Annoying Questions I'd Like Answered...

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Wed Jun 06, 2018 4:08 am

Our local computer repair shop sells warrantied boxes they put together for pretty cheap: ~$300. They do not come with mice, keyboards, monitors or anything like that. But they build for all sorts of purposes including gaming, home business, etc. Maybe you have a place like that near you? I'd call around and see.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jun 06, 2018 6:48 am

Technically, putting together a computer is actually easier than building stuff with lego . .
With lego, you have way more different parts and they can be connected in all sorts of ways.
With computers, nowadays, you are looking at about 1 dozend very distinct parts that usually can only be put together in one single way.
If something does not fit there, it does not go there. If it fits there, it can go there.
But yes, i, myself, have not built my last 2 computers either.
Exactly for the reason of needed blood sacrifice <.<

If you can find a shop with really really reasonable prices and can actually buy all the components you want from there, look around if they offer assembly before delivery as well.
Could cost 50 to 100 bucks to get it done like that, but for me it was worth it more than the time and nerves and blood spilled i would have needed to get this damn monster to run <.<

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Wed Jun 06, 2018 8:22 am

Stahlseele wrote:Technically, putting together a computer is actually easier than building stuff with lego . .
With lego, you have way more different parts and they can be connected in all sorts of ways.
With computers, nowadays, you are looking at about 1 dozend very distinct parts that usually can only be put together in one single way.
If something does not fit there, it does not go there. If it fits there, it can go there.

I'm afraid those are not much of advantages:
-If you buy the computer pieces and they don't fit, then it's wasted money.
-Many human beings will try to make it fit by force.
-Sometimes the pieces do fit the right away but then their drivers are incompatible. Had that plenty of times helping set up computers for the laboratories where I work and then "fun" times looking for the piece(s) that's making everything crash.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Jun 06, 2018 9:50 am

stahlseele wrote:If something does not fit there, it does not go there. If it fits there, it can go there.

maglag wrote:-Many human beings will try to make it fit by force.

I had to push so hard on the last CPU cooler I replaced that I thought for sure I was going to snap something on my motherboard. I stopped and started over so many times that I nearly ran out of thermal paste. I double-checked that I'd ordered exactly the right part. I double-checked the documentation to see that they'd delivered exactly the right part. I double-checked the product itself to make sure the item in the packaging was the item that was supposed to be in the packaging, which was made more difficult by the fact that they were using a single pamphlet for multiple models and the part in the pamphlet was subtly different from mine. Once I confirmed that every single thing was exactly right and finding a sufficiently large enough number of obscure forum conversations boiling down to "holy shit is this really supposed to be this hard" "yes" to alleviate my concerns, I did everything I'd been doing, except pushed harder. That was the correct move.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Jun 06, 2018 10:31 am

Oh, yes, i keep forgetting about the fucking CPU-Installation. .
First time i heard the CRNSH of the Pins being actually BENT INTO PLACE i just about had a heart attack x.x
CPU-Coolers . . i can't really talk there anymore, i have gone to AIO-Water-Cooling, and those are so easy to install with a backplate and a case with a cut-out for doing that . .

dirkformica · Post by **dirkformica** » Wed Jun 06, 2018 6:27 pm

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapcsales/

Product search: Prebuilt.

Links from past week.

Look at comments.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Jun 06, 2018 8:35 pm

Here's the computer I put together a couple years back, it runs Fallout 4 just fine. It cost, like, $400. Partially because I got a couple parts through charity, but even then, it should be well within your budget.

It's the first PC I put together, and it went together pretty easily. The one thing I would advise when you're new to building PCs, after the couple I've put together (mine and a friend's) is to buy two of the same mobo, just fucking in case. These things seemingly long for the death of static, so when you're still new, keep one in its wrap and if the first one fails, or the computer doesn't start and you know everything is in place, take it out, put in the second one, being far more careful, and you should be good.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Thu Jun 07, 2018 2:05 am

Right. So that's a lot. Building a PC is probably not gonna be the route I go, if not for the simple fact that I'm very much so a "instant-gratification" kinda guy, and I've already waited over a year-and-a-half just to get the money ( they're from some bonds that I didn't realize I had, and dealing with the IRS is a pain in the bitch). Anyway...

DSM, that sounds like a lot of good advice. Especially the benchmark info; I'm very tech-UNsavvy. Like, I know how to use a computer, but nothing about the inner-workings or tech specs, so most of the jargon will go right over my head. Like, in the example you gave, I understood everything up to the word Xtreme. After that I was totally lost, so any help in that area would be a great help.

I'm definitely going to do a lotta shopping around... is Best Buy a good place to start?

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Jun 07, 2018 1:31 pm

Shrapnel wrote: I'm definitely going to do a lotta shopping around... is Best Buy a good place to start?

