Buildapc

Exactly what the title says. I know the prices of computer parts have been skyrocketing because of all the "generative" "AI" bullshit that's been forced on the world, and I'm lucky my computer is just good enough to still be doing what I need it to several years later. It's a laptop, though, so basically no ability to swap components.

I want to get into PC building, more out of necessity then desire, but I'm nervous about ruining good parts. I'm totally fine with building a mediocre machine with cheap, old stuff just to get a feel for how everything goes together. If I can make it run Linux and maybe emulate a PS1 game, I'll be happy. Additionally, I have a HUGE rack mounted server PC from the mid 2000s that, if nothing else, can be gutted for it's spacious casing.

Is building a cheap test machine like this worth while? If so, I'd appreciate any advice on what parts to scoop up and maybe where I could find them.

Hello,

I have been upgrading this PC for years now, and the CPU is way behind. However I'm not sure what to put in. I planned on sticking with AMD, I'm running Linux Mint, and I want to spend $200-300. My monitor is capable of 165 FPS but nothing I play tends to reach that (Counter-Strike 2, Doom: The Dark Ages, Control, other big-budget games). So I'd like something that could help get this thing up to speed.

I'm also interested to hear what other components ought to be prioritized for upgrading in the future.

Thanks

Over the Christmas and New Year's holidays, I decided to make use of a case I got late Summer from an online transaction. The buyer was someone purchasing a computer and insisted on providing several items along with the cash payment I requested. The computer case smelled like smoke, contained cockroach carcasses and frass, and was still otherwise filthy. I ended up putting it in a trash bag, spraying Raid in the bag, and leaving it in my garage. The weekend after Christmas I finally got it out, removed the board, and began cleaning it up. After a few rounds of cleaning over a few hours, I got all of the brown sludge out of it and it started smelling clean. The hardest part was getting the gross brown tar dust out of the creases of the plastic front cover.

With the house to myself, I gathered all the parts, lay them out on the table as above, and began. That's when I met my first hurdle: the rear panel does not come out and the ports do not match.

That saddened me deeply, but then I got over it and decided that cutting holes was the best idea ever. Before I got to cutting, I decided to give it a little test. Don't mind the state of the monitor. I snagged it for $0.63 at a yard sale 15-20 years ago. The scuffs were why it was so cheap. Why the weird number? It was just something in the moment I guess.

That was when I noticed that the case had no cabling. Nothing for power buttons, nothing for LEDs. I guess I'll need to figure something out.

Confident that something was working, I got to cutting. It wasn't pretty, but it fit. To make it more pretty, I added some epoxy putty. After letting it settle, I eventually sanded it down.

I'm not a huge fan of the holes, but it's not completely ugly. Testing, I still need to fix the holes for the PS/2 mouse, but that's not really a concern. Maybe I'll borrow the kid's tools and give it one more go.

Having finally mounted the board, I get to work fabricating a power button. I don't have pictures of the button pieces, but for the cable I used the coded cable from a DVD player. For those that don't know, DVD drives used to require an external decoder card to play DVD disks. That technology is obsolete, and I'm pretty sure I don't have the cards, so I don't really need it any more. I ended up epoxying strips of aluminum from soda cans into the plastic holder for the power switch and then later wedging the contacts from the cable up against the aluminum strips. The power signal only needs a momentary close, and the exact resistance doesn't matter. On the backside of the power button I epoxied a small loop of copper to press against the aluminum contacts I made. The button has built-in springs, so a momentary switch is born.

From there, I had just enough to work with, so I installed a case fan to address the error messages, installed a SSD and then installed Fedora Linux. Why Fedora? Well, that's because Mint crashed from the desktop shortly after boot and I didn't feel like doing real troubleshooting.

It started to feel real, and I had ordered some sets of switches and LEDs. The original Dell switch had the power LED built into the power switch. Drive activity LED or reset switches were not part of the original build, and while I wanted drive activity, I wasn't interested in a reset switch.

I didn't document the process much here, but here is testing the LEDs.

I had to wedge the power LED near enough to the power button to allow the light pipe to pick it up. The drive activity LED is shown here wedged into the case near the vent.

I wasn't a fan of that location and ended up carving out part of the plastic case and using hot glue to keep it in place.

Here it is from the outside, looking pretty. It's 9MB, so I don't blame you for skipping this one.

I was pretty happy with that, so I took a few more minutes to clean the board well and do some cable management.

On the software side, I initially tried playing Minecraft, but it was terrible. This was paper MC on a network server, but I hadn't disabled enough to play well.

