I am looking to replace my PC that I mostly use for gaming for close to 10 years. While I used to work in data centers, I've never been into building custom PC, particular the planning and research portion on what parts to get.

I am currently eyeing the Corsair build kit, and wonder if anyone has any experience to share.

Thanks in advance.

Fellow PC builders, here's a fun one for you.

I took some "old" and no-longer-used PC parts and built my sister-in-law a gaming PC for her and her stepdaughter to use. It was a Christmas gift so the stepdaughter could play the Sims.

She has called me three times to tell me it's completely frozen - like hard locked, dead freeze, screen is displaying the last frame it was on but you can't interact with the PC in any way until you reset it with the power button.

She let it sit for an hour before she gave up. Two times this happened while stepdaughter was playing the Sims 4 and once it happened while my brother-in-law was watching YouTube videos.

Obviously, I went through the usual things you'd think in this situation and I had her bring the PC over so I could do some digging. Fully expecting to find a hardware issue, I tried the following:

1. I ran the Sims while also watching multiple YouTube videos in the background. Couldn't replicate the issue after about two hours.

2. I obviously checked the temperatures while gaming and YouTubing, checked the usual performance metrics and everything was great.

3. Ran OTTC stress tests - all of them. Under heavy loads, this thing was doing fine. Even at 100% utilization, the memory, graphics card, and cpu were fine. Did a power test too, fine. Did a "combined" stress test and all was fine.

4. Ran mem86, no issues with the memory, no bad sectors or errors.

5. Played Skyrim on ultra for several hours. This was a really fun way to troubleshoot.

6. Checked the event log from the day she had freezes. I can see where the event happened because leading up to the unexpected "power off" event, there were a ton of events related to various processes timing out. Seems like it was unable to connect with services and run certain background processes while it was frozen? I didn't see anything that really stood out to me as being a possible cause except...

7. in the event viewer, there were a few events related to Microsoft family safety. I set this up at the request of SIL so stepdaughter wouldn't get into anything she shouldn't. In the Event Viewer, it seems like maybe it wasn't verifying something correctly or didn't have permissions it needed? Upon Googling, I found some other folks with this error but I couldn't find anything about whether it caused freezing or not. Seems like one of the many events that just gives a warning but doesn't have any effect. One guy who had this issue had his computer freeze but disabling the family safety entirely did nothing. People in the comments thought it probably wasn't related. I also found another event that Google wasn't very helpful with. Might have been related to sound card but my sound card drivers are up to date and again, I have not been able to replicate the issue even when gaming and watching videos, so I don't know if it's related.

8. I ran the Windows System Files Checker and found no issues related to my Windows install.

I can't figure out why this would be happening only at her house. She says it froze after one hour of use every time. This brings me to the title of this post. My SIL moved into a really old house with sketchy wiring. My FIL told her the wiring is so bad that she needs to get it fixed immediately or risk a fire, so she's working on that. This house has a butler stairway, asbestos, and plaster/lathe walls if that tells you what we're dealing with here. This is the ONLY thing I can think of that would possibly be different between the two setups and maybe explain the freezing, but it just seems so unlikely to me that this is the cause.

Help?

Hello everyone, my CPU died and I'm at a crossroads and hoping for some advice. I bought my rig 4 years ago second-hand. It was originally built in 2017 using high-end parts. It was not something I was looking for TBH, but at the time GPUs were hard to get and it was a crazy deal. Here is what's left of the rig:

• Motherboard - ASUS x99 Deluxe II, fits Intel i7 LGA2011-v3 CPU socket
• PSU - EVGA Supernova 850 T2
• RAM - 32GB, 4 sticks of G.Skill Trident Z 3200 DDR4
• GPU - EVGA 1080 Ti Founder's Edition 11 GB
• Case - In Win 904 plus - large and spacious case
• Storage - Couple of Samsung SSDs
• CPU Cooler - Have ditched the Corsair AIO, picked up a lowest tier fan for $10 to keep it booting while I figure out what to do

Options I'm floating.

