Researching and planning a build - Some questions.

[berserksteve]

Edited this to make it more straightforward - A few quick questions if anyone knows the answer.

1/ Network cards: Will the cheapest £8 option work with Virgin Hub 3.0

2/ Do PCS sell overclocked AMD products?

3/ is there a difference between 2 x 2TB HDDS or 1 x 4TB?

Removed the subjective questions and the ones that seemed like they were related directly to the configurations I have for advice but were mainly my curiosity in wanting peoples thoughts. Thanks for any replies.

 

[Oussebon]

There are a lot of questions there.

I think it might be a lot easier if you give your budget, and your intended uses for the system (just gaming? gaming and streaming to twitch/youtube? other uses as well?) People can then suggest builds, and explain how the builds relate to your questions.

Partly to avoid covering the same ground twice. But also because the answers to your questions depend on the above. "Should I buy a GTX 1080 ti" is one question. "Should I buy a GTX 1080 ti for 1080p gaming if I can then only afford a dual core Pentium and 4gb RAM?" is another question with a very different answer...

What's the budget for the whole system, including the monitor? And what will you be using it for>?

 

[berserksteve]

I appreciate the reply but I have questions because I will use the answers to determine my budget and exactly what it will be used for. Nothing in my query requires more information than given :/

I have read a lot of your posts and feedback already, if I thought you needed more information I would have given it. Most of the questions are yes/no. Was this the wrong place to post this?


edit for clarity : basically while its good to post what i want from a computer or a build and have you fix it, I would rather get the knowledge to make my own decisions firstly, and then if those decisions are wrong they can be corrected and learned from.

 

[Oussebon]

Nothing in my query requires more information than given :/

It does, and respectfully if you're looking to learn then that's probably the first lesson.

You haven't answered my question about any other uses you might have for the system, so it's impossible to answer whether you might want 32gb RAM. Ofc, taking your question in the narrowest terms i.e. "Does streaming need 32gb?" the answer is a straight no.

Unfortunately, I have a full time job, and answering "no" to that question, only to have you then pop up later and say "I'll also be editing videos of my gameplay, as well as streaming" means more discussion with different answers later on. And I don't really have that kind of time to answer multiple incarnations of the same question in the same topic...

So apologies if asking you to be explicit about your intended uses was a problem for you. It's necessary for me to start offering any advice, however, as I'm not going to cover the same ground twice and I'm not sure many other people here have that kind of time either tbf.

As for the budget, that is important. Even if it's just to say that your budget is unlimited. If your budget is not unlimited, then you might find yourself making choices between 16gb and 32gb RAM, and whether or not to get a monitor with gsync... etc... And the answer might be that even if 32gb RAM would be beneficial to your uses, as it's more cost effective to add more RAM later on than it is to replace a 1440p 144hz freesync monitor at £400 with a 1440p 144hz gsync monitor at £550, it makes sense to buy the smaller amount of RAM, and invest in other components....

You're buying a whole system, and specifically a whole system from PCS - whose prices and offerings can be different to what's available in the DIY market or other system builders. So this is another reason why giving advice with reference to PCS-specific examples is sensible.

The bottom line is, I'm offering to answer your questions with the aid of examples. You can take that offer up, or not, it's totally down to you. I hope that helps explain why me asking for more info is to try to be helpful rather than to frustrate you.

And I honestly can't believe I just had to explain this......

 

[berserksteve]

I guess I will go elsewhere then, thanks for your time. The answer you did give to what I asked was exactly what I wanted, a straight no. It may seem unhelpful to you but it is helpful to me as are all the posts you have already made giving advice based on budgets and builds in other threads that I have already read. It was also probably the only question that was pretty unnecessary as it's fairly covered in other threads but I just wanted to be crystal clear. Which is the best part about you not wanting to tread ground twice. I understand, from reading the threads here I see how people just slap things together or don't understand what they need or what their budget can provide and have read your answers.

I mean what more information do you need to know to answer - Does PCS stock Overclocked 2700x ? No? I'm not trying to be a rude, I'm asking strangers questions, that's not my aim but genuinely most of them are yes no, or an opinion on something that doesn't impact the build at all.

 

[Oussebon]

I don't work for PCS, so please do go where you like.

You can also phone PCS or email them if you want advice from someone who works for them.

If you want help from strangers, best not to ask for it to be provided exclusively on your terms btw. Better to actually engage with what's offered.

 

[berserksteve]

I had meant go elsewhere for answer to my questions.

 

[Oussebon]

1) I'm a moderator, not a psychic. I can't see when you're typing a reply.

2) I can't be any clearer on this point:

I will answer your questions (promise), but only in the context of giving advice on a specific spec as it is not worth the time I volunteer to do otherwise. That's the offer. If that's not an offer you want to engage with, completely your choice, perhaps someone else with more time on their hands will oblige. Though tbh I think I have more free time than most of the others here.

 

[berserksteve]

Edited main post.

 

[berserksteve]

It's fine.

 

[polycrac]

1) think so - I hear there are 2 main types (AC and N). The new, expensive cards might require a new expensive wifi, the old (cheap) cards will work on a new or old wifi.

2) Yes, though they may not have that option yet for the very newest ones. Choose the overclocked configurator option, then pick which range of cpus you want overclocked. It tells you how fast they start and the overclock applied ,(e.g from 3.4 to 3.8GHz. One link here: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/amd-am4-overclocked/ but there is another menu for threadripper overclock options


3) not really. If you have two you can seperate out Windows and the rest, making it easier to reinstall Windows, but you could do the same with partitions. Having two also lets you pick a fast one for Windows, and a slower, cheaper one for the rest.

I picked up the above from Oussebon's past posts and may have garbled some of it. He really IS one of the most expert and most helpful people on this forum.

 

[berserksteve]

Thanks for the replies. With the harddrives I was wondering more about power draw/life expectancy, should have mentioned they would solely be storage drives and know about partitioning.

 

[polycrac]

Power draw: no idea but suspect one single 2Tb drive would draw less than two 1 Tb drives. Think the draw is V small compared to the rest of the system (CPU, GPU, case fans etc.)

Lifespan: HDDs are pretty much the same - if it matters then the WD blacks have a reputation for lasting (but also for noise).

If you are worried about recovery then RAID can be used to auto-copy form one drive to another (though no use if your PC gets stolen/explodes) or periodic copying to an external HDD makes sense. General advice would be a small NVMe M.2 drive for the OS and any favored games, then a large 720 rpm HDD for storage with an external HDD (normally kept away form the PC) to back up.

 

[berserksteve]

Cheers.

Related to Ousseban, yep I know he is thats why I just wanted to stop, get my answers for these things elsewhere and come back when I could give him what he wanted. I was deciding on which of the 3 systems we have I would replace and have now so will be able to post fully and very specifically build aim, use, budget etc. Probably the original edited post was hasty/too much just my own weird thought process. That's why I wasn't trying to be rude and just wanted to stop, because I literally couldn't give a budget or use until I decided which we would replace. And my own talk too much/language can be hard to understand at the best of times