How to Pick PC Parts?
Are you new to building, or even speccing PC’s? Need a hand understanding what parts are for you – or even just what to look for in a pre-built PC? This video is for you. I’m going to walk you through the main parts of a PC, gaming or not, the order you should ideally pick them in, what sort of parts to look for depending on your use case, and more too, so lets jump into it, but first if you aren’t already, consider subscribing for more videos like this one!
The first part I would recommend you decide on is your CPU or central processing unit. The ‘brain’ of your PC. There are 2 main makes, Intel, and AMD. Some context, AMD is seen as the underdog as they are an order of magnitude smaller than Intel, while still offering some, in my opinion, amazing CPUs. Now the reason I suggest picking this first is that this determines what motherboard, RAM and to an extent cooling, case, storage and psu you’ll need.
In terms of use cases, if you are looking for a refreshed ‘home pc’ for web browsing, maybe working from home, then you don’t need much, AMD do what they call an “APU” or accelerated processing unit, which basically means it’s a CPU and GPU on one chip. Something like their 3200G or 3400G is plenty. Intel also do some options here, but I’d personally vouch for Ryzen in this use case, especially since it tends to be more upgradable in the future.
For gaming, it can really vary depending on your budget. The best bang for buck chip around right now is the Ryzen 3600 and the slightly faster 3600X. Again, Intel have some good options here, but it doesn’t make too much sense to go with them until you get to the high end for their 9900KS, and even then it depends on what you want to do.
If you do CPU heavy work, like video editing or 3d modelling, then the Ryzen 3700X or higher is a great fit. Of course you can still go with the 3600X for 6 cores on a budget, but if it’s a machine you can expense, or just have the cash, then the 3700X with it’s 8 cores, or 3900X with it’s 12, or even the 3950X with it’s whopping 16 cores (and amazing gaming performance too) are all great options.
Next is your motherboard, this is the piece that holds your CPU, RAM, and lets that all talk to everything else. Motherboards have what are called chipsets onboard, which are the chips that let the CPU interface with everything else connected to the board. I did a full guide on motherboards explaining the different names they have, so if you are confused go check that out. With that said, for Ryzen, you’ll either want a B450 board for most budget options, from that home PC setup, all the way to most gaming machines – they have a higher end option called X570 which supports the newer Gen 4 SSDs that are super fast, and can be useful in the more CPU heavy workloads, although not always.
On the Intel side, while they do have different options, I’d generally recommend you just gen a Z390 motherboard that fits your budget, although many pre-built systems may not tell you which chipset they use, and they often use lower end ones to save money.
In terms of brands of motherboards to go with if you are building yourself, MSI, Asus, Gigabyte and ASRock all have great options, with MSI’s B450 Tomahawk Max being a brilliant option for most AMD users. ASRock also do a great set called “Steel Legend”. Make sure to check reviews of the specific board you want to make sure it’s a good fit for the rest of your parts.
RAM is next, this is the short term memory for your CPU, and its important to match the RAM with the CPU you have. For Ryzen, the faster the RAM the better, up to 3600MHz. That’s the sweet spot. You’ll want to make sure the latency, the C or CL number is as low as possible too. 3600MHz CL18 is probably slower in the real world than 3200MHz CL14, there is a relationship between the two numbers, so keep that in mind.
When it comes to RAM capacity, 16GB is plenty for most people, you can get away with 8GB for home PC or low end gaming if you need to, but the more the better, within reason. For CPU heavy work, especially stuff like 4K video editing, I’d suggest 32GB or higher. I have 32GB myself and I use about 28GB while editing these videos, but for larger projects it gets very, very close to maxing out.
Right, next is the graphics card. Now if you are going for that home PC, and picked a CPU with graphics onboard, like the APU from AMD, or most of Intel’s CPU options (anything without an F in the name), you can skip this bit. If you are gaming though, this is crucial. The better the graphics card you get, the better performance you’ll get in games, although the law of diminishing returns is very strict here. A $1500 graphics card only performs about 75% better than a $260 one.
The brands that make them are AMD, again, and NVIDIA. And again AMD is the underdog, although not quite as competitive here. Their RX 5700XT is possibly the best value for money card around, especially in the mid-range, but NVIDIA is uncontested at the high end. A GTX 1660 Super is a good entry point for gaming, or an RX 5500XT.
The actual graphics card brands are pretty numerous. MSI, Gigabyte, ZOTAC, EVGA, Sapphire, XFX and Asus all make good cards, although Asus has had some issues with their recent AMD options so maybe stay clear of those ones.
Next up is storage. For a home PC I’d honestly recommend getting a single 512GB SSD, SATA is fine, and be done with it. If you need more storage for family pictures or bluray rips, you can either add a 2-8TB HDD, or get a NAS (network attached storage) which would let you access all that data from any device at all times. For gamers, a 240-480GB SSD as your boot drive is recommended, with a 2-4TB HDD for games, although feel free to get a larger SSD to store some longer loading games on it if you can.
Your case also determines a few things, like the size of your motherboard, graphics card, power supply and cooling, so keep that in mind. There are some great cases around, and this is really personal preference, so I’ll only give you a few soft mentions. Phanteks’ cases have been some of the easiest to build in ever, the P350X is budget friendly, and the Evolv X is the most stylish case I’ve seen. There are so many to choose from, so good luck!
Once you’ve picked both your CPU and case you can pick your cooling. Ryzen CPUs now come with stock coolers in the box which are generally well matched to the CPU so for a home PC, and even budget gaming PCs it’s not a big deal to get nothing extra. For intel you will want something, a budget option I love is the ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO, it’s easy to mount and performs great. For higher end options you can either get a big air cooler like the Noctua NH-D15, or go water cooling, with something like the Corsair H100i Pro.
And, lastly, there is the power supply. There are a few different sizes, basically there is the normal size, called ATX, then SFX for really small cases. Chances are you’ll only need a standard ATX one though. You have 2 main options here, the wattage, how much power it can output, and if all the cables come pre-attached. If only some are pre-attached, that’s called semi-modular. Full modular means nothing hard attached, and non-modular, well you get it. Semi-modular is fine for the vast majority of builds, you only need fully modular if you want to use custom cables or have enough money to be a baller.
When it comes to the wattage, if it’s a home PC, something like 300-450W is plenty, for most gaming rigs you want 500-650W, and for high end rigs, you’ll want a bit more, probably towards 800W. Anything higher and you’d need to be running a HEDT CPU like threadripper AND multiple graphics cards really.
Right, that’s a run down of what sort of parts you should be looking for when speccing your next PC, if you want to check out any of the parts I’ve mentioned I’m going to leave links to them in the description below, those will be Amazon Affiliate links that will take you to your local Amazon store where you can see pricing when and where you watch this! Otherwise if you have any questions, do leave them in the comments below.
Some parts I can recommend – on Amazon (affiliate links):
3400G: https://techteamgb.co.uk/3400g
3600X: https://techteamgb.co.uk/3600x
3700X: https://techteamgb.co.uk/3700x
B450 Tomahawk Max: https://techteamgb.co.uk/b450tommax
RX 5700XT: https://locally.link/IvoJ
EVOLV X: https://techteamgb.co.uk/evolvxama
P350X: https://techteamgb.co.uk/p350x
Arctic Freezer 34: https://techteamgb.co.uk/freezer34
