# PC buying anxiety



## MartinH. (Sep 8, 2021)

*[Update: I already ordered a PC from Alternate, built to order with hand picked parts. You can see the parts list in post #24]*


My PC is getting somewhat old and I'm thinking about buying a new one. I have an i7-3820, Geforce GTX 1060, 64 GB Ram. Bought it 9 years ago and did some updates over time.

To be honest it is still fine for most things but I'm hitting the limits of my CPU increasingly often, both with games and Reaper projects. For tax reasons,* I want to buy an already assembled desktop PC, not components to build one myself!* The thing is, I have never before bought an off-the-shelf-PC, so not only am I absolutely clueless about current hardware, I'm also clueless about how to shop for "a PC" instead of "shop for parts".
I live in Germany, so I'm only interested in stuff that I can buy from German retailers, preferably "Alternate" or similar, not Amazon.


The PC needs to be quiet and reliable, should last me another 8-10 years ideally. Components should be high quality and I need to be able to service it myself without that breaking the warranty (like adding/switching hard drives, upgrading GPU, adding PCIe cards etc.). There needs to be space in the case for lots of hard drives (minimum 6x 3.5 inch drives internally plus 2x 3.5 inch drives in 2x 5.25 inch front access mounting frames or whatever they are called) and they need to be easily accessible. 8 internal SATA connectors minimum if that's possible, otherwise 6 is absolute minimum and I need to plan for adding another non-raid SATA controller as pcie card.

CPU wise I'm leaning towards Intel and I care more about single core clock speed than total core count because that tends to be my bottleneck. 6 or 8 cores should be enough I think, as long as they're fast. 64 GB Ram has served me well, don't feel like 128 is worth it unless it doesn't cost much extra. For the case I prefer simple black designs without RGB lights. I haven't decided what exact GPU I need, but RTX3060 is the smallest that makes sense I believe and I want to stick with nvidia. Gaming is a high priority, but also graphics software like Blender, and maybe machine learning experiments later down the line - no crypto mining, so "lite hash rate" cards are fine.

There needs to be enough space in the case to add a second GPU if it should ever be required to be able to attach more screens (I have 4 attached right now, not sure where current cards max out). I haven't thought through what USB/thunderbolt/whatever connectors I need, but the more ports the better. I expect all boards have USB3 by now and tbh I don't know what thunderbolt even is.

Good energy efficiency and thus lower heat emission would be great.

I haven't decided on a budget but I expect it's gonna cost 2k+ Euro probably. I'm looking for something that plays in the "normal consumer price range", not some fancy boutique stuff where you pay a huge markup compared to the single component prices.
*Not looking for a specialized audio PC by the way. *My needs are likely better met with a regular gaming PC or graphics workstation. And rackmount cases are a no-go.

Any advice where I should start looking? Is there something like prad.de but for PCs? That site was always a great help for picking monitors - big archive of reviews and fairly standardized criteria with lots of detailed observations.


I have browsed some online stores already but it's very overwhelming and I feel so clueless. I don't like making such expensive purchases and if there's something about my next PC that I'll find annoying, it'll bother me daily for many years to come, so I need to get this right. :-/


Thanks for reading this far and for your suggestions!


*[Update: I already ordered a PC from Alternate, built to order with hand picked parts. You can see the parts list in post #24]*


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## ilja (Sep 8, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> My PC is getting somewhat old and I'm thinking about buying a new one. I have an i7-3820, Geforce GTX 1060, 64 GB Ram. Bought it 9 years ago and did some updates over time.
> 
> To be honest it is still fine for most things but I'm hitting the limits of my CPU increasingly often, both with games and Reaper projects. For tax reasons,* I want to buy an already assembled desktop PC, not components to build one myself!* The thing is, I have never before bought an off-the-shelf-PC, so not only am I absolutely clueless about current hardware, I'm also clueless about how to shop for "a PC" instead of "shop for parts".
> I live in Germany, so I'm only interested in stuff that I can buy from German retailers, preferably "Alternate" or similar, not Amazon.
> ...


