Anyone know anything about building a PC?

[javeryh]

Does this do the trick for a family computer?  Light gaming, school work and photo related stuff (scanning and printing).

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Dzmjjy

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor   $129.20      

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition 42 CFM CPU Cooler   $38.89   

Motherboard: Gigabyte B450 AORUS PRO WIFI (rev. 1.0) ATX AM4 Motherboard   $109.99

Memory: Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory   $64.99   

Storage: Kingston A2000 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive     $109.99

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card   $279.99

Case: Cooler Master MasterBox NR600 (w/o ODD) ATX Mid Tower Case   $75.98   

Power Supply: Pure Power 11 CM 600 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply    $88.99

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit   $99.89   

Base Total:   $901.93      
Mail-in Rebates:   -$20.00      
Shipping:   $5.99      
Total:   $887.92      

[jennifer]

That seems well thought out and a fun family project at a reasonable price point for what it is, Would love to follow along with a few build pics, (Hint,Hint).

[Drnick]

I think I may know too much about building PC's,  I've been doing it for 29 years now 

First was a 386sx with 4mb ram, Most recent was a Kick arse I7 setup.

Your choice looks good, but spend an extra 16 dollar and get the 2600x, it comes with a better cooler and faster default clock speed to boot, (You could in theory then save 22 by not needing the coolermaster, but that is a good cooler and I don't think I have used a stock cooler since the P2 days

[Osirus23]

(You could in theory then save 22 by not needing the coolermaster, but that is a good cooler and I don't think I have used a stock cooler since the P2 days

The last stock AMD cooler I used was so loud it sounded like a jet was taxiing under my desk.

I believe it was a Phenom II X4 CPU. Replaced the cooler with an Arctic Freezer brand and have been using them in all my builds since.

[javeryh]

I think I may know too much about building PC's,  I've been doing it for 29 years now 

First was a 386sx with 4mb ram, Most recent was a Kick arse I7 setup.

Your choice looks good, but spend an extra 16 dollar and get the 2600x, it comes with a better cooler and faster default clock speed to boot, (You could in theory then save 22 by not needing the coolermaster, but that is a good cooler and I don't think I have used a stock cooler since the P2 days

Thanks!  I'll go for the 2600x if it makes a difference.  I assume the 3600 would be even better?

[Drnick]

12% better from the looks of userbenchmark

[Mike A]

You guys don't know anything.

3600-2600 = 1000x better

[javeryh]

You guys don't know anything.

3600-2600 = 1000x better

This is my kind of math.

[knave]

There are a few places online to buy a legit copy of windows 10 for cheap, some of the tech u-tubers advertise them. I think it was $16 to $18 bucks...that is if you don't have a win 7 license laying around...

[Mr. Peabody]

There are a few places online to buy a legit copy of windows 10 for cheap, some of the tech u-tubers advertise them. I think it was $16 to $18 bucks...that is if you don't have a win 7 license laying around...

Yeah, you can download 10 and install direct to PC, save to folder, or make a bootable drive. Apparently anyone with a 'genuine' copy of Windows 7 will have a licensed copy of 10 after installation. I don't know how the desktop and all that translates.....

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

[javeryh]

I'll take a look at the cheaper Windows XP deals if I can find them.

I'm going to upgrade to the 2600x - any other suggestions before I pull the trigger? 

Thanks!

[Drnick]

Dont get home version of W10, Get Pro.      I have an aversion to home version.   

[Osirus23]

Dont get home version of W10, Get Pro.      I have an aversion to home version.

Yeah. I use BitLocker and Hyper-V too much to ever settle for Home. Windows Sandbox looks interesting, too; though I haven't played with it yet.

[javeryh]

Parts have arrived.  I'm going to build it this weekend... maybe I'll post some pics and stuff.

I'm also thinking about buying a new monitor (or two).  Any recommendations suitable for gaming?

[Drnick]

What sort of size you going for and what is your budget,  I don't game so ain't great with monitors, but a couple of friends of mine are twitchy shooter fans??? and like to argue over what's best.  I'm sure whatever they are rocking will be wonderful

[shponglefan]

I'm also thinking about buying a new monitor (or two).  Any recommendations suitable for gaming?

What type of gaming?

I'm a fan of LG monitors. I've currently got a 38" ultrawide LG I use on my gaming PC. Great for first-person stuff, although with the new 49" screens I'd be tempted to go for one of those.

[DaOld Man]

Interesting thread.
Not meaning to stray off the topic here but you guys need to educate me.
I started with a legal copy of Win7.
I downloaded and upgraded to Win10 when it was offered free a couple of years ago.
Since then my hard drive crashed and I lost everything.
New hard drive and reinstalled my legit copy of Win7.
Now my question, I thought it would cost me to upgrade to Win10 so im still running Win7.
Are you guys saying that I can still get the legitimate upgrade for free?
I like win7, but I liked win10 too, and Win7 support is about to end (curse you microsoft!)

[Drnick]

If you previously got and installed the free upgrade to 10 you should be able to just download the relevant iso and install again.
Your machine would have got registered with the MS servers when you installed the first time, so if you only swapped out hard drive you should be good to go.
If the motherboard etc has changed then you would probably need to get a new version

[DaOld Man]

It worked! Thanks Drnick! Guess you can teach old dogs new tricks.
Sorry to get your original thread off track  javeryh, maybe we can get back to it now.

