Intro: I built a PC this weekend

After 3 years I've FINALLY built my own gaming desktop. I got my hands on a gaming laptop on 2014 as a graduation present and I fell in love with PC gaming, sold my PS4 and never looked back. After a few months with it I started to read about computer hardware and learning about the hobby of desktop building. Started saving money and by last November I had enough to buy my dreamy desktop, however I came to the realization that I would almost empty my whole bank account and that I didn't have enough time to PC gaming as I wished (4-6h a week in average)... so I decided to look for budget parts instead of the $1,500 initial budget. Afer much much reading and comparing of benchmarks I decided to establish my budget to $600 thanks to a pretty modest Pentium G4560+RX470 combo, with WIndows 10 Pro to make use of DX 12.

Ze build: Budget conscious, a console on steroids

After that I started searching for parts and deals, I don't live in the US (aka Super Cheap PC parts land) so an uncle who does was kind enough to help me get everything to his place, except the case, that's the only part I had to buy on my home country and why it might seem to expensive since it takes roughly 9% of my budget, but I'm extremely happy with my case choice due to ease of building, expansion space, cooling performance, look and compact space. I also decided to go with 8GB vs 16GB of RAM due to recent price spikes, also checked FPS difference between both and it's pretty negligible, specially considering my modest parts, I managed to grab a 2666Mhz with a great looking cooler for $60. Here's the PC Part Picker.

So this thread was amazing, made me discover a lot of programs I've never heard before and I've already installed a bunch of those, this is my current list of things I have installed:

NINITE.com PROGRAMS suggestions?

  • BROWSER: Chrome
  • VOICE CHAT: Skype (tried Discord but my friends didn't like it and found it weird... I guess we're too old)
  • VIDEOS: CCCP (MPCH)
  • MUSIC PLAYER: foobar2000
  • PDF: Sumatra
  • ANTIVIRUS: Avast Premier
  • TORRENTS: qBittorrent
  • STEAM!!!
  • FILE SEARCH: Everything
  • DOCS: Office 2016
  • REMOTE ACCESS: Teamviewer
  • UNINSTALLER: Revo
  • SPACE STATS: WinDirStat
  • COMPRESSION: 7-zip

OTHER UTILITIES suggestions

  • SnailDriver Lite (driver updates and backup)
  • SlimBrowser as a secondary browser (super light on system resources)
  • Blizzard App (I don't use more than 2 clients right now)
  • FRAPS (for chosing optimal ingame settings, just as FPS meter)
  • HWMonitor (temperatures, fans, voltages and more!)
  • CCleaner (people say it's better to have it hehe)

I thank you all for your time and interest :]

UPDATES:

  • After trying Vivaldi, Midori, QupZilla, K-meleon and Green browser... I swapped Firefox with SlimBrowser, uses less CPU and RAM! Great find and highly recommend it.
  • Tried TeamSpeak, Discord was easier and yet my friend found it hard to use... so yeah, Skype or ingame voice chat I guess
  • Started using CCleaner again
  • Swapped K-Lite for LAV filters/CCCP
  • HWMonitor to check fan speeds, temperature of components and other metrics, super complete
  • Installed SPeccy, I like the design and I mostly care of just CPU and GPU temps, doesn't show fan speeds like HWMoniutor though... I prefer HW
  • Replaced Driver Booster + Uninstaller from Iobit for SnailDriver and Revo (the SystemCare and the Defrag seem unnecesary)
  • f.lux (white glow easier on the eyes at night) I'm using now Windows 10 Night Mode and it's great
  • So you guys convinced me to change VLC for CCCP full suite including the Media Player Classic and LAV filters, I liked the volume controls more and subs came in automatically like VLC so I was sold, it can play music too but it can't save playlists sadly... so for that only I started using foobar too.
  • I had a fucking ghost HDMI audio driver who kept dissapearing after each shutdown or restart, so I decided to format the damn SSD, at least now I installed Windows through UEFI which is better. So I decided to give them a second chance to Win10 Apps, specially the calculator and photo viewer, we'll see how it goes.
  • Windows 7 Photo Viewer (I just want some simple browsing)
  • Windows 7 Calculator (I dislike Windows 10 apps vs Desktop Programs)
7 years ago*

Comment has been collapsed.

