Getting/building a pc

Ryanmcdonnell

Hello im looking to buy a pc (I know building a pc is cheaper but I dont know how) im very new to pc gaming and im looking to spend no more than €700. I would like to be able to run gta 5, day z, arma. I dont dont know what to do can someone please help.

degrassinoel

I'd say if you're going to build your first pc with no technical knowledge at all - you should try this forum here first.

If you're just looking for a standard PC for gaming, you might get a decent deal in the usual places like harvey normans, dell etc..

Building your own machine takes a lot of effort and time and you really need to know what you're doing or you'll end up breaking your own heart with it

Digital Solitude

Building your own machine is easy? They're almost literally plug and play. Have a look on YouTube for a tutorial, its more daunting than anything.

I can put up a part list here and myself and the other regulars can answer any questions you have.

Ebay and adverts are probably the best places for value for money, but you have to be wary to not get shafted there too. €700 in a shop won't get you anything worth looking at.

john the one

For the most part, building a pc is easy.

The parts that you need is easy, the guys on boards will spec it for you.

The part that is not easy is what to do if something goes wrong or if you are in no way competent in electronics. Watch some YouTube videos first before you rule in or out a self build. But be aware it is by far the best bang for your buck and the knowledge learned allows for you to upgrade easily when the time comes

mrcheez

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Building your own machine is easy? They're almost literally plug and play.

As much as you'd like to believe that, they really aren't.

To the complete novice, either get someone who knows something about motherboards to assist in the build, or be prepared to spend several days learning/potentially breaking something.

challengemaster

mrcheez wrote: »

As much as you'd like to believe that, they really aren't.

To the complete novice, either get someone who knows something about motherboards to assist in the build, or be prepared to spend several days learning/potentially breaking something.

Days?! It would take a complete novice about 2-3 hours and the inherent skills of a 3 year old by putting correct size items in their appropriate spaces to build a PC.

Digital Solitude

There's no way you could break something unless you go dropping things.

Each port is a totally different size or shape, so there's no way to mix anything up.

The hardest steps are slotting the CPU and remembering to plug its fan cable into its slot :pac:

My i3 PC took about 15 minutes to build. The longest part was finding the power pins without a case. No way you'd spend days at it.

degrassinoel

many a stick of ram has been broken like that :P

john the one

What if I part is rma?

What if a pin breaks on the mobo?

What if not everything is in the box and the builder doesn't realize he is missing the stand off's?

Digital Solitude

Then he runs into the same problem an experienced builder has.

Dealing with customer service :eek:

That's like saying you're afraid of buying a car in case the timing belt may be worn

*Disclaimer I don't know a thing about cars*

mrcheez

challengemaster wrote: »

Days?! It would take a complete novice about 2-3 hours and the inherent skills of a 3 year old by putting correct size items in their appropriate spaces to build a PC.

I'm including the time to research and make sure you are getting matching components, comparing reviews yadda yadda.

Regardless building the PC is hardly "plug and play". An xbox is plug and play. A Dell is plug and play. A PC build requires some forethought and research if you want to be sure you do it correctly the first time.

I built a PC 10 years ago, and then built one last year. I assumed everything would be literally plug and play at this stage, but was surprised at how some things were still very cumbersome. e.g. small things like couldn't figure out why the PC speaker wasn't working until it turned out the pin was the wrong way around (the motherboard didn't actually indicate which pin was +/-) ... re-routing the modular PC power supply cables as apparently the wrong cables were being used, or couldn't reach some components ... configuring the BIOS to work with the SSD ... etc (to be honest these were minor annoyances but will be daunting to a novice).

It's a great learning experience for the OP if he's willing to invest the time and effort. But I emphasise there is effort involved and he may assume "plug and play" is literally that.

Don't forget OP to use a hammer to get the RAM in place.

challengemaster

mrcheez wrote: »

I'm including the time to research and make sure you are getting matching components, comparing reviews yadda yadda.

I'm also including that time, considering if you take a look at the PC Building & upgrading forum, plenty of people have complete parts lists handed to them every day. In fact, Digital solitude offered to do the same in the 3rd post here.

The days of personally needing to know things work together is more of a reassurance rather than a necessity. The most I'd suggest doing is watching any good build video to get a visual reference as to what you should be doing. The likes of Linus, etc. So that's maybe an extra hour at most.

Regardless building the PC is hardly "plug and play". An xbox is plug and play. A Dell is plug and play. A PC build requires some forethought and research if you want to be sure you do it correctly the first time.

