Building a PC with my offspring - Help an old dog learn new tricks!

[Disputes]

solid GPU, he's gonna love it. if he has any friends playing id recommend getting a server to play on, theres many good tutorials for running one on your own network, an old desktop or laptop with wired networking would be a good choice and just port forward 25565 to that PC. or you can get a company to host it for your which is much easier and can be much faster for a few £ a month 3-4gb. dont bother with realms that stuff is expensive for what it is

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Awesome cat thanks, lots of reading tonight! The one thing I didn't miss is the ridiculous number of sockets with Intel!

Well,in terms of pure gaming performance a Core i5 8400/9400F or a Core i3 10100F will be better than a Ryzen 3 3100X and also cheaper. AM4 does have a better upgrade path,but Intel does seem to jive better with older engines than AMD does(maybe not so much with Zen3 IMHO).

[DanceswithUnix]

Also minecraft is an openGL game i would avoid an AMD GPU due to that reason.

Take a look at the video link I posted earlier, integrated graphics on a *really* cheap athlon. OK it is gpu bottlenecked, but at around 200fps at an 8 chunk draw distance. The whole OpenGL needs Nvidia thing hasn't been true for years.

Both my kids currently have AMD GPUs, and both play Minecraft. In fact, if you really want to cheap out on a Minecraft PC then running Linux saves you the cost of a Windows licence and the AMD Linux drivers are the main reason I have an AMD card.

solid GPU, he's gonna love it. if he has any friends playing id recommend getting a server to play on, theres many good tutorials for running one on your own network, an old desktop or laptop with wired networking would be a good choice and just port forward 25565 to that PC. or you can get a company to host it for your which is much easier and can be much faster for a few £ a month 3-4gb. dont bother with realms that stuff is expensive for what it is

We have an old Pentium dual core for that. I mean really old, it doesn't take much. I did swap out the hard disk in that old machine for an SSD and, being a server, put Linux on it.

[Waynehwc]

Afaik minecraft java only uses one cpu core? So it should benefit more on single threaded performance. There might be modes for it to work better with multi core if you not in a rush could wait to see what new cpu amd releases to replace 3100x.
Ram you can save some money by going 3200mhz also you can go single slot 8gb and upgrade an extra stick if you need to later for other games minecraft with mods should be fine with 8gb ram. Single vs duel channel should not make to much difference
There are some cheaper b450m motherboards around.
Psu you will need at least 600w for 980ti i think i suggest getting a 700w incase the cheaper ones are around £40 with 80plus efficiency rating non modular or semi.
Using linux is great way to reduce cost windows cost £100+ unless you can find it cheap somewhere. Minecraft supports running on linux fine if not better however not sure about nvidia gpu divers.

On pc minecraft there should be lots of free servers to join and play with friends some with mods enabled. You can setup own server too however you will need more ram and at least decent quad core depending on how many people on it.

[Rob_B]

So the parts are purchased, when the last ones arrive next week I'll build it in secret to make sure it all works then dismantle again ready for Christmas. My wife wanted to buy my son a monitor as he currently games using a PS4 on a TV so if we ignore that then the total came out to £385.

I really wanted to go with Ryzen but due to stock/prices I just couldn't justify the cost. I'll also be able to claim a free Assassin's Creed game with the MSI motherboard for him. I had some parts already which helped knock off a few quid.

If anyone cares the the final specs/prices were:


Intel i3 10100F £74.39
1st Player Rainbow R3 Case £24.19
Be Quiet! System Power 9 500W PSU £39.99
MSI MAG B460M BAZOOKA Motherboard £79.99
2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3000MHz £47.70
GTX 980ti £100.00
120gb ssd (part of another purchase I made) £10.00
500GB 2.5" (had from existing laptop) £0.00
Win10 free/unregistered £0.00
Wifi USB adapter (from the 'box of stuff' under the bed) £0.00
Zalman F3 120mm x 2 £8.50
Total £384.76

Overall I'm pretty happy with that for the price

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So the parts are purchased, when the last ones arrive next week I'll build it in secret to make sure it all works then dismantle again ready for Christmas. My wife wanted to buy my son a monitor as he currently games using a PS4 on a TV so if we ignore that then the total came out to £385.

I really wanted to go with Ryzen but due to stock/prices I just couldn't justify the cost. I'll also be able to claim a free Assassin's Creed game with the MSI motherboard for him. I had some parts already which helped knock off a few quid.

If anyone cares the the final specs/prices were:


Intel i3 10100F £74.39
1st Player Rainbow R3 Case £24.19
Be Quiet! System Power 9 500W PSU £39.99
MSI MAG B460M BAZOOKA Motherboard £79.99
2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3000MHz £47.70
GTX 980ti £100.00
120gb ssd (part of another purchase I made) £10.00
500GB 2.5" (had from existing laptop) £0.00
Win10 free/unregistered £0.00
Wifi USB adapter (from the 'box of stuff' under the bed) £0.00
Zalman F3 120mm x 2 £8.50
Total £384.76

Overall I'm pretty happy with that for the price

It will be a nice surprise for him!

