It looks like !buildapc community isn’t super active so I apologize for posting here. Mods, let me know if I should post there instead.
I built my first PC when I was I think 10-11 years old. Built my next PC after that and then sort of moved toward pre-made HP/Dell/etc. My last PC’s mobo just gave out and I’m looking to replace the whole thing. I’ve read over the last few years that prefabs from HP/Dell/etc. have gone to shit and don’t really work like they used to. Since I’m looking to expand comfortably, I’ve been thinking of giving building my own again.
I remember when I was a young lad, that there were two big pain points when putting the rig together: motherboard alignment with the case (I shorted two mobos by having it touch the bare metal of the grounded case; not sure how that happened but it did) and CPU pin alignment so you don’t bend any pins when inserting into the socket.
Since it’s been several decades since my last build, what are some things I should be aware of? Things I should avoid?
For example, I only recently learned what M.2 SSD are. My desktop has (had) SATA 3.5" drives, only one of which is an SSD.
I’ll admit I am a bit overwhelmed by some of my choices. I’ve spent some time on pcpartpicker and feel very overwhelmed by some of the options. Most of my time is spent in code development (primarily containers and node). I am planning on installing Linux (Ubuntu, most likely) and I am hoping to tinker with some AI models, something I haven’t been able to do with my now broken desktop due to it’s age. For ML/AI, I know I’ll need some sort of GPU, knowing only that NVIDIA cards require closed-source drivers. While I fully support FOSS, I’m not a OSS purist and fully accept that using a closed source drivers for linux may not be avoidable. Happy to take recommendations on GPUs!
Since I also host a myriad of self hosted apps on my desktop, I know I’ll need to beef up my RAM (I usually go the max or at least plan for the max).
My main requirements:
- Intel i7 processor (I’ve tried i5s and they can’t keep up with what I code; I know i9s are the latest hotness but don’t think the price is worth it; I’ve also tried AMD processors before and had terrible luck. I’m willing to try them again but I’d need a GOOD recommendation)
- At least 3 SATA ports so that I can carry my drives over
- At least one M.2 port (I cannibalized a laptop I recycled recently and grabbed the 1TB M.2 card)
- On-board Ethernet/NIC (on-board wifi/bluetooth not required, but won’t complain if they have them)
- Support at least 32 GB of RAM
- GPU that can support some sort of ML/AI with DisplayPort (preferred)
Nice to haves:
- MoBo with front USB 3 ports but will accept USB 2 (C vs A doesn’t matter)
- On-board sound (I typically use headphones or bluetooth headset so I don’t need anything fancy. I mostly listen to music when I code and occasionally do video calls.)
I threw together this list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/n6wVRK
It didn’t matter to me if it was in stock; just wanted a place to start. Advice is very much appreciated!
EDIT: WOW!! I am shocked and humbled by the great advice I’ve gotten here. And you’ve given me a boost in confidence in doing this myself. Thank you all and I’ll keep replying as I can.
Someone might have already mentioned it, but M.2 is just a physical connector. You can have M.2 SATA or M.2 NVME drives. Prefer NVME (a modern motherboard should support it but older ones only do SATA)
Compared to those pain points building a modern PC should be a breeze. CPUs go in Zero Insertion Force sockets so as long as you remember to lift the little lever you won’t bend any pins. People don’t even wear static discharge wrist bands anymore (all though it couldn’t hurt) or worry about shorting things out. And power connectors only fit one way unlike the AT power connector.
Speaking of breeze your only pain point might be making sure you have enough air circulation for cooling all that gear.
I remember working on a PC back in my Geek Squad days that had a lever.
For air circulation, what should I be on the lookout for? Making sure I have clearances, of course, but should I buy more fan that I need?
Case usually have fans preinstalled that should be fine. Just pay attention to the direction, have tham all blow air front to back. There is usually an arrow indicating which way it moves air.
Run a benchmark after buiding the PC and check temperatures.
