
Ask HN: Review my webapp PCPartPicker: pick parts, build a pc, compare prices - pcarmichael
Hi all,<p>I'd love to get some feedback from the HN community on a webapp side project I've been working on recently.  In the spirit of November launch month, I'd like to offer up PCPartPicker:<p>http://pcpartpicker.com<p>PCPartPicker provides computer part selection, compatibility guidance, and multi-part pricing comparisons for DIY PC builders.<p>I originally created it to solve a problem I had at my day job: quickly pricing out cheap systems for a small cluster I was building.  After talking with friends and colleagues it appeared there might be utility for the PC building community.  I was encouraged by feedback to a HN comment regarding hard drive prices (here:  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1546145 ), so I decided to continue on with the concept.<p>My target audience is DIY PC builders who are building systems of moderate complexity.  I think with some work I can target both novice builders as well as more serious builders/gamers.  However, I'd like to validate the concept further before investing considerably more time.<p>Any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated.<p>Thanks!
Philip
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bravura
I really like the "Featured System" functionality.

In fact, I think you should focus on the Featured System thing. I am a casual
DIY part picker, and I would rather just browse several community vetted
configurations.

Other people are more interested in building a system from scratch, or
commenting on other people's configs.

Now, imagine a "fork this configuration" option! So a builder can fork someone
else's system but make some slight mods.

\---

Please add a Disqus thread to the bottom of each page, so people can comment
on the configuration or part.

\---

Also, if you are buying a bunch of parts, you might be able to save money on
shipping by ordering parts from fewer distributors. Incorporating shipping
cost would be another useful feature, but perhaps tricky to implement.

~~~
pcarmichael
I like the idea of promoting the featured system aspect more. The ability to
fork a configuration is already there - perhaps not visible enough (the "Edit
this part list" on permalinked/featured part lists).

Disqus was a great idea. I've added it to the bottom of the part list pages.
I'll look into adding it to the individual part pages.

~~~
pcarmichael
(Too late for an edit, but I'm going to roll back the Disqus integration - at
least until I settle on a community involvement strategy.)

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smiler
Congrats on launching this, it's great. I'm in the UK so obviously my first
suggestion is UK webshop integration =)

The site is simple, clean and easy to use. I noticed that a lot of the small
touches of UI which add to the experience were there as well - eg a little
tick next to each component when you've selected it and then it does go away
again when you click remove. (Sounds straight forward I know, but great
attention to detail)

Here is my feedback - I've thought of a fair few things - please don't take
that as a negative, it just has lots of potential!

1\. Lots of the items you have lots and lots of components, which makes it
quite difficult at first to look at. I have a few ideas but don't know if they
will help

\- RAM - perhaps tabify the interface (eg have tabs of 12GB, 8GB, 6GB, 4GB).
You are even listing 256MB ram sticks on there. No-one should be buying 256mb
of ram. Educate your users and don't allow anything less than 4GB.

\- Hard Disks - you could tabify that by SSD, and then speed perhaps?

\- CPU - tabify by number of cores or clock speed?

2\. the tag line "Pick your parts. Build your system. Compare and Share" is
pretty good - how about "Pick your parts. Build your own PC. Compare and
Share" - system is ambigous, PC clarifies what it is, and ties in with your
domain better

3\. Bring in ratings / reviews from other sites, link to them etc...

4\. Have a "E-mail me when this system price drops below $xxx" form

5\. I might want to buy all the items from one store - give me a comparison
between 'source parts from anywhere' v one store. I don't know if you can get
stock status as well, but that would be good.

6\. You don't have monitors or software. You could have a "I also need
Windows" button or something like that

7\. With so many components on the graphs, some of them are grouped together
so tightly, that's it almost impossible to distinguish them without a lot of
tedious hovering. Not sure how you can improve that

8\. Add a Reset / remove all button to the system build page

9\. Once I've made my component choice - when looking at the component page,
put that clearly at the top of the list - rather than a little box in the
right hand side?

10\. Fill out with content - suggest enthuiast websites, "Why build a custom
PC?" etc etc

11\. White label it and sell it to pc component e-stores.

~~~
pcarmichael
Wow, lots of feedback - much appreciated.

Re: 1: This is becoming a common theme, so it's definitely something I need to
address. I like your suggestions on how to break it down into more manageable
sub-categories.

Re: 2: Changed it, thanks.

Re: 3, 4, 6, 8, 10: All definitely on the roadmap.

Re: 5: On the System Build page, there's a tab for viewing the price breakdown
by merchant. Is that along the lines of what you were thinking? --
<http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/partlist/by_merchant/>

~~~
smiler
Thanks for that on point 5, didn't see it, but very nice

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sp4rki
Looks and works great.

It would be an improvement to ajaxify the process so it doesn't refresh every
time I choose a product.

Also, start marketing this like, pronto! Open a blog linked to it where you
benchmark and review hardware and build a community as fast as you can around
it. That way your idea is harder to steal by the big players (and they'll look
bad by doing so exponentially), and you'll have a ton more leverage to have an
affiliate program going on with the retailers.

