Speccing and building a PC

[LuckyVanDine]

TL;DR - what are the best three sources to read to learn how to spec and build a gaming PC?

An eternity ago (1980s) I got a good degree in Computer Science, including modules in computer engineering and microcomputing.
Half an eternity ago (90s/early 00s), I used to happily build my own PCs.

Now though, my knowledge is way out of date, and I have recently discovered gaming and would like to build my own PC. There is so much specific knowledge I don't have - types of memory, CPU cores, RTX this, Shader that and DirectX the other, etc.

What are the best (specific) resources I can read that will help me understand the new technology, the language of gaming PCs and so on enough to spec and build my own gaming PC?
(I know about the PC Part Picker site, which is useful to browse, but isn't a structured way to acquire the knowledge, I think.)

[DevaVictrix]

If you were building computers in late 90's/early 2000s then to a large extent, not a lot has changed. SATA, NVME and changes to northbridge/southbridge are probably the biggest changes.

Sounds silly but motherboard manuals make good bedtime reading.

[LuckyVanDine]

Interesting idea - thanks. I was thinking of maybe something more generic, though - wouldn't a mobo manual just tell me about that particular (sub-)architecture, and not much about performance, etc, in general?

[DevaVictrix]

There's more compatibility issues than there used to be and motherboard manuals tend to cover that quite well. For product features I'd go to manufacturer websites first... Intel, Nvidia etc. They'll have lots of bumpf related to feature changes.

[LuckyVanDine]

OK, thanks. It's more the general principles and patents that I'm trying to understand, rather than specifics of any individual product at this stage

[DevaVictrix]

General principles - patents! Good luck

[LuckyVanDine]

Thank you, but I think we are at crossed purposes.

[VisciousFishes]

Do you want a long answer or short answer?

Short answer is Tom's Hardware for hardware comparisons and tech information.

Slightly longer answer - ATX is still a thing for cases and motherboards. Add in slots tend to be PCI-E which are backward compatible. Manufacturers websites will tell you loads of tech information on their spec pages. Pick a cpu, then a mobo and Google the chipset, the c.p.u. and then get you drive, ram and gpu support.

Long Answer- requires loads of questions of you, OP.

[LuckyVanDine]

Thanks. By "Tom's Hardware" do you mean this? https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pc-building-tips-beginners,5816.html

I'm finding that a slightly unsatisfactory mix of both being superficial and making me feel like I'm coming in halfway through a conversation. I see some other articles there but those look like they are deep dives into very specific areas or comparisons between specific products.

What I'm looking for is a beginners program of study, if you like, from which I can learn the principles of what the important parts of a gaming PC are, What the terminology means and so on.

What are the questions I need to answer for the long answer? To be clear, I'm not asking people here to tell me what components to buy to build a particular PC. I'm wanting to find resources I can read to understand how to go through that process myself for any PC I might want to build.

[VisciousFishes]

You have the collective mind of the internet or the collective mind of the steam forums. Just ask your questions. At this point I feel like I am just being used as a replacement for Google anyway. And the real truth of the matter is computing hasn't changed in the intervening time period since your last system build.

DirectX has existed since 1996. The ATX motherboard standard has existed since 1995. The sata disk interface standard has existed since 2000. Pci-e has existed since 1992. The only thing that has changed is the version number which is generally an indicator of transfer speeds. Sata 2 is slower than Sata 3. Pci-e 3 has a narrower bandwidth than PCI-E 4.

If you want a literal hierarchy table of either GPU's or CPU's by performance then you can literally ask Google for it and you will get said data. Like me, Google responds to natural language enquiries.

You can literally ask Google "what is directX" and Google will tell you

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms

Essentially it's an ask and you get situation. Ask Google "what is a multicore processor" and you get this link (among others.)

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/glossary/multicore-processor/

RTX refers to a specific computational operation set that isn't available on GTX Nvidia GPU'S. Or better put - it's just branding at the end of the day. RT just mean "Ray tracing" which is performed on a specific part of the GPU.

You can literally be at the start of the conversation and get all the information you require just by asking the right questions.

[LuckyVanDine]

Googling is fine for the questions that I know I have. I am very confident that there are questions that I need to know the answers to that I don't even know the questions for yet, because I don't understand the domain of building a modern gaming PC. I'm pretty confident there's loads of issues around games that I haven't thought of that I'm only going to stumble into at some point when I find problems in the future. For example it was only yesterday that I found out that there's something called shader that some games expect certain versions of and is only available in some video cards. Now I know about it I can work out how to search for what it all means, but until yesterday I wouldn't even have known it was an issue. I fully expect there to be dozens of other issues like that that I just don't know about yet. I'd rather not find out about them the hard way, by spending a grand on a PC only to find that it doesn't play a load of games because I didn't know what questions to ask while I was specifying it.

I'm getting the impression that no one else knows the answer to the question I'm really asking, which is where to go and get the foundational knowledge. It's ok for you not to know, and not have an answer to this question 😄

[VisciousFishes]

Originally posted by LuckyVanDine:

.

I'm getting the impression that no one else knows the answer to the question I'm really asking, which is where to go and get the foundational knowledge. It's ok for you not to know, and not have an answer to this question 😄

I got my foundational knowledge in the 90's. I stopped building systems from 1997 thru 2010. Since about 2011 I have been building my own systems. I do not have a degree and cannot tell you where I got my knowledge. I am an information magpie. Therefore I don't have resources for beginners.

It's not foundational knowledge you require as you have a computer science degree and knowledge of system building using the modern standards. What you require is gaps filling.

Building a modern computer is like building lego. Everything is pretty much plug and play.

Also, I get the impression you're already gaming on a p.c. which means you have a system spec. Why not just post the system spec and ask "where would I be better spending my money to upgrade this system?"

[LuckyVanDine]

Originally posted by smallcat:

Have fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BL4DCEp7blY

Ah, thanks for this. I don't usually learn well from videos, but I can step my way through this and make notes and then go back and read those.
Much appreciated - Thank you.

[pasa]

Yor goals are too open-ended for a good advice. First maybe narrow them down a bit. Just to build a PC and play games you don't need to know all the details, or even most -- you can just copy setups based on budget target and enjoy. Especially if you can let go of missing 10% of something here or there. And aim to play the game rather than the fps meter or benchmarks to beat the other guys.

If you knew the stuff in the 90s then you can tell a proper review from BS. So you can just google for "<whatever hardware> review" and look into the first 5-10 hits. Not even going into details, just how the content looks, how it evaluates and compares to alternatives. After a few you will get your list of sources from those that passed the test.

If you aim games that are used fro performance measurement, than it's even easier, YT is full of clips comparing the realized performance in different setups. And that is what counts not the PR figures and fancy keywords. For different games you need an extra step of mapping, finding some representative in the measured pool.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Easier to just post your approximate budget and intended monitor resolution and see what people recommend. Plenty of people here who are keeping themselves in the PC hardware loop at all times.

[LuckyVanDine]

How do I determine my "intended monitor resolution"?