Expert mode removes compatibility checks. This shouldn't be the case - as soon as I select an item, it should cull the results and show me only the intersection of items that are now compatible with my chosen piece of hardware.
The lack of an ability to filter. Maybe I want to splurge more on a graphics card, but I need one that has at least 4 mini-display port outputs to drive my monitors. Right now there doesn't seem to be a way to say "show me only gpus that are nvidia, above $500, and can drive at least 4 monitors".
One of the biggest things for me: lack of reviews. You have a pangoly score. That's great and all, but you're a brand I don't (yet) trust. If I'm buying a component that costs multiple hundreds of dollars, I want more than a single score from a company I haven't heard of. I want to know what the reliability is like, and I want to hear it from people who have had hands on experience with it. I want to know how loud the fans are, what temperature it runs at passively and actively, etc.
Visually your site is really nice, but your expert mode leaves a lot to be desired, and I think you have a ways to go before you catch up with the competition. If I were you I would try and find your niche - either target users who are switching over from console gaming, and want to build their first computer, or build out a bunch of more expert features and target regular hobbyists.
1) I really like auto-filters on compatibility. If my CPU and mobo aren't compatible, don't let me put both on the same build.
2) I don't need to see big pictures of most of the components. I might want to see what the case, monitor, and peripherals look like, but I'll only look at the SSD when I'm installing it.
3) I didn't see an easy way to sort or filter by specific criteria. On PCPartPicker, I sorted HDs by $/GB and was able to easily scroll down the list until the first drive that was large enough (1 TB), and probably could have filtered it to only include those. Here, I just have a bunch of hard drives to pick from, in no particular order, without a lot of advanced options -- and I didn't even get many on the screen because of the large images.
It's just a couple steps away from being a really excellent site.
I think your categories are too large - e.g. you show various motherboards but really no way to choose which one you want (i.e. physical size, minimal ports, other characteristics), nor an easy way to select the chipset.
Similarly, the SSD grouping simply had "SSD"s. Again, features like encryption support and/or powerloss protection might be interesting to look at; and even more obviously, I'd really like to narrow down the selection by size.
I saw you preselected the 4770K, yet the 4790K is it's successor (and certainly should be an option).
All in all, I want a system to satisfy various needs. Some aspects I may not care too much about or know much about, so a default choice or bias is fine, but there's almost always some aspect I do care about. And if you really don't care, you should probably look into just buying some ready-made HP or whatever (no idea which brand is best) box, and at least you'll get good somebody to put the thing together for you (and be responsible when it doesn't work).
Unfortunately, almost all such websites are supported by vendors paying to have their wares promoted to users, and letting users _not_ see them isn't what the vendors want. (e.g. in real estate searches, there are plenty of houses that meet all my criteria but which are terrible for other reasons and I'd prefer to never see in my results ever again.)
Does nobody care to check the mainboards support site for compatibility lists?
This one, for example: http://uk.pangoly.com/en/build/configure/pro
When you select the asrock mainboard, you are presented with these three choices of RAM: http://uk.pangoly.com/en/review/corsair-vengeance-16gb-2x8gb...
http://uk.pangoly.com/en/review/patriot-viper-3-16gb-2x8gb-2...
http://uk.pangoly.com/en/review/corsair-vengeance-pro-16gb-2...
And if you venture to that mainboards support site, it shows you a list of compatible RAM: http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty%20Z97%20Professional...
End Result: Not one of the mentioned RAM options is on that list.
Why would that be important? Well, for one thing, it it weren't, there wouldn't be the need for the asrock people to maintain such a list, right? And, speaking from personal experience, I have had brand new builds bluescreen like nobody's business. Was the RAM faulty? Nope, send it back and got replacement of same make/model. Still bluescreens. It was only after I checked the mainboards compatibility lists and chose a RAM from that list when the bluescreens stopped! Nothing else was changed. And both types of RAM were "the same" as far as part pickers like this one is concerned. So, same Type, Speed, Dual Channel etc. The "only" difference here was that the one that caused bluescreens was not on the mainboards compatibility list.
