
Show HN: A better PC builder for the US, more parts and Ryzen (Ask HN follow-up) - onli
https://www.pc-kombo.de/us/tipp?price=1640&cpuLegacylist%5BAM4%5D=on
======
PascLeRasc
Some concerns:

Can you make the titlebar change as the price changes?

Why is the cheapest case $108 and PSU $70?

You've got some bad links, like this one I excitedly clicked expecting a $12
Dark Rock 3
([https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA8MC3VU6...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA8MC3VU6034&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction-
MKPL&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-MKPL-_-
OG%20-%20Riding%20Mower%20%20%20Tractor%20Attachments-_-
Reliable%20Aftermarket%20Parts%20Inc.-_-9SIA8MC3VU6034&cm_sp=&AID=11517614&PID=8139957&SID=))

I'm surprised by the omission of the Pentium G4560 as a midrange CPU.

Also RAM doesn't change when going from Intel/DDR4 to AMD/DDR3. I'd probably
just remove the really low-end AMD setups anyway.

But really my biggest question is why should I use this over PCPartPicker?
They show a lot more specs than just normalized performance, and being able to
sort by total reviews from many sites is really great.

~~~
onli
Thanks. All valid feedback

> _Can you make the titlebar change as the price changes?_

Yes, that seems to be possible. I'll add it to the todo list.

> _Why is the cheapest case $108 and PSU $70?_

That should not be like that. I guess for the case this can happen when the
cooler or the gpu is very large and it has no remaining other option. I'll
check whether the data is correct, but I expect that problem to go away when
the newegg API works better. As you noticed there are still some problems
(they don't take EANs and the manufacturer-sku sometimes produces different
products than expected).

I thought about adding a second list with the components that don't fit
currently, and that will replace the non-fitting component with something like
a closest match.

For the psu, there suddenly seem to be holes in the offer-database for the US.
Very bad timing. The german version now gives a better impression on how that
should work...

> _I 'm surprised by the omission of the Pentium G4560 as a midrange CPU._

Midrange is the wrong word for that one :) I mean that positively, is has a
great performance for its price. It's just either not listed or not in stock
and thus ignored. If it becomes available again it should show up shortly
after, the system does know it, and uses it in the german and french variant.

> _Also RAM doesn 't change when going from Intel/DDR4 to AMD/DDR3. I'd
> probably just remove the really low-end AMD setups anyway._

Thanks for catching that. Hmpf, I did just fix that yesterday already. But the
US version seems to know of no offer for ddr3 ram anymore. I'll have to work
on that API integration, and prevent this from happening.

> _But really my biggest question is why should I use this over PCPartPicker?
> They show a lot more specs than just normalized performance, and being able
> to sort by total reviews from many sites is really great._

Let me preface that: I like pcpartpicker. They build what I set out to build
many years ago (I don't think they existed back then?), only that I pivoted
very soon to the performance comparison approach and then did not take the
project seriously for a while, during which they pulled through, built a
community and a business. I do respect that.

But honestly, that pivot and its workflow is why: Just entering a price and
getting a working PC is so much faster than what I understand as being the
pcpartpicker-workflow. For me, the recommendations most of the time work quite
well, and if not are easy adaptable with the arrows, and now maybe with the
custom selection.

~~~
PascLeRasc
Ok, I can see the value added as entering the page to a fully-built PC without
necessarily needing to know all the components needed for a PC. I guess it's
just API integrations for US sellers that caused most of my problems. Looking
forward to seeing this page do well.

And G4560s are hard to keep in stock anyway so that's fair on your part. They
are really surprisingly good.

~~~
onli
> _Looking forward to seeing this page do well._

:) In that spirit, the ram issue for FM2 got just fixed. Not a hole in the
database, just a parser bug making it impossible to select DDR3 ram. Thanks
again for reporting that.

------
RationPhantoms
A genuinely curious question; How is this an improvement on pcpartpicker.com?

With them, I can see completed builds and pictures, compare benchmarks and
prices as well as restrict builds to specific parameters.

