- May 29, 2023
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Howdy very smart computer people!
For the last decade I've always bought my computers assembled from ibuypower, and I'm tempted to do it again, but all the advice online is "build it yourself!" so I'm thinking of taking the plunge. (Also, ibuypower didn't quite have the exact things that I wanted.)
It seemed wise to post my build for critique given that I've never done this before.
The questions I'm noodling over the most:
--I don't actually have a great sense of whether the parts I've chosen blend well together, and it seemed like there were a number of factors, like the generation/speed/connection of the SDD. (And something about a USB header in the PC part picker compatibility warnings.) I know basically nothing about motherboards, or case selection. I know keeping this thing cool is a priority, as my prior experience with CPUs is them getting throttled from heat or melting nearby plastic. I would really love a machine with a large number of quiet fans cooling an open mesh box.
--My ability to do this is limited to my ability to follow YouTube videos of others doing it. So I need a case that's relatively easy to assemble.
--I have never had a computer run fast enough for what I've thrown at it. My current 5 year old desktop can run today's shooters at 120+ FPS, but that's not the concern. Cities Skylines/The Sims/Civ 6/Blender/Stable Diffusion are a struggle, with 30 second render times and memory problems on Stable, 3-5 minute load screens on the games (I keep 50-100 gigs worth of DLC on these), sculpting latency in Blender, etc. So any advice to make the machine faster would be appreciated, such as faster loading of things off the SDD. I would like to bring that down to 20-30 second load times so I can edit custom content and load a game quickly.
My understanding of cores vs. clock speed is that clock speed is more important/noticeable in gaming, whereas Blender likes cores, so the i7-13700k seemed like a decent tradeoff, and relatively easy to upgrade later.
Here's my best guess at what would go together well thus far, along with my rationale, so you can at least get a sense of why I chose a thing (even if I chose the wrong thing):
PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/DcpVhk
CPU: Intel Core i7-13700K 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor ($409.99 @ Newegg)
*basically looked like the fastest compromise between cores/clock speed based on what I do
CPU Cooler: Corsair iCUE H170i ELITE CAPELLIX XT 89 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($239.99 @ Amazon)
*I like running sims for long periods which means a lot of heat for a long time and I read this was the coldest of the cold
Motherboard: MSI MPG Z790 EDGE WIFI ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($324.99 @ Amazon)
*honestly I had no idea what I was doing when choosing this. I know I want some USB-C ports, and I need it to work with the fastest SDD/RAM connections, but I understood like 2% of the acronyms listed
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6600 CL32 Memory ($259.99 @ Corsair)
*twas the fastest on PC Part Picker
Storage: Gigabyte AORUS Gen5 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 5.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($289.99 @ Newegg)
*this appeared to have the fastest read times, a current very irksome bottleneck
Video Card: MSI SUPRIM LIQUID X GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB Video Card ($1909.99 @ Amazon)
*I understand this is the most capable card for gaming, Stable Diffusion, and Blender
Case: Corsair 7000D AIRFLOW ATX Full Tower Case ($244.99 @ Amazon)
*I understand air flow is like a thing and it appeared to have holes on pretty much all sides, and airflow is in the name, so yeah
Power Supply: be quiet! Straight Power 11 1200 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($249.90 @ B&H)
*I'm at 850w now and 350 seemed like enough extra capacity to add drives and a zillion usb devices and such? Should I go higher for the future if I want to reuse in five years?
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro OEM - DVD 64-bit ($144.99 @ Other World Computing)
Total: $4074.82
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-05-28 16:30 EDT-0400
To answer the questions that are in the template for new-builds:
Approximate Purchase Date: e.g.: In the next thirty days.
Budget Range: Keeping it under $4,500 or thereabouts
System Usage: Simulator games with large amounts of DLC (The Sims, Civ 6, Cities Skylines and whatever its sequel is), snappy rendering in Stable Diffusion, high poly scultping in Blender, painting. Occasional use for 3d rendering and model training, but I don't mind leaving that stuff overnight, so lower on the priority list.
Are you buying a monitor: For the moment no, unless sniping in first person shooters becomes a problem.
Reused parts: Not reusing anything.
Do you need to buy OS: Windows 11. So I think this means I need to pick the right motherboard the first time?
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: I'll noodle around to find the best deal on sales tax in Georgia.
Location: Atlanta. I'm not opposed to taking all the parts to a store and having them put it together for me, though everyone insists this process is fun and I should do it.
Parts Preferences: by brand or type: My AMD experience has been poor. I switched to AMD only to find out that what was supposed to be faster was far slower because the software I use wasn't optimized for AMD, so I'm going back to Nvidia/Intel, despite my other complaints.
Overclocking: I wait to do this until my processor is a couple years old and then I feel less bad if it lights on fire. But when I do it I need it to be easy-cakes.
SLI or Crossfire: Don't actually know what this is.
Your Monitor Resolution: 2560x1440.
Additional Comments: I want cold, versatile, extremely powerful, quiet, invisible. I don't like to throw money away, but for me waiting 20% longer for AI and portview render times is throwing time away and I'm ok spending more money to get that time back even if the gains seem smallish.
Thank you for reading and commenting if you choose to!