[knave]

PSA for all my friends at byoac: until otherwise stated windows 10 will register or authenticate with a windows “7” key. Then your pc (mostly motherboard) is registered as licensed by Microsoft and future installs will activate automatically.

There are some possible nuances to this but it works...

Bottom line try prior to buying any licenses

[javeryh]

I ended up ordering an ASUS "gaming" monitor.  27"/1080p/1ms/144hz.  We shall see...

I have only had time to install the CPU, RAM and SSD onto the motherboard.  Back to school night this week plus a million activities.  I'm hoping to boot up this weekend if I can find a block of time.  I've watched a ton of youtube videos so hopefully I'll know what I'm doing.  I still haven't purchased the Windows license...

[BadMouth]

PSA for all my friends at byoac: until otherwise stated windows 10 will register or authenticate with a windows “7” key. Then your pc (mostly motherboard) is registered as licensed by Microsoft and future installs will activate automatically.

There are some possible nuances to this but it works...

Bottom line try prior to buying any licenses

Thanks for posting about this.  I had turned down the Win 10 update years ago when it was free.
With windows 7 support being dropped this January (last I heard anyway), I came to regret that decision.
This worked on my 7 year old Alienware laptop, so I'll get a few more years out of it. 

[DaOld Man]

I upgraded to win10, and Im thinking of rolling back to 7. My facebook is slower than a snail with constipation. And these security issues keep popping up telling me my FProt anti virus is turned off, but it shows as being on. I think MS just keep digging deeper into your stuff with each new version. Im sure I had these problems when I first upgraded to win10 before my HD crash, but I cant remember what I did to fix it, and all the web tips dont seem to help.

[javeryh]

I spent most of yesterday putting the computer together in between soccer games and baseball games and trying to watch the Giants.  Anyway, I got it up and running.  I'm quite pleased with myself because it was much harder than I thought it was going to be just because so much has changed since the last time I did this.  I installed Windows 10 off of the USB Installer I downloaded from the MS website - no license required.  It seems to work fine?

Anyway, I think I need to figure out how to update my motherboard (BIOS/drivers) so that is next on my to-do list.  Then I need to figure out anti-virus protection - is Windows Defender enough?  What do you guys recommend?

By the way, the M.2 SSD seems insanely fast.  I couldn't believe how fast Windows installed - took less than a minute.

[Drnick]

I don't know what everyone else is doing, but I now just run Defender and have Malwarebytes.  I always have Firewall enabled. I use Firefox with Ad blocker,  I've had no issues for the past few years

[benarcade]

I'm guessing you are running a non-Activated version of Windows 10, which works for now, until Microsoft decides they don't want people to do that anymore.

I haven't installed an anti-virus since MS introduced Defender. But I'm also careful about not clicking on landmines (.ru) and generally stay away from torrents.

I used to build PCs, but it's hard to beat the prices on Dell Outlet and Craigslist.

[javeryh]

yeah - non-activated right now.  I think I'm going to bite the bullet and get a license though.

So yesterday I learned of the existence of a display port cable... never heard of such a thing in my life.  The Asus monitor I bought supports 144hz refresh rate but I had hooked it up via HDMI and wasn't that wowed by the performance.  Anyway, I was messing with the settings and noticed that it was set to 60hz and couldn't be changed in Windows or in the monitor's settings.  After talking to a buddy of mine he told me about the display port cable and after about 30 minutes of messing around I got the monitor connected properly and it made a world of difference.  The picture is buttery smooth and there is no screen tearing.  The colors appear a little more vibrant too.  I can imagine tons of people like me buying the fancy monitor and never realizing it wasn't connected properly.

I still haven't updated the motherboard BIOS/drivers.  I'm just not sure how.  Gigabyte has an app but I keep getting an error message when trying to use it so I think I'd be better off downloading the BIOS and drivers manually and installing them one by one.  I just don't know where to get the right files - the website is confusing.

Overall I'm enjoying the new computer and learning a lot about it.

[fallacy]

Windows 10 seems pretty good about installing your device drivers for you I have found anyway. For years and years and years my job plus my personal computers was in windows xp and I still have nightmares on what a crappy operating system that was; between the amount of malware you would get just being online, the constant freezing and rebooting you would have to do when you would go back to your computer once it was in sleep mode; just using the computer would ruin the registry slowing down your machine. Of course not 1 dame device would install by itself on a new copy of windows xp, you would have to find all that out in the wild.

Windows 7 was better but like you would still have to install your graphics driver every time as an example.

I don't have a lot of experience with new installs of windows 10 but the few machines I built and installed windows 10 I watched the device manager as if it was some kind of borg nano-bot self repairing itself fixing and installing every single device driver.

[Mr. Peabody]

Windows 7 on my machines has installed the majority of 'necessary' drivers, or updates to them. However, the first thing after OS installation is install drivers: chipset, then other stuff. The chipset drivers seem optional.....  XP auto-downloaded drivers at least in most of my experience. I can bet any average person's use messed/messes up any machine, let alone in a commercial setting, adding onto 'location configurations'....

[Howard_Casto]

I've had to work on all of them and win 10 is just better in most cases due to the fact that it forces updates and the average user will do everything in their power to prevent normal pc maintenance, even if auto-update is turned on.  Like fallacy said, it also seems to deal with video cards better than any version of windows.  Xp wasn't nearly as bad as people thought it was.... 90% of problems were due to user error, but you know, since the whole idea of a pc is to use it....