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Show HN: Pangoly – Build your shiny new PC

778 points by ejjpi 12y ago

slipwalker 12y ago
failed for my first attempt: how can't i customize my dual-socket opteron 64Gb RAM workstation ?... ( mobo ASUS KGPE-d16 )
hardwaresofton 12y ago
This is really cool -- now when people ask me how hard it is to build their own PC I can show them this site... Usually my answer is "it's just as easy as picking the right things, and putting round pegs into round holes"
- dublinben 12y ago
  This doesn't seem very different from PcPartPicker.com or the LogicalIncrements.com guide. Nearly every hardware review site will also have a running list of recommended builds.[0] [0]http://www.pcper.com/hwlb http://www.pcper.com/hwlb
  - ejjpi 12y ago
    Of course, you mentioned similar websites but I think they have different purposes compared to Pangoly. PCPartPicker offers a huge set of components with different stores so you can find the best price available for almost anything, but it struggle with users having little building experience that are trying to find what's the current best build options for their budget. On the other hand logicalincrements offers a nice viewing experience of components tiers but it lacks building customizations. I think having another option and point of view is not harmful at all :)
    - sergiotapia 12y ago
      Exactly, competition is great don't let anybody discourage you. I already shared your site with some friends and they all like it a lot.
      - hardwaresofton 12y ago
        +1 -- I made that comment after sending it out to a friend of mine at work
ejjpi 12y ago
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).
- sswezey 12y ago
  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?
- darthgoogle 12y ago
  Would be great to link up with sites that offer pre-configured builds for specific purposes. For example, about some Hackintosh friendly builds?
- MarkyC4 12y ago
  I'd allow people to unselect a second hard drive, especially since 256GB SSDs are an option.
- walterbell 12y ago
  How would one search for processor + motherboard support for VT-d or vPro?
- newman314 12y ago
  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.
bsenftner 12y ago
I'd be interested in a service such as this for building custom servers. I currently custom design and pay to have them built for my company.
- smacktoward 12y ago
  Serious question: why? I would think that for servers, the lower cost and easier replaceability of buying standardized machines from an OEM would outweigh any benefits you could get from hand-selecting components.
avmich 12y ago
I'd prefer to be able to have motherboards suggestions based on requested features. Like, so many USB ports, SATA ports and this socket for AMD CPU.
tokenizerrr 12y ago
How does this compare to pcpartpicker? I don't see any option to use euros as the currency without getting an italian user interface. Are the prices at all localized, if so, do you have plans to support any other countries?
- ejjpi 12y ago
  yes, more countries and localizations are on their way.
  - tokenizerrr 12y ago
    Great. Looking forward for Dutch prices, that would be great. FYI an entire translation seems unnecessary, and in my experience (at least with dutch peole) most will prefer an english interface though that is usually because translations are so bad.
ianpri 12y ago
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
- Linell 12y ago
  This would be an awesome feature.
- mmastrac 12y ago
  I'd (figuratively) kill for that feature as well. If you aren't following Hackintosh guides regularly, you fall behind far too quickly.
pling 12y ago
This looks really cool. I haven't built my own PC for a number of years and probably wouldn't consider it any more to be honest (MacBook FTW). I will however recommend this to anyone who does ask me about self-builds :)
- mindslight 12y ago
  Modern laptops have been adequate for most tasks for quite some time (T61 ftw, personally). On the other hand, if you are CPU/GPU/RAM limited (eg rendering..), then you will still greatly benefit from the additional power a desktop build will bring. And it's refreshing to see the continuing progress of stats, while laptops have seemingly stagnated (6 cores and 64GiB RAM? Nifty!). OP, I think you have a ways to go to match the utility of pcpartpicker. But if you want a possible leg-up on them, then look into supporting workstation builds with Xeon/Cxxx/ECC (they don't really cost more than comparable "consumer" builds, and if you value stability more than overclocking, they make a lot of sense). Niches can be powerful.
kayoone 12y ago
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 ?
- ejjpi 12y ago
  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.
  - AustinScript 12y ago
    Did you read the question?
orwhat 12y ago
Really cool. How do you browse shared builds?
- ejjpi 12y ago
  Here: http://pangoly.com/en/build/list http://pangoly.com/en/build/list
devd 12y ago
Cool project - Wish I could remove some of the mandatory components - I could not figure out a way to remove the hard drive.
- njsubedi 12y ago
  no need to. remove it from Amazon cart.
maxsilver 12y ago
Looks great so far! 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.
ziol6546 12y ago
This is a really cool tool for beginners or just shopping around to get the best deal. I def would have appreciated this when I first started out.
ErikRogneby 12y ago
Wow, it's been so long since I've built a desktop I had to look up APU. (a CPU that does more than just central processing, possible a GPU on the same chip)
prawks 12y ago
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.
falcolas 12y ago
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.
- kubiiii 12y ago
  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.
  - asdasd123dd 12y ago
    Can someone tell me what he used to code that website? Javascript and bootstrap or something else?
    - buckbova 12y ago
      http://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fpangoly.com%2fen%2f http://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fpangoly.com%2fen%2f Have you used BuiltWith? Looks like asp.net, jquery, bootstrap, and what not. There's a chrome extension too.
- makmanalp 12y ago
  Agreed! This seems a bit more polished than http://pcpartpicker.com/ http://pcpartpicker.com/ in that regard
chatmasta 12y ago
This is awesome. I remember building my first computer at 12 years old. :) A nice fat gaming rig with dual boot to Linux. My parents bought it for me after I got all "E's for effort!" At the time all I had to go by was a "how to build your own computer" book. I would have loved something like this.
- balls187 12y ago
  Did your mobo have soft-jumpers?
  - walshemj 12y ago
    Kids today :-) I remember upgrading a IBM compatible using DIP chips on the mother board.
obsession 12y ago
Wow, this is really neat!
chton 12y ago
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.
grapeshot 12y ago
I find it unfortunate that I can't completely remove the graphics card from the mid-range system, and I'm not allowed to select a SSD for it either. If I could do those things I would be able to compare this site directly to the PC I built yesterday. Also I notice that you're missing estimated tax, shipping, and a Windows license from the price.
LaikaF 12y ago
What does this do that PC Part Picker can't?
opendais 12y ago
May I suggest including linux compatibility for hardware? [e.g. graphics cards tends to not always support it]
swatthatfly 12y ago
Accessories should be part of the options. You need cables for example to connect the HDs to the MB, DVI adapters for older monitors, etc. Some people may have a spare one, while others will have to make an additional trip to the store.
- dublinben 12y ago
  SATA cables are included with the motherboard, and DVI adapters are included with the video card. Neither of those should be an expected purchase when building a new machine.
drewg123 12y ago
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.
- adl 12y ago
  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?
  - joosters 12y ago
    Memory errors are a significant cause [citation needed!] of system instability. If you want a reliable machine, even a desktop, that is going to keep working, then ECC is very useful. If you've decided upon ECC as a must, then it would be great for a system builder tool to then show you options based upon that choice.
    - dclowd9901 12y ago
