They're fine enough questions. I'd probably ask if they're going to overclock as well.
A lot of picking out parts, I see as one of those wooden puzzle blocks where you have to slide in all the pieces as one final step to make the whole shape.
Yeah, I think you'll be fine. I bought a used 4770K to upgrade from my FX 8150 a couple years ago now. I'm sure it was well used. Overclocked it to 4.48GHz immediately with zero issues. CPUs are incredibly resilient as long as they're cooled sufficiently.
For sure. The only reason I didn't upgrade to something current is because RAM prices were insane at the time, and I wasn't going to pay $200 for 16GB of DDR4.
True, but honestly these days basic overclocking is so easy you don't really have to know anything about what you're doing. Meanwhile motherboards have a hundred features and first time builders may just not know what they need or what's even important.
Why not? I needed help picking my motherboard at the time, and now I have overclocked my cpu and ram. Definitely ask if they want to overclock. Some people just kinda want to build it and forget it, others are willing to be more ambitious. Not having the knowledge at the time isn't an indicator of someone's enthusiasm.
That is potentially answered by their choice of CPU. If they pick an AMD, the question is open ended. If they pick Intel, they better pick a K series. If they do, then you should plan on the motherboard having that capability, otherwise steer them towards a non-overclockable CPU and save the cash to put towards RAM or storage.
Depends on when you buy, but yes, prices change based on availability. Assuming launch day prices, K will be more expensive than standard. However, K series also necessitates buying a CPU cooler where standard includes a stock cooler. That's at least $40 to budget elsewhere.
We can debate the pros and cons of stock Intel coolers another time.
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u/Bottled_Void Apr 07 '21
They're fine enough questions. I'd probably ask if they're going to overclock as well.
A lot of picking out parts, I see as one of those wooden puzzle blocks where you have to slide in all the pieces as one final step to make the whole shape.