That and you need to decide how much positive or negative pressure you want in there as well. You could always do some calculations. Treat your case as an open control volume where mass can transfer across the boundaries. Then the sum of air going into and out of the case must equal the rate of change of air in the case. Assuming the volume of air in your case is constant, this term would be zero. So you can look at the rated volume flow rate for each fan (CFM - aka cubic foot per minute) and see if this summation is positive or negative. A positive value would mean “positive pressure” and a negative value “negative pressure”. The only problem is if the fans are not running at max RPM and/or the rated CFM value - which is the case if you have your fans plugged into the motherboard( regardless of whether you’re using PWM or 3 pin). In this case, you would have to calculate the volume flow rate of each individual fan as a function of the RPM. This may not be a linear function and would probably require taking some data and coming up with a regression for the data. This would be way harder to do.
tldr: add up the CFM going into the case, subtract the CFM leaving the case. If the value is positive you have “positive pressure”
Don’t just look at temperatures though, look at clock speed too. 95c+ is normal for modern high end CPUs (AMD 7000 series actively try to run at that temp under full load). What you want to make sure is that it’s not throttling.
If this is a server and you don’t want your thermal paste to be toast in a year then I’d suggest lowering the maximum temperature in the bios if it lets you.
I went through the same process myself a couple years ago, first PC build in a while. The biggest shock for me was finding out hard drives (SSD, HHD, etc) were outdated: its all about NVMe cards which look like a stick of RAM and plug directly on the motherboard.
I’ve been learning the same. Though, I don’t get the sense that SATA is going out of style. I could be wrong though.
Not going out of style no, but not the new hotness.
sata would be used more for secondary storage or for systems setup as network attached storage. the nvme m. 2 formfactor for ssds is more convenient for users as its both smaller and does not require the user to wire 2 cables to use it.
is that really a concern? 2 cables vs. pushing a card into the mobo?
its more so the convenience factor. this also doesnt consider the hard drive mounting mechanism that youd spend time on as well, which limits case choice. with an m.2 drive, the drive can be installed outside of the case trivially
The other poster said it’s about convenience but that’s not really true. The claim to fame for NVMe drives is speed: While SATA SSDs can theoretically run at up to 500 MB/s, the latest NVMe drives can hit 7000+ MB/s.
It’s for this reason that you should pay attention to which NVMe drive you choose (if speed is what you’re after). SATA-based M.2 drives exist – and they run at SATA speeds – so if you see a cheap M.2 drive for sale it’s probably SATA and intended for bulk storage on laptops and SFF PCs without room for 2.5" drives. Double check the specs to be sure what you’re getting.
This is the reason why most of us have lived to NVMe. Speed, when compared to SATA, is ludicrous. But SATA is not going anywhere any time soon.
I just checked the specs for the M.2 NVMe drive that I pulled from an old laptop. It’s read speed is 3000mbs so it looks like I’m good there. Thanks for the heads up though.
Double-check the physical size of your NVME. Some laptops have a smaller M2 form factor than desktops.-
It frees up sata slots for your massive array of hard drives.
You’re right, SATA isn’t going anywhere for a very long time. If you have a need for 4+ TB of total storage there is nothing at all wrong using HDDs or 2.5" SSDs.
Unless you want a bunch of storage and modularity. The benefit to Sata is that it is much more flexible and Sata SSD’s are cheaper and can be put in a ZFS raid to increase maximum speeds.
I’ve gone back and forth on whether I need RAID locally. Giving up at least a third of your storage capacity (assuming RAID 5) for the off-chance that your hard drive dies in 3-4 years seems like a high price to pay. I had two drives fail in the lifespan of my current desktop. And I had enough warning from SMART that I could peel off the data before the drives bricked. I know I got lucky, but still…
Just go with Raid-1 then
If you’re practicing 3-2-1 backups then you probably don’t need to bother with RAID.
