Best custom PC building company?

[arandomguy]

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.

Just something to keep in mind is actual street prices of AMD vs Intel due to the current market conditions. While the general rule of thumb was that Zen 2 parts were much better value at MSRPs over Intel, spot street prices over the last half year due to the Covid disruption/mindshare from Zen3 have often created situation in which Intel may not only be better value but actually cheaper while still being faster for gaming.

At this point for the CPU unless you're in a rush I'd wait until at least mid January for CES based announcements.

 

[PSman1700]

It's the best to wait now, some parts are hard to get anyway. Or better said just about anything is hard to get, even consoles. Like the above poster said, if you can wait say half a year it will pay off. It depends on the situation, if you really need something else now then ye.... But if the current system tags along for what you do then its absolutely better to wait.

 

[musicmixer]

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.

We're in the US, and really looking to build a machine that combines bang-for-buck, that will perform well for gaming, and last hopefully 5 years or so. Longer would be great, but probably not realistic. It would be nice to purchase all the parts to do the build ourselves and have a project we can work on together, but it's not a deal-breaker if we end up finding a nice Dell, Lenovo, etc, that fits the criteria. I forgot about Slickdeals. I'll have to get that on my radar again. Thanks!

 

[digitalwanderer]

Yeah, a few months from now the whole price/availability thing should be ok. Hell, I'm hitting up my AMD contacts just to BUY a 6800 right now for near to MSRP!

 

[BoardBonobo]

I just bought a custom build (Ryzen 9 5900x, 6900XT, 32GB) from pcspecialist. That was a pretty painless process apart from the bill that is :/

 

[PSman1700]

I just bought a custom build (Ryzen 9 5900x, 6900XT, 32GB) from pcspecialist. That was a pretty painless process apart from the bill that is :/

Well thats a very high end system you got there.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Well thats a very high end system you got there.

Saddest thing is I built it around hashcat benchmarks and not gaming ones I wasn't quite sure whether it was worth going one up on the CPU to the 5950x but for the price difference I couldn't see the point. I also picked an X570-F motherboard so I could take advantage of the Smart Memory feature. Now I just have to wait for it to be built and posted. It still won't hold a candle to my work beast though!!

 

[Davros]

when you say X570-F is that an updated version of the X570 chipset ?

 

[BoardBonobo]

when you say X570-F is that an updated version of the X570 chipset ?

I don't think so, it's just the name that Asus use. It's an Asus ROG strix X570-F.

 

[Davros]

ahh,

 

[BoardBonobo]

And I've got bored waiting for my PC to be built (still waiting on the 5900X to arrive) and bought a laptop to tide me over i7-9750H with and RTX2060. Stuffed 32GB of ram in it and a 1TB Evo plus (as the 2nd m2). Quite surprised at the actual performance I'm getting with it. Finally get a chance to play the witcher 1 & 2

 

[digitalwanderer]

And I've got bored waiting for my PC to be built (still waiting on the 5900X to arrive) and bought a laptop to tide me over i7-9750H with and RTX2060. Stuffed 32GB of ram in it and a 1TB Evo plus (as the 2nd m2). Quite surprised at the actual performance I'm getting with it. Finally get a chance to play the witcher 1 & 2

Damn that's one of the most entitled thing I've ever heard and I am jealous as hell 'cause it sounds like something I'd do and have my wife kill me for!

 

[BoardBonobo]

Damn that's one of the most entitled thing I've ever heard and I am jealous as hell 'cause it sounds like something I'd do and have my wife kill me for!

It's definitely a first world problem I'm lucky to be working, to have a good job, and a shed load of disposable income!!

 

[Deleted member 11852]

And I've got bored waiting for my PC to be built (still waiting on the 5900X to arrive) and bought a laptop to tide me over i7-9750H with and RTX2060. Stuffed 32GB of ram in it and a 1TB Evo plus (as the 2nd m2). Quite surprised at the actual performance I'm getting with it. Finally get a chance to play the witcher 1 & 2

I've also been eyeing gaming laptops lately. I've only really had one, an ancient Dell XPS2 (17" Nvidia Go6800 Geforce) and really liked it but it was massive. What you can get in the 14" and 15" space now is really, really good. I keeping looking at the ASUS ROG X13 which I absolutely do not need

 

[digitalwanderer]

I like the 14-15" range. Anything smaller is too small for me and anything bigger is just humongous to me.

A good balance, plus they're usually the most economical and can fit decent parts.

 

[BoardBonobo]

I've also been eyeing gaming laptops lately. I've only really had one, an ancient Dell XPS2 (17" Nvidia Go6800 Geforce) and really liked it but it was massive. What you can get in the 14" and 15" space now is really, really good. I keeping looking at the ASUS ROG X13 which I absolutely do not need

Yeah I was eyeballing the Asus machines too, but I've ordered a monster of a desktop machine, in my mind it was either a monster laptop or a monster desktop. Not both. But then I saw the MSI GF65 thin for sale, 200 off list price, and I thought that was perfect. Powerful enough to play most games at a decent quality and, importantly, upgradable. A lot of machines in this price range have started soldering ram in and don't allow for upgrading it. Which seriously limits the usability.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yeah I was eyeballing the Asus machines too, but I've ordered a monster of a desktop machine, in my mind it was either a monster laptop or a monster desktop. Not both. But then I saw the MSI GF65 thin for sale, 200 off list price, and I thought that was perfect. Powerful enough to play most games at a decent quality and, importantly, upgradable. A lot of machines in this price range have started soldering ram in and don't allow for upgrading it. Which seriously limits the usability.

The MSI is a good deal. Whilst utterly trying to ignore the X13, I do have my eye on the ROG Zephyrus G15 (RYZEN R7-5800HS, 3060), a penny under £1,600 - due next month.

 

[BoardBonobo]

The MSI is a good deal. Whilst utterly trying to ignore the X13, I do have my eye on the ROG Zephyrus G15 (RYZEN R7-5800HS, 3060), a penny under £1,600 - due next month.

Yeah the Currys deal is the one I went for. Two m2 slots and 2 ram slots. And whilst I like the look of the ROG, it's a little overkill for what I wanted from the laptop plus 8GB of the ram is soldered on which is something I just don't like the idea of. But that's a personal thing I guess