Typically, pre-built gaming PCs are priced better than custom builds because the manufacturers buy the components in bulk.

My advice would be to get one with the best hardware you can afford, a good warranty/service plan, and add a high-end sound card if one's not included. (A USB model won't void the warranty)


Also, this is a good time to get a graphics card since the next generation is reportedly going to be released in a month or two. Card makers are trying to get rid of their back-stock before there's no market for the current generation anymore.

I'm of the opinion that pre-built PCs are never better than what can be custom built. This is especially true for production-heavy-work like 3D modeling, video editing, video game development (programming), and similarly, modern games.

3D Modeling takes a lot of RAM, I would say *at least* 32 GB, preferably 64; a high-end graphics card, as Flare said the 3000 series nVidia cards are about to be supplanted so a 3070/3080 might be worth it; and a decent CPU, no less than an Intel i7 or Ryzen 7 due to your workload.

Additionally, serious audio production might make getting a discreet sound card a requirement. I don't have any recommendations for those, unfortunately.

I agree that customs are better, but depending on budget adding RAM to a pre-built may be the better option.

As for a sound card, I would advise a Creative Sound Blaster X4: I used to have one, it's an external model that has volume, mute, and mic mute controls on it, in addition to digital AND analog ins/outs right at your fingertips.

AMEN on the RAM part. RAM is probably one of the cheapest things for a new computer (relatively) and there is no reason to skimp out on it, especialy on a work rig.

Also make sure to get warranty on any custom built stuff, shit happens and its always nice to have such things covered.

Other then that figure out your budget and what you actualy "need" and dun get stuff just because.

I build my own mostly because it grants me more freedom to hit certain goals and less fiddling to deal with on prebuilt in terms of hidden partitions and unwanted software. It can be more expensive, but depending on your parts some can cycle to the next machine with little effort. Right now I'm just a CPU away from being set for at least 3-4 more years till people really start to build hardware for the new AMD CPU, and it becomes affordable

Do you have a Micro Center near you? If you do, they are great and can help you a lot in building a computer yourself. Their employees are super helpful, and if you get parts they have in stock (and they probably will), you can even have them put it together and pick it up the next day.

Prebuilds are rarely if ever worth the money. The only time they are is in niche cases like the System 76 machines, which are built from the ground up to be super compatible with linux, and often utilize custom hardware designed for a certain end user market.

Here's some general rule of thumb:

Build around an AMD Ryzen CPU. They are top of the game right now. You might actually want to wait because apparently the next generation that's coming out soon is *another* big step up.

What CPU specifically depends on your use case, but music production is very CPU heavy, so I'd suggest spending a bit extra on the CPU and getting at least an 8 core.

Nothing less than 16 gigs of RAM. 16 gigs is the future proof number right now.

Don't cheap out on the power supply or the motherboard.

For a power supply, *absolutely* get a corsair, and get at least an 800w gold rated one or better if you can afford it. Power supplies are one of the biggest points of failure in a computer, and when they go, they can blow out the motherboard and other components.

A general rule of advice: Always get a power supply that's rated for at least 150% of what you actually plan on using. Power supplies generate more heat and wear down more quickly when they're being pushed close to their limits.

It's hard to suggest a specific motherboard or GPU at the moment... Both due to the market, and the somewhat chaotic state of the technology. Especially GPUs: You have two choices with multiple lines, and they're all a crapshoot at the moment.

AMD and Nvidia GPUs trade blows, but the general consensus is go AMD if what you care about is stability (and ethics, Nvidia is super, super scummy as a company), go Nvidia if all you really care about is raw performance.

Mainboards move fast these days, and like CPUs supply is spotty. The main thing to worry about is that the mainboard itself is of good quality, and the Chipset onboard supports what you want to put in the machine.

I. E. if you're getting a super fast graphics card, or plan on running multiple high speed NVMe drives, make sure your chipset provides the PCI Express bandwidth needed. Likewise, if you plan on doing stuff that needs a whole lot of memory, I. E. something ridiculous like 64 gigs, make sure your chipset supports addressing that much memory.