I can hear the mechanical keyboards clacking; Hear me out: If you’re not committed to a regular backup strategy, RAID can be a good way to protect yourself against a sudden hard drive failure, at which point you can do an “oh shit” backup and reconsider your life choices. RAID does nothing else beyond that. If your data gets corrupted, the wrong bits will happily be synced to the mirror drives. If you get ransomwared, congratulations you now have two copies of your inaccessible encrypted data.
Skip the RAID and set up backups. It can be as simple as an external drive that you plug in once a week and run rsync, or you can pay for a service like backblaze that has a client to handle things, or you can set up a NAS that receives a nightly backup from your PC and then pushes a copy up to something like B2 or S3 glacier.
I have nothing to add here. Your assessment is spot on.
I know that this is the self-hosted community but I very much agree. The way I run my desktop is that I can, in most cases, lose my primary hard drive and I’ll survive. It won’t be pretty and I might have a few local repos that I haven’t synced in a while but overall, it ain’t bad.
Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t want my primary hard drive restored if I can do it. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to restore them from the drive. But if I can’t, the most I lose is some config files, which I should start to version control but I get lazy.
I can’t back up my media. It’s just too big. But yar.
My greatest fear is losing my porn collection. 😅 But not enough to RAID.
The only thing I’ll add is that RAID is redundancy. Its purpose is to prevent downtime, not data loss.
If you aren’t concerned with downtime, RAID is the wrong solution.
It’s not necessary. Just have a backup. If it’s something you can’t afford to lose.
Some thoughts:
Ubuntu, most likely
I’d encourage you to take a look at Linux Mint, it alleviates some of the Ubuntu fuckiness. And if you want to join the “I use arch btw” crowd, maybe checkout EndeavourOS if you’re feeling more brave than just Ubuntu variants (which is built on arch, but makes barrier to entry a little easier).
i9s are the latest hotness but don’t think the price is worth it
Take a look at last generation to soften the blow to your wallet. E.g., instead of looking at a 14900k, look at 13 or even 12 series. In fact, this is a useful strategy all around if you’re being price conscious: go one gen older.
GPU that can support some sort of ML/AI with DisplayPort
Probably going to want to go with a discrete card, rather than just integrated. Other major consideration is going to be nvidia vs AMD, for which you’ll need to decide if CUDA should be part of your calculus or not. I’ll defer to any data science engineers that might wander through this post.
The rest of your reqs pretty much come as regular stock options when building a pc these days. Though another nicety for my latest builds, is multi-gig nics (though 2.5Gb was my ceiling, since you’ll also need the network gear to utilize it). Going multi-gig is nice for pushing around a fuckton of data between machines on my lan (including a NAS).
Very last thing that I’ve found helpful in my last 3 builds spanning 15 years: I use newegg for its reviews of items, specifically so I can search for the term “linux” in any given product’s reviews. Often times I can glean quick insight on how friendly (or not) hardware has been for other’s linux builds.
And I lied, I just remembered about another linux hardware resource: https://linux-hardware.org/?view=search
You can see other people that have built with given hardware. Just remember to do a scan too once your build is up to pay it forward.
Good luck, and remember to have fun!
And if you want to join the “I use arch btw” crowd…
I may be a linux nerd and pedantic, but not that pedantic. 😅 I’ve looked into Linux Mint and not opposed to an distro switch. I’ve been very happy with Ubuntu over the years. My first distro was slackware, then Fedora. Settled in Ubuntu and haven’t turned back.
if CUDA should be part of your calculus or not.
Probably not, if my cursory google search is correct. But happy to be convinced otherwise.
Though another nicety for my latest builds, is multi-gig nics (though 2.5Gb was my ceiling, since you’ll also need the network gear to utilize it)
I’ve had the benefit of laying my own CAT-5e in my house. Given the distances, CAT-6 was going to cost twice as much with a negligible increase in bandwidth. That said, I’m restricted by the narrowest straw, which is wifi (when streaming media to my phone) and ISP (which taps out at around 300mb/s). My current PC has 1gb/s card and I’ve only occasionally had issues.
I use newegg for its reviews of items, specifically so I can search for the term “linux” in any given product’s reviews.
Oh that’s a good tip!
