My new PC (and why I chose the components I chose)
During December I finished building my new PC. My previous PC was not terribly dated or slow (and continues to be used by my wife), but I felt it’s favorable time for update. It’s not balls to wall build, rather something I think is good for my workflow – mostly development and related tasks. I don’t edit movies, stream (or play for that matter) games, etc. I describe each component (in no particular order) and my reasoning why I chose it, your mileage may obviously vary.
CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X. I was thinking about 5900X, but I think I wouldn’t be able to fully use all the cores and hence 5800X it was. Also, I was extremely lucky, the most common e-shops here where I was looking for 5800X (or 5900X) were not having any in stock and the restocking was unknown, but one B2B distributor had 5800X in stock. When I found out I immediately placed the order – at 22:47 on Saturday. 😃 If you’re wondering why not Intel… Last time I used AMD CPUs was in “486” era, but I felt I need to try AMD again (you know to have some excitement). I also think the Zen 3 architecture really pushes the bar.
Motherboard
ASUS TUF Gaming B550-PLUS. I went for B550 chipset because I don’t need much of extra cards and hence X570 seemed overkill. My previous PC used ASUS motherboard and I had no issues with it, I went for ASUS again.
RAM
Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4 64GB (Kit 2x32GB) 3200MHz CL16 DIMM 1.35V. I wanted 64GB in two sticks, dual rank at 3200MHz, CL16. And this one was in stock and very reasonably priced. I ran MemTest86 for almost 24 hours when the build was done, and the RAM passed.
SSD
Samsung 980 PRO 500GB NVMe M.2. Because it’s PCIe 4.0. And although in last 10+ years I used Intel SSDs, I think this is better option.
Cooler
Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4. I’m big fan (no pun intended) of Noctua products. Both because of performance and reliability. And although I’m not a professional PC builder, the research on NH-U12S looked like it’s going to be more than fine and so far, I haven’t even seen the fan going to full speed.
PSU
Corsair RM550x. I used it before, again no issues. For my build 550W is enough and I like the zero RPM feature. 80 Plus Gold certification doesn’t hurt either.
Case
Fractal Design Define S. I don’t mind the look and my PC is purely functional, it’s not for looks in any way. Simple black block.
GPU
GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1650 D6 WINDFORCE OC 4G. Frankly I have no idea what I’m doing here. I don’t need much from GPU. Bit of OBS? Visual Studio? Word? Excel? Firefox? YouTube? Vimeo? SMPlayer? In my last PC I used integrated Intel HD 630 and my workflow was never affected. If the 5800X would exist with integrated GPU I would go that way. I know everybody is crazy now about the “3090”, “3080” and so on, but I literally have no idea what I would use that GPU for… The “1650” seemed good enough, was in stock, and with decent price. But again, I have no idea what I’m doing here and how my workflow would benefit from better GPU.
Summary
I know everybody has its own needs and this build doesn’t aim to be “reasonable”, “budget”, “performance” or something like that. I’m not a professional PC builder, I went on what felt like it would make my life – as a developer; day and night – more pleasant. I might be wrong. I would also trade stability over performance (the PC waits for my brain/fingers most of the time anyway) anytime (the PC runs smooth – knock on wood – so far).
