As you might have seen in my previous posts, I have been keeping myself busy with lots of sim racing/gaming during those weird times we were in, and still are. It has been providing me with an escape from everything that was going on in my life during those times, since I wasn’t able to play any sports to take my mind off of things, as I have mentioned in one of my previous posts, as well. One thing lead to another, and I still can’t quite believe it myself, that I managed to put together a proper gaming PC, for the first time in my life. In this post, I’ll go through my reasons, why and how I decided to go through with that, and I’ll try to answer the question from the title of this post by the end of it.
One of the first proper sim racing events I have watched, was the 2020 virtual edition of 24h of Le Mans, which, some people will know, is the biggest 24h endurance race in the world, may it be in real life or in the virtual world. It awoke a desire in me to maybe one day participate in it as well, or at least something similar to it, and just be a part of something that big. At the time, I only had my trusty PlayStation 4, which I was, and still am, using for some racing. After a bit of research, I knew that if I wanted to make my wish come true, I needed a proper gaming computer to be able to join in.
I did have a laptop at the time, with decent enough specs, but nowhere near being good enough for that kind of gaming. And since I’m not really that big of an expert on computers, at first, I literally had no idea where to even start in regards to building a gaming PC. I knew I needed a good central processing unit (CPU), powerful enough graphics card (GPU) and enough of random-access memory (RAM), which would be able to run all those games. With so many components out on offer, I was a bit overwhelmed and confused by it all.
When I was younger, and with PC gaming being on the rise back then, our first (proper) computer was gifted to us by a person that was also building his own computers at the time, so he knew what he was doing. A few years later, I bought my very first computer, and I only went with the specs listed and what the salesperson said about them at the store. It actually turned out to be an incredibly powerful computer, but also not too expensive, considering everything. We’re actually still using it at home for some general tasks to this day, something like 15 years later, which, in my opinion, says a lot about the computer.
Let’s jump back to 2020, or rather 2021. 🙂 With my decision to finally start thinking more seriously about building myself a gaming computer. Of course I had to do quite a bit of research on all of that. At first, I just thought you can basically get any components you want, in your price range, put them all together and it’ll work. Weeeell, that’s not really the case. There’s really a number of things you have to consider when picking the right components, but I won’t go into all of the details here. Let’s just say, for example, that the CPU you decide to get then dictates which motherboards are compatible with it and so on and so forth.
With the amount of time I had on my hands with the situation being as it was at the beginning of the year, I needed to find some guidance and help on how to actually go about building the computer. Google and YouTube were (undeniably, still are :D) my best friends for all of that. Went over a lot of videos, reviews and helpful tips on how to choose the right components, where to maybe spend a bit more, and where to try and save some money and rather use it on other components. For example: it is much more important to get the best graphics card that you can afford to buy, than spending more than you would need to on something like a computer case. Don’t get me wrong, you can spend a lot of money on a case, depending on what you want to get and how big it would be, but just a simple case, to put all the components in, is just as good and far less expensive.
Let’s just quickly go through the components I have decided to put in my computer. I won’t be going into all of the details of how powerful they are, if you want to check that out, Google will gladly help you out on that one, or put a comment down below and we’ll take it from there. 🙂 I went with AMD Ryzen 5 5600x CPU, ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus motherboard, ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3060 OC Edition, 32GB of Kingston HyperX Fury PC3200 RGB RAM (2 sticks of 16GB), 5TB of storage, either on SSD or HDD drives, ASUS TUF Gaming LC 240 RGB All In One CPU cooler, ASUS ROG Strix 750W power-supply unit to keep it all going and ASUS TUF Gaming GT301 RGB Aura PC case to put everything in.
Those of you that know a thing or two about those components will know that this is quite a powerful setup. Unfortunately, I had to make a small compromise, in regards to the graphics card, because I was too anxious at the time and couldn’t wait much longer and maybe buy an even better one later on, but the 3060 is still an amazing card, at least for how I use it. My initial plan was to build some sort of a budget gaming PC, with the components I was able to find. Have to say that the situation in Slovenia wasn’t as bad as somewhere else in the world. After checking it out, the plan for a budget PC went straight out the window, I decided to spend some extra money and really build a system that would last for a number of years.
I really don’t want to go into the cost of my computer and the whole system in general, because honestly, it’s ridiculous! (I’m not known for doing smart things most of the time anyway. :D) As with everything, the pandemic made everything 100 times worse. People stayed home, needed some good computers to work from home, or kids getting taught online, so everyone either upgraded their old systems or built completely new ones. And that is just the tip of the iceberg, not going into all of the cryptomining stuff. With the production dropping massively, and the demand skyrocketing, all of the components were very difficult to find, and if you managed to be lucky enough to get your hands on one of them, the prices were insane!
And that’s where we come back to the question in the title of this post. Is it worth building a computer by yourself, or better to buy a pre-built one? Well, to be honest, at the moment, and after going through the process myself, I would say that it might just be a better idea to buy a pre-built computer. With some other people I’ve spoken to about this topic, being able to buy a whole system, with a really powerful graphics card and CPU, it cost them even less than just getting that exact same graphics card on its own. On the other hand, if you can afford it of course, building your own system gives you much more satisfaction when you complete the build, and you also put in pretty much exactly what you want, meaning that you can customize it a lot more. I know I was over the moon when I finally put everything together, and pressed the button to turn the computer on for the very first time. 😀 Not just because I (with my dad’s help) have put together a computer and it actually worked properly straight off the bat, but also because this is the most powerful computer I have ever had!
