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Comment by larrik | Hacker News Reader

Re: building your own:

I'm sure you know that building your own desktop would let you get a vastly superior machine (in terms of raw performance) than buying an Apple. What you may not know, being out of the game for so long, is how much EASIER it is now. I don't build machines that often (maybe 4 in the last 5 years?), but when I do, I do some research, buy the parts, and then put them together. Then it works! In the 90's and early 2000 years, this process was a real hassle.

Sometimes you run into weird issues (especially with weird on-board video configurations), but I've never had them bad enough to make the process longer than a weekend day. (In the 90's it could take a week or more).

Is it easier than buying a Mac off the internet? No. You may easily make up your cost in time with your newfound productivity, though.

(Or you can just install Linux on your Mac directly, instead of a VM).

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This guide has saved me countless hours (people are always asking me which parts to buy). Price ranges/etc included, and it's updated fairly often...

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/af150/The_FalconO6/Curre...

It's mainly the inertia of not knowing where to begin. It's good to know that the process is easier now though.

At the risk of descending into total newbie-land, when you say "do some research" where do you start with that? Has the state of things really moved to the point where I can find a highly rated ATX motherboard, a power supply that won't catch fire, and start plugging in components? My general approach would be to read reviews to find potential compatibility issues, stick with good performance but not bleeding edge, and to stay away from anything in the bargain basement.

(To everyone else who is replying about the 1Password replacement, +1 to all. Thanks. I'll check out those suggestions.)

Tom's Hardware does regular roundup articles for building gaming PCs in a certain price bracket. I use those as a starting point. I've always built my own systems and in the past couple of years it really has become just plug and play. If you are looking to build a linux box the only caveat is that nvidia and intel video cards are generally better supported.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-overclock-perfor...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-overclock-crossfire-s...

Personally, I have my list of trusted brands for each component (which are likely out of date, but whatever). I also poke around Newegg's reviews.

As a general rule, I tend to prefer older high-end components over newer mid-range components. That usually gives you better bang for your buck (since "older" in computer hardware is often a single year).

I never skimp on my power supply. A bad power supply can ruin your whole computer, and a flaky power supply can make it LOOK like another component is bad. Also, I buy the CPU/fan retail box combos, since custom fans invalidate your CPU warranty, and the boxed version has the thermal grease already done for you. This means you throw out overclocking, but you probably didn't want that anyway.

I think the other guides angrycoder and kylek are likely to be more help than I am, though.

"This means you throw out overclocking"

Not necessarily. You can get surprisingly good overclocking results on most Intel chips even using the stock heat-sink/fan these days (and it has been this way for a while, at least since the Core 2 Duo days and even the generation prior to those).

But yeah, for someone who isn't even sure he wants to build his own rig and who won't be using the machine primarily for gaming the overclocking can be skipped without much real world loss.

Ars Technica runs a guide every few months with their recommended components to build a desktop PC at a few different price/power levels. Here's their most recent one, from last December:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2011/12/ars-technica-s...

Their advice is generally really good, so even if you don't end up buying the exact components they recommend, it's useful for establishing a baseline of what a good custom PC at a given point in time for a given amount of money looks like.

As to compatibility issues, if you mean "compatibility with Linux," those sorts of problems are much less common today than they used to be, at least for desktop PCs. Laptops still require some picky shopping if you're planning to run Linux on them (thanks to things like proprietary drivers for wireless radios, grumble grumble), but compatibility with desktop parts is pretty robust.

"Laptops still require some picky shopping if you're planning to run Linux on them"

This is the show stopper for me. I hope it improves since I'm uncomfortable with the direction apple is going.

http://reddit.com/r/buildapc <- everything you need.

Easiest way is just search a price point and steal a parts list. Then follow the youtube guides.

I'd like to second this. I just built a PC through this subreddit and they were very helpful and the resources of past threads are incredibly useful.

I highly, highly recommend http://hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=40 for build your own pc advice. There are some very knowledgeable and helpful people that frequent that forum (in my experience, more technical than tomshardware and reddit).

If by chance you don't find a thread by someone with similar needs and budget(seriously, thousands of these threads), then just start your own and it will be answered promptly.

In addition to the [buildapc subreddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc) you should also check out PC Part picker which will let you choose parts for your system, automatically choosing the lowest price and checking compatability.

http://pcpartpicker.com/

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