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Post

philip June 10, 2014

Last year we rolled out parametric price alerts which let you receive email notifications when any part in a user-defined set drops below a price threshold. Today we're significantly expanding that capability to part lists.

With parametric part lists, you can filter a part category and add it to your part list. Every time the part list is viewed, our pricing engine automatically identifies the lowest price compatible part from your criteria, while using your merchant preferences and tax settings. Since prices can change several times a day, parametric part lists allow you to always view the lowest price part matching the filter criteria you set.

Take choosing RAM for example. If you only want DDR3-1600 1.5V RAM from Corsair or G.Skill, just select those filters on the RAM category page, then click the "Add From Filter" button in the Parametric box (in the filters, top-right part of the page). Your part list will then automatically pick the lowest price RAM matching that filter criteria.

Alternatively, if you want to add a case to your build, but do not want to pick from filter criteria, you can select models on a part by part basis. In the category views are checkboxes that let you select which parts you want to evaluate. On selecting parts, the parametric add button switches to "Add From Selection". If you add the selection to your part list, it will evaluate the lowest price part from that set of parts. (We also threw in the ability to compare parts with the selection as well!)

Here is an example part list that uses both parametric filter and selection criteria.

We hope you enjoy this feature and find it useful! It's been a long time in the making, and we're excited to finally roll it out for everyone to use. Let us know what you think!

Comments Sorted by:

hotmoosettu 2 Builds 13 points 59 months ago

This is truly the perfect addition to an already amazing website! This makes the idea of lowest possible price much easier. Saves a lot of time!

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candy 2 Builds 8 points 59 months ago

It took me a minute to figure out, but now I realize that this is probably one of the most useful features introduced to PCPartpicker. Thanks again guys, for the excellent work

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Apach3 3 Builds 5 points 59 months ago

i love having the ability to compare a wide range of parts without having to cycle through pages. kudos to the site dev team for such a brilliant update!

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Seghasivk 1 Build 5 points 59 months ago

This is what we all need. Everyone on this earth needs a panametric part list. Life wouldn't be complete without one.

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kwill1429 1 Build 3 points 59 months ago

Wonderful design but I was wondering if you could add a way to blacklist components. Like reverse what the check marks do. It would be nice to prevent lackluster components from showing up.

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zappatosin 1 point 55 months ago

Try filtering with 4 stars. Unchecking 5 star parts helpfully removes parts that only have a single review.

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raveturned 3 points 58 months ago

Wow, that's a pretty fantastic feature. :) Only limitation I can see - currently for categories like Storage and RAM, the lowest price for a filter is not always the best value. Is there any chance that at some point in the future we could see parametric lists that pick parts by other criteria (e.g. lowest Price/GB)?

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xacloman 5 Builds 2 points 59 months ago

Thanks so much for this.

Just a question, how does this work with the compatibility filter?

Like right now i have a a10 apu in my system build, and when i select motherboards, then filter mini itx, i of course only see fm2 motherboards. but when i add to filter for lets say $70, in my parametric price alerts it shows for any mini itx mobo.

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philip staff submitter 10 Builds 4 points 59 months ago

Ahhh, right. So when you add a parametric price alert, it is independent of your current part list. So in that regard we don't take compatibility into play. The compatibility is only accounted for when adding it to your part list. For price alerts, you'll want to set additional filter criteria to match the FM2 motherboards. However, I can understand how that's not quite as comprehensive as what you want - I'll have to think about that a bit more to see if we need to make it an option to limit price alerts compatible with a given part list.

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deathfromup 6 Builds 2 points 59 months ago

I love how in touch you are with the users of your site. This is exactly what i do every build i make a build here. Search for RAM, sort by price, add. This will save me tons of time. With improvements and updates like this PCPP will stay the top and best place to build a computer on the internet.

Good job Philip and team.

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silvatwinkie 1 point 58 months ago

It is the only place (as I know of).

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Allanitomwesh 2 points 58 months ago

This is a super awesome great addition,however for RAM and storage I usually filter by price/gb. For now iv'e worked around it by heavily filtering,and it's going great

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marclen 5 Builds 2 points 24 months ago

Could you possibly include the search bar in the top right of the part selection page as one of the parameters in your parametric algorithm? I notice I'm still able to use logical operators in the search bar, so having that along with the parametrics you guys implemented would be an incredibly powerful addition to the already incredibly powerful tool you guys have given to us!!!

Please upvote this!!!

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Novapilot28 1 point 59 months ago

This is great! Very helpful addition to the site!

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Mykinius 1 point 59 months ago

Beautiful. Thanks for the feature! This will be especially useful for RAM, SSDs, and some video cards.

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videogamefanatic89 1 point 59 months ago

This is perfect for everything but Graphics Cards. There is no way to filter based on whether or not the card has a reference-design cooler.

