Building (or buying) a new desktop Created 8 years ago2015-12-09 04:22:56 UTC by Alabastor_Twob

I mentioned in a journal a few years ago that I was lent a laptop until I finished at university. Well by Friday I'll have finished my second last semester, so I think it's time for me to start looking into getting a new computer. As a Christmas present I'm getting help on paying for this, so my budget at the moment is going to be around €800. I've never built a computer before, or even had a desktop for that matter, so I don't even know where to begin looking at the moment.
Does anyone have any recommendations? Primarily I'll be using this for general gaming, web browsing and mapping, but I will be intending to upgrade later as I save more money.
I already have an (old and crappy) monitor that I can use for the time being, I have a mouse a mouse, and I can probably get a cheap temporary keyboard, so they don't need to be included in the cost.
I'm also interested in perhaps having the OS and some common programs/games installed on an SSD, with a HDD for files. Since I can keep using this laptop for the next six months, the desktop probably won't see a huge amount of use before then, so I could probably get away with only having a small SSD and no HDD for the time being.
So does anybody have any thoughts or recommendations on this?

It's challenging to fit in an SSD with that budget.

Here is a reasonable place to start: http://www.maximumpc.com/maximum-pcs-budget-gamer-build-summer-2015/

This is a good place to shop for your parts: http://www.newegg.com/DIY-PC-Combos/PromotionStore/ID-33

This is a well-done instructional video: https://youtu.be/0bUghCx9iso

Have fun building!

Well, thanks for the help, but it turned out not to be necessary.
Apparently my mum felt it was more important for it to be there on Christmas than I did, because she went out and bought a prebuilt gaming computer from a store today. I suppose I'll post the specs here when I find out what they are.

Good to hear.

Nevertheless, there is a sense of satisfaction to have built it yourself.

Building (or buying) a new desktop

building...
it is the best way to build perfect rig and cheap
there are hardware shops where u can choose what parts u want and
store employees build it for a few euros + hardware costs

I would have preferred to have built it myself, but my mum was pressuring me to not build one and buy a prebuilt one so that it could be here in time for Christmas. I can't really complain too much as she was responsible for most of the budget for it.
As for the specs, here's a table that I copied from the store website:

Not too bad! Its only slightly less powerful than my current rig.

Generous mum! That's a pretty good build, I've been eyeing off the GTX 960 myself to update from my 570. While it's true that building it yourself is better in most ways, you can usually upgrade these pre-built ones fairly easily. When you want a new GPU, you just put a new one in.

The only thing I'd change in that setup is to use an Intel socket/CPU instead of AMD, and probably start off with 16GB RAM. RAM is super cheap, no reason not to have 16GB these days.

I have that same case. It's a good case. It can accommodate a monster-size graphics card.

Now, when you are ready to upgrade your graphics card in the future, you'll need more wattage for your PSU.

I'd say I won't be making any upgrades for a while, but once I have spending money again I'm not sure if I'd improve my monitor or the RAM first. My 'monitor' (actually an old LCD TV that happens to have a VGA port) probably needs upgrading, but it would probably cost less to upgrade the RAM first.

I have my computer now. It currently has no internet access, but after dinner I'll put a desk next to the router so I can have an ethernet connection.

Since I don't have Steam or anything installed, I can't say yet what I think of it really. Apart from the fact that Windows 8 is the worst OS I have ever used. I was going to ask a few people what they thought of Windows 10 before upgrading, but right now it's looking like it's the first thing I'm going to do when I get an internet connection.

However bad it may be, it can't be as bad as 8.

I skipped Windows 8, but I'd say even coming from Windows 7, it's a worthy update. Works like a charm for me.

Hated Windows 8 until 10 came along, probably the worst product from M$ by far. I don't know if it is sloppy design or what, but its like a lottery 50/50 that it will work fine. Have a top of the line Thinkpad and have weird issues with 10 on it, even though it should be fully supported. Switched back to 8.1 and been happy ever since. I don't understand why people hated 8 (8.1 and 8 are the same to me if you can't tell by now) in the first place when classicshell fixes the only issue for free, most things are still nicely laid out compared to 10.

Honestly i think Windows is done, even the bloody Mac is better at this point. But if it has to be this way then i think its for the better, people are thinking of switching to open source OS'es. At least that's where im going when 7 and 8 are gonna be unsupported.

Suggesting 8 is better than 10 is mindblowing to me. That said, I've not had any of the problems with 10 I've seen reported - although neither has anyone else I know who uses it, which is most people by now.

10 is, for the most part, exactly what we wanted - Win7, but far faster under the bonnet. I stand by my original review in the desktops thread:

Well I'm just about a week into my Windows 10 experience and so far it's performed great! I've had no compatability issues whatsoever, and my niggles are so minor that they're barely worth mentioning - and will almost certainly be addressed in the first Service Pack, if not in smaller patches.

Firstly, the aforementioned inability to rename items in my Quick Access list.
Second, after finally adding an easily-accessed New Folder button in W7, it's been hidden away again behind another menu. Mildly irritating.
Thirdly, programs don't automatically come to the front when they start up. This is good in some ways - dialogue boxes no longer reduce games to the taskbar, for example. However, I use a lot of keyboard G-key binds as shortcuts to my browser, my email and media players and it's a little annoying that they don't start in the foreground. I've caught myself waiting for a program to start for quite a while before noticing it's just sitting behind whatever else is running.

These are all barely even problems. Overall, I think W10 is a winner. It's exactly what we wanted - Windows 7 with all the performance advantages of Windows 8 and none of the horrendous design choices.

For comparison, it's always fun to read about my Windows 8 experience.