      I think I'm the vein of this product's philosophy, maybe a "stability" or "reliability" metric along with the performance and price metrics.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      And for some high end use case you might want to be looking at xenon's or even dual xenon's. I could see a big data or HPC developer wanting to have a desktop that used the same processor as the cluster they are writing for - mainly in the case where your tuning for max performance and want to able to develop using the same complier flags.
    - Freaky 12y ago
      It's less about the stability and more about data integrity. Crashes suck, but they suck a hell of a lot less than corrupt filesystems and backups.
SandB0x 12y ago
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?
- warfangle 12y ago
  Agreed. It would be nice if for each tier there were an Intel option and an AMD option ... and an ATi and nVidia option.
supsep 12y ago
Nice service for those of us who find it hard to follow the ever changing hardware landscape. Thanks!
alexchamberlain 12y ago
s/Wattage/Power Usage/?
buckbova 12y ago
I pretty much bounce between newegg and tigerdirect when building a machine. Once you have a case and motherboard, everything falls into place based on my budget. I'm looking to start a new build soon. This case is speaking to me. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9113957&Sku=C69-0008 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-det...
- doorhammer 12y ago
  Have you tried http://pcpartpicker.com/ http://pcpartpicker.com/ ? I used it for my last build. You can select a variety of different vendors, browse parts compare prices, etc. It does a pretty good job doing the compatibility checks for you as well (I can do them myself, but my heart just wasn't in it this time, so it was handy). I basically assembled my build with pcpartpicker, selected newegg, amazon and microcenter, then bundled it all up and ordered it. The microcenter one was neat because they actually found the processor I wanted at a local microcenter, for in store pickup, at a hundred bucks cheaper than anywhere else (not a technically crazy hurdle, but really convenient and pleasantly surprising). Wondering how it compares to the site linked (I haven't looked through it yet; they could be totally different, but I'm going to check it out in a sec)
  - pc86 12y ago
    Seems like PCPP makes it much easier to filter on specific criteria (say, you only want to see 7200RPM HDDs) but the linked site seems much more user friendly, particularly for beginners. Edit: Also, the first several builds I made to test the site out all appear to be shipping from Amazon. Not sure if this supports multiple vendors or not.
- Pwntastic 12y ago
  You may want to check out HoverHound, a chrome/firefox plugin. It'll let you compare the price of a part on newegg with the current price on amazon and tigerdirect. When I rebuilt my htpc about 6 months ago, I was surprised to find that many of the parts were actually cheaper on amazon.
lifeformed 12y ago
Cool! Some humble UI suggestions: - 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 12y ago
  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.
jbert 12y ago
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 :-)
- jedahan 12y ago
  Maybe the algorithm scores based on more than just cost and performance - perhaps review scores as well?
aresant 12y ago
The most daunting part of building a custom computer is usually validation of the component quality and, more importantly, how they'll wind up working together. A rating / review of component selection by power-users is all that's missing here for me. Beyond that this is brilliant and simple - I'm surprised that NewEgg doesn't offer something like this.
thearn4 12y ago
Looks good, I'll be putting together a lab computer pretty soon, and will give this a shot for comparing possible configurations.
lazyant 12y ago
Works automagically for Canada, awesome
jamieb 12y ago
Am about to buy/build PC right now. It will be a six-core socket 2011 CPU with a couple of 780s. All the CPUs are little 1150s. Guess I'm not your target audience?
JustinAiken 12y ago
I found myself looking for a 'upgrade your shiny old PC' section... Site is appealing, but would be more useful if you could put in everything you already have, then look at which piece/pieces could be upgraded, with $/wattage/performance changes...
carlmcqueen 12y ago
This is perfectly timed (for me) as I plan to build a gaming computer soon. I've lived off a laptop and an older desktop for a bunch of years but have money sitting saved for a new desktop. Overall, I really like the site rating and the rational pros/cons between the different options. The description of the AMD gamer computer made me realize there were more options than three, I didn't intuitively realize I could scroll down for more computer builds at first. That is probably more a me problem than a mass problem, however.
josefresco 12y ago
Does anyone else remember Geek.com's value/mid/high end gaming PC build articles? Each month they'd revise each setup and I always used it as a guide when building or costing machines. I tried to find them this morning, but didn't have luck. Did they ditch this feature? Edit: What I liked about the feature is that despite being a "tech" and having built several PC's in the past, I can no longer keep current with hardware developments. The Geek.com guides allowed me to jump right in, without a weekend of research to get up to speed on the latest CPU's, GPU's and various hardware components.
- dublinben 12y ago
  If you're looking for something similar that's always kept up to date, check out the PcPer hardware leader board. They have a low/mid/high/dream system suggestion. http://www.pcper.com/hwlb http://www.pcper.com/hwlb
  - Thrymr 12y ago
    They don't update as often, but I've always liked the Ars Technica system guides, e.g.: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-guide-bargain-box-april-2014 http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-g...
cottonseed 12y ago
A HTPC option would be nice.
nelmaven 12y ago
I think the only thing missing here are the CPU coolers. Edit: Nevermind, found them. :) Otherwise it looks like a cool way to pick a build, especially since it's been so long since I have looked into building a desktop.
jcastro 12y ago
Nice work, really like the UI, much simpler to use than other tools. It'd be nice if you could add some mini-itx options for HPTC and/or Steam Machine.
ad_hominem 12y ago
I like it a lot, but it would be cool to hear some of the technical details. Such as: - Technology stack? - How do you keep product pricing up-to-date? Do you have a persistent process that iterates over your known product list, querying Amazon's Product Advertising API (staying within rate limits)? If that's the case would love to hear more details on language and libraries used as I'm working on something similar. - How do you discover new products to list? - What storage backend do you use to store historic pricing data? Regular relational database or something more exotic like InfluxDB? - Any plans on introducing new retailers besides Amazon? If so, how will you correlate products into canonical listings if the product does not have UPC information? Things like that.
mrfusion 12y ago
Tangential offshoot topic: So for my soon to arrive Oculus Rift, what's the cheapest PC I can build with this site? Could i start with the cheapest option and just add a beefy graphics card?
joosters 12y ago
This tool looks fantastic. 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 12y ago
  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.
coldpie 12y ago
This is really cool. Two things I find vital when I'm shopping for components are reviews and brands. It'd be nice to filter based on Newegg reviews or select a certain set of brands.
rcthompson 12y ago
Suggestion: on the starting page, the "Highlights" for each starting configuration include both technical details ("AMD APU A6/A8 Series Dual/Quad Core") and a blurb describing what this configuration is good for ("Ideal for browsing the Internet, watching movies and chatting"). Furthermore, the latter always comes last on the list. I think that the blurb should come first, and that it shouldn't be part of the "checklist", but should rather be in highlighted near the top somewhere (maybe above or below the price).
1ris 12y ago
I would really like to to tweak the price. I.E. get a suggestion what i could get for 50 pounds more. Also I can't figure out how to select "none" for components. I.e. Most people already have a case.
deleted 12y ago
