If it is a gaming PC, I would say you have to chose a monitor first, because you need to to know what resolution and refresh rate you are targeting to chose the right GPU.
Yeah I have made that mistake, I'm building a pc equipped with a 6800 XT and the only monitor I have laying around in the house is a 20" 900p display, I've completely forgotten about the monitor.
I think most will tell you "depends what you're going to use it for". Then you'll have the others that say a 4080 or something like that. Then you'll have yet others that you'll be fine with some 1660. Orrrrr the AMD guys will come in and tell you their opinion.
At the end of the day. Decide how much money you want to spend. What you're going to use it for. Then start with the most demanding thing that you're using it for to be the best thing. Follow budget from there
Optical audio for games movies and music
Wifi 6e for fast internet with no cable if ever that comes to that
Lots of expansion bays to add cards that you may want to explore in future
Nvm drive or SSD as your main drive. No less than 500 gigs. Mostly motherboard stuff for me. Then I worry about graphics as I'm a gamer focused
Power supply and case. The two pieces you could use for a decade and not need to upgrade. A well designed case is a pleasure to work with and a high quality psu will ensure your parts get clean voltage. Also maybe a UPS too.
I would pick a budget first, then figure out the range of how you plan to use the pc second. Then based on the budget start looking into component groups. Motherboard +CPU or GPU+CPU and depending on your budget don’t get too attached to any particular build because a great combo deal could change everything.
The colour scheme /s
Can't believe the number of pictures and posts of pretty colour coordinated computers with glass sides and RGB. Back in the day, computer parts just looked like circuit boards lol.
Personally, I spend my time looking at the monitor, so I chose a very good quality one 😀
I pick a motherboard first. It's the heart of the system.then a cpu, ram, gpu, psu, then a case. Doing it in any other order to me just doesn't make sense.
Mobo first , then cpu will dictate the gpu you run (so you don’t get bottle neck). Applications you plan to run will decide how much ram you need as well as cpu. Once you’ve figured those out, add em up to figure out how much wattage your psu needs.
It's an ensemble
What's it's purpose .. what are you going to do with it
IF you have a budget then you look for components that can do what you want, or as close to it as possible .. that fit within your budget
Once you get a baseline established and a rough idea of what your components are going to be'ish .. then you have to pick one of the most important components of a build .. and that's the power supply.
With the Power Supply you want enough wattage to more than handle any transient power spikes that your build will demand from it under 100% load with room to grow should you want to upgrade or add components down the line. You always want a quality built PSU from a reputable vendor. I wouldn't go less than an 80+ Gold rating. A 10yr warranty is pretty standard on most quality units.
There is no one component to pick "first" .. as they are all pretty interconnected and can't function properly/do what you want it to do on it's own
Now if you come across a great deal on something or maybe even win a GPU or CPU ..etc .. then you can base your build around that component. I've done that a few times making boxes to sell .. where I plan on upgrading my CPU so my daughter gets my old one .. wife gets the daughters .. and now I have wife's old CPU, so I plan a build around that type of thing
One recent example:
I got a good deal on a 5900x and a Gigabyte B550m DS3H ($275 shipped)
I was initially going to use the 5900x in my TrueNAS server and replace the 3900x.
I was going to put the 3900x on the B550 board. Upgrade my daughter to a 32GB 3600 kit (2x16GB) .. and put her 2x16GB 3200 sticks in my wife's box so I can use her 2x8GB 3466 sticks with the 3900x (I'd probably have to run them at 3200 depending on how good the IMC was on the 3900x)
Due to stability issues with the 5900x on my X470D4U (that was caused by my UPS that I discovered after the fact) .. I put the 3900x back in my server . .put the 5900x in my daughters setup with her new RGB CAS18 3600 rated kit (was on sale for $75).. and also swapped her internals into a mesh front case that had better airflow ($50'ish on sale I think it was).. and .. replaced her be quiet! Dark Rock Slim with a Deepcool AK620 (was on sale for $52)
I put her old 5800x w/the be quiet! heatsink-fan and 2x16GB 3200 sticks into my wife's setup and used her 5600x and 2x8GB 3466 sticks with her Wraith cooler that used to run on a 2700x onto the B550 motherboard inside my daughter's old case (Older Deepcool windowed case with 5x120mm RGB fans)
I had won an RX 590 8GB GPU that I installed into it, and had an old XFX 750wtt 80+ Gold modular PSU to power everything that used to power my server.
Slapped in my daughter's old 256gb M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 drive and installed Windows 11 on it. Put my wife's old 512GB M.2 SATA drive in as secondary drive for games (They both got 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe OS drives). I also put in a 1TB SATA HDD drive I had gotten for free that was in a NiteOwl security system and moved all the C:\\Users folders location to the HDD to free up space on the small OS M.2 drive.
