Long standing members of the Hive community might remember way back in late 2017 I built a gaming pc for my boy, if you missed those posts you can find them here
@c0ff33a/building-a-gaming-pc-part-1-i-love-it-when-a-plan-comes-together
and continued here
@c0ff33a/building-a-gaming-pc-part-2-the-components-for-the-pc
and also here
@c0ff33a/building-a-gaming-pc-part-3-putting-the-components-together
and here
@c0ff33a/building-a-gaming-pc-part-4-bench-testing-the-build
and even here
@c0ff33a/building-a-gaming-pc-part-4-boot-time-and-game-play
At the time I specced up that gaming rig to last the test and time, and to be completely fair it is still running even the latest gaming titles without too much struggle. But computing technology moves fast, and running a game is very different to enjoying it in the full high quality definition it could be in - 144 fps with crystal clear graphics on top end games like Forza Horizon 5, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Watchdog's Legion, Farcry 6, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Hitman 3 you need something far better then 5 year old hardwear.
More worrying then the look of games was the whole rig was still running off the tired old 500gb ssd I started it off with, it was a constant battle to keep enough free space on it as random game launchers kept not using the 5 attached drives I had for games, plus downloads etc every few weeks Steam had a meltdown because the boot drive was down to it's last few gigs.
The final straw was some six weeks back when a update for the Nvidia GTX 1070 card completely cut out all video output - black screen every time the pc booted. Hard reset so many times, even pulled the power cord - in the end I have to remove the graphic card, boot with the motherboard hdmi, uninstall the graphics driver - reinstall the graphic card and then install the graphic card driver again. It took way too long during a time I didn't need to be messing around with this sort of thing on an evening - so with Black Friday approaching I decided to build a new pc from scratch.
At this point I am sure there are many screaming just buy a new bigger faster boot SSD - 1tb plus are quite reasonable nowadays and that solves the storage issue. Even my boy in his inexperience suggested just replacing the graphics card with a newer more powerful one. The problem is my friends, until you truly understand how a PC runs then you don't understand "bottlenecks" - and that is why so many people end up putting high end expensive components into old systems and then wonder why they don't actually run any faster. It's like putting alloy wheels and racing stripes on your late 90's Ford Fiesta - it might look prettier but it's not going any faster because it's still just got that tiny 1.2litre engine......
If I want a faster PC it's got to be from the base up, the biggest bottleneck on any pc is the operating system, that is loaded off the boot drive - so the faster you make the boot drive the faster ANYTHING happens. And nowadays NVMIE storage is the fastest read write bar none - the old board won't handle it so straight up to speed things up I need a new Motherboard and NVMIE SSD card. The new board won't take the old processor so I need to upgrade that too, while I am at it the ram is kinda slow so new faster ram makes sense, add in a new kick ass graphics card and to make life easier a whole new tower to put all the bits in - then I can keep the old rig running while I move 5 years of stuff over to the new one.
Finally we get to what I bought
New screen, this is adding to not replacing the existing screen - this build now takes the rig from one display to three - this is the main gaming display great reviews and handles the 144 fps golden ticket with ease.
The tower is a CoolerMaster MB520 ARGB - the ARGB bit means the three front fans have rgb lighting and that can be controlled by the motherboard - so on the pc MSI Mystic Lighting can set any colour or strobing colour effect you like. I was really procrastinating on towers, the original was a cheap gaming case - it did the job and was fine for purpose. But I have to admit this whole tower feels quality - the side panel is tempered glass not plastic - feels quality. The screws have rubber retainers so when you release they they stay in the side panels - it's a little thing but when you remove them and put them down somewhere and take a week finding them again - it just makes sense. Cable management is exceptional with little slots for the case button wires, a big rubber flap for running cables into the case, and a hard drive section in the base with two pull out 3.5" drive housings. I will take more pictures of the cable management in the future, but for a man who's favourite tool is a hammer this case looks inside so tidy it could have been bought built. The case itself came with 3 argb front fans and a basic rear fan, I added an argb top fan to patch in so airflow is the 3 front fans sucking cool air in, the back and top fan pull hot air out. This is my optimum set up, and it stands the test of time the first rig had a similar air flow and the old graphics card has dust free fans - because it hardly had to use them - get that air flow right and the graphics card never gets hot enough to need them. Cost £80.
Motherboard, MSI MPG X570 gaming plus - great reviews, two nvmie slots, supports argb lighting - ticks all the boxes and a steal at £143
Processor AMD Ryzen 5 3.7ghz £269 plus £6 for Artic Silver thermal paste.
Power supply, you probably don't remember the old rig power supply got a case of squealing fan last Christmas 2020 so I ripped it apart and spliced a case fan in - worked fine since but I'm not building a new rig with an old tatty psu - £91.00
NVMIE storage, 1tb SSD for the boot drive - the actual total of all drives the gaming PC uses is a whopping 8TB! You can of course delete and redownload games but it's really tiresome, anyway for this super fast boot drive just £61.00
Graphics card - and here comes the OUCH. Geoforce RTX 307 crystalline edition - full ARGB control of the beautiful lighting, super fast and thanks to Bitcoin miners super expensive because graphics cards are a miners best friend...I actually weep for the £900 this cost, but it blows me away every time I use it - was playing Forza 5 on ULTRA at the weekend - so smooth you could be watching a DVD. And it looks pretty in the box too!
Ram, while I was going for faster ram it made sense to go for fast RGB ram that looks pretty too - CORSAIR Vengeance Pro RGB DDR4 3600 MHz PC RAM - 8 GB x 2 - £88
So that is the build, it might seem expensive but when you put all that together the system is so fast and smooth - you can tell straight away to the old rig it boots like lightening, everything run smooth - it even downloads and installs faster even though the 212mb/s internet is the same.
Actually putting the parts together was stressful, I will do a post on the assembly even though I ended up taking no photos - I had one Saturday free to do it and once I got going the actual job of joining and plugging bits to delicate hardware knowing any excess force, mistakes etc could fry an expensive piece of kit overtook the idea of taking photos.
One last comment, why buy parts and put together instead of buying a pre-built system. With graphics cards so hard to find, and so expensive when I did find them - I did look at pre build options - but they always tempt you in with a high end graphics card - and everything else is so poor - it's a fools game. Oh just £1600 for this rig, but it's a 500gb ssd boot drive, 8gb ram and weak cpu - so then you configure it up and up and suddenly the price goes sky high. Plus however much of a pain in the butt it is putting all these parts together, when you finally press the power button an it boots to the BIOS first time with no faults...priceless. True satisfaction, I made this thing and it works, and it looks beautiful - just how I wanted it to. You just don't get that taking something out of a box and plugging it in.
The lighting is something else, my boy has a thing for purple so he has set everything to purple - but there are so many variations you can have - pulsing and waving - it's amazing. The three front fans, top fan and graphics card can be all set with MSi Mystic Lighting, the ram using Corsairs own app. The green lighting is an led strip I have under the desk, makes it easier to see when plugging things in, on top of the desk is another rgb strip set to purple - I might replace the green for rgb some time.
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