Hi everyone. I've been a console player my whole life, but it's clear that consoles aren't what they used to be. I've dabbled a bit in PC gaming over the years, but I've never owned a gaming PC.

I'm someone who appreciates the simplicity of consoles, so I'm a little concerned I'll be in over my head by diving into PC gaming. I have pretty limited knowledge of PC hardware/components and software/compatibility troubleshooting. I'm also pretty unfamiliar with the longevity of gaming PC builds (i.e. when upgrades are needed). With that said, my fear is dropping $1k+ on a build and having something go wrong with hardware or simply not getting the most out of it because of my lack of knowledge. I'm not really concerned with bleeding-edge technology or even really high end performance for that matter - just a smooth experience.

Does anyone have any advice on a first time build? Or any decent resources to learn more about PC gaming in depth?

Thanks in advance!

Hello; i suggest buying a "pc gamer" setup commonly sold pre-built on many trustworthy sites these days, to have all the power consumption sockets and such handled by professionals. A middle entry desktop unit with a budget of 800-1200$ can last 3-4 years if it is no joke. Personally as specs for 2018 i would aim for an intel i7 generation processor, at least 16go RAM and a NVIDIA 1060 for graphic card, and a confortable 2 GO disk drive storage.

Pre-builts are garbage. Building a PC is easy-peasy and you'll learn something new. Can you put together a LEGO set without catching on fire? Then you can build a gaming PC.

Can always try a site like https://pcpartpicker.com/

I keep hearing that from US PC gamers, so isn't there really a middle road in US? Either you buy an overpriced HP or Compaq mom&pops PC from Walmart with no options, or build a PC yourself by ordering parts from dozen different companies, putting thermal paste on the CPU yourself etc.?

Back when I was still buying desktop PCs here in Finland (nowadays I buy only laptops), I always bought them from some smaller computer shops which gave me some basic setups (they had several, like one basic setup, a beefier "gamer's setup" etc.), and then for extra money I could ask them to replace some components (like a better graphics card, more RAM, a bigger hard drive, maybe even a bigger PSU if I felt the default one wasn't powerful enough for my future needs...).

Then they would put it all together for me and test that it works, and it didn't cost that much more. At least here it didn't seem like I would have saved a lot of money by buying different components from different stores either, usually the component prices in those smaller computer shops were already well competed and margins were low.

I might do some basic "assembly" myself later, like replacing a graphics card, hard drive, even the PSU, or adding more RAM... but I never saw the point of trying to build a whole PC from a scratch, anymore like I'd try to build myself a car from parts. And while it is supposed to be easy, yet I read even in these forums where people's own build PCs don't start (either some compatibility problem with some parts, or some component is even broken possibly) or the CPU is overheating because they put thermal paste the wrong way, and yes I have killed one desktop PC by stupidly trying to ram RAM the wrong way into the slot.

Don't know about US, but in the U.K. They used to have techniques to force you to upgrade like glueing memory into the motherboard. I avoided most pre builds for a long time. Finally brought a vi box, which was ok for a year or two, pretty flimsy though. And this time I went big with pcspecialist, which were excellent, and well built product. So there is still a wide range of quality out there, and that's not mentioning things like Alienware which add 30% onto the cost purely for the alien on the cover apparently (as the hardware is same as lower price versions).

Do you mean the computer store doing the assembly for you did that, or some computer vendor factory? If I saw some computer store do that, I'd demand my money back, take my business elsewhere, and warn everyone in the world not to do business with them. And then i would send a letter full of flaming poo to their doorstep.

I was specifically talking about computer stores which build a PC for you according to your wishes (from the selection of components in their inventory), not e.g. some HP or Compaq desktop which has no options whatsoever. Not sure what was meant by "pre-built", I just took it to mean "someone else but me has assembled the parts together".

To me it seems to be usually the US folks who for some reason recommend building a PC yourself from parts bought from several stores, so I was wondering don't they have such (smaller?) computer stores then that assemble the parts together for little money?

Yes, from stores. Only used a builder company once - pcspecialist - and they have been excellent. Not sure I could bothered any more sourcing, building, testing and all that. Even having all the right tools, you know for that screw that's just too small for standard screwdrivers and has to bend at a 17% angle to get between the hdd and the motherboard - as that's obviously the best place to afix it. All that would just annoy me nowadays.

Australia sells great pre-built pc's that last,if you are lucky enough for two months.Do not buy pre-built but find a trusted builder and build to your specs.Do the research if you wish to go that way or research sites that specialize in building pc's and learn from them.As you are new to pc's,borrow an old one and play around with it as pc's are a whole different world to sitting in front of a console.

