I built my current PC in January 2015. It was the first time I could afford to spend more than my usual 1000-1200€ for the whole thing (Monitor and other peripherals excluded). I was really looking forward to having a high-end machine that, hopefully, would be able to run current games at max details for years to come without the need for further upgrades.
I ended up spending about 2000€, and my plan has worked out beautifully. To this day I haven’t had to replace or expand anything, and it still runs everything I play pretty well.
So why a new rig then? Well, there’s actually not one single main reason but more like lots of little ones that, added up, have become a pain in the butt lately.
The 500GB SSD I run Windows and the most important software and games on is constantly full, so every time I want to install a new game I have to uninstall something else first. Of course I could buy another one, but now that we have NVMe I feel money spent on a SATA SSD would be kind of wasted.
16GB RAM don’t cut it anymore either. I run multiple game clients at the same time quite often, which, together with browser, voice chat and all the other stuff that’s constantly running in the background fills up the memory rather quickly. Some games even manage to claim it all by themselves and still wanting more (looking at you, Cities: Skylines). For over four years I had the Windows swap file deactivated, but I eventually had to turn it back on, and I don’t like it.
I’m also still running Windows 7. What can I say, I’m a big fan of ‘Never change a running system’. I’ll have to switch to Win 10 sooner rather than later though, obviously, but I just can’t be bothered to do it on my old machine when I know that I don’t want to use it for much longer.
Then there’s the usual small stuff like fans not running smoothly anymore and thus making more noise than they once did, or the fact that, after more than five years, re-applying the CPU’s thermal paste is probably long overdue, but I just can’t be arsed.
Again, none of this is a biggie by itself, but all of it combined really makes me crave a new machine.
More importantly though, yes, my old PC runs every game I’m playing now just fine, but barring any more delays this will most likely change come November…
Not only am I hopeful that Cyberpunk 2077 will be an awesome game, I absolutely want to be able to play it on the highest settings without the slightest hint of framedrops or stuttering. So yeah, need moar power!
After spending quite some time researching what’s currently out there these are the components I’ve settled on and ordered yesterday – keep in mind though that this is by no means a recommendation to buy that stuff as I’m far from being an expert, it’s just what (hopefully) works best for my needs and budget right now.
CPU
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
A lot has been talked about AMD’s new generation of CPUs, and while they aren’t perfect the performance you get for the price is just phenomenal. I got this 12-core beast for just over 400€, and since the boxed cooler is said to be pretty efficient and also looks quite nice I won’t even have to spend another 30-60€ on a better one.
Mainboard
Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra
At almost 300€ this is by far the most expensive mainboard I’ve ever bought, and it’s mainly due to the fact that third gen Ryzen CPUs don’t run on boards with an older chipset unless you flash the BIOS to a newer version – which you can’t do without having a working CPU installed. As I said above, they aren’t quite perfect.
I do get more bang for my bucks than just native support for the CPU though, like PCIe 4.0, three M.2 slots and high-quality sound-, LAN- and WLAN-chips. Unfortunately all X570 boards – except for one with a 700€ price tag – cool their chipset with a small fan; I really hope that it isn’t too noisy.
Graphics card
None.
The thing is, I just didn’t know which one to buy.
Those I had on the short list are terribly expensive, and to make matters worse Nvidia is expected to release their new cards later this year, so buying one now doesn’t seem like a good idea. Hence I’m going to wait for a bit and continue to use my GeForce GTX 980 in the meantime. Hopefully current cards’ prices will drop some once the RTX 3080 is out, then I’ll decide what to do.
RAM
32GB G.Skill DDR4 PC 3600 CL18 KIT (2x16GB) 32GTZR Tri/RGB
Why do so many PC-components have names you need a dictionary for? Anyway, as pretty much everything in my new rig will be able to glow in RGB I thought my RAM should too. 32GB is a given, and I decided to go for dual- instead of quad-channel this time to save two slots for a possible upgrade at a later point (my current machine has 4x4GB, which is why an upgrade wasn’t really feasible).
SSD
Corsair Force MP600 1TB
When I have to pay for a PCIe 4.0 mainboard anyway I’ll buy a matching SSD of course. I’m pretty anxious to see it in action.
Power Supply
700W be quiet! System Power 9 CM
Be quiet! power supplies are a bit hard to come by at the moment, many models are out of stock everywhere I looked. I’d have preferred one with full cable management, but as the mainboard cables will all be used anyway I feel this one will do the job just fine. Going by reviews it’s efficient, quiet and has more than enough headroom for whatever graphics card I’ll eventually decide on.
HDD
4000GB WD Blue WD40EZRZ 64MB 3.5″ SATA 6GB/s
It’s a data tomb, ’nuff said.
Case
Sharkoon Night Shark RGB
Lakisa and I both have Sharkoon cases right now and we’re pretty happy with them. They’re inexpensive yet built rather well, have a good size and weight and look quite nice. Also, cases with an external 5 1/4″ drive bay are relatively rare these days, but this has one. Call me old-fashioned, but I’m going to re-use my ancient but great Plextor PX-880SA DVD drive once again. Although I don’t actually use CDs to play music anymore I still buy music CDs quite often, so I want to be able to get the stuff into iTunes easily.
And there you have it. All in all this runs for about 1300€, with an additional 120€ for Windows 10 Home USB. The parts ought to arrive by the end of next week (as the Mainboard and the SSD aren’t in stock now but should be by Monday or Tuesday). Can’t wait.
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