Building a new PC

Long story short, it looks like its time to upgrade/replace my 7 year old Intel 7-2600k based system.

I've used Newegg and Fry's in the past, but it's been a while.

For those of you who build your own systems, who do you recommend for buying components?

Newegg, amazon..most legitimate websites are fine.

It never hurts also to use Google Shopping for price comparisons.
You'll sometimes find significant savings from a well-reputed vendor
you may have forgotten about, such as CDW or Tiger Direct.
I've found this to be the case more than once.

Timphoto wrote in post #19081356
Long story short, it looks like its time to upgrade/replace my 7 year old Intel 7-2600k based system.

I've used Newegg and Fry's in the past, but it's been a while.

For those of you who build your own systems, who do you recommend for buying components?

Goto PartsPicker.com and build there. I just finished a new build, two actually and that tool makes the whole process much easier. Start with your processor and it walks you through all of the parts removing ones that are not applicable. You can easily see all of the options and when ready to buy, see all of the buying options as well. I tend to choose the vendor with the best price and delivery as many parts have lead times out to July. I used B&H for the graphics card and processor, Best Buy for the second processor, Amazon for a lot of it, New Egg for memory and OEM Windows licenses, CMI Tech for some coolers, and I think I'm missing one or two vendors.

gjl711 wrote in post #19082393
Goto PartsPicker.com and build there. I just finished a new build, two actually and that tool makes the whole process much easier.

This is another resource I had forgotten about, so I thank you for the reminder.

I'm likely to begin acquiring components to upgrade my Core i-7 3770K system, and this is certainly
an easy tool to use, taking much of the research requirements off of the purchaser
who hasn't been closely following the industry changes.

Components such as drives and video are easily transferred during a new/upgrade build,
and there are other aspects to consider in all instances of a system build or update.
For example, I could likely transfer system memory over, and while not operating
at maximum speed the motherboard could provide, it may prove more than sufficient.

I also plan on using my existing ATX Mid-Tower case, of which I have two.
The second is unused and will likely be a build for my wife someday when we have more space,
while it sits boxed in a closet for now.

Remember to reuse anything you have now that's still sufficient for a new/upgrade build.
This can significantly reduce cost.

SkedAddled wrote in post #19082473
This is another resource I had forgotten about, so I thank you for the reminder.

I'm likely to begin acquiring components to upgrade my Core i-7 3770K system, and this is certainly
an easy tool to use, taking much of the research requirements off of the purchaser
who hasn't been closely following the industry changes.

Components such as drives and video are easily transferred during a new/upgrade build,
and there are other aspects to consider in all instances of a system build or update.
For example, I could likely transfer system memory over, and while not operating
at maximum speed the motherboard could provide, it may prove more than sufficient.

I also plan on using my existing ATX Mid-Tower case, of which I have two.
The second is unused and will likely be a build for my wife someday when we have more space,
while it sits boxed in a closet for now.

Remember to reuse anything you have now that's still sufficient for a new/upgrade build.
This can significantly reduce cost.

I upgraded from a i7 3770K as well and the problem I ran into pretty much right off the bat is that everything has improved so much that there was little I wanted to carry over. For instance, I had a GTX-660, a decent enough card but compared to the new RTX 2060, it's laughable. Might as well draw pictures on the screen with crayons. Same with memory. Drives I never reuse. They go into the backup pool as yet another backup. Power supply I never reuse unless it's less than a year old. On my old PC, it's sitting at 8~9 years old so why would I trust an old supply with brand new parts. About the only thing I re-use is the case. and even there, the new cases are so much nicer that I ended up getting a nice gaming case. SO the old machine gets repaired which basically means removing the video card as that's what failed, and gets turned into an electo-condom (Web surfing machine) leaving the new machine as a image/video processing machine and gaming machine.

gjl711 wrote in post #19082393
Goto PartsPicker.com and build there. I just finished a new build, two actually and that tool makes the whole process much easier. Start with your processor and it walks you through all of the parts removing ones that are not applicable. You can easily see all of the options and when ready to buy, see all of the buying options as well. I tend to choose the vendor with the best price and delivery as many parts have lead times out to July. I used B&H for the graphics card and processor, Best Buy for the second processor, Amazon for a lot of it, New Egg for memory and OEM Windows licenses, CMI Tech for some coolers, and I think I'm missing one or two vendors.

Thanks, that helped answer a couple of questions I had.

gjl711 wrote in post #19082490
I upgraded from a i7 3770K as well and the problem I ran into pretty much right off the bat is that everything has improved so much that there was little I wanted to carry over. For instance, I had a GTX-660, a decent enough card but compared to the new RTX 2060, it's laughable. Might as well draw pictures on the screen with crayons. Same with memory. Drives I never reuse. They go into the backup pool as yet another backup. Power supply I never reuse unless it's less than a year old. On my old PC, it's sitting at 8~9 years old so why would I trust an old supply with brand new parts. About the only thing I re-use is the case. and even there, the new cases are so much nicer that I ended up getting a nice gaming case. SO the old machine gets repaired which basically means removing the video card as that's what failed, and gets turned into an electo-condom (Web surfing machine) leaving the new machine as a image/video processing machine and gaming machine.

