Tech-Illiterate Autist Seeks Assistance - No clue where to start with building a PC

[Anonitolia]

Hello Kiwifarms,

I come to you in a time of great need.

I am a pleb. A peasant, perhaps. I’ve only ever used pre-built PCs. Dogshit ones, might I add; the kinds that couldn’t play Minecraft with more than 20 mods before exploding. Big dumb boxes without much configurability. They have mostly been gifts, and mostly tended to by people I know as opposed to myself.

My current PC is going on 8 years old and beginning to chug a bit. It’s a big black box with shitty specs and no real benefit to keeping it besides semi-decent storage. I want to replace it with a custom-built PC… but I have no clue where to get started.

Most guides I see out there are for high-end gaming PCs. That’s okay, I’m somewhat interested in that field too. But this PC would have to be able to handle relatively intensive 3D rendering for different reasons, and I’m struggling to find much consensus on how to build in favor of that.

When I asked someone I knew about the topic, I just got this video in response:

which does a decent-enough job at explaining the basics, I think, but is once again slanted heavily in favor of RGB 4K Crysis gaming.

Where can I find some basic guides on how to start building a PC for high-end 3D rendering (and maybe, simultaneously, smooth gaming? I don’t care about newer slop, I just want to be able to run 2000 Minecraft mods at the same time or maybe get Switch games to emulate without issue)? For reference as to what I’m describing as “high-end 3D rendering:” I mean multiple large CAD instances at once.

Pretty much any basic material would be appreciated at this point. The people I know aren’t much help and a lot of the default searches seem to just turn up a shit load of sponsored ads. Thanks.

 

[Unarmed Gunman]

What is your budget?

Why do you think you need to build a PC rather than buying one that meets your spec requirements? Building one rarely save money like it used to, but you may have other reasons to build one so it's worth asking.

When you say you're tech-illiterate, does that mean you haven't even played around on https://pcpartpicker.com/ to see what is compatible (assuming you absolutely must build a custom PC)? Along the same lines, have you asked these questions in the Feed The Beast forums, since those are probably the subject-matter experts on exactly what you're looking to do.

 

[Anonitolia]

What is your budget?

Honestly not sure. Probably somewhere in a 1-2k dollar range at the highest? Actual implementation of a custom-built PC isn’t going to be considered for another half a year at least and I can’t predict my financial situation by then.

Why do you think you need to build a PC rather than buying one that meets your spec requirements?

Primarily for maintenance reasons, but also for easy part replacement. It’s a lot easier to maintain a good PC when you know how every part of it works, I think, and if something breaks I presume it’ll be a lot easier to fix in a PC you built yourself as opposed to a black box you bought where you can’t immediately intuit where things are.

When you say you're tech-illiterate, does that mean you haven't even played around on https://pcpartpicker.com/ to see what is compatible (assuming you absolutely must build a custom PC)?

Yes, because I had no idea that site existed. Oops.

 

[KillaSmoke]

Set a realistic budget, and go from there. Your first big choice is what CPU to get, and that will determine which motherboards you can use, and based on that, what RAM you can use.

For CAD stuff, it depends on what specific program you're using, what specific things you're doing in those programs and how large you mean by large. My experience has been that, at least with the programs that I've used, they all kind of run like shit, even on super high end hardware. They run worse on shitty hardware, but still...

Most CAD shit is primarily single threaded, so for the CPU, you're first priority is single core speed. Core count and cache also have an impact, but less so.

At least for the tasks that i do, the GPU isn't really utilized much. I have a 3060ti, and its comical levels of overkill. If you have a discrete GPU in your old PC, you might be able to get by with that for a little bit, and upgrade down the road

For RAM, 32-64 GB is a decent place to start. We have 128 on most of our workstations, but we do a bunch of really memory intensive shit. The newer motherboards have had stability issues with 128gb, and can be difficult to run at advertised speed. This might have been improved in BIOS patches, I'm not sure. Also, if you don't actually need 128, you'll get better performance from buying less, faster RAM.

Power Supply, you kind of need to be an electronics engineering sperg to have opinions. If you use pcpartpicker.com it has a nice wattage calculator for all of your parts. Get something 10-20℅ higher. No real benefit to getting more, unless you're explicitly planning on a GPU upgrade.