Do you play in a desktop you built yourself?

View Results
Fuck yeah, PC MASTER RACE!
Well... I didn't built it but I still use it don't I?
Laptop portable race!
I plan to upgrade my potato to a toaster in the next decade :3
Deleted

This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Thanks, pretty straight forward! Real temps is like Everest I suppose? Might try them both

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Deleted

This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

BROWSER: Chrome
VOICE CHAT: Skype/Pidgin/Google Hangouts, Whatsapp Desktop
IMAGES: To edit GIMP, to view, default viewer is fine
PDF: View on browser, create with Libre Office
VIDEO: K-Lite
MUSIC:Google Music, my main computer syncs my own music on it, I can play it on other devices: Google Play Music Desktop Player (Github) and Google Music Player on android or use Spotify/Deezer
ANTIVIRUS: Windows Defender do the job + common sense
GAME CLIENTS: Steam
DOCS: Libreoffice or MS Office 2016
Other maybe useful, maybe not, Qbittorrent, MiPony, Popcorntime

UTILITIES
Notepad ++
Ccleaner
TeamViewer is a must
7-zip
DFX audio enhancer

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Thanks bro!

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Ninite and pick things in it.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Yeah ninite is awesome, most of the things I installed I got them from there

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Opera is Chrome with more bells and whistles and many like Vivaldi.

To the best of my knowledge, VLC has an internal library of codecs, which is what sets it apart from other players, so no need for K-Lite at least for that program. I like MPC better, anyway. Transmission is superior to qBittorrent in my book.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Interesting take, yeah a lot of people told me to get rid of K-lite and I will tonight :]

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

AutoHotKey - Automate all the things!
Everything - Search for anything on your computer so much better then windows built in search (www.voidtools.com)
Lightshot - If you make any documentation (i do mostly for work) it's better than the built in print-screen function
Mouse without Borders - share your keyboard an mouse across multiple computers (great for my work laptop next to my gaming desktop)
VLC - Lightweight movie viewer
Notepad++ - well, you know.

Are you only gaming on here or do you have a day job that you're using this computer for as well?

~David.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I will try Lightshot, seems like a cool screenshot app! Thanks a lot, I have a day job but my new rig will be mainly for gaming and browsing the Internet.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

For taking screenshots, I use Greenshot.
Lightshot seems like very cool app, too.

I don't know why some people recommend Adobe for PDF... only Acrobat is useful for editing them. Sumatra is way faster to browse them.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Deleted

This comment was deleted 1 year ago.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Thanks a lot! Although I must point out that 7zip is enough, it works with RAR files :]

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Deleted

This comment was deleted 1 year ago.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

BROWSER: Chrome
VOICE CHAT: Skype and Discord
IMAGE VIEWER: Windows?
PDF: Adobe
VIDEOS/MUSIC PLAYER: BSPlayer (Auto downloads subtitles)
ANTIVIRUS: None
Honorable mentions: Spotify, MusicBee (Music Player + Mp3 tag in one), ASF, CCleaner, Malware Bits

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Deleted

This comment was deleted 7 months ago.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

  • For PDFs, I am a big fan of Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. It's free, and so much nicer to use than any other PDF viewer I ever tried. Personal opinion though.
  • For music, I advise you use something else than VLC (which is great for video, though). I use AIMP and it is awesome, everything is customizeable and the settings are countless.
  • I've tried Avast a few times but I found it extremely intrusive and annoying. After trying a lot of other antivirus I am now using Panda antivirus and I think it's a great one.
  • Instead of HWMonitor, I suggest you try Speccy. It's made by the same folks who made CCleaner and it has the advantage of being super clear and clean.
  • Others said it before but Discord > Skype :D
  • IObit Uninstaller is a great choice, it's my favourite uninstaller. However, for the drivers, I find SnailDriver to be superior, as it is less intrusive and much more straightforward.
  • For opening zips and archives, I have found a little soft called Bandizip. It opens everything, has a lot of options and isn't ugly, on the contrary to 7-zip xD