Windows 10 all the way!
It only takes a few minutes to turn off Cortana and get everything set up.
I even love that the system settings are searchable too.

Everybody is over-reacting with Windows 8. I've used it without it bothering me in the most diverse tasks: gaming, engineering, programming, video and photo editing.
It was just the start menu. That's all.

10 is, for the most part, exactly what we wanted - Win7, but far faster under the bonnet.

I think a lot of people now think in these terms, without realizing what a piece of spyware Windows 10 is. Not that the previous versions didn't use some kind of telemetry, but Windows 10 is off the charts. I'm still considering whether I should upgrade to it or not, although there already guides on turning off most of the telemetry settings(even dedicated programs), not feeling comfy yet.

This is the result of us taking technology for granted. But I guess that's what people too lazy to inform themselves deserve. And it's hard not being skeptical once you realize all this... unless you're a maniac you can't really know everything that's happening with the software you use.

Of course, a question remains: should I care if a robot directly sees my activity on my computer? Should I care if an unknown person could potentially gain access to my files because of all these new data being generated and sent to microsoft servers? I don't know, should I?

I'm just sad thinking of a future where we have completely sacrificed our privacy while glorifying convenience.

So far I'm liking Windows 10. It seems faster, but that could very well just be the computer itself. I haven't been using it enough to figure out what I really like about it and what I don't, but one thing that really stands out is the multiple desktops. That should make multitasking significantly easier.

Also,

Second, after finally adding an easily-accessed New Folder button in W7, it's been hidden away again behind another menu. Mildly irritating.

There is one at the top left of the window, here:As for the privacy concerns, it doesn't seem too difficult to turn the datamining stuff off. Personally I don't really care about that one way or the other, but I'm sure they'll learn from their mistakes after the public reaction to it. They seemed to have learned from the majority of the mistakes they made in Win8.

It's been proven things are still broadcasted after you turn everything off.

Windows 10 issues aside, I really need to get a proper monitor. I'm currently borrowing a small TV which is supposed to be 1920x1080, but it cuts the edges of the display off unless I set it to display at 1824x1026. Apparently it's a 'feature' of HDTVs which can usually be turned off, but it looks like this one doesn't have that option. I wouldn't mind so much except it resets back to 1920x1080 when the display drivers or OS update. When I go back to college I'll be going back to my 1024x768 TV though, which doesn't have that issue.

For comparison, it's always fun to read about my Windows 8 experience.

Not to open a can of worms, but what exactly were the issues with it other than the UI?

I see no actual reasons for your hatred of the OS other than "I can't take the time to learn a new UI because it needs to be identical to the last iteration of windows"...
Windows 10 is what Windows 8 should have been from the start, but to say Win8 was garbage simply because Microsoft attempted to compartmentalize things into more logical places is quite silly. (I won't defend the start menu however, that was very poorly thought out)

If you want to have a familiar UI, use an OS with a familiar UI.
You wouldn't buy a bicycle and complain it doesn't have 4 wheels like the vehicles you are used to driving, would you? It's nonsense.

In terms of Windows 10 however, I love it but I do have to warn that the forced Windows update can range from mildly irritating to completely breaking your system with bad drivers or forced new builds (Which you cannot revert back from without reinstalling, by the way).
I've had to re-install Windows on my tablet probably about a dozen times since I've had it installed in July because of new builds, and in fact even right now my build is partially broken already, and I've simply been procrastinating re-installing it because it usually works okay.
On my desktop, I have to completely disable Windows update because it installs bad drivers for my hardware, and there's no option to disable the forced automatic driver installation without disabling Windows update entirely. Very irritating.
EDIT: It appears this may have been fixed.

If you want to have a familiar UI, use an OS with a familiar UI.
You wouldn't buy a bicycle and complain it doesn't have 4 wheels like the vehicles you are used to driving, would you? It's nonsense.

That is unless Ford suddenly decided your F1000 would be better with two wheels instead of four, and remotely updated it without asking you what you thought of that. Then you found out the next morning when you were ready to load it up.

Very true, but that's a complaint for Windows 10 and it's awful forced updates, not Win8 I was referring to there.

To make a better example, I use 3ds max and can't stand blender or maya because the user interfaces are dramatically different.
They're all 3d modeling software so they do the same thing, but I don't say that blender or maya are bad simply because I am unfamiliar with the UI, I just simply use 3ds max instead.

There's unfamiliar and there's objectively bad. Win8 tried to implement a bizarre hybrid of a touch interface with a traditional desktop and it just clashed at every single point.

It'll be forgotten to time along with ME and Vista.

Vista at least was a good idea - and it eventually turned into 7.

I actually sometimes forget I'm using Windows 8, but that's mostly because before I was issued this computer they installed a classic start menu shell onto it.
But then I try to connect to a new router or mouse over to the right of my screen and remember, oh yeah, my OS is terribly designed.

One thing I've just noticed about Win10 that I don't like, is that programs that are running fullscreen don't seem to show up in the Alt+Tab menu. This is fairly annoying as I really don't like running games in Windowed mode.

As for Windows 8, whether you like the UI changes or not, the fact that many of the changes aren't obvious is pretty shitty.
Taken from Stojke's comment on Archie's journal:

The shut down and computer/network info buttons are on the pop up menu accessed by pointing to the top right or bottom right corner of the screen.

I was messing about with Windows 8 for a few hours before upgrading, and not once do I recall this being made clear. I did accidentally notice this menu after a while, but the fact that this was how you shut down the computer wasn't at all obvious even after finding it.

One thing I've just noticed about Win10 that I don't like, is that programs that are running fullscreen don't seem to show up in the Alt+Tab menu.

This doesn't make sense. It defeats the purpose of ALT+Tab.