct]

So I removed the motherboard from my order at 12:30pm Tuesday and immediately ordered another one from PLE Computers. It just arrived about 30 minutes ago.

My order with PCCG is still "processing."

I now have all of the parts for my build except the PS and GPU which are coming from PCCG. They were all sent from three different vendors in five packages, none took longer than two days. All were processed same or first thing next day.

PCCG sucks.

 

[Captain Apollo]

My cousin builds and maintains PCs for a living at his work. He has built all my PCs for here at home. He orders all his parts thru M-Wave, who are located in Lidcombe here in Sydney. You can order the parts thru M-Wave, they will assemble tghe PC for you and test that all the parts will actually work together without any problems as part of their service before they do final assembly (so if anything doesn't work, you can change the part which is incompatible). They also offer pre-made rigs for sale too.

 

[bileduct]

Finally got my system together.

Everything seems to be fine except for one of the f**king DIMM slots not detecting RGB properly. It's locked in a rainbow pattern and can't be controlled by Aura or the G.Skill software. Seems to be a problem with the motherboard because it's only happening in that one slot and persists after swapping DIMMs around. f**king annoyed because I don't really care too much about RGB, but the fact it doesn't work properly is irritating me enough to want to return the motherboard for replacement.

 

[Misanthrope]

With our stay here in Tbilisi extended indefinitely due to COVID-19, the wife has given me her blessing to build a PC here.

I've got an Acer Predator that has served me well over the last two years, but gaming on a laptop just isn't the same as gaming on a solid PC.

Do we have any experts at PC building here who might be keen to help me put together a build? Or am I better served hitting up the PCBuilds reddit?

 

[bileduct]

With our stay here in Tbilisi extended indefinitely due to COVID-19, the wife has given me her blessing to build a PC here.

I've got an Acer Predator that has served me well over the last two years, but gaming on a laptop just isn't the same as gaming on a solid PC.

Do we have any experts at PC building here who might be keen to help me put together a build? Or am I better served hitting up the PCBuilds reddit?

What kind of advice are you looking for mate? I always build my own. Was always an Intel man but recently changed to AMD,

 

[bileduct]

My build has been going pretty sweet. The problem with the DIMM turned out to be a software issue. ASUS has this garbage software called Armory Crate that was installing a dodge version of Aura Sync. Got rid of Armory Crate and installed the full Aura Sync product... It gives me full control over all the RGB components but... the service keeps crashing after a few minutes. Meh, whatever. I've just set everything to red, I don't care about the colour changing.

My system ended up being:

CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970x
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix TRX40-XE Gaming
GPU: ASUS ROG Strix Geforce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB OC
PSU: Corsair AX1000 Titanium
RAM: 4x G.Skill Trident Z Neo 3600 C16 16GB (64GB)
Storage: 2x Corsair Force MP600 2TB Gen4 PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD
Keyboard: Logitech G915 Lightspeed
Mouse: Logitech G502 Lightspeed (+Powerplay charging mat)
Case: Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic XL

I've gone for air cooling as I don't have the time and energy to maintain a custom water loop and I think they are too risky for this kind of system. There are also no reliable AIO water coolers for the shape of the CPU.

Air cooling system is:

CPU heatsink/fan: Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 (140mm)
Case fans: 10x Noctua NF-A12x25 (120mm)
Fan controller: 2x Corsair Commander Pro

I've still got my three old Dell U2713H 27" monitors which will do 2560x1440 at 60Hz with no issue, but I am eyeing off some 4K monitors to replace the primary one.

 

[Misanthrope]

Shit, that looks like the kind of beast I'm hoping to build. My Predator has been doing the job, but I've been noticing more and more things that fall just outside of my current specs, especially when it comes to VRAM.

What did the above set you back?

 

[bileduct]

Shit, that looks like the kind of beast I'm hoping to build. My Predator has been doing the job, but I've been noticing more and more things that fall just outside of my current specs, especially when it comes to VRAM.

What did the above set you back?

Somewhere in the vicinity of $10-11K.

If I wanted a pure gaming build I probably would have gone with a Ryzen 9 or Intel 10900 and saved about $3K on the CPU/Motherboard combo, but I do a fair bit of photo/video processing and spin up VM environments.

 

[Misanthrope]

Somewhere in the vicinity of $10-11K.

If I wanted a pure gaming build I probably would have gone with a Ryzen 9 or Intel 10900 and saved about $3K on the CPU/Motherboard combo, but I do a fair bit of photo/video processing and spin up VM environments.

Damn! I guess I'll need to wait for the safari business to start existing again if I wanted something along those lines haha.

If I wanted something for gaming (predominantly MMOs, modded Skyrim, and the occasional new game), what would be a solid build for around the $2,000 AUD ($1,500 USD) mark?

 

[Eelectrica]

Damn! I guess I'll need to wait for the safari business to start existing again if I wanted something along those lines haha.

If I wanted something for gaming (predominantly MMOs, modded Skyrim, and the occasional new game), what would be a solid build for around the $2,000 AUD ($1,500 USD) mark?

This is the machine I'm thinking of building for myself in a few weeks, a couple of notes though, some parts I'll be transferring from my existing machine. I've added those to the bottom of the post.

MB Gigabyte-Z490-Aorus-Ultra-LGA-1200-ATX-Motherboard
CPU Intel-Core-i7-10700K-CPU
RAM: Corsair-16GB--2x8GB--CMW16GX4M2D3600C18-Vengeance-RGB-Pro-3600MHz-DDR4-RAM
CPU Cooler Corsair-Hydro-Series-H80i-v2-Extreme-Performance-Liquid-CPU-Cooler
Case: Corsair-Carbide-678C-Tempered-Glass-Mid-Tower-EATX-Case
PSU: Corsair-RM850x-850W-Power-Supply-Fully-Modular-80-Plus-Gold
Last time I checked the price of all that was under $2k but I'm also cheating by not having to buy an expensive video card and storage. Same with mouse and KB.

SSD's I'll be transferring across. I've got a Samsung 1TB EVO 970 m.2 SSD ready to go in and a couple of older 512GB SSD's. I should just be able to squeeze CP2077 on there... hopefully.

as well as my 1080Ti Video card. Will upgrade that at some point in the future.

I'm still not sure what I'm going to do for a monitor, I'll figure that out later.