Eventually I had nearly everything turned all the way down and it was playable.... more or less. (SUPER NINJA EDIT! I forgot I put an AMD HD 4530 in there, and that's why it was so playable)

No matter what I did, reducing the resolution and using mods to disable most effects, Hollow Knight was still unplayable.

Using Firefox was fine. It even played Jellyfin without any complaints. Videos do seem to need to take a little bit to buffer or they end up skipping frames.

The last thing I tested was LibreOffice and then Opened a Sheets .xlsx in excel.com. The Sheets was a test of patience, and crashed several times trying to use larger data sets. It even caused Firefox to crash due to OOM. I had to use a smaller data set (50k lines instead of 100k) and everything was much better. I did not have the patience to find where it really started to struggle, but MOST spreadsheets are not that large.

I had to put it down for a couple weeks, but after asking people's opinions of what games to test on it, I was given the following:

Doom: No problem! I would be concerned if I couldn't get it to play Doom.

Elder Scrolls Arena: It was perfectly playable, but the audio was a little bit crackly.

Elder Scrolls Daggerfall: It was laggy in dosbox and the audio was terribly crackly.

More testing to be done in comments, but for now I'm pooped!

[ Off topic ]

Couldn't find a laptop-specific community to ask this question.

I'm thinking to buy a 2nd hand/refurbished laptop.

For study purposes, browsing the internet, tinkering with a few note-taking apps like Obsidian, Capacities, Logseq etc. I'll persue coding in future.

Will definitely use linux. Probably Zorin OS or Fedora.

My last laptop broke back in 2023 and I've never touched a pc/laptop since. This is probably why, I lack the understanding of computing power of laptop grade processors in today's standard.

I just want to know that the things I'm hoping to do with my yet-to-buy laptop within a linux environment, will a i5 chipset be enough?

Here's what specs I'm hoping to get alongside the chipset:

16 GB of DDR4 RAM ( Non-soldered ) ( At least )512 GB SSD ( any variant will do )

I'll eventually upgrade the RAMs and SSD in future. Maybe when I'll start coding. But for my study purposes, 16 gigs is more than enough.

Will i7 be a perfect balance with the 512 + 16 GB combination or i5 will be efficient enough?

[ Picture is collected from another Lemmy post. Excuse the picture ]

A few years ago I mistakenly bought some used ECC DDR3, 256GB (8x32GB) of the stuff for $110. Given the current memory shortage, is it time to dust it off and let someone else put it to use somehow? Or is DDR3 just too old to be worth it? I already have 128GB of DDR4 in my server and don't really need more for myself, but I have considered getting a second server to play with that I can stick these in.

I currently have a Intel Core i5-12400F (bought a pre built from Starforge) and am thinking of upgrading to an Intel i9-14900K or KF and I'm wondering what steps I need to take in regards to preparation and during installation

I bought a bit of thermal paste a while back that was a corsair one that I saw in Walmart for cheap, but if I need better I'll get better, I also have a Arctic Freezer 36 Air Cooler

Hello! I excitedly bought myself a new Graphics card for my setup. Now, this was the first time I'd ever built a computer, and the case I used was an old hand-me-down mid-tower. While purchasing the card I considered power draw and airflow, however I did not account for size. The drive bay can't be removed if not by forceful means. I assume the best course of action is to just purchase or find a bigger case, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any option so that's why I'm asking here. What do I do? Do I try to hardmod my case into having enough space for the card?

Recently, I was thinking about upgrading my gpu, but I'm a little unsure what model makes sense. My system is quite old, but I am also (modt of the times) not a lot of an ultra graphics gamer.

My system:

CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 Mainboard: MSI B450 mortar max Gpu: gtx 1070 Case: Fractal design define mini c Power: Be quiet! Pure power 500W Atx

Actually, I want to switch to linux in the future, so I tend more to the AMD direction.

I have a budget of around 400. But I was also looking for something that isn't too hard on the power bill...

I don't need the newest stuff so does instance a rx 6700 make sense or would you say just changing the gpu isn't enough?

Hello, my brother prebuilt pc sometimes restartes when there are network issues with our internet over the phone line.

Over the summer when the network work's with no issies he never experiences restarts, but the moment we started getting snow and networks issues his pc restarts on random, we know that network issues happen because the iptv box from our carries alwo experience network issue at the same time.

We tried reinstalling windows, also installed bazzite which worked fine, byt yesterday at the same that the iptv box experienced network issues the pc rebooted.

Is there any way to diagnose this and fix?

Edit: this happened when he bought it with a tp link wifi usb dongle last year AND over ethernet since last few weeks.