If you're buying a CPU on a current socket, you'll need a matching motherboard, and DDR5 RAM, both of which are more expensive(but better). When I was shopping a few years ago, you had to pay like $400+ to get a modern motherboard that wasn't a steaming pile of shit. Hopefully prices have gone down by now, I'm not sure. If money is tight, you might be able to get better performance overall by getting something on the last socket, and using the money you save to get a nicer (old) CPU and more (old) ram

 

[Seminar]

While talking about PCs how is Logical Increments ? https://www.logicalincrements.com/
I seen that some people on reddit disliked it and reccomended partpicker (i prefer Logical site layout)

 

[Big Seej]

The biggest difference between a CAD workstation and a gayman desktop is that the CAD one will have a SRS BZNSS plain case and an overpriced Nvidia workstation card that'll eat up your entire budget, while the gayman desktop will have RGB LEDs with the tranny flag preprogrammed in and a less expensive gayman-oriented card that probably still punches above the workstation one in most ways unless you need extreme amounts of VRAM.

I don't know how to spec out exactly what card you would need, but for workstation GPUs check out the PNY catalog: https://www.pny.com/professional/hardware/nvidia-professional-products

 

[JohnnyG]

A middle ground between a cheap box and a full-blown custom build is to get a midrange prebuilt that can be upgraded, and get comfortable "building" that way.

My last few desktops were specials on Slickdeals (watch for deals good enough to hit front page, check comments for red flags). Usually a higher-feature version of a low-mid brand, marked down cause it's last year's processor and they have a new model out. Or a random "gaming" example; first comment breaks down $715 in parts for that $800 prebuilt.

Maybe instead of overpaying for the latest ThreadRaper 9000, you get a $1000 HP that's now $599. The ThreadMolesterer 8000 processor is plenty for years, but maybe you upgrade to 64gb RAM, or a newer GPU, or add a 2TB SSD, etc.

 

[KillaSmoke]

Primarily for maintenance reasons, but also for easy part replacement. It’s a lot easier to maintain a good PC when you know how every part of it works, I think, and if something breaks I presume it’ll be a lot easier to fix in a PC you built yourself as opposed to a black box you bought where you can’t immediately intuit where things are.

Yes and no. Assuming its a desktop, all the parts should be in more or less the same place either way. However, sometime prebuilts will use nonstandard proprietary hardware. This might mean a motherboard that's shaped differently, meaning you can't buy a replacement that will fit, and would mean a new case. It could also mean non standard pinouts on wiring, which mean if you plug them into normal, non retarded parts, it will fry them.

Even when prebuilts are price competitive, I still really prefer to build myself. Usually, prebuilts will only give details on the big ticket parts, like CPU and graphics card. Most of the other parts, they give very little info, and give you some piece of shit that the manufacturer sold them in bulk, because nobody would buy it, and it was starting to get dusty. You might not build a PC for cheaper, but you also probably wouldn't buy the shittiest SSD on the market.

This can translate to performance issues, as well as reliability. Several years back, I tried to talk an acquaintance out of buying a prebuilt for this reason, but he thought it was too hard. I think his SSD died within a week. Sure, it should be covered under warranty, but customer support isn't always easy to deal with, and even if they are, its still a massive pain in the ass

 

[I'm Retarded?]

I made this post a year ago, it's about building a gaming rig specifically but it has a lot of useful info in it. for CAD stations, obviously the video card is a special concern, but everything else is the same.

 

[VIPPER?]

If your budget is low and your knowledge limited, I would just get a crappy pre-built with a standard motherboard in it and upgrade it as required. It's much less daunting to identify a bottleneck and do your research into that one thing to upgrade it to what's appropriate as your budget allows rather than trying to learn everything all at once to make the perfect rig.

For "High end 3D rendering" you'll actually want a different type of video card than what's used for gaming. I don't know much about those but instead of googling "powerful video card" you want "professional video card". If you're otherwise just playing minecraft and using emulators for weak consoles, a gaymer GPU is less important than a good CPU (and neither will EVER run well anyway, lol minecraft). The exact nature of your CAD work matters too: are you struggling to make pretty architecture plans you have to show off live for clients but off a relatively simple and static plan, or are you 3d printing guns and don't need a high quality visual preview but need to simulate the actions of 900 different parts interacting?