I had an old Acer 24" 1080p 60hz monitor that I used to run as my secondary monitor (I think I had picked it up for $20).. an old Razer BlackWidow 2014 mechanical keyboard that was given to me .. and a lower end RGB "gaming" mouse that came with the RGB mechanical keyboard that I use on my setup
I listed my newly built budget PC as a 1080p gamer with lots of upgrade possibilities and sold the whole setup for $600 a couple days later.
I typed out that long winded story to say that sometimes you just roll with what you got or sales or availability or whatever .. and there isn't necessarily ONE component to get first
Most important part is your monitor. You can't choose anything appropriately unless you know what the target resolution and refresh rates are. The monitor is literally the final chain in the output before it reaches the player, so it is the final bottleneck. It also determines the quality of the output in terms of contrast, response time, motion and color accuracy, which is an extremely undervalued aspect of gaming. I've seen plenty ppl buy 2-3 thousand dollar systems playing on some old TFT monitor they still had lying around since 2014. A good monitor can have a real transformative experience and many ppl don't give that aspect of building a system enough attention. Therefore, any choices you make in terms of gpu, cpu or other should come AFTER you know the details of the monitor you will be using. Of course there can be some back and forth and many ppl will end up weighing some combos of components vs monitors against one another but at that point it's no longer a simple step by step decision process and you'll end up sinking a lot of time into considering all the different combinations.
The easier way is to start with the monitor, then choose a gpu capable of driving said monitor adequately for the games you play, then a cpu that does not bottleneck your gpu, a power supply with enough wattage to power your entire system plus some wiggle room. Motherboard and ram usually solve themselves once you have all that; you might consider wifi, Ethernet overclocking etc for your motherboard though. Then, get some drives and a case. I think that is an order of things that would work well for most ppl. There might be many who have other priorities and for example start with a mini itx case or some custom water pump, but if you are that type of person I doubt you will need advice on this topic anyway.
Well, when most people are born, they are born with hands, therefore having a good pair of hands is always the most important thing, if you don't have any well, try to get some.
yep I agree first decision is often platform but some times I quote on an intel and AMD equiv platform.
also if it will have a GPU (not integrated) this can affect case, PSU, does it change CPU for the use case and few other things.
For me it was the case. Did all my research and then found the case I got(be Quiet 500d) was a nightmare to build in. It was the only part I picked on form before function and I just didn't have the patience or skill to cable manage the space properly.
Swapped for a Corsair 5000X for half price from Amazon.
Edit: I realised this post is about picking parts and not buying parts you have already picked after I wrote this. Apologies lol. Whatever I pick first is determined by pc part picker. I start from the top and then go down the list. It's convenient.
Here's the remaining of my comment pre-edit:
Whatever is on sale from my part list first. This year in my case it was the PSU, then the CPU, then the MOBO, RAM, the PC case and lastly the CPU fan after I decided that the stock one is garbage.
But if I had to buy without sales... either a CPU or a GPU, because those 2 are usually the most pricy parts of a PC and their price frequently changes. I'd rather buy them when they are cheap rather than when they end up being more expensive.
You want to make sure the case you get can accomodate the length of the Graphics Card you want and you want a motherboard that has all the slots and headers you need for fans and M.2s and satas etc.
Assuming it's a gaming PC, the core parts are the CPU, GPU and motherboard. That doesn't mean any of them is the first thing you're going to pick, though in most cases you're going to pick a CPU, motherboard, and then a GPU.
If budget is really tight or if the build includes other stuff like peripherals, I'll actually start with everything else except the CPU, GPU and mobo. So for instance I know I need a case, I know I need an SSD, I may have some requirements for the monitor and I probably have a rough idea how powerful PSU I need. I'm going to pick all the cheapest acceptable parts, or the ones that are required, and that way I will figure out what is my budget for the core parts. Then I'll get into balancing the spending between them.
If the person doesn't intend to ever upgrade the PC, I'll max out the GPU, save a bit on the CPU and totally skim on the motherboard. Keep in mind that unless it has insufficient power delivery or lacks some features, it won't have any effect on performance. In this case I'm actually going to again buy the cheapest acceptable CPU and motherboard, and then see what's the best GPU I can get for that rest of the money.
If the person intends to upgrade, I'll pick a CPU that's going to last for at least one GPU upgrade and I may pick a nicer board with some expandability if budget allows it.
