Please excuse my English/Grammar, This is my first time building a PC, I am confident in putting it all together myself, but I still have some concerns about building this PC.
I have been saving for nearly 3 years to build a PC, I have met my goal of $1,200 and I am ready to build one now, I am ordering the parts in this videos description https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmuNTpKGOZU&list=UUXGgrKt94gR6lmN4aN3mYTg
Except I will be swapping the 970 for a EVGA GTX 980.
My concern is I can now afford to build the PC, but unless I want to wait another 5 or 6 months I must use a TV as my primary display, it is a 1080p HDTV by Sony, not sure the exact model. (It's my roomates) I have only 3 questions and I hope to get answers, please be nice :/
1. When I build this and enter bios will it display any different on a TV than a monitor?
2. Is it ok to leave my PC on 24/7? I am planning on using it as a media server also.
3. When it is cold inside, how long should I wait to turn on my PC to avoid shorting anything. I heard condensation can happen to it below 40 degrees, which is common in this house. If I warm it up to 60 and wait an hour, is this fine to turn it on?
I'm just a dummy so am probably totally wrong about this, but here's my attempt to answer (2) and (3):
(2) I leave certain PCs on 24/7 and have noticed that they actually last longer than those that are cycled on and off continuously. Maybe it's thermal stress? So, I'd leave it on the whole time in your case. My NAS runs constantly and has never even glitched.
(3) If your PC is inside, in the cold, and is the same temperature as everything around it then I can't see why condensation would form when it's switched on. Condensation happens when you have a something cold, like having left your PC in the car during winter, then bringing it into a warm, moist, environment. Like a cold can of coke on a warm day. A PC that starts out cold in an equally cold room, would actually get less humid as its internal temp went up.
Yes and no. It's best to shut it off every now and again (especially if it's using Windows), but I wouldn't say it's necessary to shut it off all the time. Maybe shut it off when you know you'll be sleeping or have it restart automatically every Monday at 1 AM or something?
Condensation isn't really too big a deal. Moisture will condensate on whatever happens to be colder than the ambient temperature, so if anything turn the computer on before warming the room up.
As Mick said for 3 you shouldn't have to worry about it as long as the PC is around the ambient temp of the room that you are using it in, it may be a few degrees cooler than the rest of the room because of the science behind weather, don't know the exact wording on it.
On 2, it's more about personal preference, you could leave it on all the time, which would lead to higher energy bills in the long run (not too bad however cause it wont pull too much from the wall at idle), you could do solid shut downs, which are more for security purposes, maybe...., but the one that I use and suggest is to put the PC in sleep when not in use, keeps it in a super low power state, and when rebooted it'll be much quicker than a solid shut down, kinda the best of both worlds. low power, and fast reactivation.
And finally for 1, Most modern TVs have an HDMI port on them and some even have VGA or display port. as long as you can hook up some form of video device from your GPU to your TV/Monitor in question, you should be good. I personally use a 20" 1080p Cheapo TV, cause well I'm cheap..., but i have know people to have a hard time with getting the correct resolutions to display on Computer Monitors, yet they will display just fine threw a TV, and visa-versa. if you are having trouble, you can always go down to a Thrift store and see if they have any used monitors there ans use the included DVI to VGA adapter in order to check to see how everything is.
For question number one all I can say it will look the same to a degree. When I first built my gaming computer I used an old Insignia TV which had hdmi so I guess it wasn't that old and it seemed to work fine except it would run only at 30hz and trying to go to 60hz would black screen it. I then bought a really nice asus monitor and the colors are way better and it runs at 60hz fine so that is all I can say about that. For question 2 I would say it would be fine to leave it on al the time. I leave mine on a lot now and I only turn it off every once in a while like when it has updates or I know i wound be using it for a while. And for question 3 I have no idea. Anyway hope this helps.