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sthatipamala 12y ago
I like how polished this site is. It would be a good companion to this parts recommendation guide: http://www.logicalincrements.com/ 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.
- walshemj 12y ago
  But how efficient as a developer are you on your netbook when compared to a dual or tripled screened desktop workstation.
- EpicEng 12y ago
  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.
  - sthatipamala 12y ago
    Probably not. I supplied one extreme but surely one of the lesser builds for suffice for most developers.
- groovy2shoes 12y ago
  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.
hendersoon 12y ago
Missing the new devils' canyon intel CPUs. If I were building a PC right now, it would use an i5-4690K.
randomdrake 12y ago
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. [1] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the-console-war-is-over-the-pc-already-won/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the-c... [2] - http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/ http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/ [3] - http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-glorious-pc-gaming-master-race http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-glorious-pc-gaming-master-... [4] - http://gizmodo.com/13-steam-boxes-ranked-1496078448 http://gizmodo.com/13-steam-boxes-ranked-1496078448
- sosborn 12y ago
  > PC Master Race Please don't perpetuate this inane meme. It is needlessly inflammatory and would probably alienate a healthy portion of your target market.
  - jpgvm 12y ago
    Perpetuating the meme is perhaps unwise (and alienating as you pointed out). That aside it is worth pointing out the advantages of a proper computer over cut down entertainment devices. Especially in a format that lets you customize and meet a certain price point. Shame it's not easy to have comparative benchmarks against console hardware at this time, despite the newest generation being effectively x86 hardware we have no means of comparison due to the platforms being too locked down.
silverbax88 12y ago
I first hit this on mobile and it was just about unusable. I couldn't find out how to switch over to the desktop version and had to wait until I was at a desktop to take a look. Other than the mobile issues, it's a nice idea and pretty clean looking site. I'd reduce the images in size, especially the gigantic brand logos scrolling across the bottom. Make it more of a dashboard and less like a slideshow.
acomjean 12y ago
Reminds me of Ars System Guides I haven't read in a while but they're still doing them: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-guide-bargain-box-april-2014/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-g... they have decent forums too http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewforum.php?f=8 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..
sirwolfgang 12y ago
Thats a really nice way tool to generate income from amazon referrals. :)
rmah 12y ago
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.
- silverbax88 12y ago
  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.
gprasanth 12y ago
This teaches a very good lesson I'll never forget. I have to invest more of my idle time on my side projects. I bought a domain to do this but never got around to finish it. Wonderful execution. Kudos.
jburwell 12y ago
A well-executed and beautiful site, but it would be nice to have Xeon options for the professional builds.
nathanb 12y ago
Here's some advice: 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 12y ago
  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.
  - nathanb 12y ago
    Ooh, helpful! I haven't upgraded my home system in a while, so I have a Core 2 Quad Q9450. Imagine my confusion when I started seeing numbers in the 2, 3, and 4k range. Thanks for decoding it for me!
  - elktea 12y ago
    K also means virtualization features are missing. Hugely important, these days.
    - boobsbr 12y ago
      I thought 'K' meant unlocked multipliers. You're right about virtualization, though. Some features are missing. http://ark.intel.com/compare/75123,75122 http://ark.intel.com/compare/75123,75122
ionforce 12y ago
Love the idea. A maybe tangential question for you or sites like yours... So this might be all "tyranny of choice". But what is the difference between certain parts? Like if there are two motherboards and both of them cost ballpark $200 and support the same mainstream inputs/components, how do I know which one to choose? It's moments like those that paralyze me from taking advantage of these services. Or why I like buying Apple where I don't really have a choice (implicit to the fact that I don't care which motherboard I'm getting other than Apple-curated).
sbt 12y ago
Always dreamed of a site like this when I was a kid, still do, but now it looks like it's finally here! Nice work.
izzydata 12y ago
Not enough choices in my opinion. If it were to implement close to the amount of hardware choices as PCPartPicker then it would be very practical. The site layout and design is very nice though.
danwiding 12y ago
Feature request: I want to buy a new gaming machine but the sticker shock is a little much right now. Is it possible to save my configuration and get price alerts when a component goes on sale? Bonus points: could I configure multiple acceptable components and get an alert when any of those products goes on sale?
click170 12y ago
It would be nice if after configuring a pc, I could just copy the URL and send it to someone and have it display the pc I had configured. Still, cool site!
dumbfounder 12y ago
The hardest part for me about building a pc is making sure I get the proper RAM config, and this doesn't seem to help much. I want LOTS of ram (32gb), so let me pick a motherboard with 4 slots easily, and then make sure the selections have to be compatible. Same sort of issue with a video card. I want dual DVI for output to 2 monitors, that is more important than speed for me.
ep103 12y ago
Incase you were unaware, these guys (http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc) _are_ your target audience. And your main competitor is pcpartpicker
pgrote 12y ago
I've been looking for a site like this for a while. The only issue I had was picking the $605 configuration and wanting 16 gig of memory and blue ray. What you initially choose sometimes limits capacity later, though not with hard drives.
- flurpitude 12y ago
  Are you familiar with http://pcpartpicker.com http://pcpartpicker.com?
jjcm 12y ago
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.
- gr3yh47 12y ago
  www.logicalincrements.com presents similar info in IMO a better format as well.
  - smrtinsert 12y ago
    Agreed. For the HN audience I would expect something like li, but with more interactivity.
  - aidenn0 12y ago
    That's a really good site. I tend to build workstations these days, but have several friends asking me for gaming build advice; I can point them there.
- lotharbot 12y ago
incision 12y ago
Very nice. I'm sure I'm not alone in having kicked around ideas for something like this for a long time. Comparing PC builds has been an informal competition / game on various forums for many years. I expect having more in the way of features to share, compare and feature/track builds could be very popular. There are people who take great pride in meticulous builds. Giving them a platform to share their work would be great. Likewise, have a look at any 'Lets Play' vid on YouTube or whatever and you'll see dozens of questions about the configuration that produced the video. Hooking up with a popular 'caster such that they link to 'their' builds on Pangoly could be a great source of traffic. Looking forward to seeing how this pans out.
- joeyspn 12y ago
  > Comparing PC builds has been an informal competition / game on various forums for many years. Exactly... the good ol' days at XtremeSystems forums come to my mind... :rolleyes:
dartonw 12y ago
The site looks great, but the "Learn" section is badly in need of some copy editing. Subject/verb pluralization disagreement and odd grammatical structure (to a native English speaker, many of the sentences sound awkward) are the biggest issues.
alexcroox 12y ago
Buying a new PC these week, started with the custom selection and went to choose the motherboard (Asus Maximus VI) it wasn't there, gave up.
xienze 12y ago
Really neat! I'd like to see something where I could say "I want 32GB of RAM" and that would constrain my motherboard choices, for example. I could also see the same kind of thing working with power supplies and video cards.