For rendering, it might be even better to get a "crappy" prebuilt but made out of server parts; HP loves making desktop PCs that are basically server mobos cut down and shoved into an ATX case that come with some ridiculous 2.2GHz but 32 core CPU and 666 ram, hard drive, pcie, etc. slots. Silly server CPUs may be better for multithreaded work applications, if you just natively have like 8 SATA ports you don't need a separate NAS/DAS, extra PCIE slots means you can throw a proper network or sound card in there if you want, having 8 lanes for memory means you can get cheaper smaller modules but more of them, etc.

Primarily for maintenance reasons, but also for easy part replacement. It’s a lot easier to maintain a good PC when you know how every part of it works, I think,

Not wrong but not quite right either. Except for the most abysmally shitty prebuilts, PC parts are very well standardized (and even then, the only non-standard parts in prebuilds anymore are the motherboard, power supply, and I/O (usb ports and power buttan and shit). Maybe the CPU if you're Chinese. All the various cards, drives, etc. have standard form factors and ports and you don't need to know how they work inside to slot them in and out. Modern stuff is also not reasonably repairable and doesn't involve "maintenance" other than blasting the cigarette smoke dust and cat hair out once in a while.

 

[Dan of Steel]

What parts to buy/what brands are reliable isn't something I can tell, other people above have but that's ultimately up to budget. I personally prefer getting as many components as I can from a big box store/in person because I don't trust USPS/Amazon/wherever to not fling the shit around when it's in transport (I had a case arrive broken with the glass panel completely shattered that was from Amazon). When it comes to buying, I would only say don't skimp out when it comes to getting a PSU, don't trust "gold ratings" or whatever marketing bullshit it has on the box, just get one that's known to be good and reliable and will last I prefer modular power supplies since I'm an autist about cable management, but a good PSU, modular/nonmodular shouldn't break the bank. And when it comes to data storage, M.2's are the easiest since there's no cables to fuck around with, it literally just slots into the motherboard. If you need mass storage SSDs are pretty cheap and if you need a lot of mass storage I would just get a external traditional spinning platter HDD.

As far as actually building the damn thing, since you're a first timer here's some tips I would give you:
- Magnetic screwdrivers are your friend. Computer cases and computer components have a lot of small screws, and as someone that's tall and has big hands, it's a fucking pain in the ass to lose a screw inside the case and shake it around for five minutes hoping it falls out. Magnetic screwdrivers don't have that problem.
-You don't need a rubber mat, ESD bracelet or anything like that. Unless you live in an obscenely dry area where there's a lot of static buildup, you're not going to short anything. You shouldn't even be plugging anything into an outlet anyway until you turn the computer on for it to POST the first time anyway so I wouldn't worry about that. Just make sure you have a big enough area to work with.
-Don't overdue applying thermal paste to the heat sink of your CPU. It really doesn't take much, and excess thermal paste is annoying to clean up.
-Always double check and follow your motherboard's schematic/layout of where everything is supposed to plugged in. Most things are pretty straightforward and labelled easily enough, but things like where to hookup case LEDs can be difficult to find for newbie PC builders.
-Take your time. I would set this aside as like a weekend project. Don't expect to get it done in an hour, for your first time it might take 2-3 hours to complete a build. Take breaks, don't get too frustrated, just make sure everything is plugged in and screwed down where it's supposed to be and you'll get it done.

 

[Anonitolia]

Oh wow, thank you all for the quick and informative responses! I'll take all this into account and try to figure something out, thank you again for the tips. I especially appreciate the emphasis on where I should direct my focus and the tips on actual building, since I feel like searching for parts might end up being easier than knowing which ones I should be looking for in the first place haha. And yeah, I'm not expecting Minecraft to run super smoothly or anything (it's not like anyone working on that game has heard of optimization before, anyways), I just want to be able to run big packs without running out of memory lol. Probably should've clarified that a bit more, my bad.