I'd avoid it. I've done shopping at TigerDirect and Amazon in the past, and I've heard good things about NewEgg. When I built my last PC, I got the components from TD. My current PC is a laptop I bought on Amazon.

Iduno · Post by **Iduno** » Thu Jun 07, 2018 5:13 pm

Shrapnel wrote:is Best Buy a good place to start?

That is the wrongest name that anyplace has ever had. They also give bad advice.

GreatGreyShrike · Post by **GreatGreyShrike** » Thu Jun 07, 2018 7:01 pm

In general, internet-only things like amazon and newegg will have prices that beat out local big box retailers by a fairly large margin. Bestbuy is very bad. I looked at a local Bestbuy and other retailers including their online presence and they were awful prices compared to purely online - even with shipping costs. You may be luckier, but it doesn't seem likely. In general gaming pcs from them were both more expensive and have *much* worse selection.

DSMatticus's advice above is really good and I'd follow it.

I did almost exactly what he did with a CyberPowerPC prebuilt. Mine (ordered via Amazon) was also somewhat cheaper than the parts would have been, bought seperately. Mine has done well mostly for me so far - I bought it just over a year ago and the only problem I had was that the cheapo Wifi adapter they supplied died after a few months (which I replaced with a simple ethernet cable). Even counting the cost of the ethernet cable in, I saved a fair bit of money.

Several years ago I bought stuff off of NCIX and I also recommend them as well - I had a good shopping experience with them.

Finally, it's really not that hard to install additional RAM memory if your machine's motherboard supports it and if your machine comes with extra unused slots for it. I did it and it was very easy and simple to upgraded my 8 gig ram prebuilt machine to 16 without a lot of hassle, again ordering from Amazon for the RAM.

EDIT: One big thing with Fallout 4, and bethesda games including earlier fallouts, skyrim, etc, more generally, is that they tend to do a LOT of loading stuff from disk in between area transitions and can have very long load times. If you get a PC with a SSD (solid state disk) rather than a HDD (traditional spinning drive) these loadtimes can be cut down significantly. example from youtube. I personally found this to happen in Skyrim a lot too - load times with SSDs are much much faster than with HDDs.

SSDs are much more expensive per unit of storage. Upgrading from a prebuilt with a HDD to a SSD is not at all hard on a mechanical level (you plug in a spare power supply wire to the drive, and SATA cable, and stick the drive in - it takes like ten minutes and is almost impossible to fuck up) but transferring an windows install to boot off of a SSD instead of a HDD can be a huge pain in the ass more on the software / driver / etc level, and installing windows from scratch is ... more difficult than many people feel comfortable with. If you're comfortable with software stuff but not mechanical stuff you can go for it, otherwise you can get a PC that starts with a SSD if you want one IMO. It won't help framerate much if at all, and many games don't have very long loadtimes to help with a SSD, but it's worth considering specifically for people who are hugely into bethesda's games if you can't deal with long loadtimes.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Thu Jun 07, 2018 7:41 pm

Aside from Capacity per Dollar, SSD are just straight up better in all categories than HDDs.
As soon as they drop a bit more in price, i will replace my 1TB HDD with an SSD just to get rid of that last bit of annoying noise and vibration my computer tends to create <.<
Windows boot from SSD is just nice as well. Even from complete cold start, my win10 is at the password prompt in less than 30 seconds.
And yes, bigger games with huge loading times profit so so so much from SSD installation it ain't even funny anymore . . Some of the games i play on my computer i also tried to play on my laptop. Hardware is good enough in terms of GPU, RAM, CPU, but the loading times from the HDD in the laptop just made me not want to play there anymore . . Seriously . . load times of 5 minutes or more is just unacceptable to me by now x.x

Hadanelith · Post by **Hadanelith** » Thu Jun 07, 2018 7:43 pm

In general, if you're shopping for parts online (which you should) START with Newegg. They have a great return policy and customer service. And reviews on Newegg have a much greater tendency to be from detail-oriented computer people, so you can get useful info from them. Once you pick your part, THEN start comparison shopping - and don't be surprised if Newegg is the best price for at least half of the stuff you're buying.
All that said, if you're buying peripherals and cables and shit, Amazon. They've got them, they're cheap, and free shipping is easy to manage. But definitely consider getting the expensive components from a specialist shop with a good return policy.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Fri Jun 08, 2018 6:37 am

Stahlseele wrote:Aside from Capacity per Dollar, SSD are just straight up better in all categories than HDDs.
As soon as they drop a bit more in price, i will replace my 1TB HDD with an SSD just to get rid of that last bit of annoying noise and vibration my computer tends to create <.<

Why not both? Have an SSD drive for OS and heavier programs, then a big HDD drive for storage of videos/music/photos and whatnot.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Fri Jun 08, 2018 11:15 am

I have, in my big rig, a 256GB SSD for OS and Programs, a 500GB SSD for basically my steam folder and a 1TB 7200rpm HDD as data storage for basically anime torrents and stuff downloaded with jdownloader . .
And the HDD is really really grating on my nerves as of late with the comparatively bad access times compared to the rest of the machine and also the vibrations it creates that actually still manage to make it noticeably noisy in a heavy and sound insulated case.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 08, 2018 4:28 pm

So, going to Can I Run It, putting in Fallout 4, and then clicking Recommended Computers, you get this amazon page, which I sorted by price. So that's a starting place, too, Shrapnel.