1. Get a compatible CPU, but that socket is harder to come by for my MOBO and likely to be second hand + get a new CPU cooler, and upgrade GPU.
2. Replace MOBO, GPU, and get a new CPU and CPU cooler. The PSU is 6 years old but it's decent quality and 850 watts should be enough?

Price range/goals:

• Happy to spend a bit on something that is mid to slightly upper range, but not high end. Thinking $$ will go into the GPU and CPU (maybe $600-800 USD ea?), something reasonably good that's just before the latest gen to get a discounted price. If replacing MOBO, something simple and medium range would be ideal.
• Play some current AAA games like Baulder's Gate 3 and Elden Ring decently, at medium-high settings (not ultra), and don't need super high FPS.
• Ideally supports 4k resolution for desktop use but for gaming I'd be mostly sticking to 1440p/1080p.
• I don't want to overclock (those days are over)
• Likely to sell in 2ish years, don't need heaps of futureproofing
• If replacing MOBO, open to going to the AMD ecosystem for price/performance ratio. I've only ever used Intel so know less about AMD systems.
• Don't need raytracing, DDR5
• For CPU cooler I don't mind AIO but if anyone has any non-water cooled recommendations I'm all ears

I'm at a bit of a loss at what to do, and there are not many PC-building threads here on Tildes, so I thought I'd ask for some advice. Anyone have opinions on option 1 or 2 above, or is there a third option I'm not thinking of? And does anyone have part recommendations? Thanks in advance.

I'm looking at starting to do a PC build and I'm a bit lost on which way to go CPU wise.

Proposed use case: linux, some gaming (usually older games), possibly trying to learn home lab/self hosting types of things probably in a VM but nothing really heavy. I do want to run Starfield when it comes out and maybe be able to try VR some time in the future.

I'd like to have a bit of a future proof system while getting value for my money, as in I'd like to spend less but I will spend more if it matters. This is where I'm sort of getting lost.

I tend to lean towards Intel because VM's and multitasking should work better (I think) but people seem to believe that AMD is better bang for the buck?

I feel like I'm likely not going to swap CPU's, but RAM, GPU, and storage are easy to swap so I'm not to worried.

Since the minimum and recommended specs for Starfield have come out, I've been budgeting to do a big upgrade on my PC with an AMD 6800 xt and a fancy new 1 TB SSD (which is the first game I've ever seen that requires an SSD) just so I can run the game in all it's space epicness.

What was the game that you were so excited for that you made the jump to upgrade your PC to the next gen of hardware? New or old!

I tried looking around a bit but couldn't find anyone that was interested in this. For me it had been on my radar for years through various forums, but I only built my first watercooled PC in 2020. For that I designed and manufactured my own case and now I am working on a second one! It's become a fun hobby that's taught me CAD and more about manufacturing in general.

So I was curious if anyone else is into the same thing here? It's probably a bit more niche than the mechanical keyboard thread I saw!

So I disassembled my old PC, and there are a few spare parts that I believe are still good. According to the technician, the motherboard is fried. I have no way to test this, so I'm believing him for now.

I wish to use those parts on a new desktop PC, but I have no idea where to begin... what do I need to buy new? Of what kind/brand/specification/pricepoint?

So here's what I got:

• AMD Ryzen 5 2400G processor
  • with the AMD cooler that came with it
• 1TB 7200RPM non-SSD hard-drive
• 1 Ballistix by Micron 16GB 2400MHz RAM stick
• 1 240GB WD Green Sata SSD M.2 2280

I may have access to another 8GB RAM stick of unknown origins from my partner's old PC, but she's a bit protective of those things so I'll way for her to be home to open it in front of her :P

There's a power source attached to the case, which reads ATX-600W. Image1, image2.

The computer case itself is a little beat up but I don't care about looks at all. Its external dimensions are 34.5cm by 35cm, with a width of 16cm. Here's how it looks (Xbox controller for scale).

I wanna build a new machine with the goals of:

• video editing
  • so Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, some audio work, and maybe streaming.
• gaming
  • nothing super high-end, I'll probably get one or two 1080p 24" monitors because 4K reduces my options quite a bit. But here are some of the games I'm looking forward to playing (all MMOs): World of Warcraft Classic and Retail, FFXIV, Guild Wars 2, and the upcoming Ashes of Creation (which I believe is an Unreal 5 game).

