So, I have a not so unique problem. I want to build a PC with decent power and good Linux support but local parts are hard to get and importing is a mess.
Local shops don’t have much
https://www.scanmalta.com/shop/ this is the only local shop with parts in stock, and even they only have 1 amd GPU.
I’m looking for both amd CPU and GPU. At least 16 GB of ram and ideally as cheap as I can. Anyone have any advice to give me?
I’m aiming for something midrange-ish
There’s PC Building Simulator and its sequel. The first one is on sale right now for 5 bucks (at least in my region):
https://store.steampowered.com/app/621060/PC_Building_Simulator/
The sequel is also on sale right now, but it’s only on Epic:
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/pc-building-simulator-2
It’s not perfect, but it’s a whole lot closer to the real deal than most other job simulators. You can genuinely use this to pick up the basics, but there’s no substitute building in the real world. The sequel got better reviews (79 on Opencritic vs. 70 for part 1), but I haven’t tried it yet.
What I’d recommend once you know which part goes where is getting some scrap parts from somewhere and assembling something functional out of them. I’m talking random parts found by the side of the road to at most 20 bucks in total for everything, case included. That’s how I built my first PC as a kid. It was only a 486 with 100 MHz (which came out in 1994) years after the GHz barrier had been breached (~2002ish), but it was mine and I loved it.
Ohh thanks! I’ll have to check that out! I didn’t even think about checking for a game lol
I built my current PC with a friend back in 2013, and I’ve done some minor upgrading since then, but yeah, most of my knowledge is out the window at this point so maybe this will do the trick :)
Happy to help. Forgot to mention: Make sure to check the difficulty options and disable things like automatically placed cables.
Also, keep in mind that any prices in there tend to be widely out of date. If you want to use this to plan your build, use PCPartPicker to pick out the parts you can afford and then find them or the closest equivalents in this game. The sequel is obviously going to be a bit more up to date.