rbanffy 12y ago
I can't assemble an i3 with 16 GB of RAM and no graphics card. Some work is needed.
greggman 12y ago
Why no info on multi-processor systems? Google provides their chrome engineers with 16 core, 64gig systems. Dreamworks provides even larger machines. So anything labeled "Expert" seems to need better options
- buckbova 12y ago
  I don't work for google, but I wouldn't build specific machines but instead spin up a VM as needed.
Ambrosia 12y ago
Having two extra configurations for Linux gamers (open source and proprietary) would be pretty cool!
zkar 12y ago
Not sure if it would be possible to add the price for a similar configured PC from the major pc vendor sites like HP, Lenovo,Dell etc for comparison purposes.
mjgoeke 12y ago
Looks great, but I spent forever trying to figure out why clicking the tiles didn't do anything. I finally found that touching the tiles works. I'm on a windows 8 touchscreen laptop, running the latest version of chrome.
Siecje 12y ago
For Power Supplies what is "80Plus Bronze"? Why isn't the Power listed in the on hover dropdown?
- dublinben 12y ago
  80+ Bronze is a certification of power efficiency. It's really the minimum quality you should be buying. Some people might prefer 80+ Silver, Gold, and Platinum rated PSUs, but they are not generally worth the slightly improved efficiency.
ShirsenduK 12y ago
Does anyone use a PC? Most use a Macbook.
genericuser 12y ago
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.
johndoze 12y ago
With any mild usage these guys are looking to make a killing in Amazon affiliate earnings.
asdasd123dd 12y ago
Can someone tell me what he used to code that website? Javascript and bootstrap or something else?
sspiff 12y ago
Nice site! Some suggestions: * Allow users to specify a form factor (like HTPC, μATX, mini ATX, ATX, ...) and filter components like mainboard and case by this. * Allow users to use a different Amazon site for pricing info (.de/.fr would be nice for me personally)
- mrkipling 12y ago
  Agreed on the form factor filter. I'm currently planning out a high-powered mATX gaming/dev machine, but this site as it currently functions wouldn't let me do this.
jeena 12y ago
Bummer, I already have the stuff they have under "Pro" in my desktop and my laptop, and I think it is still too slow :-/
niico 12y ago
Very well built. Kudos to the founders. Also should add other options like home media centers and other stuff.
baby 12y ago
This is really really awesome and I'm gonna need something like this in the coming months. Only bad thing is that I need the price in € as I live in France.
tekacs 12y ago
In the UK there has existed for several years something almost exactly like this in the form of [PC Specialist][0]. Well worth checking out and in my experience more pleasant to interact with than this website (a simpler interface, without all the unnecessarily huge images and so on). [0]: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/
xkiwi 12y ago
#1 Almost all games are created by PC, and port to console, not the other way around. #2 Almost all games can play on PC, maybe just with lower setting. #3 PC games are for people who like to discover => example how someone found out how to enable watch dog's E3 graph setting. But you have no control over console. #4 Almost all console games are created by Pc, oh wait.
vacri 12y ago
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.
dgorges 12y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I don't really care how my motherboard looks like. Means: I don't need to see those product photos, they could make space for more important information.
elktea 12y ago
I like the design, but I would like a better overview when picking motherboards. Perhaps include number of PCI-E slots, number of USB slots, type of audio built in, type of video built in, that sort of thing.
cloudwalking 12y ago
Ditch the notices/warnings. Eg: > Don't worry about hardware compatibility, the following components are safe to be used in the same PC build. It looks like an error, which it isn't. Instead, convey this in the UI--eg a small "100% compatible" / "compatibility guarantee" badge next to each product.
maxds 12y ago
I would like to offer some critical feedback. I just took a look at PcPartPicker and it seems so much better. On my monitor I can see at most 9 components at a time on your site. On PcPartPicker its about 28. I don't see the images serving any purpose. Why should I look at an image of the processor's box? What information does it give me? I also recommend the book Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It's in the YC library and its fantastic.
desktophound 12y ago
DesktopHound.com circa 2008 did the same thing.
snambi 12y ago
very nice site. operating system options are limited to windows though.
danbee 12y ago
I'd really like to see some Mini-ITX/Micro-ATX choices on there for people that want to build smaller systems.
clarry 12y ago
I really really hate browsing shops and reviews and manufacturer sites and all that, trying to find the build I want.. so a website to help with that would be nice. Unfortunately this is not it. The selection is not there, and it doesn't really allow me to set any criteria (without which I could buy anything and there'd be no problem to solve). The site also fails to provide an easy-to-glance overview of the differences between alternatives.
hoektoe 12y ago
Hello I haven't used pcpartpicker, but went to have a quick look compared to yours. I can see a lot of work has gone into it. I like that you don't have to navigate away from the page. 1) Images are bit big 2) At first I struggled finding the divisions of parts. Maybe close all accordions except the first. This way it might feel more like steps. Currently all "steps" are open and options seem endless as its a page full of objects. Remember when scanning over a page, we basically first see a sillhoutte of major objects. 3) Maybe number accordions, so seems more like steps 1) Motherboard 2) CPU 4) Show important information without any action require by the user. Example some of the CPU's cannot immediately identify the Speed without reading the whole title. Well done. Hopefully you see comments not as negative but constructive. All of the best forwards
kbart 12y ago
I wish somebody would make a similar web tool for the power users. I spend at least few days every few years browsing countless sites and forums trying to choose an optimal build when upgrading my desktop. It should satisfy at least these requirements: 1) include most of available parts, not just few trendy ones (in this site I got only 8 motherboards and 6 CPU's for AMD) 2) do price/performance analysis on fly (with referenced to sources) and unobtrusively show better candidates on this aspect in the same price range 3) show small summary on parts when clicked: exhaustive specifications, release date, current price (depending on region), available newer versions or successors (if any) 4) no ugly tablet orientated design with big pictures (and why would I care how my RAM looks like anyway?), but clean, slim list with advanced details. This site looks super ugly on my 22", full HD monitor. I understand that the biggest problem is to maintain up-to-date database, but I would even pay few bucks to use such tool to save my time.
owenversteeg 12y ago
First of all, what is that shiny gold motherboard [0] on the front page? Secondly, I recommend that you add Amazon reviews as another feature - just like price and performance. Also, I think you should add in some kind of metric for mice and keyboards - # of buttons, DPI, activation weight, etc. Finally, I really like the UI of your site. Although it may not be as feature-rich as some competitors, it seems many HNers have forgotten the importance of a good design. [0] http://pangoly.com/images/main-mb1.png http://pangoly.com/images/main-mb1.png
- yellowapple 12y ago
  > First of all, what is that shiny gold motherboard [0] on the front page? It's the ASUS Z87 Deluxe (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87DELUXE/ http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87DELUXE/)
  - owenversteeg 12y ago
    THANK YOU! That was driving me insane.
hqhakcer 12y ago
completely rip off!
rk0567 12y ago
It's cool :-) I've also been working on a similar project [0]. A side project, started around an year ago. Initially it was focused primarily on Indian users, now, I'm adding support for other currencies as well. [0] http://assembleyourpc.net http://assembleyourpc.net

