How to build a PC for < $1,800.00
 

I want to build a PC with my son. I need a new PC and he needs the experience. But he cost so far exceed the cost to purchase off the shelf.

A friend forwarded this to me - $1800!!! Surely something here is amiss, yes?

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I'm no computer expert, but FIVE fans plus a water cooler?!

I don't know about $1800 but unfortunately, but pretty much the standard these days is it's cheaper to buy off the shelf than build, even if you can find good deals.

My thoughts as well.

That MOBO has on onboard RAID controller, I would have done 3 1TB drives instead of the single 3TB.

And where's the graphics card?

there is no graphics card listed there. But that rig is being setup for a big ass card- that is the only reason for such a big power supply.

Also, 3TB HD? WHo needs a single drive that is 3TB? Is he doing HD video editing? That along with a 128GB SSD....
He could save a few hundo by going with a smaller drive / single SSD.

The watercooler is for the CPU or a GPU? If it is for the CPU, there is no need for all those fans. Even still.. I don't see this system putting off tons of heat unless there are 4 GPU cards going into it.

Poke questions about just what this computer needs to do... her's still missing a few things there, but this is a high power rig.

Your friend sent you specs for a balls to the walls gaming rig.

What are you using it for?

If just a standard daily use PC that thing is way overkill and honestly not well thought out.

$115.00 Blu-Ray? Why?

$189.00 for a 1000 watt power supply? There are not enough high draw components in there to warrant that massive a PSU. If you add a couple of $300.00 graphics cards you still would not need it.

I-7 3ghz processor? Again, how heavy are you going to use this PC. That's a high end processor and likely way overkill.

Even $39.00 for a fan controller is silly, willing to bet that MOBO has on board fan speed control which you manage through software / bios.

First determine what you will use the PC for then if you really want to build one for the experience got to Microcenter.com or newegg.com and look into their Bare Bones kits.

You can get a bundle with all the components you need and shopping by price point is easy because it's a single bundled price.

My thoughts exactly. I run a 650w psu with an overclocked 560ti and overclocked i7. No problems. The 3 tb drives are excessive. I would do something like this.

i7 - 300$ - BUT you can make due with an i5 depending on what you use it for.
motherboard - Asus aprox. 150 maybe 200.
8gb ram - corsair vengeance - 70
128 ssd - 100
1 or 2 tb HDD - 100? Need to check prices
Case - 59 - 79.99
650W corsair or xfx power supply under 100

Optical drives are optional. maybe a dvd burner?

Thats just under 1k before taxes. A video card with set you back another 2 - 300. If the motherboard has integrated intel chipsets you won't need it.

PM me if you need any specific recommendations and we can go over things in greater detail. But his quote is WAY off.

Xactly, if you are doing video editing you don't want a single drive. It's a read / write bottleneck. You'd always want to go hardware controlled RAID. HD editing I'd be getting 10k RPM drives instead of 7200.

And all those fans if not placed and configured properly can cancel each other out. More is not always better.

Cool, but still overkill for normal use. An off the shelf $500 PC will satisfy the needs of 95% of us.

budget pc build $850ish

Build a PC: Recommended Builds (February 2014) | Maximum PC

If you really want to build one for the experience and control costs while getting the right amount of PC for you dollar look here.

Barebone Kits | TigerDirect.com

I bought my son a custom built awesome pro gaming puter that he picked out and designed last year, cost $1300 and he knows that stuff pretty good. He paid half with money he saved btw, he was 14 at the time. He learned about saving vs spending from me evidently.

Anywho, I can't see spending much more than that, he got the best of everything pretty much without going stupid.


Lots different than my $450 I3 puter from frys, which I think is great.

My buddy built a nice system recently for I think $600. Unless you're into some crazy graphics or video editing I'd aim for that ballpark.

One thing he didn't get though was a solid state hard drive. An SSD will give you a better sense of "speed" than anything else. Last one I bought was a Crucial, 256 GB for around $250 I think. If you need more storage for pics/music/whatever make it a second drive for storage with your OS loaded on the SSD. You'll get way more benefit from that than i3 vs i7 or 4GB vs 8GB RAM.

Start here:
System Builder Marathon Q1 2014 - Build Your Own - Tom's Hardware

I built a gaming monster a couple years ago for under $1000, I have no doubt I could do it again.

I spent about $1500 putting together my drafting rig.

PassMark Software - CPU Benchmark Charts

You can build a very good rig by looking at the $/Benchmark for both CPU and Video.

I don't see any mention of software either - $$

Always liked that case.

USB, audio, Firewire etc.... ports all readily accessible and intelligently placed.

I would go with a solid state drive for the main drive and a 1 TB drive for storage. The case will come with fans (enough for now). the on-board video and audio will do for now but you may want to ugrade later. The i5 and i7 comes with a cooler that is pretty good. I would get two 8 (total 16 gigs) gig sticks of Ram so you can upgrade later.

Tiger Direct, Microcenter, and Newegg are your friends, they often have sales and deals. At Microcenter you can get a deal on the motherboard if you buy a processor.

I built one up and it was fun. Set aside a good area and get ESD wrist straps.

Sounds like a cool project for you and your son!:)

Yes they do have great MOBO Processor bundles.

And don't be afraid of using AMD processors.

You can get some good bang for the buck.

this took all of 10 seconds to find....

Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more! - Newegg.com

Intel Haswell 3.0GHz Dual-Core CPU with Intel HD Graphics, ASUS H81M MOBO, G.SKILL 4GB MEM, 500GB HDD, LOGISYS Case with 480W PSU
$$229!!!!

this is what I would build-
Newegg.com - Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, LED LCD TV, Digital Cameras and more!

AMD FX-8350 Socket AM3+ Eight-Core Processor, ASUS M5A97 LE R2.0 ATX Motherboard with UEFI BIOS, Mushkin 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1333 Memory, Seagate 500GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive, Rosewill R519-BK ATX Mid Tower Case w/ 500W Power Supply

I have built a few computers with my son at the same age. I still build my own. It really depends what you want to do with it.

You are spending $1,800 without an operating system: windows 7 or 8 there is no software in your system either. The cost only goes up!

You have way too many fans along with a cooling systems and, as mentioned, no graphics card.

There are many web sites: Toms Hardware, motherboards.org, PC Magazine that rate components.


My computer is set up for photo editing as I paint in pastels and I'm looking for color accuracy for photo editing, sizing and printing.

I have a very high end graphics card, Asus motherboard, an i7 intel chip set, a $900 monitor for this work. I have an air cooled heat exchanger sitting on the chip set as well as few fans in my case. I do not overhreat but I'm not a gamer either.

Do some homework and decide what you want in a computer. My son and I had allot of fun building a computer.

It really is a nice case. Plus it comes with 4 case fans. I always buy a really good/quiet copper heat sink & fan for the CPU. The Graphics card wasn't cheap either...But it is SOOOO quiet.

I build a new machine about every three years. I choose a top end CPU and Video card so it will last. Usually they are a couple of steps from the top, so I'm not paying stupid money.

For the office computers I generally just pickup a Dell with Intel i5. Hard to beat the price and the 3 year warranty for what my girls do.

I am NOT happy with Office 2013. The interface looks like Office 95 compared to Office 2003. A definite giant step backwards! Price was hard to argue, though...$79/year.

The important question, what exactly are you trying to build?

A game rig, a CAD rig, a general Office/web browser machine, Video editing, etc.

The end use will determine what components you need.

Unless you are planning on building a bleeding edge system in terms of performance, you don't need much of that stuff. Most motherboards have built in fan controllers, you probably don't need that many fans, and you almost certainly don't need water cooling.

A game machine generally needs less processor power, and a more video card.



I will also break ranks with others on using a SSD for the operating system, what I would do is get a SSD and set up smart caching, so the stuff you use most would be faster, but you would have the reliability of a mechanical drive.

So what do you want this to be when it is done?

I really think this would be his ticket: Photo editing workstation

$1,800 for a pc without any OS? Kind of steep.

Surprised no one has mentioned pricewatch dot com. The last few PC's I have built have been sourced from vendors on pricewatch.

For general purpose use I can't think of any new computer that wouldn't do the job. If you want it for games it makes a difference what type of game you want to play.

Well folks, my suspicions were confirmed here. I let my son to the research, so he sought out a teacher and a friend for advice. Ok so far. They got together and suggested what I posted.

Last night at dinner, I asked my son what those guys were into - what did they spend their free time on. He came back with, "They are WAY into gaming - stay up all night doing it."

So you were right.

I appreciate all the help. Hopefully in the next day or two I can take you up on the suggestions and post a new list.

THANK YOU!

By the way, an LG BD Burner is about $67 on Newegg.

Tom's Hardware just did a set of computers for different budgets. You might want to check that out.

you give me your budget and what it is you wish to do with the machine, and i can spec one out for you. i've literally built and repaired thousands of PC's.

I just build a mostly-new fairly bass-arse system. Went with New-Egg

Intel i7-4770k processor
Gigabyte G1 Sniper 5 motherboard
16 GB Gskill "Ripjaws" ram.
($872 sofar)
EVGA 760 2GB video card (250) (thanks to Best Buy price matching down from $299)

total = $1122

add a couple ginormous hard drives for $150 each, and you're still well under your mark.

I re-used my original case and power supply. Check out Coolermaster if you need those.

For a game rig, spend ~$100 less on the CPU and put it toward the video card. See the quote I posted earlier for why.

If you are a Costco member, you really cannot beat this deal. 2TB 7200 RPM drive, 32GB RAM, i7 quad core, etc. On sale for $899 bucks. Add a decent video card and you are way ahead.

Acer ATC Desktop | Intel Core i7 | Bluetooth 4.0

Ridiculous prices!
 

Ridiculous prices! I build computers almost every weekend...

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Send me your requirements and budget and I'll send you the list of gear you'll need from your local MicroCenter. You'll get a lot of computer for your $. I guarantee it!!

I like what you are doing. What case is that?

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Porwolf: It is a THOR, like the one I posted earlier.

It's a Corsair 300R or 400R, can't remember which. After building several hundred computers over the last 25 years, I strongly prefer the Corsair cases. They provide a nice sturdy platform with good airflow and no rattles and vibrations. They are not expensive, either...

That particular PC is the video production PC from our church, it has an i7-980x CPU, 24GB of RAM, 10TB of hard disk and a 240GB SSD. The hard drives and GPU got too hot in the old Coolermaster Cosmos case, so I got the church a new case and did an organ transplant. The old Cosmos case was a disaster as it had no airflow to speak of and the drives got very hot. When rendering video, the liquid cooled cPU doesn't even work up a sweat any more...