I have built many systems for myself, friends and family since, and never encountered this issue again.
Edit: Although, if RAM is listed on the Pangoly site that is in the approved list, that should be indicated somehow, as it's guaranteed to be compatible.
Yesterday, Forbes did an article[1] about how console gamers are moving towards PC.
I think you could really knock it out of the park if you capitalized on that trend and added a portion of your site for folks looking to migrate. Something that shows how specs from different sets of cheaper hardware could mimic and beat the console they may be trying to migrate from. Perhaps something with a bit more of an educational front to it.
You could even go as far as video demonstrations showing how the performance of a $400.00 PC from your service could rival or beat a console.
There's a big trend/meme on the Internet right now regarding the "PC Master Race"[2] that I think you could explore for some inspiration, if you haven't. The trend started a few years ago[3] but has started to pick up more and more.
You may even find some great success with a section specifically for building customized, beautiful "Steam Boxes"[4] that are starting to appear more and more in living rooms in place of consoles.
[1] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the-c...
[2] - http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/
[3] - http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-glorious-pc-gaming-master-...
I recently got the itch to buy the Xbox One. I had the 360 before it with the Kinect and it was a passable party game machine, but I usually game on an old-ish desktop that maybe I've invested $600 in over the past four years. i5, 7000 series AMD card, 8gb ram, etc. Seems to handle any modern game I can throw at it.
With a copy of Watchdogs that Xbox turned out to be almost $700. Um, sure Watchdogs was fun, but having both just feels extraneous at this point and if I wasn't beyond my return date I'd just get rid of it. Just the price of games alone is rough. With Steam I can usually find a deal, but for console games I'm expected to usually pay full price, usually with the understanding that I'm also subsidizing my console's low price. How is $700 with one game low? You can almost make two mid-range gaming PCs with that if you're frugal enough.
That said, I'm sure it'll be great for multiplayer and kinect games, but with powerful PC hardware being so cheap, it does feel like a rip-off as console prices haven't really fallen in line with PC prices.
On the plus side, it has impressive fit and polish, the media tv stuff is nice, xbox live is well done, and even though the kinect is optional now I really hope they continue to develop games for it, preferable another Star Wars game on the new hardware. I'm hoping I get 5 years out of this system to depreciate the big one-time cost.
I'm just surprised there isn't a competitive $199 console out there. Even if it was semi-disposable (say every 24 months a new model with faster innards) it would still be worth it. I can get a Nexus 7 for that much. Its incredible I can't get a dedicated gaming machine (sans display, sans batter, etc) for around that much. Consoles are starting to feel like those old Texas Instruments calculators that cost the same amount and have the same exact features as the ones sold 20+ years ago.
Buying a new console < 1 year after release is the equivalent of buying a new $1K+ gaming PC with a top-of-the-line video card.
Well, there's the Ouya, which is a nice little platform. You can get one an second controller and most of the games available for that price point :)
Specs and SDKs at https://www.ouya.tv/develop/
hth, adric
Please don't perpetuate this inane meme. It is needlessly inflammatory and would probably alienate a healthy portion of your target market.
I game pretty extensively as a hobby but I also hold a serious 9-5. While I don't call people homophobic slurs and scream "oh my god no scoped" and all that, I can appreciate and keep up with the typical gaming attitudes in the market these days. To be honest, I look at gaming as a different persona and snap in and out of him at will; a few close folks in that circle of mine know what I actually do, but to them I'm just another "lol rekt" dude. Just like you'd expect some things out of a typical HN user, I expect some things out of a typical gamer. I also balance that with calling out the less-desirable portions of that culture, like homophobia, racism, and sexual harassment, when I can.