I may be a linux nerd and pedantic
There’s nothing pedantic about using Arch. There’s a reason it and its derivatives are so popular.
There’s nothing pedantic about using Arch. There’s a reason it and its derivatives are so popular.
Way to show off how not-pedantic you are!
I’m not sure you know how to use that word.
Pedantic is an insulting word used to describe someone who annoys others by correcting small errors, caring too much about minor details, or emphasizing their own expertise especially in some narrow or boring subject matter.
??
I have to agree here. I use PopOS mostly, but most Ubuntu derivative nowadays beat the living crap out of Ubuntu. PopOS, Zorin, Mint, etc. Like many others, Ubuntu was my gateway to Linux, but I lived out of that in less than a year. Started spinning Mandriva (damn I’m old), Debian itself, and I’ve tried Ubuntu a few times over the years, mostly on VMs now, since now I hold no hope that it’ll ever go back to what it was.
maybe checkout EndeavourOS
After about a decade of being exclusively on Ubuntu I got fed up with it and moved to EndeavourOS and I love it.
Although I am being tempted by the NixOS crowd, right now I’m perfectly happy with EndeavourOS.
Used EndeavourOS for a few years too but switched to Fedora Workstation recently. EndeavourOS is still great but I like Fedora more now since it’s just easier. A lot of stuff I did manually before like switching ext4 for BTRFS, enabling compression and switching to Pipewire is done by default (also LUKS for full diks encryption which I was too lazy to install before) and I can update my system and install most software through GNOME Software without having to use the CLI. It’s also very easy to get OpenCL and HIP working, it’s just one package each you need to install. Only downside for me is that it’s not as easy to install stuff from COPR than it is from the AUR because you first have to enable the repo for each package you want to install from COPR. I think COPR is more secure tho, especially for someone like me who never looked at the PKGBUILD when installing from AUR.
Get Nvidia GPU for AI, period.
Read the manual for the motherboard you want and make sure that the M2 slot supports NVMe rather than SATA. (Also, learn to tell NVMe from SATA chips.) M2 slots that are SATA usually share a SATA lane with the SATA connectors and if you populate the M2 slot you might lose a connector.
Another thing to read about is whether populating which M2 slot reduces the speed of one of the PCIe slots. Same reason (shared lanes) but with PCIe instead of SATA. These things should be spelled out next to the M2 connectors.
NVMe drives in Linux have /dev/nvme* designations not /dev/sd*.
A lot of great suggestions here already. But nobody is mentioning that if you really want to future-proof, you should go fully quantum.
I actually did. And the quantum twin that succeeded is now solving global warming.
I am the twin that didn’t succeed.
According to global trends, your twin did not succeed either. Sorry.
lots of good advice here. I just want to restate: do yourself a favor and migrate your HDDs over to any solid state drive. Whether that means “classic” SSDs with a SATA-Port or M.2s is your prerogative, but in either case you’ll start wondering how you could ever stand that s pinning noise and the vibrations and the slow, slow data transfer.
There is no need for a separate sound card now, it is built in.
Seems like you got your answers already, but pcmasterrace community also exist
Asrock’s DeskMeet or DeskSlim series could fit your bill in a small form factor.
Btw, there are fast and beautiful M.2/NVMe to USB cases, for your SSD.
I’d defintely go with an M.2 SSD, you can get 1tb for 50€ and 2tb for 100€ now and they’re much faster, more reliable and take up way less space.
For ML/AI stuff, you might be just fine using an AMD GPU. AMD GPUs are a lot easier to use on Linux and are also a good bit cheaper. I use Fedora with an AMD GPU and I just installed the packages for OpenCL and HIP and now I can run LLMs on my PC using my GPU. I’ve also used Stable Diffusion with that GPU on Linux before. If there’s something specific you want to do regarding that, I’d look up first if you need an Nvidia GPU for that but from my experience AMD GPUs work just fine.
