I've been out of the loop on tech work since getting laid off 6 months ago. Still, my own personal brand preference is as follow: ASUS for motherboards, EVGA for graphics cards (or ASUS if you prefer their cooler style), it's hard to go wrong with RAM and Corsair's stuff was decently reliable. Intel and AMD CPUs were at functional parity and any hemming and hawing was over single digit percentage advantages in specific areas like gaming.

Get a microATX or ATX form factor motherboard and corresponding case. If you try to go smaller (miniITX) it gets tougher to build.

Don't skimp on power supplies, get a name brand like Corsair, Seasonic, or EVGA. I'd stay away from Seasonics highest wattage PSUs because they seemed to be DOA more than chance, but their mid range (750w) were reliable.

80 plus ratings for PSUs tell you how wasteful/efficient they are. 80 plus bronze is a basic, good level of efficiency, but I would aim for gold.

If you can give your PSU some headroom that's good for efficiency. For instance, with your PC chugging along at 100% CPU/GPU processing power and only pulling 80% of the PSU capacity. This website is a good resource for estimating usage https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

Get an **NVMe** SSD in M.2 form factor, at least 256GB, for your installation of Windows (or Linux?). Samsung and Intel make good ones. You probably won't need the Samsung Pro series. Evo is fine. Do NOT forget to install the drivers from them, you don't want to miss out on the full speed potential.

Spinning disk storage is cheap, you should be able to get a 4TB 3.5" hard drive for less than $90

Keep all your legally backed up blu-ray movies on there.

When I was last working, the GeForce GTX 1060 was the best value in graphics cards. They have since replaced the 1070/1080 with 2070/2080 upgrades and I'd be surprised if they didn't roll out the rest in the next couple months.

@Mick

I can't speak for AMD/ATI Radeon graphics cards because they have such small market share I never got to mess with them much. There's bound to be somebody who knows more and can tell you how they are competitive with Nvidia GeForce cards...

Also, avoid craigslist PCs. Everyone on there tries to advertise their old PCs as great gaming rigs. They're usually overpriced and very outdated.

<@&435155896780324864> How does my schedule look this quarter?

@Jacob all fundamental topics. Learn them well!

I'll try! 😳

@wolfwood Thanks for the suggestions.

I definitely wanna go SSD, willing to pay for it.

@Mick $500-$1500 is an enormous budget range. $500 would be a very budget desktop, not doing more than basic gaming. $1,500 would be a beast that would shred everything on max settings.

As far as AMD graphics cards, only cards worth it from them right now are 580 and maybe 590. The Vega cards are power hungry and overpriced unless you get them with a blower cooler, which you probably don't want.

Personally, I just upgraded my PC this Black Friday. I went with an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X and an EVGA GTX 1070 as far as CPU and GPU. I felt those were the best value, but that 1070 was heavily discounted and had a rebate. I would not pay full price for it, but at the price I paid, it was a great deal. Personally, I wouldn't pay above the low 300s for a GPU.

Anyone @here have experience with running Google ads on their website?

<@&435155896780324864> can someone explain to me what entry level programmers do?

@Jacob Fix other people's disgusting mistakes.

you mean like dig through hundreds of lines of code and look for the part where they accidently put an "1" instead of an "i"?

@Jacob Yup, and hopefully eventually learn to leverage CTRL+F to do it faster.

In my case, the fixing meant deleting and redesigning an entire website.

Because the old one was too sickening to tolerate.

😳

is it stressful work?

Depends. Where I work is fairly laid back. Depends how fast paced the business is.

I hate fast paced work, so I'm happy where I am.

I've just been in college so long that I want something low stress when I'm out

I am a digital marketing pro let me know if you need help with website or ads or anything

@Gumbo - AZ Thanks but it was a technical issue with adding Google ads. I settled on not using them because they're disgusting.

Np just here if you guys need anything

<@&435155896780324864> anyone here know SQL?

@Jacob yes `DROP TABLE IF EXISTS table1;`

@ThisIsChris does this relational algebra make sense?

@Jacob yes it does

@ThisIsChris these were the questions btw