Hi,
have a look at digital audio networx in Berlin, they are specialized in computers for audio, digital audio service in Hamburg offer computers as well I believe. There is also xi-machines. 
Hope that helps.
Viele Grüße,
Ilja


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## rrichard63 (Sep 8, 2021)

ilja said:


> Hi,
> have a look at digital audio networx in Berlin, they are specialized in computers for audio, digital audio service in Hamburg offer computers as well I believe. There is also xi-machines.
> Hope that helps.
> Viele Grüße,
> Ilja


I'm in the U.S. and can't recommend a German source, but I want to support @ilja's advice. Find a system integrator who specializes in computers for audio. For comparison, here's a very good one in the U.S.:

https://studiocat.com/opencart2/index.php?route=common/home


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## MartinH. (Sep 8, 2021)

Thanks for the advice guys! I'll check those out.

The thing is, audio is really just a hobby for me and as long as there's enough RAM, an up to date CPU, an SSD and my old audio interface, my audio needs are already met. I care more about reliability, quality of life stuff, graphics performance and singlecore cpu performance than raw audio DSP performance or recording latency for example. Rackmount cases are a nogo too.




Henrik B. Jensen said:


> Typically there are pc stores which have their own service dept., so that if your computer breaks down, you can take it to the shop and their technical people will look at it.


I interned once at such a store and I never trusted someone else with my hardware ever since .


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## rrichard63 (Sep 8, 2021)

Henrik B. Jensen said:


> At these stores you can often bring your own list of preferred pc parts and ask them to order it and assemble the pc for you, including stress test when it’s assembled. They will then give you an offer for how much each part will cost you and how much you have to pay them for assembling it.


I have also done this, except that my technician wanted me to buy the parts myself and bring them to him. It worked out well for me, but might not work in @MartinH.'s situation, because he has tax reasons for wanting to buy an assembled computer.


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## vitocorleone123 (Sep 8, 2021)

Currently you’d save money keeping the same graphics card, unless you’re willing to spend $1k or more just for the card.


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## MartinH. (Sep 9, 2021)

@Henrik B. Jensen: Thanks so much, you're a big help! I'll try to answer everything and then sum up the questions that are still open. 

I've emailed alternate to ask if their PC configurator builds are declared as "one pc" instead of a bunch of parts on their invoices for the tax deductability requirements and I hope they have a way to safely ship it here. DHL has a terrible track record of sending me stuff with transport damage.



Henrik B. Jensen said:


> For GPU, I can recommend MSI. I know from personal experience their fans are really good and quieter than the Gigabyte 2060 Super I had at least.


I've had MSI, ASUS, and maybe an EVGA too. I'll have to see what's available at the time I'm ordering and will look for reviews on fan noise. 




Henrik B. Jensen said:


> When you look at the Asus motherboards, check the most expensive ones first, because those are most likely to have the features you list above as preferences.


Funny, that's _exactly _how I picked my last mainboard . Good to hear that still works!




Henrik B. Jensen said:


> RAM is too tricky for me to recommend anything.
> 
> It has something called timings which is important and which I don’t know what is best to choose 🙂
> 
> Edit: But Corsair is a good and popular brand.


RAM is one of the components I know the least about. I always followed the recommendation of a friend to buy "Mushkin" and had good experiences with those. I never cared much about the speeds or timings, I just wanted to have lots of it. But I'll need to research this a little better this time. Don't want the RAM to be the bottleneck in such an expensive machine. 




Henrik B. Jensen said:


> But for RAM: If the motherboard has 4 slots and can hold 128 GB max., then you have to decide how you want to fill those slots. You can go 4 x 16 GB and then be maxed out at 64 GB ram, which is what you state you will be fine with. But another route would be to pick 2 x 32 GB ram.


I hear what you're saying, it's a good point. I need to do some research on how this affects performance first. It used to be that 4 was better than 2 on boards that support quad channel RAM, but I've read on a forum that some current controllers clock down with 4 instead of 2 slots used, so that would be an argument for buying 2x 32GB. 




Henrik B. Jensen said:


> This is the case I’d pick if I was you, it’s called Fractal Design Define R7:


They look very pretty, I'll have to watch a review video to see how everything works in detail, but this sounds promising so far. I usually used chieftec bigtowers in the past. They had a good system for screwless mounting of hard drives and a screwless opening sidepanel.