Likewise, look at how many slots for various things the board actually supplies. Make sure it has enough USB ports of the right type to support all your peripherals, if you want two NVMe hard drives make sure it has the slots... NVMe drives get hot too, so you might want to get a board with included heatsinks for them.

Most of this probably isn't relevant to you, this is just a lengthy way of saying look up the chipsets and other specs on the boards you're looking at, before buying, just to make sure your plans for the machine don't fall into some edge usage case that needs a better chipset, or some extra connectors or slots.

As someone else mentioned, if you can find a Micro Center, ask someone there to help you build a machine. The people who work at Micro Center are actually competent in regards to computer hardware, and they will help you mix and match all the parts.

I'd suggest using PC part picker, nice little website that'll help you price parts and give you a running total of all the parts in the system. You can use this to check the fairness of the pre-built systems on the market.
https://pcpartpicker.com/
I'd also do some youtube research, watch people like jayztwocents, gamersnexus, and hardwareunboxed for reviews on product, CPU's and GPU's and Prebuilt systems.
If you need something right now, I'd go AMD for CPU and GPU is up to you, AMD Radeon 60 series and NVIDIA RTX 30 series are both good options, but NVIDIA is better at reytracing/RTX on with DLSS support.

I built my own system earlier this year.
R5 5600X
BeQuit PureRock 2 Cooler
MSI B550 Tomahawk
Crucial Ballistix 2x8 kit DDR4 3200
XFX 6600 XT (AMD Radeon GPU's are a bit cheaper.)
Samsung SSD NVME
EVGA Supernova 750 GT 80+gold

AMD GPU drivers can be a bit buggy, always stick with the recommended update over most recent update for a stable experience, unless you really want a feature in the most recent update.

Oh for creators i definitely would not advise going for an AMD GPU.
A sad reality is that a good chunk of programs and plugins have lousy compatibility with AMD when it comes to hardware acceleration.
In part due to Nvidia having aggresively pursued partnerships with the likes such as Adobe in the past to make their "cuda" software widely supported.

One is better off absorbing the nvidia premium and be guaranteed to always be compatible honestly.

Yes, but I would say AMD is improving slowly but surely on the GPU end, and is offering a valid option for consumers, it mainly depends on the workload and programs being used. AMD cards can still complete the tasks, albeit a bit slower, and is gaining more support with it's growing popularity on the gaming side. I'm looking forward to seeing what the new GPU's can do, and hopefully AMD is smart about their pricing to put more pressure on NVIDIA with the next generation of hardware. We really need some good competition in the GPU market.

True, but that isn't the case YET. Right now CUDA is very prevalent in prosumer applications and in the absence of a gpu capable of such a good number fall back not to a GPU agnostic option, but go straight to CPU based software implementation in place. Which is just horrendously slow to the point it is why i switched from AMD to Nvidia to begin with.

For prosumers. Compatibility even trumps performance a lot of times and whether we like it or not: Nvidia got simply got 100% coverage on that. :/

That's why we need a shift in the market, and if AMD can continue to improve generation after generation, things will pivot and optimizations will happen. Next generation is around the corner, and that makes suggesting an upgrade path a little tricky.

I'd definitely suggest going AMD for the CPU, for gaming and productivity workloads.

Hmm. Would have to see. Nvidia got there because they courted the industries like mad while AMD has often been more passive. Industry/professional solutions tend to be a more Political and not just follow markets or even performance. For now. idk, the next generation seems to not shake things up much on software capability. So im inclined to just chuck in a RTX3060 and call it a day really. Just having any acceleration is enough for these kinds of programs with the final stuff being more often than not the CPUs domain.


On which AMD definitely wins atm. Intel's hybrid approach is great for small tasks and general computer stuff, but for this kind of stuff you want every core to be capable of everything and the R7 and R9 are uncontested on multi-threaded workloads.

Well having made such a PC. The big two is RAM and CPU, with maybe a little bit of selectiveness on GPU.