Count Arioch the 28th · Thu Jun 14, 2018 12:41 am

There are people smarter and more successful than me here, I have a question. Assuming I wanted a job with computers that isn't programming (I'm thinking computer networks/sysadmin stuff). I know I need more education to get a job like that (I can bullshit my 2 year associate in liberal arts degrees into a surprisingly high number of jobs, but not this one), but I'm a bit lost in how to proceed with that. Assuming the school is not a scam, do I want a certification class or a degree program? The job listings I see say either one or the other, I just want to know what will improve my chances of moving up, I'm bored of doing basic IT and want to move on (not at the existing company I work for, they've done major downsizing twice in the past year and a half so I'm getting my ass out of there).

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Thu Jun 14, 2018 1:00 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There are people smarter and more successful than me here, I have a question. Assuming I wanted a job with computers that isn't programming (I'm thinking computer networks/sysadmin stuff). I know I need more education to get a job like that (I can bullshit my 2 year associate in liberal arts degrees into a surprisingly high number of jobs, but not this one), but I'm a bit lost in how to proceed with that. Assuming the school is not a scam, do I want a certification class or a degree program? The job listings I see say either one or the other, I just want to know what will improve my chances of moving up, I'm bored of doing basic IT and want to move on (not at the existing company I work for, they've done major downsizing twice in the past year and a half so I'm getting my ass out of there).

I write software and got a degree, so I can't speak to how helpful certs are. I know they're useful for some things, but not for anything I've ever cared about doing.

Are there a lot of tech jobs in the area where you're looking to work? Are there a lot of places hiring? I imagine the more work there is, the less fussy they'll be about certs vs a degree.

Eikre · Post by **Eikre** » Sat Jun 16, 2018 6:13 pm

The short of it is that certs will get you actual jobs and you can complete them faster than a degree if you are motivated and intelligent and maybe even know a lot of the shit beforehand (not that it necessarily correlates to what you actually need to know for the test, though).

Once you are qualified for those jobs, a degree may or may not end up being the permission slip that you can take to HR to get into positions that arbitrarily pay 20,000 dollars more per year.

The ideal track would have been to get a four-year and get certs over your summers while living at home and being a 20-year-old that everyone expects to be doing that kind of thing, but I suspect you want to curve into gainful employment as soon as you can at this point so maybe you should think about looking at the kinds of things that people on Indeed.com are looking for any maybe get your A.S. at some point to imply that you have gotten your shit together significantly in the past few years while still devoting yourself to real adult-style responsibilities.

Disclaimer: I live in Washington, D.C. and our employment landscape is warped by comparison to less running-the-fucking-world style localities. You can earn six figures and benefits in a town full of Virginia Tech graduates and TS/SCI cleared individuals by knowing how to do the thing that those guys absolutely do not fucking know how to do, and your prospective employers are very aware that they don't know how to do that thing because they asked all of them long before they turned to you.

Whiysper · Post by **Whiysper** » Mon Jun 18, 2018 8:23 am

Also, most tech jobs want experience rather than certs - certainly for sysadmin stuff, they're only going to care that you have an IT background, a logical approach to problem-solving, and ideally experience in the OS they're running ('Nix, in my experience

).

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Jun 18, 2018 12:38 pm

How much money does the average American make now, in different age brackets and education levels?

How much do they spend on living, rent, how much saved?

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon Jun 18, 2018 1:01 pm

Location will matter a bunch too. In Indianapolis I do well on 50k/yr. in other major cities or California I’d be really struggling.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Tue Jun 19, 2018 7:36 pm

Try this.

US Census PDF

Count Arioch the 28th · Tue Jun 19, 2018 9:22 pm

If you removed my (substantial) medical bills from the equation, 35k is enough to have a decent life in Iowa.

SlyJohnny · Post by **SlyJohnny** » Wed Jun 20, 2018 12:10 am

I want to convert a bunch of 2-4 gig videos into something smaller, like 100-200 meg youtube video quality. VLC will do it, but only one at a time, otherwise it wants to output them all into one big file.

What's the easiest, laziest way to make this happen?