Nate - first build

[InertiaSelling]

I have wanted to build my own PC since 2013. Given that I had little money at the time, and that I would have had to buy a keyboard, monitor, headset, mouse and OS, I gave up and went with the Asus X75VB laptop (i5 3230m, gt 740m) instead, which I upgraded to 8gb of RAM a few months later. After 4 years of playing older titles exclusively (TESV, FO3 and FNV, mostly), I got fed up and decided to spend my savings on a shiny new gaming rig. As I had already bought a few peripherals (logitech g500s, hyperx cloud, razer tartarus, logitech k800, asus mx239h) as well as windows 10 in the meantime, I was left with about 900€ (~1000USD, except everything is more expensive in Europe).

 

My initial plans included a gtx 770 and an i5 4670K, but they have evolved quite a bit over the past 4 years. In the end, I went with the following:

 

• KFA2 GTX 1060 6GB, because I was okay with getting 80% of a 1070's gaming performance for about 60% of the price. Also, because the rx 580's price sky-rocketed as I was about to order everyting.
• Ryzen 5 1500X, because I wanted to help AMD compete with Intel. Also, because its single-threaded performance is only marginally lower than that of an i5 7500, while delivering much better overall performance in multi-threaded tasks (which will hopefully be the case of most games, at some point). The low noise level and good performance of the wraith spire was also a deciding factor here.
• Gigabyte GA-AB350M-gaming 3, because I needed a reliable board with an AM4 socket, and it was much cheaper than its ATX counterpart.
• 8GB of DDR4-2400 Crucial ballistix sport in a single stick, because it was much cheaper than going dual-channel, for some reason.
• Cooler Master G550M because it was on sale. 550W 80+ bronze is more than I need, which leaves room for future power-hungry upgrades. Also, it's semi-modular, with only the exact cables I needed as native cables, which makes my build look much cleaner.
• Cooler Master MasterBox 5, because it's modular, well-built and nice-looking. It also has a large (though acrylic) window, good airflow, and much more space than I need.
• Crucial mx300 525GB m.2, because I wanted to go full-SSD, and this one, though not lightning-fast, has consistent 500MB read and write speeds, at an attractive cost.
• A 300mbps PCIe wifi adapter, because I can't move the router, and the other option was to drill through 3 thick concrete walls to set up a 20m ethernet cable.

 

My goal while building this was twofold: first, I needed Nate to be able to render 60fps at 1080p on any modern game. Second, I wanted to be able to upgrade it easily and without spending too much money, hence the "overkill" CPU (relative to the graphics card), the very recent AM4 socket, the "small" amount of RAM, and the expensive full-SSD choice. My upgrade plans are the following:

 

• Add another 8gb RAM stick (as soon as the prices get a little more reasonable)
• Add a 1TB HDD for mass storage (as soon as possible).
• Buy a mechanical keyboard (as soon as possible).
• Add an LED strip, so that I can see the hardware even when it's dark (as soon as possible, though less urgent).
• Switch to a more powerful graphics card, such as a 1070, 1080, or 11 / 12th gen 60 or 70 (in a few years).
• Switch to a higher res or higher refresh rate monitor (after buying the new graphics card).
• Repurpose a few older HDDs as a raid array (for the fun, no hurry).
• Give custom watercooling a shot (when it's obsolete and I have to build another computer from scratch).

 

I called this build Nate after the (default) main character of Fallout 4, the first game I wanted to play on this machine. Fallout's Nate is more than 200 years old, but I doubt my PC will last this long, however "future-proof" it may be.

 

Here is what the whole desk looks like (I obviously need to do some exterior cable management, since the glass surface makes my nasty work way too visible). Sorry for the potato phone quality.

Spoiler

 

And here is the hardware. As you can see, with the mATX motherboard, the short graphics card and the m.2 storage underneath, it looks quite empty (I might make a topic later to ask for "filling" suggestions, but if any idea comes through your mind, please share it).

Spoiler

 

[django_keyes]

Cool! Nice hardware choices. I would do everything you set out to do, it looks like you spent some time thinking it out. 

[InertiaSelling]

3 minutes ago, django_keyes said:

Cool! Nice hardware choices. I would do everything you set out to do, it looks like you spent some time thinking it out. 

3 years and 7 months to be precise. Glad to have some positive feedback!

[django_keyes]

Just now, InertiaSelling said:

3 years and 7 months to be precise. Glad to have some positive feedback!

Yea! Cool to see more people building systems!

[InertiaSelling]

At first I thought I had screwed up the thermal paste application. Then I got around 33°C on idle and 64°C max after playing Fallout 4 for an hour or so at 26°C ambient, which I found to be reassuring. But since it is not a CPU hungry game, I'd like to know: does it sound like decent cooling performance ? Should I benchmark the CPU to see how hot it gets under full load ? Should I start a new thread in "air cooling" instead of asking here ?

[Shiv78]

Noice!

 

Maybe make a Fallout-themed lightning bolt out of cardboard or something and spraypaint it and put it on the right side of the mobo

[InertiaSelling]

Cardboard ? If I decided to stick with this ATX case instead of switching to mATX, then I'd do it out of frosted glass with a white LED molex strip behind. Modding isn't worth it if I'm too ashamed to post pictures in the modding sub-forum afterwards.

[Shiv78]

23 minutes ago, InertiaSelling said:

Cardboard ? If I decided to stick with this ATX case instead of switching to mATX, then I'd do it out of frosted glass with a white LED molex strip behind. Modding isn't worth it if I'm too ashamed to post pictures in the modding sub-forum afterwards.

Noice, IDK if you were willing to put in effort for modding so i suggested cardboard lol