Building a PC.

-1. I just found this site, and it seems quite legit in the advice department. They earn money from clickthrough buys from amazon so be skeptical of their specific purchase links. Amazon is good. Newegg is good. It's easy to find out of a PC part storefront is legit if you just google the name and look around. https://www.build-gaming-computers.com/

0. With the way things are right now you are just going to be overpaying for PC parts. It sucks. But that's the way it is. Rectify yourself with the fact that you are going to have to do a fair amount of reading.

1. Pick your processor.

2. Pick the motherboard and computer case that has the features that you want that match each other and that the motherboard matches your processor your processor.

No point in a motherboard that doesn't reasonably match the computer case you are putting it in. So, number of USB ports. What kind of USB ports. Bluetooth for phones or PS4 controller? You don't want to game over wireless network if you can help it. Better to have a real ethernet port and cable run to your router/modem/splitter. Interference is real and it causes problems for latency sensitive environments like online gaming. Card readers? Bluray/DVD burner? You might want some kind of physical disc drive but things might have progressed past that now to where all you need is a high speed USB port. I think I have opened my bluray/dvd drive less than a dozen times in the past 5 years, but that was only for some really old software. If I built a new PC I'd probably still stick a bluray/dvd drive in it becuase of all my old games.

For windows 11, these are the requirements, but click through to the CPU part so you don't buy something "obsolete": https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications Win 10 will be supported for years yet. Any intel CPU that says i5 or i7 that has the number 8000 or higher after it will work. AMD Ryzen... I don't know anything about their stuff.

3. Pick your RAM. You need at least 16 Gigabytes of RAM. Websites might say you need 8gb... don't listen to that. 16 is the bare minimum. 8 is the batshit barebone minimum, but I'm sitting here wishing I had 32 instead of 16, yet it's not a real problem that I don't. Developers play happy and loose with ram and everything uses a ton of RAM these days. The best final pick is to make sure your RAM is either on the motherboard maker's list of compatible RAM, or that your motherboard is on the RAM maker's list of compatible motherboards. A lot of people say it doesn't matter that much. A lot of people say it matters. It probably won't matter, but sometimes it has mattered. And when it matters and your PC doesn't work, it's a giant pain in the ass. I wouldn't know. I always make sure either the RAM lists the motherboard or the motherboard lists the ram.

Your motherboard/cpu "chipset" will have a long list of possible RAM configurations that are allowed. These are not negotiable. This and the SATA lanes are where things get a bit more complicated than LEGOs. So look that up on the motherboard manufacturers' website.

This is my motherboard: https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z170%20OC%20Formula/#Memory
If you sort it by speed you will notice the more physical sticks/RAM you have, the lower the supported speed. Because electical engineering reasons. Electron quantum tunneling or some shit, I have no idea. So I wouldn't expect 4 sticks of 4000mhz ram to run at 4000mhz on this board at all. Just make sure that once you have selected a motherboard that you find it on the internet and make sure you read and understand the limitations and caveats. If you don't understand something, I can probably help. If I can't help, the buildapc people can help. That part is really important. Read the motherboard manual. It will tell you if you use SATA Express port 1, M.2 port 1, and SATA port 1 are all on the same "lane" so you can only have something hooked up to one port. Or if the video card's PCI Express slot runs at a slower speed if something else is plugged in somewhere.

4. Pick a video card. This will probably cost as much as all the other pieces of your computer, lol. Youtube has reviewers that compare cards in real world PC builds. Sites that do that and Youtubers that do that are the only reliable source of what is a "good" video card. Though you will want a video card with like 6-8gb of vram bare minimum if I had to guess. The one I'm on a waitlist for has like 11gb DDR5 vram. This doesn't have parts that can be upgraded later. It's basically a mini computer that you plug into your computer.
* Make sure you look at how big it is. Length/Width/Heigh. Make sure it will fit inside your case. * If not, find a new case.

5. Pick a power supply. Don't cheap out on this part. There are plenty of power calculators online. You just plug in what you are putting in your PC and it will tell you what wattage you need for a power supply. You'll want some kind of "80 Plus" certified power supply that has plenty of good reviews. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_Plus This is the part of the computer that decides whether or not everything else gets ruined, starts smoking, or catches on fire. So it's important, and brand name prebuilts like Dell are the worst offenders when cutting corners on power suppplies.

6. Plug all that into PC Part picker and post it on Build a PC and send the link to me. You still need a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse. And I would suggest a headset because directional audio actually is a big deal. Plus no one else in the room hears anything. You'll probably have to adjust parts because of pricing. It just is what it is. The hardest part is actually researching what to buy, how much to spend, and making sure it all fits together. The putting it together isn't a huge deal. You'll have to buy windows, possibly as well. But if you buy retail windows at this point I think it basically gives you a perpetual liscence to be transferred from machine to machine forever. You can buy OEM windows which will be cheaper, but you may not be able to transfer that liscence to the next PC.