Wish me luck... (1 Viewer)

[Don Giro]

After 25 years as a PC owner (first was an IBM 486, most recent an Alienware Aurora R5), I've decided it's high time that I built my own. It's a little on the "high end" side, and rest assured that I do NOT have "deep pockets," I just like to get three or four years where my PC can run whatever I throw at it:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X (First PC without an Intel CPU)
CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen 5 CPU Cooler (might just use the stock cooler in the end, however)
Motherboard :ASRock X470 Master SLI/AC ATX
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16Gb
Storage: Samsung 970 Pro 512GbM.2-2280 SSD (primary)
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 2Tb 2.5" SSD (strictly for games and "large" programs)
Storage: Western Digital Gold 8Tb 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal HDD (X3 -- I am a pack rat with tons of video and backups)
GPU: EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 8Gb XC Gaming (EXACTLY the price I was going to pay for a 1080ti)
Case: Fractal Design Define R6 Black ATX Mid Tower Case (Mid Tower, my a**: the thing's huge!)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G3 750W 80+
OS: Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-Bit USB key
Monitor; Dell 23.8" 2560x1440 165Hz

I'm keeping my current Corsair 95 keyboard, and am considering a new mouse and Blu-ray burner.

Now all I have to do is put it all together!

(Also pictured: my Funko Pops: Lemmy, Daenerys Targaryen, Daenerys Targaryen riding Drogon, and Judge Dredd.
Also pictured: my Cryptozoic DC Bombshells: Supergirl, Black Canary, Wonder Woman, and Mera...)

 

[Sam Posten]

Nice, have fun!

 

[DaveF]

CPU Cooler: Scythe Mugen 5 CPU Cooler (might just use the stock cooler in the end, however)

Use the Scythe. It should do a much better job than the stock cooler. I upgraded my intel stock to a similar style Noctua cooler and the different is appreciable.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I’m a bit jealous. Not that it’s a Windows machine, but that you get to have fun assembling it.

 

[Sam Posten]

Did you get it together @Don Giro ???

 

[Mike Frezon]

Did you get it together @Don Giro ???

I have this mental image of a guy laying on a couch with empty little boxes, small bubblewrap envelopes and teeny-tiny screws strewn all around!

(Hopefully, on the coffee table in front of him is a bright, shiny CPU and monitor looking magnificent!)

 

[Clinton McClure]

That’s the dream.

 

[Don Giro]

Did you get it together @Don Giro ???

I have this mental image of a guy laying on a couch with empty little boxes, small bubblewrap envelopes and teeny-tiny screws strewn all around!

(Hopefully, on the coffee table in front of him is a bright, shiny CPU and monitor looking magnificent!)

Still working on it. I work really long hours, so I've only had an hour or two each night to work on it. Whoever said "it's just like assembling Lego" is lying.

There are boxes, plastic envelopes, screws, cables, you name it, strewn all over the dining room table and my desk. It's a disaster area, and that's with most of the parts in place. What sucks is that since there are so many different pieces from different manufacturers, I'm constantly having to juggle at least three badly-written instruction manuals at any time to figure out what-goes-where. The "manual" for the video card is a small sheet of paper that explains next to nothing! The worst was figuring out where the cables for the power and reset buttons and HDD indicator lights go. They all have to be arranged a certain way on one 8-pin plug on the motherboard, an two of the connectors are one pin wide. Then there's the fan ports that come attached to the case that merits only one small text-free diagram of what it's used for and how to power it. And I found out this morning that motherboards don't supply the PC speaker that emits the tones to let you known that something's wrong. Thank God for Amazon's same day service with some items (although the shipping costs more than the actual part).

I'm asking questions on the PC Parts Picker site regarding how many VGA connectors do I need to attach to the power supply if there are 4 separate VGA ports on the power supply and I'm only using one video card. There seems to be a lot of conflicting advice...

 

[Mike Frezon]

Your post practically triggered some PTSD flashbacks for me, Don!

I haven't built a PC in many years. I migrated to laptops quite a while ago. But your post made it all come rushing back about the uncertainty...the questions...lack of answers...lack of documentation. And the internet wasn't nearly as comprehensive about such stuff when I was doing this sort of thing!

 

[Don Giro]

Well, it's up and running, and it was well worth the effort. I now have a big, powerful rig that cost at least $1,500 less than the comparable Alienware I was looking at. I'd post a pic, but it's just a big black box.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Makes you feel like a Jedi building their lightsaber, doesn’t it?

 

[Mike Frezon]

Congrats!

Now throw out all those little boxes...and bubblewrap envelopes...and empty Red Bull cans...and get the place cleaned up! And start surfing the 'net in style!

 

[Clinton McClure]

Crap! Now I wanna build another one. It’s only been almost 10 years.

 

[DaveF]

Well, it's up and running, and it was well worth the effort. I now have a big, powerful rig that cost at least $1,500 less than the comparable Alienware I was looking at. I'd post a pic, but it's just a big black box.

I’m surprised to hear that! What about it dropped the price so much?

Also, you’re supposed to take pictures of the internals!

 

[Don Giro]

I’m surprised to hear that! What about it dropped the price so much?

Also, you’re supposed to take pictures of the internals!

I do have a few pics of the internals that I'll post here when I get a chance. I may have overstated how much money I saved by building my own. I was probably factoring in the Dell extended service plan (among other things). Maybe it was more of a $500 savings, but I'm still pretty darn happy with how it turned out. It's whisper quiet: The only sounds I hear are the HDDs. It played the recent Doom on ultra settings without breaking a sweat. Never heard any fans go into overdrive, no heat coming through the vents. I'm trying to get software to monitor internal temps. I tried Speccy, which told me that my CPU was at 117 degrees CELSIUS. I rebooted into my BIOS, where it was more like 58 degrees Celsius...

 

[Sam Posten]

Yeah 117c is trouble.

 

[JQuintana]

So what exactly does a person do with a beast like this?

 

[Mike Frezon]

So what exactly does a person do with a beast like this?

Watch cat videos on YouTube!!!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Watch cat videos on YouTube!!!

I can do that with my $250 refurb Dell desktop that I bought from Newegg.

 

[DaveF]

After 25 years as a PC owner (first was an IBM 486, most recent an Alienware Aurora R5), I've decided it's high time that I built my own.
...
GPU: EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 8Gb XC Gaming (EXACTLY the price I was going to pay for a 1080ti)
...
Monitor; Dell 23.8" 2560x1440 165Hz

I think this is a pretty good hint what this PC is at least partly for. And it’s not something a $250 Dell refurb laptop can do.