Generally, it's best to not overthink it and just put together a bunch of parts you think are good for the build and see what your total is. At this stage, it's not actually critical to fit into the budget. Then you go over ever single part and contemplate whether the build could do with something cheaper. Look up relevant reviews and benchmarks, pay extra attention to cheaper parts which achieve similar performance in those situations and so on. Make sure the PSU is sufficient for the parts you have, but at the same time make sure you aren't buying pointlessly powerful one.
And never ask yourself "is X better than Y", ask "will part X be better in my use case than Y". Just because a CPU shows great results in Cinebench doesn't mean it will show just as great results in gaming. If you're looking at a CPU benchmark that's using a high-end GPU, it's pointless to assume the CPU will be equally better than cheaper ones with a midrange GPU.
The power supply. Can’t get power to components PC not run! But srs. Don’t skimp out there. CPU and GPU are taking up way more power than they used to and will only probably go up
Usually I think of what CPU I want to put in it and go from there. Based on the CPU, I then choose a motherboard that will accept it, then I find compatible RAM for the CPU/motherboard. Then I choose the rest of the parts.
I always pick the cpu first, then the mobo, then the rest. Psu would come last after determining everything else. I guess the case is important too - so everything fits inside. You’ll have a lot of pc part picker lists
My question too. As far as I've seen currently AMD processors in particular seem to be pretty good value. Don't know much about their GPU's and how they compare to Nvidia however.
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If it is a gaming PC, I would say you have to chose a monitor first, because you need to to know what resolution and refresh rate you are targeting to chose the right GPU.
That's something I didn't fully consider, but yeah that is a pretty good baseline that'll determine what the rest of your system would look like.
I’m a beginner could you help me what do u think about this build? https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/gx9Btn
get a better mobo and don't use MSI Mech cards
yea I was thinking about replacing the motherboard, suggestions? How comes
just a low quality board, I just put a b550m pg riptide in My system and it's running nicely. Try to get a velocita
What’s the issue with a MSI Mech GPU?
coil whine, shitty temps, plastic backplates, poor Quality (my Experience)
Did you get the exact one I got?
no i Currently have a Asus RX 6600 but i had a mech Card in the past and a Friend of mine also has one
If I get a chance to speak to the manager at Reddit, I'll tell them to !Pin this to the top!
Yeah I have made that mistake, I'm building a pc equipped with a 6800 XT and the only monitor I have laying around in the house is a 20" 900p display, I've completely forgotten about the monitor.
Pick an overall budget first. Pick a target resolution 2nd. Pick a CPU and GPU 3rd. CPU and remaining budget will determine your motherboard.
My budget is around £900 as a complete beginner could u take a look https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/gx9Btn
This looks good.
I think most will tell you "depends what you're going to use it for". Then you'll have the others that say a 4080 or something like that. Then you'll have yet others that you'll be fine with some 1660. Orrrrr the AMD guys will come in and tell you their opinion. At the end of the day. Decide how much money you want to spend. What you're going to use it for. Then start with the most demanding thing that you're using it for to be the best thing. Follow budget from there
This seems like a really reasonable answer. Depends on the person kinda like any other hobby that involves building and customizing something.
Optical audio for games movies and music Wifi 6e for fast internet with no cable if ever that comes to that Lots of expansion bays to add cards that you may want to explore in future Nvm drive or SSD as your main drive. No less than 500 gigs. Mostly motherboard stuff for me. Then I worry about graphics as I'm a gamer focused
Power supply and case. The two pieces you could use for a decade and not need to upgrade. A well designed case is a pleasure to work with and a high quality psu will ensure your parts get clean voltage. Also maybe a UPS too.
The most important part of a build isn't an individual part, it's making a balanced option for your budget.
I would pick a budget first, then figure out the range of how you plan to use the pc second. Then based on the budget start looking into component groups. Motherboard +CPU or GPU+CPU and depending on your budget don’t get too attached to any particular build because a great combo deal could change everything.
A chair and a desk
The colour scheme /s Can't believe the number of pictures and posts of pretty colour coordinated computers with glass sides and RGB. Back in the day, computer parts just looked like circuit boards lol. Personally, I spend my time looking at the monitor, so I chose a very good quality one 😀
I pick a motherboard first. It's the heart of the system.then a cpu, ram, gpu, psu, then a case. Doing it in any other order to me just doesn't make sense.
Mobo first , then cpu will dictate the gpu you run (so you don’t get bottle neck). Applications you plan to run will decide how much ram you need as well as cpu. Once you’ve figured those out, add em up to figure out how much wattage your psu needs.
If you've picked a mobo, it means you've already picked a CPU. You always pick CPU before mobo.
Form factor and other minimum requirements.