For 3D-Modelling the more CPU cores you got, the better. Gaming tends to be a-ok with a hexa-core CPU, but for you a octa-core or higher will be better. Memory will also fill up rapidly when doing any creative pursuit really. So ideally 32GB. 16GB is now the minimum and probably not future proof for long.

GPU is a bit problematic. Though AMD is generally cheaper, Nvidia has long maneuvered itself to be the most widely supported by creator software when it comes to hardware acceleration and tends to be worth the extra cost to avoid headaches. I'd pick model of GPU based on monitor. Got a 1080p HD monitor? Then a RTX3060 suffices. Otherwise might want to go a step up.

For music: Well that is mostly a case of external audio stuff. Good studio monitors, a decent capable external "DAC" like a Creative SoundblasterX G5/G6. Don't be fooled by them being USB stuff, they will win from any motherboard.

Other components. Mostly a matter of buying from brands known for reliability. Like a PSU from corsair/Seasonic, Samsung SSD. Toshiba/WD HDD. generally Just avoid budget brands.

got bored and went digging on parts picker and threw these two together
Intel: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/jyoumon/saved/tB9Zcf
Amd: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/jyoumon/saved/NZHt3C

I do 3D Modelling, Gaming and Software Dev. And I built my PC on my own.

Since others have seemed to already made the part list, I'll go with general wisdom.

Buying prebuilt : What to expect
[ Pros ]
- You can get the seller/manufacturer to fix your problem, even for free if it's within warranty.
- Unless you're buying an All-in-one PC, Most of the prebuilts are going to be customizeable.
[ Cons ]
- It really depends on which seller/brand you buy the prebuilt from. Some of them are good, some of them are outright shitty.
- If they think the damage is your fault, you gotta pay pretty hefty chunk to get a fix. Sometimes this can include trying to customize your PC by adding a storage, ETC.
- Depending on manufacturer, they pull some bullshit to prevent you from customizing/upgrading.
(such as gluing a power connector together so you can't swap your PSU out )

If you're building one on your own - Picking the vital parts
[ CPU ]
Most of the time the higher priced CPUs will have many, many cores. (up to 16 currently on consumer-grade). Now having extra CPU core is not a bad thing, But keep in mind a lot of programs are not really designed to take advantage of multiple CPU cores. Plus, more cores, more heat and power required. I have Ryzen 5900X, and to really make it happy i had to get a water cooling AIO.
I would say for your case, 6~8 cores would be sufficient enough, and that way you probably won't have to bother with water cooling either. Get a nice, big and thick air cooler that's compatible with CPU you're buying, and you're set. ( in most cases, up-to-date models of coolers will have mounting system for all existing platforms )
For coolers, Noctua has very performant air coolers. The only downside is their notorious "puke and shit" coloring on fans, But they also have all-black coolers so you can go for that, really.

[ RAM ]
RAM comes in variety of speeds and sizes, But do remember you want to have the RAM sticks in the pair of 2 to get dual/quad channel memory benefits. ( so either 2 or 4 sticks ).
Also do not mix-match the RAM sticks, If you're going to get multiple RAM sticks, get them all in same product. Same speed, same capacity, even same timings. You can still somehow mix different RAMs but you can either get into instability, or non-optimal performance since your motherboard will have to turn all the RAMs speed to "Standard (JEDEC Standard)"
Also once you boot up your system, Don't forget to go to BIOS settings and enable XMP/DOCP to activate full performance of the RAM sticks.

For Brand, I can't say i can give a good recommendation since the best selling RAM here is probably not sold where you are, and vice versa. But it doesn't really matter much since a lot of the brands are basically SAMSUNG/SK Hynix RAM Chips overclocked and put on board. However i highly recommend avoiding lesser known brands.

[ Power Supply ]
Perhaps the most important component of all because if PSU fucks up, everything fucks up and dies or you get a house fire.

A nice power supply is usually heavy and big because it will hold a LOT of components inside. First sign of a good power supply is 80+ Certification (which comes in bronze,silver,gold,platinum,titanium tier). Most of 100+$ PSUs will have them.

One thing to note about Power supply is that the rated wattage of the PSU is the maximum output. Meaning even if you buy, say 2000W Power supply, if you use only 500 Watts, that's what you're using.