778 points by ejjpi 12y ago

failed for my first attempt: how can't i customize my dual-socket opteron 64Gb RAM workstation ?... ( mobo ASUS KGPE-d16 )

hardwaresofton 12y ago

This is really cool -- now when people ask me how hard it is to build their own PC I can show them this site... Usually my answer is "it's just as easy as picking the right things, and putting round pegs into round holes"

dublinben 12y ago
This doesn't seem very different from PcPartPicker.com or the LogicalIncrements.com guide. Nearly every hardware review site will also have a running list of recommended builds.[0] [0]http://www.pcper.com/hwlb http://www.pcper.com/hwlb
- ejjpi 12y ago
  Of course, you mentioned similar websites but I think they have different purposes compared to Pangoly. PCPartPicker offers a huge set of components with different stores so you can find the best price available for almost anything, but it struggle with users having little building experience that are trying to find what's the current best build options for their budget. On the other hand logicalincrements offers a nice viewing experience of components tiers but it lacks building customizations. I think having another option and point of view is not harmful at all :)
  - sergiotapia 12y ago
    Exactly, competition is great don't let anybody discourage you. I already shared your site with some friends and they all like it a lot.
    - hardwaresofton 12y ago
      +1 -- I made that comment after sending it out to a friend of mine at work

ejjpi 12y ago

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).

sswezey 12y ago
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?
darthgoogle 12y ago
Would be great to link up with sites that offer pre-configured builds for specific purposes. For example, about some Hackintosh friendly builds?
MarkyC4 12y ago
I'd allow people to unselect a second hard drive, especially since 256GB SSDs are an option.
walterbell 12y ago
How would one search for processor + motherboard support for VT-d or vPro?
newman314 12y ago
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.

bsenftner 12y ago

I'd be interested in a service such as this for building custom servers. I currently custom design and pay to have them built for my company.

smacktoward 12y ago
Serious question: why? I would think that for servers, the lower cost and easier replaceability of buying standardized machines from an OEM would outweigh any benefits you could get from hand-selecting components.

avmich 12y ago

I'd prefer to be able to have motherboards suggestions based on requested features. Like, so many USB ports, SATA ports and this socket for AMD CPU.

tokenizerrr 12y ago

How does this compare to pcpartpicker? I don't see any option to use euros as the currency without getting an italian user interface. Are the prices at all localized, if so, do you have plans to support any other countries?

ejjpi 12y ago
yes, more countries and localizations are on their way.
- tokenizerrr 12y ago
  Great. Looking forward for Dutch prices, that would be great. FYI an entire translation seems unnecessary, and in my experience (at least with dutch peole) most will prefer an english interface though that is usually because translations are so bad.

ianpri 12y ago

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

Linell 12y ago
This would be an awesome feature.
mmastrac 12y ago
I'd (figuratively) kill for that feature as well. If you aren't following Hackintosh guides regularly, you fall behind far too quickly.

pling 12y ago

This looks really cool. I haven't built my own PC for a number of years and probably wouldn't consider it any more to be honest (MacBook FTW). I will however recommend this to anyone who does ask me about self-builds :)

mindslight 12y ago
Modern laptops have been adequate for most tasks for quite some time (T61 ftw, personally). On the other hand, if you are CPU/GPU/RAM limited (eg rendering..), then you will still greatly benefit from the additional power a desktop build will bring. And it's refreshing to see the continuing progress of stats, while laptops have seemingly stagnated (6 cores and 64GiB RAM? Nifty!). OP, I think you have a ways to go to match the utility of pcpartpicker. But if you want a possible leg-up on them, then look into supporting workstation builds with Xeon/Cxxx/ECC (they don't really cost more than comparable "consumer" builds, and if you value stability more than overclocking, they make a lot of sense). Niches can be powerful.

kayoone 12y ago

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 ?

ejjpi 12y ago
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.
- AustinScript 12y ago
  Did you read the question?

orwhat 12y ago

Really cool. How do you browse shared builds?

ejjpi 12y ago
Here: http://pangoly.com/en/build/list http://pangoly.com/en/build/list

devd 12y ago

Cool project - Wish I could remove some of the mandatory components - I could not figure out a way to remove the hard drive.

njsubedi 12y ago
no need to. remove it from Amazon cart.

maxsilver 12y ago

Looks great so far! 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.

ziol6546 12y ago

This is a really cool tool for beginners or just shopping around to get the best deal. I def would have appreciated this when I first started out.

ErikRogneby 12y ago

Wow, it's been so long since I've built a desktop I had to look up APU. (a CPU that does more than just central processing, possible a GPU on the same chip)

prawks 12y ago

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.

falcolas 12y ago

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.

kubiiii 12y ago
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.
- asdasd123dd 12y ago
  Can someone tell me what he used to code that website? Javascript and bootstrap or something else?
  - buckbova 12y ago
    http://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fpangoly.com%2fen%2f http://builtwith.com/?http%3a%2f%2fpangoly.com%2fen%2f Have you used BuiltWith? Looks like asp.net, jquery, bootstrap, and what not. There's a chrome extension too.
makmanalp 12y ago
Agreed! This seems a bit more polished than http://pcpartpicker.com/ http://pcpartpicker.com/ in that regard

chatmasta 12y ago

This is awesome. I remember building my first computer at 12 years old. :) A nice fat gaming rig with dual boot to Linux. My parents bought it for me after I got all "E's for effort!" At the time all I had to go by was a "how to build your own computer" book. I would have loved something like this.

balls187 12y ago
Did your mobo have soft-jumpers?
- walshemj 12y ago
  Kids today :-) I remember upgrading a IBM compatible using DIP chips on the mother board.

obsession 12y ago

Wow, this is really neat!

chton 12y ago

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.

grapeshot 12y ago

I find it unfortunate that I can't completely remove the graphics card from the mid-range system, and I'm not allowed to select a SSD for it either. If I could do those things I would be able to compare this site directly to the PC I built yesterday. Also I notice that you're missing estimated tax, shipping, and a Windows license from the price.

LaikaF 12y ago

What does this do that PC Part Picker can't?

opendais 12y ago

May I suggest including linux compatibility for hardware? [e.g. graphics cards tends to not always support it]

swatthatfly 12y ago

Accessories should be part of the options. You need cables for example to connect the HDs to the MB, DVI adapters for older monitors, etc. Some people may have a spare one, while others will have to make an additional trip to the store.

dublinben 12y ago
SATA cables are included with the motherboard, and DVI adapters are included with the video card. Neither of those should be an expected purchase when building a new machine.

drewg123 12y ago

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.

adl 12y ago
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?
- joosters 12y ago
  Memory errors are a significant cause [citation needed!] of system instability. If you want a reliable machine, even a desktop, that is going to keep working, then ECC is very useful. If you've decided upon ECC as a must, then it would be great for a system builder tool to then show you options based upon that choice.
  - dclowd9901 12y ago
    I think I'm the vein of this product's philosophy, maybe a "stability" or "reliability" metric along with the performance and price metrics.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    And for some high end use case you might want to be looking at xenon's or even dual xenon's. I could see a big data or HPC developer wanting to have a desktop that used the same processor as the cluster they are writing for - mainly in the case where your tuning for max performance and want to able to develop using the same complier flags.
  - Freaky 12y ago
    It's less about the stability and more about data integrity. Crashes suck, but they suck a hell of a lot less than corrupt filesystems and backups.