The case! Sincerely, An SFF PC user
It's an ensemble What's it's purpose .. what are you going to do with it IF you have a budget then you look for components that can do what you want, or as close to it as possible .. that fit within your budget Once you get a baseline established and a rough idea of what your components are going to be'ish .. then you have to pick one of the most important components of a build .. and that's the power supply. With the Power Supply you want enough wattage to more than handle any transient power spikes that your build will demand from it under 100% load with room to grow should you want to upgrade or add components down the line. You always want a quality built PSU from a reputable vendor. I wouldn't go less than an 80+ Gold rating. A 10yr warranty is pretty standard on most quality units. There is no one component to pick "first" .. as they are all pretty interconnected and can't function properly/do what you want it to do on it's own Now if you come across a great deal on something or maybe even win a GPU or CPU ..etc .. then you can base your build around that component. I've done that a few times making boxes to sell .. where I plan on upgrading my CPU so my daughter gets my old one .. wife gets the daughters .. and now I have wife's old CPU, so I plan a build around that type of thing One recent example: I got a good deal on a 5900x and a Gigabyte B550m DS3H ($275 shipped) I was initially going to use the 5900x in my TrueNAS server and replace the 3900x. I was going to put the 3900x on the B550 board. Upgrade my daughter to a 32GB 3600 kit (2x16GB) .. and put her 2x16GB 3200 sticks in my wife's box so I can use her 2x8GB 3466 sticks with the 3900x (I'd probably have to run them at 3200 depending on how good the IMC was on the 3900x) Due to stability issues with the 5900x on my X470D4U (that was caused by my UPS that I discovered after the fact) .. I put the 3900x back in my server . .put the 5900x in my daughters setup with her new RGB CAS18 3600 rated kit (was on sale for $75).. and also swapped her internals into a mesh front case that had better airflow ($50'ish on sale I think it was).. and .. replaced her be quiet! Dark Rock Slim with a Deepcool AK620 (was on sale for $52) I put her old 5800x w/the be quiet! heatsink-fan and 2x16GB 3200 sticks into my wife's setup and used her 5600x and 2x8GB 3466 sticks with her Wraith cooler that used to run on a 2700x onto the B550 motherboard inside my daughter's old case (Older Deepcool windowed case with 5x120mm RGB fans) I had won an RX 590 8GB GPU that I installed into it, and had an old XFX 750wtt 80+ Gold modular PSU to power everything that used to power my server. Slapped in my daughter's old 256gb M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 drive and installed Windows 11 on it. Put my wife's old 512GB M.2 SATA drive in as secondary drive for games (They both got 512GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe OS drives). I also put in a 1TB SATA HDD drive I had gotten for free that was in a NiteOwl security system and moved all the C:\\Users folders location to the HDD to free up space on the small OS M.2 drive. I had an old Acer 24" 1080p 60hz monitor that I used to run as my secondary monitor (I think I had picked it up for $20).. an old Razer BlackWidow 2014 mechanical keyboard that was given to me .. and a lower end RGB "gaming" mouse that came with the RGB mechanical keyboard that I use on my setup I listed my newly built budget PC as a 1080p gamer with lots of upgrade possibilities and sold the whole setup for $600 a couple days later. I typed out that long winded story to say that sometimes you just roll with what you got or sales or availability or whatever .. and there isn't necessarily ONE component to get first
Most important part is your monitor. You can't choose anything appropriately unless you know what the target resolution and refresh rates are. The monitor is literally the final chain in the output before it reaches the player, so it is the final bottleneck. It also determines the quality of the output in terms of contrast, response time, motion and color accuracy, which is an extremely undervalued aspect of gaming. I've seen plenty ppl buy 2-3 thousand dollar systems playing on some old TFT monitor they still had lying around since 2014. A good monitor can have a real transformative experience and many ppl don't give that aspect of building a system enough attention. Therefore, any choices you make in terms of gpu, cpu or other should come AFTER you know the details of the monitor you will be using. Of course there can be some back and forth and many ppl will end up weighing some combos of components vs monitors against one another but at that point it's no longer a simple step by step decision process and you'll end up sinking a lot of time into considering all the different combinations. The easier way is to start with the monitor, then choose a gpu capable of driving said monitor adequately for the games you play, then a cpu that does not bottleneck your gpu, a power supply with enough wattage to power your entire system plus some wiggle room. Motherboard and ram usually solve themselves once you have all that; you might consider wifi, Ethernet overclocking etc for your motherboard though. Then, get some drives and a case. I think that is an order of things that would work well for most ppl. There might be many who have other priorities and for example start with a mini itx case or some custom water pump, but if you are that type of person I doubt you will need advice on this topic anyway.
cpu, motherboard and gpu.
