Decision has been made. You are going to buy a PC. Now, two choices exist. You can either buy one that is already prebuilt or you can go on an adventure of building it yourself. Buying one already prebuilt sounds boring. Also building it yourself at first seems like a tricky task. Surely, challenges exist. Building the optimal configuration according to the specific requirements and use cases while staying inside the budget. Wherever caution exists, potential to grow is also around the corner. In the end, life is too short to miss good adventures. Building a custom PC is definitely one of them.
This will be a retrospective guide on a custom pc build I have made back in 2016. Looking back, I have completed all major specifics I’ve wanted to complete regarding this configuration, as it still serves me very well. Naturally, I have thought that it would be beneficial to write a guide through the decisions and why have such been made. Follow along, keep in mind your potential requirements and the answers will come. You will sense, feel where decision could have gone the other way if you use this as a guide, additional help to build your own configuration.
Panther
PC is a good investment
People wait in lines from early morning to get a brand new phone with a fruit logo every year. They are prepared to match 4-mark price-tag, but when confronted with option to buy a computer, they consider it too expensive and are looking for budget solutions. To buy 1000$ phone with two (now even three) high quality cameras to take pictures of oneself, but claiming that personal computing options are expensive is hypocrisy. Choose what you like, but one thing is certain. Computer, computer parts are if anything, have become and are becoming increasingly more cheap while maintaining and even increasing performance levels. It is safe to say that buying a computer is one of the better investments one could make. Often unfortunately undervalued. For a half of a price of some smartphones, you can by a proper computer which will serve you many years while mainting performance level and giving back really good value.
Personal computer is best all-around computing experience. Getting into details would provide a need for a whole different article. To keep it short, versatility of such solution can suit a person who needs computation for a professional work, entertainment or casual purposes. Pricing, flexibility and power is unmatched. What I mean under the term PC is every computing station that has peripheral units independent, e.g (case, monitor, keyboard are seperate). Portable computers, laptops do not fall under this category. Every user comes with their own skills, knowledge, imagination and with different needs of what would system need to provide to fit the objective. However, there is general subset of specifics which targets back almost all users. You want your computer to be fast and powerful as possible or as the budget allows it to be. We can substitute speed by the word responsivity. Hertz-es does not mean much to the uninitiated, but the feel of how something is behaving can tell us much more than sheer statistic. To provide an example, it could be better to have slower processor but with faster storage access speed. Tehnically, you have a slower computer, but it loads faster, and with that comes the feeling of speed.
Requirements
At first take, one might think that by being a developer, you do fall under specific group of users with certain requirements. Well that is not the whole truth. Latest systems are more than capable of suiting for the latest general development needs on regular, budget hardware. If you are interested in specific branches as game development or machine learning then you will want to check seperate specific GPU units and better processors. My needs are a bit more modest. Just a good old web development, desktop development, quirking around docker containers and virtualizations, so I do not need greatest processor of a generation. However, machine still needs to be powerful enough to provide productive and easy to use environment without having obstacles that need to be fixed with workaround solutions.
CPU
Heart plays crucial role in your system. You start to jog, it pumps the rate up. You calm down, it goes back down. Processor (CPU) is like a heart and brain combined. It is only one part of the system but the most important. It sets the tone and the rate of work for the whole system. Greater the task, greater the responsibility. While PC has a pro for customizability and option for a potential change of parts in the future, be careful here, as this part is rarely changed and upgraded. It can be done, but if there is a component which needs the most time to ponder upon, this is the one. Unlike other components, you can only choose from two options.
- AMD
- Intel
In other markets, there are many rivalries between products and discussion which rival has better product. But here we have general unwritten agreement of users and professionals that Intel makes the best processors in the game. At least, it has been like that. Lately, that confidence has been desecrated as there are many affairs loaded on the leading brand. Few web queries and you will find it (specific critical hardware bugs affecting majority of market share, main executives going out it with cashout before dooming crisis). Intel survived, but in the midst of all that warfare, AMD stepped up and provided reliable and good competition. Nowadays, most processors will fit your use case as they are powerful enough to cover a plethora of use-cases, so it is hard to go wrong here. You should only be careful if you have major demands like, specific gaming, specific-virtualization, industry specific needs. Check various benchmarks how the component behaves, and you will be safe. I opted out for a:
- Intel Core i5 3,30GHz LGA1151 6MB (i5-6600) box CPU
Looking back, I could have went with a less powerful processor at the time, but as a developer, even though I do not have tasks which are majorly more CPU intensive, I wanted to have a safe space. Still, system needed to stay powerful. Picking a processor, which is a little bit ‘over-the-top’ was good decision. Integrated graphics is more than capable of running HD display without seperate graphic unit.
Motherboard
Motherboard is crucial part of the system. 1050 Socket was defacto a standard at the time. 1151 was a newer one, but coming strong. You must be careful when there are newer parts and technologies being introduced and coming in as they are bringing other technologies aswell. It was 1050/1051 DDR3/DDR4 breakthrough. It does not mean much to the user, but caution must be there as one building the system has to make decisions properly to make the components are compatible. Now, you have websites where you can check if something is uncompatible, but still it is good if you read a few articles on what & why. It is always beneficial to learn more about your tools and systems.