~~~
sf_rob
As someone who hasn't built a PC in a decade, I appreciate a site that stack
ranks components. PC Part Picker still seems to require quite a bit of
selection. While most enthusiasts are willing to do a little more research to
optimize things, I think that there's room for a site like this for less
knowledgeable consumers who don't want to do more research or want a simpler
starting point for researching a build.

~~~
onli
Thanks. That's exactly the angle I'm aiming for.

~~~
mentos
Hey I think you need to write explicitly at the top of the page "Enter your
budget and we'll recommend an optimal build."

Because I opened the page and it wasn't quite clear to me wtf I was looking at
and I had to come in the comments to figure out how this isn't better than
pcpartpicker, found this comment and then went back to the page and was like
"oh you have to enter your budget in at the top"

edit: ah just realized this was an issue because I was taken to
[https://www.pc-
kombo.de/us/tipp?price=1640&cpuLegacylist%5BA...](https://www.pc-
kombo.de/us/tipp?price=1640&cpuLegacylist%5BAM4%5D=on)

If you just go to [https://www.pc-kombo.de](https://www.pc-kombo.de) then it
is clear

but still worth considering to keep that "recommend" call to action at the top
no matter what page you are on so that there is never any confusion what the
website is for

~~~
onli
Color me convinced. After the next restart the explanation will also be on the
recommendation page.

The logic was of course that people will go to the main page first and only
search in a second step, making the explanation not necessary anymore. But in
practice, most people come to the site via a share link and never see the
start page. As long as the site is not widely known it is better that way.
Thanks.

------
LeifCarrotson
Looks great! I appreciate the new ability to swap parts. A few comments:

1\. Most of your swap pages have less than 100 parts, but display 50 by
default. I wish this would default to "View All". Unless there's a huge number
of components that will crash my browser, I'd rather view them all than paging
through. Or, if you can't view all in case you crash a little phone on a bad
connection, at least remember my selection across all of these pages so I
don't have to reselect it for each component and visit to the site.

2\. I wish there were more sort options on the select screen. At the very
least, I want to see the performance metric you're using to recommend one over
another. Further, I want to be able to sort and group by manufacturer
(Nvidia/AMD), brand (MSI/Asus), VRAM, release date, power consumption,
efficiency, form factor (ATX/uATX), etc. This is a lot of data, but it's the
main reason why I use Newegg over Amazon, and Digikey over Allied. Parametric
search tools are just the best way to select technical parts.

3\. The Intel/AMD processor selection is a difficult UI problem. You want to
simultaneously recommend the right brand for a target price point out of the
gate, but also recommend only processors compatible with the selected
motherboard. I'm not sure you nailed this one.

4\. In the "Advanced" screen, the Intel/AMD/Additional check box hierarchy is
confusing. The additional platforms should be under the Intel/AMD hierarchies,
perhaps deselected as "Legacy" by default. Also, I know why they're
additional, but a tooltip describing that LGA1150 is "for Intel 8x and 9x
chipsets used with Core iX-4xxx and -5xxx series processors from 2013 and
2014" would tell me a lot more than I know without Googling. (Also, I can
generate a server error by deselecting both Intel and AMD.)

5\. I didn't see any M.2 or PCIe SSDs in the storage section.

~~~
onli
That's great feedback. Thanks. I'll use this as a todo list.

> _5\. I didn 't see any M.2 or PCIe SSDs in the storage section._

They are indeed still missing. I postponed them for when I habe a good idea on
how to handle both a SSD and a M.2/PCI-E SSD without adding another static
Box. Guess it's time to add them to the SSD section for now.

For 3: Are you still talking about the swap page there? My only idea in that
direction so far is to have a second list that contains parts which would
replace other parts, in that case AMD cpus that would replace the Intel
mainboard. Maybe shown as combinations of what they do contain, like "AMD
Ryzen 7 1700 + AM4 board"?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> They are indeed still missing. I postponed them for when I have a good idea
> on how to handle both a SSD and a M.2/PCI-E SSD without adding another
> static Box. Guess it's time to add them to the SSD section for now.