Thankfully, with the situation SLOWLY starting to go back to normal, I’ve seen prices of the graphics cards also starting to drop in the last month or two. Some of the GPUs are even half as expensive as they were when I was looking for it. For the price of my 3060 card back then, and with just a tiny bit more money, I could now get an even better and more powerful GPU. Still, the prices of graphics cards (which are the most sought out component) are too high. I understand that this is just basic “supply and demand”, when the demand is so high, and the supply as low as it is, so I really hope prices start dropping even more and we see a return to normal sometime soon. For now, I’m completely happy with what I have, and I’m sure it’s going to last for quite some time, before I’m going to have to start thinking about upgrading anything in my whole system. 🙂
Blogging with Jure 
I’ve did what you did. I built my system from scratch but I didn’t buy a 3060 because of the price and I refuse to buy one now until it get into my range of acceptable prices. That is close to the MSRP. The good side of buying a prebuilt is that if you look hard enough you could find a system that has a good GPU for a decent price but It will cost you no matter what you do right now. I was lucky enough to find a gpu from a friend (Gtx 1660 super) and got it for a good deal because it was used. Although I did it backwards with building I bought my Motherboard because I wanted to find one with the right USB combo’s and then I knew what the CPU I’d have to buy. I wanted to get a log of 3.0 USB connections so I went searching for the Motherboard first. I found a nice B460MDS 3HAC(Gigabyte Motherboard Intel 1200 series). So I bought a Intel 5 and upgraded it to a i9-10850k. So I got enough clock cores and speed. I’d say I was lucky enough to have TPM and Secure boot on this motherboard but I probably won’t use it because I’d rather go with Linux when Windows 10 finally stops being supported.
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Yeah my 3060 was pretty expensive, truth to be told, but it was roughly 25% cheaper than the rest of the GPUs I was looking at at the time.
I agree with your point of view about building your system, I just didn’t want to go into every single little detail that I was looking at when I was deciding about my components. Would I do some things differently now? Most likely yes, but like I said, I went into it by myself for the first time, so all in all I think it came out really great.
With Intel CPUs it is probably better to go the other way round, getting the motherboard first, I would guess? I kbow they have to be very specific for each individual CPU to be compatible with each other, unlike with AMD.
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I’ve built systems before and knew how I wanted Intel. I grew up with Intel all my life and knew it was more stable than AMD. Add to that that I am going to need it for my classes, and I knew I would need a stable system for it. So I went looking for a motherboard with an intel chipset. I just didn’t care which chipset I was going to need to by because it was going to be 9 or new generations usually with new motherboards. So I figured it would be easy to figure that part out. The good thing about Intel is is that it backwards compatible with motherboards so as long as the motherboard supports the gen set than you can easily use it for the motherboard as long as it’s the right socket type. You’d could do the same thing with AMD if you really wanted to because they will at least tell you which socket type you will need and also the generation of minimum generation for the cpu. I think it’s all in what you are looking for when it comes to building a Computer. If you need 2 or more slots for gpu’s, so you can sli them then you will obviously look for the motherboard first before you even think about the CPU because it is getting harder and harder to find a mother with to slots for gpu’s. At least that’s what I see a lot of times.
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Things get a lot easier when you do it a few times before and already know exactly what you’re building the system for. I mean, I knew that part as well, but everything else was completely new to me. I just saw most people recommend AMD for gaming when I was doing my research so I went with it. I also had price and availability tied to my decision, as we all know what the market was like at the beginning of this year. Who knows what I’m going to decide in the future when new CPUs and GPUs come out, might even do a full 180 and go with Intel and AMD instead of AMD and Nvidia, I’m not really fixated on just one/two companies. At the end of the day, price for performance is what’s important to me, as it is for most people I would guess.
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You’re right price and performance is what really matters in the end. It is just something that as a computer technician I would ask them also what they are going to be using the system for and why? That way I could suggest to them what is a better choice because well if you’re going to be gaming than AMD and or Intel is a good mix and it just depends on the situation I am sure. Just don’t be afraid to ask questions when you do it again and find out from others what they think the best systems are right at the moment and then decide on how you want to do it. Also don’t be afraid to walk into a computer repair store and ask questions also. I’ve seen customers come in just to ask questions and leave.
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Oh yeah, of course. Knowing what you need a computer first is probably the first thing anyone should decide on, and then move on from there. I know I would’ve done a bit more researcher, like you said, just walking into a store and talking to an expert, but at the time everything was unfortunately closed. Also now, at least I know what the people are talking about when I hear them mentioning all those names and numbers. Before that when I heard someone mention a 3080 for example, I didn’t even realize they were talking about a graphics card, so I stopped paying attention to the conversation all together. But in the end, it is not as complicated as it might sound, at least that was my experience.
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