From someone who has done it for family thrice
Introduction
Building a HED is a serious and expensive task, you need to consider a minimum of 6 different parts of the computer, all of which have an influence on each other. The minimum 6 are CPU, Motherboard, RAM (also called memory), Storage, Case, and Power Supply. Additionally, you should consider a Video Card and Case Fans as these components will likely have a dramatic impact on the performance of your system. Today we begin with the parts picking phase.
Part Selection
Picking parts can be daunting, there are so many with a plethora of numbers and letters in their seemingly random names, but I will guide you on the basics today and simplify the world of PC parts for you. The first thing you need to know is that there are 3 manufacturers to be aware of in the consumer PC world: Intel, AMD, and Nvidia. Intel is focused on CPUs with some GPU manufacturing (their GPU offerings should be avoided unless you have experience with computers as their newness to the GPU space brings with it a host of teething issues). AMD is equally spread between CPU and GPU manufacturing and competes with Intel in CPUs and Nvidia in GPUs, they offer an excellent suite of high-performance components at very reasonable prices. Nvidia is the undisputed king of the graphics card space because of their Ray Tracing cores and Tensor cores which turns their XX90 series cards and XX90ti cards into juggernauts of parallel processing which stay relevant for many years but at extreme cost.
So, with the basics of who’s who out of the way, let’s conquer naming schemes. Intel uses the Core series of names to denote relative performance to the consumer; this scheme works as follows: i3 at the low end, i5 at the medium-low end, i7 at the medium-high end, and the i9 at the pinnacle of the product stack. The price of the Core series is commensurate with their position in the lineup, i3’s is cheap at roughly $100 dollars while the i9 starts at $500. AMD uses the same naming scheme as most consumers are familiar with the Core naming, so their product stack looks like this: R3 at the low end, R5 at the medium-low end, R7 at the medium-high end, and the R9 at the pinnacle of the product stack. The price follows a nearly identical scheme to the Intel competitions. Now, we have to talk about the letters at the end of the name “Intel Core i9-13900KF” or “AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D”, these letters can be the cause of quite a bit of confusion so allow me to explain the Intel naming scheme fist: K indicates the chip can be overclocked (generally increases price), F indicates that the Chip has no integrated graphics and requires you to buy a graphics card (generally decreases price), S indicates that it is a special edition chip (generally increases price), T indicates that it is “power optimized” (generally decreases price), X/XE indicates the highest performance SKU at that Core level so i7XE < i9XE, U indicates low power consumption (read low performance relative to Core level), Y indicates even worse performance but better power efficiency, and H indicates high performance for laptop chips. If you want a laptop with excellent performance, ignore any CPU without the H at the end of the name, if you want a desktop with excellent performance, ignore any CPU with a T at the end.
AMD’s names are similar but have a few different letters and numbers used: G indicates a Radeon graphics processing unit in the CPU, X indicates highest performance barring other letters and numbers, U indicates ultra-low power consumption and lower performance, H indicates higher performance, and the new 3D name means that the chip has the new cache memory which connects all the cores of the CPU together. AMD’s Radeon GPUs are named as follows: X indicates a faster card than the base model, XT indicates an even faster version of that card, and XTX indicates the fastest version of that card. AMD’s product stack is mostly only competitive at their high end with Nvidia’s medium-high end, so a 7900 XTX competes with a 4080 and a 4090 (these changes based on the test being used) and a 7900XT competes with a 4080 or 4070ti based on the test being used. Radeon has less exposure in the Ray Tracing and AI tools segment so any workload focused on that will result in a decisive Nvidia performance win. As it stands, Nvidia seems to be focusing on a product stack that is workstation first, gaming second while Radeon does the opposite.
Nvidia’s naming scheme is far easier to understand: the ti suffix indicates the ultimate version of that card, the Super suffix is one tier below that, XX90 indicates the top SKU, XX80 indicates the level below that, and so on. One thing of note is that a 70ti class card is roughly equal to an 80 card while a Super card is slightly worse than the 80 card.
TL; DR
Selecting parts relevant to your build can be difficult but as we are looking at the high-end, it simplifies our mission a fair bit. We can ignore large sections of the CPU and GPU market to focus on the parts that matter like the KF and X type CPUs and the 80 and 90 class products from Nvidia. AMD’s Radeon X900 XTX GPUs should be considered as the competition for the 80 series as of now, though AMD could improve in the future, setting up their Radeon cards to compete with the 90 class products in more tests. If your budget is over $4000, pick the best and don’t look back, otherwise consider your needs, and pick accordingly. If you rely on video processing or gaming for your HED, go graphics heavy and save a bit on your CPU. If you rely on computation for a workstation focused on coding and development, go heavy on the CPU and light on the graphics. If you aren’t sure what you want to do yet, try to take a balanced approach with a slight lean towards the CPU. A good rule of thumb for price is that your graphics card should generally not exceed double the price of the CPU with today’s prices for a balanced or gaming focused HED. For a workstation, don’t be afraid to get a 70 series or lower card as you won’t be needing all the extra horsepower contained in the dollars spent on higher end products. I hope this helped, happy price hunting!