Other softs I can't live without:
If you like customization, try Rainmeter! It's an amazing program with endless possibilities!
If you happen to download torrents, my client of choice is Deluge.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I mainly use Youtube for music, so VLC suits my needs when I download a CD o full discography, which is pretty rare! Most people recommended me foobar2000 though :P

Panda is pretty kickass! I might use Bit Defender next year, but checking my email I saw that the renewal of Avast las April was just $14.99 for covering 3 machines for a full year, you can't beat that! I will check Speccy out :]

Deluge is great, I used it on my old macbook, qBittorrent is lighter and I fell in love with it though. Thanks a lot for the input!

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Win10 pro? Office 2016? I thought you were trying to save money. cough
I have an old Office 2000 that works just fine. Still, I tried LibreOffice which functions
mostly identically.
.1. "Goodbye Backspace" extension on Chrome. I have occasionally filled out a long form (composed essay) and made the mistake of hitting Backspace when the cursor is not in a user field. I dont think they have ever fixed this huge flaw in browsers despite everyone's agreement how stupid and useless this is. Backspace will take you to the previous webpage and destroy(lose) all the work that you have done on that webpage.
.2. Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit. I do not know exactly what this does, but it seems to provide some great FREE low-level active protection against without running it every couple days (like MBAM)

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Softwarewise I have help from my grandpa, he has the mentality to "buy the best stuff you can", so we share most licenses or he just gifts them to me hehe (hardware was 100% paid by me though haha).

Thankfully it never happened to me that backspace thing you talk about... I'm even hitting backspace with the cursor on a "blank" spot on the screen and nothing happens, weird.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Most were already mentioned, so no point in re-iterating. Except for one - FastStone Viewer. It's a reason in itself to use Windows. It's that good. Perfect combination of functionality and user interface.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Interesting! I see that I have pretty basic needs haha I ended up uninstalling irFanView and enabling Photo Viewer from Windows 7! All I need is to use arrow keys to change photos and rotating them actually :3

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

everything I want to say has already been said-guess I'll just say for SS apps lightshot is my favorite however I also have gyazo installed (but set up so it doesn't take SS using print screen) because it takes can make gifs...that being said lightshot is still better for everything else.
also people keep mentioning notepad++ for use as a notepad editing txt files but I also want to add its really useful for opening all sorts of code files...assuming you're not programming (ie don't want a whole ide) and just want to open files to see what they are its handy. ie xml files, css/html files etc

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I rarely take screenshots from my computer but several people have recommended Lightshot, which seems great :]

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Screen2Gif - animated gif creator/editor
Combined Community Codec Pack - package of the most common codecs (also allows for native dvd playback in windows)
CCleaner - file cleaner
CPU-Z - CPU, Mobo, Ram identifier tool
Gimp - Graphics Editor
Open Office - Office Alt
WinFF - Video Converter
Rufus - USB Boot Drive Creator

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

CCCP seems pretty kickass, great sense of humor too! xD

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I recommend Free Download Manager for downloads and torrents (it's so much better than uTorrent and has no ads at all).

For browser, I recently started using Edge and it's really good. I currently have it as my main browser, thinking of ditching Chrome. xD

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I think I've never noticed adas on uTorrent tbh, it's so light! But I don't download torrents regularly either, Edge is pretty fast! I'm just so used to Chrome features and have everything across my office, laptop and now my desktop too (and cellphone, but I don't browse too much on it).

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Forget what I said about Edge, it consumes an absurd amount of CPU and RAM for me. Back to Chrome. :P

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

From Microsoft? Nah I don't believe you xD

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I prefer SpaceSniffer over WinDirStat, give it a try.

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Will check on that, so far WinDirStat has been fast and good for me :]

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Bump

7 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Closed 7 years ago by hotbullet8.