For the last decade I've always bought my computers assembled from ibuypower, and I'm tempted to do it again, but all the advice online is "build it yourself!" so I'm thinking of taking the plunge. (Also, ibuypower didn't quite have the exact things that I wanted.)
It seemed wise to post my build for critique given that I've never done this before.
The questions I'm noodling over the most:
--I don't actually have a great sense of whether the parts I've chosen blend well together, and it seemed like there were a number of factors, like the generation/speed/connection of the SDD. (And something about a USB header in the PC part picker compatibility warnings.) I know basically nothing about motherboards, or case selection. I know keeping this thing cool is a priority, as my prior experience with CPUs is them getting throttled from heat or melting nearby plastic. I would really love a machine with a large number of quiet fans cooling an open mesh box.
--My ability to do this is limited to my ability to follow YouTube videos of others doing it. So I need a case that's relatively easy to assemble.
--I have never had a computer run fast enough for what I've thrown at it. My current 5 year old desktop can run today's shooters at 120+ FPS, but that's not the concern. Cities Skylines/The Sims/Civ 6/Blender/Stable Diffusion are a struggle, with 30 second render times and memory problems on Stable, 3-5 minute load screens on the games (I keep 50-100 gigs worth of DLC on these), sculpting latency in Blender, etc. So any advice to make the machine faster would be appreciated, such as faster loading of things off the SDD. I would like to bring that down to 20-30 second load times so I can edit custom content and load a game quickly.
My understanding of cores vs. clock speed is that clock speed is more important/noticeable in gaming, whereas Blender likes cores, so the i7-13700k seemed like a decent tradeoff, and relatively easy to upgrade later.
Here's my best guess at what would go together well thus far, along with my rationale, so you can at least get a sense of why I chose a thing (even if I chose the wrong thing):
PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/DcpVhk
CPU: Intel Core i7-13700K 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor ($409.99 @ Newegg)
*basically looked like the fastest compromise between cores/clock speed based on what I do
CPU Cooler: Corsair iCUE H170i ELITE CAPELLIX XT 89 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($239.99 @ Amazon)
*I like running sims for long periods which means a lot of heat for a long time and I read this was the coldest of the cold
Motherboard: MSI MPG Z790 EDGE WIFI ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($324.99 @ Amazon)
*honestly I had no idea what I was doing when choosing this. I know I want some USB-C ports, and I need it to work with the fastest SDD/RAM connections, but I understood like 2% of the acronyms listed
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6600 CL32 Memory ($259.99 @ Corsair)
*twas the fastest on PC Part Picker
Storage: Gigabyte AORUS Gen5 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 5.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($289.99 @ Newegg)
*this appeared to have the fastest read times, a current very irksome bottleneck
Video Card: MSI SUPRIM LIQUID X GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB Video Card ($1909.99 @ Amazon)
*I understand this is the most capable card for gaming, Stable Diffusion, and Blender
Case: Corsair 7000D AIRFLOW ATX Full Tower Case ($244.99 @ Amazon)
*I understand air flow is like a thing and it appeared to have holes on pretty much all sides, and airflow is in the name, so yeah
Power Supply: be quiet! Straight Power 11 1200 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($249.90 @ B&H)
*I'm at 850w now and 350 seemed like enough extra capacity to add drives and a zillion usb devices and such? Should I go higher for the future if I want to reuse in five years?
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro OEM - DVD 64-bit ($144.99 @ Other World Computing)
Total: $4074.82
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-05-28 16:30 EDT-0400
To answer the questions that are in the template for new-builds:
Approximate Purchase Date: e.g.: In the next thirty days.
Budget Range: Keeping it under $4,500 or thereabouts
System Usage: Simulator games with large amounts of DLC (The Sims, Civ 6, Cities Skylines and whatever its sequel is), snappy rendering in Stable Diffusion, high poly scultping in Blender, painting. Occasional use for 3d rendering and model training, but I don't mind leaving that stuff overnight, so lower on the priority list.
Are you buying a monitor: For the moment no, unless sniping in first person shooters becomes a problem.
Reused parts: Not reusing anything.
Do you need to buy OS: Windows 11. So I think this means I need to pick the right motherboard the first time?
Preferred Website(s) for Parts: I'll noodle around to find the best deal on sales tax in Georgia.
Location: Atlanta. I'm not opposed to taking all the parts to a store and having them put it together for me, though everyone insists this process is fun and I should do it.
Parts Preferences: by brand or type: My AMD experience has been poor. I switched to AMD only to find out that what was supposed to be faster was far slower because the software I use wasn't optimized for AMD, so I'm going back to Nvidia/Intel, despite my other complaints.
Overclocking: I wait to do this until my processor is a couple years old and then I feel less bad if it lights on fire. But when I do it I need it to be easy-cakes.
SLI or Crossfire: Don't actually know what this is.
Your Monitor Resolution: 2560x1440.
Additional Comments: I want cold, versatile, extremely powerful, quiet, invisible. I don't like to throw money away, but for me waiting 20% longer for AI and portview render times is throwing time away and I'm ok spending more money to get that time back even if the gains seem smallish.
Thank you for reading and commenting if you choose to!
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