Finally, implement user accounts so they can save their systems and
configurations, and compare between them in with a spreadsheet like view. This
can also go hand in hand with social features and will help create a community
around your product.

Good Luck!

~~~
acgourley
I think the static page views are fine, for what it's worth.

As for protecting the idea, I think the only real concern is that one of these
merchants hires a contractor to copy the concept. But their version will be
fundamentally flawed because it won't have price history (against their
interest) and price comparison.

~~~
sp4rki
It's not just protecting the idea, it's about creating a user base and rapport
to go with it. I can go out and create a worse version right now, but market
it immediately and create a community around it, and then boom I have a
thriving business. This has a great potential not only to grow as an app to
plan your machine ahead of time, but it can also easily become the go to place
for hardware reviews and articles on DYI computer integration, and the number
one spot for hardware searches.

This can become the Google of PC Hardware searches and as such MUST be
protected and monetized by means of an affiliate program ASAP!

By the way, not a big fan of the name. Something like PCHardware.com seems
like a better fit.

------
bwillard
Awesome tool, great idea, great implementation,

Couple ideas: 1) On the CPU and HDD graphs if I just keep my mouse over the
dot the tool tip blinks in and out, if I mouse over the tool tip it stops
blinking (this is with chrome)

2) I like the review info on CPUs it would be handy to have it for other
components (from new egg or amazon ratings perhaps)

3) It would be useful to have more categories for mother boards (e.g. RAID
support, USB 3 support, ect...)

4) Adding a social component would be handy. Let people build, share and vote
on builds. Basically I would like see the top three builds for a development
machine that the rest of community has selected.

5) I would prefer if the filters on the right were defaulted to collapsed if
everything is checked in them.

6) It would be nice if the graph resized, If i just select SSD's on the HDD
$/Capacity graph all the data points are on the left 1/8th of the screen, it
would be nice for the graph to resize based on what data points are being
shown.

Great job I will definitely use this to spec out my next build.

------
lachyg
I _really_ love the site. It's a great concept. The next step is providing a
service charge (25%~?) to build the computers and ship them to people.

I'd also make it much more ajaxy, it's currently too slow! Also, if it's
possible, a picture of the computer so far would be cool, and would be a major
innovation.

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zdw
Two things:

1\. If you could somehow get ratings on quality/reliability of parts from
other sites, that would greatly help in picking individual parts.

2\. If you could also make it group the parts into a small set of vendors so
that you wouldn't have to buy from more than X (user defined int) companies,
that would be nice.

~~~
pcarmichael
Great suggestions, thanks. I'll definitely look into both.

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ohyes
It would be nice to have something where it searches pre built systems with
'specs like this'.

Sometimes it is cheaper to buy a pre built system with all (or most) of the
right parts than it is to build it yourself.

Another option would be to let users spec out the system and then let
manufacturers bid on delivering a system with those or similar specs.

A manufacturer that buys parts wholesale will be able to give a significant
price reduction over buying all of the parts on ebay or amazon or egghead.
(And any parts they have sitting around are just wasted capital, so they want
to move parts as long as they can make money on them... you could even let
them sell excess parts).

You could take a cut of the money saved through the bid process/whoesaling.

------
streety
Clickable: <http://pcpartpicker.com>

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SkyMarshal
Cool idea. I suggest also asking for feedback over at Reddit:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/hardware>

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acgourley
Great idea. Seems obvious in hindsight, but I can't recall ever seeing it
before.

From a feature perspective I'd like to see more reviews on parts, price to
performance indications, and part hierarchies.

For example, I know what an i7 is - but I don't know what the difference is
between an i7 870 and an i7 875k. Once I select an i7 I'd like to see
descriptions, a breakdown of reviews, and prices to benchmark performance.

From a business perspective you should start to come up with a business model.
This is a really cool site but it's also a lot of work to do right. Do any of
these sites have affiliates? If not, you may be able to get merchants or
hardware manufacturers to pay for paid messages, but that seems doubtful. So
failing that it's possible someone like newegg would want to buy this tool
from you, but they'd probably just copy you instead.

Other ways to make money: Show people how much money you saved them via
comparing merchants and ask for a donation. Sell premium features to people
who buy in batches for companies or local shops. Offer to assemble PCs for
people. Maybe you can make some money selling MS software licenses to people.

------
limist
Very nicely done! What I'd enjoy seeing: A listing of builds/combinations,
which can be filtered by price, popularity, etc. Other HNers have suggested
this too so I imagine this feature would be popular.

Along the same lines, it's not so much the parts that should be emphasized,
but the whole: combinations of hardware that are known to work well together,
and deliver the best value. So perhaps the site name/domain should use terms
like "rig," "system," "combo" etc.

There may be copyright issues, but two sources of vetted combinations are the
system guides at The Tech Report, and ars technica; would be nice to have
those on your site:

<http://techreport.com/articles.x/19868>

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2010/09/the-ars-
system...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/guides/2010/09/the-ars-system-guide-
september-2010-edition.ars)

------
wccrawford
I like it. It could be more ajax-y and not have as many page refreshes.

It could also provide more info on individual parts. I do a LOT of spec-
reading when I buy hardware. Customer reviews usually factor in as well.

I would like to be able to pick which retailers I want it to use prices from.
I only shop a few places, so some of them wouldn't really be the best price
for me.

I didn't have any confidence that it matches my CPU and RAM and Motherboard
properly because of the warning on the page. I thought that was the main draw,
but having to match those things manually defeats the purpose for me.