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philip staff submitter 10 Builds 6 points 59 months ago

I can look into adding that.

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stnz 1 Build 1 point 59 months ago

Great update guys ! Keep it up !

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supermike560 1 point 59 months ago

Love it,Love it, LOVE IT! i just saved 200 dollars on my youtube gaming build! link: http://pcpartpicker.com/user/supermike560/saved/fwmLrH

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xshadowinxbc 2 Builds 1 point 59 months ago

Ah, I've been hoping that you folks would implement something like this for ages. I had no idea it was in the works. Now I can actually make static lists based on general price ranges that automatically select the best options available at the time.

Question: Does this save you on server side processing? I'm guessing the queries would go a lot faster because the machine knows exactly what it's looking for, for each part list (and nothing goes out to display during this process); which is a lot more efficient than a human picking things out... but that depends on the polling interval, which leads me to:

Question 2: Does this "choosing the best price" happen at intervals on the server side or every time the part list is loaded?

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xshadowinxbc 2 Builds 1 point 59 months ago

Tried using it for a bit. Another important question: are you going to add an option to sort it by best $/gig ratio? Because that's very important. You can easily choose capacity ranges in the filter, so it's easy to limit the price ceiling, and you know what you're looking for. But you're not always looking for simply the cheapest within that. A good example of this is SSD's. https://pcpartpicker.com/parts/internal-hard-drive/#t=0&m=12,21,32,33,34&S=120000,256000&sort=a6

I want what's at the top of this sort, not simply the lowest priced option, which will obviously just be the lowest capacity SSD.

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samsoundar16 1 point 59 months ago

Awesome. Thanks.

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silvatwinkie 1 point 58 months ago

For your next update, I think that you should add laptop support. Macintosh support would be lovely (personally, I am a Mac kind of guy) too. I know that certain parts won't work with OSX (AMD for example), so maybe at the start of the build, you must choose an OS (Windows, OSX, Linux, or other ((The "Other" option would use the same parts as Windows and Linux))). Then only parts compatible with that OS will be shown. Great update, very helpful, and I hope to see my recommendations integrated into the site!

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tylerste85 1 Build 1 point 58 months ago

Best site ever! Another great addition to an already great site.

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DDawg426 1 point 58 months ago

I actually would've never thought of this, but now that it's implemented, I'm actually really enjoying it. It's really useful when I'm trying to keep costs low :D.

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toadwiz 1 point 58 months ago

I just found this site yesterday. Prior to that I've spent hours looking through sites for a good deal on high-quality ram. Found some candidates in less than 10 minutes here. Suggestions: RAM: Need the actual timing, not just the CAS latency. Not as a selection, but once I've narrowed the field down to the CAS latency I want, I'd like to compare the timing. Most are the same, but not all. CASE: Special features, for example top or front hot swappable SATA port, USB 3.0, front mic and speaker connections. CASE: Number of fan mounting points, as a selection factor. CASE: External and TOTAL drives as opposed to external and internal as you have it now. Selection on total drives should include externals. After all, if I need 6 internal drives, I don't care if one or two of them are external. On the other hand, if I need 1 external and 6 total, that would allow selection of a case with 2 external and 4 internal. CASE: The selection of number of drives is a minimum, yes? I'd hate to have a great case rejected from the list just because it had one more bay than I specified.

Thanks! Keep up the good work!

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MirthlessSmile 1 Build 1 point 55 months ago

ooooooooooooh..... okay. I get it. Cool.

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drillyourownhole 1 Build 1 point 55 months ago

Hi only just started using this site (found it a while back but thought it was US market only) Great site and the filter functions are fantastic! Well done guys :)

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megasnowman08 1 point 28 months ago

So, I tried the "add from filter" button and it gave me no results and then there were no motherboards listed even with no filters. Any help would be grateful

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marclen 5 Builds 1 point 24 months ago

simply put at least one filter in then

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bigpcparts 1 point 24 months ago

Parametric lists don't help me. I want to be able to buy all of the parts I am buying, not just the cheapest.

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philip staff submitter 10 Builds 1 point 24 months ago

Ok? Not sure how that's related to parametric lists - and it's not what they were intended to solve?

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Bafonso 1 point 5 months ago

It would be nice to be able to edit the parametric filter.

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Eschaton 6 Builds 0 points 59 months ago

Does anyone else think this warrants a forum for users to post their filter sets for critique and advice?

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Joshua546123 -3 points 59 months ago

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/XjFZzy how is this please tell me suggestions my first pc if i dicide to go through

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philip staff submitter 10 Builds 5 points 59 months ago

I'd recommend trying our part list opinions wanted forum.

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Joshua546123 2 points 59 months ago

thanks i did

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MirthlessSmile 1 Build 1 point 55 months ago

That all depends on budget/use/and monitor resolution. I use a 1920*1080 42" LCD T.V. as a monitor.

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