My budget (including the monitor or monitors) is roughly 1400 US dollars. I understand that is not a lot of money for the majority of Tildes users, but that is just my reality. My 1400 US dollars PC is very much a luxury around here.

If needed for budget purposes I can get just one monitor now, and another down the road.

So, what's the best I can do?

Thanks! ;)

Hi folks! I am, unfortunately, probably going to have to build a new PC soon; my beloved Thelio-r1 is slowly failing, and while my original plan was to buy a Ryzen 7 5800X and keep riding this PC for another three to five years, I don't know that I'll actually be able to make that work.

I like the NXT H510 I used for my boyfriend's gaming build, but the thermal performance isn't amazing and, most importantly, I hate tempered glass!

Yes, I understand that people want to show off their (ridiculously!) expensive components. I understand that lots of things have RGB. However, metal is cheaper, easier to work with, doesn't shatter, and I can modify it if I need to.

So, does anyone know of a good mid-tower PC case with decent airflow, up-to-date features (no 5 inch bays, good cable management hardpoints, a cable hiding bay, etc.), and no tempered glass or, preferably, acrylic?

Thank you!

EDIT: Since a few people now have not realized how old this topic is before making a comment, see above date ↑. :)

My old PC's CPU (i7 930) started to critically fail after 8+ years of being overclocked from 2.8 to 4.0 GHz, so I decided to build a new one based on the Ultra-Compact Mini-ITX Gaming PC Build from TechBuyersGuru.

I went with Mini-ITX this time since my old PC was in a huge Antec P193 tower which weighs 16.4kg (36.2lbs) before components and so was a giant PITA to move around. The new Sugo SG13 case is roughly 1/7th the volume and initial weight so is much more convenient to move (but not build!).

p.s. I was unsure whether to post this 'buildapc' style content in ~tech or ~comp.... thoughts?

PCPartPicker Part List
^{Parts labeled incompatible are not... see "Notes" below in Build Process section.}
Salvaged from old PC:
GPU   -     $0 - EVGA - GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Superclocked ACX 2.0+ Video Card
SSD   -     $0 - Samsung - 850 Pro Series 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
SSD   -     $0 - Samsung - 840 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
HDD   -     $0 - Hitachi - Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive

New Components:
Case -   $72 - Silverstone - Sugo SG13B-Q Mini ITX Tower Case
Mobo - $190 - Gigabyte - Z370N WIFI Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard
CPU   - $325 - Intel - Core i5-8600K 3.6GHz 6-Core Processor
Cool - $114 - Silverstone - NT06-PRO 74.0 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
RAM   - $220 - Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
PSU   - $175 - Silverstone - 600W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply
M.2   - $143 - Crucial - MX500 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
M.2   - $143 - Crucial - MX500 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive

Total:  $1382 (CAD)

Build Process w/ Pictures:

TL;DR - Behold my new Battlestation, IN ALL HER GLORY!!!

After saying goodbye to my old, heavy, oversized, Antec P193 case...
Unboxing the new one, which is almost the same volume as my UPS!...
And prepping all the new PC components for a photo op...
I began the arduous process assembling my new computer.

Everything went fairly smoothly to start. I installed the RAM, M.2 Drives, CPU and CPU Cooler before mounting the motherboard to the case, as instructed in the build guide. The CPU Cooler was a PITA to attach but that's no surprise as they always are.

Note: These "incompatible" parts listed on PCPartsPicker actually do fit together as the build guide said they would. However the RAM and CPU cooler fan are actually touching and I barely managed to squeeze them in together, so the build guide probably isn't lying when it said that particular low-profile RAM might be the only one that actually works with the cooler.

I then mounted the motherboard to the case and began slowly plugging everything else in. This was a particularly slow and frustrating process as I have pretty large hands and everything was incredibly tiny, in incredibly cramped positions, and required more finesse to get in place than I could muster with my fingers alone. As a result I wound up using long needle-nose pliers, including some bent-angle ones, to get most everything plugged in.