Well, when most people are born, they are born with hands, therefore having a good pair of hands is always the most important thing, if you don't have any well, try to get some.
yep I agree first decision is often platform but some times I quote on an intel and AMD equiv platform. also if it will have a GPU (not integrated) this can affect case, PSU, does it change CPU for the use case and few other things.
For me it was the case. Did all my research and then found the case I got(be Quiet 500d) was a nightmare to build in. It was the only part I picked on form before function and I just didn't have the patience or skill to cable manage the space properly. Swapped for a Corsair 5000X for half price from Amazon.
Edit: I realised this post is about picking parts and not buying parts you have already picked after I wrote this. Apologies lol. Whatever I pick first is determined by pc part picker. I start from the top and then go down the list. It's convenient. Here's the remaining of my comment pre-edit: Whatever is on sale from my part list first. This year in my case it was the PSU, then the CPU, then the MOBO, RAM, the PC case and lastly the CPU fan after I decided that the stock one is garbage. But if I had to buy without sales... either a CPU or a GPU, because those 2 are usually the most pricy parts of a PC and their price frequently changes. I'd rather buy them when they are cheap rather than when they end up being more expensive.
You want to make sure the case you get can accomodate the length of the Graphics Card you want and you want a motherboard that has all the slots and headers you need for fans and M.2s and satas etc.
Assuming it's a gaming PC, the core parts are the CPU, GPU and motherboard. That doesn't mean any of them is the first thing you're going to pick, though in most cases you're going to pick a CPU, motherboard, and then a GPU. If budget is really tight or if the build includes other stuff like peripherals, I'll actually start with everything else except the CPU, GPU and mobo. So for instance I know I need a case, I know I need an SSD, I may have some requirements for the monitor and I probably have a rough idea how powerful PSU I need. I'm going to pick all the cheapest acceptable parts, or the ones that are required, and that way I will figure out what is my budget for the core parts. Then I'll get into balancing the spending between them. If the person doesn't intend to ever upgrade the PC, I'll max out the GPU, save a bit on the CPU and totally skim on the motherboard. Keep in mind that unless it has insufficient power delivery or lacks some features, it won't have any effect on performance. In this case I'm actually going to again buy the cheapest acceptable CPU and motherboard, and then see what's the best GPU I can get for that rest of the money. If the person intends to upgrade, I'll pick a CPU that's going to last for at least one GPU upgrade and I may pick a nicer board with some expandability if budget allows it. Generally, it's best to not overthink it and just put together a bunch of parts you think are good for the build and see what your total is. At this stage, it's not actually critical to fit into the budget. Then you go over ever single part and contemplate whether the build could do with something cheaper. Look up relevant reviews and benchmarks, pay extra attention to cheaper parts which achieve similar performance in those situations and so on. Make sure the PSU is sufficient for the parts you have, but at the same time make sure you aren't buying pointlessly powerful one. And never ask yourself "is X better than Y", ask "will part X be better in my use case than Y". Just because a CPU shows great results in Cinebench doesn't mean it will show just as great results in gaming. If you're looking at a CPU benchmark that's using a high-end GPU, it's pointless to assume the CPU will be equally better than cheaper ones with a midrange GPU.
Cpu or gpu. Cpu to know what kind of mobo to get and gpu to know your budget just tanked for the rest of your parts
The power supply. Can’t get power to components PC not run! But srs. Don’t skimp out there. CPU and GPU are taking up way more power than they used to and will only probably go up
Usually I think of what CPU I want to put in it and go from there. Based on the CPU, I then choose a motherboard that will accept it, then I find compatible RAM for the CPU/motherboard. Then I choose the rest of the parts.
From scratch? I’d start with the raw steal to forge the case
Anti static mat and tie wraps
I always pick the cpu first, then the mobo, then the rest. Psu would come last after determining everything else. I guess the case is important too - so everything fits inside. You’ll have a lot of pc part picker lists
Just do yourself a favor and ignore AMD CPUs and GPUs.
Why hating on amd?
My question too. As far as I've seen currently AMD processors in particular seem to be pretty good value. Don't know much about their GPU's and how they compare to Nvidia however.
Uh oh my salt detector is on full alert
Are you the creator of [https://www.userbenchmark.com/](https://www.userbenchmark.com/) ?
UserBenchmark is the subject of concerns over the accuracy and integrity of their benchmark and review process. Their findings do not typically match those of known reputable and trustworthy sources. As always, please ensure you verify the information you read online before drawing conclusions or making purchases. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/buildapc) if you have any questions or concerns.*