Building my own setup, need advice (new)

Hey guys, I've come into some money lately and have been interested in building my own custom machine, figured I should start seriously researching different manufacturers and build techniques, tricks of the trade, etc.

Was wondering if any of the experienced individuals here have tips or resources they use that I can quickly absorb? Anything would be fine, just want to get a feel for it...

I have a background in computer engineering so I will understand most hardware/software terms, throw anything you have at me. I'm happy to learn.

Thanks!

 

I guess the best question to start with is: what are you planning to do with this computer? Is this a computer for word processing, surfing the web and playing Maple? If so, you're not going to need to break the bank on your motherboard+CPU, or anything really.

Is this going to be a media server? Then let's work on getting as much storage crammed into this as possible, etc.

 

To be honest, I wasn't thinking much about the sorts of tasks I'd like to do on it, I was more interested in the experience of researching and understanding the capabilities and competencies of different hardware components/manufacturers, learn how to run and evaluate performance benchmarks, etc...

But let's say that I'll mostly be using it for everyday tasks, at least for this first build. I may run some virtual machines, partition my hard drive, dual boot, etc. As much utility as I can get without straying into the territory of intense processing.

Eventually I'll want to work my way up to builds that can handle higher loads and maximize performance, etc.

 

If it's just messing around/running VMs, I would look into getting a processor with as many cores as possible. Don't focus on clock speed, as you can't divide the clock as easily between VMs as you can cores. Additionally, get as much RAM as you can to support running multiple VMs at once. Additionally, you'll need a lot of storage to accomodate the virtual disks for each VM. Since you will need to value hard drive storage over speed, I would reccomend a small SSD for your main OS, and then larger hard drives for storage purposes.

Since you're trying to learn from this rather than get some sort of finely tuned system, do lots of reading into RAID arrays and the different types of RAID. Perhaps you want several drives to mirror each other for backup purposes, or maybe you want to create a mega 20TB drive that shows up as one drive letter in Windows. Or, try to create a hackintosh or learn how to use Linux and terminal.

 

All excellent advice. Thank you. I was also interested in understanding what is generally considered top-tier hardware by most builders, and developing the vocabulary and knowledge-base to evaluate other people's builds and forum posts. Apart from the hands-on experience of building, do you have any advice on how to go about doing that? Is it mostly just reading as much of the topic as I can until I get a general understanding?

 

Basically. I haven't built my own computer in years since I started using laptops as my primary workstation. A LOT of my knowledge came from Googling, reading reviews (especially when the reviewer brought up another product in the review and then I would read up about that product too), and things like that. You really just have to read a lot of reviews, message boards, product descriptions like on NewEgg or if you have one near you, MicroCenter, and get familiar with the terms as well as what it means and how it affects what you want to do with the product.

 

Yeah. I tend to go on sprawling Wikipedia adventures when I'm interested in a topic, clicking on links to other technologies that interest me, and learn from that.

The concept of RAID arrays is very interesting btw, it seems to basically parallelize data processing using some kind of bank switching between disks through hardware controllers? Is it considered a cheaper alternative to a SSD, and would I have to design the functionality myself (like design the functionality of RAID 1 in Verilog, or something?)

Or is it like manufactured pre-programmed RAID hardware that I can buy, which interface with the CPU, RAM sticks, etc?

I'm probably thinking too low-level about this, so disregard if it's irrelevant, haha.

 

I'm not too well versed in RAID since I never did it myself but I think you're thinking too low level indeed. It can be done hardware or software based and depending on what RAID you use, it can make things faster than an SSD.

Here's an example article about how to set up a RAID 0 array and your options to do it. http://www.pcgamer.com/how-set-software-raid-0-windows-and-linux-2015/

Again, I can't stress the importance of not just reading Wikipedia but also actual product reviews and tutorial articles kind of like the one I linked above from a magazine.

 

Okay I see, so it's more of a tip/trick to speed things up using existing hardware storage devices or built-in OS features rather than an actual protocol or design, I was definitely overthinking it.

It seems that software would be the way to go, since it cuts out the overhead of buying multiple SSD's, which could get expensive I guess. Unless hardware has a significant speed gain over software RAID, I'll look more into it.

Thanks again for the article, I'll try to focus more on those kinds of sources.

 

I wouldn't bother with raid unless you have a specific need for data redundancy with large drives (Like a media server) or having loads of money and nothing to do with it. SSD's are fast and cheap enough these days to only need one physical drive. A better investment if money is a constraint would be a kickass graphics card. (looking at you gtx 1080). I'd recommend getting a NAS or enterprise rated regular hard drive for games. God forbid it fails you can always just re download them. Almost all game data is backed up virtually now anyways.

I have 4 x 10Gb VMs that I don't really use. I store them on a HHD and move them over to my SSD if i need them.

 

I know this is old but how did it work out? Had a crazy idea about doing the same....