Hey Guys,

In this post, I’m going to share with you guys my journey through the world of PC buying(I know, it’s kinda confusing with all the specs, configs and companies branding the same product in different ways).

One thing to note is that since I’ll mostly focus on the PC I built and won’t indulge much in brands whose components I haven’t used.

4. Conclusion

Background

Everyone has their own opinions, perceptions and needs. I’ll just give you an idea of what a Custom PC is, its advantages and disadvantages and its components(You can give me a bouquet or a brickbat in the comments afterwards :-p).

But before that, to better make you understand why I made the choices I did, I’d like you to know as to how I finally landed on buying a Custom PC instead of a normal PC or an AIO(All-in-One). But if you don’t have much time or are here just for a specific component, click here.

I don’t actually remember the first choices I had. I’d always wanted a PC with good configs, but circumstances didn’t allow me to. About one and a half year back, I came to know about the gorgeous “HP ENVY 34 CURVED AIO” and I almost took an instant liking to it. A never version was released this year and it improved upon the original one in a lot of ways. I spent the next six months trying to figure out how to ship it to India from the states. Why, do you ask? Because HP didn’t release the world’s best AIO in India. Why, HP, Why?

It’s pretty expensive, at around Rs. 1,20,000(Approx. $1800) for the model I wanted, and I didn’t want to risk shipping it through some Freight Forwarder and risk it getting caught up in customs. I finally got fed up and left the idea.

Before I came to know about the new version and after letting go of the idea to get one, I did some research in Gaming RIGs available in India. The best ones were ASUS’ ROG(Republic of Gamers) and ACER’s Predator Series. Recently, I narrowed down to the ROG series but I was unable to find the config I wanted. I also came across a Alienware PC which was the only one in the Indian market and was also pretty expensive. I finally kind of used it as a reference for my Custom PC.

Store

Almost every major city will’ve custom PC builders. In case, you are lazy(like me) and prefer the luxury of online shopping, you can do that too. You can compare prices and be sure of the value you are getting but you have to research the best configs for yourself.

Every major online store like Amazon and Flipkart will have computer components from which you can buy and assemble the components yourself with the help of a few YouTube videos. I’ll try to cover a few components myself below.

But if you think you can’t assemble yourself, there are many online custom PC builders from whom you can get one built yourself. Most of them will do the assembling part for free. You can also buy individual components from a few. But the vast majority of them don’t explain or compare the components, leading to utter confusion. Some of them don’t even show all of the components you need in the site, though you can have one built with one if you contact them.

So the best thing would be to complete the process through International Custom PC builders like Origin PC. They always explain each component and would even go to the level of helping you out from the basics and help pick the component most suited for your use and ensure their compatibility with each other. The only problem with these brands is they focus mostly on gaming rigs, so if you just want a cheap, general custom PC, you had better look elsewhere.

If you happen to be in India, you can go for the following(The following list is not exhaustive, mind it):-

1.The IT Depot

2.PC Kart

3.The MVP

4.Ant PC

5.Assemble Your PC

6.Volted PC

7.RIG Assembler

Components

Now that I’ve talked about the sources to get the components, I’m going to share the options I’d before me and if possible I’ll share some options I didn’t consider too.

1. Processor(Intel Core i7 7th Gen 7700 3.6GHz)

Also known as the CPU, the processor performs the basic instructions for a computer.

Though AMD may give me better value for money, I preferred Intel because of the shear market share it has. More Market = Mostly more support for varied applications.

Now that I’ve narrowed down to Intel, I’d to make a selection such that my processor is powerful, energy-efficient and future-proof. Future-Proof(7th Gen and well, I wanted the latest too), Powerful = i7 and 7700(i9 is just released and is damn expensive and 7700 is in the Goldilocks zone as compared to 7700T and 7700K) and Energy-Efficiency = (7700(Kaby Lake, 7th gen) over 6700(Skylake, 6th gen)).

Note: 8th gen Intel Processors are released on 21st August.

Well, cost too played a factor as I selected i7 over i9 and another thing to note would be that they all are not mutually exclusive of each other.

2. Motherboard(Gigabyte GA-Z270X-Ultra Gaming 7th Gen Intel)

Motherboard is the component which holds together many of the other crucial components and allows communication between them. Hence it can be said of as the backbone of the system.

The type of motherboard you choose depends on our needs. For good gaming with Intel, Z270 will do. There are other options like H270 and Z170 and H270. The options are varied and the performance and efficiency heavily depend on the type and manufacturer.

Initially I’d chose ASUS but it was out of stock. My custom PC provider recommended the present one as it also would be more than sufficient for connecting all my components.

3. Hard Drive(Seagate Barracuda 3TB SATA Internal Desktop Hard Drive(ST3000DM008))

Nowadays the Hard Drive tends to be the bottleneck for performance, not the processor or RAM. Hence a SSD(Solid State Drive) is always welcome, though it’s a lot more expensive. A wise choice would be to have the system files on the SSD and leave the other files to the HDD. This would give the best price to performance ratio. I made a huge mistake here. I thought I’ll sacrifice the SSD, because I thought higher load times is better than paying for a SSD. But now it seems maybe I should have got one considering I’ve got such a powerful build. It just seems to be the only thing missing in my build. Also I may have performance issues with running resource rich applications from my HDD. I may add it in the future though.