Hello everyone. (First Lemmy post!) I'm having a terrible time with my build crashing games and I know there are WAY tech savvier that might give me a few ideas. The games that crash/wont even load are: cyberpunk, Dead Space, Last Epoch, the Division 2 to name a few. I built my computer 2 years ago and upgraded a year ago to:

ASUS AM4 TUF Gaming X570-Plus AMD Ryzen 9 5900X NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti CORSAIR Vengeance RGB PRO SL DDR4 RAM 32GB CORSAIR RM1000x PSU

The issue very much seems to be my GPU as when I run Cinebench GPU test, after a while will close itself. It does not overheat just closes. I have tried doing a clean windows install, using DDU to wipe and then install most up to date drivers, and even attempting to reseat the GPU. I've tried drastically lowering the game settings but the result is the same.

So, first question: am I in fact stupid? second question: what on earth is wrong with this thing?

I've been having an issue with my computer deadlocking after roughly 10-30 minutes of it being on. The simple test was when the computer froze up it didn't register any inputs, caps lock didn't change any lights on my keyboard, the computer fans still ran, sound just stopped instead of tonally rattling my headphones like a regular bsod.

I'm not entirely sure what could be causing it other than it's a hardware issue. PC parts list below.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/f2hPRV

The things I have tried are as follows:

Booting with my old windows 10 and Linux Mint Windows didn't seem to record anything major in event viewer.

Switching out my ram cards one at a time and running a check on the sticks themselves. Neither stick appears to be the issue.

Checked my CPU seat for any damaged pins or debris.

Made sure all plugs are properly installed and all drivers are installed.

Flashed bios to both the recommended version and the most up to date version.

Set CPU, GPU, and internal SSD to gen 4 power in the bios.

I also ran a log check on Mint and the only error that it spat out was this:

[Dec 7 13:03] mce: [Hardware Error]: Machine check events logged

[ +0.000006] [Hardware Error]: Corrected error, no action required.

[ +0.000004] [Hardware Error]: CPU:0 (1a:44:0) MC14_STATUS[Over|CE|MiscV|AddrV|-|-|SyndV|CECC|-|-|-]: 0xdc2040000602010b

[ +0.000008] [Hardware Error]: Error Addr: 0x000000000008bdc0

[ +0.000001] [Hardware Error]: IPID: 0x000700b020347000, Syndrome: 0x000000262a1f2603

[ +0.000003] [Hardware Error]: L3 Cache Ext. Error Code: 2

[ +0.000001] [Hardware Error]: cache level: L3/GEN, tx: GEN, mem-tx: GEN

Looking this up seems to spit out a fault in the GPU, but this is way beyond my skill level here.

Thank you for any advise or tips for troubleshooting. I'm still within the return and replace period for my parts so if this indicates anything needing to be replaced, that's always an option.

Thank you all very much!

Edited for formatting

Will it be good to go with amd buldup? . Because intel price are skyrocket

I can't fit 3 120mm lian LI fans up top on this case, a Fractal Design Meshify 3, even though I thought PCpartpicker said it could. On top of that, the SL and CL series fans dont share the same touch points for transmitting power. So the one on the back would have no power to exhaust, and my reverse flow up at the front spot on the roof can't share with what would have been the other two fans. Clear oversights, oops. So now I have what is effectively two fans up top, and two fans I can't even use.

Well, not too sure how to fix this. Anyone have ideas on how I might salvage this or get the original idea to work? I uhh... I am not sure where to go from here. Not exactly urgent, one of the parts isn't here yet and I'm still waiting on things.

Also to clarify: I can't find the article or document anymore, but I was trying to emulate a fan setup that was supposedly ideal for hot components and environments (Florida.) Standard 7 fan config, but the front most top fan is intake not exhaust, supposedly it has a great effect on cooling as it wasn't just removing the fresh air from the highest front case fan.

Price are skyrocket

The LG 32G810SA-W.AEU is available to me for 400€, which is half its typical price. My important use cases are photo editing and software development. I will be calibrating whatever display I buy using a spectrophotometer.

Specs, but here's a quick overview:

In the short term, at least, I'll be running it from a Thinkpad P14s gen3 (AMD), which will drive it at 60Hz. PD is nice, but 65W is a bit weak, and my laptop will drain the battery under sustained load. WebOS doesn't seem like something I'll ever use, and from what I've read, all "HDR" anywhere near this combination of size and price is worthless.

I've been known to do occasional light gaming and watch videos on my PC, which would be improved by the fast response time, but I think color gamut, viewing angles, and contrast get priority in roughly that order. I'm not finding better contrast without either a much higher price or much worse color.

I recently swapped motherboards between two builds. One went well but the other is being very finicky with detecting the CPU. Right now its laying on its side like a beached whale with the left side panel open. The heatsink is simply sitting on the CPU, no mounts, no fans. Sometimes I can strap the heatsink down, stand up the box, and close the case, but never with the fans on. Its like that's too much weight and some connection is broken. Is anyone familiar with this problem?

