Having run out of good excuses to put it off, I finally smashed Purchase on the components that will eventually by my hand become my new desktop PC - my current PC has been chugging along faithfully since 2016 and has more than earned its retirement. This will be my first time actually building a PC on my own, and I'm very nervous and excited about it. And I even have a few hundred left over from the money I had set aside that I can put towards replacing my even-older laptop, which is about to turn 10 whole years old.
For those interested, here's what I'll be working with:
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
- Motherboard: ASUS AMF TUF Gaming X570-Plus
- RAM: Two sets of Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 32GBs
- Graphics Card: MSI Ventus GeForce RTX 3060
- Case: Antec Performance Series P7 Neo
- PSU: CORSAIR RMx Series (2021) RM850x
- Cooling: Enermax ETS-F40
- Memory: Coupla these bad boys
I basically started from the "Mainstream" suggestions on NewEgg's PC builder tool and then economized in a few areas (partly out of thrift, partly out of personal preference). I swapped the suggested case for a more "basic" one because I think RGB stuff is just tacky and I'd rather have more case space I can decorate with stickers and stuff like that. I also swapped the suggested liquid-cooling system for an air cooler because I've had bad experiences with liquid-cooling systems in the past and I'm really not much of a benchmark-pushing gamer anyways. PSU got tweaked because I spotted one that was cheaper with higher wattage and didn't seem to have any obvious flaws. I'm excited to see the difference in boot times with the SSD (my current HD is mechanical) and I decided to double up on those drives because I'm constantly having to memory-manage my 500GB HD and I'm SICK of it.
Oh, and I also picked up my first-ever wireless headset because I tried it out at my parents' place and was really impressed with the sound quality. Also it's cute and comfortable.