Maybe if you need the exact aesthetics of the Corsair this would be difficult.

But, if your only experience in building your own PC was from years ago, you'd be in for a pleasant surprise. Nowadays there's very little to worry about. No jumpers, easy cable management, even the front panels are no longer the mess they used to be. You can even avoid dealing with ANY cables at all for your SSD, if you go with the M2 form factor.

You can build from start to finish in less than one hour. It takes longer to install the OS (if it's Windows), than it takes to assemble the machine.

Of course, then there's part selection. Which is now exceedingly easy, thanks to the likes of https://pcpartpicker.com/

Don't know what to pick? Well, there's plenty of builds by other users. Pick one, modify to taste. The site will let you know if there are incompatibilities. In my case it even warned me that a GPU I wanted was too big and might not fit.

You can even have 'parametric filters'. For instance, say you want 16GB of system memory and you don't care about brand. You can say "I want 16GB, in either 1x16GB or 2x8GB, rated 3 stars or above, pick the cheapest". And it will pick one, usually linking straight to the product page(those may be affiliate links, not sure but I'm ok with that).

> I'm also less interested in those huge, full of fancy glowing RGB lights, gaming rigs and more interested in something small, silent and discreet.

I got a PC that's only slightly larger than a PS4. No RGB lights or anything. That's entirely up to you, even more so if you are choosing your own parts.

The biggest change for me is there’s no longer a risk of putting a screwdriver through your motherboard when attaching a CPU cooler. Why they didn’t address that a decade or more is beyond me!

Agreed - They are pretty easy to assemble these days. I used the pcpartpicker, like you, and had it done in an hour.

Unless you get case which is too small, and you have problems getting you hands in there.

I recently bought this case: https://formdworks.com/products/t1-black

You can build in this case pretty easily as long as you don't try to do fancy things, like custom loop. It's smaller than the Corsair One, and you get better upgrability. It's small and discreet. Silent depends on what parts you pick.

There are many other cases that are similar, but not quite as space-optimized. Popular ones include the Ghost S1, and the Ncase M1. All three support the same-caliber specs you would get with a Corsair One.

Let me know if you want help selecting parts/building in such a case.

Yikes, and now that's on my to-buy-list.

Edit: What I really need is a 5.25" slot on one of these so I can stick in a 3.5" hard drive toaster for forensics work :(

Building PC in 2020 is so easy - like two cables, chase, cpu, ram and video. Drive is probably just m2. So much easier than back in the day.

It's very easy indeed, but will still take hours for component research and hours for building (for a first-timer). It makes sense if you like this kind of thing. If you're not into it, buying prebuilt is a valid option.

Eh, IDK. It'll definitely take some research, to maximize everything. But there's so much uniformity these days, that you could figure out your build in an hour or two. And, if you're not going for SFF or the like, have a build complete in less than 30-45 minutes after watching a YouTube video.

This isn't the 90's/00's where you had to match graphics interfaces, FSB timing, RAM sockets/timing, modular vs cabled PSUs, set jumpers, configure components' master/slave relationships, run molex's/splitters, maximize board fans, clump case/button/etc connectors, terminate sockets, etc, etc.

There are still plenty of topics that make sense to an experienced builder, but not the novice.

* does my motherboard m.2 slot support PCIe or SATA m.2 SSD-s?

* on AMD motherboards: will my CPU work out of the box or do I need a loaner CPU to perform a BIOS update?

* using the wrong fan header on the motherboard for your AIO water cooler

* not setting the proper XMP profile for your RAM

Those are the ones that I could think of immediately.

> does my motherboard m.2 slot support PCIe or SATA m.2 SSD-s?

Definitely SATA, most likely m.2 as well. They're not either/or.

More likely, you'll run into exhausting your PCIe lanes and might knock your GPU into 8x/4x mode or your additional SSD's into the dedicated SATA lanes.

> on AMD motherboards: will my CPU work out of the box or do I need a loaner CPU to perform a BIOS update?

Unless you fall into a very specific set of Motherboards from during the Zen -> Zen+ transition, the answer is no.

> using the wrong fan header on the motherboard for your AIO water cooler

Any header will still work, and it's not catastrophic anyways. Just change it if you got it wrong. Realistically, any modern motherboard will have the CPU fan header marked clearly, as opposed to the chassis headers.

> not setting the proper XMP profile for your RAM

The point of XMP is that you don't have to choose the profile. You just choose "XMP custom" (or however your motherboard manufacturer labels it) in the UEFI settings. If you don't, you'll get standard JEDEC RAM timings, which is hardly going to stop you.

I mean, your off the top of your head examples are all pretty easily solvable and probably wouldn't even be encountered unless you were specifically looking for them anyways. And if you don't configure them, most will Just Work (tm) at default configurations.

Chase?

Probably an autocorrect meant to be "case" or "chassis", lucky they both mean the same thing in this context!

Interesting, I didn't know things were so easy now; well, maybe I'll build my next gaming PC then!

Also, you can choose much better quality components for cheaper. Even with economies of scale, it seems like OEMs can't build a high end gaming PC for cheaper than what you can do yourself.

There are a few exceptions. If you get a mid-range pre-built, especially with sale prices, you can actually save some money and round it out with your own parts to make a nicer, more complete unit. It requires some real comparison shopping for sure, and it's probably isn't worth doing unless you're staring at a hell of a deal but that does happen.

The weird thing is how pre-builts seem to tier the products at. You can get Pre-builts with good CPU/GPU combos but absurdly low RAM/Storage quantities.

They like to tier at 16GB RAM/500GB SSDs and then go up from there for hundreds of dollars without a change of the CPU/GPU and that really confuses me.

It's a shame there is little to no physical retail for this stuff anymore as it used to be easier to find a fire sale on a pre-built that needs to move because of how brick and mortar works.

That said, it truly is easy to do it yourself and that has its own satisfaction.

Self-build is only meaningfully cheaper if you don't pay for a Windows license. If you place any real value on your time, just buy a system from Puget - their support is first class and they understand the real needs of power users.

https://www.pugetsystems.com