SandB0x 12y ago

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?

warfangle 12y ago
Agreed. It would be nice if for each tier there were an Intel option and an AMD option ... and an ATi and nVidia option.

supsep 12y ago

Nice service for those of us who find it hard to follow the ever changing hardware landscape. Thanks!

alexchamberlain 12y ago

s/Wattage/Power Usage/?

buckbova 12y ago

I pretty much bounce between newegg and tigerdirect when building a machine. Once you have a case and motherboard, everything falls into place based on my budget. I'm looking to start a new build soon. This case is speaking to me. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9113957&Sku=C69-0008 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-det...

doorhammer 12y ago
Have you tried http://pcpartpicker.com/ http://pcpartpicker.com/ ? I used it for my last build. You can select a variety of different vendors, browse parts compare prices, etc. It does a pretty good job doing the compatibility checks for you as well (I can do them myself, but my heart just wasn't in it this time, so it was handy). I basically assembled my build with pcpartpicker, selected newegg, amazon and microcenter, then bundled it all up and ordered it. The microcenter one was neat because they actually found the processor I wanted at a local microcenter, for in store pickup, at a hundred bucks cheaper than anywhere else (not a technically crazy hurdle, but really convenient and pleasantly surprising). Wondering how it compares to the site linked (I haven't looked through it yet; they could be totally different, but I'm going to check it out in a sec)
- pc86 12y ago
  Seems like PCPP makes it much easier to filter on specific criteria (say, you only want to see 7200RPM HDDs) but the linked site seems much more user friendly, particularly for beginners. Edit: Also, the first several builds I made to test the site out all appear to be shipping from Amazon. Not sure if this supports multiple vendors or not.
Pwntastic 12y ago
You may want to check out HoverHound, a chrome/firefox plugin. It'll let you compare the price of a part on newegg with the current price on amazon and tigerdirect. When I rebuilt my htpc about 6 months ago, I was surprised to find that many of the parts were actually cheaper on amazon.

lifeformed 12y ago

Cool! Some humble UI suggestions: - 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 12y ago
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.

jbert 12y ago

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 :-)

jedahan 12y ago
Maybe the algorithm scores based on more than just cost and performance - perhaps review scores as well?

aresant 12y ago

The most daunting part of building a custom computer is usually validation of the component quality and, more importantly, how they'll wind up working together. A rating / review of component selection by power-users is all that's missing here for me. Beyond that this is brilliant and simple - I'm surprised that NewEgg doesn't offer something like this.

thearn4 12y ago

Looks good, I'll be putting together a lab computer pretty soon, and will give this a shot for comparing possible configurations.

lazyant 12y ago

Works automagically for Canada, awesome

jamieb 12y ago

Am about to buy/build PC right now. It will be a six-core socket 2011 CPU with a couple of 780s. All the CPUs are little 1150s. Guess I'm not your target audience?

JustinAiken 12y ago

I found myself looking for a 'upgrade your shiny old PC' section... Site is appealing, but would be more useful if you could put in everything you already have, then look at which piece/pieces could be upgraded, with $/wattage/performance changes...

carlmcqueen 12y ago

This is perfectly timed (for me) as I plan to build a gaming computer soon. I've lived off a laptop and an older desktop for a bunch of years but have money sitting saved for a new desktop. Overall, I really like the site rating and the rational pros/cons between the different options. The description of the AMD gamer computer made me realize there were more options than three, I didn't intuitively realize I could scroll down for more computer builds at first. That is probably more a me problem than a mass problem, however.

josefresco 12y ago

Does anyone else remember Geek.com's value/mid/high end gaming PC build articles? Each month they'd revise each setup and I always used it as a guide when building or costing machines. I tried to find them this morning, but didn't have luck. Did they ditch this feature? Edit: What I liked about the feature is that despite being a "tech" and having built several PC's in the past, I can no longer keep current with hardware developments. The Geek.com guides allowed me to jump right in, without a weekend of research to get up to speed on the latest CPU's, GPU's and various hardware components.

dublinben 12y ago
If you're looking for something similar that's always kept up to date, check out the PcPer hardware leader board. They have a low/mid/high/dream system suggestion. http://www.pcper.com/hwlb http://www.pcper.com/hwlb
- Thrymr 12y ago
  They don't update as often, but I've always liked the Ars Technica system guides, e.g.: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-guide-bargain-box-april-2014 http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-g...

cottonseed 12y ago

A HTPC option would be nice.

nelmaven 12y ago

I think the only thing missing here are the CPU coolers. Edit: Nevermind, found them. :) Otherwise it looks like a cool way to pick a build, especially since it's been so long since I have looked into building a desktop.

jcastro 12y ago

Nice work, really like the UI, much simpler to use than other tools. It'd be nice if you could add some mini-itx options for HPTC and/or Steam Machine.

ad_hominem 12y ago

I like it a lot, but it would be cool to hear some of the technical details. Such as: - Technology stack? - How do you keep product pricing up-to-date? Do you have a persistent process that iterates over your known product list, querying Amazon's Product Advertising API (staying within rate limits)? If that's the case would love to hear more details on language and libraries used as I'm working on something similar. - How do you discover new products to list? - What storage backend do you use to store historic pricing data? Regular relational database or something more exotic like InfluxDB? - Any plans on introducing new retailers besides Amazon? If so, how will you correlate products into canonical listings if the product does not have UPC information? Things like that.

mrfusion 12y ago

Tangential offshoot topic: So for my soon to arrive Oculus Rift, what's the cheapest PC I can build with this site? Could i start with the cheapest option and just add a beefy graphics card?

joosters 12y ago

This tool looks fantastic. 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 12y ago
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.

coldpie 12y ago

This is really cool. Two things I find vital when I'm shopping for components are reviews and brands. It'd be nice to filter based on Newegg reviews or select a certain set of brands.

rcthompson 12y ago

Suggestion: on the starting page, the "Highlights" for each starting configuration include both technical details ("AMD APU A6/A8 Series Dual/Quad Core") and a blurb describing what this configuration is good for ("Ideal for browsing the Internet, watching movies and chatting"). Furthermore, the latter always comes last on the list. I think that the blurb should come first, and that it shouldn't be part of the "checklist", but should rather be in highlighted near the top somewhere (maybe above or below the price).