[Saracen999]

I've watched this thread with considerable interest. Sadly, I'm too out of date to contribute advice, but I love the notion of introducing Rob_Junior to PC building. If nothing else, it's nostalgic.

I'm not entirely convinced how much longer it's going to be practical to do this kind of thing for. It seems to be past the peak, and getting to be more and more niche.

Nonetheless, it's still an excellent background skill to impart to the young, and whether it's directly useful in the future or not, it imparts that inquiring mindset that certainly will be.

So, nice one, Rob.

It almost re-kindles the old building habit in me. I've been debating between building or just spec'ing and buying custom for my first new PC in years, and it just might be what tips the balance into 'build'.

On the other hand, I'm getting lazy in my dotage, so maybe not.

Either way, I've enjoyed watching this build evolve.

[Rob_B]

I've watched this thread with considerable interest. Sadly, I'm too out of date to contribute advice, but I love the notion of introducing Rob_Junior to PC building. If nothing else, it's nostalgic.

I'm not entirely convinced how much longer it's going to be practical to do this kind of thing for. It seems to be past the peak, and getting to be more and more niche.

Nonetheless, it's still an excellent background skill to impart to the young, and whether it's directly useful in the future or not, it imparts that inquiring mindset that certainly will be.

So, nice one, Rob.

It almost re-kindles the old building habit in me. I've been debating between building or just spec'ing and buying custom for my first new PC in years, and it just might be what tips the balance into 'build'.

On the other hand, I'm getting lazy in my dotage, so maybe not.

Either way, I've enjoyed watching this build evolve.

Glad I could inspire the younger generation... (sorry, you *might* not be included there Saracen )
I'd been out of the loop for so long but it doesn't take long to get back into it, that's where my new found addiction with mini PCs has come from as I can't justify the cost/space for my own ATX build but if I can 'help' my son build one then great

If I had a bigger budget I'd have loved to build some RGB fuelled behemoth for him but as an intro I'm more than happy with the spec, sure I probably could have bought off the shelf for the same-ish cost but then he'd be getting low end parts and miss out on the furustration and joy of building your own.
I'll try to remember to get some pics on Christmas day.

[Pob255]

I might be a bit late on this but you can get some very good rgb bling for fairly little
I made my first foray into rgb at the start of the year https://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware...e-coolers.html
These are the ones I ended up with https://www.amazon.co.uk/EZDIY-FAB-M.../dp/B07XD19X61 not the cheapest, well £45 for 5 fans isn't too bad, they are actually good fans You can get cheaper but these have the benefit of standard fan headers/connectors
still much cheaper than say corsair and still decent.

For really cheap https://www.amazon.co.uk/ICETEK-Addr.../dp/B08HN1J3SH or https://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-Ad.../dp/B08HGWBFS6 both use the weird 6pin headers (so fans through the controller not motherboard) but £23 for 3 fans.

the biggest headache with rgb is cable management

[Rob_B]

I'm going to leave it up to him with regards to any RBG, mostly because I've spent a lot of time and effort (and money) so I'm passing the torch on now

I set it up today to check it all worked, first I didn't plug in the CPU power, then the same with the GPU.. Its been a while!

It POSTs though, bioses have changed since I was last in one, very snazzy. Next step is to get a Win10 setup onto an external drive ready for install, I'm making him sit though the pain of that

[TAKTAK]

Next step is to get a Win10 setup onto an external drive ready for install, I'm making him sit though the pain of that

It's surprisingly swift and painless these days. Progress!

[Pob255]

I did think about that after I posted it, a potential birthday present later down the line, also you can have him install it, let's get them cable managing young!

as taktak posted win10 install is pretty quick, driver installation is pretty much handled by windows update now too which makes that so much better, although updating is still slow, I still find it best to manually run an update search and just let it run for a couple of hours

ps pretty nice setup there only thing I would of changed is the case but I really dislike cheap cases now, I'd of looked for something better but 2nd hand like I did for my other half, granted she really doesn't care much about cases, but I do.

[Rob_B]

It's surprisingly swift and painless these days. Progress!

I've got a USB stick plugged in currently setting that up Much better than it used to be!

....

ps pretty nice setup there only thing I would of changed is the case but I really dislike cheap cases now, I'd of looked for something better but 2nd hand like I did for my other half, granted she really doesn't care much about cases, but I do.

I'm sure as a 13yr old boy on a budget I might have picked something similar but I tried not to get involved in the case picking (apart from making sure the airflow was 'ok)

[Rob_B]

Well it's built with no real problems, and he's playing Minecraft on it

The case was NOT fun, needs more space for cable management and there is no place to secure 2.5" drives to! Thats the problem with sub £30 cases I guess!

I'm very jealous...

[DanceswithUnix]

The case was NOT fun, needs more space for cable management and there is no place to secure 2.5" drives to! Thats the problem with sub £30 cases I guess!

I think in such times my 3D printer has saved me hundreds in being able to just download an adapter design and print it. Shame the printer has cost me over a grand
These days you can get much cheaper printers though.

Thankfully SSDs are light and don't mind being bodged in place.

[yippyUK]

if you already own a retail version of windows 10, link it to a microsoft account and use it on the new system. You will have to deactivate it on the old system though.