- MSI B150M BAZOOKA Intel B150 LGA1151 mATX motherboard
1051 boards at the time, represented minority on market share but it was not hard to find one and MSI Bazooka mATX board seemed like the good option. Supported latest DDR4-2133 memory, not plenty but enough of good ports. Simple, yet good. Most importantly, it has been working solid as a rock ever since. Good product.
Graphics Card
- None
This type of card has been riding since processors began to impose sorcery known as integrated graphics. I picked powerful enough processor that can be combined with many graphic cards in the future, but I do not need it. Plus, you get rid of temptation of playing games for free. One notice, if you plan to use multiple monitors it would be good to equip yourself with a graphic card.
Storage
- Kingston 240GB SATA3 2,5” HyperX FURY (SHFS37A/240G) SSD
Main and only storage component of my system. On the old configuration, my main option was Western Digital HD. SSDs became standard and I switched. Difference in performance is monumental. Nothing but the praises. However, performance is not the most important part of the game for the storage options. Fortunately, it proved to be reliable too. Still, despite innovation, hard drive storage options are not going anywhere soon. Be careful of anyone who is advocating differently for electro-magnetical disks. They still have a good place under the sun. If you have bigger storage needs add to this configuration seperate hard drive option aswell to complement your main disk so you would not run out of the space. I have some older drives with data, shared disks, cloud backup and 240GB was more than enough for me at the time.
Memory
- Kingston 16GB 2133MHz DDR4 (Kit 2pieces 8GB) HyperX
It is all about quantity here. I needed to be careful because of some issues between some boards as DDR4 was sunrising. Other than that, you go with the current standard and you will not fail. One of the simplest, least expensive and best parts to upgrade and improve existing configuration. It would not necessarily improve speed (if frequency is the same) but it would provide better responsiveness (feeling of speed). I knew my needs from the start and went with 2 parts of 8GB. It was a good choice.
Other
Initially I did not have specific requirement for the build. I still needed the power supply unit (PSU) and a case. Based on configuration, I could go with smaller case. Even if you did not intend for the specific small mATX or ITX build it is always good to measure the height and width of the products you are buying, just to be sure. One of the novice mistakes is to buy a graphic card and a smaller case just to realize that card is not fitting properly. I did not have major demanding components and in the end it seems as fairly economic build. I do not have intentions of upgrading anything big in the future. I want my system to be simple, silent and quiet. I opted for:
- Fractal Design Core 1000 minitower for the case
- CORSAIR Power Supply, Builder Series CX 80+ Bronze, 430 Watt, ATX, EPS12V,
I have AOC 24’ monitor which works good enough, an old but remarkable PS2 white/yellow KeyTronic keyboard and competitive gaming mouse leftover by my brother. Only thing I upgraded was my sound system. I threw the old, half broken headphones out and bringed in Senheisser HD 4.40 BT Headphones which I will not include in configuration list. Excellent purchase.
Software
We could go quite in depth here but that would need at least another article. To keep it simple, I did not have gaming intensions and been using Ubuntu since 12.04. Decision was easy enough. At the time, I’ve went with Ubuntu 16.04 which worked good for the development. While you can go now with any operating system, I still recommend linux distributions, especially those based on Debian. Node and Docker worked perfectly without big weird issues which appeared on Windows and even on Mac OS.
Configuration
Full configuration without is provided below in original currency. Prices are with VAT included, without delivery additions. If we convert total value in international currency, we get 544.55€ or 607.48$.
Intel Core i5 3,30GHz LGA1151 6MB (i5-6600) box CPU 1 kom 1633.05 HRK
MSI B150M BAZOOKA Intel B150 LGA1151 mATX 1 kom 583.30 HRK
Kingston 16GB 2133MHz DDR4 (Kit 2pieces 8GB) HyperX 1 kom 634.56 HRK
Fractal Design Core 1000 USB3 minitower kućište 1 kom 306.00 HRK
Kingston 240GB SATA3 2,5" HyperX FURY (SHFS37A/240G) SSD 1 kom 508.00 HRK
CORSAIR Power Supply, Builder Series CX 80+ Bronze, 430W ATX 1 kom 392.76 HRK
Total: 4 057.67 HRK
Raw working mode
Summary
I did not have budget restrictions, neither low or high. Main objective was to pick parts that I truly need for my purposes and filter the uneccesary stuff away. I did not want any additional equipment that I might or might not need. Simple but performant working machine. Still, parts I went with needed to be quality with little room for compromise. Now, after years of serving me very well I can claim that this system proved to be reliable under pressure while remaing silent. Build accomplished all major objectives I initially wanted and is still economic and in budget. Simple but with enough power. It even overperforms in some aspects. I could have gone with the less powerful CPU, but difference in budget would be negligible. On the other hand, performance could have not been this good. Take your time to ponder on requirements but once you are sure what you need, buy good products. Software complied perfectly with hardware and I did not have any issues whatsoever. More specific your build, more skills you need to have and more tradeoffs need to be taken. Take time to gather your requirements, but once set and done, buy good, buy once.