1ris 12y ago

I would really like to to tweak the price. I.E. get a suggestion what i could get for 50 pounds more. Also I can't figure out how to select "none" for components. I.e. Most people already have a case.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

sthatipamala 12y ago

I like how polished this site is. It would be a good companion to this parts recommendation guide: http://www.logicalincrements.com/ 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.

walshemj 12y ago
But how efficient as a developer are you on your netbook when compared to a dual or tripled screened desktop workstation.
EpicEng 12y ago
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.
- sthatipamala 12y ago
  Probably not. I supplied one extreme but surely one of the lesser builds for suffice for most developers.
groovy2shoes 12y ago
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.

hendersoon 12y ago

Missing the new devils' canyon intel CPUs. If I were building a PC right now, it would use an i5-4690K.

randomdrake 12y ago

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. [1] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the-console-war-is-over-the-pc-already-won/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2014/07/14/the-c... [2] - http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/ http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/ [3] - http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-glorious-pc-gaming-master-race http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-glorious-pc-gaming-master-... [4] - http://gizmodo.com/13-steam-boxes-ranked-1496078448 http://gizmodo.com/13-steam-boxes-ranked-1496078448

sosborn 12y ago
> PC Master Race Please don't perpetuate this inane meme. It is needlessly inflammatory and would probably alienate a healthy portion of your target market.
- jpgvm 12y ago
  Perpetuating the meme is perhaps unwise (and alienating as you pointed out). That aside it is worth pointing out the advantages of a proper computer over cut down entertainment devices. Especially in a format that lets you customize and meet a certain price point. Shame it's not easy to have comparative benchmarks against console hardware at this time, despite the newest generation being effectively x86 hardware we have no means of comparison due to the platforms being too locked down.

silverbax88 12y ago

I first hit this on mobile and it was just about unusable. I couldn't find out how to switch over to the desktop version and had to wait until I was at a desktop to take a look. Other than the mobile issues, it's a nice idea and pretty clean looking site. I'd reduce the images in size, especially the gigantic brand logos scrolling across the bottom. Make it more of a dashboard and less like a slideshow.

acomjean 12y ago

Reminds me of Ars System Guides I haven't read in a while but they're still doing them: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-guide-bargain-box-april-2014/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/ars-technica-system-g... they have decent forums too http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewforum.php?f=8 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..

sirwolfgang 12y ago

Thats a really nice way tool to generate income from amazon referrals. :)

rmah 12y ago

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.

silverbax88 12y ago
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.

gprasanth 12y ago

This teaches a very good lesson I'll never forget. I have to invest more of my idle time on my side projects. I bought a domain to do this but never got around to finish it. Wonderful execution. Kudos.

jburwell 12y ago

A well-executed and beautiful site, but it would be nice to have Xeon options for the professional builds.

nathanb 12y ago

Here's some advice: 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 12y ago
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.
- nathanb 12y ago
  Ooh, helpful! I haven't upgraded my home system in a while, so I have a Core 2 Quad Q9450. Imagine my confusion when I started seeing numbers in the 2, 3, and 4k range. Thanks for decoding it for me!
- elktea 12y ago
  K also means virtualization features are missing. Hugely important, these days.
  - boobsbr 12y ago
    I thought 'K' meant unlocked multipliers. You're right about virtualization, though. Some features are missing. http://ark.intel.com/compare/75123,75122 http://ark.intel.com/compare/75123,75122

ionforce 12y ago

Love the idea. A maybe tangential question for you or sites like yours... So this might be all "tyranny of choice". But what is the difference between certain parts? Like if there are two motherboards and both of them cost ballpark $200 and support the same mainstream inputs/components, how do I know which one to choose? It's moments like those that paralyze me from taking advantage of these services. Or why I like buying Apple where I don't really have a choice (implicit to the fact that I don't care which motherboard I'm getting other than Apple-curated).

sbt 12y ago

Always dreamed of a site like this when I was a kid, still do, but now it looks like it's finally here! Nice work.

izzydata 12y ago

Not enough choices in my opinion. If it were to implement close to the amount of hardware choices as PCPartPicker then it would be very practical. The site layout and design is very nice though.

danwiding 12y ago

Feature request: I want to buy a new gaming machine but the sticker shock is a little much right now. Is it possible to save my configuration and get price alerts when a component goes on sale? Bonus points: could I configure multiple acceptable components and get an alert when any of those products goes on sale?

click170 12y ago

It would be nice if after configuring a pc, I could just copy the URL and send it to someone and have it display the pc I had configured. Still, cool site!

dumbfounder 12y ago

The hardest part for me about building a pc is making sure I get the proper RAM config, and this doesn't seem to help much. I want LOTS of ram (32gb), so let me pick a motherboard with 4 slots easily, and then make sure the selections have to be compatible. Same sort of issue with a video card. I want dual DVI for output to 2 monitors, that is more important than speed for me.

ep103 12y ago

Incase you were unaware, these guys (http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc) _are_ your target audience. And your main competitor is pcpartpicker

pgrote 12y ago

I've been looking for a site like this for a while. The only issue I had was picking the $605 configuration and wanting 16 gig of memory and blue ray. What you initially choose sometimes limits capacity later, though not with hard drives.

flurpitude 12y ago
Are you familiar with http://pcpartpicker.com http://pcpartpicker.com?

jjcm 12y ago

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.

gr3yh47 12y ago
www.logicalincrements.com presents similar info in IMO a better format as well.
- smrtinsert 12y ago
  Agreed. For the HN audience I would expect something like li, but with more interactivity.
- aidenn0 12y ago
  That's a really good site. I tend to build workstations these days, but have several friends asking me for gaming build advice; I can point them there.
lotharbot 12y ago

incision 12y ago

Very nice. I'm sure I'm not alone in having kicked around ideas for something like this for a long time. Comparing PC builds has been an informal competition / game on various forums for many years. I expect having more in the way of features to share, compare and feature/track builds could be very popular. There are people who take great pride in meticulous builds. Giving them a platform to share their work would be great. Likewise, have a look at any 'Lets Play' vid on YouTube or whatever and you'll see dozens of questions about the configuration that produced the video. Hooking up with a popular 'caster such that they link to 'their' builds on Pangoly could be a great source of traffic. Looking forward to seeing how this pans out.

joeyspn 12y ago
> Comparing PC builds has been an informal competition / game on various forums for many years. Exactly... the good ol' days at XtremeSystems forums come to my mind... :rolleyes:

dartonw 12y ago

The site looks great, but the "Learn" section is badly in need of some copy editing. Subject/verb pluralization disagreement and odd grammatical structure (to a native English speaker, many of the sentences sound awkward) are the biggest issues.

alexcroox 12y ago

Buying a new PC these week, started with the custom selection and went to choose the motherboard (Asus Maximus VI) it wasn't there, gave up.

xienze 12y ago

Really neat! I'd like to see something where I could say "I want 32GB of RAM" and that would constrain my motherboard choices, for example. I could also see the same kind of thing working with power supplies and video cards.

rbanffy 12y ago

I can't assemble an i3 with 16 GB of RAM and no graphics card. Some work is needed.

greggman 12y ago

Why no info on multi-processor systems? Google provides their chrome engineers with 16 core, 64gig systems. Dreamworks provides even larger machines. So anything labeled "Expert" seems to need better options

buckbova 12y ago
I don't work for google, but I wouldn't build specific machines but instead spin up a VM as needed.

