Hello everyone, now that I work from home I can't keep working from just my laptop, so I am putting together a small office (in a corner of my living room lol). This means I am looking to build my first PC, so I am looking for some advice. When I was younger this was the kind of thing my close IRL friends did all the time so I am pretty familiar with the process, but it's been many years since I was current. Additionally, while I had budgeted certain amounts for putting together this office, by sheer chance one of my prior employers completed a review of historical payments and found that I had been underpaid for time there. I do not really understand their logic, but it is still a windfall of money I didn't expect, so it's upped my budget.
My target budget is $5000. That's in AUD, so it's about two bucks US at the moment. I need to buy everything for an office so I need to be mindful of the hardware cost, but I can stretch this if necessary to achieve a future proofed, capable rig, or if there's some good value in paying extra.
- What do you want this computer to do?
As mentioned I need this for work, but I want it to be able to smash out some games I've always been interested in but never been able to play, such as Arma, or will be complicated for me to play with my current consoles, such as Starfield. And if I'm going to do that I want a machine with some serious grunt: but with the big changes to Cyberpunk 2077 coming next month I'd like to see exactly what this vaunted 'PC gaming' can do. I've got a PS5 and a big fancy television, so I want to be able to hit those big performance benchmarks around resolution, frame rate, ray tracing, etc. Otherwise there's not much point.
In terms of work nothing I do is very demanding, and my laptop handles it well, but has difficult in terms of multitasking--if I'm doing the accounting or working on policy stuff it would be good to not be always we switching between different tabs or documents. I would also like to be able to do more image and video editing in future, that's proven to be difficult on just my laptop. I do a lot of word processing, too.
My one key requirement is that it be in a Fractal Designs North case, if at all possible
- Are you willing to build your own computer? How much do you know about building computers?
I am willing to build my own computer, and I have IRL friends who are experienced in building, so if necessary I can ask them for help.
- How long do you want this build to last? When do you plan to upgrade this computer?
Is it unreasonable to ask that I not have to worry about upgrading again for the next five years? I honestly don't know what the standard for this is, these days.
- What monitor resolution will you be using?
I mean it's gotta be 4k, right?
- Are you reusing parts from an old computer?
This will be my first desktop PC.
- Do you plan to overclock?
I am too much of an amateur for that
- Where will you buying your parts?
Australia. Hard to imagine importing is going to save me money, but I'll do it if it's worth doing.
- Do you need to buy the OS (eg: buy windows), KB, mouse, monitor etc?
I will basically need everything. I have a preference for Win10 over Win11, and I'm undecided on whether to go with a multi-monitor or ultrawide set up in terms of the monitor. I'll even take recommendations for a chair, but that's on a different budget lol
e: also I don't really know if this is particularly relevant, but I don't really want any RGB lighting or anything