Sure. Or maybe add them, SATA SSDs, and hard drives to a multiple-selection
"Storage" box? I definitely think it's time to add them, they're similar in
price and much faster than SATA SSDs!

> For 3: Are you still talking about the swap page there?

No, sorry, the "Advanced" tab, which is where AMD/Intel is selected.

~~~
onli
> Or maybe add them, SATA SSDs, and hard drives to a multiple-selection
> "Storage" box?

I like that, it would be a good solution and could work well with the design.

For the Advanced tab, I think I got the problem now. It's that the swap page
filters, making it potentially hard to get from for example socket 1151 to
AM4. The Advanced settings are not problematic by itself, the concept of
starting with one mainboard is. Does that catch it?

I'm not sure that is obvious, but when you browse via the side buttons, it
will happily switch out the mainboard. That is just less discoverable right
now because the 1151-processors are always higher rated than the FX-processors
(which additionally are disabled by default because of the incoming Ryzen).

But in the alternatives list, there it is problematic. That one needs a way to
list alternatives that do not fit into the current build, but would replace
additional parts. All I got in my mind for that is having a second list, or
probably rather additional entries in the main list that are somehow marked
distinctively and contain the additional item as well.

------
dgelks
Very useful tool, will definitely send people who want a new computer here as
their first stop. Unfortunately the website doesn't open very nicely in Safari
- seems fine in Chrome though

~~~
onli
Thanks.

I appreciate any pointers on what is wrong with Safari here. I'll otherwise
have to use something like Browserstack to test for that browser.

Does it just not open nicely on first load and then work fine, or is
everything in one row or one column and broken?

~~~
EduardoBautista
Here is a screenshot I took:
[http://i.imgur.com/FDWQh3o.png](http://i.imgur.com/FDWQh3o.png)

------
danudey
This is pretty great. I do have a few issues though:

1\. Your part picker seems to remove some symbols; for example if you change
your video card to the 'Sapphire Radeon RX 480 Nitro 4G', then click the link,
you'll see it's actually the Nitro+ 4G, which is a different product.

2\. When typing into the autocomplete box, once your string matches no items
the list returns to 'show all items' rather than 'show no items', which is
more sensible (along with an indication to the user that their search found no
results).

3\. Searching seems to be alphanumeric; typing 'Nitro+' into the search box
shows you results for 'Nitro'.

4\. It doesn't work in Safari; I'm not sure why or how much work it would be
to fix, but it would be nice.

~~~
onli
Thanks for the feedback. I just pushed some fixes: Less symbols should get
eaten, and a 'no results' found is now shown instead of the full box when
nothing was found.

I asked a friend for help with Safari.

------
GordonS
Firstly, t his looks great! I really like just being able to upgrade/downgrade
each component with just one click.

A couple is issues I found though - the cheapest graphics card is $448 and I
was unable to specify 32Gb of RAM - the next option up from 16GB was 128GB.

~~~
onli
Thanks for your feedback. Do you remember the steps you took till the system
did not show any gpu lower than $448? Because that was a bug, it goes down
till the RX 460 otherwise (~$90).

The ram I just fixed by allowing more ram sticks in that category to be
selected.

------
graycat
As it stands, I can read only the left column of the Web page.

Suggestion: Turn on or leave on the horizontal scroll bars of the Web page.

Then when I magnify your fonts by 4x or so so that I can easily read your
content on my screen, I can scroll horizontally and still see the other half
of your Web page.

In general, Web pages need both vertical and horizontal scroll bars. Even if a
page looks good on the screen of the Web page designer, without the scroll
bars the screen might be a disaster for some users.

~~~
onli
Uff. That's actually not that easy. By default, that recommendation page is
50% of a page wrapper that fills 200% of the viewport. The other 50% contain
the almost empty space for the alternatives list. That is why horizontal
scrolling is disabled.

But I did test that with very small screens and high zooms, and on my devices
the responsive design makes that work each time. Please excuse that remark,
that is not a "your setup is wrong" comment. But I wonder whether there is a
incompatibility with the css that makes the situation as bad as it is for you?
And in that case maybe I can fix it instead.