The master race thing is a tongue-in-cheek exercise which really, as a couple other folks have pointed out, has a more subtle message. If you allow yourself to be alienated by things that other folks find humorous -- and it's totally within your right to not find it humorous, by the way, I'm not saying that -- you're just going to have a bad time, that's all.
Gaming and the culture around it is not something to be taken seriously. Even e-sports have an element of insanity. To be entirely honest, I look at master race and calling console users "plebes" as the gaming generation getting older and discovering there's another one right behind them, and that one likes Call of Duty on Xbox and Minecraft. Really, though, you'd be hard pressed to find someone on either side who takes that sort of thing seriously. At the end of the day, we're all gamers doing what we enjoy.
That aside it is worth pointing out the advantages of a proper computer over cut down entertainment devices. Especially in a format that lets you customize and meet a certain price point.
Shame it's not easy to have comparative benchmarks against console hardware at this time, despite the newest generation being effectively x86 hardware we have no means of comparison due to the platforms being too locked down.
I'm talking about things like those sprite optimized graphics controllers when 2D still was king and the tightly integrated 3D chips later on (when consumer PCs were doing 3D exclusively with the CPU) - and let's not forget all those esoteric but very powerful CPU architectures (e.g. Cell processor).
I suppose the reason I'm bitter is because I'm constantly being told (online and lots of PC enthusiast friends) that my choice of gaming hardware (a console) is vastly inferior to a PC. Choosing a gaming platform is not a 100% performance to cost optimization problem.
Console provides the best experience for me. Anyone that tells me differently is simply wrong, because it's subjective.
I've been a PC gamer since far before it was "popular". So I have obviously always preferred it. Nothing has really changed in the arena of PC gaming vs Consoles in terms of the actual differences between them, but now all of the sudden everybody's jumping on this bandwagon.
The same people who said Halo revolutionized multiplayer gaming are the ones spamming about "PC Master Race" now. (Not trying to pick on Halo in particular, but I use it as an example because I feel there were many PC games released before it which provided the same or better multiplayer FPS experience)
A contributor, essentially using Forbes as a blog platform, claimed that. The article is a baseless fluff piece pandering to an audience.
I really believe that the whole contributor model has seriously undermined Forbes' already strained credibility: Endlessly people attribute these often specious claims to the magazine itself.
- Build configuration starting from user's preferred budget. The suggested components are always safe to be used in the same build and it's also possible to add optional parts like peripherals.
- Automatic build creation starting from user's preferred component.
- Sharing: once the build is completed it's possible to share it on the most popular social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit), on forums (BBCode) o by Email.
- Build guidelines: for every component type we provide general guidelines and best practices for the picking, also suggesting the highest rated products currently available on the market.
- Product reviews: our rating, pros and cons, q&a, price history, suggested PC builds for the selected component and compatibility.
- Price analysis and trends.
- Multilanguage and multicurrency.
- Responsive design: the website provides an optimal viewing experience on all devices (desktops, tablets and smartphones).I personally do not need the latest and greatest, however it would be nice to help me optimize on a different set of factors.
For example, I have a lot of interest in building power efficient machines. Rather than having to look up power consumption for individual parts, it would be great if you had the ability to generate optimal configurations given power and noise considerations.
Similarly, if you could have a generator for minimally different Hackintoshes (eg OS X running with minimum hacks), I think you would find a lot of interest from that particular user base.
PS. Playing around with the various configurators for different parts, it seems that there are options missing. For example:
1) Can't find 16GB Ballastix Sport Low Profile memory
2) Can't find Intel low power processors; T-series
3) Can't filter on 80 Plus level for power supplies
4) For a low(er) power build, I do not want the largest power supply. Conversely, I want the lowest capable of powering my setup.
5) Ability to easily find a video card meeting my needs: single slot GPU Nvidia Maxwell suitable for HTPC.
For example, about some Hackintosh friendly builds?
- I don't really need to see big pictures of everything (except the case and peripherals). It's kind of visually noisy, and it doesn't help me make any decisions. Maybe just a small thumbnail would suffice.
