Building a PC—Avoid wasting Money

[Brian Boru]

Jayz has an 18m wallet-friendly video where he discusses:
0:58 - Power Supplies
3:19 - RAM
6:28 - "Gaming" PC's
9:20 - Custom "High End" GPU's
13:07 - Storage
He mentions at the end that the whole RGB thing goes without saying as an universal money waste.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odR3UI8FKSY


If budget isn't an issue, K yourself O. But when budget matters:
Agree? Disagree? Add anything?

For me, a key factor he mentions a couple of times is the concept of 'noticing the difference'. I don't care if your thingummy has twice the speed-power-capacity of my doohickey if I can't see a noticeable diff in practice.

I know nothing re current parts, but I imagine it's easy to waste on case and mobo too.

Jayz says DDR4 RAM will be fine for years yet. Why is this?
Because games and software can't yet use the extra which DDR5 provides? Or…?

 

[CParsons]

That was a good video, I watched it last night. I'm into a lot of virtual pinball systems and I see people suggesting to others all the time wayyyyyy over specced video cards for their needs.

 

[Why_Me]

That video should be mandatory for every first time builder.

 

[Brian Boru]

That video should be mandatory for every first time builder.

Made it a 'Sticky' thread, so always available top of this forum to link to.

Must add to my sig, feel free to do same

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

One small criticism: I wish he would have stated that not overspending on PSU doesnt equate to 'buy the cheapest PSU you can find with the right wattage on the label'. Getting a good quality PSU that will last a long time preserves all your other components as well.

RE: RAM. Far as I understand it as the speed of DDR goes up the latency gets worse, so even if the MT/s numbers look way bigger, in practice at least for gaming they arent that much faster, especially at the start of the generation with slower DDR 5 vs the fastest more refined. DDR4. Also add the fact that gaming in general is often GPU rather than CPU limited and RAM speed affects the CPU performance mainly.

DDR5 vs DDR4: Is It Time To Upgrade Your RAM?

Welcome to the new era of DDR5 RAM

www.tomshardware.com

The performance difference in gaming between the two extremes (DDR4-2133 C15 and DDR5-6400 C36) was only around 8%. However, once we stepped up to something better, like DDR4-3200 C15, DDR5-6400 C36 was only 2% faster.

 

[Brian Boru]

not overspending on PSU doesnt equate to 'buy the cheapest PSU

Good point, he did miss that.

Thanks for the RAM clarification—those Tom's numbers are an enlightening surprise for my ignorance

 

[Rolfil]

Vex has a similar video

View: https://youtu.be/7zw5wMgBGNo?si=6Plww5SXlkSY3BGw


I particularly like the part about AIO coolers being a waste of money in most cases.

 

[Why_Me]

All white builds when on a limited budget, those NZXT Kraken AIO's ... AIO's in general when on a limited budget, pretty much any case Corsair makes, Intel i9's for a gaming build and those fish tank cases such as the 011's and Hytes .. I detest those cases. Expensive and horrible airflow. I'm sure there's more I can complain about but that's off the top of my head after I just witnessed a $2000 USD build that included a RTX 3060 for a peep that wants to game at 1440P. You know a build thread is going to be bad when it starts with 'my friend on Discord recommended this ...'

 

[Colif]

Spending too little on PSU is far worse than spending too much. A cheap PSU can kill other parts before it dies itself. I have lost hdd in the past to bad PSU.
I may have too much power now but it let me upgrade parts without needing to worry about power.

6:28 - "Gaming" PC's
9:20 - Custom "High End" GPU's
13:07 - Storage
He mentions at the end that the whole RGB thing goes without saying as an universal money waste.

But RGB & Gaming PC's are the same thing... PC only needs RGB to be a gaming PC... that is what seems to be case anyway.

PCIe5 nvme are a waste of money for windows drives. You won't notice a massive speed difference between PCIe3 & 5. Just an increase in heat. If they keep going the heatsinks needed to cool the nvme will look like mini CPU heatsinks. Why not just make one water cooling pump that does the CPU & nvme?

You need to move really big files around to notice any speed difference really.

 

[ZedClampet]

Jayz has an 18m wallet-friendly video where he discusses:
0:58 - Power Supplies
3:19 - RAM
6:28 - "Gaming" PC's
9:20 - Custom "High End" GPU's
13:07 - Storage
He mentions at the end that the whole RGB thing goes without saying as an universal money waste.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odR3UI8FKSY


If budget isn't an issue, K yourself O. But when budget matters:
Agree? Disagree? Add anything?

For me, a key factor he mentions a couple of times is the concept of 'noticing the difference'. I don't care if your thingummy has twice the speed-power-capacity of my doohickey if I can't see a noticeable diff in practice.

I know nothing re current parts, but I imagine it's easy to waste on case and mobo too.

Jayz says DDR4 RAM will be fine for years yet. Why is this?
Because games and software can't yet use the extra which DDR5 provides? Or…?

I wouldn't get RGB even if I could afford it unless I was making a custom case that needed it (for appearances--like I put fake buttons and switches all over it)

As for RAM, I've never done a test with it, but the standard take is that RAM speeds make very little difference in game performance.