Ambrosia 12y ago

Having two extra configurations for Linux gamers (open source and proprietary) would be pretty cool!

zkar 12y ago

Not sure if it would be possible to add the price for a similar configured PC from the major pc vendor sites like HP, Lenovo,Dell etc for comparison purposes.

mjgoeke 12y ago

Looks great, but I spent forever trying to figure out why clicking the tiles didn't do anything. I finally found that touching the tiles works. I'm on a windows 8 touchscreen laptop, running the latest version of chrome.

Siecje 12y ago

For Power Supplies what is "80Plus Bronze"? Why isn't the Power listed in the on hover dropdown?

dublinben 12y ago
80+ Bronze is a certification of power efficiency. It's really the minimum quality you should be buying. Some people might prefer 80+ Silver, Gold, and Platinum rated PSUs, but they are not generally worth the slightly improved efficiency.

ShirsenduK 12y ago

Does anyone use a PC? Most use a Macbook.

genericuser 12y ago

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.

johndoze 12y ago

With any mild usage these guys are looking to make a killing in Amazon affiliate earnings.

asdasd123dd 12y ago

Can someone tell me what he used to code that website? Javascript and bootstrap or something else?

sspiff 12y ago

Nice site! Some suggestions: * Allow users to specify a form factor (like HTPC, μATX, mini ATX, ATX, ...) and filter components like mainboard and case by this. * Allow users to use a different Amazon site for pricing info (.de/.fr would be nice for me personally)

mrkipling 12y ago
Agreed on the form factor filter. I'm currently planning out a high-powered mATX gaming/dev machine, but this site as it currently functions wouldn't let me do this.

jeena 12y ago

Bummer, I already have the stuff they have under "Pro" in my desktop and my laptop, and I think it is still too slow :-/

niico 12y ago

Very well built. Kudos to the founders. Also should add other options like home media centers and other stuff.

baby 12y ago

This is really really awesome and I'm gonna need something like this in the coming months. Only bad thing is that I need the price in € as I live in France.

tekacs 12y ago

In the UK there has existed for several years something almost exactly like this in the form of [PC Specialist][0]. Well worth checking out and in my experience more pleasant to interact with than this website (a simpler interface, without all the unnecessarily huge images and so on). [0]: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/ http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/

xkiwi 12y ago

#1 Almost all games are created by PC, and port to console, not the other way around. #2 Almost all games can play on PC, maybe just with lower setting. #3 PC games are for people who like to discover => example how someone found out how to enable watch dog's E3 graph setting. But you have no control over console. #4 Almost all console games are created by Pc, oh wait.

vacri 12y ago

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.

dgorges 12y ago

Maybe it's just me, but I don't really care how my motherboard looks like. Means: I don't need to see those product photos, they could make space for more important information.

elktea 12y ago

I like the design, but I would like a better overview when picking motherboards. Perhaps include number of PCI-E slots, number of USB slots, type of audio built in, type of video built in, that sort of thing.

cloudwalking 12y ago

Ditch the notices/warnings. Eg: > Don't worry about hardware compatibility, the following components are safe to be used in the same PC build. It looks like an error, which it isn't. Instead, convey this in the UI--eg a small "100% compatible" / "compatibility guarantee" badge next to each product.

maxds 12y ago

I would like to offer some critical feedback. I just took a look at PcPartPicker and it seems so much better. On my monitor I can see at most 9 components at a time on your site. On PcPartPicker its about 28. I don't see the images serving any purpose. Why should I look at an image of the processor's box? What information does it give me? I also recommend the book Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It's in the YC library and its fantastic.

desktophound 12y ago

DesktopHound.com circa 2008 did the same thing.

snambi 12y ago

very nice site. operating system options are limited to windows though.

danbee 12y ago

I'd really like to see some Mini-ITX/Micro-ATX choices on there for people that want to build smaller systems.

clarry 12y ago

I really really hate browsing shops and reviews and manufacturer sites and all that, trying to find the build I want.. so a website to help with that would be nice. Unfortunately this is not it. The selection is not there, and it doesn't really allow me to set any criteria (without which I could buy anything and there'd be no problem to solve). The site also fails to provide an easy-to-glance overview of the differences between alternatives.

hoektoe 12y ago

Hello I haven't used pcpartpicker, but went to have a quick look compared to yours. I can see a lot of work has gone into it. I like that you don't have to navigate away from the page. 1) Images are bit big 2) At first I struggled finding the divisions of parts. Maybe close all accordions except the first. This way it might feel more like steps. Currently all "steps" are open and options seem endless as its a page full of objects. Remember when scanning over a page, we basically first see a sillhoutte of major objects. 3) Maybe number accordions, so seems more like steps 1) Motherboard 2) CPU 4) Show important information without any action require by the user. Example some of the CPU's cannot immediately identify the Speed without reading the whole title. Well done. Hopefully you see comments not as negative but constructive. All of the best forwards

kbart 12y ago

I wish somebody would make a similar web tool for the power users. I spend at least few days every few years browsing countless sites and forums trying to choose an optimal build when upgrading my desktop. It should satisfy at least these requirements: 1) include most of available parts, not just few trendy ones (in this site I got only 8 motherboards and 6 CPU's for AMD) 2) do price/performance analysis on fly (with referenced to sources) and unobtrusively show better candidates on this aspect in the same price range 3) show small summary on parts when clicked: exhaustive specifications, release date, current price (depending on region), available newer versions or successors (if any) 4) no ugly tablet orientated design with big pictures (and why would I care how my RAM looks like anyway?), but clean, slim list with advanced details. This site looks super ugly on my 22", full HD monitor. I understand that the biggest problem is to maintain up-to-date database, but I would even pay few bucks to use such tool to save my time.

owenversteeg 12y ago

First of all, what is that shiny gold motherboard [0] on the front page? Secondly, I recommend that you add Amazon reviews as another feature - just like price and performance. Also, I think you should add in some kind of metric for mice and keyboards - # of buttons, DPI, activation weight, etc. Finally, I really like the UI of your site. Although it may not be as feature-rich as some competitors, it seems many HNers have forgotten the importance of a good design. [0] http://pangoly.com/images/main-mb1.png http://pangoly.com/images/main-mb1.png

yellowapple 12y ago
> First of all, what is that shiny gold motherboard [0] on the front page? It's the ASUS Z87 Deluxe (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87DELUXE/ http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87DELUXE/)
- owenversteeg 12y ago
  THANK YOU! That was driving me insane.

hqhakcer 12y ago

completely rip off!

rk0567 12y ago

It's cool :-) I've also been working on a similar project [0]. A side project, started around an year ago. Initially it was focused primarily on Indian users, now, I'm adding support for other currencies as well. [0] http://assembleyourpc.net http://assembleyourpc.net