For example: What do you mean with left column? On a small screen or a high
zoom there should only be a single column. Are you on a browser that does not
support flexbox, at least not as implemented here? Could be the safari bug
mentioned before.

~~~
graycat
Running Google's Chrome Web browser

Version 49.0.2623.112 m

(which is now a very old version) on Windows XP SP3; Google no longer supports
Chrome on XP. Yes, I'm shopping for a new PC, especially because my current
motherboard has problems causing the system to reboot several times a day, has
caused some data corruption, e.g., my software, including essentially all the
software for my startup, that dynamically loads Microsoft's .NET Framework
will no longer run, etc.

On your Web page at 100% zoom, I see two columns. The left one has a block of
text with title

AMD Ryzen 7 1700

and the right one has

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming Premium Pack

At 100% zoom, a lot of the text I can't read because the font size is just too
small and/or the font is not _bold_ and/or dark enough to show up clearly on
my display.

As soon as I zoom to the next larger magnification, 110%, I get just one
column that starts with

AMD Ryzen 7 1700

as in the left column before the zoom.

At zoom 150%, I can read the content, but zoom 175% is easier to read.

But, now that I look again, at 175% zoom, farther down the Web page I see
again

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming Premium Pack

again. So, this looks like the start of what used to be the right column.

So, maybe I can see all the text but at zoom 175% the page is reformatted to
one column instead of two.

In the Web pages I've written for my startup, I have put all my content in
tables and not used HTML element <div>, and zoom settings do not _reformat_ or
rearrange the content on my Web pages. So, maybe your pages (I have not looked
at your HTML code) have HTML elements <div> which let a Web browser rearrange
the content.

So, maybe I was wrong: A user doesn't need horizontal scroll bars to read the
content.

What fooled me is that suddenly at zoom 110% the page reformatted
(rearranged), _jumped around_. Pages I've seen that jump around a lot are at
Facebook; at times I've screamed myself hoarse; and that jumping nonsense is a
big reason I try to avoid Facebook, even when they have content I'm interested
in.

~~~
onli
I'm happy to hear that. Even if you did not like the behaviour here, it is
good to see that the css worked as planned. It indeed is a responsive design
that will adapt the columns, from 3 to 1. After that the blocks get smaller.
Sadly flex-wrap seems to be not animatable, that might have helped here.

It would not work to force the layout to remain, there is not one good
configuration that looks good on all displays.

------
GuruPower
I would love an option that allows you to filter by ECC ram.

~~~
zer0t3ch
I don't think this tool is really meant for the people that are looking for
ECC RAM.

------
onli
I wanted to show you the new version of the PC hardware recommender I asked
advice for here, a bit less than a year ago in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11618937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11618937).
Afterwards I continued to work on this sometimes in my spare time, but the
last month I took some real time to fully concentrate working on this, after
realizing I really wanted to.

Now, this version does not look completely different, but there are some
bigger changes. Most important is probably the new database scheme. Instead of
having one preferred model per vendor, it now has a big list of recommended
models and takes the cheapest from that. That step alone improved the
recommendations a lot. It also made it a lot easier to add new hardware and
new countries, which I was thankful for when adding Ryzen just now and
extending the version for the US with more vendors.

The other big change is the feature to customize the recommendation, to swap
one part with another. You probably see how that goes together with prior
change of extending the database. Since this is HN: The UI there was a problem
for me, but the solution might be interesting for some. I did not want to load
a new site, since storing the current recommendation can be confusing, for the
user. But the selection list is too big for an overlay. My compromise was then
to scroll to the right (using css) and showing the alternatives list there.
The user has a lot of space, but is still very close to the recommendation
list, without losing state. I wonder how that will work out, thatfeature is
all new.

Apart from that there are many smaller changes. I took a round working on the
design: Flexbox for the responsive design, Cache-Headers (set to immutable),
syntax highlighting for the share codes, adopting Yahoos pure.css for the
buttons, fixing pace.js showing longer load times than was true, using a
system font stack instead of webfonts. Had some fun reworking how the
recommendation process itself works, breaking it in the process, then having
too bad of a performance, resorting to memoization and concurrency to fix
that. That reworing included lots of added logic to see which parts go
together. More vendors for Germany, a version for France, additional vendors
for the US-site (again, made possible by the database change, together with
detecting EANs as identifier being supported by the APIs I use - well, by most
of them).

Some highlights: bflesch pushed thinking about how to proceed in general,
edent triggered the thinking about the database design, WA for the
recommendation to do the work I want and not more (this indeed was the kind of
project for that). sokoloff and some others recommended ignoring the newegg
api terms I did not like, at least so far they were right. aharonovich made a
comment I really did not want to hear at the time but accepted later, that the
german version was only enough to prove that this can work, not more. But
basically, I am still impressed, going through that thread now again, how many
helpful comments there were - I just don't want to enumerate too many names
here. I hope some of them see it anyway.

I did not become a overnight millionaire thanks to this, and there is still a
lot that could be done, but when I saw that the improvements of the site you
pushed me to finally came together, that made me very happy. Of course, I
would love again to listen to your feedback.