Henrik B. Jensen said:


> The Noctua NH-D15 is extremely popular among Danish pc enthusiasts, that much I know. It is very good at cooling, and quiet.


Have CPU cooler prices been escalating alongside GPU prices? I could swear things like this used to cost like half the price :D. 
I don't overclock CPUs and I rarely run tasks that tax all cores close to max, so I'm not sure I need a high end cooling solution. This one looks promising at about half the price of the Noctua but similar performance: 









Fazit - Seite 9 - Hardwareluxx


Hardwareluxx testet den Dual-Tower-Kühler Scythe Fuma 2.




www.hardwareluxx.de








__





Elektronik & mehr online kaufen | ALTERNATE Online Shop


Online einkaufen beim Testsieger: Mehrfacher Versender des Jahres, Sieger im Webshop-Test! Tolle Neuheiten & Bestseller, ausgezeichneter Service!




www.alternate.de









vitocorleone123 said:


> Currently you’d save money keeping the same graphics card, unless you’re willing to spend $1k or more just for the card.


At first I thought "wait, what?" but then I remembered how those GPU naming conventions always imply way bigger benefits than they actually offer. Definitely worth double checking, thanks! I looked at some benchmarks and for some Blender benchmark rendering scenes a 3060 TI is actually about 3 to 4 times as fast as my 1060. But to be fair the 3060 TI is almost in that 1k$ price range that you mention. I use blender for work sometimes, so this is something that matters to me. For games it seems to be about twice as fast and since I would like to experience ray tracing and propper VR this is what I need to buy I guess?




Things I'm still clueless about: 

-RAM timings, do they even matter / when do they matter? 

-CPU singlecore performance, how do I best compare different models since apparently they don't execute the same number of operations per clock cycle and depending on usecases, cache size could be a huge factor if it helps avoiding cache misses. 

-What am I missing about USB etc. connector availability and other you-don't-know-what-you-don't-know stuff?


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## tf-drone (Sep 9, 2021)

Hi,

I would always go for a silent PC. The noise is zero with a HDD. I did buy here: https://www.silentmaxx.de/


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## MartinH. (Sep 9, 2021)

tf-drone said:


> Hi,
> 
> I would always go for a silent PC. The noise is zero with a HDD. I did buy here: https://www.silentmaxx.de/


Hi, thanks for the recommendation! I was considering them at the beginning, but then I started digging for user reviews and it seems like it often takes several weeks for them to repair a broken computer. I'm also slightly worried if a 0db silent PC would irritate me. I know a loud one would bother me too, but I have tinnitus and I'm used to having the white noise of spinning discs and cooling fans next to me all day everyday. I think with a 0db silent PC there is a good chance I would start thinking about my tinnitus again. But I don't know for sure, never had a chance to test it. One concern that I have with their builds is that without fans running all the time there is much less airflow cooling for components like hard drives that don't strictly need it, but tend to last longer with better cooling.



tf-drone said:


> The noise is zero with a HDD



Do you mean SSD?


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## tf-drone (Sep 9, 2021)

Yes, sorry, a typo. And my mild tinnitus gets louder with more noise - I really appreciate silence form the PC.


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## MartinH. (Sep 9, 2021)

tf-drone said:


> And my mild tinnitus gets louder with more noise - I really appreciate silence form the PC.


That's really interesting! I never experimented much with this, I just thought it's a constant noise and I notice it more when there is less ambient noise. Do you think it would be worth trying to put my PC outside of my room? I recently thought about that as primarily a solution for the heat emission problem. My PC runs hot enough that during Summer my room is very noticably warmer than all other rooms. During winter that's nice for saving on heating but during summer it's terrible.


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## tf-drone (Sep 9, 2021)

Well, I guess everyone is different - but a (loud) PC fan would aggravate me very much. Tinnitus is quiet with noise levels up to 40 dB (Smart Tools "Schallmessung" Android app). Even a fly in the room can drive me mad, I have become that sensitive.