So my suggestion is to buy a power supply that's got a bit more capacity than what you're actually using as power supplies perform the best at somewhere around 50~70% load, and also for futureproofing. Though at this time future proofing won't be very valid since they're releasing the new ATX 3.0 Standard Power supplies with the new power connector that will fit the new GPUs. ( Though sellers are also preparing adapters for it )

For your case i recommend getting somewhere around 850W power supply. There are many great brands that make a good power supply. Few of my picks are :

1. FSP, Antec ( They're pretty much stable as a rock )
2. Corsair, Cooler Master, Super Flower ( They get OEMs from pretty stable manufacturer )

[ Motherboard ]
Now some people may disagree but motherboard is also a worth while investment. higher priced motherboards will have better connectivity, I/O, and power delivery to your CPU (meaning you'll get more performance out of your CPU since your mobo can push more power to the CPU. )
For example, I previously used a $150 mobo, then upgraded to $500 mobo for few reasons. The newer one can hold more SSDs, and comes with bunch of other connectivity such as built-in WIFI 6, Bluetooth, 10G Lan, and even 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports along with extra M.2 Slot for extra SSD.
Plus protection. one of computer's worst enemy is electric shock. It can either happen because of ESD (Electrostatic Discharge) or in case of thunderstorms ( thunder hitting power/phone line and discharging to incoming power or LAN cables ).
After certain price points motherboards also have protection fuses for these Electric charges to protect the system. Cheaper motherboards usually do not have this.

For brand i recommend either ASUS or Gigabyte. They're the best brands so far in my book.
There's also other brands like MSI, ASRock, But these are 2nd place in my book. Especially ASRock is usually known for making "the stuff that nobody asked for" such as making a server motherboard that fits in a mini cube case.
Other than that there's loads of other brands like Colorful, ECS, BioStar...ETC. These are mostly chinese or not-so-good brands that you'd rather avoid.

[ GPU ]

Now for GPU. This is probably the best time to buy a 30-series card. the new 40 series is coming out so sellers want to get rid of their stock. There are some great deals. Plus the crypto crash means there's a lot of used mining cards out there.

In terms of mining cards, usually it's best to avoid them since they're abused as hell. But because some people got in the crypto pretty late there's been actually stocks of lesser used mining GPUs that even still has a seller warranty. Now those aren't too bad risk to take.

Either way if you're planning to do any 3D modelling at all i suggest going for at least RTX 3080 for 12GB of VRAM. Because when you get more into 3D modelling, You'll realize a lot of these 3d apps are very VRAM hungry. (and RAM too.) and unlike RAM, you can't add more VRAM. You just have to buy a GPU that HAS a lot of VRAM. For this reason i got myself a 3090, But you don't really have to go that far if you're not working on something that's very detail intensive.

In terms of brand, I highly recommend ASUS again, since they make the most stable cards. Gigabyte and MSI also makes good cards. Zotac is a maybe. (there was previously EVGA but they aren't making graphic cards anymore )

[ Storage ]
Simple : Get a fast NVMe drive for booting, and get a nice fat HDD for everything else.
SSD is great for speeds ( and longevity , actually ) But they're not that cheap per Gigabytes. The most benefit you'd get is when you use it as boot drive. in other cases, Hard Disk would serve just fine. In fact, for gaming putting your games on SSD provides almost no advantage whatsoever.
When looking for SSDs, Check whether the drive has DRAM Cache. Some drives do not have them, and that's a big No-No for most cases. Also, SSDs are now either in TLC or QLC. I'd recommend getting one with TLC since that will last longer.

In terms of brand,
For SSD - Samsung makes the best drives. But WD is also a solid choice. (But avoid Green)
For HDD - Get WD. But don't get WD green drives. Either get WD Blue/Black or UltraStar.
For both - Avoid Seagate. They've had highest failure rates for a while. I had one die on me too.

Feel free to poke me if you have more questions.

Thank you for the full on essay! This is the most helpful reply I've gotten. Very impartial. I'll continue my research with this invaluable personal experience in mind!