Building An Average PC... I'm Scared And Confused (X_X)

80 plus gold and above is great, as long as it's from a trusted vendor like those already suggested.

 

What he said

 

A 120GB drive these days can be had for as little as 20 dollars. No reason not to go with at least that.

 

Sadly I live out in the middle of nowhere. I really appreciate you taking the time to share that build with me. Microcenter sounds great =).

I have been looking at PSU's and it really boils down to two different models. The Seasonic Focus 450W ($64.90) or the Corsair TXM 550W ($75.99). Both are Gold 80+. The only thing holding me back from grabbing the Seasonic is that you stated you couldn't get it to work with the 2400G. The way you worded it, it sounds like you got it to work after some fiddling about. Is that true? If so, can you describe what the situation was?

I tried looking online for customer reviews where people mentioned their build which included this PSU and the 2400G, but I couldn't find anything. All I could find was an article for a home media PC, which recommends both. But there isn't a comments section, so I cannot verify that anybody actually built that machine with success.

The only other option on the table is a refurbished Corsair RM550x for $59.99. But I don't know if I should consider a refurbished item or not. If it were my own PC, I'd probably take the chance. But I'm buying for somebody else and so the risk it not really mine to take.

I have an older machine (the one in my specs) and I've asked for advice on speeding it up. Other than some hardware improvements, several people stated that getting an SSD would greatly improve the responsiveness of my desktop experience. SSD should be faster than SATA and NVMe SSD should blow both of them away. Are you saying that a normal desktop user wouldn't notice the difference? I'm honestly asking because I've never used an SSD before.

Question About SSD
The motherboard manual states that it takes a single M2 SSD drive. I checked NewEgg and found this: Patriot SCORCH M.2 2280 256GB PCI-Express 3.0 x2 with NVMe 1.2 ($43.99). Considering that NVMe is supposed to be faster and I already have the slot (save a drive bay for later expansion options), this seems like a good deal to me. I have no familiarity with M2 drives or SSD though. Any reason I shouldn't pick this up? Plus it addresses everyone's concern that the 60GB to 80GB drive wouldn't be enough =P.

 

I did use it in another system, and reused my old Seasonic PSU for the 2400G build. Hooking the new PSU (Focus) to the build did nothing at all, no lights on, not even a boot, using the old Seasonic PSU worked from the first start. Since they practically have the same cables, I tried to mix and match those too to no avail. But actually I more believe in my PSU being a dodgy one than it being a general problem.

Just for the sake of god, don't buy any refurbished PSUs. That's something I would never consider, a dying PSU can kill your whole rig in an instant.

 

I found an equally priced PSU from Corsair and so I will just go with that one. I realize yours might have just been dodgy but I would rather play it safe. Thank you very much for your personal experience.

@everybody
I just noticed that my mom's old laptop had a 250GB drive. And that was more than enough for her. So I am going to skip going with the 2TB SATA drive and just opt for the 512GB NAMe SSD. All that is left for me to pick out at this point is the case. As soon as I pick one I will let everybody know the final build. Thank you all so much for your support =D

 

I'm studying the low rating customer reviews of PC cases at NewEgg and Amazon for cases in the $0 to $100 range. I have yet to find a case that doesn't have a handful of folks reporting that the materials are questionable, low quality, damaged at the factory, poorly designed, prone to bad QoS standards from the Manufacturer (hearing this a lot with Antec cases from 2018 reviews), screws aren't properly threaded, front panels have wiring issues, cases aren't grounded due to the all parts of the case being painted, etc...

Frankly, I'm a bit unsure on what would be a safe buy. This is supposed to be a budget PC and I realize that maybe I cannot skimp on the case. Am I being overly judgmental here? Are these things to be expected and I should just order something and hope for the best? My mom's need is time sensitive and I don't want to give her a case that won't cover it. At the same time, paying $100 to $200 for a case seems a bit excessive. What do you guys think?

 

For my budget PC I bought a no-name $70 case that is crap and does the job perfectly fine at the same time. All it needs is a 120mm fan at the back and a 120mm intake at the front. Or bigger, but not smaller (smaller fans make noise.) That's about it, really. You won't be using a GPU in there, or any other card, so cooling isn't an issue. Getting a case that has dust filters at the fan slots is still a good idea though.

 

I guess it comes down to what you want or expect from the PC case? Does it need to have a certain number of drive bays (5")? Does it need a certain look, like some HTPC cases that look like AV receivers?
Generally, I haven't had a case that had any of the issues described. That said, I never was on a budget, I built my rig into a case I already had... so what are you looking for specifically?

 

NEED

• 1x 5.25 External Drive Bay (DVD Drive)
• 1x (or more) 3.5" Internal Drive Bays (future HD/SSD's)
• 1x USB 3.0 USB Port on front of case

OTHER THOUGHTS AND CONCERNS

• It is bad enough you have to buy the case and then all new fans (in most situations with cheap cases). So a case that either comes with quality fans or one that only requires a low number of fans to produce quality airflow, is a huge plus.
  