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## MartinH. (Dec 3, 2021)

So, I actually bought a PC. In case anyone cares, here is the parts list: 



Spoiler



AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 3700 AM4 WOF 
Asus ROG STRIX X570-E GAMI. WiFi II X570 
Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 Rev.B bk ATX 
Scythe Mugen 5 PCGH 
64GB RAM - Mushkin 3200-16 Redline Lumina RGB K2 MSK 
SSD 1TB 530/560 860 PROBasic SA3 SAM 
Gainward 12GB D6 RTX 3060 Ghost 
ICY BOX IB-168SK-B 
be quiet! Dark Power 12 850W ATX24 
MS Win10 Pro H-End OA3.0 OEM Alternate 

48 hour stress test
5 year warranty extension

Total cost 3250,- Euro

Could probably have had similar hardware for about 1000,- Euro less if I hadn't insisted on hand-picking each component and having it assembled, tested and extended warranty. But that bit of peace of mind is worth it for me right now. I hope to use this PC for 10 years with only minor upgrades.




It came with Windows pre-installed. I made a backup image of the system drive before I installed anything else. To try if it worked (the first attempt actually didn't!), I restored the backup to a second drive and booted from it. That worked, but I think somehow along the way the bootmanager information got confused, because after I formatted the "test-drive" again, I couldn't boot anymore. I had to boot to a command prompt, locate the EFI volume, rename the BCD file, and execute bootrec /rebuildbcd to recreate the BCD file with correct entries. It boots again, I can not see any problems, BUT I neither know what I did wrong, nor why exactly this fixed it. I have no experience with Windows 10 and I want to know whether I should use that backup image that I created to restore the old state of the system drive from before the boot manager got confused? 
Is there something I should read up on to understand what all this new stuff is?
Also can someone tell my what exactly I did wrong and how I avoid it in the future? I had both drives connected when I tried to boot from the test drive, was that the issue?


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## EgM (Dec 3, 2021)

MartinH. said:


> So, I actually bought a PC. In case anyone cares, here is the parts list:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah, definitely try with only one drive at first as it'll most likely try to boot the old one


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## noldar12 (Dec 3, 2021)

I'm in process of ugrading my PC from 64 gigs to 128 gigs of RAM. The PC is custom built, and I got the additional RAM through the builder (it is yet to be installed, and that will be done locally). It was important that the two new 32 gig sticks matched with the two 32 gig sticks I already had, so that is something to consider if you start by going the two 32 gig sticks route.


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## MartinH. (Dec 4, 2021)

noldar12 said:


> I'm in process of ugrading my PC from 64 gigs to 128 gigs of RAM. The PC is custom built, and I got the additional RAM through the builder (it is yet to be installed, and that will be done locally). It was important that the two new 32 gig sticks matched with the two 32 gig sticks I already had, so that is something to consider if you start by going the two 32 gig sticks route.


I tried for hours to find RAM that was both available at the seller and listed as compatible by the mainboard manufacturer and had the right specs. In the end I gave up and just ordered Mushkin RAM that wasn't on the QVL because that always worked for me in the past. Only got 2 x 32gig because 128 gig seemed more than I needed, but the option to upgrade is still there. I haven't used an orchestral library in years and I've been getting by fine with 64 gig the last decade, don't see why I'd need more suddenly.




liquidlino said:


> My
> 
> Top tip for pre-built is dell. Specially, dell outlet. I used to own my own it services business, had hundreds of different desktops and servers under management. Dell were the best value, most reliable and best warranty service. Usually you get three years onsite, even with the outlet PC's. Buy the business models, because what dell do is put latest and greatest in domestic models, and then the most stable stuff goes into the business models. So if can stretch the budget, a dell workstation from the outlet, will be amazing value. Having said that, I always build my own, as I want to choose every last component. But you already said tax reasons, so that's out.



I managed to hand pick the parts and get it "built to order", so that it counts as a complete PC for tax reasons. Post #24 has the parts list. I updated the opening post to mention I already ordered. Maybe should have made a new thread for my windows bootloader question (also post #24) instead, but I hate cluttering up the forum with lots of small threads.


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