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Christmas PC Build 2023

01 | 12th Jan 2024

Hello all and welcome to the first entry! For Christmas, I politely asked for new computer parts to migrate from a crappy pre-built HP Z440 Workstation to my own choice of case, CPU, motherboard.. basically everything except GPU.

On the 25th (after being expelled to my grandparents' house for the day lol) I built the computer, making it the first time I experienced building a system like this.

Here's the parts I used in this initial PC build, along with my experiences setting them up and using them:

CPU

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

For £150, I landed a 6-core 12-thread CPU from AMD. It's my first time using an AMD product, and so far I'm definitely happy with its performance. I'm yet to run into any CPU-related problems, and with what I use a computer for, this thing definitely gets the job done.

For its price to performance ratio alone this thing gets a 10/10 from me.

CPU Cooler

ID-COOLING SE-214-XT

A nice £20 tower heatsink cooler from ID-COOLING. At first I was really confused about how to mount the fans onto the heatsink (see images below, I hadn't mounted them in a secure way) but in the end I figured it out and all's good now. Other than the fans, installation was very easy thanks to the manual included.

Since the build, I've purchased three extra fans; one for the case and another on the heatsink (mostly for RGB and consistent looks). One of them is a spare, since this case only seems to support one case fan (unless you go for an AIO configuration, which I won't be doing for a good while).

Under heavy load, this thing keeps my CPU at around 60 degrees celcius. Pretty good.

Motherboard

MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI

Honestly, I don't even need WiFi in a system because Ethernet gets the job done. I morely chose the WiFi model of this motherboard as a contingency measure, in case I end up somewhere without Ethernet.

Nothing really to talk about here, the motherboard works about as I'd expect and it had all of the features and plugs I needed for my build.

RAM

Corsair Vengeance LPX (2x 8GB)

Being the first and best reviewed option on pcpartpicker.com, this seemed an obvious choice. It doesn't have fancy RGB nor is it DDR5 but honestly I don't think I've run into any issues yet. For £35, it's a great deal.

GPU

Nvidia GTX 1070 (Asus)

This is just the GPU taken from my pre-build PC. At the moment it's getting the job done with higher than 60FPS in most games (with settings fine-tuning) but since my monitor is 240Hz, I'd like to strive for more. This will probably be replaced in the future, at the moment I'm considering going AMD because their cards seem to be better value for performance at the moment.

Case

Asus Prime AP201 MicroATX Mini Tower (Black Mesh)

With the RGB fans installed onto the heatsink and case, this thing looks really nice when it's dark. It also functions really well as a case; its airflow is decent and the cable management is good too. Assembly/disassembly is easy too.

The one problem I've had is regarding SATA cables. You have the option to install HDDs in three places, but all of these places don't give any room for 90 degree SATA cables. This means that I've had to plug the non-angled cables into the drive and the angled cables into the motherboard, which means that two of the four SATA ports are blocked by the cables. This is arguably also a problem with the motherboard supplying the wrong cables but either way it's annoying. Just be cautious and get spare cables just in case.

Storage

Seagate Barracuda (4TB HDD)
Crucial P3 Plus (1TB M.2 SSD)
Samsung 870 Evo (500GB SSD)

My original plan for this build was to just use the 500GB SSD and another 1TB HDD that came from my old PC. However, thanks to some very generous relatives, I was able to afford an M.2 and an upgraded HDD.

The M.2 is used to store my Windows OS, and the 4TB HDD stores all of my games and various project files. At the moment I don't have any use for the 500GB SSD so I'm using it as a separate drive to store torrents for seeding. At some point in the future I may also add my 1TB HDD from my old PC into the mix, but I'll need to buy a new SATA cable before that and it's not really a priority right now.

Pictures

All the new PC parts together, still in their factory boxes. Every PC build needs this photograph taken of it. Mandatory.



The CPU, just after it had been installed. A lot easer than I thought it would be. Ignore the fingerprint.



First POST. To my surprise, it actually POSTed first time without any difficulty. Impressive considering I'd never done this before. After this, all I had to do was make the cables look nicer and more tidy (which was a problem I had after realizing I couldn't fit the back of the case on with the current cable config.



And of course, the complete setup with Minecraft running shaders on the monitor. Framerate is stable around 75FPS, the same as my old PC but the old PC had stability issues due to its much less powerful CPU. Fun fact actually, according to a calculator my 1070 was only experiencing 60% of its full ability due to a CPU bottleneck in the old PC. Wow.

This won't be a permanent setup because I'm moving my PC to university whenever I get back there, but at the moment it looks really nice.