I’d take a look at AMD CPUs again. Last time I checked they were even cheaper (including mobo price) than Intel even though they’re also more efficient (faster and less power draw). Prices might have changed tho. You should probably use a Ryzen 5, a Ryzen 7 will only make sense if you use all cores because game performance is pretty much the same. A Ryzen 3 is more of a budget option tho, I wouldn’t use that. If it’s in your budget, you should also use the newest generation that uses the AM5 socket because you’ll be able to upgrade your CPU without needing a new mobo. I think it also only supports DDR5 RAM, which is more expensive than DDR4. If you use a Ryzen generation that uses the AM4 socket, it’s gonna be cheaper but if you want to upgrade you’ll need a new mobo with AM5 and new DDR5 RAM in addition to the new CPU.
As for Linux distros, my recommendations are Linux Mint if you want something very easy, EndeavourOS if you want something Arch-based or Fedora if you want something that’s not quite as easy as Mint but more up-to-date. I personally use Fedora but I used EndeavourOS before. I detailed why I switched to Fedora in a reply here somewhere.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express PSU Power Supply Unit RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 5 acronyms.
[Thread #529 for this sub, first seen 20th Feb 2024, 23:55] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
I for one would not purchase any Intel hardware as long as AMD is around. Not that they’re bad or anything, but AMD gives me much Kore “bang for the buck”. To future proof your rig, I strongly suggest you go with the latest socket (be it Intel or AMD, doesn’t matter) and make sure you get DDR5 RAM. PCI Gen 4, and then have at it.
Getting an 80 Plus Gold power supply is always nice too.
And then there’s the cooling. I see you went with a radiator and fan, but I strongly suggest getting some type of liquid cooling. The prices are not that bad anymore (unlike about 10 years ago, which was insane).
As for the board, you’ll get all kinds of different suggestions. Some people swear by Asus, I’d rather go with Gigabyte (love the Aorus line), so it’ll come down to brand trust at the end of the day.
As for the card, I hear a lot of crap given to Nvidia about being closed source, and I sort of agree that’s messed up, but ATI cards (while pretty good) are always a step behind Nvidia. Plus, most distros have them working out of the box.
It can be intimidating after so many years, but its way simpler than it was back then.
Good luck man, you got this, there’s nothing to fear but fear itself.
ATI cards (while pretty good) are always a step behind Nvidia.
Ok, you mean AMD. They bought ATI like 20 years ago now and that branding is long dead.
And AMD cards are hardly “a step behind” Nvidia. This is only true if you buy the 24GB top card of the series. Otherwise you’ll get comparable performance from AMD at a better value.
Plus, most distros have them working out of the box.
Unless you’re running a kernel <6.x then every distro will support AMD cards. And even then, you could always install the proprietary blobs from AMD and get full support on any distro. The kernel version only matters if you want to use the FOSS kernel drivers for the cards.
I agree that I could be wrong on the comparison. Maybe they are not that far behind, but guaranteed not at the same level when comparing apples to apples. I wish that wasn’t the case, but it still is.
when comparing apples to apples.
But this isn’t really easy to do, and impossible in some cases.
Historically, Nvidia has done better than AMD in gaming performance because there’s just so much game specific optimizations in the Nvidia drivers, whereas AMD didn’t.
On the other hand, AMD historically had better raw performance in scientific calculation tasks (pre-deeplearning trend).
Nvidia has had a stranglehold on the AI market entirely because of their CUDA dominance. But hopefully AMD has finally bucked that tend with their new ROCm release that is a drop-in replacement for CUDA (meaning you can just run CUDA compiled applications on AMD with no changes).
Also, AMD’s new MI300X AI processor is (supposedly) wiping the floor with Nvidia’s H100 cards. I say “supposedly” because I don’t have $50k USD to buy both cards and compare myself.
I have absolutely no counter for you on this one, as I’m jot aware of the highest level stuff between manufacturers. And it makes sense. Nvidia has been the goto manufacturer for gaming and developers usually improve their code based on what’s needed to run the best possible on Nvidia hardware. I’ll research Kore on this when I have a chance, this seems to he a very interesting topic. Thank you for pointing this out.
