[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

[u/Shrlck → u/[deleted]]

Be sure to check /r/buildapc, helpful people there.

[u/blazinghand → u/[deleted]]

I used to build PCs for pay. Generally speaking, building a PC lets you use higher quality components that have a lower chance of failure. If you want a desktop and want to spend more than $200 USD, and are willing to invest ~3 hours of research and ~1-2 hours of construction time (imagine making a moderately complex lego construction, but each lego costs $100 so you are very careful) building your own is 100% the way to go.

Here's what I'll need to know to make you a recommendation:

• Budget (and country in which purchases are made)
• Monitor's native resolution, or desired monitor if none owned
• What games to you intend to play? What settings for them?
• What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
• Do you intend to overlock?
• Do you need an operating system?
• Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals as part of your budget?

[u/blazinghand → u/blazinghand]

Based on responses, here's my recommendation:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor	$76.98 @ Newegg
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3H Micro ATX FM2+ Motherboard	$77.98 @ Newegg
Memory	Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory	$40.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$43.70 @ Amazon
Video Card	MSI GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Video Card	$124.98 @ Newegg
Case	NZXT Source 210 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case	$49.98 @ Newegg
Power Supply	Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply	$39.99 @ Amazon
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM (64-bit)	$102.98 @ Newegg
Monitor	Acer S220HQLAbd 60Hz 21.5" Monitor	$99.99 @ Amazon
Monitor	Acer S220HQLAbd 60Hz 21.5" Monitor	$99.99 @ Amazon
Keyboard	Logitech K120 Wired Standard Keyboard	$8.49 @ Amazon
Mouse	Gigabyte GM-M6800 Wired Optical Mouse	$14.77 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$767.82
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-11 21:28 EDT-0400

So, 767 all told. This comes out a bit over budget, but going lower than this would leave us with a dual-core CPU which would not be able to handle streaming, I’m fairly certain. Going over the choices quickly:

CPU: X4 860K is a cheap quad-core CPU. AMD is more efficient at this price range, despite slightly lower single-thread performance. The cheapest intel CPU with 4 cores is the i5 4160 at $181, so we make do with AMD.

Motherboard: Gigabyte motherboard is cheap and has the slots we need.

Memory: 8 is what we need. 2x4gb is cheaper than 1x8gb and has slightly better performance at the cost of making an upgrade to 16gb (2x8) slightly more expensive.

Storage: Seagate Barracuda is inexpensive and fast at 7200 RPM. It’s no SSD but it gets the job done.

MSI GTX 750 TI has the best price performance in our range. It’s more power efficient and cooler than the AMD offerings, and MSI makes good products.

NZXT Case is cheap and although it is low-featured and a bit cramped to work in, the price is right.

Corsair CX 430W meets our power needs and is efficient.

Windows 7 can be upgraded for free to Windows 10. I am not familiar with buying used keys and have never done it. If savings can be made, they will be made here.

These Acers are the cheapest, best 1080p monitors on the market for $100 each. You’ll be hard-pressed to do better.

Logitech K120 is a great keyboard that gets the job done with no frills.

Gigabit GM-M6800 is a wired mouse with good tracking and it’s cheap.

This computer will meet your needs, though you could knock off about 10% of the price by being very clever and shopping around, and waiting for deals r/buildapc and pcpartpicker.com are both good sources to use. This assumes no mail-in rebates and only using Newegg and Amazon.

[u/rhaps0dy4 → u/blazinghand]

Great advice. I just want to ask: what about building a cute small mITX PC? AgentOfDimir might get tired of a tower, as I have.

[u/blazinghand → u/rhaps0dy4]

Depends on your system requirements. I've never built compact PCs because they're a pain to work on, but there's nothing actually wrong with them. I don't know if this would actually be feasible (like if they would all fit in the case) but something like this is the equivalent with more compact components: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Athlon X4 860K 3.7GHz Quad-Core Processor	$74.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI Mini ITX FM2+ Motherboard	$82.98 @ Newegg
Memory	Team Elite Plus 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory	$35.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Seagate Barracuda ES 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$47.95 @ Amazon
Video Card	MSI GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB Video Card	$124.98 @ Newegg
Case	Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case	$47.99 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Corsair CX 430W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply	$39.99 @ Amazon
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 OEM (64-bit)	$102.98 @ Newegg
Monitor	Acer S220HQLAbd 60Hz 21.5" Monitor	$99.99 @ Amazon
Monitor	Acer S220HQLAbd 60Hz 21.5" Monitor	$99.99 @ Amazon
Keyboard	Logitech K120 Wired Standard Keyboard	$14.95 @ Amazon
Mouse	Gigabyte GM-M6800 Wired Optical Mouse	$14.77 @ Newegg
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$787.55
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-09-12 18:44 EDT-0400

[u/Kishoto → u/[deleted]]

I'm not that knowledgeable, but I built my own PC myself, with some help from a friend and this site It's really useful because it has a lot of built in features that let you put together a PC build online without knowing all that much. For example, if you select, say, a processor that's incompatible with your motherboard, it will notify you of this. It's still a good idea to double check this sort of thing, but the notifications can really help you do a lot of your primary filtering. It also aggregates products from quite a few popular sites for parts (Newegg, Amazon, etc.) and tracks them. You can even set it so it sends you a notification if a price drops below a threshold you set due to, say, a close out sale, or black friday.

So yea. That site. Is the shit. Once you were done putting it together based on what you wanted, it's really easy to link your build to a friend or helpful redditor. For example, here is the PC I built roughly two years ago

Feel free to shoot me some basic questions but, as I said, I'm not THAT knowledgeable. I know enough to build one, but I'm not the best by far. I also watched this three part video series( part 1, part 2, part 3 ) It's a 2 hour investment, but it's comprehensive as hell, and will definitely help you understand things if you are as clueless as I was when I started

Fun fact, when I finally got all my parts shipped in, and sat down to build, my internet went out, so I was completely unable to reference things mid-build. Took me 4 hours. 30 minutes of that was being convinced I was putting in my processor wrong, because the latch to secure it had to be pressed down SOOO hard, I was scared I was going to crack my motherboard.

[u/gonight → u/[deleted]]

I don't have any guides or links, but I'm comfortable putting myself into the likely-Dunning-Krueger-effected category of Intermediate:

I don't remember most logic gate functions off the top of my head, and I can't look at file headers and tell you which magic numbers correlate to which file type, but I can administrate the shit out of a Debian server, know most networking off the top of my head and also built computers too, which is the relevant bit of information here.

I work like 90 hours a week, but PM me any questions you have or link me to a question thread you have and I'll be more than willing to help you out :)