~~~
rorosaurus
I remember this thread! Congratulations on following through and making it
happen! It seems like a nice next step would be more options for the case, and
perhaps some quick preview of how each case looks. I assume it will update
when we have solid Ryzen benchmarks? Is the main source of income through
affiliate links?

~~~
onli
I plan to better integrate product photos, is that what you are thinking of
for the case preview?

Ryzen will definitely get proper benchmarks as soon as they are out. I'm
honestly eager to know how they will place itself in the system. And affiliate
links are indeed the main source of income for that project, with main source
meaning the only source ;)

------
HiroshiSan
As someone who wants to build a pc but doesn't want to worry about doing all
the research to the components, this is very simple and wonderful. Thank you.

~~~
farresito
This subreddit is quite useful:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/)

They usually have pretty good builds, and they update them regularly.

~~~
BorisMelnik
came here to say this! also a huge fan of /r/buildapcsales

------
touristtam
The filters are lacking seriously and the amount of component that are listed
is quite poor. The recommendation is nice, but without better filtering and
more component availability I don't see myself using this.

~~~
onli
Noted. Please don't forget that the alternatives selection is really new.
Filtering will be extended, and I count on having more components soon.

------
thomasz
May I ask where one can find data about pc parts? Is there a DB you can buy?

~~~
onli
If there is, then I did not find it. I created a db of my own, with scrapers.

------
iooi
Server returns a 500 on any input over $2,500

~~~
LeifCarrotson
It does return "Value must be less than or equal to 4000" for numbers over
4000, but 2501 to 4000 does give me a 500 as well.

~~~
onli
Yes, confirmed and noted. Happens solely with the US version, it is a a
missing case. I'll fix that now.

------
bradknowles
Hmm. Seems pretty badly broken on iOS. ;(

~~~
tmrmn
I guess in Safari in general

~~~
onli
I guess so. That new flexbox design in action probably. I probably won't fix
that fast, but I will see what I can do.

------
npezolano
Neat, can you add motherboard size (mini-ITX, microATX, ATX exc.. exc..) to
the filters as well?

~~~
onli
I don't have mini-ITX yet in the database, but I plan to add them later, when
having sorted out the API intergration. microATX is there, I'll add a filter
for the size.

------
dabadoo
Where do you pull product reviews from?

How much views/income do you get?

~~~
onli
Hi. I'm not pulling full reviews, only benchmark results. Which benchmarks are
used can be seen by hovering over the performance chart, they are linked. That
currently does not work well with Kaby Lake processors, since their ratings
rely mostly on logic deducing their performance from their predecessors. That
will change soon when I'll add another round of benchmarks, at the latest when
Ryzen gets released.

I'm not fully sure how many views I get, it is only using piwik which gets
blocked by adblockers and respects the dnt-header. But I can tell that sharing
the site here gave it a big spike with 3000 visits in the last 24 hours,
counting those that piwik can see. I'm not comfortable with sharing the
income, sorry. It's not that much.