This is when I ran into my first major problem though... and one that was not mentioned in the build guide at all. The Case's front panel USB cable wouldn't fit in the motherboard with the CPU cooler fan in place. After trying fruitlessly to get the cable plugged in for 30min I finally gave up and decided to solve the issue the old fashioned way and it plugged in just fine afterwards. (Thanks for saving my ass yet again, Mr. Dremel!)

The other potential issue was due to the CPU cooler and case mounted PSU, which aren't supposed to work together, but once again as the build guide suggested they actually do... with a whopping 3mm clearance between them! At this point I also decided to swap out some of the ribbon power cables that came with the new PSU for some spare braided ones I had from another build since they are much nicer looking and allow for better airflow.

Note: The other supposed incompatibility listed on PCPartPicker is due to the fact that the case only officially supports 3x 2.5" drives or 1x 3.5" with 1x 2.5" but that's easy enough to get around, as explained below.

I also decided to cram an extra SSD under the front case fan, secured with double sided tape to the properly mounted SSD on the case floor panel. It worked just fine and allowed me to get my 3.5" 4TB HDD properly mounted on the underside of the top plate. Linus Tech Tips, in his similar Sugo SG13 build, even managed to squeeze 2 more SSDs above the PSU using double sided tape as well, so I guess that even leaves me with some room to expand my storage later. ;)

The rest of the build assembly process went relatively smoothly and once everything was hooked up, in position and plugged in, it booted straight into windows 10 (which was still on my old 1TB SSD). The moment when a new PC build gets past the POST is always a huge relief, however that momentary relief soon turned to dread as I quickly noticed a pretty big problem; The machine couldn't detect one of my new M.2 SATA drives.

After several hours of frustrated tinkering and much googling I finally found out the reason why, cursing PCPartPicker for not warning me and face-palming pretty hard for not having read the motherboard specs more carefully. It turns out that the Z370N motherboard actually only supports 1x M.2 SATA drive and the second M.2 slot is NVMe only. I had apparently just wasted $140+ on an M.2 SATA drive I couldn't use and my plans to configure them both in RAID 0 was shattered. But that's honestly not the worst part... in order to get the useless M.2 drive back out I had to basically FULLY DISASSEMBLE my entire build again since the NVMe M.2 slot is located on the bottom of the motherboard!

Despite the serious temptation to just leave it in there even though I couldn't use it, I wound up going through with the disassembly purely because I had a pretty good idea for how to actually make use of that second M.2 SATA drive based on something I saw on Linus Tech Tips a few months ago. So rather than leaving it in there or even returning it, after ordering myself the necessary enclosure I now have myself a pretty nice DIY 500GB Thumb drive. ;)

So several hours later after completely taking apart my new build, removing the bottom mounted M.2 SATA drive, and fully reassembling my build once again, I booted it up, it got past the POST and into Windows 10 again. I then reactivated Win 10 on the new hardware configuration (which was surprisingly painless compared to how it used to be where you needed to actually phone Microsoft) and then began the process of installing Linux Mint on the M.2 SATA drive I still had remaining.

Conclusion:
After several days of going at it now, I am finally done and my new computer is fully assembled, functional and ready to use. As always with building computers it was a bit scary, a bit painful, and more than a bit frustrating but ultimately well worth it. I couldn't be happier with the results and can't wait to overclock this bad boy when I get the chance!

For those of you not in the loop, the Verge created a PC build guide back in September, and it was...bad, to put it lightly. They took down the original video after a storm of criticism, but this guy reuploaded it, if you want to see it.

Kyle (aka Bitwit) created a response video to it, which got copyright striked (which is more severe than a claim and has to be done by a human, unlike content ID claims), in addition to ReviewTechUSA. Ironically, the Verge published an article about abuse of the copyright system just 3 days ago (2 days when the videos were taken down yesterday).

The Verge should have taken more responsibility to begin with, now that the dust have settled they seem bent on reminding everyone how bad their video was.

Edit: Bauke pointed out Kyle's video is back up! This is not because the Verge retracted their claim, but because YouTube actually had a human review it and determine it was fair use (which usually isn't the case from what I've heard).