Don't ever buy a prebuilt PC. They are always huge ripoffs and they usually contain subpar parts as well. The ones that contain good parts are almost always astronomically huge ripoffs.

Just buy all the parts you want, individually, from either amazon.com and/or newegg.com (they tend to have the best prices and selection). After you receive them, then you can either learn how to assemble the parts yourself via online tutorials that you can find by searching google and/or youtube...or you can take it to a computer technician who will assemble the parts for you for a fee, which will still be way cheaper and better than would buying an overpriced prebuilt piece of crap.

And you will want to learn some of the basics of assembly anyway, because if you don't learn how to do very simple tasks like adding or removing a graphics card, or a sound card, or a hard drive, then you will need to let technicians rip you off for the rest of your life, since you will have to haul your PC to them and allow them to charge you an absurdly high fee to perform simple tasks that you easily could have done at home, by yourself, in 10 minutes.

But some of the other steps of assembling a PC are much harder, like mounting the motherboard to the case, installing the CPU (it's easy if you do it right, but if you wreck the pins then you just lost several hundred dollars and will need to buy a new CPU), applying thermal paste properly, installing the heatsink on the CPU, connecting the case power & reset cables to the motherboard, mounting the power supply in the case, connecting the power supply's cables to the motherboard and components. You might want to let a professional technician do those things for you since they are kind of complicated. But they are learnable skills if you want to invest the time and energy to learn them.

Anecdote for anecdote.

My sister bought a gaming PC fully assembled (to spec) from SystemaStore. I think there were at least two tiers of pricing for the assembly job, and she went with the more expensive "pro" tier.

PC eventually arrived. PC did not boot. Error leds lit up on mobo, screen was blank.

Carefully peeking through the back panel, I could see fucking CPU pins. CPU wasn't seated properly! And yet they had managed to ram the heatsink on it anyway (these tend to be rather tight on properly seated CPUs to begin with..). I'm not comfortable with how loose the heatsink was after I seated the CPU properly. They had forced it hard enough to bend the metal clips.

What a waste of time and money.

As for RAM -- they should have a notch and there's a corresponding protrusion in the DIMM slot so it's simply impossible to install it the wrong way.

Still, it's an anecdote. I'd be happy to pay a little if I knew the shop knew what they're doing, and did a good job. I'm afraid they're working under pressure to get it done quick (cheap), like all things commercial these days. There's also the fact that assembling a PC every once in a while is actually quite satisfying. Cleaning up all the wrappings and packaging material sucks though :)

Most of these are just put it in, screw screws. Most sockets are labeled and there's simply no way to connect them the wrong way. Common sense gets you far -- double check that you're connecting the right thing to the right slot and in the correct orientation, and don't force it if it's tight. Make sure everything's seated properly.

Some heatsinks are a little daunting as they have a springy steel clip that you have to push down with considerable force (often using some tool to get there). One just needs to be careful and find a way to do it without risk of slipping and tearing up the motherobard.

In fact, all of that is pretty easy, if a little time consuming. I'd be more concerned with having to replace a big modern GPU. Some of these are just huge, and underneath they hide a locking tab you must release before the "card" can be pulled out of the slot. Often there's little room to work with, and the GPU is so thick that it completely hides the release mechanism underneath, so you can't press straight down on it from above. You might have only one side to work from when the GPU sits next to a sufficiently large CPU heatsink... Fuck these things :P

So you had a store build a system, and they built it, and it didn't work. (And they probably didn't test it before sending it out.. although there's an ever-so-slight chance that it developed a fault in transit)

What are you paying for?

See my anecdote above.. this is why I build my own systems.

It might've been damaged in the mail. When I sent it back it arrived back at the store with a broken cpu, lying on the bottom of the case (and a broken CPU cooler).
They then put a new CPU & cooler on it and it worked - so no way to determine anymore what made it malfunction the first time.

And I'm still waiting for the mail insurrance to pay for the damage.
I'm pretty sure they tested it (they said they did). It's a small store in my city and I've had only great experience with them in the past. But still, dealing with people is no hard science - you can never be sure a 100% about anything.

They don't charge anything for assembly. Only downside is that they have a limited stock of models/parts.

Depends on the case and how big it is. It was a hell of a job in my old Antec Sonata II. I even had to remove the front fan to fit a GF8800GT because it was so long and the power connector was placed at the end of the card.
It's really easy to do in a Fractal Design Define R5 and a Corsair Carbide 270R. That last one almost looks empty since all the drives are behind the motherboard. I'm glad cable management has improved a lot the last years! No more navigating the spaghetti with your hands/parts...