Best custom PC building company?

digitalwanderer

digitalwanderer

wandering
Legend
I got a friend in Nashville trying to build his 13 year old a gaming rig, and he asked me for some advice since it has been a decade or two since he built one.

They have a PC picker list here, but the prices hurt me, and that was without a GPU or PSU! Microcenter has his CPU/mobo for only about $350 total, but there are none in Tennessee.

I thought this one might be a good one to recommend an online PC builder where you configure the bits and they put them together, they have GPUs in stock helps too.

Anyone like anyone out there? Last time I did it was with Cyberpower and I liked it, but that was back in '99 I think. Any recommendations appreciated, thanks in advance!
 
Is assembling the parts themselves are out of the question?

How about paying pc service guy for assembling the parts?
 
orangpelupa said:
Is assembling the parts themselves are out of the question?

How about paying pc service guy for assembling the parts?
Click to expand...
No, he actually wants just the parts and to put them together but with the scarcity of GPUs I thought this might be a more practical option.

He's leaning towards a Ryzen 5 3600 and a B450 right now, it's for his 13 year old kid who's a gamer and wants to build their first PC. He built PCs, but it's been around 15 years since he has so he's looking for advice mainly.
 
If you/he can go for a 5600x zen3. Its a 6 core 12T, but will outmatch the baseline (consoles).
Over those it will offer higher/longer boost, higher IPC, lower latency and no split and larger l3/ccx.
5600x probably will run above 4ghz most of the time, peaking to 4.6

W10 doesnt really ’reserve cores’ either, atleast not what im seeing.

Otherwise 5800x, more expensive and maybe not all that needed now and then. Go for zen3 atleast, great improvement over zen2.
 
you can get windows 10 for like $10-20
Malo said:
Personally I wouldn't limit myself to a B450 as there won't be any CPU support beyond Zen 3 for it.
Click to expand...
I've heard this over the years (not just zen 3 but with all CPU's) but does a large % of the public buy a new CPU (and throw the old one out or give it away)
I've never heard of anyone doing this, or its never happened in any of my 20+ PCs over the years I've assembled for myself, you get a new CPU = you also get better motherboard/memory.
I used to upgrade CPU's when I was fixing PC's a couple of decades ago for a job for businesses chiefly, not sure what happened to the old CPU's went to china perhaps.
 
zed said:
I've heard this over the years (not just zen 3 but with all CPU's) but does a large % of the public buy a new CPU (and throw the old one out or give it away)
Click to expand...
There were tons of people upgrading their Zen CPUs to Zen+ and Zen 2, myself included. Just because we've been used to Intel's shenanigans over many years doesn't mean it has to be the norm.
 
Malo said:
There were tons of people upgrading their Zen CPUs to Zen+ and Zen 2, myself included. Just because we've been used to Intel's shenanigans over many years doesn't mean it has to be the norm.
Click to expand...
thats all well and good, I currently haev a zen 2, 3600 but thats beside the point (and have often had amd's cpus in the past ~4 I think)
my point is what do you do with this old CPU? is there are market for non virgin CPU's?
OK perhaps there is, I am in the large city of baerclona, now where can I buiy a cheap second hand superhigh CPU from someone here.
I want to upgrade now, what can I do?
looked up I have ryzen 6 3600, socket AM4
how can I get a new CPU and pass my old one onto someone else? where is this market? I have no Idea
Im guessing I buy new for 200 euros and sell my old for 100?
 
Hey guys - I'm Marc, the guy in Nashville whose son is looking to do this build. I appreciate all the input on this. Thanks! And thanks to my old friend, @digitalwander, for starting this discussion on my behalf.
 
zed said:
you can get windows 10 for like $10-20

I've heard this over the years (not just zen 3 but with all CPU's) but does a large % of the public buy a new CPU (and throw the old one out or give it away)
I've never heard of anyone doing this, or its never happened in any of my 20+ PCs over the years I've assembled for myself, you get a new CPU = you also get better motherboard/memory.
I used to upgrade CPU's when I was fixing PC's a couple of decades ago for a job for businesses chiefly, not sure what happened to the old CPU's went to china perhaps.
Click to expand...

I just realized my pc was Intel Haswell then jumped to zen+.

On ps3 / x360 era to ps4 / x1, pc cpu ages really slow. But now on PS5 / Xsx Xss era, maybe pc cpu will age faster? Especially if you play games in high frame rate or play vr games

Hmm wanna sell my old cpu or make a nice display and place them on wall..
 
Oh, he pmed me that he joined but couldn't post yet. He mentioned he was going to be coming back to my area to see his family in about 3-4 months and it might be worth the wait to go to MicroCenter, plus this is a REALLY shitty time to try and get a GPU!

I think in a few months it'll be much better, can't knock his reasoning at all. I'm in sort of the same boat wanting to upgrade my Ryzen 5 1600 and RX580, but everything is out of stock and so jacked up over retail right now. :(
 
Malo said:
There were tons of people upgrading their Zen CPUs to Zen+ and Zen 2, myself included. Just because we've been used to Intel's shenanigans over many years doesn't mean it has to be the norm.
Click to expand...

I think the bigger issue is that usually it's not very good value for money to upgrade just the CPU.

Extreme cases aside, a CPU can usually easily last 4~5 years. Even on AMD there isn't really an upgrade path for that and even if there was, a 4 year old mainboard and memory is going to come with its own set of (big) limitations to the point where you probably want/need to upgrade those as well even though it's not technically necessary.

If you upgrade after 1 or two years, you might avoid that but I always get the feeling that if you upgrade that quickly, you bought the wrong CPU to begin with. Thou of course there are always exceptions such as a (unexpected) big jump between generations. I guess you could apply that to Zen3.

Overall I'd say you are probably better of spending more initially for a system that can last longer as buying two systems over a ~5 year period is probably going to be more expensive that a single, higher end system at time of purchase.
 
In practice planning around future CPU upgrades currently is rather limited due to the upcoming DDR4->DDR5 transition. You're effectively looking at less than 0-2 product cycles now unless you intentionally buy older.

As for the the original question, the best depends on what criteria you're aiming for. Assuming you're in the US/Canada the best in terms of value for the specs is probably to watching something like slickdeals for a deal on a major OEM system such as Dell or Lenovo. If you mean best in terms of "quality" as in closest to what you'd do with DIY then it's what's considered a "boutique" builder such as Origin, Cyberpower, etc. The third option would be more local shops that will essentially assemble via parts for a service fee (some includes in house warranty as well), this would basically be a DIY build in terms of the part selection process, just without the actual assembling.
 
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