It's good to know that CAD and gaming stuff is separate; I was always under the weird impression that they'd both have more to do with graphics than anything else, but I don't know why. If I was going to do gaming I'd be focusing far more on performance than graphics, anyways, so I'm not sure why that was my first thought.

instead of googling "powerful video card" you want "professional video card".

I know you said you didn't know much, but in case anyone else reading this does: what's the difference between these two? I know they're conflated a lot in advertisements or used as synonyms, and I really want to make sure I don't screw this bit up since it seems to be the most important.

Spoiler: powerlevel

architecture plans

Yes, bingo. I didn't want to say it outright for obvious reasons but that would definitely be the focus.

I made this post a year ago, it's about building a gaming rig specifically but it has a lot of useful info in it. for CAD stations, obviously the video card is a special concern, but everything else is the same.

It really does, thank you! I've got it bookmarked and I'll start taking notes lol, this helps a lot. (As do most of KillaSmoke's posts. Thank you both very much.)

- Magnetic screwdrivers are your friend. Computer cases and computer components have a lot of small screws, and as someone that's tall and has big hands, it's a fucking pain in the ass to lose a screw inside the case and shake it around for five minutes hoping it falls out. Magnetic screwdrivers don't have that problem.

I'm showing my illiteracy again, but might those cause different issues? I know credit cards have some issues with magnets. I don't think credit cards and computers share many parts, but you can never be too cautious (probably). Anything I should be looking out for if I use them in a PC?

I would set this aside as like a weekend project. Don't expect to get it done in an hour, for your first time it might take 2-3 hours to complete a build.

Oh wow, that's way faster than I thought. I assumed this would be like a week-long project, maybe 10 hours minimum, if you were doing it alone like I plan on doing it. Good to know I don't need to set aside nearly as much time for this as I thought I would.

 

[VIPPER?]

I know you said you didn't know much, but in case anyone else reading this does: what's the difference between these two? I know they're conflated a lot in advertisements or used as synonyms, and I really want to make sure I don't screw this bit up since it seems to be the most important.

Basically there's cards for gaming, cards for offline rendering(like making a 3d movie), and cards for video rendering(like broadcast editing). And some other niche uses like crypto or AI but those don't matter and are gay (and will either run you tens of thousands of dollars or be useless for anything else)
The first one is sufficient for previews in CAD, the middle one is what you want if you're making high detail renders like for promotional material or animated film or whatever. But professional/workstation cards are pretty pricey and the cheap ones aren't suitable for gaming. And they can be a pain in the ass to get since not everywhere stocks them consistently due to low demand on the consumer market. A normal gaymen GPU is probably fine for your uses.

architecture

I know absolutely nothing about architectural CAD programs but it may be worth it to see if the one you're using has a way to export renders or if you can switch to one that does. I know mechanical engineering CAD programs often have that. Instead of relying on real time renders like in a preview pane you can set it n' forget it to get a much higher quality one at the cost of it taking minutes, hours, or even days to get all the bull shots for the chinese investors done. But that's how the big companies do it for the kind of quality you'd need to make shit like those giant construction fence sized ads. And if you do that, you can just get a gaymen card since the turnaround time of an hour vs two hours or a day or a day and a half probably isn't super relevant if it's your personal machine and a normal GPU should be sufficient for previews while you're working.

Magnetic screwdrivers

Modern PCs are not so sensitive and the magnets in screwdrivers are so weak that it doesn't matter. More than likely any cheap driver set you get anywhere will be magnetized anyway, it's basically the default now.

Good to know I don't need to set aside nearly as much time for this as I thought I would.

It really is all plug and play these days. Last time I did it, it was with a friend who got his first gaymen rig; it took us maybe two hours and we were drinking absinthe. Just keep all your manuals and look up all the funny acronyms in the BIOS when you go to set it up. Even pre-built manufacturers tend to forget stuff like setting the memory timing in BIOS, enabling or disabling features as required, etc. and losing out on the performance you paid for for no reason.

I'd recommend looking at GamersNexus on youtube and some of their pre-built computer reviews; in exposing how bad and ass they are, the host does a good job explaining what stuff means and the common pitfalls of builds.