May I ask why water cooling? Its just more loud and more expensive afaik, they just look awesome.
Decent air coolers are cheap, silent and easier to install. When I was overclocking i5 9600k temperature was not an issue at all. Is it different with CPUs today?
Simple, the difference in cost is negligible in terms of keeping the CPU at way lower temperatures, extending the life of the CPU and better avoiding throttling. And they are not louder than a regular fan with heatsink, since the fans spin at lower RPMs most of the time because they don’t need to increase it since the CPU is already running cooler. And if you add a high end GPU, that’s way louder and will drown the noise of any other fan in the rig when it kicks in.
AMD graphics are terrible at any kind of media encoding or decoding. That probably won’t affect most people but it can be a problem for self hosting.
I also find that Intel CPUs are much easier to find than AMD when it comes to used hardware.
They are not terrible, they just don’t hold a candle to a Nvidia card of the same tier. And the Op is buying new not old. Not once did I say anything bad about any brand, like the Op, I’m not married to any of them, and only speak out of personal experience. I dont make money from them, they make money out of me.
I take it your taking about Intel? AMD GPUs tend to be a pretty good deal as there are tons of them used on eBay.
Maybe, I’ve never bought PC parts on eBay, or used for that matter. Too risky from my perspective. And yes, I’m talking about AMD GPUs. They are very good, but still behind Nvidia in every aspect.
Except for Linux support. Nvidia is awful on Linux compared to Intel (best) and AMD (solid).
Name one example in which an Nvidia card from the same gen of an AMD GPU performed equal or worse, regardless of the driver. Why do you think that even manufacturers focused on hardware for Linux choose Nvidia over AMD GPUs? Cost? Unlikely, since Nvidia is usually more expensive.
Cost wise I believe they are close. For instance, according to Toms Hardware a RTX 3070 is the same cost and performance as a 6700XT.
https://www.tomshardware.com/features/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3070-vs-amd-radeon-rx-6700-xt
What your saying doesn’t align with what I’ve seen and read online. Admittedly I’m not a GPU expert so maybe I’m just out of touch. Anyway I wouldn’t by Nvidia because the free software drivers are still being worked on. We are seeing a lot of progress with NVK but its nowhere near complete.
To be honest with you I mostly use Intel integrated graphics which works very well and can even do some light gaming.
Some value software freedom more than performance, and the open source Nouveau Nvidia driver isn’t quite there yet on performance.
I for one would not purchase any Intel hardware as long as AMD is around. Not that they’re bad or anything, but AMD gives me much Kore “bang for the buck”.
If you have a processor line in mind, let me know. Happy to give them another look, given my experience with AMD is 30 some years old.
And then there’s the cooling. I see you went with a radiator and fan, but I strongly suggest getting some type of liquid cooling. The prices are not that bad anymore (unlike about 10 years ago, which was insane).
I’m not tied to the cooling solution I picked. I just picked something that looked affordable and did what I wanted. I’d love to do liquid cooling so long as it isn’t a pain. I helped my friend back in high school do liquid cooling and it was a proper mess. We came close to shorting his entire rig.
As for the board, you’ll get all kinds of different suggestions. Some people swear by Asus, I’d rather go with Gigabyte (love the Aorus line), so it’ll come down to brand trust at the end of the day.
I have zero brand loyalty here. The boards I’m looking at right now all have embedded wifi with the annoying antenna…I really want bluetooth embedded so it seems like I’ll have to have wifi but just not use it.
AM5 sockets are now LGA like Intel. AM4 was the last PGA socket, so bent pins on the chip are a thing of the past. Make sure to leave the socket cover in place while installing the CPU. Now, the fear is bending a pin on the MoBo.
I think you mean LGA (Land Grid Array), meaning the pins are on the motherboard. Ball Grid Array (BGA) is used for embedded, non-removable CPUs.
I did. This should teach me not to try and cook dinner and post at the same time. I’m NOT that good at multitasking…