- It'd be nice to be able to instantly visually compare the most important traits of each component. For example, for SSDs, I'd like to see Price, Size, and Speed. If you just had a bar for each of those things, I'd be able to instantly see the tradeoffs I'm making. The hover-over info is nice too, it's good to see if I'm trading price for durability, or some other less common metric. Maybe this kind of info could replace the big images?
This may just be my own personal gripe but I get serious information overload from component buying. A nice frontier could filter the dozens of options to just a handful with meaningful tradeoffs worth considering.
I was hoping that this tool might make finding non-server parts that support ECC easier, but alas, that does not seem to be the case.
If you've decided upon ECC as a must, then it would be great for a system builder tool to then show you options based upon that choice.
http://cr.yp.to/hardware/ecc.html
He hasn't updated is build in a while, though. http://cr.yp.to/hardware/build-20090123.html
I can never remember any details regarding the Intel chipsets. Is a given CPU a Haswell processor? Ivy bridge? Should I wait for Broadwell? Am I misremembering code words entirely? I would love it if this site helped me figure out which chipset I'll be getting, in case I care.
i[digit] is the series, i3 means starter, i5 mainstream and i7 performance (that's not entirely accurate but it is accurate enough).
Then the four digit number is of no obvious logic across the generations. But, the first digit shows the generation, so 4 means haswell, which is the fourth Core iX generation. 3 is ivy bridge, 2 is sandy bridge and the lack of it means nehalem. And beyond that, the higher the number, the more powerful it is.
The last letter is optional. K means unlocked, S or T mean low power consumption.
* The names Advanced and Pro are too similar.
* "For AMD lovers, a cheaper alternative of the Gamer configuration" OK, but then this could be folded into the Gamer configuration as an alternate flavour.
Can you get this down to three or four options and move the rest to the expert users section?
It would be nice if for each tier there were an Intel option and an AMD option ... and an ATi and nVidia option.
However, I disagree that a "Pro" build is necessary for software development, as suggested by the description. I've gotten by writing software on a netbook.
There's an unfortunate consequence of the tendency for developers to have "Pro" hardware: their software often doesn't get tested on older hardware. Some examples:
About 8 years ago, I tried to install a KDE-based Linux distribution on a PC that was then only 2 years old. The screen resolution defaulted to 800x600. I opened the settings panel to try and adjust it to 1280x1024 (the maximum for that monitor), but the settings window was larger than my screen, and the icon for screen resolution was off the bottom of my screen! I couldn't get to it.
About 4 years ago, I was taking a Software Engineering course where our assignments were doled out with Eclipse project files. No problem, I installed Eclipse on my Macbook (which at the time was only one year old), and fired it up. It was using over a gig of RAM, and OS X using another half a gig. I couldn't open a web browser without swapping.
Today the problem is even worse. Modern software gobbles so much memory -- it's ridiculous. Web browsers and desktop environments are especially bad, and systemd uses loads of RAM, too. I realize it's not all bloat, but this memory explosion is leaving users with older computers in the dust. Not everyone can afford to upgrade to the latest and greatest every year.
I urge developers to keep their end users (even other developers) and their potentially meager hardware in mind.
Most web browsers are actually pretty memory efficient these days. Unfortunately, the websites they're viewing aren't because they're designed and coded by people with "pro" hardware too.
e.g.
1 - Select Advanced
2 - the two processor options shown are (+11% cost, +13% perf) and (+7% cost, +3%perf). If I expand "more options", I can see a (+9 %cost, +16%perf) in there which is preumably superior to either of the two shown.
But this is awesome - please keep it going and improving it :-)
I haven't read in a while but they're still doing them:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-g...
they have decent forums too
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewforum.php?f=8
A hackintosh section would be good. The one I used to build mine years ago is gone..
I agree with other comments that if you want it to appeal to hobbyists you need a pretty massive build out of options.