I considered whether to use my 7 year old power supply, but decided to replace it. On a previous build I had a power supply go out and zap the HD's. Fortunately two of the HD's were "fused" with a relatively easy to replace surface mount device.

gjl711 wrote in post #19082490
I upgraded from a i7 3770K as well and the problem I ran into pretty much right off the bat is that everything has improved so much that there was little I wanted to carry over. For instance, I had a GTX-660, a decent enough card but compared to the new RTX 2060, it's laughable. Might as well draw pictures on the screen with crayons. Same with memory. Drives I never reuse. They go into the backup pool as yet another backup. Power supply I never reuse unless it's less than a year old. On my old PC, it's sitting at 8~9 years old so why would I trust an old supply with brand new parts. About the only thing I re-use is the case. and even there, the new cases are so much nicer that I ended up getting a nice gaming case. SO the old machine gets repaired which basically means removing the video card as that's what failed, and gets turned into an electo-condom (Web surfing machine) leaving the new machine as a image/video processing machine and gaming machine.

All fine points, to be sure, as I had a power-supply failure which made me think
it was a motherboard failure, while replacing with an RMA-replaced unit
stored for a few years got me back into operation.

The only point here is: I've seen components hold out for a couple of decades,
and I've seen components fail shortly after deployment, along with
everything in-between. If components are still functional years after deployment,
particularly such as memory, it's highly likely they'll continue to function
for a long time to come. Therefore, if time-proven components CAN be used
in a newer system build, it stands to reason that those components
can also be used to gradually build-up a new or improved system,
which is what I have done many times, in order to save on immediate costs
of said new build.

Not all of us have a few-thousand dollars to spend on a dedicated system rig
all at once, so it's only normal for us to take a stepped approach to building
any sort of new rig. At the same time, many of us have a system case we like,
which allows many standard components to be exchanged.

I've got a very new Radeon RX 5500 XT video card I installed to go along with
the pair of AOS 4K monitors I purchased, connected to this old Core i-7 3770K
system, and I've seen a noticeable improvement in all aspects of video performance.
I could likely update my system's RAM to a faster speed-standard and realize
improvements there, too. If I added a discrete audio card to the system,
I may likely enjoy better audio performance, but a THX-Certified 5-channel
amplified speaker system gives me results I don't feel need improving on.

I finally updated to SSD a short time ago, and that had to be
the best speed improvement possible. Without that, everything was slow.
With a Core i-7 3770K, it was as fast as a system could be when I built it,
or just about. Then I moved to SSD, and speeds skyrocketed.

Cases are currently all about gee-whiz, whizzbang lighting effects,
which don't interest me at all. I've had blackout tape over the high-intensity LED lights
of my system case since day one. A newer caddy to accept 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives
installed to the front of my case also has insanely-bright LED lights, so those were
immediately snuffed with blackout tape.

Overall, you CAN transfer some components to a new build, saving some money
and buying some time along the way.

SkedAddled wrote in post #19082516
Cases are currently all about gee-whiz, whizzbang lighting effects,
which don't interest me at all. I've had blackout tape over the high-intensity LED lights
of my system case since day one. A newer caddy to accept 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch drives
installed to the front of my case also has insanely-bright LED lights, so those were
immediately snuffed with blackout tape.

Overall, you CAN transfer some components to a new build, saving some money
and buying some time along the way.

I'm with you about the insane (to me anyway) LED light displays. It's almost difficult to find plain units without all the LED's.

I do plan to transfer my GTX-1080 graphics card for now. In my experience the Adobe apps have not come close to stressing that card.

I just finished a new build and moved to an AMD Ryzen processor for the first time. Way more bang for your buck. I started buying parts back in November last year which isn't necessarily a good idea. I had new parts sitting here with the warranty ticking that I hadn't even started using. I knew I was going to have to buy the CPU and motherboard at the same time and then build it. With Intel's new CPU launch, AMD dropped the prices on some of their processors. I bought a Ryzen 7 3700X. I bought it for $290 and thought I had gotten a bargain. About a month after I bought it the price dropped to $275. Oh well, impossible to time it perfectly. I bought most of my parts at Newegg or Amazon. They pretty much follow each other's pricing to the dollar. Some things are not available right now or they weren't for most of June. It looks like stock is starting to come back now. I reused my graphics card and my CPU cooler. I eventually want to replace them but need to pay for what I already got first.

AMD Ryzen 4000 might come out around October, though it could be as late as March 2021. I'm holding out my i7 2600K system, which works fine at the core but bits are failing like USB ports and sound cards. I'm using a USB PCI card and USB sound card to try to stretch it out until the new Ryzen is available. Hope they're not super expensive on launch. New socket type apparently, so good to future proof, though I haven't upgraded my 2600K in the 8 years I've had it so probably won't upgrade a Ryzen either. CPUs are plenty fast.

tim wrote in post #19084773
AMD Ryzen 4000 might come out around October, though it could be as late as March 2021. I'm holding out my i7 2600K system, which works fine at the core but bits are failing like USB ports and sound cards. I'm using a USB PCI card and USB sound card to try to stretch it out until the new Ryzen is available. Hope they're not super expensive on launch. New socket type apparently, so good to future proof, though I haven't upgraded my 2600K in the 8 years I've had it so probably won't upgrade a Ryzen either. CPUs are plenty fast.

The liquid CPU cooler on my PC died last week. I replaced it with an inexpensive fan cooler. It runs 5-10C warmer, but still well within the CPU chip's limits.

I've read a couple of articles about the Ryzen 4000, but I'm not certain I'd go there. From a value/performance standpoint I it might make sense to wait until the Ryzen 4000 comes out and hope the price drops on the Ryzen 9 3900 or 3950.

We've been using this site for our current build.

https://www.logicalinc​rements.com …to-editing-graphic-design

goalerjones wrote in post #19084856
We've been using this site for our current build.

https://www.logicalinc​rements.com …to-editing-graphic-design

Thanks for the link, it appears to be a solid site with good advice.

I was looking through the comments and Daniel said he will be updating the Photo Editing builds sometime in the next month or so.