I had this issue previously with a different motherboard and fixed it by using a stock heatsink. But this is a fairly simple CoolerMaster 212. Its not massive. I feel like its a problem with the board or the socket.

More details: when uninstalled the old motherboard in this build, it had the same CM212 heatsink in it. When I removed that heatsink the CPU (Ryzen 5700) came out with it to my horror. Neither that CPU or that motherboard are in this build though. But that CPU was supposed it be. It did have bent pins and I did try to install it before discovering the bent pins. After straightening them the CPU still didn't work so i switched to an old Ryzen 1600, which is currently being finicky. Maybe I damaged the motherboard socket?

The motherboard in my old home server died whilst moving house and I have recently acquired a Dell Poweredge 2900 Tower Server.

It is great as a NAS but I would like to add some GPU power so I can do some video encoding.

I know I'll need a PCIe 8x to 16x adapter to get something reasonable to work with.

Would something like a Quadro K5200 work in this or would I be better off with something older such as a quadro 4000 or is that still too new?

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

I'm thinking about building a modest Bazzite HTPC with a bunch of spare parts lying around the house. Here's what I've got:

• Intel 4770k
• Asus Z87-A LGA 1150 Motherboard
• NVidia GTX 1060 3gb GPU
• 16GB DDR3 RAM
• 640W Corais PSU
• SilverStone Grandia GD09 HTPC case

I'm assuming that the Nvidia GPU with a lackluster 3gb VRAM is probably the weakest link of the whole system, but I don't know what a reasonable upgrade might be for an older system (that probably doesn't support stuff like resizable bar, which I think is needed to get optimal performance of newer GPUs?).

What do you think? What would be the best bang-for-the-buck upgrade to a system like this, assuming the main use case would be gaming and media consumption? What would you do if you happened to have this set of parts lying around in the spare parts bin?

I plan to have two m.2 drives. One with Windows, one with Linux. I'm hoping to only use Linux, but I've had issues in the past trying to switch to Linux. Either way, I think I would prefer to have the Linux drive in the 'primary' slot.

I am running an AMD CPU AM5 processor, which has 24 PCIe5 lanes, but both of the drives are actually PCIe4. The motherboard has three m.2 sockets. The first one is Gen 5, the second one is Gen 4 and the third one is Gen 4 but shares with a Gen 4 PCIe4 slot I do not intend to use, so I'm cool using it for a drive, but it does go through the chip set.

So I figured I would put the Linux drive in the second slot and the windows drive in the third slot. But because Windows is an actual operating system (go with me in that one). I thought maybe it should maybe NOT go through the chipset but instead be in slot 2 and the Linux drive should be in slot one. Slot one should be backwards compatible and since it has 24 lanes, it shouldn't affect the GPU, right?

So which configuration should I use?

Thank you in advance. I hope to get feedback before Lemmy deletes this, which they always do. Never knew how to use Reddit either.

I am looking to have a physical switch installed in my living room to control the PC.

• Is it a possibility to have that, are there issues to be considered?

• I am thinking a fancy looking wood and press clicky switch with good travel. Suppliers?

• Volume would also be great to have.

Any avice appreciated.

My current 5900x seems to be on the brink of death, randomly refusing to boot and crashing despite having disabled C-States already. I'm using as an excuse to upgrade to AM5 while taking with me as many components as feasible.

While I did already quite some research I am sure if there are things I have overlooked, so someone looking a this build (I included my old components I plan to still use) would be helpful.

I have read that the AM4 coolers are still compatible I am unsure about that particular one, or if I should replace it since it is 5 years old already...

PCPartPicker Part List

Firstly, don't think I am loaded here this is an ideal list that I will chip away at over time - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/xVL9kf

I am looking at getting a fractal desigm north xl second hand, I presume there is no danger in that other than standard non new concerns.

Are case models universal or will I need a specific motherboard and then specific cpu/gpu etc.?

Probably not the right community for this, but I've been searching for a new 2TB SSD for my Thinkpad T14 G1, It's only PCIe gen 3.0, so both are going to be limited by that anyway. I specifically need resonably fast sustained write speeds, and both of these can write at >1GB/s for 15 minutes. The Samsung seems to be the better choice, but I remember them having some data loss issues a while back and that is worrying me, and the P510 is quite new, so not much time for any issues to be found. I can get both of them for the exact same price, which of these is the better pick? The P510 also seems to use a bit more power, so maybe not a good idea for a laptop?

EDIT: Thanks for the help, ended up getting the Samsung 990 pro