How do you choose your PC parts?

MicroCenterOfficial

You've finally saved up the money to build that dream rig. But now comes the daunting part: choosing components. 

So how do you do it? Just pick things at random? Try to min/max your build? Or maybe you swear by a brand and fill your case with just that brand?

MicroCenterOfficial

When I build my first PC it wasn't about choosing at all - it was all about slowly amassing parts while finding the best deals. If I had to do it again, I'd probably pick things a bit more deliberately, worrying less about color or aesthetic and more about perfomance.

And pick a case that's actually conducive to cable management.

Ian

Gotta say it's at random for me, but a nice sale doesn't hurt the cause.

AlyG

Been building my own machines since 1999. It has and continues to be brand loyalty because of my hardware experiences. Compatibility is absolutely important as well but if the brand ain't there I move on. Only Corsair / Asus / Intel for me.

Love your store btw. Sanitation is 🔥👍🏽 I've been shopping with y'all since 2015 I believe and will keep spending my hard earned money here as long as yall carry parts I need 🙂

MicroCenterOfficial

AlyG said:

Been building my own machines since 1999. It has and continues to be brand loyalty because of my hardware experiences. Compatibility is absolutely important as well but if the brand ain't there I move on. Only Corsair / Asus / Intel for me.

Love your store btw. Sanitation is 🔥👍🏽 I've been shopping with y'all since 2015 I believe and will keep spending my hard earned money here as long as yall carry parts I need 🙂

 

Paul_2

I know you technically asked "your" (my) pc parts, but most of the PC's I build are for business clients.

The general workstation is an Intel I5 with integrated graphics, 8GB ram and an SSD in a cheap case with a basic power supply.

The engineering or power user workstations get an Intel I7 with discrete graphics, 16GB ram and an SSD in a cheap case with a better power supply.

I ALWAYS use the Gigabyte UD line of motherboards for these machines. I've used at least 100 of them over the years and not one has ever had ANY problem, with the exception of needing to flash a BIOS once to update the microcode to work with a CPU that had just come out. For the rest of the stuff I just generally focus on price to keep the overall cost down.

For my own personal computers I like overkill, and that same "completionist" urge, to gather every hidden item in a game, or to check every box in a checklist causes me to want to fill every hole/slot in a PC.

So, I start with the largest case I can find basically, and just keep adding stuff over time. Then I'll find the largest EATX motherboard from the HEDT chipsets generally, and fill up the RAM slots over time, and find more peripherals like 2x discrete GPUs (hooked up in SLI, but usually not running in SLI) discrete RAID, etc ... As many monitors as my desk and walls by my desk support, etc ... I often compare benchmarks, and then work out the best performance for my budget basically.

As far as aesthetics go, I don't really like a lot of RGB because I often nap on the couch in my office and it's a lot of light pollution, but I like to have a two tone color scheme based on the PC case.

termin

Using PC partpicker, or just find build guides online.