 

[Slav Power]

run 2000 Minecraft mods at the same time

That's CPU and RAM intensive. A modern midrange CPU will do just fine, but I'd recommend aiming for at least 32GB of RAM.

get Switch games to emulate without issue

CPU and GPU. For me the GPU used to be a bottleneck, but that was a 1060 and it still emulated Switch well.

high-end 3D rendering

CPU, RAM and GPU. Mainly GPU when you're doing ray/path tracing calculation.

Don't know if Autodesk's rootkit is more dependent on CPU or GPU but here's the deal: a good gaming rig is also a good productivity rig. That's the magic of the ATX platform. It's open, the hardware you have can run a multitude of operating systems, and said operating systems can run a plethora of software, ranging from video games to professional tools. You're not just building a gaming PC. You're building a versatile workstation.

Now, very important. We don't know how heavy your CAD loads are. You know those super expensive workstation PC's with Ryzen Threadrippers, RTX PRO GPU's and 1TB of RAM? Those are the types of machines that you get when you do some serious work with CAD, simulation, 3D rendering and so on. Question is, is your work the same type of heavy? Or will a high end gaming rig be enough to fulfill your demand?

I assume that you do CAD work on a different computer, perhaps at work or at your university. If you know that this machine that you're using is meeting your demand, and assuming you're running Windows, which you 99% are, open up Task Manager with Ctrl+Shift+Esc and go to Performance. Note the CPU, GPU and RAM amount in the system, as well as how much of it is being utilized during your workload. That can be a very valuable reference point of how much computing power you need. It's important, since no one knows how heavy your workloads are, so no one knows if you need a run-of-the-mill gaming PC, or a professional workstation, which can be a difference between a four and five digit price tag.

 

[Sandnigger Mudhut]

Buy an R7 AMD CPU, 4070, 32 GB RAM, and whatever motherboard and PSU you can get. DONE.

 

[Premium Dog Food]

I know you said you didn't know much, but in case anyone else reading this does: what's the difference between these two? I know they're conflated a lot in advertisements or used as synonyms, and I really want to make sure I don't screw this bit up since it seems to be the most important.

With professional cards you get official support. The high upfront price is not worth it unless you are a sizeable enterprise.
Consumer cards will work just fine unless you have specific requirements. (I worked in archviz and we had consumer cards.)
For 2D work most of the work is done on CPU, archviz on the other hand needs a decent GPU*. In both cases having at least 32GB of RAM is a must, 64 is probably good enough.
*Lots of big textures, lots of lights are VRAM intensive, rendering speed and quality is also a factor. Most rendering engines / archviz programs will not work with AMD cards so you have to use NVIDIA cards, which are currently very overpriced. A 16GB GPU would be "good enough", more is better.

 

[Le b0wski]

For storage and home use "external hdd shucking" almost always can save you a huge amount of money, changes depends on what deals are on but look at storage with more options open to you. If you really don't care about risking losing stuff or want to raid and back it all up you can also rip 1tb/2tb out of old sky tv boxes, pvrs, cctv and things.

A cheap case is usually just going to be more annoying to build in, less cable space and all around a bit annoying tho some of the cheaper brands do better than others and it depends how much stuff you want to cram in.

The cpu cooler mounts haven't changed in a few generations and neither have the designs for a typical cpu cooler, you can pick up really any aftermarket cpu cooler and it will be fine, don't pay $$$$ for a rerelease of an almost 20 year old hyper 212.

 

[seri0us]

@Anonitolia Did you make your build yet

 

[Anonitolia]

@Anonitolia Did you make your build yet

no, I've had to shuffle some plans around and I won't even be starting on a new PC until the last quarter or so of this year (if I'm lucky). I forgot about this thread, somehow, despite having several pages of notes on what was recommended to me... oops.

 

[OrangeManeXTinyHatGVNG]

no, I've had to shuffle some plans around and I won't even be starting on a new PC until the last quarter or so of this year (if I'm lucky). I forgot about this thread, somehow, despite having several pages of notes on what was recommended to me... oops.

when u have a budget and are ready to go slide in my dms my nigga who still gaymes and builds rigs can usually give you a good recent build suggest that gets you most bang for your buck. the market changes quite fast even though new stuff is becoming gayer and gayer imo im sure theres a chart for that