~~~
pcarmichael
Thanks for the feedback! I agree - the individual parts do need more
information, and that's something I plan on augmenting. Regarding
compatibility - I'm slowly getting to the point where I can guarantee
compatibility. There's a lot of combinations and data points to fill in. It
gets a little complicated with things like CPU/Motherboard compatibility,
which can vary depending on bios revision. I've been working on back-filling
that data both with web scraping (have to be careful - even some manufacturer
spec pages have errors) and by hand where necessary. In time though I intend
on filling in the gaps there.

~~~
acgourley
Error on the side of caution and require qualified editors to fill in cases
like bios revisions. There are so many parts to pick from, it's okay if you
error safe and exclude 10%.

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akx
Excellent idea. I'm looking at the cpu tab now -- will probably apply to all
tabs; how about a general "value" gauge that's the average of all values (for
non-star data such as speed, cores and price, scaled to the full data set's
minimum and maximum -- inverted for price, so high price = low score)?

edit: The video card tab is very lacking in attributes. I absolutely need to
know how many VGA, DVI and HDMI outputs a card has. (Also, adding the same to
the mobo tab would be useful.)

------
fharper1961
Great work!

I really loved the Price/performance CPU chart. I do find it hard to believe
that the Intel Core i5-661 3.33Ghz Dual-Core Processor is much faster than the
AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor. But I guess it depends on how
TomsHardware, etc. did the benchmarks.

One nitpick, the warning about not having enough slots on the motherboard for
the amount of RAM is not visible enough because it's at the bottom of the page
and in a gray font.

~~~
pcarmichael
I've put in an incompatibility notice closer to the top that should be a bit
more prominent - it's not perfect, but hopefully a little more visible until I
can figure the right way to present it.

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mickeyben
Congrats it's great.

Some vendors in France have this kind of in-house services to build a PC with
a subset of parts.

Here some links, so you can see it (it's in french but you should find your
way) :

[http://www.pcbysurcouf.com/Configurateur/configurateur.aspx?...](http://www.pcbysurcouf.com/Configurateur/configurateur.aspx?idNoeud=3471)

<http://www.ldlc.com/assistants/devis.html>

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leif
It would be nice to be able to change the columns in the matrix when selecting
a part, and sort/filter on arbitrary criteria that you already know about.

For example, when I pick CPUs, I like to compare cache sizes. You already pull
those items out in the View section, but they aren't available in the matrix.

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throwthataway
If you included Canadian stores (NCIX.ca, Amazon.ca, etc), this would be
immensely helpful. Also, including Opterons and Xeons (and their motherboards)
would be nice.

This app is incredible. I wished for something like this years ago while
building PC's off pricewatch. thanks for making it happen.

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DannyCooper
Without a doubt one of (if not) the best idea/execution I've seen on here.
Very well done, congrats!

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rrival
Ahh, love this idea. Was going to use PriceMyPC.com / PriceAPC.com for it and
have it affiliate the parts efficiently. I never worked past the hw
compatibility issue. Great to see it working.

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protomyth
Great Idea

Suggestion: it might not be a bad idea to include the age of a certain part.

------
lee
What a great idea and site! Great execution.

Are you making money through this via affiliate sales? With a little more
polish and popularity, this site could make a ton of cash that way.

~~~
pcarmichael
That's the intent - the merchant price links are affiliate links when
possible.

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phr
Very cool.

I didn't see a link to back out of the page for adding a component, for
example a hard drive, other than the browser back button of course. Maybe it's
there and I'm blind?

~~~
pcarmichael
You're not blind. :) Once you click from the System Build view to choosing a
component, there isn't a backlink to get back to your part list. That's a part
of the navigation I couldn't figure out a clean way to present well, at least
with the current design. You can, however, click on the System Build button
along the top to get back to your part list from any page.

~~~
phr
A cancel button?

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teddytruong7
this is genius.... It's so true that whenever I'm on newegg.com I also go out
to browse amazon, then tigerdirect, then my neighborhood Fry's electronics.
Good look on this. I think this can be big!

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finiteloop
This is really cool. Wish I had this when I built my PC.

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clistctrl
very nice! Was planning on building a PC after I get paid on the 15th. Will
without a doubt use this. Thanks!

