Your obvious rival here is PCPartPicker. Having used that extensively, here's some things I don't like about yours:
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.
I just built a pair of PCs using pcpartpicker. I had similar thoughts:
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.
Also missing: an obvious way not to include an HDD/GFX card (I just tried the "pro" setting).
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).
Thanks for your constructive feedback.
We are still under active development and we are rolling out new features every week.
Although analogy with PCPartPicker was inevitable, I'd like to say we're not aiming on being its clone, we're not providing price comparison and they are already doing a great job providing extensive compatibility checks so there's no point wasting time reproducing what is already available.
Pangoly provides preconfigured builds with full compatibility checks that may satisfy most of the people needs (having the ability to also remove/add extra components) and it has a lot of useful features that noone else already provides.
I agree with you for the "lack of reviews" part, we'll sort that out soon enough.
Stay tuned!
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.
Beautiful execution and a well-done site. Nice visual choices and a good responsive layout. Great example of waiting until a product has some polish before a Show HN.
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.
> $400.00 PC from your service could rival or beat a console.
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.
It seems as if the console makers have delivered developer friendly platforms this time but with that forgot to / decided not to pack in that extra punch they used to.
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).
This "PC Master Race" mentality has left a sour taste in my mouth. It is a joke to a few but it is starting to become serious (weather they refer to it as PC Master Race or not). Most arguments are made by technically unqualified enthusiasts on subjects like architecture, performance, and cost effectiveness.
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.
Yesterday, Forbes did an article[1] about how console gamers are moving towards PC.
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.
Thanks!
I'm the owner, so here's a brief overview of the available features:
- 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).
One thing that I noticed was the lack of Xeon processors for Intel. When I built my current rig, I could get an i7 level chip for an i5 price, but without integrated video. This is totally fine for gaming rigs and something that isn't uncommon. Was that a specific decision?
So... Nice site so far but it would be nice if you offer some additional features over your competitors.
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.
- 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?
To add to the tradeoffs point - it would be great it you could generate a pareto efficient frontier given the users "desired traits".
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.
When I build a PC, the number one feature I want is ECC memory. It can be tricky to find a non-server configuration that supports it (you historically need a "good" bios that is smart enough to enable it for AMD, and you typically need a Xeon flavor CPU + workstation level board for Intel; caveat, it has been 2.5 years since my last build).
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.
I'm genuinely curious, why is it your number one feature? I know that ECC provides error correction, but aside from server use, is it really that critical?
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.
For the record, the naming scheme is something like this: e.g. i7 4770K
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.
I really like it but I think it can be simplified. At least the original presentation of options. e.g.
* 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?
Seems like there's a good mid-ground between pre-configured systems and expert mode. A mode which offers some alerts for silly mistakes (or prevents them from being made in the first place) would be nice. i.e. an Intel chip paired with an AMD socketed motherboard.
Indeed. But alerts would be a nice addition to expert mode anyway. You can't build a PC with a processor that does not fit in the socket, expert or not. Pre filtered list of motherboards or cpu based on selected cpu or motherboards would be nice.
Anyway, great website.
Why can't you perform compatibility checks on hardware in free build mode? That would take so much headache out of the composing, and be an awesome middle ground between the prebuilt ones and the completely free builder.
I like how polished this site is. It would be a good companion to this parts recommendation guide: http://www.logicalincrements.com/
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.
Likewise, I've gotten by writing software with a pen and paper.
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.
Yeah, probably too overarching, but it depends on what you are doing. For example, are you "getting by" on your notebook parallel compiling 1m+ LoC C++ projects? Probably not.
Nice. One comment - I think it's not always showing the 'best' options in the initial 3.
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 :-)
Although i'm unsure of the legality, you might want to add hackintosh/OSX86 setups in there as well, matching the right hardware combos is a big part of getting it all setup and the latest configs change often
While it's pretty, the site doesn't allow for much in the way of customizing one's criteria. Or it's very non-obvious on how to do so. For example, I might want a gaming system with a apx $150 video card rather than a $200 to $300 one. Perhaps I have hard drives already and don't need a new one. Why the rather pricey power supplies? The CPU choices are limited and don't reflect current options. What about cooling options? Why the limited case choices? etc, etc, etc.
I agree - since I'm in the middle of building a machine, I would think that I would be the target market. One of the first things I noticed was that the power supplies were overpriced but the mobo combinations were entirely based on price as opposed to features. The site looks good but I think it needs more tweakability.
So the business model is based on piping customers to amazon ? thats neat, however i found that amazon germany lacks the diversity that many of the big online hardware retailers have around here.
Is it only stuff that amazon sells or also marketplace ?
How can you suggest builds for the budget if you don't have a real store providing updated components prices? Amazon is by far the most popular online store so I think it's a safe bet using it as a de facto standard.
It seems like a beautiful tool, however not having options to pick components I have a strong preference for such as Hitachi hard drives, and Silverstone cases for instance means I can't use it to build systems I might actually want to build ever.
I agree with other comments that if you want it to appeal to hobbyists you need a pretty massive build out of options.
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.
It really needs a section for "Operating System". Windows isn't free, and most build-your-owns will be a Windows machine. Other appropriate options should be available (linux/bsd/etc) along with a 'no OS' options, for people who might already have a free license.
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.
Agreed! It's extremely impressive in terms of design + functionality.
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.
One thing that bugs me at first glance is that after I pick a preset denoted with a "starting price", when it gets to the next page with the component breakdown the starting price is $100-300 higher.
[+] [-] jjcm|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] lotharbot|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] emn13|11 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] ejjpi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yaeger|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gr3yh47|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randomdrake|11 years ago|reply
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-...
[4] - http://gizmodo.com/13-steam-boxes-ranked-1496078448
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sosborn|11 years ago|reply
Please don't perpetuate this inane meme. It is needlessly inflammatory and would probably alienate a healthy portion of your target market.
[+] [-] hoggle|11 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] niwri|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] personZ|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ejjpi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sswezey|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newman314|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] darthgoogle|11 years ago|reply
For example, about some Hackintosh friendly builds?
[+] [-] MarkyC4|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walterbell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeformed|11 years ago|reply
- 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?
[+] [-] reqres|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] drewg123|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] adl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathanb|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sirodoht|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] SandB0x|11 years ago|reply
* 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?
[+] [-] warfangle|11 years ago|reply
It would be nice if for each tier there were an Intel option and an AMD option ... and an ATi and nVidia option.
[+] [-] falcolas|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kubiiii|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makmanalp|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chton|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sthatipamala|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] groovy2shoes|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] walshemj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EpicEng|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbert|11 years ago|reply
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 :-)
[+] [-] jedahan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianpri|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmastrac|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Linell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmah|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silverbax88|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acomjean|11 years ago|reply
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..
[+] [-] kayoone|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ejjpi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] genericuser|11 years ago|reply
I agree with other comments that if you want it to appeal to hobbyists you need a pretty massive build out of options.
[+] [-] maxsilver|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] vacri|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joosters|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ethbro|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] prawks|11 years ago|reply