Any thoughts into a comparison tool?
I have a PC that was pretty powerful when I built it, but has aged (5-6 years old now).
I'd love to find a way to easily compare my current system to these ones. For instance, the 'AMDicted' sounds good, but I can't easily tell if it's an upgrade from my current rig or not.
I recently put together a couple of machines from parts, and having not done so for many years, found it extremely difficult to do so. A tool like this, that could highlight compatible CPUs, motherboards and so on, would have been very helpful!
A few (highly specific) features that would be useful:
* For the cheaper machines, there are some very good value case/PSU combos on Amazon (and elsewhere). It would be great to include these in the list of components. I know bargain-basement PSUs have a reputation for being poor quality, but there are reliabile ones out there (I ended up buying three different cheap case+CPUs and they have all been perfect under high load)
* I found it extremely hard to discover which CPUs came with their own heatsink+fan. Any way to clarify this would be very useful.
If you're not worried about spilling secret sauce, I'd be interested in a post (or link if you've already got the information there) about what data sources you have hooked up to various metrics.
I'm looking to start a new build soon. This case is speaking to me.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-det...
I used it for my last build. You can select a variety of different vendors, browse parts compare prices, etc. It does a pretty good job doing the compatibility checks for you as well (I can do them myself, but my heart just wasn't in it this time, so it was handy).
I basically assembled my build with pcpartpicker, selected newegg, amazon and microcenter, then bundled it all up and ordered it. The microcenter one was neat because they actually found the processor I wanted at a local microcenter, for in store pickup, at a hundred bucks cheaper than anywhere else (not a technically crazy hurdle, but really convenient and pleasantly surprising).
Wondering how it compares to the site linked (I haven't looked through it yet; they could be totally different, but I'm going to check it out in a sec)
Edit: Also, the first several builds I made to test the site out all appear to be shipping from Amazon. Not sure if this supports multiple vendors or not.
It'll let you compare the price of a part on newegg with the current price on amazon and tigerdirect.
When I rebuilt my htpc about 6 months ago, I was surprised to find that many of the parts were actually cheaper on amazon.
1) include most of available parts, not just few trendy ones (in this site I got only 8 motherboards and 6 CPU's for AMD)
2) do price/performance analysis on fly (with referenced to sources) and unobtrusively show better candidates on this aspect in the same price range
3) show small summary on parts when clicked: exhaustive specifications, release date, current price (depending on region), available newer versions or successors (if any)
4) no ugly tablet orientated design with big pictures (and why would I care how my RAM looks like anyway?), but clean, slim list with advanced details. This site looks super ugly on my 22", full HD monitor.
I understand that the biggest problem is to maintain up-to-date database, but I would even pay few bucks to use such tool to save my time.
At the time all I had to go by was a "how to build your own computer" book. I would have loved something like this.
I haven't used pcpartpicker, but went to have a quick look compared to yours. I can see a lot of work has gone into it. I like that you don't have to navigate away from the page.
1) Images are bit big 2) At first I struggled finding the divisions of parts. Maybe close all accordions except the first. This way it might feel more like steps. Currently all "steps" are open and options seem endless as its a page full of objects. Remember when scanning over a page, we basically first see a sillhoutte of major objects. 3) Maybe number accordions, so seems more like steps 1) Motherboard 2) CPU 4) Show important information without any action require by the user. Example some of the CPU's cannot immediately identify the Speed without reading the whole title.
Well done. Hopefully you see comments not as negative but constructive.
All of the best forwards
- Technology stack?
- How do you keep product pricing up-to-date? Do you have a persistent process that iterates over your known product list, querying Amazon's Product Advertising API (staying within rate limits)? If that's the case would love to hear more details on language and libraries used as I'm working on something similar.
- How do you discover new products to list?
- What storage backend do you use to store historic pricing data? Regular relational database or something more exotic like InfluxDB?
