I prefer building my own and have been doing so since since 1995, and still do.

 

Well, that's gonna be issue for SCAN, they are based in UK, even if they somehow ship to US, probably will cost you enough on top of everything.

I just re-created one of their systems via PCPartPicker, you can pretty much order this at local shop, pay them to build that for you and follow guide to tweak the BIOS, get yourself Oprekin Windows build and follow one more guide to tweak few settings in Windows.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/JRxZ6r

 

Yes, very cheap.
Building and chosing parts is much better, but you need to inform yourself a lot, and search for details about each part. Which sometimes is not so easy. Example : you need to know the speed of each bus of your motherboard, but this info is not always easy to find. So I understand that for a musician it's a bit heavy and some prefer to go for pre-build.

 

Microcenter is having bundles this week
example
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, Gigabyte B450M DS3H WiFi, CPU / Motherboard Combo
191.89
Intel Core i7-12700K, Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Elite AX DDR4, G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB DDR4-3200 Kit, Computer Build Combo
349.99

My pref would be the intel since it has memory also.
Microcenter will build also..

 

Last edited: May 12, 2023

Closest store is 500mi.
unless someone can convince me im wrong, im leaning on buying pro built. i mean im farely clueless about setup. im sure i could connect everything, but thats about it. i dont even know what bios is

 

Sorry to hear the store is so far away from you.

FYI Microcenter will build it pro, but that choice is up to you. I was just trying to give you a place with a good bundle deal for parts.
Plugging things in, there is a little more to it than that. Motherboard mount / CPU Heat sink mount are very important.
If I were you pick your parts and have who ever build it build it to your specs. This way you know what you are getting.
Also if they install a $80 motherboard or a $300 motherboard the labor should be the same.

 

Building your own computer isn't hard -- it's like putting a lego kit together. I've got no technical knowledge at all, but I've built my last four or five PC's.

That said, I don't think you save any money doing it. If anything, I've always found myself spending more money -- because I put in better parts and you don't get the economies of scale that a big company would get. You want a decent case. You need redundancy in your power supply. Don't get that crappy motherboard -- buy that high spec mofo instead. etc.

And the reason you do this is because your computer becomes a living thing. You don't just replace the whole thing every five years. You add more RAM. Newer/faster storage. And when the thing is on it's last legs, you can just replace the motherboard/ram/processor and it's like having a whole new machine for half the cost of buying a new machine. That's why you specced some redundancy in that power supply.

That said, if you don't feel comfortable troubleshooting your computer if there's a problem, then it's definitely worth paying the relatively modest sum that it costs to have a pro build it for you. I've never had a part fail on me when I've been building a new computer, but if it ever happened, you might well be very anxious as you struggle to figure out whether you've broken something, whether you've got a faulty part and if so, which part it might be. It's gotta be worth the £40 - 50 a pro charges to not have to worry about that stuff.

 

i'm upgrading from my ancient (still rocking great) i5-2500/sata ssd system to something beefier. i'm going the 12400/b660m/nvme route. wish me luck yay !!

 

It all depends whether you want the challenge and have the patience and aptitude to endure the learning curve. If so, others can do it, you can.

But if you just want it up and running asap, then take it from someone who has built many systems for myself and others over the years: You could be in a world of frustration if you try to build it yourself without knowledge, ability or experience. I have been called out more than once to a pile of gaming computer parts they can't put together.

Help from a friend could be great or it could be a disaster. A new one, like it seems you've chosen, custom built for you could be the best idea if spare money is there.

But from what you said you use it for, to save money just about any PC built in the last 5 years or so would be fine for the next few years. Just make sure its an i5 or better (or AMD equivalent), 16Gb RAM (if 8, add some) or more with an SSD. Make sure it has built in graphics at least to fall back on. If you want a card, make sure it has one of the basic low end AMD Radeon graphics cards mentioned on other threads here -it will free up some memory but no big performance benefit for audio.

There's no need for heavy BIOS optimisation, for our purposes. Tweak here and there later, maybe disable internal audio. You certainly don't want major overclocking for an audio system, you want stable.

You do want quiet (another plus for internal graphics). In my systems the case fans are removed in favour of good airflow (eg. maybe open a PCIe slot cover), which will be extracted anyway by the PSU fan. I usually swap out the CPU fan for a quiet one - its just four screws. But even most off the shelf systems are fairly quiet until hot nowadays anyway and some have BIOS settings just for that. And/or keep it in a recess/plinth.

The main problem with an off the shelf PC is the manufacturer's garbage plus subscription ad garbage installed on top of the MS garbage already in commercial/pro WIndows 10/11. It can add up to latency.

Whatever you go for, you can do a complete wipe and reinstall on it, if you prepare a USB stick with a fresh version of Windows 10. (I won't be touching WIN 11 for years if ever... and I fix and work on it daily).

The best, leanest, cleanest version for this, to be usable with all current software is the business "Enterprise LTSC" version of 10. The "IoT" variant is still supported until at least 2029. It won't come with any off the shelf computer though, maybe not even from a custom builder (better buy it blank/no OS).

If you want the PC only for music, you could go for one of the slimmed down Win 10 versions mentioned on the "Windows 10 services" thread or ask Saccamano about that. Or for more general use as well, look at the instructions I put there for downloading and installing LTSC.

 

Nice build!

The Dark Rock Pro4 is not the easiest cooler to install.
For coolers I would look at this as a reference: YMWV

Better be safe than sorry.

PURE BASE 500 came with only one fan in the front, I would add one more in the case front
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/fJ4Ycf/arctic-p14-pwm-pst-a-rgb-68-cfm-140-mm-fan-acfan00239a

Tweaks for Windows
https://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=8667750#p8667750

 

Part picker usually has dimensions for most of the parts they list on the site. However definitely check with the OEM's dim's on the spec sheets as well. (part picker has been known to fudge on occasion). I dismissed liquid cooling out of a hat because liquid and electricity in such proximity do not mix well (IMO), so the decision for air cooling was hands down. My first decision for CPU cooler was the dark rock pro. However when I was going about checking specs on the Dark rock pro itself, the system board CPU socket and RAM placement, the type of RAM i was getting, and the dimensions for all those installed components I found the RAM was going to impede into the dark rock pro's space considerably. Hence I had to change CPU coolers to the Dark Rock Slim. With the slim version I had what seemed to be the same efficiency cooling wise, but there was a perfectly natural amount of space left so that both RAM and CPU cooler could co-exist peacefully. The case space was no issue at all because I made certain the case selection was first spacious, and second very future proof.

Moral of the story here - because most of us builders are getting a lot of parts online (sight unseen) while they may seem to work and go together visually (from pictures) at first you must check specs (mainly dimensions of parts) to make certain things will physically fit together in a natural way without having to kludge or force fit.

 

Last edited: May 13, 2023