I think you're misunderstanding plug and play. Or else confusing it with a "ready to go" device.

In computing, a plug and play device or computer bus, is one with a specification that facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system without the need for physical device configuration or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts.

What plug and play actually means is once you stick the right component in the right slot, everything will work. You don't need to be an IT guru or download the matrix - things just work. All you need to do is install your operating system.

TerrorFirmer

If you don't want to build then just buy something that's reasonably priced, and we can help you with that either. Something like this is a good idea of what €700 will buy you, and it will run all those games you've mentioned at high settings.

I'm one of those who understands and accepts that because frankly I have seen a lot of people bend motherboard socket pins/bend processor pins/other such things. And obviously as a regular builder I have tons of spare parts, but for someone building their first PC, they don't have spares either if something does go wrong, or the ability to always work out easily what is wrong. That's not to tell someone not to build a PC. Not at all. It is easy enough - and these days with access to stuff like YouTube you can find loads of videos that show you exactly what to do. And it's so satisfying as well, that is a major part of it - it's your labor of love, not somebody elses, and you get to pick out every single component to suit your needs perfectly.

But if you want to just buy a PC that works, can play all the latest games at high settings, has a retail warranty, and only requires you to plug it in, get something like the PC I linked to above. It's very good value for a retail bought machine.

That's another thing that gets constantly ignored on building and upgrading, it's always like anything that's anyway over the sum of the individual component prices is bad value. Here you have a pre-built machine, the work's done for you, the copy of Windows is 100% reliable and legit, and it has a full system warranty for 12 months. In fact, if you built it yourself with the same parts, and a genuine, proper retail copy of Win10, you wouldn't really save anything.

Build if you want. But don't build yourself because people convince you that it's twice as good value for money. Sure, if you're buying from PC World, it definitely is. But if you shop around and know what to look for, there is excellent value in pre-built machines as well from the big online retailers.

mrcheez

challengemaster wrote: »

Days?! It would take a complete novice about 2-3 hours and the inherent skills of a 3 year old by putting correct size items in their appropriate spaces to build a PC.

challengemaster wrote: »

I'm also including that time, considering if you take a look at the PC Building & upgrading forum, plenty of people have complete parts lists handed to them every day. In fact, Digital solitude offered to do the same in the 3rd post here.

I don't know what you're feeding your 3 year old but if they can do the research for all components and build a PC within 3 hours, I've gotta get me some of that baby food.

challengemaster wrote: »

I think you're misunderstanding plug and play. Or else confusing it with a "ready to go" device.

What plug and play actually means is once you stick the right component in the right slot, everything will work. You don't need to be an IT guru or download the matrix - things just work. All you need to do is install your operating system.

Yep I know what Plug and Play means in the technical sense, but I'm reflecting on the reality of building a PC which has many steps that don't live up to the concept of literally: plug it in, turn it on, finished (which the OP may assume means just that).

I'm looking at posts I made back in 2014 when I built a new PC and I have questions about my video card not being recognised (was a jumper issue), which BIOS settings I needed to play with, setting the SATA to AHCI *before* installing the OS (lucky spot that one)... plus several other things I had to look up. Took a bit longer than 3 hours, not including the time to build the machine

So I wanted to make sure the OP understood that he'd have to get up on the technology to do this correctly. As the last poster mentioned though, you can get a decent pre-built machine for roughly same price as buying individual components so go that route if you're new to the custom build game and just want to get on with playing games.

circadian

Don't hardwareversand do a build and ship for a few extra quid? You could get some of the heads in the building forum to help you spec something and get it shipped already built.

degrassinoel

circadian wrote: »

Don't hardwareversand do a build and ship for a few extra quid? You could get some of the heads in the building forum to help you spec something and get it shipped already built.

They went into receivership or insolvent recently too - whichever it is i know people were left in the lurch really badly by them

circadian

degrassinoel wrote: »

They went into receivership or insolvent recently too - whichever it is i know people were left in the lurch really badly by them

Wow! Didn't know that. Shame as they usually had some decent gear too.

TerrorFirmer

Also even when they did offer that service, it was half baked and frequently problematic. Never understood peoples fascination with the place really, you save €80, but you have to deal with crap customer service if something goes wrong.

They're back now again under new management but I wouldn't touch them. Sickening to think of all the people who spent thousands and were told 'tough ****' while they're filling orders to customers after that date no problem.

Kiith

Moved to PC Building & Upgrading