- Any plans on introducing new retailers besides Amazon? If so, how will you correlate products into canonical listings if the product does not have UPC information?
Things like that.
Site is appealing, but would be more useful if you could put in everything you already have, then look at which piece/pieces could be upgraded, with $/wattage/performance changes...
I'm sure I'm not alone in having kicked around ideas for something like this for a long time.
Comparing PC builds has been an informal competition / game on various forums for many years.
I expect having more in the way of features to share, compare and feature/track builds could be very popular.
There are people who take great pride in meticulous builds. Giving them a platform to share their work would be great.
Likewise, have a look at any 'Lets Play' vid on YouTube or whatever and you'll see dozens of questions about the configuration that produced the video.
Hooking up with a popular 'caster such that they link to 'their' builds on Pangoly could be a great source of traffic.
Looking forward to seeing how this pans out.
Exactly... the good ol' days at XtremeSystems forums come to my mind... :rolleyes:
I tried to find them this morning, but didn't have luck. Did they ditch this feature?
Edit: What I liked about the feature is that despite being a "tech" and having built several PC's in the past, I can no longer keep current with hardware developments. The Geek.com guides allowed me to jump right in, without a weekend of research to get up to speed on the latest CPU's, GPU's and various hardware components.
It's the ASUS Z87 Deluxe (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87DELUXE/)
So this might be all "tyranny of choice". But what is the difference between certain parts? Like if there are two motherboards and both of them cost ballpark $200 and support the same mainstream inputs/components, how do I know which one to choose?
It's moments like those that paralyze me from taking advantage of these services. Or why I like buying Apple where I don't really have a choice (implicit to the fact that I don't care which motherboard I'm getting other than Apple-curated).
Overall, I really like the site rating and the rational pros/cons between the different options.
The description of the AMD gamer computer made me realize there were more options than three, I didn't intuitively realize I could scroll down for more computer builds at first. That is probably more a me problem than a mass problem, however.
On my monitor I can see at most 9 components at a time on your site. On PcPartPicker its about 28. I don't see the images serving any purpose. Why should I look at an image of the processor's box? What information does it give me?
I also recommend the book Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It's in the YC library and its fantastic.
Other than the mobile issues, it's a nice idea and pretty clean looking site. I'd reduce the images in size, especially the gigantic brand logos scrolling across the bottom. Make it more of a dashboard and less like a slideshow.
Still, cool site!
> Don't worry about hardware compatibility, the following components are safe to be used in the same PC build.
A rating / review of component selection by power-users is all that's missing here for me.
Beyond that this is brilliant and simple - I'm surprised that NewEgg doesn't offer something like this.
Also I notice that you're missing estimated tax, shipping, and a Windows license from the price.
#2 Almost all games can play on PC, maybe just with lower setting.
#3 PC games are for people who like to discover => example how someone found out how to enable watch dog's E3 graph setting. But you have no control over console.
#4 Almost all console games are created by Pc, oh wait.
* Allow users to specify a form factor (like HTPC, μATX, mini ATX, ATX, ...) and filter components like mainboard and case by this.
* Allow users to use a different Amazon site for pricing info (.de/.fr would be nice for me personally)
I'm on a windows 8 touchscreen laptop, running the latest version of chrome.
Otherwise it looks like a cool way to pick a build, especially since it's been so long since I have looked into building a desktop.
It'd be nice if you could add some mini-itx options for HPTC and/or Steam Machine.
Why isn't the Power listed in the on hover dropdown?
I haven't built my own PC for a number of years and probably wouldn't consider it any more to be honest (MacBook FTW). I will however recommend this to anyone who does ask me about self-builds :)
OP, I think you have a ways to go to match the utility of pcpartpicker. But if you want a possible leg-up on them, then look into supporting workstation builds with Xeon/Cxxx/ECC (they don't really cost more than comparable "consumer" builds, and if you value stability more than overclocking, they make a lot of sense). Niches can be powerful.