If you can’t get a SSD, better get a HDD with high read/write speeds. You won’t regret it!

Coming to the brand choices, Samsung’s SSD’s will be more than enough for an average person. Better get the EVO than the PRO, if the speeds are sufficient enough for you. But the life of the Pro series is longer.

Coming to the HDD, better get one from either Seagate or Western Digital. Both of them are of international repute and have a range of series of HDD’s to match your taste. Always think for the future if you are going to get a HDD since there won’t be much difference in cost between a 1TB and 2TB disk and so on but a new 1TB disk won’t come so cheap.

SDD’S and HDD’s from Adata too are good considering their low cost.

4.Graphics Card(Zotac GeForce GTX 1070 Mini 8GBGDDR5(ZT-P10700G-10M))

So here’s comes one of the most critical part of your system if you are going for gaming. It also happens to be one of the most expensive! Here too at first I’d gone for ASUS but it was out of stock(Damn!). But the Macau company is no less good.

But overall I feel the performance doesn’t depend much on the brands themselves, other than for special features like overclocking.

Nvidia and AMD are the big players here, though you can find Intel’s graphics card integrated into almost every laptop out there, albeit not as powerful as them.

As of now, Nvidia has more powerful and more efficient upper graphics cards, though in the future it may change with the upcoming new graphic cards from AMD. AMD will most likely have better DirectX 12 support too.

For my gaming needs, I didn’t have to look over the GeForce 10 series, with the 900 series being last-gen, less energy-efficient and not that powerful.

I wanted the best so I thought I’d go for 1080 but it was almost double the cost of 1070 with the performance variation not being that much. I wasn’t going to be a serial gamer too, given the circumstances and overall 1070 had better performance than the expensive and energy-consuming 980. At present for playing the best games at good quality, 1070 is the standard. It’s market share also happens to be one of the highest.
If there are budget restrictions, 1060 will also do too, but it’ll be at the border line for playing at high settings.

5.Cooler(Cooler Master MasterLiquid Lite 120 Cooler (MLW-D12M-A20PW-R1))

There are two types of coolers, Air and Liquid, with the latter generally being better. Brands don’t matter much here as long as you get a good enough cooler for your cooling needs. But don’t end up buying from a cheap one as they either won’t have a good life or they won’t be efficient enough that you risk burning your chips.

6.RAM(G.Skill RipJaws V 16GB (1x16GB) DDR4MHz Desktop RAM (F4-2400C15S-16GVR))

Another important component for any computer. At this age and time, 4GB is the bare minimum you can go for(with it being a standard for many phones too). So if you happen to be on a tight budget or just want a normal build, you can go for it, but I strongly recommend 8GB nevertheless as it will be future-proof.

For gaming, again 8GB is the minimum with many games nowadays recommending 8GB as the minimum requirements. So better get a 16GB(8×2 GB if Dual-Channel support is present, it will give a slight performance boost) or 32GB, if you have got money to burn. You won’t regret it. And also better get DDR4.

7.Power Supply(Cooler Master Storm Edition GX 650W Power Supply (RS650-ACAAB3-UK))

A General PC don’t require a separate power supply, but if you are going for a demanding one, first find out the total power of your components and buy a power supply whose rating is roughly twice this value for maximum efficiency and room for later expansion. You can use the below link to check the total power of your system.

https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

8.Computer Cabinet(NZXT S340 Elite Tempered Glass Compact ATX Mid-Tower with VR Support – Matte Black)

Well, here we come to the most beautiful physical part of your build, and also the one in which we can choose whatever we like without any restrictions. Well almost! If your configs are high rated, go for a larger volume cabinet which will allow good air-flow. That’s about the only restriction you will have.

9.Monitor(Samsung 24 inch Curved Gaming Monitor (LC24FG70FQWXXL)

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Here come the other beauty, though technically it’s not a part of our rig although we may generally consider it to be so.

If you don’t have a High-Def Large-Sized TV in your home, please don’t get a small sized monitor like the above one. I only got this 24 inch monitor because it was the best curved monitor I could find at the particular cost. Also I could connect to my larger TV too or to my Home-Theater system.

But I got to accept, when I received the monitor, I didn’t expect it to be so small(not bad, but the height of the monitor feels too short).

Also go for a monitor which supports G-Sync or Free-Sync, if you are getting a Nvidia or AMD Graphics Card respectively. They help reduce or remove screen tearing. But it’s not as important as a high quality monitor(The above monitor supports Free-Sync whereas I am using a Nvidia graphics card!). As long as you happen to be a casual gamer, any HD monitor would do.

Coming to the planeness of a monitor, it’s all about your personal feel. I personally love FPS games and have a feeling that they are best played in a immersive environment(almost). But at the same time it’s possible to get a larger and better monitor at the same price, if you don’t need that immersive “feeling”.