• The motherboard I chose is Micro-ATX and the CPU cooler is the stock 2400G Wraith Stealth Cooler. So dimension wise, I don't need anything abnormally deep.
• PSU shrouds are not my favorite. I prefer as much open space as possible.
• I see a lot of cases that put a side style drive bay directly in front of the PSU (example). This makes cord management an issue because there is almost no space between the PSU and the drive cage. The HD cage also has the SATA power/cables facing into the back case side, which causes issues for many folks. Special angled connectors can fix this, but that ups the price of the cage. Seems like a design flaw to me.
• A handful of the cheaper cases don't provide enough space between the DVD drive and the motherboard. Depending on the length of your DVD drive and placement of connectors and motherboard bits, this can ruin a build.
• Some cases are reported to be abnormally loud. My mom from home on the phone all day, with this PC in her room. It doesn't need to be perfectly quiet but I keep an eye out in the reviews (like this one) to make sure it isn't above average in its noise production.

@anybody
Do I need to pick up some Artic Silver when I order this, or should the CPU come with a respectable alternative?

 

Does it have to have any specific looks? Since the one you linked for being loud pretty much does look quite "gamer" case like, or does it not make any difference?
In terms of loudness, the 2400G's stock cooler is running on mine too, and despite it's small size, it's quiet enough that I can't hear it while watching TV from 1.5m away, so sound levels shouldn't be an issue with your build. I did use the cooler as it came, it's got thermal pads on it iirc, but I did not pull them off as I specifically wanted to test the stock cooler. For the beginning it should be fine for you, a few years down the road you can always replace the pad with TIM.
Case fans can be toned down via the mainboard so they become inaudible too, the loudest will probably be the DVD drive when it's in use. And, of course, the sound mechanical drives make.

 

*face palm* I had originally added, to my above post, a section on "Features I Don't Need". But I scrapped it in order to make my post smaller. So here it is:

FEATURES I DO NOT NEED
Aesthetics do not matter
Case Dimensions do not matter (this case will never house an aftermarket cooler)
LEDs do not matter

As long as the case isn't reported to be abnormally bad with heat buildup, I'll be happy. The most she will ever add is one additional SATA or SSD hard drive. So, heat-wise, being able to handle that future upgrade is all that matters in this PC.

That is awesome to hear. I feel relieved =)

Alright cool. Since I may not be living here within the next few years, I'll go ahead and grab some Artic Silver, just to make sure it lasts as long as possible, before I have to meddle with it again.

 

hehe well if your only real requirement is the 5" bay (which are sometimes not built in anymore), you have quite a few options, in the sub 100$ range as well. I only did a quick check on newegg, and there's options there.
Don't worry too much about any claims on bad fans or horrible build quality, unless everyone reports that, it's usually not that bad. To me personally, a case only needs to be really good when you toy around with it more than once a year
Also, if you take a case for let's say 50$, you might as well grab 2 good / quiet fans to get the job done and take out any single or two ones already in there.
All in all I can only say, I've had Cooler Master cases (they're usually quite basic but okay), Corsair (my two current cases, pricey but well done as far as I've worked and built with them), and Fractal Design (also very good, and if you pick the right one they're sound dampened, usually a little more expensive as well). Others I did not personally use for my / friend's builds, so I can't give any input on their build quality / sound leakage.

 

Alight guys, I finally made my order last night. It all is coming from Amazon and should arrive on Tuesday. This build was particularly frustrating because the parts I had previously selected would keep going out of stock. The only thing that has held the entire build is the choice of CPU. The PSU is more than I needed, but the price was right.

This is a complete PC build, though I did start with a DVD drive and a monitor from an old PC. Below I didn't bother listing the 4x mouse pads, cheap speakers, wireless keyboard and mouse, or the accompanying two wrist rests. I ended up paying $45.xx in taxes, though shipping was free thanks to Amazon Prime. I also picked up 3-year warranties, for a few bucks each, for the CPU, Mobo, RAM, PSU, Mouse, Keyboard, and fans.

All of that together brings the grand total for everything to $619.78. I'm pretty excited to see how this turns out. The case was pretty small but I think it will do a great job. I researched up to the $75 price range but I couldn't find anything that I didn't feel needed to have the fans replaced. Also, the case construction didn't improve significantly. Those things considered, I went with a cheaper case and put the extra "case cash" into some greatly improved fans.

I hope this will make a wonderful office PC for my mother. You all were very helpful and I sincerely appreciate your feedback, input, and support. I have enjoyed being a part of this wonderful community for well over 13 years now. It is both a pleasure and an honor to be among such fine people. Thank you all, once again, for your help .

1. CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2400G Processor w/ Stock Cooler ($154.00)
   
   
2. THERMAL GREASE: Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (2 Pack) ($9.99)
   
   
3. MOTHERBOARD: MSI ProSeries B450M PRO-M2 ($74.99)
   
   
4. RAM: Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 2666, 4GBx2 ($54.84)
   
   
5. POWER SUPPLY: EVGA 650 GQ, 80+ Gold, 650W ($69.99)
   
   
6. SSD DRIVE: Crucial P1 500GB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD ($74.99)
   
   
7. CASE: Rosewill Line-M ($39.99)
   
   
8. CASE FANS: ARCTIC F12 PWM PST 5-Pack ($25.99)
   
   NOTE: They got a special mention for being quiet and pushing a lot of unobstructed air in this round-up.

PC Parts Only Grand Total Before Taxes: $504.78

 

R5 2400g is a a pretty good cpu, you can even game at 1080p medium settings with the onboard vega gpu

 

Most of the off brand cases are complete junk and so are most cases for under $40. I would avoid those unless money is super tight.

NZXT (used to) make some really solid, entry level cases for about $50. You might look at theirs.

I've bought a bunch of Corsair cases in the last couple years and all of them have been fantastic. Antec makes solid cases and a handful of others in that price range ($50-$75).

 

Yes you need, otherwise you wont be able update windows.
Windows 10 upgrade create separate copy of windows and switch directories as final step and in recent versions Microsoft even increased requirements for free space (10GB+) to be able update/upgrade your windows to avoid issues.

That or you will need to use additional disk during every bigger windows upgrade and run manual upgrade which will be used as temporary.

So.. you need at least 20GB space to install windows, at least 10GB more as free space to be able do big updates, more space for paging or hibernation file (if using that function), some space for programs and data that simply wont install on different drive and 20-30% total free space on SSD if you want to keep good performance and longer live (needed for disk maintenance)

My current used space is
18.5GB Windows
15 GB users
6 GB Program Files
13 GB Hiberfile
6 GB PageFile
-----> 58,5 GB used space on 3 months old install (using other drive for programs (140GB) and games/steam (2.4TB) that does not need system drive)

 

Completely missed the point.

I'll just list out all the fails:

1. The latest version of Windows 10 requires less than 20 GB.
2. We were discussing the size of the drive required for Windows being more than 60 GB - simply not true.
3. You don't need to install feature updates, run hibernation files or page files - I use none of the latter two unless it's temporary.
4. Can use a USB stick for feature updates.
5. If your Windows drive absolutely requires 60 GB, that's a personal issue on your part.
6. Finally, this would make a perfect necro because the just announced requirement for the additional 7 GB wasn't there until last week.

p.s.
I suggest contacting Microsoft to ask them to increase the listed space requirement to over 60 GB, because they obviously don't know what you know.

 

What people are saying is that you do not need to have a hiberfile
pagefile you can have assigned to a separate drive or not use 1 at all,
you can map all user folders to a different drive, it doesn't have to be the system drive

only system drivers and related software are installed to the program files on my system, just windows and games that benefit from quicker load times

 

Sorry, but windows do not really work without page file regardless of how much memory you have. Some programs do not even work without it and if you have low memory its pretty much must.

Its really stupid idea moving page file from your SSD to regular disk as with that you greatly decrease performance of anything using it. You want to have page file on your fastest storage.

You can move some folders like downloads to different disk, however not your full home folder (well you can, but its STRONGLY not recommended as it might work initially, but you can run into serious issues later).
As example, remember those issues with October windows update where users lost their data? It was caused exactly by this.

Anyway I would not go bellow 120GB for system drive and highly recommend at least 250GB if you want to put few programs or games there. I value my time more than to waste it on issues related to too small system drive to save just few bucks.

1) Sure, when there is nothing installed. Its absolute minimum requirement for succesfully installing windows 10 on it which does not make it recommended.
2) As I previously mentioned If you want to avoid performance issues with SSD and keep it working for longer time you need to keep certain free space. Make it full and you will degrade most used NAND cells rather quickly (as SSD will have no space to spread write cycles over more NAND cells) and your disk performance will suffer (Ever tried run defrag on full drive ?)
3) Sorry, but I did run many times into issues that programs did not run or randomly crashed when my page file was disabled.
4) Why to bother using stupidly slow USB stick for upgrades and recovery backups ? It just run everything much slower.
5) Sorry but if you are recommending less than 60GB for system drive then issue is on your side.
Cost difference between 60GB and 120GB is currently pretty much zero (if you can even find 60GB ssd).
Cost difference between 120GB and 250GB is 20 bucks.
That pretty much makes questions if 20GB or 60GB is enough irrelevant because anyone thinking about SSD for OS drive should be thinking if 120GB is enough or want more space on SSD for certain programs or Game.
6) I am aware of new requirement more then one week, just dont realy remember when.

And BTW how about restore points ? It also require some disk space and personally cant remember how many times it saved my a$$ or at least a lot of my time when managing over dozen computers for family and some friends.